As his bare feet touched down upon the blacktop, he collapsed, pitching forward, the stinging warmth of his face and body now pressed to the cool tar-paper roof.
Unconsciousness threatened to take him, but he managed to fight it, not wanting to surrender to the darkness again. He’d spent far too much time in the womb of oblivion, and would prefer not to return there.
In the distance he heard a noise, growing louder, more persistent as it came closer. It was the barking of a dog—his dog—and he wasn’t sure if he’d ever heard a sound so beautiful.
Marlowe was saying hurry, over and over again in the rough voice that he had. And Remy couldn’t have agreed more.
Hurry.
He heard the door to the roof open, the distinct voice of his friend speaking to the insistent animal.
“If these are friggin’ pigeons again, you’re not getting your snack tonight. You think I’m joking? Try me. If you brought me all the way up here in the middle of the freakin’ night again to…”
Marlowe knew he was there, somehow sensing his arrival.
He was a good boy, a really good boy.
The barking turned higher, almost a squeal of pain, as the dog found him. Remy could feel his excited approach. The Labrador pounced and began licking his face, his head, his shoulders, repeating his name over and over again. Remy wanted to sit up, to throw his arms around the neck of his animal friend and tell him how much he was missed, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t even open his eyes.
“Jesus Christ, Remy,” he heard Mulvehill say. “I thought you were dead. When I got that phone message I didn’t know what to think… I didn’t know if you needed my help… I thought you were dead… ”
Mulvehill knelt upon the ground, and Remy’s bare skin stung as his body was gently raised, held in the arms of his friend.
Marlowe had not stopped kissing his face. It felt good, cool and sort of slimy on his tender flesh.
“Look at you,” Mulvehill said, holding his friend close. There was worry in his voice, and Remy wondered how bad he actually looked.
“You hang in there, okay?” he said. “You’re going to be fine. It’s my turn now,” Mulvehill said. “There’s no reason to be afraid… Everything is going to be all right.”
And with those words, Remy managed to crack open his eyes, staring up into the man’s worried face.
His friend was right, he thought, as he felt his eyes begin to close, eager oblivion rushing in to steal him away from this moment of happiness.
At the moment, there was no reason to be afraid; everything was going to be all right.
And as exhaustion threatened to take him, he saw his wife’s beautiful face as she again asked him the question.
Are you happy?
And he completely surrendered to the moment, taking her into his arms, the two of them drifting down, down, down into the darkness.
Yes.
EPILOGUE
It had taken him time to heal, the damage far more extensive than he would have originally believed.
Hell certainly had its dramatic effects; his shoulder still ached where he had been wounded, his flesh still peeling in places, the remaining manifestation of his angelic form sloughing off like a snake shedding its skin.
It itched like hell.
Remy stood in the foyer of Francis’ building on Newbury Street, listening to the sounds of the empty building. The fallen that had lived here were gone, leaving to go elsewhere when the passageway between this world and Hell was severed.
It is not such a bad thing, he thought, there being one less entry point from the netherworld, especially now.
The jingling of Marlowe’s collar distracted him from his musing. The dog was at the end of the hall, sniffing around an old radiator.
“What did you find?” Remy asked.
“Mouse smell,” Marlowe said, lifting his head to answer, a large wad of dust sticking to his wet black nose.
Since Remy’s return, Marlowe had become his shadow, refusing to let him out of his sight. He believed the dog had thought that he had died, leaving him like Madeline had. It would take some convincing, but he was sure that the animal would soon start to relax again.
Malowe padded down the hallway toward him.
“Want to get going?” Remy asked him, reaching out to pat his head and wiping away the dust and dirt that still clung to his nose.
“Park?” the dog asked.
Remy reviewed his day. It was Saturday, and there really wasn’t all that much planned.
“Sure, I think we can squeeze in a run to the Common,” he said.
Marlowe’s tail wagged happily.
Fishing the building’s keys from his pocket, Remy noticed Marlowe now sniffing around the door that would take them down into what had been Francis’ place.
“Where Francis?” Marlowe asked with a tilt of his head.
He really didn’t know how to answer the animal. To tell the Labrador that his friend was dead would have likely been a lie. Francis had been a Guardian angel in service to the Lord God who had betrayed his station by joining Lucifer’s rebellion against Heaven. He had realized the error of his ways, begging the Almighty’s forgiveness, and had been given penance.
“Francis had to go away,” Remy told the animal.
And until that penance was completed, until the Lord of Lords bestowed forgiveness, there would be no release.
“Coming back?” Marlowe asked, inquisitively tilting his head to one side.
“I don’t know,” Remy answered truthfully. “I really don’t know.”
The former Guardian must have suspected that something had been wrong in the netherworld, putting things in motion in the material world that put Remy in charge of all his financial holdings. Remy had been stunned when he’d received the letter from the lawyer’s office explaining that he was now the sole owner of the property on Newbury Street, until the original owner’s return.
“C’mon, let’s go to the park,” he said, opening the foyer door out into the entryway. Marlowe bounded ahead of him as Remy took a final look.
They’d blamed the results of Hell leaking out from the Tartarus passage on a gas leak, city workers tearing up the street in front of the brownstone, as well as the basement, in search of the problem pipe.
Nobody ever really said if they’d found what they were looking for, but things returned to normal, and the building was again deemed safe to be lived in.
Not wanting the now vacant building to sit there empty, Remy had contacted a real estate company and was going to rent the apartments out. There was no danger now, the passage to Hell having been permanently closed, but Francis’ apartment would remain locked and unrented just to be on the safe side.
Remy left the building, the details over what had transpired in both Hell, and later in Heaven, nearly dominating his thoughts. He had no idea what the future would bring, the concept of a war breaking out between the forces of Hell and Heaven making him feel very afraid. He knew that a war such as that would not stay within the combatants’ borders.
Marlowe barked, snout pointed at the door as he waited patiently to leave.
“All right, pal,” Remy said, pushing open the outside door. “We’re going.”
The dog leapt out onto the front landing, bounding down the steps with increased excitement.
Heading straight toward the lone woman standing at the bottom of the stairs.
“Marlowe, no!” Remy yelled, hoping to put the brakes on the dog’s excitement, but it didn’t do much. He loved to meet new people, and when there was one just standing at the end of the walkway, waiting for him, how was a Labrador to resist?