Remy let the Seraphim free, screaming as he channeled the power of God through one of the Pitiless blades, aiming a blast of divine fire toward the black limousine across the garage.
The fire snaked through the front grille, the intensity of the heat causing the headlights to shatter, before the hungry flame found the gas tank, instantaneously igniting its contents.
The limousine exploded with a deafening roar, spewing flaming wreckage and liquid fire, distracting the Hellish creations. The monsters spun toward the roar of the explosion.
“Move—now!” Remy yelled, grabbing Byleth by the arm and hauling him up the ramp.
But Remy did not stop there. Another blast of Heavenly power flowed from his still-outstretched arm toward the small collection of sports cars, their security alarms still blaring. They too exploded at the touch of the Seraphim’s might, filling the enclosed space of the garage with even more smoke and fire.
He was running up the ramp, Byleth ahead of him, when he heard the sound. Remy turned his head to find the Hellions scrambling up the ramp after him; his distraction was less effective than planned.
“Go! Go! Go!” he bellowed, pushing Byleth into the back of the van.
Madach put the van in drive, the tires screeching for purchase on the garage floor. Remy lurched forward, falling down hard on the ramp, grabbing to hold on as the van rocketed forward on a collision course with the closed garage gate.
He’d managed to get a foothold, clambering up into the vehicle as it smashed through the garage door out into the cool, spring night. And then it spun violently as Madach slammed on the brakes.
“What’s wrong?” Remy shouted toward the front of the van. He looked back into the garage, through the roiling, oily smoke, to see that the surviving Hellions were clustered together, for some reason not pursuing them.
But how long that would last was anyone’s guess.
“What’s going on?” Remy asked, jumping out from the back of the van.
“Why are we stop—?” he began, only to stop midsentence as he rounded the front of the van and saw them.
The tiny stretch of back alley that ran behind Byleth’s converted church home was blocked by five enormous figures, their features hidden in flowing robes that shifted and moved in a nonexistent wind, shimmering like an oil slick upon the water.
Nomads.
Remy could not help but wonder what had brought them here as he stood with Byleth and Madach in front of the van.
“I’m not too sure that this is the best place to be at the moment,” he said as he watched the powerful form of Suroth move to the front of the gathering.
“The weapons,” the Nomad leader stated with urgency, eyes burning from inside the deep darkness of the hood that hid his angelic features. “Give them to us before all is lost.”
Intimidated by the oppressive power radiating from the fearsome beings, Madach and Byleth cowered in their presence, practically driven to their knees.
“I’m not giving them to anyone,” Byleth hissed. “They belong to me.” The Satan moved toward the back of the van, and Remy reached out, grabbing hold of his arm.
“Not the smartest thing to do right now,” he said.
Byleth fought him for a moment, and then stopped. There were sounds behind them in the alley, low rumbling purrs like the idling of a monster truck. The Hellions had found their way out through the fire- and smoke-filled garage.
“If only there was the time to make you understand,” Suroth said, flowing a little closer, as did the Nomads at his back. There were many more of them now.
“How about you try,” Remy suggested. “Why should we hand over something so potentially dangerous to you? There has to be some good reason.”
The Nomad leader’s smile grew from within the shadows of his hood.
“You of all of them should know, brother,” he said. “For it was this world, nearly brought to its end, that opened our eyes.”
Remy glanced into the side mirror of the van to see one of the Hellions coming closer. He guessed that another was probably coming up on the other side.
Call him dense, but it actually took him a second to figure out what the Nomad leader was talking about. The business with the Angel of Death. He knew that narrowly avoiding the Apocalypse had changed things a bit, but he wasn’t quite sure what the Nomad was getting at.
“Answers, Remiel,” Suroth stated. “The questions we had carried since the close of the war were suddenly answered.”
Another glance in the sideview showed that the Hellion was practically on top of them. It was squatting down now, tensing, ready to pounce.
Remy spun around, facing the creature as it leapt.
“Get down,” he screamed, pushing both Madach and Byleth out of the beast’s path.
The creature soared over their heads to land gracefully in front of the Nomad leader. The other two beasts slunk out from the other side of the van to join their brother.
The Nomad didn’t even flinch.
Suroth extended his hand, and Remy watched in awe as the Hellions cowered. Practically on their bellies, the ferocious beasts crawled toward the Nomad leader.
Something told Remy that things were about to become even more interesting.
“You brought them here?” Remy asked, shock and horror evident in his tone.
“Remarkable beasts,” Suroth said, lowering his hand to allow one of the Hellions to sniff at his fingertips. A bruise-colored tongue extended from its skull-like mouth to lick the offered appendage. “And exactly what was necessary to find the weapons of change. It took far less time than you would imagine training them, deceptively intelligent and so very eager to please.”
Remy didn’t know what to say.
“Sounds like another creation of the Almighty, doesn’t it, brother?” Suroth chided.
“You trained them,” Remy said, the gears turning and grinding inside his fevered brain. “You trained them to find the weapons.”
“We trained them to find the tools of change,” Suroth added. “And with them in our possession, the next phase of our plans can begin.”
“Why do I have a sick feeling that I don’t even want to know what that means?” he asked the Nomad.
“Know that it is all for the best,” Suroth said, “and that this time, the true victor will reign supreme in Heaven.”
It was as if all sound had been bleached from the air.
Remy’s thoughts raced at the speed of light, all the pieces of the puzzle trying desperately to come together. What did the Nomad leader mean exactly—the true victor will reign supreme in Heaven? He didn’t like the sound of that in the least.
The Hellions jumped to their feet with a grumble, the Nomads advancing toward them.
“Give them to us,” Suroth demanded.
The idea was certainly tempting. To be free of the weapons—of the crushing responsibility. For a moment it actually sounded like a pretty good plan.
Until he regained his sanity.
The Pitiless were weapons imbued with the power of Heaven’s greatest angel, crafted especially for the Morningstar in his bid to challenge the power of God, weapons that never had been used in the Great War, weapons that fell to Earth in the form of divine inspiration, spurring craftsmen to create these ultimate weapons—these precision instruments of killing.
These Pitiless daggers.
Yep, it certainly would be easy to hand them over to the Nomads, to make them somebody else’s problem, but much to his chagrin, Remy just didn’t work that way.
“No,” he said flatly.
Suroth recoiled.
“Something isn’t right here, and I’m not about to hand these bad boys over to you until I feel one hundred percent safe in doing so.”
The Nomads said nothing, their heavy robes billowing in a nonexistent wind, shimmering with all the colors of the rainbow, and some that were not.
“What are we going to do now?” Madach asked in a nervous whisper, his eyes still riveted to those blocking their path.