Malatesta looked as though he was going to continue, but then appeared to think better of that. “I guess there’s nothing more to say,” he said, standing up.
Remy stood also.
“Thank you for your time, Mr. Chandler,” Malatesta said, and extended his hand.
Remy reached out, taking his offered hand, and as their flesh touched . . .
There was a flash, and a hum, like unrestrained power coursing through a live wire lying in wait upon a street after a storm. If there had been any doubt that this man, this Constantin Malesta, had some sort of a knack for the arcane art of magick, there wasn’t any now.
His power coursed through Remy, amplifying the sensations that he had been experiencing for quite some time, reminding the angel of what was out there in the world, and the dangers that it would soon be facing.
“Perhaps another time,” Malatesta said with a final squeeze, before releasing his grip.
And before Remy could even respond, the Keeper agent was gone. But what he had stirred up in Remy with just a touch remained, and it lingered disturbingly for the remainder of the day.
CHAPTER FIVE
The next few weeks passed without incident.
The world rolled on, the trivial and the not so trivial, the kinds of events Remy had grown accustomed to in his time with human civilization, as days passed into weeks.
But that did not mean he wasn’t waiting for the so-called other shoe to fall. He found himself staring out the windows of his office and down onto the city streets far more attentively, watching the evening news broadcasts, and trolling the Internet with more frequency as he looked for signs.
He found nothing serious enough to alert him to impending doom, and started to eventually let his level of caution drop; still, he kept one eye open and his superhuman senses on alert for any notable change in the ether.
But life marched on; it had the habit of doing that, and Remy found himself more fully engaged in his ordinary human life than he had been for quite some time.
Business was good—not great, but good—enough to keep money coming in to handle the rent on the office space, and pay for the inordinate amount of coffee he drank.
On a personal level things couldn’t have been better. The more time he spent with Linda, the more the trepidation that he’d felt at becoming involved again—falling in love again—slowly crumbled away. He needed a partner to be whole, to be the person he wanted, and needed, to be. Linda was that partner—of that he no longer had any doubt.
The August night had been dreadfully humid, but a quick-moving thundershower while they had been out on a walk with Marlowe had brought with it a welcome drop in temperature. Refreshing cool breezes made the curtains in the house flap and wave like something out of an eighties music video.
While he dried Marlowe off with a towel, which was more of a tug-of-war match than anything of real use, Linda kicked off her sneakers and peeled her soaking-wet T-shirt and running pants from her body. She left the wet clothing where it had fallen, in a trail that led to the stairs that would take her up to the bedroom.
“Coming?” she asked as she started to climb, wearing only a sports bra and panties.
“Oh, do I have to?” Remy mockingly whined.
Linda laughed, padding up the wooden steps.
Telling Marlowe that Linda and he had some business to attend to met with some minor protests—Linda had been staying with Remy and Marlowe far more often lately, and the Labrador was feeling just the tiniest bit neglected—but the offer of a smoked pig’s ear was just the balm the retriever needed to feel as though he was still loved.
Remy picked up Linda’s discarded wet things as he followed their path to the stairs, finding the bra and panties waiting for him at the top.
“You’re never going to find yourself a good man with these cleanliness issues,” Remy said as he added her underthings to the wet pile, and dumped them in a hamper in the corner of the bedroom.
“Guess you’ll be stuck with me,” she said, propped up on her elbows in bed, a sheet barely covering her naked body.
“Great,” Remy said with a heavy sigh that made the woman laugh. He started to remove his own clothes, also damp from the summer rain, as she watched him from the bed.
“Is it so hard?” he asked her, as he tossed his shirt into the open hamper. “Dirty clothes go in there.”
He shed his sweatpants and underwear, putting them where they now belonged.
“Is that where they go?” Linda asked, wearing an exaggerated, dumbfounded look. “I thought that was the trash barrel.”
Remy shook his head in mock disgust.
“And they said I would be sorry for bringing a mail-order bride over from Blugrovia.”
She started to giggle, the sheet sliding down to reveal her nearly perfect breasts.
“I may not be the most tidy, but I can shine in other ways,” Linda said, holding out a hand and beckoning him to join her in bed, beneath the sheets.
“Shine away,” Remy said, crawling into bed with the woman he loved.
Their lovemaking was passionate, yet gentle. There was a hunger present, each of them attempting to appease the other until the air of the bedroom became filled with the sounds of labored breathing, gentle sighs, and pleasure-filled moans, before falling eventually to contented silence.
Exhausted by the act, Linda swiftly drifted into a deep sleep, Remy’s arm around her body as she snuggled up tightly against him. He lay there in the soothing quiet, listening to the sounds of the city outside.
There came a creaking of the wooden steps, and he lifted his head from the pillow to see Marlowe’s head peak up over the rise.
Remy put a finger to his mouth.
“C’mon,” he told the dog. “But be extra quiet.”
The Labrador contemplated his jump up onto the bed before doing it, seeming to defy gravity for an animal his size as he leapt into the air, before coming down upon the mattress with hardly a ripple.
“Good boy,” Remy whispered, reaching his hand down to pat the dog’s rump as he lay down with a heavy sigh at the foot of the bed.
“Good boy,” Marlowe repeated, licking his chops noisily as he settled in for the night. It wasn’t any more than five minutes before Remy heard the dog’s breathing change as he drifted off into sleep.
Remy lay there for what seemed like hours but was more likely much less than that, staring up at the ceiling, listening to Linda and Marlowe, an odd symphony of heavy breathing, moans, and grunts.
As a creature of Heaven he did not require sleep, and had often used this time of night, when loved ones were embraced in the arms of Morpheus, to escape to a kind of fugue state where he thought about his life, and the events and people that had helped to shape him into the man he was, for better or worse.
And some nights he would just watch TV.
Remy was about to carefully extract himself from bed to go downstairs and see what he might find on-demand that he hadn’t yet seen, when he felt a sudden change in the atmosphere. He knew in that instant that he was no longer the only one awake in the room.
Montagin appeared in the far corner, in front of the hamper, his wings unfolding in the darkness to reveal the angel that had been within their feathered embrace.
Remy leapt up from his bed, feeling his own angelness rising to the surface. He had no idea why Montagin had come, and assumed the worst.
Assumed that he was there to harm him and those that he loved.
Remy’s first thoughts were to the safety of Linda and Marlowe, but he noticed that the two were still deeply asleep, their breathing regular and heavy.
He reached over to brush some hair away from Linda’s peaceful face, as Marlowe snored loudly, certain now that the angel had done something to keep his loved ones in slumber.
“You better have a really good reason for being here,” Remy warned, looking away from his woman to lock Montagin in his fiery gaze.
“I didn’t know what to do,” the angel said
, his eyes wide and darting about the room. “It’s terrible.”
“What is it, Montagin?” Remy demanded.
The angel’s eyes seemed to focus upon him, as if remembering where he was and why he had come.
“It’s murder, Remiel,” Montagin spoke, his voice a whisper filled with disbelief.
“General Aszrus has been murdered.”
Heaven
At the Close of the Great War
Remiel stood on the battlefield, the Kingdom of Heaven looming ever so large at his back, the corpses of his fallen brothers strewn upon the ground before him.
The air was heavy with the stink of death, and the taste of blood was bitter in his mouth.
“Stand down, Seraphim,” a voice ordered from behind him.
Remiel spun, his bloodstained sword at the ready in his gold, gauntleted hand.
General Aszrus emerged from a shifting haze that seemed to rise up from the bodies of the dead that littered the ground.
“I ordered you to stand down,” he repeated.
Realizing that they’d fought on the same side, Remiel lowered his blade, turning back to the carnage for which he had been partially responsible. The sword was suddenly heavy in his hand, and seemed to grow heavier with each passing second.
“It is a sight,” the general said as he moved to stand beside Remiel.
“It is,” Remiel agreed, feeling a bottomless sadness open up at his core.
“But we are victorious,” Aszrus added.
The words were as sharp as a dagger, and Remiel flinched as if struck.
“Victorious?”
“Aye,” the angel general said, with the hint of a crooked smile upon his chiseled features. Remiel studied the figure then, noticing the dried blood that flecked his pale, perfect flesh. “Many of our brothers perished in this great conflict, but so did our enemies.”
“Enemies who were our brothers not so long ago,” Remiel reminded the general.
Aszrus’ gaze intensified.
“Brothers who turned against the Lord God to follow the edicts of the Morningstar,” he said firmly. “Making them brothers no longer.”
Remiel sensed the presence of others and turned to see the last of the general’s men, their haggard faces a reflection of the battle that had been fought. Here were faces of beings once touched by the glory of God, now forever changed by what they had seen, and been forced to do.
“But that is behind us now, soldier,” Aszrus proclaimed, reaching out to lay a heavy hand upon Remiel’s armored shoulder. “Those still faithful to the Morningstar have been routed, and the adversary himself has been captured, and awaits the Almighty’s edict for his treasonous acts.”
Aszrus paused, allowing his supposedly inspirational words to sink in.
“It’s over, brother,” the general added.
Remiel could not take his eyes from the carnage, and the more he looked, the more he saw.
The more he came to understand.
“You’re right,” the Seraphim said. “It is over.”
And it was.
• • •
There is nothing sadder than a dead angel.
Angels were a durable breed, but even they could not function when their hearts were cut out. General Aszrus was indeed dead.
Sensing the wrongness of the situation, Remy had risen from bed, thrown some clothes on, and told Montagin to take him to Aszrus.
The angel had just stood there, staring off into space and talking about how horrible it all was. Remy had been forced to reach out and take hold of Montagin’s arm and to squeeze as hard as he could.
The angel’s face quickly registered pain, and then anger, but before he could lash out at the one causing it . . .
“Take me to Aszrus. Now.”
Remy had watched as the anger churned there, behind the angel assistant’s dark eyes, but the rage gradually receded, as what Remy was asking of him gradually sunk in.
Montagin pulled his arm away, reaching up to rub at where Remy had grabbed him.
“That better not leave a bruise,” the angel warned as he brought his wings around to embrace them both, and transport them away from Remy’s bedroom to . . .
Here.
They appeared in the corner of a room—a study—that Remy would have given one of his kidneys to have.
It was enormous, filled with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and heavy pieces of leather furniture. Lying in the center of what was obviously a priceless Persian rug was the sprawled body of angel General Aszrus.
Remy glanced to his left, through the opening in the slats of a shuttered window, and saw a spectacular view of the sea washing up on a rocky beach outside.
“Where are we?” Remy asked, walking away from Montagin toward the body.
“Newport,” the angel responded. “I believe it’s in a state called Rhode Island.”
“What brings an angel soldier and his assistant to Newport?” Remy knelt beside the corpse.
“You would have to ask him,” Montagin replied. “Perhaps he saw a picture in one of the human magazines he enjoyed reading.”
Remy looked down at the general, remembering how he’d last seen the powerful being. Once again, his face was flecked with small spatters of blood, but this time it was his own.
“Tell me everything about finding him,” Remy ordered.
He was already starting to notice things that were . . . curious.
Montagin had crossed the room, over to what looked to be a portable bar in the shape of an old globe. The angel lifted the cover, revealing the inside of the planet to be filled with bottles of alcohol.
“I came in for one of these, actually,” Montagin said, removing a decanter of scotch from the hollow inside of the globe, along with a glass, and filling it halfway.
Remy looked away from the corpse, to the angel.
“He was the one to introduce me to the joys of alcohol,” Montagin said. “Especially scotch. Got to be one of the only things I admired about this monkey cage of a world.”
“So, you came in for a scotch—go on.”
Montagin came cautiously closer, drink in hand.
“I didn’t expect to find him in here, especially in this . . . condition.”
The angel took a large gulp of his drink and swallowed it down without any hesitation, his eyes briefly closing as he savored its taste. It was obvious to Remy that the angel wasn’t lying when he said that he’d learned to love alcohol.
It wasn’t often that one could observe an angel in the throes of pleasure.
“Aszrus wasn’t supposed to be here. He’d gone out earlier in the evening and wasn’t expected back until much later—if at all.”
“Where did he go?” Remy asked.
The angel shrugged. “Out,” he answered. “The general did not share his every bit of business with me, only items that pertained to maintaining God’s will and the glory of Heaven.”
“Right,” Remy muttered in response. “The glory of Heaven. So you don’t have the slightest idea where he went last night?”
“Not the slightest,” Montagin said as he drank some more.
Remy scowled, not liking that pieces of the puzzle were missing. “Go on. You came in . . .”
“So when I came in and found him like this . . .”
“And this is exactly how it was when you entered?” Remy asked. “You didn’t touch anything?”
The angel shook his head. “Not a thing.” He considered the question again, before adding to his answer. “I had a drink, but that was all.”
“And then what did you do?”
“Drank my drink, and thought about who could have done such a thing, and what it would mean to the grand scheme of things.”
“And then?”
“And then I thought of you, and how if there was anybody on this forsaken world that could keep this situation from blowing up it would be you.”
“I’m guessing that you already suspect who’s responsible,” Remy said, rising to his feet, e
yes still rooted to the corpse of the angel general.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Montagin scoffed.
“No, not really,” Remy said, looking away from the corpse to the angel.
Just as he was about to take another swig from his glass, he stopped. “You’re not sure?” Montagin asked. “Who else but the Morningstar would be responsible for such a blatant disregard for protocol? Somebody entered the dwelling of a general serving in the army of Heaven and cut out his heart. Who else but Lucifer would dare—”
“He wasn’t murdered here,” Remy interrupted, looking back to the corpse.
“What?” Montagin asked, thrown by the statement. “What do you mean he wasn’t murdered here?”
“There isn’t enough blood.” Remy pointed down to the Persian rug beneath the corpse. “If Aszrus’ heart was cut out here, the rug would be stained with his blood. There isn’t more than a drop here and there beneath him.”
Montagin downed what remained of his drink, placed the empty glass on one of the bookshelves, and stalked closer for a look.
“You’re right, but if he wasn’t murdered here, then . . .”
“He was murdered someplace else,” Remy finished. “And I think that wherever that is will likely tell us who is responsible.”
“But who else would dare?” Montagin began.
The stink of scotch wafted from the angel’s breath, causing Remy to wrinkle his nose.
“I could be wrong, but I’m just not feeling the work of the Morningstar here,” Remy said.
“Then who?” Montagin demanded.
“Don’t know.” Remy was looking at the body again, searching for something—anything—that he might have missed the first few times. “But something tells me that if the Morningstar was involved, he wouldn’t have gone through all the trouble of killing the general, and then bringing the body back here. I’m guessing it would have been left where it fell.”
“How can you know that?” Montagin asked.
Remy shrugged. “I can’t,” he said. “It’s just something that I’m feeling in my gut right now. This doesn’t feel like an act of war. It feels more . . . personal.”
“But that’s exactly what this is,” Montagin stressed.
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