The sorcerer sneered as he quietly passed the television reporting yet another story of the child and her promise. It was all bullshit as far as he was concerned. The Creator…God…or whatever it was being called now had lost interest in its earthly creations a long, long time ago, and the only message that Heath could imagine the little girl delivering was that the human race was a total disappointment.
Francis was deep in some sort of trancelike state that was as close to sleep as a fallen angel could manage, while the other-Remy was what Francis had called him-was still recovering from the injuries he had sustained in the place of shadows.
But it was neither of the two divine beings that interested him at the moment; it was the girl.
Angus moved around the bed to where she lay. The bathroom light had been left on, the door partially closed, shedding some light in the rented room.
Light from which he could check on his suspicions.
The girl had been hurt pretty badly, looking as though she had been mauled by some kind of animal. He had cleaned the wounds and bandaged them the best he could while Francis fretted over his unconscious friend.
That had been when he started to suspect that there was more to this young woman than initially met the eye.
Angus hovered over her as she slept, angling his body in such a way so as not to block the light leaking from the bathroom. Carefully, he reached out to peel back the girl’s covers. Her shirt was still unbuttoned, exposing her young flesh and the heavy bandages he had placed upon her wounds.
He could not deny the fact that he felt the pangs of hunger emerging, but doubted he would receive much in the way of sustenance from this one if his suspicions were correct.
Angus first pulled away a piece of the tape and, when he saw that his touch did not disturb her slumber, lifted the bandage to get a better look at the wound. It had already started to heal, far faster than it should have been able to. He leaned in closer and stuck his finger into the healing gash, attempting to pull the flesh apart to see what secrets lay beneath.
“What the fuck are you doing?” asked an angry voice, and he felt the cold barrel of a pistol against the back of his head.
Angus pulled his fingers away and froze.
“I’m checking something.”
“Looked a little nastier than that to me,” Francis said. “Planning an unauthorized midnight snack, perhaps?” the fallen angel suggested.
The sorcerer sighed. “If I’d planned to do that, I could have just kissed her.”
“What were you checking?”
Angus felt the pressure on the back of his head ease, and he turned to face Francis. “I was checking to see if she’s real.”
Francis looked at him, head cocked to one side. “Excuse me?”
“As I tended her wounds, I got a sense that maybe she isn’t as human as she appears to be.”
“You’re talking nonsense.”
“Perhaps, but that still doesn’t explain the strange aura I’m sensing.”
“Strange aura,” Francis repeated. “That pretty much says it all.”
Angus couldn’t stand it any longer; he needed to be vindicated. He turned again to the girl and reached out, plunging his fingers into the exposed stomach wound and ripping a portion of the flesh away.
Francis reacted as Angus thought he might, pistol-whipping him and throwing him to the floor.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” the angel said, going to the girl’s side but stopping cold when he saw what had been revealed.
“Not what you expected to see, is it?” Angus asked, rubbing the sore spot at the back of his head.
“That’s not what I think it is…is it?” Francis asked, moving in for a closer look.
“All depends on what you thought you might see,” Angus said, joining him at the bedside. “If you thought you’d see bloody flesh and exposed muscle, no, not at all.” He stared at the open wound and the damp gray material that lay beneath it. “But if you expected to find clay, then we were both right.”
“It isn’t her,” Francis said, eyes darting to the unconscious Remy on the bed.
“No, it isn’t,” Angus agreed. “She’s a golem…a very advanced golem, but a golem nonetheless.”
“Then where’s the real Ashley?” Francis asked, worry in his voice.
Angus looked over to the closet door, remembering the thick wall of shadow that had appeared there.
“Still over there, I’d imagine.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Never talk to strangers.
Ashley heard her mother’s voice over and over again, echoing inside her skull, growing louder with every utterance until she felt as though she might scream until her throat bled.
But she had already done that.
When she’d awakened inside the metal cage.
She opened her eyes quickly, hoping that something-anything-might have changed, but she was still there.
Cramped inside a cage, stuck in the corner of a filthy room that had been decorated for a small child a very long time ago.
There was a part of her that still hoped something was wrong with her, that maybe she’d had some sort of horrible illness, a fever so high that it caused her to hallucinate, or maybe she’d been in a car accident and this was some kind of head trauma. She would even accept being drugged at a party, but she couldn’t remember the last time she’d even been to a party.
All she could remember was that afternoon, heading downtown and filling out job applications.
And the strange man.
Never talk to strangers.
She almost told her mother to shut up, but just the thought of her mother made her begin to cry, and she had been crying so often, for so long, that she barely had any tears left.
Ashley had first noticed the man in the antique store, watching her as she had petted the cat. She remembered how she was annoyed at first and then creeped out. She’d been tempted to tell the guy off, but instead she had moved on to the next on her list of potential employers.
Remy would have been proud of her, being aware of her surroundings and who was in them. He’d always drilled that into her: Pay attention to details, no matter how small. All good advice, like…
Don’t talk to strangers.
As she lay curled up on a dirty blanket draped across the bottom of the cage, Ashley realized that the alarms had stopped. The grating sounds had started suddenly and had seemed to go on and on for a very long time.
But they’d finally been silenced.
She had thought the alarms might have had something to do with her, that maybe somebody- Remy — had come to take her home.
But the alarms had stopped, and she was still here.
Remy hadn’t come.
She hadn’t a clue as to where she was or why she had been taken, so even though she didn’t want to relive it, she allowed the scene to replay in her mind. Maybe she had missed something.
She had finished her job search for the day and wanted something to drink. Knowing that there was nothing good back at the apartment, she had stopped at a convenience store not too far from her new home.
It was funny the details that she remembered leading up to…
Ashley began to tremble, pulling herself tighter into a ball. It was cold in the little kid’s room, and she reached out to pull a corner of the blanket over herself.
The convenience store had been empty. A song had been playing softly over the speakers. She’d recognized the tune but couldn’t remember exactly what it was; it had been mangled so badly in this horrible Muzak
