“Yeah,” she answered casually, her approach bringing a warm yellow glow to the nebulous surroundings. “Who else would it be?”
He pushed himself up into a sitting position. The aura around her was warm, and it felt good upon his naked skin as she drew closer.
“Are you going to answer my question?” she asked.
“I’m not hiding,” he said indignantly. “Why would I be hiding?”
“That’s what I want to know.”
Remy said nothing as he stared at the woman he loved, the woman who had given him so much.
“Do you know what’s happening out there?” she asked, hooking a finger toward the sea of black behind her.
He looked past her, squinting into the shadows.
“Not going well, is it?”
Madeline’s mouth opened in disbelief. “I can’t believe you,” she said.
“What?” Remy asked. “What can’t you believe?”
“You,” she said incredulously. “I can’t believe you. He’s dying out there, you know.”
Remy was still staring into the darkness behind her when he looked away.
“There’s nothing I can do,” he said, looking at his bare feet.
“Really?” She placed her hands on her shapely hips. God, she was beautiful. Just one look was enough to get his heart racing.
“The Seraphim is out there fighting for Eden . . . for Heaven, for Pete’s sake, and there’s nothing that you can do? What’s wrong with this picture?” she asked him.
“This is where I’m supposed to be,” he said. “There’s no room for humanity out there.” Remy shook his head.
“There’s not going to be room for much of anything once the Shaitan are born,” Madeline said. “I’m not going to ask you if you know how dangerous those creatures are, because of course you do—I’m nothing but a manifestation of your subconscious—and if I know, you certainly do too.”
“I’m here because I need to be,” Remy said. “I’m his weakness. . . . The matter of the Shaitan should be faced with a cold, divine efficiency.”
Madeline laughed, a delicate hand going up to her mouth to stifle the sound of her merriment.
“Sorry about that,” she said. “It’s just that that was really funny.”
Remy almost smiled, loving the sound of her laugh, even if it was at his own expense.
“Are you that big of a dummy?” Madeline asked.
Remy was a bit taken aback by the question.
“Excuse me?” he asked.
“I asked if you were stupid.”
“No, I don’t think that—”
“The Seraphim has gone into battle incomplete,” Madeline stated.
“You’re wrong; the Seraphim is out there . . . complete, all fiery rage and righteous indignation,” Remy explained.
“Then what are you?” she wanted to know.
“I’m what isn’t needed right now,” he said. “Which is why I’m here.”
“Which is why you’re wrong,” Madeline corrected. “You’re his humanity . . . not some useless thing that was picked up at a yard sale a few years back. Whether he likes it or not, the Seraphim has evolved . . . his human aspect is just as important as his angelic one.”
Remy didn’t know how to respond to that one.
“He’s missing something,” Madeline explained. “Like going into battle without his armor . . . without his sword.”
The darkness began to swirl behind her, growing lighter as forms began taking shape—as images of a world appeared.
New York at night . . . Chicago . . . Japan . . . Australia . . . the Boston skyline.
Remy felt his mood lighten at the sight of his adopted home.
“This isn’t what he’s fighting for,” Madeline pointed out.
The backdrop quickly changed, melding to scenes of the past. Remy saw when their relationship was young—he and Madeline walking on a beach at Cape Cod, their love uncontrollable in its growth. It would grow so big . . . so powerful.
“This isn’t what he’s fighting for.”
The disheveled image of Steven Mulvehill appeared, and for some reason the sight of the man . . . his friend . . . it hurt, made him want to reach out and . . .
Marlowe running at the Boston Common, his black fur shiny in the afternoon sun as he chased a tennis ball thrown by . . .
Linda Somerset dressed in a heavy winter jacket and jeans, clapping her hands for Marlowe to return the ball to her. Remy smiled. She would probably have a long wait. Marlowe was a ball hog, preferring to tease, running around with the prize clutched proudly in his mouth before . . .
“This isn’t what he’s fighting for.”
The following scene made him gasp, not real but torn from the imagination.
The Earth was in ruin, infernos burning that permanently blackened the sky. The Shaitan swarmed upon the world like locusts, dismantling everything that He—the Lord God—was responsible for.
“Up there, in the Garden,” Madeline said, pointing off in the distance behind them. “He fights for his Creator, and the Kingdom of Light. . . .”
Remy saw the Garden and the battle going on within it. The Seraphim was covered in the flesh of the Shaitan, being crushed . . . suffocated. . . .
“And there’s so much more to fight for, Remy,” Madeline said. “Don’t you think?”
So much more, he thought as the images of the world, of people, places, and things, fired past in staccato blasts.
Madeline came to him, putting her arms around him and drawing him close.
“Glad you agree with me,” she said with her most seductive smile as she brought her lips to his. And they kissed.
And it was like he had been awakened from a very long slumber, like the sun rising powerfully in the sky to chase the darkness away.
So much more.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Remiel had failed the Creator.
He could feel the corrosive, supernatural energies flowing from the Shaitan digesting what remained of his armor, and starting to work upon his flesh.
And there was nothing he could do.
The angel considered crying out to his Lord God, but he was too ashamed. If this was to be his fate, he would accept it. He had met a foe more powerful than he.
This realization seemed to fuel the angel’s anger, and he struggled fitfully in the Shaitan’s grip, but the darkness at the center of the creature’s being was like nothing he had ever experienced before.
It was so cold, and it was drawing the light from him.
Soon there was only shadow, and Remiel was flying in the endless night, not toward the sky, but down . . . down to where the light would never reach.
Down to where he’d cease to be, swallowed up by the endless night.
At first he believed it a trick of his failing system, flashes of light heralding his approaching death, but then he realized that something was with him.
There were shapes in the flashes, and he came to know that they were of his human persona and its deceased wife.
Come to gloat? the angel of Heaven wondered, as he drifted closer.
The woman was smiling, and he didn’t know why. For soon they would be no more . . . their life forces consumed by a horror with the potential to level the Kingdom of Heaven. He wanted to ask her why she smiled, but he was too weak, already wavering on the precipice of oblivion.
And then she reached out, taking his wrist and bringing his hand toward the other, toward the hand of the human self that had dominated his form.
“I doubt I can make the two of you kiss and make up,” the woman said, as she joined their hands. “So a handshake will have to do.”
Malachi was loath to admit it, but at the moment, he was quite in awe of his creation.
Despite the angel’s divine power, Taranushi had managed to immobilize the Seraphim, completely envelop its body, and was now in the process of consuming him.
This was a design to fear, and maybe the Almighty had been right in His decision not to create the Shaitan.
But that was neither here nor there. If Malachi wanted to save reality, he had to move quickly, before the rest of the Shaitan were born. He started back into the jungle’s thickness when he heard the sound of crying. Glancing across the clearing, he saw the old woman, Eliza Swan, kneeling just before the Tree as Adam’s corpse continued to be fed upon by the emerging Shaitan. She was weeping, mourning his death, but at least he had gotten his wish: to die in the Garden.