Where Angels Fear to Tread

CHAPTER FIVE

Remy quickly climbed the steps to the front door of the apartment building. He peered through the glass, but the lobby was empty. Frank and his friends must have already gone to the therapy assistant’s apartment.

On the wall to Remy’s left was an intercom system with a listing of the last names and apartment numbers of the building’s residents. F. Downes was in number 306.

Remy ran his finger down the length of buzzers, pretty sure that at least one person would answer.

“Yes?” a woman asked after a bit of squawking feedback.

“UPS,” Remy said, lowering his voice.

The front door buzzed as another voice asked who was there.

Ignoring it, Remy pushed through the door and headed up the stairs in the lobby. On the second-floor landing, a woman in a bathrobe asked him if he had seen a UPS man in the lobby, and Remy told her he was on the way up. He continued up himself, listening to the sounds of the building—his hearing was good, inhumanly so—a television tuned to a newscast, an animal snoring, a microwave announcing that dinner was ready. . . .

There it is, he thought as he reached the third floor. The sounds of a struggle. And it was coming from number 306.

Standing on the threadbare runner outside 306, Remy knocked on the door, and the sounds of violence inside came to a sudden stop.

“Guys, it’s me,” Remy called, placing his mouth close to the door.

He heard sounds of movement inside and placed his thumb over the peephole. “C’mon, let me in,” he said.

The door opened a crack and Remy stared into the eyes of one of the intruders. “Who the fuck are you?” he snarled.

“Is Frank home?” Remy asked with a smile.

“Get the fuck out of here,” the man replied, getting ready to close the door.

“Now, is that any way to answer the door?” Remy said as he slammed his shoulder into the door, pushing the man backward and forcing himself inside. “What if I were from Publishers Clearing House?”

He quickly scanned the room.

Frank was down, lying on his side in the middle of the tiny kitchen floor, two toppled dinette chairs near him. Blood stained the front of his green scrubs top, making it look dark and wet; more seeped onto the linoleum in a crimson pool beneath him.

The four attackers were eerily silent, their eyes slack, void of emotion.

Then the closest lunged at Remy with a snarl. He reacted in kind, putting everything he had into a punch. The man’s face snapped to the left and he stumbled to the side. Remy drove the heel of his shoe into the guy’s knee and was greeted with a wet snapping sound as the man screamed and crashed to the floor.

Two headed for Remy next, one of them brandishing a bloodstained knife. Remy could feel his heart hammering in his chest, hot blood pumping through his veins, as the angelic nature trapped within him shrieked to be free.

He dove to the right, grabbing one of the overturned chairs, using it to parry the knifeman’s thrusts. Remy lifted the chair and brought it down on the man’s outstretched arm. The knife clattered to the floor. He quickly kicked it away, then slammed the chair against the side of the second attacker’s face.

He turned to see that knifeman had found his blade and drove a knee into the man’s groin as he bent to pick it up. With a wheezing groan, the guy went down like a ton of bricks. But Remy was suddenly grabbed around the throat from behind—the man he’d hit with the chair had recovered.

Remy struggled, and the two crashed through the kitchen into the small den. Their legs struck a cheap coffee table, shattering it as they tumbled to the floor against a worn leather couch. The shock of the impact loosened his attacker’s grip, and Remy managed to free himself, picking up a piece of the broken table and using it as a club. The man raised his arm to block the blows, then kicked Remy in the stomach, knocking him back into the kitchen.

His true essence wailed, demanding to be unleashed.

And he continued to ignore it, scrambling to stand as soon as he hit the floor.

Three of the attackers were trying to escape and he lunged toward them, but something grabbed his ankle and he tripped, crashing to the floor. He rolled onto his back to find knifeman, a balding man with a fat, red face, still holding his ankle in a vise-like grip. Infuriated, Remy lashed out, kicking the man in the face and knocking him back, his head bouncing off the kitchen floor and rendering him unconscious.

Remy jumped to his feet and spun toward the door, but the others were gone, the sounds of their feet on the stairs floating through the open door.

He took a deep breath and went to Frank.

The man was lying in a shivering ball on the floor, and at once Remy could see he was too late. The aura of death was wrapped around Frank like a comfy blanket.

Remy knelt beside him, careful to avoid the still-spreading puddle of crimson.

“You,” Frank slurred as Remy lifted his head, resting it in the crook of his arm.

“It’s all right, Frank,” Remy said. “Relax. Everything is going to be fine.”

Most would have thought he was lying to soothe the dying man, but it was true. Soon there would be no worries, no pain, as the powerful force that was Frank’s immortal soul returned to the source of all life in the universe.

But before he was gone, Remy had questions that needed answering.

“Who were they, Frank?” he urged. “Why did they attack you?”

Frank’s eyes had started to close, but as Remy spoke, they slowly opened. “They wanted to know about Zoe . . . and Carl.”

A chill vibrated down Remy’s spine.

“Carl and Zoe?” Remy asked. “What did they want with them?”

“Want them,” Frank grunted. He tried to move, but his face twisted in pain and he began to convulse. It wouldn’t be long now.

“Parsons,” Frank said weakly. He reached up, grasping Remy’s biceps.

“Dr. Parsons? What does he . . .”

“Told them,” Frank gasped. “Told them where . . . where I lived. . . .”

“Were Carl and Zoe here, Frank?”

“Gone now . . . left . . . left this morning. They must know . . . ,” he said, his voice growing weaker. “Know how special . . .”

“Who’s special, Frank?” Remy urged.

“The child . . . little Zoe.”

Even through his pain, Frank smiled at the mention of the child’s name. Then Remy felt the man’s grip on his arm suddenly strengthen.

“Scared,” he managed, his eyes looking up into Remy’s.

Remy pulled him closer. “Don’t be, Frank.” He loosened the mask of humanity he wore and allowed Frank to see him for what he really was.

The last thing he would see before he passed from this world.

The aura surrounding Frank was completely black now, and his hand slipped from Remy’s arm, dropping to the floor.

The Angel of Death appeared in a flicker of time before them, taking what was his, before moving on to the next to feel his touch.

A part of Remy was annoyed that Israfil hadn’t even acknowledged his presence. Even a simple Hey, how’s it going? would have been nice, for if it hadn’t been for Remy, Israfil would have triggered the Apocalypse and brought about the end of the world.

But then again, angels with that magnitude of power and responsibility often had very short memories.

At least that was what Remy liked to tell himself.

Gently, Remy laid Frank’s head upon the kitchen floor. Israfil had taken what had defined the man as a human being, leaving only a husk behind.

Remy remembered trying to explain that to Mulvehill during one of their late-night drinking binges on the rooftop patio of his Beacon Hill home. He thought the candy bar and wrapper analogy had worked best.

He stood and stared down at Frank’s lifeless features. Now only the wrapper remained.

His thoughts were suddenly interrupted by the sound of a moan from behind him. He turned to find the remaining creep gradually making his way back to consciousness. Remy planned on questioning the guy before calling the police, but first he wanted to have a quick look around Frank’s apartment. If Carl and Zoe had been here, perhaps they had left something that could shed some light on where they might have gone.

Remy walked into the small den and scanned the debris left from his struggle with Frank’s killers. He bent down and picked up some old copies of the Boston Herald, revealing some crumb-covered plates and an empty juice box, a sure sign that a child had been here.

He tossed the papers on the couch, then lifted up the largest piece of the broken coffee table, leaning it against the wall. He knelt on the area rug, poking through the pile of animated movies and princess coloring books, until something red caught his eye.

He reached out and picked it up. It was a flyer advertising a place of worship called the Church of His Holy Abundance. Remy had never heard of the place, but that didn’t really surprise him—religions were popping up and dying all the time. This pamphlet was unusual though; some of the symbols drawn around its border were strangely old.

He folded the flyer, placed it in his pocket, and continued to rifle through the piles of debris. He found more pamphlets and information the church had mailed to Frank, and then something familiar.

“What’ve we got here?” he asked aloud, pulling the sheets of construction paper from beneath some more dirty plates.

Remy stared at a drawing, unmistakably done by Zoe’s hand. At first he didn’t understand what he was looking at, and then suddenly it dawned on him. The picture was of a man, kneeling on the ground, and of another man behind him, carrying a knife.

“Oh shit,” Remy said, and spun around to find that the knifeman was conscious again and bearing down upon him.

Knife descending.

The blade dropped in a silver arc, slicing through Remy’s shoulder as he tried to move out of the way.

With a grunt of pain, he pushed backward, away from his attacker, but the man had murder on his mind.

He threw himself at Remy, falling upon him, the knife raised again. Remy grabbed his attacker’s wrist as the weapon dove toward his throat, and was momentarily distracted by a strange mark on the back of the man’s hand. It resembled a pair of pursed lips.

Then the Seraphim inside him howled its fury.

And in a moment of startled weakness, Remy let slip the leash of control. The power of Heaven surged forward with a roar; the angel warrior that he was rejoiced.

He squeezed the man’s wrist with all his divine might, feeling the bones crack beneath his grip. The man screamed in agony and tried to pull away, but the Seraphim would have none of that. Remy drew the man closer, inhaling his fear-tainted scent with a growl.

Immediately his angelic essence recoiled, a convulsive reflex that caused him to hurl the man away and across the room. Remy began to cough, as if his lungs had been filled with some sort of corrosive gas, a foul taste coating the inside of his mouth making him gag.

Remy struggled to rein in the angelic nature and force it back deep inside him where it belonged. Through watering eyes, he glanced up to see the last of the attackers escaping through the open door.

“Shit,” Remy managed, slowly climbing to his feet.

He tried to piece together what had just happened. It had something to do with his attacker’s scent. Something was different. . . . Something was missing . . . and in its place was only the poisonous stench of loss and despair.

And then it hit him.

It was what set humanity apart from all lesser things.

The thing that most separated the human from the angelic.

The man was missing his soul.

Remy had to get out of there.

He started through the kitchen toward the door, and his foot kicked something across the room. It was a wallet. He leaned down, picked it up, and opened it. The driver’s license inside belonged to his red-faced attacker, Derrick Bohadock, forty-six years old, from Michigan.

Remy committed the name to memory, then dropped the wallet on the floor and left Frank’s apartment, willing himself unseen as he closed the door behind him, just in case the struggles inside the apartment had attracted attention from the neighbors.

He was a few blocks away before he allowed himself to be seen again. He removed his phone from the holder attached to his belt and dialed an all-too-familiar number.

“Mulvehill,” announced a weary voice on the other end of the line.

“You are so sexy when you answer the phone like that,” Remy said.

“I don’t know what it is,” the detective replied. “Sexiness just oozes from my pores; makes me feel bad for the poor bastards out there who don’t have a fraction of what I’ve got.” He barely stifled a belch before continuing. “Excuse me; that’ll teach me to have leftover Chinese for lunch. What can I do for you?”

“Got a murder,” Remy said.

“Finally, something to do. What’s the story?”

“The victim is—was—Frank Downes, a therapy assistant at Franciscan Children’s.”

“And what did Mr. Downes have to do with you?”

“A person of interest in a case I’m working on,” Remy explained. “Looks like someone else found him interesting too, only that someone murdered him.”

“Any idea who that somebody might be?”

“There were four of them. I tried to help him, but I was too late. Although one of them did leave his wallet behind—Derrick Bohadock of Novi, Michigan.”

He didn’t mention that the man apparently had no soul, putting this investigation heavily into that weird-shit category that Mulvehill liked to give Remy so much trouble about.

“Are you on the scene?” Mulvehill asked.

“No, I’m on my way back to the hospital to follow up on a few more things.”

“Try not to get anybody else killed,” Mulvehill cautioned.

“I’ll do my best,” Remy answered. “Come by the house tonight. I’ll fill you in, and if you’re good, there might even be a bottle of Jameson in the freezer.”

“Will there be loose women?”

“Sorry,” Remy said. “No loose women.”

“Good, more Jameson for us.”