Denning opened his mouth to cry out again, but Remy was across the small room with the speed of thought, snatching up the prisoner by the front of his jumpsuit. “You will not cry out again,” Remy ordered, his face mere inches from that of the young man.
He had taken on the full guise of the Seraphim warrior, his body adorned in golden armor, stained with the blood of recent battles, of which there had been many.
Denning’s mouth moved like that of a dying fish desperate to feel the flow of water over its gills again.
Remy looked into his eyes… really looked into his eyes. They were welling up with tears, but there was little else there; no sign of some otherworldly evil that might have taken up residence in a frail human shell.
All Remy saw was a terrified human being.
“I…” Denning was trying to speak but was having difficulty forcing the words from his gaping mouth. “I… I’m…”
“What?” Remy snarled. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
“I’m…sorry,” Denning managed, and then fell limp, sobbing uncontrollably in Remy’s grasp.
“You’re sorry?” Remy asked incredulously, barely able to control the anger in his voice. “You took the life of a mother and her two children in cold blood, and you’re sorry?”
Remy could feel the divine fire building up inside him, traveling through his body as he remembered the prayers of a mother who had lost so much. It took a mighty effort not to allow the hungry flame to emerge, to consume the flesh of the lowly human he held, to award him an excruciatingly painful death.
It would be the closet thing to Hell that Remy could manage.
The fire…the fire of Heaven would start with the soul first, burning it away before moving on to the physical…the flesh and blood, organs and bones. It would happen quickly, but a pain like that would seem to last forever.
And it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
The flames moved down Remy’s arm toward his hand, and he struggled to hold it back, trying to convince himself that this wasn’t want he wanted to do.
But it was what he wanted…what the Seraphim wanted.
He heard Catherine’s plaintive prayers again echoing inside his skull, begging the Almighty to punish the man who had taken her loved ones.
And wasn’t that what the angel Remiel had been created to do? To carry out God’s will? To be His divine messenger?
Denning was looking up at him, tears streaming down a face flushed with emotion as he jabbered on.
“I never believed in you…I never knew… So sorry for what I did…sorry that I didn’t believe…so, so sorry…”
Remy could feel the fire at his fingertips now, straining to be released.
Hungry to feed on the flesh of the sinner. To return this one to the dust from whence he had come.
Suddenly his fingers began to glow, and Remy knew he could no longer hold it back.
With a growl, he roughly tossed the young man away, back onto the bed. Then Remy threw his wings about himself like a cloak of feathers and was transported high above the prison into the storm-swept sky, where he released the fire of Heaven into the night, his own furious screams drowned out by the roar of thunder.
His rage temporarily spent, Remy returned to the prison cell to find Denning kneeling, his face pressed to the floor, his body trembling uncontrollably and stinking of urine, as he prayed for forgiveness to a God who was not listening.
Denning slowly raised his head, and Remy felt a certain satisfaction when he spotted five circular burns on the man’s face where he’d gripped him with a hand engorged with Heavenly fire. And in the young murderer’s eyes was terror, a terror that had taken him beyond the brink.
It had been a struggle not to kill him, but Remy had come to the realization that it wasn’t his place. Human justice had prevailed here, and now, for as long as he lived, Robert Denning would never know another moment without fear.
Fear of living, and what awaited him beyond.
For now that would have to be enough.
Spain 1945
The magick was killing him.
But it was also keeping him alive.
Algernon Stearns clutched the knife in his hand all the tighter as black spots blossomed before his eyes.
The irony of the situation was not lost to him as he stumbled forward, grabbing hold of one of the child’s spindly legs in an attempt to keep from falling. The boy tried to scream, but the gag in his mouth stopped the sound. His body, hanging upside down from a thick metal hook in the stone ceiling of the basement chamber, began to swing like a pendulum.
Algernon’s old flesh tingled and he sweated profusely beneath his scarlet robes, despite the chill temperatures in the secret room beneath the Spanish castle. He opened his mouth and took in large gulps of air, trying to keep from losing consciousness.
The preparations for the spell had taken more out of him this time than they usually did-another sign that his time was growing short. How many times had he performed this very ritual? A parade of young faces coursed past his mind’s eye, reminding him of those he had sacrificed to extend his life over the past twenty years or so.
And he needed to perform the ritual more frequently.
The dizziness finally passed, and Stearns reached out to steady the struggling child.
“That’ll be enough of that,” he said in the boy’s own tongue, but it did nothing to calm the youth, for he knew that his life would soon be forfeit.
But better the child’s life be extinguished than Stearns’ own. There was much he still desired from the living world, and he meant to have it all.
Stearns gazed down at the circle drawn on the floor beneath the youth’s head, wanting to be certain that the sigils were intact. They had been meticulously drawn in chalk molded from the bones of a Catholic nun impregnated by a demon conjured from the region of the seventh veil. To have even a single line out of place meant certain death for the conjurer.
And this conjuring was all about keeping himself very much alive.
He slid the knife through the belt of his robes and turned toward the altar, where he’d arranged the items he would need. Grabbing the copper bowl, he carefully bent down and placed it in the center of the mystic circle, directly beneath the child’s head. Then he retrieved the ancient tome from its place on the altar, opening to the page that held the spell to prolong his life. He hoped he had enough strength left to see it through.
The old man began to read ancient words of power transcribed when humanity was still very young. The words flowed from his mouth, and the power they carried chipped away at his life force. His eyesight began to blur, and tufts of hair, once a golden yellow, fell from his dry scalp to obscure the arcane words on the page from which he struggled to read.
Every time he performed this spell, Stearns had to wonder if this would be the time he expired before he could finish.
The air was suddenly charged with arcane energies as the last words of the spell slipped from lips numbed by age and weakness. The boy hanging from the ceiling began to spin slowly above the circle, moved by the powers that had answered the sorcerer’s summons.
Stearns let the book fall from his grasp, not having the strength to return it to its place upon the altar. He lurched toward the spinning youth, plucking the sacrificial knife from beneath his belt.
The child spun round and round, and Stearns waited for his opportunity. He had to strike at precisely the right moment, severing the jugular exactly as it presented itself.
To miss would be disastrous.
Through eyes failing by the moment, Stearns watched as the boy’s throat came round once more, the vein that carried the source of life- his continued life — pulsing beneath the thin covering of tanned flesh.
And he struck, almost missing the mark, but still managing to puncture the skin and nick the vein. It meant that the child would die more slowly, but Stearns didn’t care, as long as he got what he needed.
Blood poured from the child’s throat into the copper bowl beneath his head. Weakness drove Stearns to his
