Remy's suspicions had been right; these weren't savage beasts to be put down.
"How could I tell Sariel about them?" Armaros asked, kissing one of them atop its bald, veiny head.
"They're only children."
Armaros hugged the children lovingly, and they hugged him back.
"We were going to try to save them—Noah and I," he explained. "Transporting them to a place in the modern world where they could learn, and adapt."
Remy recalled the transport containers, and the abandoned church property in Lynn.
"Noah had it all worked out," the angel continued. As soon as he spoke the old man's name, the Chimerian children immediately reacted. They became very still, throwing back their overly large heads, their mouths emitting a strange ululating howl that echoed through the vast chamber.
"I know, I know," Armaros said, pulling them closer to him.
"They miss him," the angel explained. "They loved their Noah very much."
It was the most heartbreaking sound Remy had ever heard, triggering some bizarre paternal instinct. He wanted to go to them, to hold them in his arms as Armaros did, and comfort them from the pain of the world.
"He had returned to the rig for some final preparations when Sariel found him," the angel explained, drawing the Chimerian children closer to him.
The scene of the crime flashed before Remy's eyes, Noah's beaten and battered body lying on his office floor.
"And for what he was going to do, Sariel killed him," Remy said.
Armaros nodded. "I'm not sure if that was his intention… but he was so enraged that Noah could even consider what he was doing…"
The angel looked at Remy. "But how could we not?" he asked. “Somehow they had survived the deluge… survived all the years following… doesn't it mean that they'd earned their right to live?"
Remy stepped closer, keeping his burning hand at his side.
The children grew nervous at his approach.
"Shhhhh," Armaros comforted. "He means you no harm."
One of the Chimerian looked at him with deep, cautious eyes, and Remy knew that this was the one that had found its way to his home.
Remy knelt down near Armaros, reaching out with the hand that did not burn with the fire of Heaven. The child at first studied what was offered, and then cautiously reached for it, gripping one of Remy's fingers in his.
"That's it," Armaros said. "He's our friend."
With the child's touch the images flowed through his brain, and his suspicions were confirmed. He knew these children of the flood, and why the Grigori were so desperate for them to be gone.
"The bastards," Remy whispered. "The miserable, coldhearted bastards."
Seeing that he wasn't a threat, the two other children became interested in him, leaving Armaros's arms to come to him. And with each touch of their clawed hands, or the feel of their warm breath on his cheek, Remy knew them more, and what they had gone through to live.
"I couldn't let Noah's death be in vain," Armaros went on. "I was going to try and accomplish our goals alone…" The Grigori laughed. "But I was sloppy and Sariel caught me. I tried to tell him that they meant us no harm, that they only wanted to live, but he would hear nothing of it. I'm surprised that I didn't share Noah's fate right then and there, but that must be where you came in."
The Chimerian children were crawling all over Remy now, completely unafraid.
Armaros chuckled. "They know you," the fallen angel said. "They know what you are."
Remy laughed, the first real laugh that he'd had since his wife had died.
With the thought of Madeline, the Chimerian children stopped. They stared at him with their intense dark eyes. And one by one, they drew back their heads and sang their sad, sad song for him.
"Sariel tried to make me talk," Armaros explained defiantly. "But I wouldn't tell him." He shook his head from side to side. "I thought I would die, but still I kept their secret. He wanted to know about this place, but I held my tongue."
Remy was holding the children now, each of them completely comfortable with the other.
"How did you escape?" he asked.
"There are some among them—the Grigori—that feel as I do. They let me go so that I could try and get the children to safety before…"
Remy felt it inside his head, like fingers gently running across the surface of his brain. It wasn't an entirely unpleasant sensation.
Angel of Heaven, said the voice like a gentle summer breeze tickling inside his ear. I have something to show you.
Armaros must have heard it as well, because he smiled.
"She wants to talk with you," the fallen angel said. He opened his arms, calling the children to him. "Go to her."
"Who?" Remy asked, feeling a psychic tug upon him, turning in the darkness like the needle of a compass, pointed toward where he needed to go.
"The Mother," Armaros said.
There wasn't a moment's hesitation; this was what he had been waiting for. Remy headed off into the vast underground cave system.
She was calling to him.
The Mother was calling, and he had no choice but to answer.
THIRTEEN
It felt as though he'd been walking for days, but he knew that wasn't the case. The chamber went on, and on, up and over hills of ice older than recorded history, the only source of illumination being the divine fire that burned around his hand.
Dripping stalactites, like the teeth of a giant beast, hung over his head as he slid down from the other side of a black rock wall and onto a path that seemed to be taking him even deeper into the cavernous surroundings.
At first he had not the slightest idea what it was that loomed out of the darkness in front of them, believing it to be another enormous wall of rock and ice, an obstruction that could very well prevent him from going any farther.
Remy lifted his burning hand, staring at the obstruction, and realized that he was looking at something else altogether.
That he had reached his destination.
Remy nodded in satisfaction, taking it all in, absorbing the sight of the ancient craft that appeared to have become part of its rocky underground surroundings.
It must've been swallowed up by changes in the Earth's surface. Pulled farther and farther beneath the ground as time passed, he thought as he looked upon what was left of the ark.
The remains of Noah's ark.
Over the passage of time the wood had ossified, becoming like stone, blending with its geological surroundings. The front of the once gigantic ship protruded from the stone as if sailing through a monstrous ocean swell that had been frozen in time.
It made sense that this was where they'd be, Remy thought as he was drawn toward the ancient transport. Denied passage on the great craft, but now…
Wedging his fingers deep into cracks between the rock and ice, Remy started to climb, the gentle voice of the Mother driving him on.
The answers are inside, Remy told himself, the all-too-human flesh of his fingers feeling the rigors of the harsh elements.
And Remy needed answers.
From the beginning, when Sariel had first come to him, he had sensed that something wasn't right, that he wasn't getting the entire picture.
It was all so much bigger than what the Grigori leader had cared to share.
Remy reached the top of the ark, jumping from an icy ledge to the side of the craft, and climbing over onto what had once been the deck. Countless millennia of shifting, geological change had done its job on the ship, holding the vessel in its cold, rocky clutches like a prized toy in the mouth of a playful dog.