“Don’t,” he begged, a plaintive hand reaching out trying to convince him not to do what Remy knew had to be done.
He had to find out what was going on, and what fate had befallen his friend.
He had to know about Francis.
Remy turned the knob, throwing open the door to a blast of intense, lung-shriveling heat, followed by suffocating cold.
Through watering eyes Remy gazed in horror at the sight before him. Francis stood upon the bridge of writhing, fallen-angels in the midst of battle, a bloodstained sword in one hand, a gun in the other. From out of the icy prison streamed a steady flow of prisoners, their mouths open in ululating screams of madness and rage as they attempted to put him down, fighting to get past the only thing preventing them from making their way toward the exit and the earthly plane beyond.
Remy stared, frozen in place by the sight of the former Guardian angel as he dispatched wave after wave of his attackers. He was relentless in his defense, as were the fallen in their attempts to remove him from their path. For every fallen angel that fell beneath the boom of gunfire, or was cut in two by the bite of his sword blade, there seemed to be four more scrambling over the decimated corpses to take their places.
“What’s going on? What do you see?” Madach cried, temporarily distracting Remy from the disturbing scene playing out before him.
Remy glanced to the end of the hall and then back through the doorway. He had to do something; the number of fallen angels spilling out from the prison onto the bridge was growing unmanageable, many of the pale-skinned attackers tumbling over the side of the bridge of angel flesh to the Hellish landscape waiting for them below.
He started onto the bridge, the bodies of the fallen that comprised the structure quivering beneath the heel of his shoes.
“Francis,” Remy yelled.
The Guardian turned and his face twisted at the sight of Remy.
“Get back!” he screamed, quickly returning his attention to the marauding fallen, cutting down five more before looking back. “Get back into the fucking apartment!”
Remy hesitated, not sure what he should do. It wouldn’t be long before his friend succumbed to the ever-increasing number trying to escape.
He started forward again, feeling the stirring of the Seraphim within. He would have to let it out if he was going to be of any significant help to Francis in holding back the ravening hordes emerging from Tartarus.
Francis turned back again, his favorite suit tattered, spattered with blood, his horn-rimmed glasses missing.
“Don’t you fucking listen?” he bellowed, shoving the hand-gun into the waistband of his pants and reaching inside his jacket pocket to remove something that chilled Remy more than the frigid air radiating from the frozen prison at the bridge’s end.
Francis held a grenade, something that he’d likely picked up wholesale from one of the many weapons suppliers that he did business with.
“I said go back.” And with those words he pulled the pin on the round, olive green explosive device, rolling it across the uneven surface of the flesh bridge, where it became trapped within one of the open mouths of the angel-damned.
Remy knew what was about to happen and turned quickly, running back toward the open door.
The force of the blast propelled him through the doorway, face-first into the corridor wall, the deafening roar of the explosion and agonized screams of the fallen angels that made up the bridge suddenly cut off by the slamming of the door behind him.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Remy rolled awkwardly onto his back, the metallic taste of fresh blood filling his mouth. He leaned his head back against the wall of the narrow corridor, and gazed at the dilapidated door, listening to the sudden silence.
Slowly Madach moved down the hallway toward him. “What happened?” he asked, cautiously eyeing the closed door.
Remy scrambled to his feet, his human form aching in more places than he could count. He ran a hand across his mouth and nose, wiping away the blood there.
“He closed it.”
Remy took hold of the doorknob again, experiencing none of the extreme sensations he had before. The emanations from Hell had stopped completely. Throwing the door wide, he gazed upon a utility closet, the most menacing things inside an ancient mop and a plastic bucket.
“He closed it,” Remy said again, looking fitfully to Madach. His mind was on fire. Something terrible was happening in Tartarus, and he was almost certain that the Nomads were responsible, and that it all revolved around the Pitiless weaponry.
A spasm of cold went up his back, so powerful that it nearly broke his spine, Suroth’s words again echoing in his ear.
This time the true victor will reign supreme…
He liked the sounds of them even less now.
Pushing past the fallen, Remy went out to the living area, his brain humming as he tried to piece together every piece of information he’d gathered and form it into something he could act upon.
But there were still too many gaps.
“So what now?” Madach asked, much calmer now since the radiation from Hell had stopped.
Remy dropped down heavily upon the couch. “Good question,” he said, throwing up his hands in frustration. “I’m stumped.” He strained his fevered brain even more, staring at a particular section of pattern on the carpet beneath the coffee table until it blurred.
“The Nomads took the Pitiless for some kind of purpose,” he said aloud. “And from what I just saw, it has something to do with Tartarus and the prisoners there.”
Madach leaned against the doorframe. “They’re going to break them out,” he said suddenly.
Remy looked up, urging him on with his eyes.
“They’re going to use the power of the weapons to free all the fallen angels still being punished in Tartarus.”
A sick sensation began to grow in the pit of Remy’s belly, something horrible and malignant expanding in size as he realized how close Madach likely was to being right.
“They’re going to free all the prisoners,” Remy muttered, again hearing the Nomad leader’s chilling words.
This time the true victor will reign supreme…
Tiny pinprick explosions of realization erupted all across the surface of Remy’s brain and suddenly he knew the horrible, deadly truth.
He bolted up from the sofa, going to the closet in the corner of the room adorned with the original poster from The Wild Bunch. He grabbed the latch and gave it a pull. As expected, it was locked, but he couldn’t—wouldn’t—allow that to stop him. He gave the handle a forceful twist followed by a tug and listened as the lock broke, pieces of the mechanism clattering around somewhere inside the closet door.
Remy pulled open the door, exposing Francis’ treasure trove of violence: everything from bladed weapons to guns of almost every caliber, shape, and size. It was a closet filled to the brim with instruments of death.
“Was your friend expecting to fight a war?” Madach asked, coming to stand beside him.
“He liked to be prepared,” Remy said, reaching for one of the handguns—a Glock—hanging from a peg. He hoped that Francis had a hefty supply of the special ammunition he would need to deal with the kind of threat he believed he was going up against.
Madach reached for one of the handguns too.
“You don’t have to do this,” Remy said, finding the ammunition in a small wooden box and loading a full clip. Even touching these special bullets, created from materials mined in Hell, made him feel sicker than he already did.
“Yeah, I think I do,” Madach answered. He took a gun, staring at it in his hand. “You said it yourself. If it wasn’t for me, none of this would have happened.”