A Kiss Before the Apocalypse

Chapter ten

Heaven, a very long time ago

The sword in his hand grew heavier with each passing moment, the stench of burning flesh and blood almost palpable in the air.

Remiel looked about the battlefield. What had once been golden fields of high grass that sang with joy when the celestial breezes moved through them were now trampled flat, and everywhere he looked his eyes fell upon the fallen.

He knew them all, whether they be friend or foe, for not long ago they had been brothers under God. But that was before the Morningstar gathered his forces about him and challenged the will of the Almighty.

Before the war that turned Choir against Choir, brother against brother.

It was drawing to a close now, the followers of Lucifer Morningstar either vanquished or awaiting capture. But looking about the battlefield, at the twisted wings and broken bodies of those who had died fighting, Re-miel knew it would never be the same again.

Standing there, in what had once been golden fields, he made up his mind, letting his weapon fall from his hand to lie uselessly upon the blood-soaked ground. Remiel closed his eyes, committing to his memory how it once had been.

Slowly, he removed his armor, shedding the raiment of warfare, letting that too fall useless to the ground beneath his feet.

"It is over, brother," said a voice from nearby, and Remiel slowly turned to gaze upon the visage of the angel Israfil as he walked among the dead, their bodies disintegrating to dust, carried away upon the winds as he passed.

As if they'd never been there at all.

"The legions of the Adversary have been driven to their knees before His most holy glory," Israfil told him.

"And what of the Adversary — what of Lucifer Morn-ingstar, who was once the favorite of our Lord?" Remiel asked the angel.

"He is to be cast down," Israfil replied. "A fitting punishment for one who dared try to usurp the will of the All-Father."

At first Remiel did not respond, gazing out across the field and the bodies of those who had not yet been removed by the power of the Angel of Death, but he could keep it inside him no longer.

"Haven't we all been punished enough?" he asked. And then he began to walk across the field-turned-battleground, on his way to the golden gateway that separated the Kingdom from all else.

Remy knew that Jon Stall was Israfil.

For some reason, he had chosen to don a human form and live among humanity. Now it was up to Remy, an angel who had done something very similar so long ago, to locate the wayward Angel of Death and convince him to return to the life that Remy himself never would.

And, oh yeah, he couldn't breathe a word of it to his girlfriend.

"When did you and Jon first meet?" Remy asked. They had returned to the living room, and he was sitting in a chair across from the couch where Casey sat, Marlowe practically in her lap.

She took a careful sip from her mug of steaming tea before she answered his question, clearly reliving the past in her mind. "It was about a year ago. I was doing some temp work in the psychology department." She made a face and then smiled. "Not the psychology department… the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences."

Remy returned the smile. "There's a difference?"

Casey laughed. "I guess so. He was just a nice guy, y'know?" She smiled warmly with the memory.

Remy drank his coffee, his silence urging her to continue.

"We really hit it off… both of us coming off some pretty rough times and stuff." "Rough times?" Remy asked.

She put her mug down on the table, doffed her shoes, and pulled her legs up beneath her. "I had lost my mother a little less than a month before to breast cancer, and Jon had been quite sick himself."

"I'm sorry about your mom."

"Thanks," Casey responded with a sad smile. He could see emotion welling in her eyes.

"Jon had been sick as well?" he prompted after a minute.

The woman nodded. "From what he told me, I guess it was pretty bad. They'd given up on him. He had inoperable brain cancer and they'd given him less than a year to live."

Remy felt a cold knot of fear twist in his stomach.

"So he survived, then."

"Yeah." She nodded enthusiastically. "I guess they looked at him as a sort of miracle. The cancer went into remission and he was fine after that."

Casey picked nervously at a piece of skin on one of her fingers. Her voice started to tremble. "You wouldn't even know he used to be sick. It was amazing."

"Did he talk about his past much?"

She was petting Marlowe's head as he snored by her side. "Not at all, really… other than the stuff about you. I know he doesn't have any family or anything — both his parents were deceased and he was an only child. He used to say that the cancer gave him a chance at a new beginning," she explained. "That it enabled him to start all over again."

The icy knot in Remy's belly twisted tighter. Outside, the wind was whipping, spattering the heavy rain against the windows. Israfil had become this Jon Stall, assuming his identity, his life.

But why? Why had he abandoned his work, and why had he then gone missing?

"Tell me everything leading up to Jon's disappearance," Remy said, gulping down the last of his drink. He rose from his chair, heading toward the kitchen for another cup.

"More tea?" he asked her.

"No, thanks. I'll be peeing all night if I do."

Marlowe lifted his head. "Treat?"

"You've had enough," Remy said, and the dog's large head dropped between his paws with a heavy sigh.

"Was Jon acting strange? Was there anything to make you think that something might be wrong?" Remy asked, returning to the room with a fresh cup.

He could see that she was thinking hard. "It's all hindsight now," Casey said. "I really didn't think anything of it at the time — it was just Jon being Jon."

"And what does that mean?"

She shrugged, changing her position so that now she was leaning against Marlowe. "He would get very quiet, then go into his study and lock the door and not come out for hours. Stuff like that."

"So you lived together?"

"Yeah, he had a two-bedroom in Southie. I moved in not too long after we started dating. Most of the time it was great, just toward the end there it got a little hard. He was drinking a lot more and I think he might've been…" She paused.

"Drugs?" Remy finished for her. "You think he might've been taking stuff?"

"Yeah," she sighed, the memories of the bad times weighing heavily on her. "He said that it was to help him sleep, but I don't think he was sleeping inside his study all that time."

"What do you think he was doing in there?"

"I used to think it was school stuff, y'know, for the classes that he taught, but then I started hearing him talking to himself… and crying."

Marlowe lifted his head and looked at her with his deep brown eyes. He could sense that she was troubled, and laid his head consolingly upon her thigh.

"He's so sweet." Casey leaned down to kiss the top of his head.

"Yeah, he's a good boy," Remy confirmed.

Marlowe's tail thumped on the couch.

"Did you confront Jon about his behavior?" Remy asked, turning the conversation back to the problem at hand. He had to get every little bit of information he could to piece together the entire picture of the situation.

"Oh, sure. And that was when he started talking about you, and how much he admired you and everything that you'd done in your life, and how I was to get in touch with you if anything happened to him."

Casey suddenly stopped talking, putting all her concentration into petting the dog.

"Why do you think he thought something was going to happen to him? Did he give any indication that he was in trouble?"

"Jon wasn't himself at that point, Mr. Chandler," Casey explained. "He'd become very paranoid, certain that he was being watched and followed. He even stopped going to work, spending all his time locked in his study."

The warmth from the coffee cup felt good on Remy's hands. Even though he'd been out of the rain for well over an hour now, he could still feel the chill of the nasty weather.

"And when did you suspect he was gone?"

"Pretty much right away," she answered. "He said he was going out for a while. He hadn't been out of the house… out of his study… for days. I just knew that something wasn't right."

Casey started to cry. Remy got up and brought a box of tissues over from a side table.

"Thank you," she said between sniffles. "It's just that he didn't even kiss me good-bye." And then she began to cry all the harder. "I'm sorry," she finally managed, plucking another tissue from the box beside her.

"It's all right," Remy said. "I can see how this would be hard for you."

She dabbed at her eyes and nose. "Was I right to come to you?" she asked, crumpling the tissue in her hand. "Will you help me, Mr. Chandler?"

Marlowe lifted his head and woofed at him. "Yes."

"Marlowe says I should." Remy rested his empty mug on the arm of his chair. "How can I argue with that?"

She smiled sadly. "Thank you."

"Jon's things are still at the apartment, correct?" he asked.

Casey nodded. "I haven't touched a thing." "Good. I'd like to look at them… If that's all right with you."

"Sure," Casey said, nodding. "You can come over tomorrow and…»

"Now," Remy interrupted.

The clock was ticking, and he couldn't afford to waste any more time.

A handful of dog cookies and a promise to be back in time for Marlowe's breakfast, and they were off.

The weather was still bad, alternating between torrential downpour and deluge, and Remy had to seriously wonder if this was some sort of precursor to the end.

"You never really answered my question," Casey said, above the sounds of the storm: the heavy patter of rain as it landed upon the roof of the car, the rhythmic swish from the wipers as they barely kept up with the water on the windshield.

"What question was that?" Remy asked, as he headed down Atlantic Avenue toward Summer Street, the rain so heavy he could hardly see the harbor on the other side of the hotels.

"What's Jon's connection to you?"

He had to think a bit on how to answer. The truth was obviously out of the question, but he didn't want to lie to her either; the poor woman had already been through enough.

"Jon has changed," Remy began, carefully picking his words as he navigated the Toyota through the rain-drenched streets. "He isn't who I remember him to be….But then again, neither am I."

He could sense her sudden agitation.

"So what're you saying: that you do know him, that the two of you have changed your identities or something?"

"No, nothing like that," Remy said, trying to stifle her growing unease. "Let's just say that we both have… complicated pasts, and leave it at that."

Casey gazed into the darkness through the rain-spattered passenger's window. "That's probably what he meant about starting fresh after his illness."

Remy wanted to agree. The illness had indeed allowed Israfil to start fresh, providing him with an established identity — a life — that he could slip into like a comfortable suit of clothes. And then it hit him. Casey had never known Jon Stall at all; it was Israfil that she had fallen in love with.

She looked away from the window and at him. "Just tell me that you didn't do anything wrong… you or Jon."

Remy remembered the war in Heaven, wings spread as he dropped down from the skies, his sword cutting a bloody swath through the forces of the Adversary.

Killing his brothers.

She waited for an answer that he wasn't sure how to pose, when he was saved by the ringing of his cell phone.

"Excuse me." He reached for his phone, and she turned back to the window. "Hello?" he said.

"It's me," said the unmistakable voice of Lazarus. He always sounded exhausted, like he had just woken up from a nap. Living as long as he had was obviously very tiring.

"Hey," Remy answered, avoiding a particularly nasty-looking pothole behind the Industrial Park. "Do you have something for me?"

"Nothing," Lazarus said sleepily. "But it isn't that I'm not trying. I hit a few hangouts… some demon social clubs. I asked about your beating and nobody was fessing up. They all thought it was pretty funny, though."

"A riot," Remy answered. "Nothing about the other thing?"

"Israfil? Nope, but they all sense something's up. The last place I was in was pretty wild. Lots of heavy drinking and fights. The natives were most definitely restless. Had to spread some serious cash around in order to get anybody to even look at me."

"I'll reimburse you." Remy glanced over at the girl. She was drawing a smiley face in the window fog. "I might actually be on to something about that."

The phone was quiet, and for a moment Remy thought he might have lost the connection. "You still there?"

"Yeah," Lazarus answered. "Sorry about that. Do you think you know where he is?"

"Maybe. I'm on my way to a place on Dorchester Street."

"The Angel of Death was living in Southie?" the immortal asked incredulously. "Maybe," Remy told him.

Again there was silence, and Remy had to wonder if Lazarus was watching television or something.

"Well, good luck," the immortal finally said. "Give me a call if you need anything."

"Yeah, you do the same."

"Was that about Jon?" Casey asked, as Remy returned the phone to its holder on his belt.

"Sort of," he replied. "It's a little complicated right now. I'll fill you in a bit more after I have a look around his study, all right?"

He looked over at her to see she was staring directly at him. There was trust in her dark eyes as she nodded in agreement.

"Good. Now, why don't you guide me the rest of the way. We have to be getting close now."

Casey did as he asked, directing him toward an olive green two-family building on Dorchester Street. He managed to find a parking space relatively close, on the other side of the street, among the bumper-to-bumper SUVs. Somebody had broken a bottle in the spot, making it unattractive, and Remy got out and kicked the glass around a bit with his shoe before parking.

Collars pulled up against the rain, the two hurried across the street. She pulled her keys from a tiny purse and opened the front door. The entryway was warm and dry. The house, like many older buildings, smelled like food, like the hundreds of meals cooked there over the years. It was a good smell. A comforting smell.

Casey put a finger to her lips, telling him to be quiet as they climbed the carpeted steps to the second floor.

"The landlady's a pretty light sleeper," she whispered, searching her key chain again. "I'll be hearing about it for days if I wake her up."

She found her apartment key and let them both in, switching on a ceiling light as they entered.

"This is it," Casey said, taking off her wet coat and throwing it on an old wooden chair that sat by the door. Remy left his coat on, casually checking things out.

The door opened into their living room; mismatched furniture around an old television set, tasteful watercol-ors of what looked to be a beach house on Cape Cod decorating the walls. Beneath that was a framed and yellowed photograph, of what looked to be the same location captured by the watercolor artist, only in the photo there was family — mother, father, and son, dressed in the clothing of the time period, the early seventies, Remy believed — standing out in front of the cottage. He guessed that the child was Jon.

In a recliner in the corner, a large tiger cat rose to its feet, arching its back in a quivering stretch. The animal eyed Remy curiously with large, yellowish eyes.

"Hello," Remy said to it.

"Who?" the cat asked.

"Who am I? I'm Remy. I'm a friend of your master."

"No master," the cat proclaimed indignantly, then began to lick its paw, ignoring him.

"Sorry," Remy apologized. Cats always had the worst attitudes.

"Feed?" it suddenly asked between licks. "Not me," the angel answered it. Then, as if on cue, Casey returned with a dish in her hand.

"Are you talking to Tyger?" she asked, a hint of a smile playing around the corners of her mouth.

"She'll feed you," Remy told the animal, hooking a thumb toward her.

The cat meowed loudly, jumping down from the re-cliner, walking around Casey's feet, rubbing against her legs.

"Come on," she said to the cat. "I've got your supper here." She turned back to the kitchen, Tyger following, complaining all the while that he shouldn't have had to wait so long to eat.

Just beyond the living room was a short hall, and down the hall, a door. "Is this Jon's study?" Remy asked, raising his voice so that Casey could hear him in the kitchen.

She came back to the living room, wiping her hands on an old dish towel. "Yeah, but I think it might be locked."

Remy grabbed the doorknob and tried to give it a turn. It was.

"I'd really like to take a look inside," he said to her.

"I don't have a key," she said. "Maybe you could open it with a screwdriver?" She started back down the hall. "There's one in the kitchen that we use to…"

"I could open it with a minimum amount of damage," he called after her.

Casey stopped, slowly turning back to him. "Just try not to make a lot of noise, all right?" she warned.

Remy put his shoulder against the door, and using only a portion of the strength that he possessed, pushed upon it, breaking the lock and a bit of the jamb. "I'll pay for that," he said, as she joined him in the doorway.

Remy allowed her to enter first. She reached up to pull a chain hanging from a fixture in the ceiling, illuminating the tiny room.

"There isn't much to see," she said, looking around the cramped space.

And she was right. The room was small, with an old metal desk the dominant piece of furniture, squatting in the room's center. There were no pictures on the walls, no shade upon the naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. The room was coldly sparse.

"Do you mind?" he asked her, pointing at the desk.

"Go ahead."

Even the top of the desk was bare, except for a single ballpoint pen resting upon the flat surface, as if waiting to be used.

Used for what? Remy wondered. He pulled out the desk chair and sat down. There were two drawers on either side. He opened one and found it completely empty. Not holding out much hope, he checked the larger drawer below it.

"Hello there," he said with surprise, reaching down and lifting out a stack of notebooks. "Do you know what these are?" Remy asked Casey as he placed the books on top of the desk.

She shook her head, moving to stand beside him. She reached down and opened one. The notebook was filled with writing, page after page of writing, but not in a language she could understand.

"What is this?" she asked, flipping the pages, as if hoping to find something that she could decipher, but Remy knew it would be impossible, for there were very few who could still read angelic script.

"Is this… Latin?" she asked, frowning in confusion.

"It's older than that," Remy said. "You can read this?" she asked him. He nodded. "What's it say?"

Remy took the last notebook from the bottom of the stack.

And he began to read.