Squire had sensed the opening that had likely brought the good guy here some time ago, but had chosen to ignore it.
Why set himself up for future disappointment? The worlds he’d found on the other side of the shadow were often just like the one he and his friends had fought so hard to protect. Sure, there were differences, but there were similarities, too.
Like the fact that there was always a war of good against evil in various stages of development, and that the worlds always had protectors who believed they would triumph over the seemingly insurmountable obstacles that were set down before them.
Images of the place he had left behind and the number of other worlds that he had stumbled across in the throes of death appeared unwanted inside his skull.
And Squire wondered if he had it in him to see yet another.
He paused for a moment, getting his bearings, before his senses zeroed in on the passage.
Of course I have it in me,
he thought, trudging across the shadowscape.
For once upon a time, he had been a good guy, too.
Algernon Stearns knocked lightly on the wooden door as he opened it.
The little girl appeared to be sound asleep, but upon seeing him, her eyes brightened and she smiled.
“Uncle Algernon,” she said happily, pushing herself to sit up.
Stearns went to her bed and sat down beside her. She wrapped her spindly arms around him and, feigning affection, he hugged her back.
“How’s my little Angelina feeling today?” he asked her.
She released him from her pathetic grip and stared up at him, eyes wide. “The angels came to me, Uncle,” she said.
“They did?” Stearns responded earnestly. “How exciting.”
“And they told me that it would soon be time for me to tell God’s message to the world.”
He smiled at her as best he could, the muscles in his face uncomfortable with the expression. “How marvelous that will be.”
“Very much so,” she agreed, grabbing a nearby doll and clutching it to her chest.
“And when it is time, who will be there to help you deliver this important message?” he asked her slyly.
“You will, Uncle,” she said adoringly.
He couldn’t help but be impressed with her. Even though he knew the truth, he could still not find a single flaw in her design.
The Watchers had far surpassed anything he could have created on his own.
“Yes,” he told her. “Yes, I will.”
Angelina crawled out from beneath her heavy covers and maneuvered herself into his lap.
“Tell me again how you will help,” she said, throwing her arms around his neck. “Just in case I might have forgot.”
He chuckled, feeling a slight revulsion from the contact, but he allowed it to pass so that the charade could go on.
“Let’s see,” he said. “I hope that
I
haven’t forgotten.”
The little girl giggled, laying her head upon his shoulder. “You’re just being silly, Uncle. You would never forget anything so important.”
“You know me too well, my dear. Let’s see….” He paused for effect before continuing. “When the angels come to you and tell you that it is time for all the worthy to hear God’s special message, I will come for you.”
“In a big car—right, Uncle?”
“Exactly,” he said with a nod. “I will send my special driver to pick you up and bring you to my building.”
“The one that goes way, way up into the sky,” she said, lifting one of her arms above her head.
“Almost to the clouds,” he told her. “High enough so you can hear the message that you will share coming all the way down from Heaven.”
“And you’ll help me share that message,” little Angelina said, placing a tiny hand lovingly upon his cheek.
“Yes, I will,” he told her. “Inside my building there is a special place…a studio that has been set up just for you.”
She smiled widely, her eyes twinkling, even though she had heard this information countless times before.
“A special place for you, the angels, and your message from God.”
Stearns felt the palms of his hands grow itchy as the mouths wanted to manifest. He held them at bay, exerting his will on them.
“And when you receive His special message, I will be there with my television cameras, broadcasting to all who wish to hear it.”
“How many do you think will be listening?” the little girl asked.
Stearns smiled not at the question, but at the answer.
Far more than the number killed in Hiroshima in 1945,
he thought, the mouths on his hands eagerly appearing before he forced them away again.
“Millions,” he said, leaning in close to whisper in the child’s ear.
“And I will touch each and every one of them with my message,” Angelina said.
“You most assuredly will,” Stearns agreed. “Each and every one; they will never be the same after they hear you.”
She placed her head upon his shoulder again, snuggling her face into the crook of his neck. “Why me, Uncle?” she asked. “Why did God choose me over so many others?”
“It’s quite simple, really,” Stearns said. “You are very special, and God would select only a very special someone to deliver His message.”
“But I don’t feel special.” Angelina lifted her head to gaze into his eyes.
“If you only knew how special you really are,” he told her, for the first time being completely honest with the child.
“You’re special, too,” she said then, hugging him tightly in a fragile grip.
Stearns was finished here, and reached up to peel the girl away.
“Uncle needs to go now,” he told her as he laid her back down on the bed. “There is still much to do in preparation for the big day.”
She crawled beneath the covers, and he pulled them up to her chin.
“Rest now, my special girl.” He forced himself to lean forward and kiss the child’s damp forehead.
“What do you think it will be?” Angelina asked.
“What will what be?”
“The message,” she whispered. “What do you think God’s message will be?”
For a brief moment he heard a million voices raised in a scream of terror as their lives were stolen away.
“I have no idea,” he said, opening the door. “But I’m sure it will be something wonderful,” he added as he closed it behind him.
Stearns turned from the room to view the child’s immediate family standing there in the hallway, waiting for him.
“Was she happy to see you?” the child’s mother asked, wiping her hands on her apron. Her husband smiled, uneasy in Stearns’ presence, which he had every right to be.
Stearns was not used to being questioned by beings such as this; they were normally created only to carry out orders, but there was a charade to maintain.
A story to be played out.
Again, the Watchers had outdone themselves.
“As happy as I was to see her,” Stearns told the golem family. It all felt like a game to him, and he did not have the time or the patience for games. But if this plan, conceived in part by the fallen Grigori, was to succeed, he had to partake of this fiction.
The parents of little Angelina Hayward must fully believe in their humanity, just as completely as the little girl must believe that she was chosen by God.
If the life forces of millions were to be his.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It was the closest thing the fallen Guardian angel had to dreaming.
Remembering.
Francis remembered how scared he had been…how weak he had felt in the presence of God.
Where was the big, bad warrior then?
he thought.
Where was the angel that had chosen to fight on the side of Lucifer, just to help the Son of the Morning make his point to the Creator?
He had been but an insignificant bug kneeling before a force that had shaped the universe from nothing, and even though he had known it would help him naught, he had begged for the Almighty’s forgiveness, honestly believing he had learned the error of his ways.
And he’d waited for what seemed like an eternity for his punishment to come, but it never happened.
Instead, the Lord had given him a penance to perform, and that was where he had learned the art of dealing death.
Killing in the name of Heaven.
When he remembered like this, he saw their faces, all those who had somehow offended God or posed some sort of threat to the Golden City.
He saw their faces as they were before they died—before he killed them.
He saw them all now, but this time the expressions they wore were different. No longer did they appear surprised or angry or scared.
They seemed amused.
Smiling as if they knew something that he did not.
Francis opened his eyes.
“Now, that sucked,” he said with a grunt, rolling onto his side and attempting to stand.
The motel room where he’d last met with Remy Chandler was completely dark, and he used the side of the small wooden desk to steady himself as he searched the shadows for his companion, worried that he might have gotten lost along the way.
A toilet flushed noisily, and the bathroom door opened, illuminating the room in fluorescent harshness.
“Oh, good. You’re awake.” Angus stumbled back into the room, looking like death warmed over. “For a minute there I thought I might’ve killed you.”
“You thought you might have killed me?” Francis asked. The room seemed to be moving beneath his feet, and he pulled out the desk chair to sit down and ride out the storm.
Angus dropped down on the room’s double bed, mattress coils screaming out in protest. “I would have died if I hadn’t fed,” the sorcerer explained. “But I took only enough to keep on living.”
“So I’m guessing you’re not talking about room service or a quick jaunt to the burger joint down the street,” Francis said, not the least bit happy about where he knew this was going as he realized how weak he was feeling.
The sorcerer shrugged.
“You’re like the asshole that almost killed us in New Orleans,” Francis said, his voice becoming louder.
Angus nodded. “Like Stearns…yes.”
“You fed off me,” Francis stated, the words dripping with fury.
“Only a little,” Angus defended himself. “Stearns took so much from me that I would have died if I hadn’t—”
Francis was up with his gun drawn in a blink.
“If you hadn’t had taken a few nibbles from the Francis snack bar,” he finished, aiming the pistol at Angus’ fat, flushed face.
Angus raised his hands in surrender. “I would have asked if you had been conscious, but I had no idea when you were going to wake up. And this way at least one of us would be able to alert someone to Stearns’ plans.”
Stearns’ plans.
Even though he wanted to perforate the sorcerer’s round face, Francis lowered his gun and returned it to the bottomless pocket inside his suit coat.
“Tell me about this Stearns character,” he said, sitting on the desk chair before he fell down. “I thought the problem was with somebody named Deacon.”
Angus lay on the bed, legs splayed, head back against the headboard. “It appears that I was mistaken. It’s not the betrayed reaching out to kill us from beyond the grave at all…. It’s one of our own.”
“And the mouths on his hands?” Francis asked, holding up his own as examples. “What the fuck’s up with that?”
“I told you before: The cabal was part of an experiment to use the life force of living things as an energy source, and it achieved everything we had hoped. But there was a price to pay, one that we didn’t realize at first.”
“It gave you nasty little mouths on your hands,” Francis said. He reached into his coat pocket and removed a crumpled pack of cigarettes. If there was ever a time for a smoke, it was now. He offered the pack to Angus.
“Thanks,” the sorcerer said, grabbing a cigarette and leaning forward so Francis could light it. “The magick obviously changed some of us more dramatically than others,” he continued to explain. “It appears, though, that we all must feed on the life energies of living things in order to survive, but I certainly haven’t grown mouths on my hands to do so.”
Francis wasn’t sure that he wanted to ask the next question, but he did, anyway. “So how do you feed?” he asked, blowing a cloud of smoke into the air.
Angus pointed a chubby finger to his mouth. “This works just fine.”
“You put that on me?” Francis felt his ire begin to climb again.
“Just a gentle peck on your cheek,” Angus said.
Francis could see that the fat sorcerer was struggling not to laugh. Maybe he would shoot him after all.
“What an interesting existence you’ve led, Fraciel.”
“Don’t call me that,” Francis warned.
“Aren’t you going to ask how I know about you?” the sorcerer teased.
Francis just puffed on his smoke, knowing that Angus would answer his own question.
“When we feed on your energies, we get a good taste of what you are…who you are…where you’ve been, what you’ve been up to…Your experiences become ours…. We live them as you lived them,” Angus explained.
Francis glared across the room.
“No worries,” Angus assured him. “Your secrets are safe with me.”
“You said something about Stearns being up to something.” Francis pinched the still-burning end of the cigarette to extinguish it and dropped the remains into the barrel beside the desk.
“As he fed on me, I tried to feed on him…and I saw that he is very hungry.”
“Thinking an all-you-can-eat-buffet hungry?” Francis asked to help him gauge the level of importance.
“Hungry for the power that only the deaths of countless people would satisfy.” Angus finished his own cigarette, grinding it out on the bedside table and leaving it there.
Francis felt a sudden dip in the temperature of the room and knew it wasn’t a chill from Angus’ statement. The Pitiless pistol was in his grip once again as he stood, his every sense on full alert.
“What is it?” Angus asked nervously, throwing his tree trunk–sized legs over the side of the bed, ready to flee.
“It feels different in here.” Francis carefully stepped away from the desk, attempting to home in on the cause of the disturbance.
“I feel it, too,” Angus said. He extended his arms, fingertips wiggling. “It’s as if something is pulling the energy from the room—”