A body.
She turned at the sound of his voice, and he could see that her face was damp with tears, but there was something in her expression.
Something in her eyes.
Clarity. That was the only way to explain it.
“This is Adam,” she said. “And he needs our help.”
Mulvehill stepped forward and knelt beside Fernita. He was shocked by the condition of the body leaning against the tree. It reminded him of a mummy that he’d seen at the Museum of Science a few years back, only this mummy was somehow alive.
“I don’t know how much time we have,” he said, his eyes drawn to the dark, sunken orbs in the body’s—in Adam’s—skull. Mulvehill felt as though he were falling into them, suddenly feeling a sense of calm despite the current situation.
“You help him,” Fernita said, holding on to Mulvehill’s arm as she awkwardly climbed to her feet. “I’ll be fine.”
Mulvehill gently placed one arm behind Adam’s back and the other under his knees, and carefully lifted him from the ground. His injured hand throbbed painfully with each rapid-fire beat of his heart, but he didn’t have a choice. They had to move, and move now.
It was a little disconcerting, the corpselike figure in his arms seeming to weigh close to nothing. Skin and bones, that was all he was.
“If we head this way, I think we’ll be close to the highway,” Fernita said, leading them away.
There was that look again, Mulvehill observed as he followed with Adam. There was that clarity.
“Where do you think you’re going?” a voice boomed from somewhere behind them.
Mulvehill spun around to see the white-haired, older gentleman, but he knew better. He was about to tell Fernita to run faster, when the bearded man was suddenly right in front of him, his movement a blur.
“I believe you have something that belongs to me, monkey,” the thing wearing the mask of humanity said with a knowing smile. It knew that Mulvehill was aware of its deception. “Give him to me,” he demanded, holding out his arms.
“Why don’t you go fuck yourself,” Mulvehill said, knowing that probably wasn’t the smartest thing to say.
The figure before him stared blankly before seeming to explode. First there was a bearded guy in a suit, and then there wasn’t—the man’s shape flowing up and out, expanding and contracting as it became something else.
A thick tentacle of pale, tattoo-adorned flesh lashed out, slapping Mulvehill with such speed and ferocity that he found himself airborne before striking a nearby tree and dropping to the frozen earth in a heap of agony.
The taste of blood filled his mouth. And through bleary eyes he saw that the creature was holding the blanket-wrapped Adam in an arm that coiled about the ancient figure like the body of a large snake.
“Respect,” the creature said, fixing Mulvehill with its inhuman gaze. “Humanity will know its betters soon enough.”
“Steven,” a frightened voice called out.
Mulvehill turned his head slightly and saw Fernita moving toward him through the trees. His heart sank.
“There she is,” the creature said happily, a grin, absent of any real joy, spreading across its gaunt, skull-like features.
Fernita knelt before Mulvehill, placing a cold hand against his cheek.
“I told you that you should’ve left me,” she scolded.
“I could be saying the same thing to you,” Mulvehill replied, trying to shake off his pain but only making everything hurt all the more.
Fernita turned to face the strange beast that held the body of Adam in one tentacled arm.
“You’re here for me . . . aren’t you?” she asked.
“Oh, yes,” it said, a tremble of what could only be excitement passing across the creature’s body and making it vibrate. “I’ve been trying to find you for a very long time.”
And with those words, another boneless limb lashed out, wrapping around the elderly woman’s waist and drawing her to it.
Mulvehill reached for Fernita as she was yanked away, but the movment made him dizzy and he fell over on his side, too weak to right himself.
Face pressed to the cold winter ground, he watched as the tattooed beast admired its two prizes.
“Master, I have them both at last,” it said almost gleefully. “Now I have the key.”
The very air around the creature began to stir, to swirl, picking up leaves, snow, and twigs, as if they were in the eye of a cyclone.
Through blurring vision, the homicide cop watched as one moment they were there, and the next they were gone.
One moment he was conscious, and the next . . .
The air above Fernita Green’s cluttered living room floor began to shimmer and quake.
Something from somewhere else moving from there to here.
Remy and Jon had been at the stilt house in the middle of the Louisiana swamp, and now they were in the old woman’s home in Brockton.
“Oh, God, that’s awful,” Jon said, stumbling out from beneath Remy’s wings.
Remy didn’t waste any time, ignoring the Son of Adam, who was doing everything he could not to retch upon the carpet. Remy was about to call out for Fernita, for Steven, but his eyes were instantly drawn to something that filled him with fear.
The walls were covered in powerful sigils: the kind used in angel magick. Remy could feel the power leaking from the markings that remained, but he noticed the bucket of filthy water, the scrub brush floating within it, and the sections of old wall smeared black where the sigils had been wiped away.
Remy’s eyes darted over the writing as he tried to discern their meaning . . . their purpose.
“What is it?” Jon asked, some color returning to his pale features.
Remy’s mouth moved as he translated what he could. It had been ages since he’d seen an angelic spell this complex, but he pretty much got the gist of it.
“This writing . . . It’s there to make you forget,” he said, ice flowing in his veins as he recalled the numerous discussions he’d had with the poor old woman, blaming her condition on age and ailment.
“Like that you’re actually somebody named Eliza Swan?” Jon asked.
“Something like that,” Remy said, eyes darting about the room. He lunged toward a chair overflowing with loose clothing, books, and magazines, grabbing the piece of furniture and sliding it across the room to see what lay hidden behind it.
It was as bad as expected.
“Remy!” Jon called out.
He hadn’t realized that the man had left the room, and went to find him. At the end of the hall, Remy found Jon in the kitchen. It looked as though a demolition team had come by and turned the room on its ass.
“What happened here?” Jon asked, looking up at the enormous hole in the kitchen ceiling to the second floor, and then up through another jagged hole into the attic. One of his hands tugged at his damaged ear nervously as he gazed up through the ragged openings.
“Whatever it was came through the roof,” Remy said. He allowed his angelic senses to expand, sniffing the air for the scent of anything familiar, and he found it.
Cherubim.
“Fernita?” he called. “Steven?”
He tensed his legs and flapped his powerful wings once, flying up to the second floor.
“Hello?”
The stink of the angel sentry was strong up there as well, and he began to feel afraid. If Zophiel had found Fernita and Steven here . . .
He pushed the troubling thoughts aside, not wanting to think about the outcome. Expanding his senses farther, Remy listened beyond the sounds of the house to the neighborhood outside, and beyond that.
The sound of sirens.
He flew up through the gaping hole in the ceiling of the secondfloor hallway, through the attic, and then outside, his powerful wings keeping him aloft as he scanned the area with vision sharper than a bird of prey’s. In the distance he saw a plume of smoke and immediately flew toward it, a tightening in his gut warning him of what he might find.