It bellowed, a deafening sound, before reaching down with one of its clawed, metal-covered hands to rip away the gun and toss it above the treetops.
Mulvehill cried out as two of his fingers snapped like twigs.
If somebody had described this scenario to him, he would have imagined himself curled in the fetal position on the ground, but instead he felt more angry than anything else.
Angry that two of his fingers had been broken . . . angry that his favorite gun had been tossed away into the woods . . . angry that he was probably going to die at the hands of something that he had been taught as a child was a thing of beauty and a loving servant to God.
And more specifically, he was angry at Remy Chandler for kicking open the doorway and exposing him to a world that he shouldn’t even know existed.
The anger boiled up inside him, and he reacted, hauling off and punching the monstrous thing of Heaven in the faces as hard as he could with his unbroken hand.
The angel recoiled, its many eyes at first expressing surprise, but then the lion pulled back the flesh of its maw, showing off fearsome teeth, and Mulvehill was sure he was about to be eaten.
When there was a voice.
“Hello, Zophiel, what do you have there?”
The monster angel spun around, its multiple sets of wings unfurling in a defensive posture.
As the heavenly creature moved, Mulvehill could see who had spoken. It was an older guy, maybe someone who had seen his wrecked car from the road and come down to help.
Mulvehill almost screamed for the man to run away, but something about his appearance stopped him. Something told Mulvehill that this probably wasn’t just a normal man. That he was something else entirely . . . something of this strange new world that Mulvehill had been unceremoniously thrown into.
“You’ve been on the hunt for too long, Cherubim,” the man with the white hair and beard said, a sly smile spreading across his face. “Wasting your time menacing a helpless human—is that not below you?”
“Malachi,” the Cherubim said in an unearthly growl as it tensed and sprang, even more furious now than when Mulvehill had shot it in its faces.
“You are the cause of this,” the monster angel roared, landing upon the stranger and driving him back to the frozen ground.
Mulvehill clutched his injured hand to his chest and stumbled back, away from the impending carnage.
The stranger appeared helpless beneath the bulk of the armored attacker, but then the homicide cop heard the oddest of things—laughter.
As the angel lay upon the man, armored claws reaching down to tear and rend its prey, the stranger was laughing.
The sound of merriment only proved to enrage the angelic beast all the more. Its body glowed with an unearthly light, and liquid fire began to drip from the tips of its hooked fingers and its three open mouths.
“And you have been a thorn in my Master’s side long enough,” the stranger announced, his expensive suit already starting to smolder and burn, but it seemed to have zero effect upon the person inside it.
Mulvehill was catching snippets of their heated debate. It was obvious that these two knew each other, and weren’t the best of buds.
“Your fetid touch has brought me to the brink of madness,” the Cherubim wailed, struggling to hold the stranger down. “For millennia I have fought the aftereffects of your influence, and only now am I able to see what must be done for Heaven to be saved.”
The stranger was laughing all the harder now, even as his body began to change.
“Do you think my Master would sully his touch upon a worthless creation such as yourself?” asked the old man, who wasn’t an old man anymore. “You’re nothing more than a stupid beast . . . a guard dog that outlived its usefulness a very long time ago. . . .”
The stranger had become another creature, and Mulvehill hadn’t a clue whether this was another kind of angel . . . or something more demonic.
Its skin was a dingy white, and covered with strange markings, like some of the tribal tats that he’d seen on many of the scumbags he’d arrested over the years.
“What madness is this?” the Cherubim hissed. “You are not the traitorous elder.”
“I am what should have been,” the pale, tattooed thing said, its body almost like liquid as it flowed around the now struggling Cherubim. “And what will be very, very soon.”
“You are an abomination!” Zophiel bellowed, panic clearly in its voice. “The Lord God would never allow you to exist, Shaitan!”
The pale-skinned thing had wrapped multiple limbs around its foe, powerful, knifelike fingers attempting to make their way between the seams of the angel’s armor. Zophiel’s movments were frenzied, its four wings flapping wildly as it attempted to flee the battleground, but its equally monstrous attacker would not allow it, the liquid flesh of the shape-changing foe slithering onto the Cherubim’s wings, preventing flight.
“Then we shall need to do something about the Lord God,” the new aggressor spoke. “But first things first.”
The pale-skinned thing spread across Zophiel’s body, constricting the Cherubim’s four mighty wings and wrapping around its throat.
Mulvehill knew that he should be getting the hell out of there, but he couldn’t take his eyes from the epic struggle before him. He had no idea whom to root for, sensing that either of these creatures would be the death of him—and Fernita.
It didn’t look good for the Cherubim. The shape-shifting thing had almost completely enveloped the angel’s armored form. At that point Mulvehill decided that he should probably move along, and had just started to turn when the Cherubim let loose a deafening cry, equal parts scream and thunderous roar. The angel’s fury echoed through the winter woods, the tormented sound shaking free the dead leaves that still clung to the trees.
Zophiel tore away the liquid flesh of its attacker, the Cherubim’s armored form now glowing white-hot with the heat of its divine body.
The pale, tattooed thing writhed upon the frozen ground, steam rising from its smoldering body, but within only seconds it appeared fine, returning to its more human shape to taunt its Cherubim foe.
“You have met your better, sentry,” the shape-changer said. “Accept your fate now, for your kind, and all the hosts of Heaven, will soon bow before my brothers and sisters. The Almighty will be made to see the error of His ways, and a great change will be brought upon the Shining Kingdom and all the worlds that bask in the light of its glory.”
Mulvehill started to back away as muscular tentacles shot out from the tatooed beast’s body toward the angel, whose form still glowed like white-hot metal.
“What now?” he said, running in the direction he’d last seen Fernita go, a battle of monsters still raging behind him.
Dreading what new insanity would be waiting ahead.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The dead man moved.
Fernita had been making her way through the woods, trying not to slip and fall, when she came across the body.
It was wrapped in an old red blanket, propped up against the base of a birch tree. She wanted to run past it, knowing she had to get as far away as she could from the monsters behind her, but she could not.
It was as if it were calling out, beckoning for her to come closer.
For a moment, Fernita hesitated, trying to force herself to go on, but her mind was filled with the images of a wondrous place of green, a jungle unlike anything she had ever seen.
The old woman stepped closer to the body.
And suddenly the memories came flooding back.
She remembered the place she saw when she opened her mouth and bared her soul in song. She remembered who she really was.
Pearly had tried to hide that too, but now Fernita Green was just another fading memory. She was Eliza Swan, and always had been.
Eliza could feel a song bubbling in her heart as she climbed over the mounds of frozen leaves and broken branches toward the body, a song starting to move from her heart—her soul—up through her chest and into her throat.