Simeon had walked the lonely streets, feeling the effects of the deadly radiation, but never succumbing.
Though it did not give him what he most wanted, he grew to admire this place, reveling in its eerie quiet.
It was as if a tiny corner of the world had simply stopped.
A place of death, and it gave him something to aspire to.
But all good things . . .
From the window, Simeon watched a rabbit emerge. It scampered out from beneath some overgrowth, near a section of rusted chain-link fence that had been taken down by a fallen tree.
Twenty years later, life was slowly returning to the region. He’d even heard rumors that people were again being allowed to walk the evacuated streets, a once-forbidden curiosity to be explored.
He so despised letting go of things he’d grown to love. If he had to be around forever, so should at least a few of the things that gave him some bit of happiness. Simeon snarled, and wondered what his chances were of finding some discarded nuclear material to spread around in order to raise the radiation levels and preserve the solitude of this place.
And then he realized he was no longer alone.
The demon Beleeze stood silently in the doorway to the office.
“Yes,” Simeon sighed, knowing that what was to follow would not be good, for he had left specific instructions that he not be disturbed.
The demon flowed farther into the room.
It always impressed him how silent this species was, as if sound itself was scared away by the primordial creatures.
Beleeze still did not speak.
“Tell me,” Simeon commanded, twisting the ring upon his left hand.
“There’s a problem,” the demon said.
“Where?” Simeon asked, catching sight of a tuft of brown fur as it blew across the cursed earth. He had taken his eyes from the rabbit for only a moment, but it was gone now, tufts of bloody white and brown fur all that remained. Whatever had happened had only taken an instant.
It reminded him of how quickly things could go awry.
“The island,” Beleeze grunted, as if the words themselves were adorned with razor-sharp edges that savagely cut as they left his mouth.
They had retired to a great den in the nearly empty castle, the stone walls covered in fine tapestries, a roaring fire burning in the huge stone fireplace.
The Pope sat upon a formidable wooden seat—a throne, really—its upholstery the color of fresh blood. Remiel sat in his own chair, a simple chair in comparison to Tyranus’, but it suited the angel just fine. Both had been set before the fire, a small table for their wine goblets positioned between them.
“Would you like this castle, angel?” Tyranus asked. He held out his goblet, waiting for the servant girl to attend to his needs. She scurried over, filling his cup, careful not to spill a drop.
Remiel pulled his eyes from the mesmerizing flames and looked at the Pope.
“This castle,” Tyranus stated again. “Would you like it? I could make it yours.”
“I have no need for a castle.”
The servant girl was now hovering beside Remy, eager to refill his goblet.
“I am fine, girl,” he told her, and she bowed her head and scurried off.
“Certainly a place to call your own would not be a bad thing,” the Pope continued, as he drank his wine. “A place to settle down . . . a place to call home.”
“This could never be home,” Remiel said grimly. He gently sipped what little drink he had remaining in his cup.
“Do you actually have a place in this world, soldier of God?” Tyranus asked. “What would drive one such as you from the Golden City of Heaven to this place of such turmoil?”
Remiel felt an odd compulsion to tell the holy man of the Great War, but he managed to suppress the urge, rising from the chair to stand before the fire. “Tell me of this necromancer,” he said instead, changing the topic. “The more I know, the swifter will be his defeat.”
The angel leaned upon the stone mantel, staring into the roaring flames, waiting for the Pope’s answer. When he did not respond, Remiel turned to see him reclined on his throne, his goblet of wine resting in his lap. He was watching a young boy, dressed in Vatican finery, setting an ornate wooden box down upon the table between the two chairs.
“What is this?” Remiel asked.
“You wish to learn of the necromancer,” Pope Tyranus replied. “This will tell you all that you need to know.”
Remiel approached, observing the boy as he began to unsnap metal latches that held the box closed. He then pulled the two sides of the box apart to reveal what was inside.
The head was ancient, the skin like parchment stretched taut over the bald pate and the angular bones of the face. The eyes were squeezed tightly shut and sunken in, the orbs of sight behind the withered flesh a long time ago food for the worms and beetles.
“Let me guess,” Remiel said. “One of the ways you fight fire with fire.”
Tyranus smiled dreamily, multiple goblets of wine at last having their effect. “If you are suggesting that the oracle is an object of supernatural power, then you are correct,” the Pope admitted. “Through it I first learned of the necromancer’s existence, and that he possessed Solomon’s sigil.”
Remiel continued to stare at the disembodied head. “What does it do?” he finally asked.
With those words, the boy reached beneath his fine garments and produced a small knife. He stared at his master.
“Pay the oracle,” Tyranus proclaimed as he drank once more from his cup.
Remiel watched as the boy raised the knife to his index finger, slicing the pad with a pained hiss. As the scarlet fluid bubbled out from the slash, the child brought his finger to the head’s pursed lips, smearing the blood there.
The child’s blood beaded upon the dry, leathery flesh, before slowly being absorbed. At first Remiel believed it be a trick of the flickering light thrown by the fire in the stone hearth behind him, but came to realize that the lips of the corpse were swelling, and then a tongue, dried and withered like a piece of tree bark, snaked out from between the engorged lips to partake of the boy’s offering.
The boy squeezed his wound to bleeding again, and brought it down to the writhing mouth.
The head opened its awful mouth eagerly, and the boy stuck the bleeding digit into the gaping mouth, where it was at once suckled upon.
The child gasped as the head continued to suck greedily.
“That’s enough, boy,” Pope Tyranus ordered from his throne. “Make the oracle work for its sustenance.”
With a growing revulsion, Remiel watched as the child withdrew his finger from the corpse-head’s eager mouth. It began to emit a horrible, high-pitched keening.
“Silence, oracle,” the Pope commanded.
The head ceased its noise, its nose twitching as if attempting to locate the scent of the one who commanded it.
“You have been fed, and now you will tell us of what we ask,” Pope Tyranus proclaimed.
“The payment has been made,” the head spoke in a weak, high-pitched voice. “You will be told what the oracle knows.”
The boy had removed a lace handkerchief from somewhere within his robes, swathing his bleeding finger in the finest material.
“Tell us of the necromancer,” Pope Tyranus stated. “You will tell us of the necromancer called Hallow.”
