He commanded the Seraphim to manifest, but somehow it denied him. He could feel it deep in the darkest part of his being, watching as his human nature struggled with its newest plight.
So weak and fragile, he heard it growl. But still you cling to it.
This is not the time, Remy said, oxygen deprivation starting to take its toll.
I have nothing but time, the Seraphim replied. Time to lie here buried deep within the darkness of your being, waiting to be called upon when needed . . . imprisoned and hated when not.
The grass was drawing him down, catfish and snapping turtles stirred by his presence, hearing the siren call of the swamp to attack.
Perhaps it would be better to die, the Seraphim continued. To allow the fragile guise of humanity that you wear to choke upon the black water, to suffer no more.
His lungs were about to burst, explosions of color blossoming in the darkness. There was nothing Remy could do other than call the Seraphim’s bluff.
He opened his mouth, foul water pouring in to fill the cavity, and for a moment, he knew what it might be like to drown.
For a moment.
The Seraphim flew up from the darkness, filling his every fiber with the power of its being, chasing away the opportunity for death. Remy’s body burned with the fires of Heaven, the heat from his armored flesh causing the water that surrounded him to boil with such intensity that nothing could live near him.
So glad you decided not to die, Remy chided, wrestling with his angelic nature so that it could not assume total control. Beneath the churning waters, he spread his powerful wings and sprang from the bottom of the swamp in a roiling cloud of silt, dead fish, and turtles.
The world had turned to muffled chaos.
Jon thrashed, trying desperately to keep his head above water as the swamp tried to pull him under. He could feel things around him, beneath the stinking water, things that bit at his clothes, trying to get to the flesh beneath, things that wrapped about his ankles, trying to yank him below.
“Please!” he screamed, moving his head away as a wave rushed at him, trying to enter his mouth to silence his voice and steal his life. “We don’t mean you any harm.”
He could see Izzy still standing on the platform in front of her house, hands glowing with supernatural power that flowed from her fingertips down into the water.
“My daddy said you’d be coming someday,” she cried over the groans of the swamp bending to her will. “You’d be coming here to try to find out about my mama, and nothing good would come of it.”
Something in the water tugged hard upon his ankle, and Jon screamed once before being pulled beneath the surface. His hearing aid buzzed and whined as it was submerged. Frantically Jon reached for his foot, feeling the slimy blades of grass wrapped around his shoe. Before his lungs could explode, he tore the shoe from his foot and struggled back to the surface.
Jon broke the surface, gasping for air, and found himself gazing up into the face of the woman using the swamp as her weapon.
“Just . . . just let me talk to you.” He gasped, struggling to keep his head above the thrashing water.
“You’re not dead yet?” Izzy asked, her voice filled with annoyance. Then she raised her hand, sending a writhing blast of magickal power out into a wooded section of the animated swamp. “I can fix that.”
The waves grew, breaking over Jon’s head, their weight trying to push him down again. He fought the watery onslaught, arms flailing, desperate to grab onto something, anything that could keep him afloat.
Through stinging, bleary eyes he saw something floating in the water not too far from his reach, but as he reached out to take hold of what he thought was a thick branch, he caught sight of two yellow eyes.
Alligators, his brain screeched in full panic. I’m about to be eaten by alligators.
Jon spun in the water, and began to swim as hard as he could away from the approaching predators, but Izzy wasn’t going for it.
“Where are you going?” she called out from the deck. “Don’t you want to meet some of my babies?” She started to laugh, directing even more of her magick into the water surrounding her stilt house.
Jon imagined he could hear the sound of the gator swimming closer, its hissing breath as it anticipated its next meal, its jaws creaking like an old hinge as it opened its mouth wide for the first bite.
A wave of black water dappled with dead fish and God knew what else rushed at him, throwing him backward into the path of the advancing alligator.
“You shouldn’t have come,” Jon heard Izzy say over the whine of his water-damaged hearing piece.
At least I’ll be with Nathan soon, he thought as he slowly turned, looking into the cold stare of reptilian death.
But then the alligator came to an abrupt stop as the water around them became suddenly hot.
It began to froth, and glow an eerie yellow as something rapidly rose to the surface.
The angel erupted from the swamp in an explosion of blazing light and clouds of steam, his mighty wings flapping powerfully, holding his majestic form above the frothing waters.
Remy scanned his surroundings with the eyes of a warrior, searching out the nearest threat.
He saw Jon bobbing in the water below, an alligator too close. Remy angled his body down toward the water, and reached down to snatch Jon from the water.
A bolt of magickal force struck the metal of his chest plate and he cried out, almost dropping Jon back into the swamp. He quickly recovered, shrugging off the pain and flying toward the stilt house, where he released Jon and turned to face Izzy.
“Get away from my house,” she cried, more and more magickal energy leaking from her body. The sky had begun to rumble; the trees swayed with winds that had begun to pick up. “I’ll bring something worse than Katrina down on your heads,” she spat.
Remy looked at her intensely, furling his powerful wings.
“I don’t want to fight you,” he said.
“I tried to tell her,” Jon said between gasps, but Remy held up a hand, silencing him.
“Look at me,” Remy ordered Izzy. “Really look at me. . . . I know you can feel my intentions. I don’t want to hurt you.”
The magick continued to swirl around her. “I swore I would stop you,” she said through gritted teeth.
“Stop us from what?” Remy asked. “All we want to do is talk to you.”
Izzy held out her hands palms up, showing him the magickal power that swirled there.
“If you’re lying, I’ll make you eat this,” she said with a sneer.
“Deal.” Remy pulled back on his angelic essence with little difficulty, and returned to his very wet but human form.
Jon was looking down at his bare foot.
“I lost my shoe,” he said.
“Maybe one of the gators has it,” Remy said. “Want to go ask?”
This got a laugh from the woman, who was staring at Remy with a tilt of her head.
“There’s something about you,” she told him.
“I’ve heard that,” Remy joked.
“No,” she said seriously. “There’s something familiar about you . . . something that I trust.”
“And that’s a good thing,” Remy said.
“Yeah,” she agreed with a nod, pulling open the screen door and gesturing for them to follow her inside.
“If it wasn’t, the two of you would be dead right now.”
Steven Mulvehill tried to reach Remy again, and again he got nothing.
“Son of a bitch,” he hissed beneath his breath, sliding the phone back inside his jacket pocket.
“He did this,” Fernita said, waving a rubber-gloved finger at the writing upon the wall. “He did this to protect me.”