Now it was about the battle, the fighting skills, the fury. These were the memories that would allow him to vanquish his foe, to serve the Lord God Almighty to his fullest capacity. There was no reason for compassion, kindness, and love in a place like this.
His humanity was dying, and Remy realized that it wouldn’t be long before all the precious experiences and memories that he’d collected over the centuries he’d lived as a human would be gone.
But there was no other choice. If this was the sacrifice required of him to prevent this most heinous act from happening, then it was the price he would have to pay.
He returned his focus to the job at hand, descending farther and farther into the bowels of Tartarus. The air had become even thicker with despair, the lower levels where the least repentant of the Morningstar’s minions were kept.
He did not want to look at them, curled fetal-like within their small, icy cells, but could not help himself. Remy had known these creatures. No, it was Remiel who had called them family, his brain quickly corrected. But nonetheless, they had been part of his world at one time, and here they were confined to an eternity—or more—of suffering for their actions.
Remy had tried not to think of what had occurred after the rebellion had been thwarted, after he had left Heaven for the earthly plains. He knew it would be bad; how could it not? The Lord of Lords—the Creator of all things—had been challenged by His own creations. How could He not punish them?
Remy knew it would be bad, but he never imagined anything like this.
They rounded yet another corner, the pitching of the floor beneath their feet making it ever more precarious as they descended deeper and deeper into the prison’s lower depths.
From the corner of his eye, Remy believed that he’d seen movement from inside one of the cells. His gaze moved over the frozen wall, looking for what he’d seen, and he was about to dismiss it as a trick of the poor light when a section of cell wall to his left suddenly cracked, sounding like the snap of a bullwhip, and then exploded outward.
Remy and Madach reared back, immediately on the defensive as they were showered with razor-sharp fragments of prison wall. At first he believed it to be more of the fallen angels escaping, but he quickly came to the realization that it was something much bigger, as even more of the wall crumbled and gave way to reveal multiple Tartarus Sentries pouring into the winding corridors, locked in furious combat with recently escaped fallen prisoners.
The Sentries roared through their blood-streaked helmets, unleashing the full fury of their Heavenly weaponry as they attempted to beat back the prisoners that attacked them.
They were like locusts, swarming through the jagged break in the wall, attacking the guards in a frenzied rage. The Sentries swung their crackling swords wildly, the burning blades decimating their enemies with every swing, flaming body parts strewn into the air, but still they kept coming.
The Sentries’ attempts to defend themselves grew more frantic as the fallen numbers continued to grow unabated. Soon Remy could no longer see the giants, their armored forms covered in writhing bodies slick with the grime of confinement in Hell.
The corridor trembled from the ferocity of the struggle, chunks of ceiling dropping down to shatter at their feet.
“Go!” Remy yelled to Madach, pushing him farther ahead. But their way became blocked by one of the Sentries, who dropped to his knees to reveal fallen angels wielding jagged pieces of their prison walls like daggers, clinging to their keeper’s back like hungry ticks to a dog.
And the walls continued to shudder from the enormity of the struggle, more and more of the prison breaking away. Remy was certain the passage was about to come down on their heads, and knew that if they were going to continue on their mission, he had to make this fast.
Leaping in front of Madach he raised the sword that he had taken from the warden Uriel, lashing out at the fallen that swarmed atop the giant Sentry.
The prisoners screamed, leaping back from the devastating blade, shielding their eyes, sensitive from a millennia of shadowed confinement, from the emanations that leaked from the Heavenly weapon.
With a grunt, the Sentry clamored to his feet, reaching out to destroy anything within reach. Realizing that they too were targets for the giant guard’s rage, Remy and Madach tried to push past the Heavenly Sentry. The being’s movements were wild, out of control, as he slammed his bulk against the wall, his flailing, razor-sharp wings cutting through the air, their sharpness devastating to any who got too close.
Madach dove past the Sentry’s uncontrolled movements with Remy close behind.
They were barely able to keep their footing as they skidded down the winding, circular corridor. Remy looked over his shoulder briefly, the curve of the wall hiding most of what was occurring behind them.
There was a sudden roar and a flash of blue light, and Remy watched as the area behind him started to disintegrate. He turned away from the horrific sight, the sound of devastation at his back. He spread his wings, springing off the ground that had started to crack and crumble beneath his feet, reaching for Madach. He grabbed the fallen angel beneath the arms, lifting him from the path and into the air.
He wanted to believe that there was still a chance they could survive this. If there was one thing living as a human being had taught him, it was to believe.
There was always a chance.
No matter how bleak the circumstances.
“It doesn’t look good for me,” the man he would know as Steven Mulvehill had said, leaning back against a gray concrete parking garage support.
There was a growing patch of crimson on his belly where he’d been shot, and he was looking at one of his hands. It had been stained red with his blood.
He was dying.
Remy did not know this man; the two had not yet established their special bond.
Two cases: one that he had been hired to investigate—a possible kidnapping—had somehow intersected with that of another investigation being carried out by the homicide division of the Boston police. Revelations were made, motives revealed, and guilty parties attempted to flee justice, no matter the price.
It had been three a.m. on a rainy Sunday in a Logan Airport parking garage. A suspect in both their cases was preparing to leave the country. Mulvehill had been confused; some pieces of the individual’s story just didn’t seem to fit. He had some questions for the man—some niggling inconsistencies that needed to be clarified before he felt safe in allowing this man to leave.
Those same inconsistencies had aroused Remy’s interests as well, bringing him to the same Logan parking garage.
Mulvehill had been the first to arrive, catching the man as he unloaded a suitcase from the back of his metallic blue BMW. All the homicide cop wanted was to talk, to have a few of his questions answered, some gaps in logic cleared up, and then the individual would have been allowed to go on his way.
The violence was unexpected, the weapon hidden somewhere in the trunk. And it was the one shot fired from the handgun—the single thunderous clap that reverberated off the concrete walls and ceiling of the parking garage—that had led Remy to the man who would later become his friend.
He had found him alone, slumped against the support column, the stomach area of his shirt stained red from blood. The man was dying, and Remy found himself drawn to act.
“It doesn’t look good for me,” Mulvehill had said, looking down at the expanding stain. There was fear in his voice, fear of the unknown that awaited him if he were to die.