Francis stepped around the car, brushing pieces of glass from the fabric of his jacket.
“Who the hell are you two supposed to be?” the man asked defiantly, trying to pull away from Remy’s hold with little success.
Neal was older than he first looked. His thick head of hair was dyed an inky black and too many trips to the tanning salon had left his skin lined and leathery.
“Management sent me,” Francis stated flatly, his gaze boring into the driver’s. “Do you understand?”
Neal quit struggling, knowing exactly what Francis meant.
“Yeah, sure,” he said quickly. “Why the fuck did you have to wreck my car?”
“Because we wouldn’t have been able to talk with you if we hadn’t,” Remy explained.
Neal looked at him. “I got a call saying that I pissed somebody off with my job last night,” he said. “Said I might want to lay low for a while.”
“Your job last night is exactly what I’d like to discuss,” Remy told him, pulling him back toward the fire escape.
“Hey, I can’t help if he never came out,” Neal protested as Remy began to push him toward the first step. “I waited until they told me not to.”
“Who told you?” Francis asked.
“A guy came out and said Mr. Aszrus would be finding another way home.”
“Where did you take him?” Remy asked.
“Where he told me to go,” Neal said.
He looked as though he was going to say more, but stopped, staring at something in the opposite direction.
“Now what the fuck is that?” he asked.
Remy barely had a chance to look when the driver was snatched away. Francis and Remy reacted as one, jumping aside as the tendril of smoke dragged a flailing Neal Moreland up into a roiling black cloud that was drifting in from the opposite end of the alley.
Remy and Francis knew that it wasn’t really a cloud at all.
Neal screamed horribly as he was taken inside the billowing substance, and a rainfall of blood began pattering down atop the roof of the limousine and the alley floor.
“Black Choir,” Remy announced, already flexing the muscles of his shoulders to make his wings emerge.
“No shit,” Francis said, drawing the golden Colt from inside his suit jacket, already on the move toward the threat.
The Black Choir was the most horrible example of the fallout from the war in Heaven: angels who chose not to take a stand during the Great War, cursed to be accepted by neither God nor Lucifer, and warped to monstrous proportions by their inability to take a side.
They were true abominations, their misery provoking their foul deeds.
Remy searched the alley for something to use as a weapon, finding a length of an old wooden pallet lying up against the side of the apartment building beside the Dumpster. It would have to do.
He reached for the piece of wood in midstride, his wings lifting him from the ground as he took flight.
The Choir’s writhing, cloudlike environment descended toward Francis, who opened fire with the Pitiless pistol. Shrieks of the eternally damned echoed from within the shifting black and gray miasma. The cloud expanded, flowing out from the ground. Francis spun, attempting to outrun the roiling storm, but he wasn’t fast enough, turning to fire into the black cloud even as it engulfed him.
Remy descended from above, the piece of wood in his clutches now burning with the fires of Heaven. He could see glimpses of shapes within the shifting fog, the accursed angels now neither damned, nor divine. They were a horrible sight to behold, their thin, pale bodies warped by the hatred they felt for God and His opposite.
He dropped within the cloud, lashing out with the burning board, the fires of Heaven illuminating the numbing atmosphere within. He swung the flaming club, striking at the Choir and driving them away from his friend.
Francis fired the pistol with deadly accuracy.
It was like a world unto itself within the cloud—a horrible world of misery and torment—and Remy and Francis fought together to be free of it.
“Get me the fuck out of here, Chandler,” Francis cried out.
“I’m working on it,” Remy shouted, swinging his makeshift weapon at his foes, while also attempting to illuminate a path to escape. Briefly he caught a glimpse of the smashed-in Town Car, and flapped his wings, flying toward it. “Follow me,” he ordered, swinging his burning weapon at the withered angels who tried to prevent their leave.
Francis’ gun boomed, and angels fell, as they fought their way toward freedom.
“Get out,” Remy told Francis, pushing him out of the shifting cloud and back into the alley.
“What about you?” Francis asked as he fired his weapon three more times in succession, the screams of the damned nearly deafening in response.
“I’m right behind you,” Remy said, infusing the piece of pallet with even more divine fire than it could contain, and tossing it toward the Black Choir angels who were slithering closer to them through their misty environment.
The wood exploded as it fell among them, the Choir screaming out in rage and pain, driven deeper into the cloud by the blinding light of Heaven.
Remy emerged to find Francis standing at the ready, gun in hand.
The living darkness of the Black Choir writhed and shifted before them. Something darker than the area surrounding it moved within, and the Seraphim was at the ready, wings spread to propel him into action.
The body of Neal Moreland was ejected from the cloud, spit out like an old piece of gum to land broken and bloody beside his wrecked limousine. Seemingly having accomplished what it had come to do, the Black Choir drifted back and away, disappearing as quickly as it had appeared.
“Son of a bitch,” Remy hissed, pulling the aspects of his true nature back within himself and squatting beside Neal’s corpse.
The driver’s body was withered and pale, as if drained of life energies as well as fluids. It was a horrible way to go.
“So much for answers,” Remy said.
“We might be able to get some more,” Francis said, putting the Pitiless back inside his jacket.
“What do you mean?” Remy asked.
Francis knelt down beside the corpse, and from another inside pocket extracted the special knife. “This thing is better than a Swiss Army knife,” the former Guardian angel said as he plunged the glowing blade into the back of Neal’s head. “Let’s see what I can find.”
Francis seemed to drift off for a moment, staring blankly into space.
A smile suddenly appeared on his face.
“What is it?” Remy asked.
“Yahtzee.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Montagin watched the magick user weave his spell.
“How much longer?” the angel asked before taking a long drink of his second scotch.
Malatesta continued to mutter, pausing only when he appeared to run out of breath.
“This is a more difficult task than normal,” the Vatican sorcerer finally said. “We must repel not only the household staff, but also those of an angelic nature. For such a spell to work on an angel, it must be layered, spell upon spell, magick atop of magick.”
“And that will keep any and all away?” Montagin asked, not sure if he truly believed that was possible.
“I certainly hope so,” Malatesta said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
The sorcerer went back to work, laying down another layer of magick to keep the contents of the study a secret—how long it would last was a question that gnawed at him.
Montagin finished his drink, and poured another. He was allowing the alcohol to calm him. It was the only thing keeping him from panic. What he was helping to hide here could very well lead to a war that would rival the one already fought in Heaven so very long ago. The angel brought the glass to his mouth, gulping the liquor, eager to dull the anxiety that nibbled at the periphery of his thoughts. All he had to do was stay focused until Remiel returned. Hopefully, he would have the answers they needed.