Beneath he found a body. The remains were badly damaged. There was no way that the sound could have come from him, but Remy again heard something: this time a muffled cry.
Rolling the corpse over to one side, he found what looked to be a metal stretcher. Something stirred beneath the stainless steel, and Remy lifted it up to reveal the shape and the still-living body of a man covered in thick dust, dirt, and blood.
Reaching down, Remy carefully took hold of the man’s arm and pulled him from the rubble. Despite the destruction around him, the survivor appeared to be unscathed other than some minor burns, cuts, and bruises.
“Are you all right?” Remy asked, kneeling beside him.
The man turned a dirty face toward him. “You’re going to need to speak up, Mr. Chandler,” he said.
Remy was startled, even more surprised when he realized that the survivor was the man called Jon.
“What happened here?” Remy asked, remembering how it had once looked, but now seeing only devastation.
Jon crawled across the rubble to the body that had lain atop him. He knelt beside it, taking one of its burned hands in his. “I was going to bury him,” he said. “In the garden . . . when I found them all dead.”
Remy realized that the corpse belonged to the volunteer, and his belief that Jon and he had been more than friends was affirmed by the intensity of the man’s emotion.
“All dead?” Remy asked.
“Something got into the dome and killed everybody. I only survived the initial attack because I was dropping you off at the plane. I came back to bury Nathan. . . .”
Jon stared at the broken and bloody corpse again, stroking its hand. “That was his name. . . . His name was Nathan.”
“Stay with me, Jon,” Remy said. “What did you find when you returned?”
“The place was unusually quiet. . . . It was when I entered the garden that I found the bodies.”
“Did you see who did it . . . ? Was it Zophiel? The Cherubim?”
Jon shook his head. “I don’t know. . . . All I heard was a laugh, and then there was this horrible fire and—”
“What happened to Malachi and Adam? Did you see either of them?”
Jon thought for a moment before answering. “No . . . no, I didn’t see them.”
“Then they might have survived,” Remy said. “Escaped before they could be hurt.”
“Yes,” Jon said as he started to rise, nearly falling over as the rubble shifted beneath his feet. “I believe Adam still lives,” he said. “I think I’d have felt it if he died.”
“Then there’s still a chance of getting this done,” Remy said. “Of finding the key.”
“Do you still have the map and drawings?” Jon asked. He was still gazing down at Nathan’s body.
“I was attacked, as well. Zophiel brought the plane down,” Remy said. “The map and drawings were lost.”
Jon looked to him with a nod. “I see,” he said, and then walked closer to Nathan’s remains. “I’d like to bury him before we go,” he said.
Remy stared, not entirely understanding what was being said.
“We?” he questioned.
Jon nodded. “I’m the only one still alive who saw what he did,” Jon said, pointing at Nathan’s corpse. “You’re going to need me to get us where we’re going to find the second half of the key and open the Gates of Eden.”
Remy now understood completely.
“But before we go anywhere, I need to bury my friend,” Jon said, going to the body. “Will you help me?” he asked of him, as Remy nodded.
It was the least he could do for the man.
Zophiel . . . I am Zophiel.
The Cherubim floated above the Earth in the cold vacuum of space and continued to remember. Splintered pieces of memory came at him from every side and he snatched at them, eager to put the imagery together . . . eager to know what had happened to him.
Eager to know what had yet to be done.
Invisible feelers trailed from his drifting form, leading from his armored body down to the planet below.
Zophiel knew the answers were there, and he would find them. All he needed was patience.
The feelers drifted across the surface of the Earth, telling him much about the place to which the Almighty had taken such a shine. It was a special world filled with a myriad of life, and bountiful resources, and so much more, but the answers still eluded him.
The Cherubim felt his anger begin to spike, and he resisted the temptation to descend upon the planet, laying waste to its vast cities until the answers to the mysteries in question revealed themselves to him. It was an option that he was seriously considering when he felt the first twinge.
Like a spider in its web, Zophiel felt the thrum of an ancient power through the tendrils of webbing that trailed from space to the planet below. It had not been there before, but now it was.
Just a hint of something that had once been hidden.
A taste.
The Cherubim drifted in the cold of space, ready to act upon the next sign. And it came again: another faint tremble in the ether, vibrating up through the invisible line from the earth below.
Zophiel squinted his many eyes, following the connection from space, down through the atmosphere and clouds. It was there that he would find what he was searching for.
Spreading his massive wings, the Cherubim dropped from the stars in search of answers.
Heaven help any who dared stand in his way.
Steven Mulvehill pulled up in front of Fernita Green’s house a little after six, and again considered what he was doing.
Taking one last puff from the cigarette in his mouth, the homicide cop shoved the smoldering remains into the open ashtray, which resembled a kind of cigarette cemetery, the butts sticking up like tombstones.
Leaning over in the driver’s seat, he looked out the passenger window at the house across from him.
He’d received his friend’s message after a particularly grueling day on a Charlestown double homicide with no witnesses, or at least that was what they were saying. The folks of that particular Boston neighborhood had their own ideas on justice and how to handle things. He’d seriously considered ignoring Remy’s text, but realized that his alternative—at least three hours of paperwork—wasn’t any more attractive.
Remy had talked about this Fernita Green and what a hot shit she was a few times, and Steven had even said that he would get a kick out of meeting her, but the real reason he didn’t say no was because of who was asking the favor.
How could somebody say no to an angel of Heaven?
It sounded fucking stupid even as he thought it, but there was some semblance of truth even with the stupidity.
To most, Remy Chandler was just a guy, a relatively good-looking middle-aged private investigator. Nothing more than that.
But Steven knew otherwise.
He knew some of the details: that Remy had left Heaven after some war, fed up with all the bullshit that was going down as a result of the conflict, and ended up here. He’d been hanging around Earth for a really long time, eventually becoming a private eye, falling in love with an amazing woman, and losing her to cancer.
Mulvehill was sure there was more, all kinds of details connected to what Remy actually was, and the reality of the kind of world in which Steven was living where a warrior angel every so often had to deal with a situation like the impending Apocalypse, or that the Devil was taking control of Hell again.
Yeah, weird shit happened, but it was the kind of shit that Mulvehill would rather not know about. Just being privy to the knowledge that Remy wasn’t really human was more than he cared to know, a peek into a reality that, because of his friendship with Remy, he now knew existed, and wished that he didn’t.
The pair had a rule when they were together. The weird shit was kept to a minimum. Steven believed that this rule was a good thing, helping to keep Remy grounded in his attempt to be as human as the next guy, and it also prevented Steven from knowing things that he shouldn’t.