The spokesman came toward him then, the fire of his hate burning even brighter in the center of his coal black eyes, but then a sudden voice interrupted his murderous intent.
“Hey, Arioc,” one of the Denizens called.
Arioc, the name echoed inside Remy’s skull.
“You might want to see these,” one of the fallen angels said.
Remy managed to pull himself into a sitting position. They were at his car, the passenger door open. The Denizen was handing his superior the bundled sweatshirt with the daggers at its center.
“No!” Remy barked, and again attempted to climb to his feet. This time he was successful, lurching toward his vehicle.
“What have we here?” Arioc asked, hefting the item handed to him. “Do we have something more here than dirty laundry? By your reaction, I would have to say that’s a big yes.”
They all laughed. The Denizen who’d searched his car, and had been the one to stab him, again came at him from behind, pushing Remy roughly up against his car.
Face pressed to the cold metal of the hood, he managed to twist his head enough to see what was happening. The Denizens were all standing around their leader as he unwrapped the sweatshirt.
Remy could feel himself beginning to fade, finding it harder and harder to remain conscious as the poison from the Hell blade’s bite continued to course through his system. He was forced to drop the barriers again, allowing the power of Heaven to course through his frame, burning away the toxins that if allowed to spread would kill him.
He was able to stand now, a sudden vitality making his muscles hum with divine power.
Arioc had exposed the blades, eyes wide in wonder as he looked upon them. He reached within the cloth, removing one of the daggers and holding it up. The blade glinted seductively in the glow of a streetlight that had just come on. By the twinkle in his beady eyes, Remy could tell that the murderous images conjured by the weapon were now filling the Denizen’s mind. The fallen angel smiled, reveling in their intensity. He held the dagger aloft, pointing it into the sky, toward Heaven.
“Oh, isn’t this the sweetest thing,” Arioc said, as all eyes were glued to the seductiveness of the single Pitiless.
Remy was at a loss as to what he should do. He was considering the insanity of trying to get the blades back and making a run for it when things went from bad to worse.
It didn’t even register at first, his brain attempting to process what it had seen, and then attempting to delete the information as a side effect of having the shit knocked out of him again.
The wind had kicked up; at least he believed it to be the wind. There was a sudden rush of air—a roar—and something far more substantive was moving amongst the Denizens.
Arioc’s head was suddenly gone from his body, the crimson arterial spray shooting up into the air like a fountain. The others barely had the opportunity to take their eyes from the Pitiless blade still being held aloft before they too were taken down.
Balam was next to go, his burned and blackened facial features registering danger well before the others.
Remy started to yell as Arioc’s headless corpse finally collapsed to the ground, the stump of his neck still pumping blood out onto the street. He pushed off from the car, his warrior’s nature urging him into battle. Closer now, he could just about make out the blurred shape of the thing that moved amongst them. It was large, about the size of a jungle cat.
The thing from the vision he’d experienced back at the apartment. The thing that had killed Dougie.
Balam was attempting to get a bead on the blurred shape with his gun when his hand was abruptly no longer attached to his wrist. Remy watched the hand, still holding the weapon, sail through the air, bouncing off the side of the SUV and clattering to the ground.
It had all happened so fast that the fallen angel didn’t seem to know that he was now weaponless, pointing the bloody stump at the shape that circled him, preparing for its next strike. Balam’s stomach was torn open next, the burned flesh sounding like the crackling of autumn leaves as the former angel was savagely disemboweled.
Whatever it was that attacked them was nearly invisible to the human eye, it moved so quickly. Fueled by the Seraphim’s lust for battle, Remy advanced toward the bloody scene. Another of the Denizens had gone down, while the other looked on, stunned, his face spattered with the blood of his companions.
Remy squinted, altering the composition of his eyes to look upon the world not as a human, but as an angel, and at last he was able to see what exactly they—he—was up against.
It had the shape of a large dog, but its body resembled that of something that had had its skin pulled away to reveal raw sinew and musculature. Its pointed head seemed to be made entirely of exposed bone, its yellow eyes like two LEDs illuminated from within the deep black caverns of the eye sockets.
It was perched on the back of the third Denizen, who thrashed beneath the thing’s weight. The dog thing eyed Remy before lowering its head to bite into the back of its prey’s neck, and with a savage shake, it broke it. The beast was drooling, and Remy noticed that everywhere the saliva touched, it sizzled and burned. The unpleasant image of Dougie’s burned open belly filled his head, and he suddenly understood.
The monster looked back to Remy, distracted from the remaining blood-spattered Denizen, who stood frozen in place, his eyes riveted to the terror that had laid waste to them.
The thing’s body was rigid except for the slight movement of its yellow eyes. Remy stared back at the beast, attempting to draw it closer to him, away from the other man.
The surviving Denizen began to back away, but his movement caught the attention of the animal. It turned with a shrieking hiss, as its red-veined muscles tensed to pounce on the escaping prey.
The nature of the Seraphim exerted control, and Remy found himself bounding at the animal as it prepared to strike. Remy snatched up the Pitiless dagger that Arioc had dropped from a cooling puddle of blood, and then found the other still nestled snugly within the confines of the sweatshirt lying in the street.
In his hands, the daggers began to sing an aria to the glory of the violence to come.
This is what they had been created for.
The beast sprang, catching the remaining Denizen with little effort, and was about to maul him savagely when Remy launched himself through the air, twin daggers poised to strike.
The animal looked away from its prey, mouth open in a roar of savagery, a roar drowned out by the cry of a warrior.
A warrior of Heaven.
CHAPTER NINE
The beast was in motion, turning from its fallen prey to attack Remy. With a powerful thrust, he plunged one of the Pitiless daggers into the bloodred flesh of its muscular hide as it descended. It tossed its skull-like head back in a bellow of pain and he slid the second blade into the soft tissue below its jaw.
The animal panicked, its powerful form recoiling from the attack. The beast was not accustomed to its prey biting back, and Remy managed to jump backward, taking the bloodstained blades with him as he avoided the monster’s slashing black claws.
The Seraphim rejoiced in its freedom, Remy barely maintaining enough control to prevent its power from fully manifesting. He battled not only the wild monstrosity crouched and growling before him, but the fury of the angel within.
It begged to be released, demanded to be fully free, but Remy ignored the commands, desperate to hold on to his humanity. Yes, it had become wounded over the last few months with the death of his one true love, but it was not yet dead, and he had no intention of allowing it to be eclipsed by the ancient power fighting to emerge.