The old Jew shook his shaggy head. “I do not,” he said. “For I know that Paradise is waiting.”
“Then all of this”-Deacon lifted his hand, gesturing to indicate the world outside the shack, the concentration camp-“it means nothing.”
The old man did not answer, but his eyes were intense as they bored into Deacon’s.
“And what of your family?” Deacon asked. “Do they believe as you?”
There. Deacon saw the slight flicker in the holy man’s gaze.
“My family is…”
“Your daughter-in-law,” Deacon continued. “And two grandchildren, if I’m not mistaken.” He reached into the pocket of his coat and removed a folded piece of paper. “Jacob and Hannah,” he said, looking up from the names. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have stopped their executions…perhaps I should have allowed them to feel the embrace of your God.”
“They are alive?” the old man asked.
Is that a spark of hope in his ancient eyes? Deacon certainly hoped so.
“Jacob is quite proud of his grandpa,” he said. “The stories he told me…and little Hannah, as well.”
The rabbi looked down at the floor.
“But, of course, they’re just children,” Deacon said. “Repeating fairy stories told to make them eat and go to bed.”
“Exactly,” Rabbi Eshed said, his gaze still on the floor.
“But what if their stories were true?” Deacon mused. “How wonderful would it be if Jacob and Hannah’s beloved grandpa could create a man made from clay and bring it to life, to thwart their enemies? What a world this would be, eh?” He placed his hands on either side of the open journal. “It would be a world that Jacob and Hannah could live in for quite some time, a world filled with magick.”
The old man finally met Deacon’s gaze.
“I could give them that world,” Deacon pressed. “I could see that they were taken from this place.”
It was indeed hope that he had seen in the holy man’s eyes, and now it burned out of control.
Deacon knew that he was close and carefully reached for his pen. “For the sake of Jacob and Hannah-”
“What…what do you wish to know?” Eshed asked, defeated.
Deacon set pen to paper.
“Tell me everything.”
Eshed spoke for hours.
Once the words began, there was no holding them back. Some of what he had to say was already familiar to Deacon, but there was much that wasn’t, so many details…multifaceted pieces of information that finally revealed the magnitude of it all.
They were at it for hours: spells, diagrams, formulas, and words. The rabbi gave him everything Deacon would need to create his own man of clay and to improve upon it.
When they had begun, the journal was empty, and now it was nearly filled. Deacon felt an overwhelming sense of joy and accomplishment as he flipped through the pages. There was so much work to be done now that he had all the missing pieces.
He’d become so engrossed with what he had collected that the sudden appearance of the two guards surprised him. But then he remembered where he was and who had helped to fill the sucking void of arcane knowledge that had eluded him for so long.
Rabbi Eshed still sat across from him, looking far smaller than when he’d first entered the room. It was as if all the knowledge he had revealed had somehow caused him to diminish in size.
The guards stared from the open door, the cold, Polish winter flowing into the confines of the tiny room. Deacon’s time with Rabbi Eshed was at an end.
He pulled his purple gloves from his coat pockets and jammed his freezing hands into them. Then he closed his burgeoning journal, retrieved his leather satchel, and slid his prize inside.
The old man watched his every action with growing anticipation.
Deacon stood and, clutching the satchel protectively to his chest, walked around the desk and past the old rabbi. Eshed turned in his chair and reached out to grab the sleeve of his cashmere coat.
The guards moved, but Deacon stopped them with a glance. He turned his gaze to the old man.
“My grandchildren,” the rabbi said hesitantly. “You…you said that if I were to tell you…that they would be safe.”
Deacon pulled his arm from the old man’s desperate clutches.
“Rest assured, they are in a better place,” Deacon said coldly, watching as the realization sank in and the light of hope that had been in the old rabbi’s eyes was extinguished.
“They…they are already dead,” Eshed proclaimed, the weight of the words seeming to crush him down even farther into the chair.
“Freed from the horrors of this world, so they can find peace in the next,” Deacon said, feeling no shame. “I will be sure to tell Reichsfuhrer Himmler of your excellent service to me,” he again praised the guards as he passed between them on his way out the door.
“Herr Deacon,” boomed the rabbi’s voice from the cold space behind him. It was as if he’d been grabbed by the shoulder and spun around to face the old Jew, who still had not risen from his chair.
“Another piece of information I give to you of my own free will.” A new fired burned in Rabbi Eshed’s eyes. “There will be a special darkness for you,” he proclaimed, as if knowing the words he spoke were undeniably true. “For you and all who would dare to love you.”
Then the rabbi abruptly turned his back to Deacon.
Finished with him.
Finished with this world.
Waiting for Heaven.
CHAPTER ONE
It had been quite some time since Remy had last listened.
That was why he was here, standing before the high front gates of the New Hampshire Correctional Facility, staring at the harsh angles of the prison beyond.
He had come because he had listened again.
Thunder crashed, lightning pulsed across the nighttime sky, and rain fell in straight sheets to the earth. Remy was soaked to the skin, but he didn’t give it a thought, his mind occupied with the reason for his being in this inhospitable place on this most inclement of evenings.
He had come in answer to a prayer.
A prayer that he, a former emissary of Heaven, had overheard as someone had pleaded for God’s attention. And although Remy had struggled to block out those prayers in his quest to be human, tonight he had heard and was compelled to act.
Invisible to the video cameras that watched the comings and goings from the prison, Remy spread his powerful wings to their full span and, with a single mighty thrust, lifted himself up and over the fence to the open yard beyond.
The world was changing. He could smell it in the air, taste it on the tip of his tongue, feel it like a faint electric current on the surface of his skin. Remy knew it had to do with how close the earth had come to the Apocalypse a year or two back, a catastrophe that he had had a major role in averting. Ever since then, life had been growing stranger, deadlier, with every passing day-as if being that close to the end had set the world on a different path.
Stirred things up like silt from the bottom of a lake.
Remy had changed, as well, for the love of his life had died, and without her strength, he’d found himself fighting to hold on to the humanity that he’d worked so hard to fabricate. His human nature had begun to tatter, his angelic essence trying to assert itself as he drifted further away from the mundane existence he had created as a private investigator-and husband.
