“No, but you know my friend…Remy.”
“Remy,” she said.
“Yeah. I’m going to take you to him, all right?” Francis said.
Ashley nodded again. “Remy will take me home,” she said, a hint of hope in her voice.
“That’s the plan,” Francis said, his mind already on to the next obstacle.
It wasn’t going to be easy.
The two sorcerers stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity, but it was Stearns who blinked first.
Remy watched as the exoskeletoned Stearns uttered some guttural spell, casting a wave of destructive power toward his opponent. Reacting instinctively, Remy threw his body over that of the little girl, shielding her from the devastating repercussions that were sure to follow.
From the corner of his eye, Remy watched as Deacon cast his own spell, a shield of protection that deflected the magickal outburst from Stearns toward the ceiling with catastrophic results.
There was a cacophonous rush of air as the ceiling of the skyscraper exploded in a shower of rubble, glass, and steel. Remy could not help but turn his gaze to the nightmare unfolding above him, coming to the sickening realization that things were even worse than he suspected.
He’d pictured the wreckage of the skyscraper rooftop plummeting to the streets of Boston below, never imagining that the rubble wouldn’t get the chance to fall. In the dark and tempestuous sky above him, there was a black and swirling whirlpool; a spinning hole in the fabric of reality, sucking up the pieces of refuse blown into the air by the deflection of Stearns’ magickal attack.
“Dear God,” Remy uttered. He could feel the pull of the vortex, and knew without a doubt where it had originated. Somehow by coming here, Deacon had created some sort of opening-a breach between the shadow realm and the world outside it.
It was Deacon’s turn to attack now, the fires of the divine flowing from his outstretched hands to incinerate Stearns below. Remy could feel the power move as it flowed from the air, hungry to consume its adversary, a familiar tugging at the core of his being for the divine might that once was his.
Stearns awkwardly leapt from the path of the hungry fire, already unleashing another magickal attack on his adversary. Explosions of supernatural energies were decimating what remained of the television studio, and Remy knew that it wouldn’t be long until he and the child were left exposed and helpless.
“We have to get out of here,” he told her over the near-deafening sounds of a sorcerers’ duel. The child began to protest as Remy bent down to lift her, and he was startled by what he saw. A section of wall had fallen on the child’s lower body, the injuries exposing the truth about her.
“Leave me here,” she said, attempting to push him away.
Though her lower body was revealed to be made from clay, Remy saw genuine pain in the artificial child’s eyes then, and it moved him to not even consider her request.
He tossed the section of wall away and lifted her up from the ground, the pull on him from the swirling maelstrom in the sky above becoming stronger. It was something he didn’t even want to consider, but he could feel the dark dimension tugging on his clothes as he made his way across the pieces of rubble, toward where he remembered the door leading into the studio had been.
“I’m going to take you someplace safe and…”
“And then?” Angelina asked, her voice frightfully soft over the sounds of magickal conflict going on behind them.
“Don’t you worry about that,” Remy said, finding the twisted remains of the staircase that would bring them down to the level below the studio.
“I would have killed them,” Angelina said into his ear as he carefully descended the broken steps.
On the next level, he found a safe place to set her down beneath a section of ceiling that still appeared relatively intact.
“Don’t think of that now,” he said, gently leaning her back against a section of wall.
“If the attack hadn’t come, I would have killed everyone who was watching and listening to me,” she said.
He didn’t argue, knowing that what she said was indeed the truth.
“I knew that something was wrong when I felt them-the angels-inside my head.” The little child paused, eyes welling with tears. “They were hurting so bad,” she said. “And they actually believed that their hurt could make things better.”
Something exploded above them, plaster dust raining down on them like a fog.
“But we don’t have to worry about that now,” Remy told her. “I have to go,” he started to explain. “But I want you to stay here and be safe until…”
“Until,” she said.
“I have to try to do something,” he told her.
She smiled at him, tears running down her filthy cheeks. She lifted a hand and placed it on his face.
“You’re special, aren’t you?” she said. “You’re like them…the angels. But instead of sadness, you’re filled with hope.”
He tried to leave her, but for some reason couldn’t.
“I can feel something inside you,” she said, still touching him. “Something buried so very deep…It wants to come out, but it’s hurt…weak.”
The entire building was shaking again, the fight above intensifying. He had no idea what the two sorcerers were capable of; it was a distinct possibility that the city could be destroyed as a result of their confrontation.
He took her hand and started to pull it away.
“I need to go, Angelina,” he told her.
“I have some of their life still inside me,” she said.
Remy didn’t understand.
“When I began the angels’ message, some of those who were listening passed away, and their life energies were passed into me,” the golem child said.
“Didn’t Stearns…”
“He received some, but not all. When the power went out, for a little bit, there was still energy flowing into me.”
“I don’t understand what that has to do with me,” Remy told her.
“I can use that power… I can wake it up,” she said.
Remy cocked his head, still unsure where this was going.
“The thing inside you,” the child said. She pulled her hand from his, laying it flat against his chest. “I can give it the strength it needs…the strength you need…”
“What are you…” Remy started to ask, as a surge of something entered his chest.
He cried out, falling backward as something exploded inside him. He lay in the rubble-strewn hallway, the sound of magickal conflagration happening all around, and felt the fires surge inside him.
“What did you do?” he croaked, his body now racked with incredible pain as the spark of the Seraphim surged hungrily to life.
“I’ve given it what it needs,” the child said, barely able to keep her eyes open, her head lolling to one side. Her skin had taken on a sickly gray pallor, more like cold stone-or wet clay-than flesh.
Fire trailed from Remy’s fingertips, but it was a fire the likes of which he had never known. It was a fire fed by life, and it burned hotter and faster than the divine fire that had been stolen from him. It filled his mind with the experiences of thousands, pieces of their lives; moments of tenderness, joy, hope, fear, misery, and sadness. All these were now his, part of the fire that fed his angelic nature, making it drunk on the life forces of thousands.
It took everything that Remy still had to keep his power in check; it wanted to explode from him, to wreak vengeance on those who had humbled it so. It wanted to make them all pay.
And while it was at it, it would make the world pay.
“No,” Remy roared, flexing the muscle of his will. He had finally unified his dual natures and was not about to let that of the Seraphim rip free now, no matter how much this new power desired to do so.
Remy had fought too hard to make this so.
Angelina looked even worse than she had before, her once-beautiful dark hair now dried and brittle like straw and falling from her head as the life left her.
“It will soon be dark for me again,” she said, withered hands playing feebly with a clump of hair that had fallen into her lap.