Dancing On the Head of a Pin

CHAPTER TEN

Remy didn’t like the sound of that.

Byleth pulled himself together, running his long fingers through his straight blond hair. “It appears to be my lucky day,” he said. He removed his sports coat and squatted before the daggers.

“Depends on how you define lucky, I guess,” Remy said, watching as the Satan wrapped the knives in his jacket. “What are you going to do with them?”

“What do you think?” Byleth asked, a nasty glimmer in his eye. “They were to be Lucifer’s. The power of Heaven flows through them. Imagine the clout somebody with these bad boys in their possession would have.”

Remy couldn’t believe his ears. “You can’t be serious,” he said. “There’s something not right about this whole business,” the angel started to explain. “The kind of not right that involves a creature from Hell and an angel driven crazy by guilt. Do you seriously want to wrap this Pitiless albatross around your neck?”

“Losing Heaven nearly destroyed me,” Byleth began. “My time in Tartarus was nothing compared to the pain I felt… still feel… when God took it all away.”

The Satan looked to his men.

“Restrain him,” Byleth commanded.

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.

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.”

Remy glanced into the side mirror of the van to see one of the Hellions coming closer. He guessed that another was probably coming up on the other side.

Call him dense, but it actually took him a second to figure out what the Nomad leader was talking about. The business with the Angel of Death. He knew that narrowly avoiding the Apocalypse had changed things a bit, but he wasn’t quite sure what the Nomad was getting at.

“Answers, Remiel,” Suroth stated. “The questions we had carried since the close of the war were suddenly answered.”

Another glance in the sideview showed that the Hellion was practically on top of them. It was squatting down now, tensing, ready to pounce.

Remy spun around, facing the creature as it leapt.

“Get down,” he screamed, pushing both Madach and Byleth out of the beast’s path.

The creature soared over their heads to land gracefully in front of the Nomad leader. The other two beasts slunk out from the other side of the van to join their brother.

The Nomad didn’t even flinch.

Suroth extended his hand, and Remy watched in awe as the Hellions cowered. Practically on their bellies, the ferocious beasts crawled toward the Nomad leader.

Something told Remy that things were about to become even more interesting.

“You brought them here?” Remy asked, shock and horror evident in his tone.

“Remarkable beasts,” Suroth said, lowering his hand to allow one of the Hellions to sniff at his fingertips. A bruise-colored tongue extended from its skull-like mouth to lick the offered appendage. “And exactly what was necessary to find the weapons of change. It took far less time than you would imagine training them, deceptively intelligent and so very eager to please.”

Remy didn’t know what to say.

“Sounds like another creation of the Almighty, doesn’t it, brother?” Suroth chided.

“You trained them,” Remy said, the gears turning and grinding inside his fevered brain. “You trained them to find the weapons.”

“We trained them to find the tools of change,” Suroth added. “And with them in our possession, the next phase of our plans can begin.”

“Why do I have a sick feeling that I don’t even want to know what that means?” he asked the Nomad.

“Know that it is all for the best,” Suroth said, “and that this time, the true victor will reign supreme in Heaven.”

It was as if all sound had been bleached from the air.

Remy’s thoughts raced at the speed of light, all the pieces of the puzzle trying desperately to come together. What did the Nomad leader mean exactly—the true victor will reign supreme in Heaven? He didn’t like the sound of that in the least.

The Hellions jumped to their feet with a grumble, the Nomads advancing toward them.

“Give them to us,” Suroth demanded.

The idea was certainly tempting. To be free of the weapons—of the crushing responsibility. For a moment it actually sounded like a pretty good plan.

Until he regained his sanity.

The Pitiless were weapons imbued with the power of Heaven’s greatest angel, crafted especially for the Morningstar in his bid to challenge the power of God, weapons that never had been used in the Great War, weapons that fell to Earth in the form of divine inspiration, spurring craftsmen to create these ultimate weapons—these precision instruments of killing.

These Pitiless daggers.

Yep, it certainly would be easy to hand them over to the Nomads, to make them somebody else’s problem, but much to his chagrin, Remy just didn’t work that way.

“No,” he said flatly.

Suroth recoiled.

“Something isn’t right here, and I’m not about to hand these bad boys over to you until I feel one hundred percent safe in doing so.”

The Nomads said nothing, their heavy robes billowing in a nonexistent wind, shimmering with all the colors of the rainbow, and some that were not.

“What are we going to do now?” Madach asked in a nervous whisper, his eyes still riveted to those blocking their path.

“We drive around them,” Remy said, starting to move to the back of the van. “I need to know more, lots more, before…”

He was interrupted by Denizens running down the alleyway, stragglers from the slaughter that had occurred inside Byleth’s garage.

Remy noticed the guns that they were carrying and the smile on Byleth’s face, just before it all went to hell.

It was like something out of the Wild West, the fallen angels coming to the defense of their boss… of their Satan. Bullets fired from pistols and sprayed from semiautomatic machine guns tore into the Nomads and their Hellish pets.

From their reaction, Remy knew that the ammunition was something special, something likely brought over from the plains of Hell. Man-made bullets would never have had this kind of effect on beings from Heaven.

The Nomads stumbled back, the bullets hitting their wonderful robes in small explosions of darkness. The Hellions squatted at their side, flinching from every bullet hit, waiting obediently for their master’s commands.

And then Remy sensed it, the hair on the back of his neck standing on end as the air became suddenly charged with an unearthly power. He reached out and grabbed Madach by the shirt, dragging him up the alleyway, toward a green metal Dumpster. That would have to do.

Bolts of crackling-white-hot energy seemingly pulled down from the Heavens erupted from the Nomads’ outstretched hands, forming a single bolt of jagged energy that skewered the front of the van with the most destructive of results.

The van flew into pieces, the vehicle torn asunder by the energy that now coursed through it. Singeing slivers of metal, plastic, and glass whizzed through the air, projectiles of death. Remy listend to the sounds of the shrapnel striking the Dumpster, and the screams of Byleth’s Denizens as they were cut to shreds by the razor-sharp debris.

The gunfire was silenced, and Remy peeked out from behind his cover.

“It could have been so easy,” Suroth droned, strolling through the smoldering pieces of twisted metal that now littered the alley floor. “But to be expected. Change is often so difficult.”

“They’re dead, aren’t they?” Madach said to Remy, gasping for breath.

The fallen was right; the bodies of Byleth’s soldiers lay bloody and torn.

But Byleth was still standing. Chunks of glass and pieces of the van stuck out of his body, making it look as though he was wearing some bizarre suit of armor. He had found the axe again, drawing strength from the powerful weapon to remain standing.

“Come at me, then,” he growled, blood dripping down from his mouth in a slimy trail. He spun the axe in his hands, swaying from side to side. “I’ve killed your kind before and am not afraid to do so again.”

Remy and Madach watched as some of the Nomads drifted about the wreckage of the van, retrieving the yellow transport cases. He felt Madach tense beside him and reached out to grab hold of his arm.

“But we can’t…”

“That’s right,” Remy agreed, turning his attention back to Byleth’s fate.

“It saddens me that you could not be made to listen to reason,” Suroth said to Byleth.

The Hellions stalked toward the Satan, stopping as he swung the axe at them.

“I’ve lost everything that’s ever mattered to me,” he grunted, stumbling toward the Hell beasts, swinging the axe in a wide arc that almost caused him to lose his balance. “And I’ll be twice damned if I lose this as well.”

The Nomads dropped the battered yellow cases at their master’s feet. One of them knelt down, opening a case and rummaging around inside. He carefully removed a pistol and handed it to his master. Even in the faint light of the darkened alleyway, it glistened like the most valuable thing in all the world.

Suroth admired the weapon, hefting the weight of it in his hand.

“The humans certainly do have their talents,” the angel said, pointing the weapon at a startled-looking Byleth.

“At least your suffering will be at an end,” the Nomad leader said as he pulled the trigger, firing a single shot like a clap of thunder into Byleth’s forehead. The Satan flipped backward to the ground, hands still clutching the body of the battle-axe.

The Nomads quickly moved to retrieve the weapon from his corpse as the Hellions darted forward and began to feed upon the bodies that littered the alley.

“That’s our cue,” Remy whispered, nudging the fallen angel by his side into action. Clinging to the shadows, they exited the alley, and Remy saw that he recognized where they were.

On Massachusetts Avenue they stayed in the cover of shadows, desperate not to be noticed. They had to get as far away from their attackers as possible before they could stop and catch their breath, maybe figure out their next step without the threat of being killed.

It was good to have something to aspire to.