Armaros stepped back from the glass, overwhelmed by a wave of sheer emotion at the memory of his beloved Sariel. He gazed quickly at his brothers, afraid that they might have felt this flagrant example of emotion.
But they just continued to stare as they had done since the loss of their leader, since the one who was going to guide them back to Heaven was taken from them.
Murdered by the Seraphim Remiel.
Armaros always suspected that nothing good would ever come from their relationship with the angel whose ties to this earthly realm were so firm. Here was a being of Heaven on Earth by choice; not banished, not exiled for an offense against the Lord. Remiel was here by choice and could go back anytime.
He chose not to.
And those of the Watchers despised him for that.
It had been Sariel’s plan to win back the affections of Heaven by making amends for past wrongdoings. Correcting what they had done in hopes that Heaven…that the Lord God Almighty would notice them…accept their penitence, and open His loving arms to them once again.
But the earthly angel cared not for their methods, blocking their path to absolution with such vehemence that it resulted in the death of their leader, Armaros’ true love.
Love.
Something else he had learned from humanity and wished he could forget. Something else that continued to cause him immeasurable pain.
Perhaps this was just another way that God wished to punish them.
An image of Sariel in death flashed before the Watcher’s mind. He saw his love consumed by Heavenly fire, his flesh and bone rendered to ash by the wrath of the warrior angel.
Armaros fixed his stare on an intricately carved wooden box that rested on a tall stack of plasterboard. In the wooden box were the remains of their leader-his love-and, sometimes, if the mood was right, Armaros swore that he could hear him-his Sariel-reassuring him that everything was going to be all right.
Of course, Armaros believed himself going mad; the death of their leader sent all of the Grigori deeper into sadness and further into the embrace of decadence that only humanity could provide. They were lost in their grief, and every waking moment they strayed farther from the path that would return them to Heaven and God’s love.
Sariel’s voice eventually grew silent.
But then a stranger came.
Armaros recalled emerging from a drug-induced stupor to find a stranger among them. He had sat in the shadows, turning a ring on his finger, the wooden casket that held Sariel’s remains resting on his lap.
He told them he had come to save them, and he warned them that a war was imminent, a war between two powerful forces. Then the stranger, his features still hidden in shadow, had placed his pale hand flat upon the lid of the box that held Sariel’s remains and had promised that God would notice them once more.
Armaros recalled the hand resting upon the box, his eyes drawn to the signet ring adorned with a six-pointed star.
“But there will be a price to pay,” the stranger had said.
A price to pay in magick and in human life.
And Armaros had said, “So be it.”
The machinations were set in motion, and now, ever so slowly, they were nearing the end of plans that would free them from their torment and give them the means to soar again.
Armaros thought of Stearns and their last conversation.
Such a selfish little monkey, he thought.
If only he knew what was really going to happen.
The sounds of a struggle drifted out over the Shadow Lands, and the hobgoblin smiled.
Standing atop an outcropping of solidified darkness, the diminutive creature squinted through the gloom at the elaborate estate in the distance, now under siege by some of the more destructive beasts that called this deep section of the endless realms of black their home.
Squire chuckled with each new roar that filled the constant night, and the flashes of gunfire that attempted to drive back the attackers.
“Good luck with that,” the hobgoblin said with a laugh.
There had been lots of comings and goings from the estate of late. Squire tried to remember how long it had been since the estate had torn through the darkness to drop down uninvited into his solitude. He couldn’t remember, although he also couldn’t remember how long it had been since he had been driven from his adopted home world to take up residence in the land of shadows.
This place of perpetual night did things to the memory, made it hard to recall specifics. All Squire knew was that he’d been there for quite some time. And the invaders of his long-sought-after peace?
They’d been there too fucking long.
Which was why he’d instigated this latest wave of attacks, taunting the monsters of the shadow realm into laying siege to the mansion.
The monsters who called this place home could have the estate and everybody inside it, for all he cared. Squire just wanted to be left alone, without a hint of anything that he had been forced to leave behind.
Or the friends who he had lost.
He was squinting through the darkness again, savoring the sounds of battle, when there came a flash.
Squire was violently knocked from his perch atop a petrified piece of shadow as it was eaten away by the explosion of brilliance. He tumbled to the ground below, where he lay perfectly still for a moment.
“What the fuck was that?” he growled, rising on shaky legs. Strange blossoms of color, like a kaleidoscope, swirled before eyes now accustomed to total darkness. It took a little while, but his vision finally cleared, and he began walking across the darkness, drawn toward the estate.
He had no idea what that light had meant, but he knew that it wasn’t good. The goblin had been around power such as that and knew its potential for destruction in the wrong hands… Even in the right, it was a force to be reckoned with.
His thoughts began creeping toward the past, and he quickly pushed them away. They were gone, as was the world he’d called his home. This was his home now, the Shadow Lands, and he needed to find out what that light was all about.
His pointed ears picked up a distinct sound carried on the still air.
The goblin stopped to listen, searching the horizon for the source of the mechanical rumble and finding the shape of a vintage car as it barreled across the expanse of darkness, kicking up clouds of granulized blackness.
It looked as though this time trouble had decided to cut him a little slack. This time he didn’t have to go looking for it.
This time it was coming to him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It was like driving blindfolded.
The flickering greenish light thrown by the damaged right headlight only illuminated the darkness so far before being gobbled up by the all-encompassing black in front of them.
Foot pushed down on the gas pedal as far as it would go, Remy attempted to keep the vehicle going straight ahead, reaching out with his limited preternatural senses in the hope of finding the point where he had first entered the world of shadows.
But he could sense nothing, the tracking skills normally exhibited by his kind strangely dormant. Remy felt oddly different, and considered that his encounter with Deacon’s life force-draining apparatus might have done even more damage than he had thought.
He started to roll down the window, hoping to pick up a lingering scent in the air of this infernal place, when his eyes caught the shape of the young woman cowering in the backseat.
