Dancing On the Head of a Pin rc-2

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

  Byleth dismissed him with a wave of his hand. “I’ve got all the pieces I need,” he said, moving closer to the table, eyeing the transport cases. “Once they’re mine, I dare anybody to try and fuck with me.”

  Remy didn’t like what he was feeling. It reminded him of that uneasy sensation that built in the air just before the full fury of an electrical storm was released. He would’ve bet good money that something was about to happen, and double or nothing that it wasn’t anything good.

  “Madach, I’ll let you do the honors,” Mason said, and Remy noticed a lone figure who had been standing by the black van as he came toward the table. He hadn’t paid him much attention until now.

  He was a fallen, and Remy watched him carefully as he approached the cases. The former angel was nervous, his hands visibly trembling as he undid the latches on the first of the cases.

  The way he was dressed—paint-stained jeans and work boots, heavy hooded sweatshirt—was as a working stiff. There was something oddly familiar about this particular fallen angel, but Remy couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

  “Quickly,” Mason urged with a lopsided grin. “I think the Satan here is going to be very happy to see what I’ve brought for him.”

  Madach stopped before undoing the last of the latches on the final box. “What we brought him,” he said in a firm, yet very soft voice.

  Mason glared.

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s what we brought him,” the fallen explained with emphasis, to be certain that Mason understood. “You and me. I came to you with the product and you said we’d bring it to him together… partners.”

  Julia leapt up and down excitedly in her master’s lap, pulling at her loose-fitting diaper, as if sensing the growing agitation in the room, and maybe something more.

  “Of course,” Mason conceded, turning his temporarily embarrassed face back to Byleth. “Madach was instrumental in me getting these items.”

  Byleth nodded, eyes riveted on the cases lying on the table. “I appreciate his efforts,” the Satan said. “And perhaps, after the transaction is completed, we can discuss how appreciative I am.”

  This seemed to satisfy Madach, and he finished with the last of the latches, flipping the lid open, and then moving back to the others to do the same, exposing the special contents to their potential owner.

  And it was a look, something briefly expressed in the eyes of the fallen angel, that at last jarred Remy’s memory as to where he had encountered this person—this Madach—before.

  It had been just days ago, in the entryway of Francis’ Newbury Street brownstone. Madach had been leaving the building as Remy had been coming in. He had reacted strangely to Marlowe, afraid that the dog was going to hurt him. Remy distinctly remembered wondering if that particular fallen would fall in with the Denizens, or lead a repentant life as was expected of him.

  So much for being repentant.

  Byleth looked inside each of the cases, eyes twinkling excitedly. He stopped, reaching down to remove something wrapped in plastic. Eagerly he tore away the covering.

  The Colt Peacemaker glistened like gold in the harsh fluorescent light of the garage. Byleth held the six-shooter before him. Remy could only imagine what that piece of violence had to say.

  The Satan examined the weapon’s loading chamber, his smile growing so wide that it could split his face.

  “It’s loaded,” he said, aiming down the barrel of the gorgeous weapon.

  “Strangely enough,” Mason gurgled. “It always seems to be that way, even after we’ve taken the bullets out.”

  Like a kid at Christmas, Byleth placed the pistol back inside its case, moving on to the next one. He gasped, and as if carefully reaching for a newborn pup, he put his hands inside coming away with an ancient battle-axe. Byleth hefted the heavy piece, holding it out before him, a crazy person’s smile upon his face. As he watched helplessly, Remy was stricken with a sense of dread so immediate that if he had been able to, he would have dropped to the ground and covered his head.

  There didn’t appear to be anything special at all about the axe, the iron weapon tarnished with age, the edges of the blade stained with something dark that he guessed could’ve been blood. But like the daggers, the ancient weapon had a voice, and it cried out to anyone with the ability to listen, and it was deafening.

  “Something isn’t right,” Remy warned as he looked around the garage.

  Procell remained undistracted from his task, while Mulciber came at him unexpectedly to cuff him on the back of his head, knocking him to the floor.

  “Shut your fucking mouth,” the bald fallen snarled.

  On his hands and knees, Remy felt the floor begin to tremble.

  A look of confusion registered on Mulciber’s face. Momentarily distracted from Remy, he was feeling it too.

  The fallen with the broken nose looked back to Remy with questioning eyes as the vibrations coming up through the floor intensified.

  “I told you something was wrong,” Remy said.

  “Satan?” Mulciber called out to his master, he too sensing that things were not how they were supposed to be.

  Byleth ignored him, swinging the battle-axe in the air. Remy could only imagine the slideshow of countless lives cut down in the blade’s lifetime playing inside the Satan’s head.

  Mulciber yelled out, this time a little louder, the vibration at their feet growing worse. Procell noticed now, the chanting of the spell that kept Remy mobilized slowing considerably. And still the Denizen leader wasn’t listening.

  “Hey, dumb-ass,” Remy finally yelled, bringing all the attention to him.

  Axe in hand, Byleth snarled. Remy knew what he wanted to do with that killing tool, but he doubted the Satan would get that chance. There were other, more pressing matters, soon to be concerned with.

  Remy’s outburst finally drew the Satan’s attention to the fact that something was wrong. The air was thick with the sense of menace.

  “What is that?” Byleth asked, looking about the room. The alarms on the sports cars were triggered, filling the confined space of the garage with blaring horns and flashing headlights.

  Remy’s eyes were drawn to a section of floor, cracks like bolts of lightning zigzagging across the hard surface before the ground erupted.

  Chunks of concrete whizzed through the air as the stink of something awful wafted up into the room in an explosion of dust and dirt.

  Remy knew what had burrowed up through the earth—he’d encountered one of them only hours ago.

  A symphony of gunfire errupted, mingling with the screams of those dying at the claws and razor-sharp teeth of the animals that Byleth had said were created by a loving God to patrol the environment of Hell.

  Hellions, the Satan had called them.

  And this time there was more than one.

  He could move again.

  Remy quickly picked himself up, eyes searching through the concrete dust and chaos unfolding before him.

  The screams mingling with the thunderous roar of gunfire were deafening. He glanced briefly to his right, at the sight of the spell caster, Procell, lying on his back on the ground, gazing up toward the ceiling and beyond, his right eye having been replaced with a jagged six-inch piece of concrete flooring. He wouldn’t be muttering any more spells for quite some time.

  The explosion had pushed Remy away from the focus of the attack, and he moved closer to the center of the storm.

  It unfolded before his eyes in a nightmarish blur. The Hellions—there seemed to be hundreds, they moved so quickly, but there were only four—were attacking the Denizens with ferocious abandon. They moved from one kill to the next, Byleth’s Denizen followers proving no match for their savagery.

  Remy skirted around the gaping hole in the garage floor, the stink of Hell beasts still wafting up from where they’d burrowed. A bellow of rage, conjuring brief electrical flashes of similar cries he’d heard upon the battlefields of Heaven, drew Remy’s eyes to Mason’s van.


  Byleth still held the battle-axe, swinging it mightily before him as one of the Hellions stalked closer, on the hunt for new prey.

  The handicapped Mason was struggling to drive his wheelchair up the ramp and back into the safety of his vehicle, as Julia screeched in fear. Madach strained behind the man, pushing on the back of the chair, trying to move the heavy, mechanized conveyance up the ramp faster.

  The Hellion poised to pounce before the axe-weilding Satan was suddenly thrown sideways by the force of multiple bullets entering its red, muscular flesh. The monster roared, spinning around to face its attacker. Mulciber, armed with a semiautomatic pistol, sprayed the monster with more bullets.

  “Get away from him!” the loyal Denizen bellowed, emptying the clip uselessly into the durable flesh of the abomination.

  Remy ran across the body-strewn garage, toward the van and the overturned table. He was looking for the daggers. They’d had some effect upon the Hell beasts before, and would likely do so again.

  His gun empty, Mulciber attempted to run, tossing the now useless weapon at the hissing nightmare. The Hellion, its body seeping thick, yellowish liquid from where it had been struck, sprang at the back of the fallen. It landed atop him, driving him to the ground, sinking its razor-sharp teeth into the soft flesh found at the back of Mulciber’s neck.

  Even though the Denizen was an ass, Remy was glad that it had ended quickly for him. And then he felt as though he had won the lottery as he found the knives, still wrapped with Byleth’s sports coat. He was removing the blades when screaming close by caught his attention.

  Three of the Hellions were converging on the van.

  It was Mason who was carrying on, his wheelchair having moved off the metal ramp, trapping him mere inches from the inside of the van.

  “Do something!” the crippled man shrieked as he frantically toggled the hand control while Madach struggled to right the cumbersome chair.

  Remy shoved the twin daggers into his back pocket and ran toward the van, jumping up onto the ramp, trying to help Madach get the wheelchair back on track.

  “Nice to see that you’re not dead, Remiel,” Byleth yelled from where he was standing at the foot of the ramp moving the Pitiless axe from hand to hand as the Hellions moved inexorably closer.

  “I’m guessing we’re going to try to use the van to get the hell out of here?” Remy said, grunting with exertion as he finally felt the chair shift, one of the spinning wheels able to find traction on the rubber-covered ramp.

  “I think that’s the plan,” Madach said, attempting to steer the chair so that it didn’t go over on the opposite side.

  Remy was about to turn, to see how close the Hellions were, when the monkey started to shriek in warning. At first Remy saw nothing except Mason’s chair about to pass over the lip and into the back of the van. But then the growl of a Hellion drew his eyes to the roof of the van, and he knew exactly what the monkey had been screaming about.

  “Ah, shit,” Remy hissed, pulling the twin daggers from his back pocket.

  It happened so quickly. The red-skinned beast dropped down onto the handicapped man, flipping the chair backward and sending Madach flying over the side of the ramp.

  The capuchin proved her loyalty to the bitter end, launching herself ferociously at the beast perched upon her master’s chest. The poor little thing didn’t last long, her entire body snatched up and swallowed in the blink of an eye.

  I liked that monkey, Remy thought, charging toward Mason. He had liked her better than he had liked Mason even, but the handicapped purveyor of the bizarre at least deserved an attempt at being saved.

  Remy screamed as he jammed one of the blades into the side of the monster’s head. He felt the dagger enter the thick, sinewy flesh, hitting against a steellike skull beneath. The creature bellowed, shaking its head furiously to dislodge the troublesome blade. Angered by its pain, it raked its claws down the front of the struggling Mason, tearing away the flesh to expose the handicapped man’s inner workings.

  At least his screams were short.

  Remy darted forward, jabbing the dagger beneath the Hellion’s jaw, into its throat. As the monster wailed, Remy reached across, retrieving the first blade from the side of its head, and used it again, plunging it deeply into one of the Hell beast’s loathsome yellow eyes.

  The beast toppled over thrashing upon the ground, and Remy turned just in time to see the three remaining Hellions attack Byleth.

  Remy was glad to see that the time spent in Tartarus had done little to quell the warrior spirit in the fallen angel. Byleth waded into the battle, swinging the axe with deft precision. The Satan proved to the beasts of the pit that he was not an easy meal and would not be brought down screaming.

  “Toss those inside,” Remy called as Madach climbed the ramp carrying the transport cases for the remaining Pitiless weapons. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  Remy wished that he could be as positive as he sounded. He strode down the ramp, Lucifer’s daggers in hand, to aid his onetime friend and brother who had fallen from grace.

  “Who’d have thought after all this time we’d be fighting against a common foe,” Byleth said, swinging his axe into the face of one of the Hellions as it surged to strike.

  They didn’t stand a chance against three of the beasts, but if they could provide enough of a distraction, there was a slim chance that they might be able to escape with most of their skin intact.

  Remy heard the van engine turn over and immediately pictured a ticking stopwatch inside his brain. There was very little time remaining before they finally grew tired and fell victim to the Hell beasts’ savagery.

  The Seraphim was aroused by the smell of death and violence in the air, eager to be called upon. Remy struggled with the idea before deciding what he would do.

  “Get ready,” Remy said to Byleth, their eyes fixed on the Hellions. The beasts had dropped to a crouch, their repulsive, skinless bodies trembling in anticipation of their next strike.

  “What are we going to—” Byleth began.

  Remy let the Seraphim free, screaming as he channeled the power of God through one of the Pitiless blades, aiming a blast of divine fire toward the black limousine across the garage.

  The fire snaked through the front grille, the intensity of the heat causing the headlights to shatter, before the hungry flame found the gas tank, instantaneously igniting its contents.

  The limousine exploded with a deafening roar, spewing flaming wreckage and liquid fire, distracting the Hellish creations. The monsters spun toward the roar of the explosion.

  “Move—now!” Remy yelled, grabbing Byleth by the arm and hauling him up the ramp.

  But Remy did not stop there. Another blast of Heavenly power flowed from his still-outstretched arm toward the small collection of sports cars, their security alarms still blaring. They too exploded at the touch of the Seraphim’s might, filling the enclosed space of the garage with even more smoke and fire.

  He was running up the ramp, Byleth ahead of him, when he heard the sound. Remy turned his head to find the Hellions scrambling up the ramp after him; his distraction was less effective than planned.

  “Go! Go! Go!” he bellowed, pushing Byleth into the back of the van.

  Madach put the van in drive, the tires screeching for purchase on the garage floor. Remy lurched forward, falling down hard on the ramp, grabbing to hold on as the van rocketed forward on a collision course with the closed garage gate.

  He’d managed to get a foothold, clambering up into the vehicle as it smashed through the garage door out into the cool, spring night. And then it spun violently as Madach slammed on the brakes.

  “What’s wrong?” Remy shouted toward the front of the van. He looked back into the garage, through the roiling, oily smoke, to see that the surviving Hellions were clustered together, for some reason not pursuing them.

  But how long that would last was anyone’s guess.

  “What’s going on?” Remy asked, jumping out
from the back of the van.

  “Why are we stop—?” he began, only to stop midsentence as he rounded the front of the van and saw them.

  The tiny stretch of back alley that ran behind Byleth’s converted church home was blocked by five enormous figures, their features hidden in flowing robes that shifted and moved in a nonexistent wind, shimmering like an oil slick upon the water.

  Nomads.

  Remy could not help but wonder what had brought them here as he stood with Byleth and Madach in front of the van.

  “I’m not too sure that this is the best place to be at the moment,” he said as he watched the powerful form of Suroth move to the front of the gathering.

  “The weapons,” the Nomad leader stated with urgency, eyes burning from inside the deep darkness of the hood that hid his angelic features. “Give them to us before all is lost.”

  Intimidated by the oppressive power radiating from the fearsome beings, Madach and Byleth cowered in their presence, practically driven to their knees.

  “I’m not giving them to anyone,” Byleth hissed. “They belong to me.” The Satan moved toward the back of the van, and Remy reached out, grabbing hold of his arm.

  “Not the smartest thing to do right now,” he said.

  Byleth fought him for a moment, and then stopped. There were sounds behind them in the alley, low rumbling purrs like the idling of a monster truck. The Hellions had found their way out through the fire- and smoke-filled garage.

  “If only there was the time to make you understand,” Suroth said, flowing a little closer, as did the Nomads at his back. There were many more of them now.

  “How about you try,” Remy suggested. “Why should we hand over something so potentially dangerous to you? There has to be some good reason.”

  The Nomad leader’s smile grew from within the shadows of his hood.

  “You of all of them should know, brother,” he said. “For it was this world, nearly brought to its end, that opened our eyes.”