This was his power… his…He had taken it from one of Heaven’s soldiers himself…not Algernon Stearns… Konrad Deacon.
He had taken it… He was the master.
Deacon looked up into Stearns’ smiling face and smiled back. He watched as his rival’s expression went from one of joy to confusion…
And then to concern.
This was his power…and he would control it.
Deacon reached within himself, stopping the flow of divine energy into Stearns’ body.
His wife’s nagging voice was replaced by that of his grandfather, urging him to make his enemy pay. Flashes of a moment from his past exploded within his memory as he took control of the power. He recalled the first time he had truly listened to his grandfather’s words.
When he was just a boy of six or seven, the family’s driver was a man named Keady, a cruel man who resented young Konrad and the life of wealth and privilege into which he’d been born. And on one particular day, when Mr. Keady was supposed to be driving Konrad to a child’s birthday party at the home of another family of wealth and privilege, that resentment reared its ugly head. Young Konrad was enjoying a lollipop-cherry flavored; he’d always loved cherries-when Mr. Keady ordered him to throw it away, or he wouldn’t be allowed in the car. Of course, he had protested, and the driver took full advantage of the authority he had been given when it came to the car, citing rules laid down by Konrad’s father himself that there would be no food or drink allowed in the vehicle.
And still Konrad had refused, attempting to climb into the back of the limousine with his cherry treat, which was when Mr. Keady happily acted, tearing the lolli from his mouth and tossing it to the ground.
Konrad remembered crying as if he’d lost a loved one, but he also remembered Mr. Keady laughing, as if this act of cruelty was one of the funniest things he had ever seen.
Konrad remembered.
The recollection of his past trauma now gave him the strength to stand. Stearns fought him, fought to feed, but Deacon had stopped the flow of power, keeping it all to himself.
Make them pay for taking it.
After he had gone to the birthday party, where treats of every conceivable imagining had been available to him, but not his cherry lollipop, he had gone to see his grandfather, to tell the old man what Mr. Keady had done.
Never mind the fact that he had already told his mother and father, who had ignored his indignant ravings; if there was anybody in his home that would understand, it would be his grandfather.
And his grandfather had understood perfectly well, and told him what he needed to do.
“Make them pay for taking it.”
Some of his mother’s special sleeping medicine crushed up and slipped into Mr. Keady’s nightly coffee was how he set his revenge in motion. He had been so careful and quiet that night-invisible. The driver knew nothing of his drugged drink, downing the coffee, and preparing a bath. The cruel man had collapsed on the bed in his bathrobe as the water had run, filling the tub.
Konrad didn’t know if he would be strong enough at that young age to do what he needed to. It had taken him close to two hours but he had done it, dragging the unconscious man to the now-filled tub and, with great effort, putting him into the bath.
One of the maids had found him the next morning, screaming at the discovery that Mr. Keady had drowned in the bath.
Konrad remembered how he had smiled when he heard the commotion caused by the discovery, and relived the satisfaction he had felt as he watched the man sink beneath the bath waters, the last of the bubbles from his mouth and nose popping to the surface.
It was similar to what he was feeling now as he watched his enemy struggle to regain control.
Veronica was there again, dancing at the corner of his vision. He could sense that she was about to tell him yet again what Stearns would do, and he didn’t want to hear it.
“Shut up,” Deacon snarled, letting the divine power that he had been holding back flow into his enemy’s body unabated.
For a moment, as the heavenly energy surged into his body, Stearns actually believed that he had won. Foolish man.
Remy Chandler was drunk on the life forces of thousands.
He could feel energy coursing through his veins like blood, sparks of memories, not his own, exploding in his mind in a cacophony of emotion, sight, and sounds.
He had never experienced anything so wonderful and yet terrifying. It was like he was being hit by tsunami-force waves, one right after the next.
Waves of people’s life experiences.
Births, deaths, celebrations of every conceivable kind; one tumbling into another, his every sense on fire with the phenomena. He felt himself starting to slow, being driven to the ground by the perpetual onslaught, but he knew that he couldn’t falter.
The fate of so many more were depending on him.
As he used to do with the power of the Seraphim, he forced the bombardment down, pushing it deep within, where it threatened to explode from its confines. But he could not think of that.
Remy found the broken stairway and made his way upward to where the television studio had once been, but now was nothing more than rubble open to the world.
His attention was immediately drawn to the struggle going on across the expanse of wreckage: Deacon versus Stearns. The energy that radiated from the battling pair was incredible; he could feel its intensity on his face from where he stood.
And then his eyes turned skyward, and he gazed in awe and horror at the swirling maelstrom of darkness that had opened there. It had grown larger in the short time since he’d last laid eyes on it, and it made the current situation all the more dire.
Remy moved from the ruined doorway, up farther into the demolished studio. He found himself drawn to the sorcerers’ struggle, sensing that the fight was over the power that once belonged to him.
The power of the Seraphim.
A power that he would need if he had any hopes of stopping this madness.
He gazed at the magick users in mortal combat through flying rubble and smoke, and had no idea what he should do.
But he had to do something.
His gaze dropped down to see the body of the Grigori Armaros slumped back against a section of broken wall. The other Watchers lay around him, all of them with the hilts of daggers protruding from their chests.
A surge of memory like a bolt of lightning caused him to gasp aloud as it filled his mind. He was about to wrestle it, to shove it back away with the others, when something made him pause.
And remember.
Remy experienced the memory of the Grigori leader as he was given his gift of death. Hands from an impenetrable wall of shadow reached out to present the Watcher leader with something rolled in ancient sackcloth.
“To still the heart of Heaven’s own,” said a silken voice as Armaros took the gift. “And create believers of us all.”
The memory seemed to fast-forward as Armaros held the ancient dagger poised above his heart, and the explosion of pain and joy that was experienced as his life-and those of his brethren-came to an end.
Their life energies surging outward into the golem child, and then out into the world.
Remy gasped for breath as the memory released him, and he found his eyes locked on the hilt of the mystical blade protruding from the dead, fallen angel’s chest.
To still the heart of Heaven’s own, he heard the mysterious voice echo within the halls of his thoughts, as he turned his gaze to the spectacle of battle still going on across from him.
It appeared now that Deacon was winning.
He squatted down, hand temporarily hovering over the hilt of the blade, before taking it in his hand.
And pulling it from the angel’s stilled heart.
Francis stopped at the stairwell door and turned.
“Where the fuck are Squire and Ashley?” he asked.