any part of the demon’s form that was still flesh.
The energy then shot from the remains, like serpents of electricity, causing the blackened assassin’s body to crumble away, leaving nothing more than a large pile of ashes in a humanoid shape.
The energy then returned to the man standing no more than five feet away, coalescing in the palm of his outstretched hand.
“Thought you might need a hand,” Constantin Malatesta said as the magickal energy he’d wielded was absorbed back into his flesh.
“I certainly hope you don’t mind.”
Remy withdrew his wings as he walked toward the assassin’s remains.
“Have you been following me, Mr. Malatesta?” Remy asked, kneeling down to sift through the ashes, retrieving the strange weapon of bone.
“I didn’t care for how our first meeting ended,” the Vatican representative said. “So I made a conscious effort to reconnect with you. Lo and behold, you were summoned to Rhode Island, as was I.”
Remy stood, eyeing the man.
“You weren’t at the mansion.”
“Not inside, but I was there,” Malatesta explained. “I received a message from one of my Keeper informants that something was going on, and that you had been called in. Let’s just say, my curiosity was piqued.”
“Doesn’t explain how you ended up here,” Remy said.
There was a click and the creak of a door opening as Squire stepped out into the hall, his stocky, leathery- skinned body wrapped in a bath towel.
“I called him,” he said.
Remy glared.
“What?” the hobgoblin protested. “Vatican boy said he’d give me fifty bucks every time I saw you. A guy’s gotta make some scratch on the side somehow.”
He then turned his stare back to Malatesta.
“I needed to know where you were, what you were up to,” Malatesta explained. “The Keepers believe . . .”
There was a moan of pain from the doorway behind them.
“Holy crap, Angus,” Squire said. “You look like shit.”
The sorcerer slid down the doorframe to the floor, as Remy was on the move.
“I think he’s been shot,” Remy told them.
Squire and Malatesta helped get the injured sorcerer back into the apartment, dragging him over to an overstuffed sofa in the living room.
Adjusting his towel as it began to slide off, the hobgoblin then tore open Heath’s shirt to get a look at the wound. It was nasty looking, seeping blood as well as some other yellow, viscous fluid.
“That doesn’t look right,” Squire said. “What was he shot with?”
Remy remembered that he was still holding the weapon, and held it out for Squire to see.
“Oh, isn’t that cute?” the hobgoblin said. “Does it fire regular bullets?”
“No,” Remy stated. “It looked like it fired teeth.”
“Swell,” Squire muttered, just as Heath began to convulse, a spurt of blood and puss erupting from the wound.
Squire tore the towel from around his waist, bringing it down on the strange bullet wound.
“Get out of the way,” Malatesta said, pushing Remy aside, and kneeling down beside Heath convulsing upon the couch.
“Remove the towel,” the Vatican representative said.
The hobgoblin started to protest, but shut his mouth when he saw that the man’s hand had started to glow an eerie blue, and pulled the towel away.
The sudden blast of stink was almost palpable, and Remy stepped back.
“What’s wrong with him?” Remy asked.
“The projectile has released its poison,” Malatesta said. “If I don’t act quickly . . .”
The Vatican representative plunged his fingers down into the wound, the blue energy radiating from the tips of his fingers causing the blood, puss, and flesh to froth and sizzle.
Heath moaned in his unconsciousness, head thrashing from side to side, the agony great as it wreaked havoc on his body.
Most of the fingers of Malatesta’s right hand were buried deep inside the wound as blood and discharge bubbled and smoked.
“I have done all I can,” he said finally, withdrawing his gore-covered fingers. He held them up, showing the broken pieces of what used to be a tooth. “Hopefully I got them all.”
Malatesta then took the towel from Squire and wiped his hand.
“I would suggest covering the injury with a bandage,” he said. “Wouldn’t want it to get any more infected than it already is.”
“Is he gonna be all right?” Squire asked. He had left the living room, and had gone into the kitchen, returning with a roll of paper towels and a bottle of whiskey.
“I believe I got all of the projectile, and hopefully burned away most of the poison,” he explained. “If his constitution holds out, he’ll probably recover over time.”
Remy watched as Squire tended to his friend, cleaning the wound with paper towels soaked in the whiskey.
“So I’m guessing he’s out of the picture for a while,” Remy said.
“I doubt he’ll regain consciousness anytime soon,” Malatesta answered. “Would I be forward to ask what it was that you needed him for?”
Remy considered the situation, and suddenly found himself with an answer.
“I’m in the middle of a job and require somebody with a certain skill set,” Remy said, looking away from the unconscious Heath to the Vatican agent, who was still wiping the blood from his hands. “But I think I might’ve found an alternative.”
Malatesta cocked his head inquisitively.
“From what you did to the assassin out in the hall, and what you did to save our friend, it looks as though you have some special talents.”
“Yes?” Malatesta inquired.
“Exactly how good of a sorcerer are you?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Simeon stood in the window of the office building, looking out through the cracked and broken panes of glass onto the abandoned Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
The forever man remembered how dangerous it had once been, the levels of radiation so high as to cause skin to blister, and wreak irreparable damage at a cellular level.
It had been a true place of death, which is why he had first been drawn to it. No matter how many times he had failed in his pursuit of the final sleep, Simeon never gave up hope that perhaps, someday, he would at last be given that which he desired most of all.
That at last he would be granted the bliss of death.
But the Almighty was unnaturally cruel, allowing everything within a thirty-kilometer radius of the damaged facility to wither and die.
Everything except for him.
In the first days following the evacuation of the city of Prypiat and some of the villages closer to Chernobyl,
