with some answers.”
“I’ll try,” Montagin replied, his eyes drifting over to the globe-shaped liquor cabinet in the corner of the room.
Remy was just about to leave when he remembered something he would need. He stopped, turning back toward Montagin.
“Do you think I can borrow a car?” he asked. “I hear there’s an entire underground garage of the things.”
CHAPTER TEN
Pope Tyranus’ carriage followed the line of soldiers sworn to defend the holy man and his mission at any cost.
Remiel sat across from the Pope, the wings that he had yet to summon itching beneath the guise of humanity he wore, eager to perform the task that had been requested of him.
He could have flown to their destination on his own, but Tyranus required his company on the ride. The angel had no choice but to obey.
“Tell me,” the Pope began, pulling aside a red velvet curtain to gaze out upon the bleak, English countryside. The weather was foul, as it had been for days, as if in anticipation of the conflict against the forces of darkness to come. “Tell me why you walk the earth.”
Remiel did not wish to speak of it, but the words came nonetheless.
“There is a simplicity here that speaks to me,” he said.
Tyranus chuckled. “Where you see simplicity, I see the complexities of this world . . . complexities that I must master.”
Remiel remained silent, hoping no more questions would come, but knowing better.
“How could you leave your God?” the old man asked. “For is He not your everything? Your sole reason for existing to answer His every whim?”
“It was.”
The images came again, the war and the killing of his brethren.
The death of so much more.
“There came a time when I could be there no more,” Remiel offered. “When the difficulties of Heaven weighed far too heavily upon my winged shoulders.”
Pope Tyranus studied the angel, his head resting against the back of the red velvet seat.
“Where is the difficulty in serving your master?” the Pope finally asked. “If there is trust in Him, there should be no question.”
Remiel saw the deaths of those he had once loved, those corrupted by the message of the Morningstar. He had hoped there would be another answer, that the Lord God Almighty would find a solution other than war.
But Remiel had been forced to take a side, and the solution was death to those who fought against His holy word.
“There was trust . . . ,” Remiel said softly. “For a time.”
This response seemed to rankle the holy man. “Are you saying that the Almighty is not to be trusted?”
“I’m saying that my trust in Him was tested,” Remiel explained. “And it was a test that I failed.”
The coach came to a sudden, lurching stop, leaning precariously to one side. Outside, Remiel could hear the chatter of the soldiers and the cries of horses in distress.
“What is happening?” the Pope asked, a slight tinge of fear evident in his voice.
Remiel cautiously opened the coach door, to be certain that they were not under attack. They were not, but somehow the soldiers had marched themselves deep into the center of a marsh, thick fog closing in on them from every direction. Several soldiers were attempting to lead their horses to solid footing, but to no avail, the panicked beasts’ cries echoing strangely across the misty moor.
“What is it? What’s happening?” Pope Tyranus demanded to know.
“Stay here,” Remiel ordered, leaping down to the muddy ground, slamming the carriage door closed behind him.
“Captain of the guard!” Remiel cried, feeling the earth suck at his boots, trying to lock him in place.
The sounds of the panicked horses, mingled with the screams of soldiers who had wandered into the bogs were eerily disturbing.
Remiel caught sight of the captain standing, holding tightly to his horse’s reins, staring out into the shifting mists.
“Captain,” he yelled, grabbing the man by the shoulder and spinning him around.
The man looked at him, eyes bulging with fear.
“How could you have led us into . . . ,” Remiel began to ask.
“We weren’t anywhere near a marsh,” the captain cried, shaking his head from side to side as his voice quaked with emotion. “A mist blew out onto the road, a mist so thick that . . .”
He stopped speaking and slowly turned back to the nightmarish scene as the wetlands claimed even more of the soldiers.
“And then we were here,” the captain finished. “May the Lord God Almighty preserve us, we were here.”
The captain let go of his horse’s reins, and the animal galloped madly off into the marsh. For a moment, Remiel lost sight of the animal in a writhing gray cloud, but then the cloud shifted; even the angel wasn’t sure of what he was seeing.
The captain’s horse was struggling mightily in the mire, which appeared to be hungry. When it seemed that the muscular beast would manage to free itself, something Remiel could not quite discern in the haze reached up from the water and mud to drag it back from whence it had escaped.
The Seraphim glanced toward the captain and realized he was no longer beside him. Remiel saw him wandering off in another direction, as if answering some siren call.
It was then that the angel sensed it. It had been hidden at first, mingling with the damp, heady smell of the marshlands, but the angel found it as the screams of animal and man intensified, and the shapes of things that might have once been human pulled themselves up from the clutches of the moors to shamble through the fog.
It was the scent of dark magick.
Remiel reached beneath his robes for the sword that hung there, the blade immediately igniting as it became engorged with the fire of the divine.
The light of the blade cut through the unnatural shadows and shifting mist, illuminating the horrors that were making their way directly toward him.
“What is the meaning of this?” Pope Tyranus cried out, clambering out of the carriage onto the moist ground. “I do not care to be kept waiting!”
It took a moment, but the Pope finally saw what was illuminated in the light of the angel’s sword.
“What in the name of all that is holy?” he stated, staring numbly ahead at the sight of the men, women, and children that had been sacrificed to the bogs so many years ago, their strangely preserved bodies . . .
Now returned to ghastly life.
It didn’t take Remy long to find Neal’s address, seeing as there was only one employee with that first name working at the Elite Limousine Company out of Warwick, Rhode Island. Doubting that they’d be willing to hand out personal information over the phone, Remy had paid a visit to the office.
It was quiet at Elite that morning, and willing himself unseen, Remy had whispered in the office manager, Ginny’s, ear that things were incredibly slow, and maybe she should go grab herself a coffee over at the Dunkin Donuts down the street to keep herself awake.
