Dancing on the Head of a Pin (18 page)

Mulciber seemed to have learned his lesson; his face stained with blood, he looked to the floor. But not the other, the one that Byleth called Procell.

Remy had wondered about that one, not at all physically imposing, but there was something about him that flashed caution. He planted his feet, preparing for a physical attack that never came.

The fallen angel Procell lifted one of his hands, and Remy noticed the elaborate tattoos—sigils—that had been drawn upon the pale flesh. He didn’t have a chance to react as the Denizen waved his fingers in the air, an incantation of angel magick leaving his lips, cast through the air to ensnare Remy in its ancient power.

It was as if a net had been thrown over him. Remy felt immediately weak, the inner power that he suppressed quieted to an electric thrum. It had been ages since he’d been on the receiving end of angel spell casting, and was amazed that he was still conscious. It was like he’d taken an entire bottle of Vicodin and washed it down with a double-Scotch chaser.

Procell’s lips moved, uttering the same incantation over and over again, reminding Remy of buzzing swamp insects on a hot summer’s night. His eyes looked as though they’d been covered in morning frost.

“You’re making a terrible mistake,” Remy slurred, swaying slightly in the grip of the magick.

“I’ve worked and suffered greatly for what I have now,” Byleth said, holding the wrapped daggers close to his heart. “And no one is ever going to take it away from me again. Lucifer’s loss is my gain.” And with that, he turned toward the door and walked out of the room.

Remy stood there, helpless, wondering how long it would be before they figured out that they didn’t need him anymore.

Procell droned on.

“Would it be rude if I asked you to shut up?” Remy said to the fallen angel, who of course ignored the request.

And then his gaze fell on Mulciber. He saw a glint of maliciousness in the fallen angel’s eyes. “Gonna give a little bit of this pain back,” he muttered through gritted teeth.

Mulciber dug into his pockets to remove what looked like a knife. The blade was short, black, chipped from a larger body of stone. Remy made a mental note to Francis to ask him how the fallen from Tartarus were smuggling the pieces of Hell onto the Earth.

“And you’re just gonna stand there and let me hurt you,” the injured fallen continued.

Remy looked to Procell for backup. “How do you think your boss will feel about this?” he asked.

Procell just shrugged, repeating the incantation again and again, as Mulciber lurched toward Remy.

“First thing I’m going to fuck with is your eyes,” he said.

The fallen angel raised the shark-tooth-shaped blade, making sure that Remy could get a good look. “I’ve let the blade soak in the blood of one of your relatives,” Mulciber whispered, his breath stinking of onions.

“I’ll remember that,” Remy said, his gaze upon Mulciber’s eyes unwavering. “And I’ll remember you.”

The fallen angel laughed, immediately wincing as a new stream of blood started to flow from one of his nostrils.

He sniffled wetly, wiping his nose with the back of his hand as he moved the blade up to Remy’s face. He was just about to insert the point into the corner of Remy’s right eye, when Byleth came back into the room.

The Satan’s expression at first was excited, a flush of pink on his normally pale cheeks, but it quickly dropped when he saw what was about to happen.

“What the fuck is going on here?” he asked in a husky whisper.

Mulciber lowered the blade but stayed close. “I was about to give him a little payback.”

“No,” Byleth simply said.

The injured fallen whirled, knife still in hand. “No disrespect, but he should receive some of what he’s dished out.”

Byleth nodded. “You’re probably right, but not now.”

Remy breathed a sigh of relief, the fear that he might have to wear an eye patch fading away.

Mulciber stepped in close again, the blade slowly rising.

“Is that disobedience I smell?” Remy asked, barely able to hold back his grin.

“Get away from him,” Byleth commanded, and Mulciber backed down, stepping away, the blade disappearing back into his pocket.

“Thanks,” Remy said, turning his eyes to Byleth, who’d come a bit farther into the room.

The Satan smiled mischievously.

“I want to show you something.”

The hall outside the study was paneled with rich, dark oak. Framed black-and-white photographs—from some fabulously chic up-and-coming artist, Remy was sure—adorned the wood walls on both sides.

He followed Byleth and Mulciber, the still-droning Procell steering him down the hallway. At the end of the corridor, they turned the corner, descending a set of stairs where a heavy metal door equipped with multiple locks stood open. More Denizen lackeys waited by the door, standing up straighter as their Satan returned.

“In here,” Byleth said, waving Remy to follow as he passed through the door.

The room was large, filled with multiple shelving units, covered in weaponry of every conceivable design and shape from every time period. It was like the Wal-Mart version of Karnighan’s place.

“Oh, I see,” Remy said, eyeing the racks.

“False alarms,” Byleth said on his way across the room toward another door. “Extreme, I know, but I couldn’t be too careful. If I had the slightest inkling that they might be part of what I was looking for, I bought them.”

At the back door to the storage room he stopped to look at the arsenal he’d accumulated. “They’ve come from all over the world,” he explained, “and there were times that I actually believed I had finally put my hands on the legitimate items.”

He paused before opening the door. “But after tonight, I realize that I was never even close.”

Byleth threw open the door into a substantial garage; a limousine was parked over to one side, five trendy sports cars parked in a row on the other. A black van had backed into the center of the garage; its back doors were open wide, and the contents that it had carried were already unloaded.

A folding table had been set up just outside the back of the van; three yellow transport cases—the kind that would be used to allow valuable items to travel—had been laid out upon the tabletop like items at a flea market. Remy noticed that the daggers had been placed, still wrapped in Byleth’s suit coat, at the end of the table.

A wheelchair-bound Mason, wearing an Evil Dead T-shirt, drove over to meet them. Julia perched on his shoulder, enjoying some kind of biscuit. “Hey, look who it is,” the man said cheerily. “Didn’t expect to find you here.” A fresh trail of drool trickled from the corner of his mouth.

“I’m a little disappointed, Mason,” Remy said, eyeing the objects laid out upon the table. “I thought we had a deal.”

“Yeah, about that,” Mason said. “With the kind of payday our friend here is offering, I’m afraid I’m gonna have to follow that old adage—deals are meant to be broken.”

Julia chattered a greeting to him excitedly in between bites of her cookie.

“Hey, Julia, nice to see you too,” Remy said to the monkey. “Did you know that your master is a scumbag?”

The monkey squealed with glee, jumping with her treat down from her master’s shoulder to his lap, and then to the floor.

“Julia, come back here this instant,” Mason demanded.

Instead she climbed up Remy’s leg and onto his shoulder, and tried to feed him her cookie.

“Julia!” Mason screamed, his normally labored breathing sounding all the more difficult.

“Have?”
the monkey offered again.

“No, thank you, Julia.” Remy smiled.

“Julia, you bad, bad girl. Come to me this instant!” Mason carried on.

Mulciber swatted at the capuchin. “Go on,” he barked. “Go back to your boyfriend.”

Julia shrieked, baring her tiny teeth, trying equally to avoid the hand and to bite it.

Byleth cleared his throat noisily, not amused by the drama. “Are we going to do some fucking business here, or are we going to continue with this Animal Planet bullshit?”

“Go back to your master,” Remy whispered to the agitated animal. “That’s a good girl. Go on. That’s it.”

His soothing tone had the appropriate effect; the monkey crawled down to the floor and then hopped back up onto Mason’s lap.

“Don’t think I won’t remember this when it’s time for special treats again,” the man complained, obviously jealous of the attention the monkey had shown Remy.

Julia ignored him, her back turned to the threats as she continued to gnaw on the special treat that she already had.

“I believe you’ve brought something here to sell me?” Byleth prompted.

“Yes,” Mason answered, shooting a disdainful look at his monkey before turning his attentions toward Byleth. “Yes, I have, and let me say this time I believe I’ve outdone myself.”

Mason moved the toggle on the arm of his chair, spinning the conveyance around.

They all followed him toward the table.

Remy sensed it immediately, a sudden unease permeating the atmosphere of the garage. He noticed that Byleth was looking at him, that stupid grin that he wanted to smack from his face present again.

“I’m assuming you can feel that?” Remy asked him.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” the Satan answered. “That’s power you’re experiencing,” he told his former friend. “You’re now in the presence of objects that can initiate change.”

Remy wanted desperately to move, to grab the Satan by the front of his shirt and shake some sense into him, but that wasn’t going to happen as long as Procell kept on with his muttering.

“You’re not seeing the big picture,” Remy said. “And I’m sorry to say that neither am I. There’s something else going on here besides the fight over ownership of these weapons, but I just don’t have all the pieces of the puzzle yet, and something tells me it’s gonna be too late once I do.”

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.

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.