Remy tried to move past and felt a hand suddenly pressed to his chest. He glanced down at the hand.
“I said he’s resting,” the Grigori repeated more forcefully.
“I know your kind despises me for one reason or another, but I strongly suggest that you remove your hand from my person or I’ll be more than happy to provide you with something to really hate me for.”
The hand stayed there a moment longer before it was withdrawn.
He considered pushing past the Grigori lackey to find the angel and ask him what he knew, but right then, he didn’t have the energy.
He gave the fallen angel a final, nasty look, then quickly turned and left.
It was cold outside on the early-morning streets of Boston, but Remy didn’t feel a thing.
NINE
R
emy wandered up Tremont Street, onto Arlington, ending up in the lobby of the old Ritz-Carlton Hotel, now the Taj.
He glanced at his watch and figured that Ashley would probably be up by now, getting ready for school. Finding a phone, he dialed the number and got Ashley’s mom. He explained that he was working on a case, and would she or Ashley mind zipping over to the apartment to give Marlowe his breakfast and take him out.
The woman said that there would be no problem, and Remy thanked her and hung up.
Now what to do? All the way up from the Zone he’d thought about what Sariel had proposed, and how freaked he was by what the Grigori had believed he’d do.
The sad thing was that no matter how disturbed he was, he couldn’t really see much of a choice. If these creatures . . . these Chimerian were as dangerous as Sariel said, there could very well be human lives at stake.
Remy headed into the Club Lounge and bought a large coffee. The scotch had worn off a while ago and he needed something more stimulating to get his brain functioning the way it should.
He took the coffee and returned to the bank of phones in the lobby, digging through his pockets for change. In this particular instance, he didn’t worry about waking anybody up—this person never slept, and was almost always home.
Wishing for his cell phone, he fed the machine with change and dialed the number, listening as it rang.
On the third ring the phone was picked up, but only silence greeted Remy.
“It’s me,” he said.
“Hey, me,” replied a voice on the other end. “What’s up?”
“I’ve got a bit of a problem, and I want to run it by you.”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with the Apocalypse, does it?” the voice asked.
“Not exactly,” Remy responded.
“Good, I’ve pretty much had my fill of the Apocalypse.”
“Meet me at the Taj for breakfast. My treat,” Remy told him.
“Sounds yummy, give me about a half hour and I’ll be there.”
“Half hour?” Remy asked. The voice on the other end lived less than ten minutes away.
“Finishing up
Once Upon a Time in the West
,” he said.
“Didn’t you watch that last month?” Remy remembered their conversation about Henry Fonda’s performance in the Leone masterpiece.
“New month,” was the answer.
It made perfect sense.
“See you in a half hour, then,” Remy said, and hung up.
The former Guardian angel said nothing as he strolled into the lobby of the Taj Hotel. With his balding head, horn-rimmed glasses, and usual gray suit, white shirt, and maroon tie, Francis looked like any other white-collar business type employed in the city of Boston.
“How was the movie?” Remy asked, getting up from the sofa where he had been awaiting his friend’s arrival.
“Better with every viewing,” Francis said.
Remy nodded, even though
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
was his own personal favorite of the Leone westerns.
“Are we going to eat?” Francis asked, looking toward the cafe.
“Let’s go,” Remy said as the two walked toward the entrance. “I could use a pot of coffee.”
“Waffles,” Francis said, and Remy turned his head to look at him.
“What was that?”
“Waffles,” he repeated. “I could really go for some waffles.”
Knowing what Remy did about the being called Francis, statements like that only made him smile.
Francis was once the angel Fraciel of the Guardian angel host Virtues. A bad choice on his part had left him on the outs with the Lord God after the rebellion. Realizing the error of his ways, Fraciel had thrown himself at the mercy of the Almighty, begging for forgiveness. Surprisingly, the Almighty did not banish the Guardian to the Hell prison, Tartarus, but instead made him watchman over one of the gates between the earthly realm and the Hellish, a gate that just so happened to be in the basement of the Newbury Street brownstone that Francis now owned.
When he wasn’t taking care of his duties to the doorway to Tartarus, the former Guardian angel worked as one of the world’s most sought-after assassins. If you could afford his fee, and he decided, after careful review, that the victim did in fact deserve to be taken down, there was little that could be done to prevent the inevitable.
But this morning, the inevitable was that Francis was going to have waffles.
They were seated at a table by the window, overlooking the lower end of Newbury Street, and while the hostess went off to get coffee for Remy and tea for Francis, they quietly perused the menu.
Remy really didn’t have to eat, although he often did so to maintain his guise of humanity. This morning, however, he realized he had no desire for food. Francis had already closed his menu and placed it on the table beside him, so Remy did the same.
“First off, how are you doing?” the former Guardian asked, as he straightened his silverware. Francis had always been fascinated by Remy’s relationship with Madeline, observing the many facets of their marriage like a scientist watching some new kind of germ beneath a microscope.
“I’m doing,” Remy replied, concerned by the bizarre visions he’d been having, but not yet ready to share. Francis already thought he was nuts to live the way he did.
“And the mutt?”
“He’s doing, too.”
Francis accepted that with a pause and a nod.
“So what seems to be the problem?” he asked, changing the subject.
The waitress appeared then, bringing Remy a carafe of coffee and Francis a metal pot of hot water and a small wooden box filled with flavored teas. She took their order: bagel with cream cheese for Remy, and waffles topped with strawberries and whipped cream for Francis.
“So?” Francis prodded, after she’d gone. He was dunking an English Breakfast tea bag in a cup of hot water he’d just poured.
Remy took a long drink from his coffee cup before replying. “It’s getting weird again.”
“Again?” Francis questioned with a laugh. He removed the tea bag and placed it on the side of his saucer. Then he added two heaping teaspoons of sugar and a splash of milk. “Has it ever stopped? Especially since the whole Apocalypse business, the crazy train has been running flat-out.”
Remy didn’t like to hear that. He had hoped that once they’d driven back the Four Horsemen, the world would have settled back into some semblance of normalcy, but it really hadn’t. He wondered how much that had to do with his current dilemma.
“First off, Noah’s dead,” he began.
Francis was stirring his tea. He removed the spoon and set it down on the white tablecloth, where it left a brownish stain.
The former Guardian took a slurping sip from the rim of his cup as he digested Remy’s statement. “Why am I already guessing that he didn’t die peacefully in his sleep?”
“He was murdered,” Remy confirmed, remembering what he had seen aboard the oil rig, the horrible condition of the old man’s body, as if he’d been beaten to death.
“Color me surprised,” Francis said sarcastically.
Remy drank his coffee, allowing the caffeine to work its magic upon him.
“Sariel was the one who showed me,” Remy continued.
“That one is such a creep,” the former Guardian said with a nod. “But he does have some damn fine scotch.”
“It seems that Noah was trying to make contact with a species called the Chimerian . . . the Lord’s first attempt at creating man that were supposed to be wiped out during the Great Flood, but somehow weren’t.”
Francis was silent as their breakfasts were delivered.
“Is there anything else I can get you?” the waitress asked.
Remy shook his head with a smile.
“Just some syrup and I’ll be good to go,” Francis said.
She quickly darted away and returned with the syrup, placing it on the table in front of Francis. “Let me know if you need anything else,” she offered as she moved on to her other tables.
“There was a first attempt at humanity?” Francis asked as he poured syrup on the waffles, careful not to get any on the whipped cream.
“That’s what Sariel said.” Remy was relieved to know that he wasn’t the only one unaware of the early prototype. “Think I might’ve caught a glimpse of one on Noah’s oil rig.”
“So that’s true, then?” Francis asked, breaking off a piece of waffle with his fork. “I’d heard he was living alone in the middle of the ocean.”
The former Guardian took a bite of his breakfast.
“So these . . . ,” he began with a mouthful.
“Chimerian.”
“Chimerian. You think they offed the old man?” Francis asked.
Remy paused to think about the question, and realized, at this stage of the game, he didn’t really know. “Possibly,” he answered.
“No wonder our fair-haired boy sounded like he was in such a tizzy,” Francis commented, eating more of his breakfast.
Remy set his bagel down and wiped at his mouth, wanting to be sure he wasn’t mistaken about what he’d just heard.
“Who, Sariel? You talked with him?”
Francis nodded as he chewed. “Called about ten minutes before you did, said he was going to need my skills for a matter of grave importance.”
“Did you already know what I just told you?”
Francis shook his head. “No, when I asked him what was up, he said it was a hunting expedition.”
“And you agreed to this?”
He shrugged. “Business has been sort of slow, and there are these Bavarian Warhammers coming onto the market that I’m really jonesing for. . . .”
Francis had a thing for weaponry. He collected it obsessively, like a nerdy kid and comic books.
“You agreed to this,” Remy repeated, resigning himself from question to statement.
“Yeah,” Francis said, breaking off another piece of waffle and shoveling it into his mouth.
“Do you understand what he wants you to do?” Remy asked. “He wants you to help them kill these creatures . . . these survivors.”
“He said that you were on board, too,” Francis told him, reaching for his teacup.
“Of course he did.” Remy had picked up the other half of his bagel, but placed it back on his plate. He couldn’t even pretend to be hungry anymore. “I just can’t wrap my brain around the idea of wiping them out,” he said.
“Think of it this way: they’re murderers,” Francis said flatly. “And they shouldn’t even be alive. The flood should’ve erased them from the world.”
Remy poured himself another cup of coffee, not buying the Guardian’s justification.
“Think of it as tidying up,” Francis stressed. “We’d be setting things right.”
“We’d be committing murder.”
“Is it murder when you put a rabid animal down?” Francis asked. “These things are likely dangerous. Can we take a risk on them maybe breeding and getting around?”
Remy knew that his friend’s points were accurate, but something nagged at him, something that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
“We don’t know anything about them, other than what Sariel has told us.”
“And?” Francis asked.
“When have we ever trusted anything Sariel has said?”
“Good point.” Francis took a sip of his tea.
“I’m not comfortable with this,” Remy said, removing the cloth napkin from his lap and placing it on the table.
“So does that mean you’re not in?” Francis asked.
Remy fished fifty dollars out of his wallet and put it on the table.
“I don’t know what it means.”
“Do you want a lift?” Francis asked. “Let me finish here and—”
“Think I’ll walk,” Remy told him. “It’ll give me a chance to think this through. I’ll call you later.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Francis said, as he continued to eat. “And thanks for breakfast.”
“Everything all right?” the hostess asked as Remy passed her on his way out.
He smiled, tempted to tell her the truth.
No, things weren’t all right.
Not in the least.
It was a nice day, not that Remy noticed at all.
He walked across Arlington Street and through the Public Garden, heading toward the Boston Common. People were just starting to hit the streets on their way to work, flowing up from the Park Street T Station and trickling down from the many small streets that made up Beacon Hill.
Remy wandered against the tide heading to Downtown Crossing, the financial district and Government Center, making his own way home up through the Common to Joy Street.
As he walked, the same thoughts bounced around inside his head. He didn’t want to be like them . . . like the Grigori, and even Francis. He would have been perfectly content to live like those bustling along to work around him.
Ignorant to the matters of the preternatural.
But he wasn’t, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t ignore what he knew.
Especially when lives—human as well as angelic—might be at risk.
To say that Marlowe was happy to see him was an understatement. But that was one of the most glorious things about dogs, they were always happy to see you.