And, in turn, the Grigori were taught the ways of humanity—of desire and the pleasures of the flesh. In a way, the Grigori had become human, and that, in turn, had taken them down a most dangerous path.
They had tutored the humans in the art of weapons making, of astrology and astronomy, of adornment and cosmetics.
And some they taught the ways of magick.
Armaros believed that was what had annoyed the Lord God most and was the reason for their punishment.
The Creator had stripped them of their wings and denied them entrance to the Kingdom of Heaven. They were banished to the earth, almost as if to say, “If you love them so much, you will live with them for all eternity.”
At first it wasn’t so bad, for humanity worshipped them, but then they began to feel the pangs of what they had lost.
If it wasn’t for their leader, they would have surely gone mad.
Armaros stepped back from the glass, overwhelmed by a wave of sheer emotion at the memory of his beloved Sariel. He gazed quickly at his brothers, afraid that they might have felt this flagrant example of emotion.
But they just continued to stare as they had done since the loss of their leader, since the one who was going to guide them back to Heaven was taken from them.
Murdered by the Seraphim Remiel.
Armaros always suspected that nothing good would ever come from their relationship with the angel whose ties to this earthly realm were so firm. Here was a being of Heaven on Earth by choice; not banished, not exiled for an offense against the Lord. Remiel was here by choice and could go back anytime.
He chose not to.
And those of the Watchers despised him for that.
It had been Sariel’s plan to win back the affections of Heaven by making amends for past wrongdoings. Correcting what they had done in hopes that Heaven…that the Lord God Almighty would notice them…accept their penitence, and open His loving arms to them once again.
But the earthly angel cared not for their methods, blocking their path to absolution with such vehemence that it resulted in the death of their leader, Armaros’ true love.
Love.
Something else he had learned from humanity and wished he could forget. Something else that continued to cause him immeasurable pain.
Perhaps this was just another way that God wished to punish them.
An image of Sariel in death flashed before the Watcher’s mind. He saw his love consumed by Heavenly fire, his flesh and bone rendered to ash by the wrath of the warrior angel.
Armaros fixed his stare on an intricately carved wooden box that rested on a tall stack of plasterboard. In the wooden box were the remains of their leader—his love—and, sometimes, if the mood was right, Armaros swore that he could hear him—his Sariel—reassuring him that everything was going to be all right.
Of course, Armaros believed himself going mad; the death of their leader sent all of the Grigori deeper into sadness and further into the embrace of decadence that only humanity could provide. They were lost in their grief, and every waking moment they strayed farther from the path that would return them to Heaven and God’s love.
Sariel’s voice eventually grew silent.
But then a stranger came.
Armaros recalled emerging from a drug-induced stupor to find a stranger among them. He had sat in the shadows, turning a ring on his finger, the wooden casket that held Sariel’s remains resting on his lap.
He told them he had come to save them, and he warned them that a war was imminent, a war between two powerful forces. Then the stranger, his features still hidden in shadow, had placed his pale hand flat upon the lid of the box that held Sariel’s remains and had promised that God would notice them once more.
Armaros recalled the hand resting upon the box, his eyes drawn to the signet ring adorned with a six-pointed star.
“But there will be a price to pay,” the stranger had said.
A price to pay in magick and in human life.
And Armaros had said, “So be it.”
The machinations were set in motion, and now, ever so slowly, they were nearing the end of plans that would free them from their torment and give them the means to soar again.
Armaros thought of Stearns and their last conversation.
Such a selfish little monkey, he thought.
If only he knew what was really going to happen.
The sounds of a struggle drifted out over the Shadow Lands, and the hobgoblin smiled.
Standing atop an outcropping of solidified darkness, the diminutive creature squinted through the gloom at the elaborate estate in the distance, now under siege by some of the more destructive beasts that called this deep section of the endless realms of black their home.
Squire chuckled with each new roar that filled the constant night, and the flashes of gunfire that attempted to drive back the attackers.
“Good luck with that,” the hobgoblin said with a laugh.
There had been lots of comings and goings from the estate of late. Squire tried to remember how long it had been since the estate had torn through the darkness to drop down uninvited into his solitude. He couldn’t remember, although he also couldn’t remember how long it had been since he had been driven from his adopted home world to take up residence in the land of shadows.
This place of perpetual night did things to the memory, made it hard to recall specifics. All Squire knew was that he’d been there for quite some time. And the invaders of his long-sought-after peace?
They’d been there too fucking long.
Which was why he’d instigated this latest wave of attacks, taunting the monsters of the shadow realm into laying siege to the mansion.
The monsters who called this place home could have the estate and everybody inside it, for all he cared. Squire just wanted to be left alone, without a hint of anything that he had been forced to leave behind.
Or the friends who he had lost.
He was squinting through the darkness again, savoring the sounds of battle, when there came a flash.
Squire was violently knocked from his perch atop a petrified piece of shadow as it was eaten away by the explosion of brilliance. He tumbled to the ground below, where he lay perfectly still for a moment.
“What the fuck was that?” he growled, rising on shaky legs. Strange blossoms of color, like a kaleidoscope, swirled before eyes now accustomed to total darkness. It took a little while, but his vision finally cleared, and he began walking across the darkness, drawn toward the estate.
He had no idea what that light had meant, but he knew that it wasn’t good. The goblin had been around power such as that and knew its potential for destruction in the wrong hands…. Even in the right, it was a force to be reckoned with.
His thoughts began creeping toward the past, and he quickly pushed them away. They were gone, as was the world he’d called his home. This was his home now, the Shadow Lands, and he needed to find out what that light was all about.
His pointed ears picked up a distinct sound carried on the still air.
The goblin stopped to listen, searching the horizon for the source of the mechanical rumble and finding the shape of a vintage car as it barreled across the expanse of darkness, kicking up clouds of granulized blackness.
It looked as though this time trouble had decided to cut him a little slack. This time he didn’t have to go looking for it.
This time it was coming to him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It was like driving blindfolded.
The flickering greenish light thrown by the damaged right headlight only illuminated the darkness so far before being gobbled up by the all-encompassing black in front of them.
Foot pushed down on the gas pedal as far as it would go, Remy attempted to keep the vehicle going straight ahead, reaching out with his limited preternatural senses in the hope of finding the point where he had first entered the world of shadows.
But he could sense nothing, the tracking skills normally exhibited
by his kind strangely dormant. Remy felt oddly different, and considered that his encounter with Deacon’s life force–draining apparatus might have done even more damage than he had thought.
He started to roll down the window, hoping to pick up a lingering scent in the air of this infernal place, when his eyes caught the shape of the young woman cowering in the backseat.
“Ashley,” Remy said over the sound of the buffeting wind as it came in through the open window. The unpleasant stink of the atmosphere here, like a wet cave or an old, musty basement, was not the scent he was looking for.
Ashley ignored him, continuing to stare at a spot just behind the front seat. He imagined that she was probably in some sort of shock. How couldn’t she be? This sort of thing wasn’t easily processed by the rational human mind.
“Ashley,” he said again, a little firmer. His eyes went from the girl in the rearview to the darkness in front of him and then back to the girl. “I’m going to get you out of here. I just need you to hold on…. Can you do that for me, Ash?”
She still didn’t answer, and gazed unflinchingly ahead.
“I know this is a lot to process,” he told her. “But you have to keep it together…. You have to be strong.
“You’ve been given a glimpse of a world that you don’t belong in. A world that most people never see, but I’m going to bring you back to what you know…. Beyond this darkness”—he nodded toward the windshield—“everything you know is waiting.”
He was about to look back at the reflection of the young woman in the mirror when something large ran through the feeble beam of light. Remy jerked the steering wheel quickly to the right, stepping on the brake ever so slightly to keep the car from tipping, but still maintaining their speed.
Ashley yelped from the back, the car’s sudden movement breaking her near-catatonic stare.
“Hang on,” he told her, as the smell of something unfamiliar wafted in through the car window.
Remy was about to turn the wheel again when the attack came.
A large, black claw lashed out, tearing at the driver’s-side window and ripping the door away as Remy struggled to steer the car from their enormous attacker. He remembered the beast that Scrimshaw had taken down with his rifle and wondered if that was what they were now up against.
Or was it something worse?
Ashley wailed from the back as Remy stomped on the gas pedal, holding on to the steering wheel for dear life, so as not to fall from the open car to the ebony elements.
Something huge roared close by. The car shuddered viciously, as if struck by a savage hand—or claw—and lurched to a sudden stop. Remy reached behind the seat and grabbed the tire iron from Ashley.
“Stay in the car,” he ordered, jumping out into the darkness. Clutching the tire iron, he willed the fire from inside to infuse the metal with the divine power of Heaven.
But the fire did not come.
Like his tracking senses, he found the power of his unearthly birthright strangely silent. Remy could feel it there, but it was weak, deathly still.
A snuffling from the darkness before him sent him leaping backward toward the front of the car. He stood in the beam of light from the single headlight, tire iron ready, waiting. He could hear the shadow beast growl, the sound of its weighty footfalls from somewhere beyond the headlight.
Something moved in the darkness, and Ashley started to scream again. Bending down in a crouch, muscles tensed, Remy waited for the attack that he was sure would come.
He didn’t have long to wait.
The monster lunged into the light with a roar, an enormous piece of darkness dislodging itself from the environment of solid black. It was bearlike in appearance, only twice as large.
Remy swung the iron with all the strength he could muster, connecting with the monster’s lower jaw with a sickening thud. The shadow bear cried out, rearing back, surprised by the sudden explosion of pain. It retreated into the concealing dark beyond the car’s light to reassess its prey. Remy stayed in a crouch, paying attention to the senses he still had, ready for the next attack.
The beast came at him from the side this time, attempting to evade the headlight’s beam. Its jaws were open, showing teeth that looked like jagged pieces of coal as it made a move to grab Remy’s leg and drag him into the forever dark.
Instincts honed in battle were not diminished by his confrontation with Deacon, and Remy jumped back as the monster’s jaws snapped shut on the air where his thigh had been. Taking aim where one of the shadow animal’s eyes glistened like a tiny pool of oil, the Seraphim drove the tire iron down, plunging the blunted end used to pop off hubcaps into the socket.
The shadow bear screamed, thrashing its big, blocky head from side to side in an attempt to dislodge the protruding metal cross.
Remy ran around to the side of the car, pulling open the door and extending his hand to Ashley. “Come on,” he said. “This is our chance.”
He hoped he was right, for as he had fought with the beast, he had begun to sense something. There was a tickling at the base of his skull, akin to the sensation he would often feel when traveling in his more angelic guise from one location to another.
Remy hoped that meant the passage to his motel room was close.
Ashley took his hand, bounding from the back of the vehicle. The two ran side by side as the shadow beast roared its fury from somewhere behind them.
There came a smashing sound, and Remy chanced a quick look behind him. It sounded as though the beast was taking out its anger on the automobile, pounding on the vintage vehicle as it roared in the darkness. He watched as the single headlight went out, shattered by a swat from the formidable clawed paws of the monster he had partially blinded.
Ashley turned, as well, a gasp escaping her as the light was extinguished and they were plunged into darkness.
Remy gave her hand a yank, pulling her toward an area where the odd fluttering sensation at the base of his neck seemed to be stronger. He hoped that this was indeed what he thought it might be: his weakened senses attempting to return to strength, and not just the beginning of a migraine.
The shadow beast’s roar echoed through the darkness, and now they could hear the sound of its angry pursuit.
“Keep running,” Remy ordered, tugging at her hand. He wanted to stop, to feel the air, to see where the weird sensation was the strongest, but there wasn’t time. If they stopped, they were most assuredly dead.
All they could do was run; run as fast as they could through the darkness, and hope for that little bit of luck stored up from the last time a heads-up penny had been found on the sidewalk or the break in a wishbone went in his favor.
The sensation was most definitely stronger this way.
Remy pulled the girl roughly to the right and almost paid a hefty price. Ashley stumbled, pitching forward, but she managed to catch herself.
The entrance to his hotel was nearby, behind a curtain of shadow. But where, exactly?
The animal roared so close that he felt the air vibrate on the flesh of his neck, but they were close, as well.
But not close enough.
The horror of Ashley’s hold on his hand being savagely ripped away was more than he could stand. One second the pressure and comfort of her presence was there, and the next he was left holding nothing as he turned pathetically in the shadows to find her.
“No!” Remy screamed, dredging up what little divine power he could muster. His hands began to glow like the burner on an old electric stove, providing him with just enough light to see what he’d feared.
The great beast made from solid darkness hunched over its prey, clawing and biting at the thrashing figure it had pinned to the ground.
With no thought for his own well-being, Remy sprang across the expanse of shadow, colliding with the monster with enough force to knock it from its perch. The beast’s roars joined with a sound that at first he did not recognize, but soon realized came from himself.
Remy was screaming.
Screaming in rage and sadness, screaming for the violence he now intended to inflict and for what he was incapable of doing.
He’d made Ashley’s mother a promise, and now he saw through bleary, tear-filled eyes that he was about to be made a liar.
The bear swiped at him with claws of ebony, and he managed to jump back and away, even though he could no longer summon his wings. It was as if the beast could sense something from this adversary, that there might be a chance that this one could be dangerous, and perhaps it should show caution.
It could show all the caution it wanted, but there wasn’t anything that could keep the enraged Remy from his foe now.
His hands were glowing a pulsing orange, and he could see the monster averting its single good eye from the burning light. Remy dodged quickly into the beast’s blind spot and lunged at the foul animal.
The bear was swinging toward him, turning its good eye to the attack when Remy latched on. With all his might he threw his arms around the beast’s thick, muscular neck, shoving his face into the rough, dank-smelling fur. And as the monster began to thrash wildly, Remy pressed his burning hands to the shadow flesh, coaxing the fire within him.
The animal became frantic with pain as its fur and flesh began to burn. Remy continued to hold tight, turning his face away from the noxious smoke.
The shadow beast’s cries were pathetic as it spun madly in a circle, attempting to fling away the one that caused it so much pain, but the angel held fast. A small part of him actually felt sorry for the stupid animal, but another, far stronger part wanted nothing more than to revel in its cries and to see this hellish beast vanquished.
To see his enemy dead.
But the fire was suddenly gone; Remy could feel the divine power falling away and dragging behind it into the abyss any strength that he had left.
The shadow beast flailed madly again and Remy was flung through the darkness, waiting for the inevitable impact, which came with bone-jarring intensity as he landed on his back.
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