He could not bear to think of such a thing.
As luck would have it, there was an empty parking space in front of Steven Mulvehill’s apartment building, and Remy pulled in close to the curb.
Marlowe began to whine and pant from the backseat.
“What are you going on about?” Remy asked as he put the car in park.
“No going on. Excited,” Marlowe expressed, drool starting to leak from the sides of his jowls.
“Yeah, we haven’t seen our buddy Steven in a while,” Remy agreed, glancing up at the second floor and seeing one light on. He retrieved the brown paper bag with his liquor-store purchase from the passenger’s seat and got out of the car, opening the rear door to let the dog out.
“Excited to see Steven,” Marlowe said, darting across the narrow street and lifting his leg to urinate on a telephone pole.
“I can tell,” Remy said, watching as the dog finished and began to sniff around. “You done?”
“Yes,” Marlowe said, running back to join Remy on the steps to the front porch of the building.
The doorbell was busted, but the front door was always unlocked, so Remy pushed it open and Marlowe immediately began the trek up two flights of stairs to Steven’s apartment. The angel followed, feeling a sense of trepidation.
He hadn’t seen Steven in a couple of weeks, not since that nasty bit of business with the shape-shifting Shaitan.
Remy had asked Steven to check in on an elderly friend of his, not realizing the connection to the case he was working on or the danger he was putting his friend in. The homicide cop had nearly been killed, and had gotten a full taste of the weird shit that Remy often dealt with. Since then, Steven had avoided Remy and hadn’t answered any of his calls.
Marlowe’s whining interrupted Remy’s thoughts, and he reached the second-floor landing to find the Lab sitting outside Mulvehill’s door, wagging his tail.
“Did you knock?” Remy asked.
Marlowe looked at him indignantly. “No knock. No hands.”
“Well, you could scratch,” Remy suggested.
Marlowe just looked back at the door and cried as Remy reached out, rapping his knuckles on the heavy wood.
He waited, listening for sounds of life from the other side, but heard nothing.
“Steven,” Remy called out, knocking again. “I’ve got a bottle of Glenlivet here with your name on it… Open the door and it’s all yours.”
He tilted his head, listening all the more intently, but still he heard nothing. “Is he in there?” he asked the Labrador.
Marlowe pushed his snout into the crack beneath the door and began to sniff. “Smell him.” He began to bark pathetically.
Remy closed his eyes and reached out with his senses. He could hear everything in the building and even some of what was going on in the houses next door and across the street. He pulled back and focused on Steven’s place, the hum of the refrigerator, the whirr of the clock over the stove, the hiss and gurgle of the hot-water heater in the far corner of the kitchen.
And the sound of someone breathing nervously-someone who did not want to open the door no matter who was on the other side.
Or because of who was on the other side.
“He must be out,” Remy said to Marlowe.
The dog looked at him. “Smell him,” he growled.
“Of course you do. It’s his apartment.” Remy turned and headed for the stairs as Marlowe continued to sniff beneath the door. “C’mon, buddy. We’ll come back another time.”
Marlowe offered one more pathetic-sounding bark.
But still the door did not open.
The Labrador started down the stairs as Remy momentarily paused. He looked at the paper bag that held the bottle of fifteen-year-old Scotch and returned to the apartment door.
“A peace offering,” he said, placing the bag with the bottle in front of the door before following Marlowe downstairs and back out into the night.
Steven Mulvehill sat perfectly still, waiting for his friend to leave.
He’d known it would be only a matter of time before Remy showed up; Steven had lost count of how many times Remy had called since-
The images flooded his mind again: a beast whose flesh shifted and changed like smoke that had shown him the dangers of a hidden world.
Of monsters and angels.
The physical injuries Steven had sustained in his encounter with the Shaitan were healing well. But the mental ones were deep and still ragged, so much so that he was surprised when he actually had the courage to get out of bed these days.
Seeing Remy Chandler right now wasn’t in the cards. As much as Steven hated to blame him, Remy was, after all, responsible for exposing him to things he never should have known about.
A Boston homicide cop for more than fifteen years, and he’d never known this kind of fear before. He was reminded of his early childhood and how he’d gone through a phase when he’d been terrified to go to bed at night.
And now he understood what he had known in those early years: that there really were good reasons to be afraid of the dark.
The Catskill Mountains
In a Subterranean Chamber Beneath the Deacon Estate
August 6, 1945
And to think, I wasn’t going to attend Konrad’s little soiree, Algernon Stearns thought as he watched one of Deacon’s golem servants finish attaching the last of the numerous coils and wires to a heavy metal harness the sorcerer wore on his naked body.
The artificial man tugged on the vest to be sure it was secure and accidently pinched Stearns’ left nipple.
“Damn you!” Stearns hissed. Supernatural energies that could easily have reduced the being to dust danced at his fingertips.
“Is everything all right, Algernon?” Deacon asked as he checked the connections on his own vest.
Stearns managed to suppress his anger, offering a tight smile. “Everything is fine, Deacon. Just a little pinch is all.”
“Well, if everything goes according to plan, you’ll be experiencing far more than a pinch shortly,” Deacon warned. “But what you will gain from this temporary discomfort…”
“Is power,” Stearns finished.
He glanced around at the other four members of the cabal. They were all there: Daphene Molaar, Robert Desplat, Eugene Montecello, and Angus Heath-some of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful magick users. And they all appeared nervous, their eyes darting about the room.
They stood in a circle in a subterranean room beneath Deacon’s estate, all naked except for the same metal vest that Stearns and Deacon wore. Cables trailed across the cold stone floor, connecting the vests to a series of complex machines that, in turn, were attached to an impressively large device that had been erected in the room’s center. Stearns understood that the device was a kind of antenna-an antenna that would attract vast amounts of life energies and distribute the raw power among those who wore the vests. If Deacon was right, his machine would transform the cabal forever.
Konrad Deacon, the hero of the day.
Stearns knew what the man was up to. Deacon coveted his position as leader of the cabal, and now the upstart believed that he had what was needed to steal away Stearns’ authority.
Well, Stearns wasn’t about to let it go so easily.
He thought about the night that had led to this. He had been tempted to stay in Spain and skip Deacon’s little party, but curiosity had made him change his mind. Even still, he had arrived late to Deacon’s mansion, and was amused by the relief he saw on his host’s face. In fact, the whole cabal shared the expression, for an affair of sorcerers could never convene without the presence of Algernon Stearns.
It had been some time since they had last gathered, and Stearns was taken aback by how old and frail they all appeared. He wasn’t alone, after all; the use of magick was taking its toll on all of them.
Then, as if on cue, Konrad Deacon had tapped the side of his crystal champagne flute with his knife, and all eyes were on him. He began his speech, and Stearns quickly grew impatient as Deacon welcomed them to his home, then launched into a dissertation on their responsibility to a world on the brink. The war in the Pacific lingered on and the instability in the world meant that nobody noticed the rise in supernatural activity, except for those in tune with the ways of the weird.