Dancing On the Head of a Pin

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Remy couldn’t believe it; something actually seemed to be going his way.

“Would you look at that,” he muttered, leaving the sidewalk, much to Madach’s surprise.

“Where are you…?” the fallen started to ask, but then decided to simply follow.

After everything he’d gone through that night, Remy had never expected this. His car was parked in a vacant lot along with the black SUV that Byleth’s gang had been driving.

With all the sports cars, and the limousine, of course there wasn’t enough room in the underground garage for anybody else’s vehicles, he thought, moving toward the Toyota, hoping that whoever had driven it here had left the keys. The thick, acrid smell of fire was prominent in the air, and he was glad at the moment for Byleth’s automobile indulgences.

“This is yours?” Madach asked as Remy opened the door and got behind the wheel. He leaned over and unlocked the passenger-side door, allowing the fallen angel to get in, then crossed his fingers and pulled down the driver’s-side visor. His keys fell into his lap.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Remy turned the engine over, flinching at the sudden explosion of noise. Someone had taken some liberties with the radio, a country-western station blaring from the speakers. He reached out, quickly turning the volume down to nothing.

They sat there in silence, the only sound the gentle purring of the car’s engine. Remy glanced down at himself. He was a mess, his pants torn and stained, one of the sleeves of his jacket and shirt charred black and crumbling from the release of his inner power.

He looked over at Madach, who sat with his eyes closed, head leaning back on the headrest. “You all right?”

Madach nodded. “Fine. Should’ve figured it would turn out something like this,” he said. “I knew it would all turn to shit the minute I listened to them.”

There was a bit of a chill in the air, and Remy jabbed the button to turn on the heat.

“Listened to whom?”

Madach laughed before answering. “The weapons,” the fallen said, eyes opening. “I was working a job—house painting—a few weeks back, when I first heard them.”

The whirling bits of information in Remy’s mind suddenly began to click into place.

“You were working at the Karnighan house in Lexington.”

This made the fallen angel sit up a bit straighter in his seat.

“Yeah,” he said. “How could you know that?”

“Small world,” Remy answered. “I was hired to find the stuff that you ripped off.”

“That’s right; you’re a detective,” Madach said with a nod. “Mason had said something about a Seraphim that was also a private investigator looking for the Pitiless.”

“That would be me.” Remy nodded.

“I would have given them away to anybody who would’ve taken them off my fucking hands,” Madach added. “But Mason saw dollar signs when I approached him. He said we could make a fortune… that there were plenty of buyers for what we had.”

“When I saw you leaving the brownstone on Newbury Street,” Remy said, “did you have them with you then?”

At first Madach didn’t seem to know what Remy was talking about, but realization quickly dawned. “That was you,” he said, forcing a simple smile. “You had the black dog.” He started to pick at the skin around one of his fingernails, peeling away some paint that had stained his flesh. “Don’t really care for dogs,” he said before laughing nervously. “After the garage, you can probably figure out why.”

“Marlowe’s much nicer than that,” Remy said.

“That’s good to know. And yeah, I did have them with me.”

“So the weapons called out to you while painting Karnighan’s house and you decided to break in some night and steal them? Paint me a better picture.”

“They didn’t just call out to me… they called out to me.” He struggled with the explanation. “They seemed to know me… to want me to take them.” The fallen fidgeted in his seat as he remembered. “I tried to take them that very day, that very moment, but there was something that kept me from entering the room no matter how hard I tried… something special to keep somebody like me out.”

“Meaning a fallen angel?” Remy suggested.

Madach nodded. “I think so. The security lock was nothing. I figured out the code in a matter of minutes, but I couldn’t get past the doorframe.”

Angels and their puzzles, Remy thought, recalling Francis’ Sudoku books. Now why somebody like Karnighan would have security specific to angels in the first place was another question entirely.

Remy drummed his thumbs on the steering wheel.

Unless he knew more about the Pitiless than he was letting on.

“How did you finally end up getting them?”

“I brought help,” Madach said. “Human help. One of the guys that I worked with had a little history, and it didn’t take all that much to convince him to give me a hand.”

“The guy that helped you,” Remy asked. “He live on Huntington Avenue by any chance?”

“Yeah,” Madach answered with a nod.

“He’s dead, you know,” Remy offered.

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Madach said. “He stole the daggers from the Pitiless stash, replaced them with some of the other antique knives that he’d taken from the house. I think he figured they were more valuable than the other shit just by watching how I acted around them.” He paused, working on the skin around the nail again even though the paint was gone. “How did he…?”

“The dogs… the Hellions got him.”

Madach seemed to physically react. “Nobody should go like that,” he said with a furious shake of his head. “After a few days I could sense that those things were around, stalking me, stalking the weapons. At first I thought I was cracking up, traumatic stress syndrome or something like that. I didn’t even think it was possible for them to leave Hell, never mind track me down. I think they could smell them… the Pitiless.”

“As soon as the weapons left Karnighan’s house, they became aware of them,” Remy said. Once again he was faced with the concept that there was more to Karnighan than met the eye.

“You say they,” Madach commented. “You’re not talking about the Hellions, are you?… You’re talking about the ones who are controlling them.”

Remy nodded slowly, examing nuggets of information still floating around inside his head.

He thought of his recent dealings with the Nomads, focusing on the incident involving the angel that he and Francis had freed from the Denizens. He remembered some of the dying Nomad’s cryptic words of warning.

The deceivers live on, the black secret of their purpose clutched to their breast.

I could bear the deceit no longer… my secret sin consumes me…

We should be punished… Oh, yes, we deserve so much more than this.

We’re no better… than those cast down into the inferno.

And how Remy had tried to explain it all away as insanity brought on by countless millennia of guilt, but now…

“They’re called the Nomads,” Remy started to explain to the fallen angel. “At the beginning of the war they decided not to choose sides, opposing the nightmarish struggle that they were certain was about to unfold.”

Madach nodded in understanding. “In Tartarus they’re called the Cowards.”

“Didn’t seem too cowardly to me tonight,” Remy responded. “Because of their stance during the war, they call no place their home. They’re able to walk between the worlds, just as comfortable in the wastelands of Hell as they are here on Earth, or in Heaven.”

“And now they have the Pitiless,” Madach said.

Suroth’s words echoed inside Remy’s mind, madness at the time, but now taking on new meaning.

And with them in our possession, the next phase of our plans can begin.

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

“I think we need to go see Francis,” Remy said, putting the car in motion, driving across the uneven dirt surface of the makeshift parking lot.

“What do you think is going on?” Madach asked him. “Why would the Cowards—the Nomads—have any desire to possess weapons with that kind of power?”

Remy left the lot, banging a sharp left onto Massachusetts Avenue, heading toward Newbury Street and Francis’ brownstone. He didn’t answer the fallen angel, not wanting to curse the situation—to give it strength—wanting so desperately to be wrong.

They rode the few blocks in silence, the tension inside the car becoming nearly palpable as the traffic closer to Newbury Street became thicker, cars stopped in the middle of the street, seemingly refusing to move.

“Is it a breakdown?” Madach asked, craning his neck to see through the windshield.

“I don’t think so,” Remy said, rolling down the window just as the sensation hit him.

His hands started to shake, his body breaking out in a chilling sweat. He looked across the seat to see that Madach was staring straight ahead, his body trembling as if the temperature in the car had dropped to subzero levels.

“I’m not even going to ask if you’re feeling that,” Remy said.

The strange sensation, an aura of undiluted menace, pulsated in the air, creating an invisible barrier that caused the people walking the streets, or driving in the vicinity, to have no desire to go any farther, making everything come to a complete stop.

He had an idea as to the cause but hoped he was wrong.

Turning around in his seat to check the rear window, Remy put the car in reverse. He beeped his horn to get the traffic piling up behind him to move so that he could back the Toyota toward Commonwealth Avenue, where he took a left, heading away from the chaos.

“Thank you,” Madach said though chattering teeth.

“Don’t,” Remy stated flatly, his eyes scanning the street for the first sign of an open space. He found one that would require an amazing feat of parallel parking, but he wasn’t deterred.

“What are you doing?” the fallen angel asked, panic growing in his voice.

“What does it look like?”

“You can’t,” Madach stated. “You can feel it in the air as much as I can, and you know what it is.” He hugged himself as his body became wracked with painful-looking spasms. “It isn’t right,” Madach yelled through clenched teeth. “You’re not supposed to be able to feel it here.”

Remy shut the engine off, pulling the keys from the ignition. As he opened the door, preparing to get out of the car, Madach’s hand shot out, grabbing hold of Remy’s shoulder.

“We’re not supposed to feel Hell here.”

“You’re right,” Remy said, shrugging the hand away and climbing out of the car. “We’re not.

“And that’s what makes me so goddamn nervous.”

As much as it frightened him to admit it, the essence of Hell had indeed come to Newbury Street.

Steeling himself against the feelings of utter despair, fear, and hopelessness wafting down the street at him like a bad stink riding on a gentle summer wind, Remy forced himself forward, fighting his way toward Francis’ brownstone.

The sidewalks and street were filled with people, lying where they had fallen—first affected by the waves of misery leaking out from the nether regions, some trembling and crying, others so sickened, so traumatized by what they were experiencing, that they had fallen into a kind of coma, puddles of vomit pooling at their heads.

The closer Remy got to the brownstone, the harder it became for even him to continue. His mind became crowded with thoughts of failure—of the crimes he’d committed against his own kind in the name of God. He saw the death of his enemies—his brothers—his sword cutting them down. With each strike of his sword—each death—the journey down Newbury Street became more difficult.

Remy stopped, pummeled by the memories, the guilt, of his ancient past. Violently shaking his head, trying to force away the overpowering thoughts, he glanced at Madach there beside him.

The fallen angel hugged himself, tears streaming down his face as he gazed fearfully ahead.

“I can’t go back there,” he said shaking his head. “I’ve done my penance and I won’t go back—I can’t go back.”

The miasma of anguish that enveloped them was nearly suffocating; Remy felt his legs begin to grow limp, and he was tempted—oh, so tempted—to lie down on the street, curling up into the tightest ball that he could imagine, to escape the sensations he was experiencing.

Anything of importance had left his mind; all he could think about, all that he could dwell upon, was the failure to his own, to his Lord God Almighty.

To Madeline.

It was as if he’d a received a shot of pure adrenaline directly to his heart, the image of his wife’s smiling face, like the rays of the sun, burning away an oppressive fog. Thoughts of her loss, and of how he had failed her on so many levels, niggled at the edges of his memory, but they had not the strength to dampen the joy and love he felt for her still.

Remy straightened, focusing on his surroundings. They were less than two blocks away.

Madach had dropped to the street. He sat there rocking back and forth, head buried in his hands.

“Get up,” Remy said, reaching down to haul the fallen angel up by the arm.

“I can’t…,” he complained.

“You can and you will,” Remy stated firmly, using this moment of clarity to propel himself and his companion forward. “If it wasn’t for you, this wouldn’t be happening. You’re coming with me just in case I need a hand.”

He pulled the struggling Madach along, maneuvering him through the body-strewn street until they finally reached the steps of the brownstone.

Wave after wave of sensations, the likes of which Remy had never felt before, washed over him. Hell had indeed come to Earth and it was leaking from the brownstone.

Madach was a quivering wreck, trying to sit down on the building steps, to hide from the destitute feelings that threatened to cripple him.

“I… I just can’t,” the fallen said, his voice a pathetic squeak. But Remy would not allow him to sit down, holding on to his arm and dragging him up the stairs toward the door.

The fallen angel’s complaints fell on deaf ears, Remy’s only concerns being that he get inside before he himself was reduced to a quivering pile of jelly. He had to know what was going on. He had to know the fate of his friend.

Remy opened the heavy wooden door and pushed Madach in ahead of him. The inside foyer door was open and Remy dragged Madach through the lobby to the door to the basement and Francis’ apartment.

Reaching for the doorknob, he felt the pulsations of the infernal place radiate from the crystal knob, a warning of what he was likely to find on the other side.

Again he steeled himself with the memory of Madeline, and like a suit of armor, it protected him against the relentless onslaught of the dispiriting atmosphere.

He took the knob and turned it, pulling the door open and letting it bang off the wall as he stood in the entryway looking down the stairs. Voices drifted up from the room below, voices that sounded familiar.

Madach shuffled closer. “We’re going… we’re going down there?” he asked, gulping noisily as he stared down the steep set of steps that led to the living area below.

The voices continued, followed by some menacing music that strangely enough seemed to fit the situation. Eerie pulses of light caused bizarre shadows to dance around what little they could see of the room waiting at the bottom.

“Looks like it,” Remy said, already beginning his descent.

He stopped momentarily to give Madach a look, making sure that he wasn’t going down alone.

The fallen angel pulled his act together, using the banister as he leaned against the wall, taking each of the descending steps slowly.

They were closer to the source. It was all Remy could do to keep from blacking out with the intensity of malevolence that hung in the air like smoke.

“We’ve got to keep it together,” he told Madach, who didn’t appear to want to leave the next-to-the-last step. He stood there, body rigid, petrified.

“You’re doing fine,” Remy told him, walking into the living space. “Don’t make me haul you off those steps.”

His words having their desired effect, Remy listened as Madach descended the remaining stairs and followed at his back.

Nothing appeared abnormal. The strange, shifting light and the sound of voices were caused by the television set. Remy took note that Francis had been watching Jaws. There was a half-eaten sandwich and cup of coffee sitting on the table, next to Francis’ chair.

“Where is he?” Madach asked through trembling lips.

Remy didn’t answer, approaching the television and turning the volume down to nothing. He hated to do it. His favorite scene was on: Quint’s speech about being on the Indianapolis.

But it didn’t become completely quiet.

He saw that Madach was carefully looking around the space, zeroing in on the source of the additional sound.

“It’s coming from over there,” he said, pointing with a nearly lifeless hand at the narrow corridor that ended with the worn door to Hell.

Remy moved down the hallway, the noise growing louder the closer he got to the door.

“I don’t think… I don’t think you want to go down there,” Madach said at his back, and Remy had to agree.

He didn’t want to go there, but there really wasn’t much choice.

Madach stopped at the edge of the darkened corridor as Remy continued.

The door was closed, but a radiance of palpable hopelessness emanated off the paint-blistered surface of the wood, and the sounds coming from the other side—he hadn’t a clue how to describe them. They were like the raging of a powerful storm, the sounds of nature’s fury muffled only by the fragile barrier that kept the storm at bay.

Something was wrong on the other side of that door.

Horribly, horribly wrong.

Remy wanted to quit, to drop down to the floor, allowing the sins and failures of his very long life to wash over him, to drag his body out into an ocean of anguish but Madeline helped him to fight, her memory urging him on.

The doorknob was both excruciatingly hot and numbingly cold in his grasp. As he was about to turn it, he looked to the end of the hall to see Madach standing there. The fallen looked as though he had aged twenty years, his body stooped from the Hellish emissions that pummeled them.

“Don’t,” he begged, a plaintive hand reaching out trying to convince him not to do what Remy knew had to be done.

He had to find out what was going on, and what fate had befallen his friend.

He had to know about Francis.

Remy turned the knob, throwing open the door to a blast of intense, lung-shriveling heat, followed by suffocating cold.

Through watering eyes Remy gazed in horror at the sight before him. Francis stood upon the bridge of writhing, fallen-angels in the midst of battle, a bloodstained sword in one hand, a gun in the other. From out of the icy prison streamed a steady flow of prisoners, their mouths open in ululating screams of madness and rage as they attempted to put him down, fighting to get past the only thing preventing them from making their way toward the exit and the earthly plane beyond.

Remy stared, frozen in place by the sight of the former Guardian angel as he dispatched wave after wave of his attackers. He was relentless in his defense, as were the fallen in their attempts to remove him from their path. For every fallen angel that fell beneath the boom of gunfire, or was cut in two by the bite of his sword blade, there seemed to be four more scrambling over the decimated corpses to take their places.

“What’s going on? What do you see?” Madach cried, temporarily distracting Remy from the disturbing scene playing out before him.

Remy glanced to the end of the hall and then back through the doorway. He had to do something; the number of fallen angels spilling out from the prison onto the bridge was growing unmanageable, many of the pale-skinned attackers tumbling over the side of the bridge of angel flesh to the Hellish landscape waiting for them below.

He started onto the bridge, the bodies of the fallen that comprised the structure quivering beneath the heel of his shoes.

“Francis,” Remy yelled.

The Guardian turned and his face twisted at the sight of Remy.

“Get back!” he screamed, quickly returning his attention to the marauding fallen, cutting down five more before looking back. “Get back into the fucking apartment!”

Remy hesitated, not sure what he should do. It wouldn’t be long before his friend succumbed to the ever-increasing number trying to escape.

He started forward again, feeling the stirring of the Seraphim within. He would have to let it out if he was going to be of any significant help to Francis in holding back the ravening hordes emerging from Tartarus.

Francis turned back again, his favorite suit tattered, spattered with blood, his horn-rimmed glasses missing.

“Don’t you fucking listen?” he bellowed, shoving the hand-gun into the waistband of his pants and reaching inside his jacket pocket to remove something that chilled Remy more than the frigid air radiating from the frozen prison at the bridge’s end.

Francis held a grenade, something that he’d likely picked up wholesale from one of the many weapons suppliers that he did business with.

“I said go back.” And with those words he pulled the pin on the round, olive green explosive device, rolling it across the uneven surface of the flesh bridge, where it became trapped within one of the open mouths of the angel-damned.

Remy knew what was about to happen and turned quickly, running back toward the open door.

The force of the blast propelled him through the doorway, face-first into the corridor wall, the deafening roar of the explosion and agonized screams of the fallen angels that made up the bridge suddenly cut off by the slamming of the door behind him.