Remy felt a blast of January air as the door opened behind him, and he turned to face it.
Linda Somerset stood in the entryway.
Her cheeks were a rosy pink, and there seemed to be a touch of panic in her gaze as she looked past him to the restaurant beyond. She pulled the floppy woolen hat from her head and combed her shoulder-length, chestnut brown hair with her fingers.
Remy couldn’t help but smile as her gaze turned to him and recognition dawned on her pretty face.
Linda laughed, reaching out to grab hold of his arm. It was a nice sound, and she had quite a grip.
“I didn’t even notice you,” she said, her eyes never leaving his. “I was afraid I was late.”
“No worries,” Remy said. “I just got here myself.”
The manic look he’d seen when the woman had first entered started to recede, and he found himself suddenly feeling more comfortable as well.
What’s that all about? he wondered, staring at Linda. Mere seconds ago he was ready to jump out of his skin, now . . .
She was the first to break their gaze, reaching into her coat pocket for a wrinkled Kleenex. “I’m sorry,” she said, laughing again as she brought the tissue to her nose. “My nose runs like crazy when it’s cold. I don’t want to embarrass myself any more than I have to.”
She looked self-conscious, turning away from him as she wiped beneath her nose and quickly put the Kleenex away.
“There, perfect,” she said with an exaggerated eye roll.
“Perfect,” Remy agreed. “Shall we head in?”
Linda nodded.
“May I take your coats?” the hostess asked as she stepped from behind the podium.
Remy helped Linda off with hers, then took his own off and gave both to the woman. They waited as the hostess hung them in a closet behind the podium, then returned, picking up two leather-bound menus.
“This way,” she said, holding the menus to her chest.
Remy gestured for Linda to go first, and followed close behind.
This is it, he thought.
Once more into the breach.
Hell
The floor of the underworld bucked and heaved like a succubus coming down from a weekend of gorging at the all-you-can-eat soul buffet.
Didn’t even have the common courtesy to wait until I died, the Guardian angel once of the angelic host Virtues thought as his injured form was thrown about the shifting landscape.
Fraciel—now called Francis—held on to his fleeing consciousness, staving off inevitable death, in order to bear witness to what was happening in the realm of Hell.
Lying upon his back, the ground beneath him moving like the Magic Fingers beds at the no-tell motel out on Route 114, he lifted his head to see the ice prison of Tartarus—that most horrible of places, created by God to imprison those who had taken up arms with the Morningstar—crumble and fall, disintegrating before his very eyes.
There’s something you don’t see every day, he thought in a painfilled haze, watching as gigantic hunks of glacial ice cascaded toward the surface of Hell, only to stop midway and float inexplicably weightless through the debris and ash-choked air. Pieces of Tartarus, like an asteroid field above the quake-ravaged surface, gradually dissolved into a thick cloud of swirling matter.
Hell was coming apart at the seams, and Francis had a front-row seat.
After centuries of servitude, he had been given the job as Guardian of one of the many gates—passages—from the world of man to the Hell realm and the prison of Tartarus. It had been his way of making amends with the Almighty for temporarily siding with the Morningstar. And he had served his God well, helping those fallen angels released from their time in the icy prison to prepare for the remainder of the penance they would do on Earth.
He’d also shown some initiative, and managed to maintain a lucrative business as a professional assassin. Very selective in those he killed, Francis had eliminated only the worst of the bad. It had been the one saving grace in his exile upon the planet of man—that and his friendship with the Seraphim Remiel.
Known now as Remy Chandler.
The remains of Tartarus swirled in the air, a maelstrom of ice, dust, dirt, and rock.
And the storm was growing.
Francis lay upon the trembling ground watching in awe. He knew that was where Remy had been going when last he saw him, and wondered if the Seraphim had anything to do with the cataclysm that threatened the Hell realm.
Of course he did.
The ground beneath his back grew incredibly hot, but Francis didn’t have the strength to move. He was thankful Hell decided to do this for him.
There was an explosion of foul-smelling gas, the force of the blast propelling him up into the air, only to land on his belly at the edge of an expanding pool of lava.
Francis barely managed to hold on to consciousness, the sucking darkness of oblivion pulling him slowly closer. He tried to pull himself away from the burning fluid, but managed only to turn onto his back, where he could once again look up into the rubble-filled sky.
Pieces of Hell and Tartarus had mingled together, a growing, swirling vortex of all the misery, hate, and sorrow that defined this horrible place created by a supposedly loving God.
It wouldn’t be long until Francis too joined the maelstrom, sucked up with everything else into the yawning maw of the voracious funnel cloud.
What did you do, Remy? Francis wondered as he felt the first, burning touch of liquid rock on his battered flesh. What did you find inside the prison that could have led to . . . this?
And as if some higher power had heard his question and, knowing that he would soon no longer be among the living, took pity upon him, showing him the answer.
The vortex spun above him, opening wider and wider. And inside its mouth, floating in the dust-, dirt-, and ash-choked air, untouched by the madness of what was happening around him, floated a figure.
The figure . . . he was like the sun, repelling the darkness with a golden light that emanated from his perfect form.
Francis remembered this being, and how he had once stood alongside the Almighty.
The answer to his question hovered in the center of the storm.
The Morningstar had risen.
And Francis knew that nothing would ever be the fucking same again.
CHAPTER TWO
“So, what’s your story, Remy Chandler?”
Linda Somerset’s voice echoed inside Remy’s head as he drove past the Museum of Science on his way to Somerville, where he’d promised to meet Steven Mulvehill for a nightcap.
The date had gone well—nothing spectacular, but good. There were no fireworks or wedding plans or joint checking accounts in the foreseeable future, but the night had been okay. There’d been lots of small talk, conversation establishing a comfort zone for the two of them. Normally, Remy would have been bored to tears, but from Linda, it was like opening the window on a gorgeous spring day after a particularly harrowing winter.
And it had been a harrowing winter.
“So, what’s your story, Remy Chandler?”
He heard her ask the question again. She had just finished talking about everything from her fear of spiders and her love for Japanese monster movies to her failed marriage and how it had taken her a very long time to get her head straight again.
She had paused, brought her second merlot to her lips, and asked him over the rim of her glass:
“So, what’s your story, Remy Chandler?”
And strangely enough, he had told her. Not everything, of course, just the things that wouldn’t make her run screaming into the night. No, there’d be plenty of time for that business on the second date.