A Kiss Before the Apocalypse (27 page)

The final member of the three sized him up. It switched a short sword from one hand to the other as it eyed him, a charred lip raised in a snarl to reveal teeth like blackened corn. Finding that he had a limited reserve of patience, Francis simply pulled the gun from his waistband and shot the creature in the face, satisfied to waste the bullet if only to move things along.

Squinting against the driving rains, he searched for signs of the remaining Seraphim soldiers. He was certain that he’d hit at least one of them. Lifting his nose to the air, he sniffed for a hint of their scent, but it was no use; the stink of spilled angel blood was everywhere—Grigori, Black Choir, and Seraphim, all mixing together in a nauseating miasma that tainted the air.

In the distance, but far closer than moments ago, the mounts belonging to the Four Horsemen pawed at the earth impatiently, sending tremors through the ground that caused him to stumble.

“Shit,” Francis hissed, caught off balance.

It was then that the Seraphim chose to make their move, descending out of the sky, wings spread as they glided down to attack him. Francis spun around, aiming his weapon, but Zophiel’s movements were a blur, his Heavenly blade slicing through the flesh and bone of his wrist.

“Son of a bitch,” the Guardian cursed as he watched his hand, still holding the pistol, sail through air.

The angels dropped in front of him, both holding weapons that cut the gloom with their unearthly fire.

Clutching his bleeding wrist tightly to his chest, Francis eyed one and then the other.

“Well, now that we’re about even, what’s say we get this bullshit over with?”

Remy Chandler was dying.

With each step he took closer to the Angel of Death, he felt more of his humanity being stripped away.

An aura of death hung around the kneeling Israfil as he picked up the fourth scroll, and, holding it out before him, broke the seal. Again there came a flash, and the deafening sounds of the Horsemen as they moved closer filled the air.

The winds howled and moaned, snatching at his clothes as if trying to hold him back, but Remy fought against it, falling to his hands and knees, crawling toward the kneeling angel through the muddy sand.

“Israfil, listen to me,” he begged, yelling to be heard. “Yes, there’s pain and sadness and misery here. . . . But there’s also happiness and wonder . . . and the strength to fight through the misery.”

But Israfil ignored his words, reaching for the fifth and final scroll.

“Is this what Casey would have wanted?” Remy continued. “Would she have wanted to see it all end because you weren’t strong enough to deal with her loss?”

Israfil’s fingers seemed to hesitate over the final scroll, the Almighty’s permission to unleash the Horsemen and bring about the end of the world. He looked toward Remy, tears running down cheeks scoured by the wind, sand, and rain.

“Remiel,” he whispered. “How do they do it? . . . How do
you
do it?” he asked, his voice a dry croak. “It hurts so much. I thought it would be a lark . . . something to break up the never-ending monotony of my existence, but it ended up as so much more.”

Israfil paused, lowering his head.

“So much more.”

“Don’t do this,” Remy said, inching closer. “Nathanuel is insane, jealous of God’s love for His complicated, and, yes, seriously flawed children.”

Israfil shuddered, dropping the scroll as his body pitched forward into the sand.

“It hurts so damn much,” he moaned.

“Let it go,” Remy said, reaching out for the scroll. “Shed your human skin and return to the form that would know what you are doing is wrong.” His fingers brushed against the ancient parchment. He almost had it, and then something had him.

Remy found himself suddenly airborne, viciously yanked away and hauled up into the sky.

“Can you hear it, Remiel?” Nathanuel spoke in his ear to be heard over the raging storm and the flapping of his wings. “It is the death cry of humanity.”

Remy thrashed in the Seraphim’s grasp as the angel’s wings took them steadily higher.

“And there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Madeline gasped for breath, her eyes opening wide as she looked about the semidarkness of her room, the disturbing images that she suspected were so much more beginning to fade away, replaced with the reality of her present condition.

She was still alive.

And though numbed with pain medication, fed through an IV hanging beside her bed, Madeline knew that her life should have come to an end hours, if not days, ago.

Her husband had gone to take care of that problem.

She remembered her dream.

Madeline was suddenly afraid for him; wishing that he were there with her, by her side and holding her hand as she finally slipped away.

But he couldn’t be. He needed to be elsewhere in order to make things right, in order for her, and so many others, to finally be allowed to go.

Remy had told her that he could hear them. Call them what you want: spirit, soul, inner self. He’d said that he could hear them trapped within prisons of flesh, begging to be free.

He said it was the saddest sound he had ever heard.

She saw the image flash within her mind again. The giants of the Apocalypse, her husband above them, locked in struggle with one of his former kind.

Madeline reached across, removed the IV needle from her arm, and pulled the oxygen line from her nose. Delving into a reserve of strength that she didn’t know she had, she rose from her bed and shuffled barefoot across the cold tile floor to the window.

The storm was ferocious, the wind spattering heavy rains against the panes of glass. She saw herself there, reflected against the glass in the darkness beyond the storm, a reflection of who she had once been.

When she was healthy and full of life.

The reflection provided her with the strength necessary, and she lifted her arm, placing her hand against the cool glass surface.

She thought of her husband, the angel that had come into her life and given her so much, and about how much she loved him.

A love strong enough to hold back the end of the world.

Nathanuel’s hands burned him like fire.

“You embrace this pathetic existence as if born to it,” Nathanuel growled, his face monstrous in the light of the eerily glowing sky.

Remy clung to the front of the Seraphim’s coat, frantically holding on.

Nathanuel pressed his hand against the side of Remy’s face, and searing pain coursed through his body as the flesh was burned away to reveal something else, something hidden beneath.

“You know what you are and where you truly belong, but still you run from it . . . hide from it in this suit of flesh and blood.”

The smell of his burning humanity filled his lungs, choking Remy with its acrid stench. The Seraphim chief was incredibly strong, as if feeding on the encroaching catastrophe. And as they hovered above the deliverers of the end, held aloft by the beating of Nathanuel’s powerful wings, he reached down, taking hold of Remy’s hands, and began to peel his fingers away from their desperate hold on his coat.

Remy glared defiantly at the one he once called brother, his hold more and more precarious with each passing second. And just as he was about to fall, Nathanuel caught hold of his wrist.

“You love them so much,” Nathanuel cooed, dangling him above the world, a moment’s respite from what Remy knew was inevitable. “Then go to them.”

The Seraphim released him, and Remy began to fall.

Is this how it ends?
he wondered as he tumbled to the earth, a victim of gravity’s pull.

Something stirred deep within himself in response to his question.

Something that yearned for sweet release.

And it answered him . . .

The dog awakened with a start, unsure at first of where he was. He lifted his head and sniffed the air.

“What’s the matter, boy?” Ashlie asked him, scooting over on the overstuffed sofa where they had been watching television to put her arm gently around him. “It’s all right,” she said soothingly as she patted his neck and kissed the top of his head. “It’s only the storm. Remy will be back soon to take you home.”

She lay against his side, as he rested his chin between his paws with a heavy sigh, afraid to drift off again.

So he listened to the sound of the storm raging outside and whined pitifully at the memory that roused him from his slumber.

A dream of his master falling from the sky.

He didn’t remember passing out, but then, how else could he explain it?

Remy was back in Heaven.

But it was a Heaven of the past; a Heaven that he’d tried so hard to forget because it didn’t really exist anymore.

From a gentle hilltop called Serenity he gazed down into the verdant valley of Awe, repulsed by the scene of violence that now overran the once-peaceful lowland.

Angel against angel, brother against brother; he listened to the cries of warfare, sounds that did not belong in a place such as this.

Though disgusted by what was transpiring below him, Remy found himself drawn toward the unfolding scene of carnage, moving down the sloping hill toward the raging battle.

And the closer he got, the more frightened he became, for he remembered this day.

Stepping over bodies of those with whom he had once soared through the skies in service to the All-Father, Remy continued toward the center of battle. Few remained standing, the last of the Morningstar’s forces against one lone figure that fought with an unbridled fury for the glory of God.

Adorned in armor of gold, wings spattered with the blood of the vanquished, the angel set upon the last of his adversaries, his cries of fury mingling with the screams of those who fell beneath the savagery of his onslaught.

And then all was quiet as the last of the Morning-star’s army joined the rest of the dead.

Remy stood on the outskirts of the circle of death, staring at the back of the winged figure as he slowly started to turn, alerted to Remy’s presence. He wanted to avert his eyes from the sight of a Heavenly being capable of such brutality in the Lord’s name, but he couldn’t, his vision riveted to the sight of the warrior angel—a Seraphim.

The angel faced him, his features stained with the blood of the lives he had taken, and Remy felt immediately sickened by the sight.

Sickened by the sight of Remiel of the holy host Seraphim.

Sickened by the sight of
himself
.

“Is this where it began?” Remiel asked.

Remy stepped back, but the heel of his shoe caught on the chest plate of an angel killed in battle, and he fell to the ground.

“I’m not you anymore,” he stated, crawling backward to get away.

The angel stared down at the dead lying about his feet. “Is that what you tell yourself? Does it take away the pain of what you were . . . of what you are?”

Remy didn’t want to hear this; he didn’t want to be in this place again. He got to his feet and tried to walk away. A gentle breeze blew across the plain, carrying the sweet scent of Heaven’s blossoming trees and flowers, tainted with the hint of death.

“You can’t change what you are, Remiel,” the warrior angel called after him.

Remy stopped, the words like an arrow shot into his back.

“You are of the host Seraphim, a soldier of the Almighty, and you have a sacred duty.”

Remy turned to find his warrior self directly behind him.

“I’m not part of this anymore,” he told the angel. “I gave it up. . . . I left it behind for something else.”

Remiel laughed. It was a sad laugh, heavy with sorrow.

“And now that it is threatened, as was Heaven. Will you walk away from that as well, or will you fight for what you have loved?”

“What I
do
love,” Remy whispered, surprised as the words left his mouth. Staccato images of the life he’d led upon the earth flashed through his mind; the painful and sometimes wonderful steps he had taken on the long path of learning to be human.

Ending with Madeline and Marlowe.

Suddenly, he felt their strength flowing through him, and he knew what had he had to do.

“You terrify me,” he said to himself.

Remiel nodded. “You were a thing to be feared.”

They were silent for a moment, standing on the corpse-strewn battlefield.

“Will you embrace your true nature and become that force again?” Remiel asked. “Or will you let it all die?”

Remy closed his eyes, seeing the faces of those he loved there in the darkness.

It was difficult, if not downright impossible, to fight two opponents with the use of only one hand.

But it didn’t keep Francis from trying.

Bleeding stump still pressed against his chest, he eyed the two Seraphim, sword held firmly in the other hand.

“So what made you go along with your boss’s crazy plan?” he asked, through gritted teeth, fighting against the throbbing pain in his wrist. “I mean, Seraphim, always so straight and serious. What makes you suddenly decide to go against God?”