He knows what I can do.”
Malatesta started screaming, his body writhing in the throes of agony.
“Get that fucker away from me!” the evil spirit screeched in a voice that was filled with fear.
“What can you do?” Remy asked the little boy, as he struggled to hold Malatesta down.
The little boy looked down at his hands, dirty palms up.
“I can make him so he ain’t so strong,” the child said. He looked up into Remy’s eyes. “It’s my gift, I guess,” he added with a shrug.
It was then that Remy truly saw this child—these children—for what they were, for the potential they had, if they were allowed to survive long enough to show it.
“Would you use your gift to help my friend?” Remy asked.
“No!” the evil entity inside of Malatesta wailed. “No! No! Fucking no!”
“I never done it before,” the little boy said, nervously.
Remy was curious. “Then how do you know . . .”
“We all got something special,” the boy explained. “I just know what I can do.” The child looked at Remy again. “Does that sound crazy?”
Remy shook his head. “Not at all.”
The child smiled, then turned his attention to the man who lay upon the ground, violently twisting and turning. “That’s enough outta you,” he said, and placed his hands on Malatesta’s chest.
Malatesta’s neck stretched, and sharp teeth grew from his mouth as he tried to bite the child. Remy reached out, placing his palm against the man’s fevered brow and shoving his head back.
“Go ahead,” he urged the boy. “Do your thing.”
The child leaned forward upon his hands, looking as though he was going to start to perform CPR. Malatesta’s body went suddenly rigid, as if an electrical current was coursing through it. The Larva’s screams became higher and higher pitched until his mouth remained cavernously open.
Remy heard a sudden buzzing, and a swarm of flies, their bodies fat, shiny, and green, flew out of Malatesta’s gaping mouth. The sorcerer’s body had gone suddenly still, and Remy noticed that it had returned to normal. Malatesta’s eyes were fluttering now, about to open, as if coming up from a very deep sleep.
Remy looked to the boy, who was leaning back on his haunches.
“It’s weaker now,” the child said.
“It appears that way,” Remy said, amazed at what he had just seen.
The child was staring at him again, as if waiting for something.
“You did a very good job,” Remy told him, and the child beamed from ear to ear.
Malatesta awoke. “What . . . what happened?” he stammered. He sounded weak, but did not appear to be fighting the monstrous spirit that lived inside of him.
“This little guy here just saved you,” Remy said, placing his hand upon the boy’s shoulder. “And showed me that we need to do everything we can to help these kids.”
Remy burned away Malatesta’s bonds, and helped him to sit up.
“What can we do?” the sorcerer asked.
“We have to get them away from here—hide them,” Remy said.
“And how do you suppose we do that?”
“We’ll need some help,” Remy said as he fixed Malatesta in a powerful stare.
“That’s where your employer comes in.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Remy emerged from the building to confront the gang of children who had been left there to guard him and the others. Malatesta and Prosper followed him, propping each other up.
The children leapt to their feet and advanced menacingly toward them, but Remy held his ground.
“I don’t want to fight you,” he said, infusing his voice with the power of Heaven. It boomed, echoing powerfully in the chasms created by the abandoned buildings around them.
“Then you should go back inside,” a teenage boy said, the air around his body shimmering as if with incredible heat.
Remy shook his head. “I’m not going to do that. If I did, I couldn’t help you.”
“You’re going to help us?” the flying girl who’d hit him with one of her fireballs asked with a smirk. “Who said we wanted your help?” She hovered a few feet off the ground, and Remy could see the beginnings of fireballs coalesce in the palms of her hands.
“You’re all in incredible danger,” Remy tried to explain. “There are forces out there, in the world, that will see what you are—what you can do—as an enormous threat.”
The children looked at one another.
“You’re talking about the angels, aren’t you?” the girl who floated in the air asked him. “The angels responsible for us being born.”
Remy nodded. “Yes.”
“And what you are.”
He nodded again.
“And what about you?” asked another voice.
Remy looked over to see the older boy, Gareth, strolling down the street toward them.
“Are you afraid of us?”
Remy knew that he couldn’t lie. He couldn’t take the chance.
“Yeah,” he replied. “At least I was.”
Gareth laughed boisterously. “You should be.”
He looked to the children, who laughed along with him.
“But I’m not anymore,” Remy added.
Another boy pushed through the crowd and slowly stepped toward Remy, the flesh of his hands transformed into two blades of solid bone.
“I’d say that’s a big mistake,” he said, slashing at the air.
Remy was ready to defend himself, but was hoping that he wouldn’t have to.
“Stop,” Gareth commanded.
The boy did as he was told, and turned toward his leader.
“Get back,” Gareth said, motioning for the young man to return to the crowd.
The boy hesitated, and Remy saw the potential for a challenge, but then he returned to the group of children, his hands morphing back to normal.
“So you say you’re not afraid of us anymore,” Gareth stated. The son of Aszrus moved closer. “Why is that?”
“Don’t get me wrong,” Remy said. “I still think you’re extremely dangerous, and in need of some serious guidance, but a little while ago I saw the good that you’re capable of.”
Remy’s eyes found the little boy who had weakened the demonic spirit that had been attempting to take over Malatesta, but did not single him out, just in case there were repercussions.
“Good?” Gareth questioned. “You saw good?”
He strode toward Remy, stopping with his face mere inches from the angel’s. Remy could feel the raw power emanating from the youth, and wondered at the extent of the teen’s might.
“Do you see any good in me?” he asked, defiantly.
“I don’t want to fight you,” Remy said softly, so that only Gareth could hear. “And I don’t want to see you hurt.”
Gareth backed down slightly, but Remy could see the frustration that burned in his eyes.
“What makes you so different from the rest?”
“Let’s just say I left their company a long time ago and leave it at that,” Remy explained. “But I still understand them well enough to know what they’ll do when they find out that something like you—
