Mean Streets

TWELVE

I have something to show you, said the whispering voice, sounding very much like his Madeline, but he knew that it wasn't.

Something… someone was attempting to communicate with him, to show him something of great importance. All he had to do was accept the offer.

'Show me,' Remy said aloud, suddenly finding himself awake.

At once he realized that he was no longer in the dusty old room of the Saint Mathias rectory.

There was cold stone beneath him, numbing his human flesh with its freezing temperature. Remy climbed to his feet, squinting in the darkness. He did not want to do it, but no longer in possession of his flashlight, he had no real alternative. Carefully he called upon the power of the divine once more, igniting his hand with the fires of Heaven.

In the illumination of its golden flame, he found that he was in some sort of vast underground chamber, its walls covered in thick glacial ice.

'Are you cold?' asked a voice from somewhere close by.

Remy directed the light of his hand toward an outcropping of jagged rock. A figure wrapped in a blanket sat on the ground, leaning back against a wall of ancient stone.

'You're welcome to share my blanket,' he offered.

Remy walked toward the man, and the light thrown from his hand revealed a somewhat familiar face. 'I know you,' he said as the identity of the stranger came to him. 'You're the angel we brought from the rig.'

'Were you there?' the angel asked. 'I thought Sariel had returned alone.' The angel was a mess, looking worse even than he had after Sariel's beating.

'Did he do that to you?' Remy asked.

The angel brought broken and scabbed fingers to his horribly bruised and swollen face. 'He did,' the angel said. 'For not telling him what he wanted to know.'

'Who are you?' Remy asked. 'And what's your part in all of this?'

'I am Armaros,' the angel said, pushing himself up, using the stone wall for support. 'And I was supposed to be Sariel's spy.'

The angel stepped closer, and the light from Remy's hand showed him the extent of how badly he'd been beaten. Remy hadn't seen injuries this savage since…

Noah.

'When Noah started talking about how the Chimerian had survived, Sariel became worried. He assigned me to be the old man's assistant, to help him with the search.' Armaros pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders.

'But I was really there to keep tabs on Noah's expeditions, and to alert Sariel and my brothers if anything was ever found.'

'Which it was,' Remy stated.

A strange, almost beatific expression came over the fallen angel's bruised face. 'Yes,' he said. 'Yes, we found a small number of them, but I couldn't bring myself to tell Sariel. I knew why he wanted to know if the Chimerian had survived.'

Remy stared, already guessing the answer.

'He wanted to destroy them,' Armaros stated, his voice trembling with emotion. 'He wanted to complete what the deluge had failed to.'

Something moved in the darkness behind them and Remy turned toward the sound, pushing back the darkness with the light of the divine.

Three of the Chimerian hissed angrily, scurrying back to the protection of the shadows.

'They don't mean you any harm,' Armaros reassured him, moving around Remy to get to the creatures. 'They're just afraid.'

Armaros knelt down, calling them to him.

Remy had lowered his hand, the light thrown now at a minimum. He watched as they emerged, cautiously moving toward Armaros at his urgings.

They came to the Grigori, and he put his arms around the pale-skinned creatures. They clung to him with their clawed hands, nuzzling in the crook of his neck.

Remy's suspicions had been right; these weren't savage beasts to be put down.'

'How could I tell Sariel about them?' Armaros asked, kissing one of them atop its bald, veiny head.

'They're only children.'

Armaros hugged the children lovingly, and they hugged him back.

'We were going to try to save them-Noah and I,' he explained. 'Transporting them to a place in the modern world where they could learn, and adapt.'

Remy recalled the transport containers, and the abandoned church property in Lynn.

'Noah had it all worked out,' the angel continued. As soon as he spoke the old man's name, the Chimerian children immediately reacted. They became very still, throwing back their overly large heads, their mouths emitting a strange ululating howl that echoed through the vast chamber.

'I know, I know,' Armaros said, pulling them closer to him.

'They miss him,' the angel explained. 'They loved their Noah very much.'

It was the most heartbreaking sound Remy had ever heard, triggering some bizarre paternal instinct. He wanted to go to them, to hold them in his arms as Armaros did, and comfort them from the pain of the world.

'He had returned to the rig for some final preparations when Sariel found him,' the angel explained, drawing the Chimerian children closer to him.

The scene of the crime flashed before Remy's eyes, Noah's beaten and battered body lying on his office floor.

'And for what he was going to do, Sariel killed him,' Remy said.

Armaros nodded. 'I'm not sure if that was his intention… but he was so enraged that Noah could even consider what he was doing…'

The angel looked at Remy. 'But how could we not?' he asked. “Somehow they had survived the deluge… survived all the years following… doesn't it mean that they'd earned their right to live?'

Remy stepped closer, keeping his burning hand at his side.

The children grew nervous at his approach.

'Shhhhh,' Armaros comforted. 'He means you no harm.'

One of the Chimerian looked at him with deep, cautious eyes, and Remy knew that this was the one that had found its way to his home.

Remy knelt down near Armaros, reaching out with the hand that did not burn with the fire of Heaven. The child at first studied what was offered, and then cautiously reached for it, gripping one of Remy's fingers in his.

'That's it,' Armaros said. 'He's our friend.'

With the child's touch the images flowed through his brain, and his suspicions were confirmed. He knew these children of the flood, and why the Grigori were so desperate for them to be gone.

'The bastards,' Remy whispered. 'The miserable, coldhearted bastards.'

Seeing that he wasn't a threat, the two other children became interested in him, leaving Armaros's arms to come to him. And with each touch of their clawed hands, or the feel of their warm breath on his cheek, Remy knew them more, and what they had gone through to live.

'I couldn't let Noah's death be in vain,' Armaros went on. 'I was going to try and accomplish our goals alone…' The Grigori laughed. 'But I was sloppy and Sariel caught me. I tried to tell him that they meant us no harm, that they only wanted to live, but he would hear nothing of it. I'm surprised that I didn't share

Noah's fate right then and there, but that must be where you came in.'

The Chimerian children were crawling all over Remy now, completely unafraid.

Armaros chuckled. 'They know you,' the fallen angel said. 'They know what you are.'

Remy laughed, the first real laugh that he'd had since his wife had died.

With the thought of Madeline, the Chimerian children stopped. They stared at him with their intense dark eyes. And one by one, they drew back their heads and sang their sad, sad song for him.

'Sariel tried to make me talk,' Armaros explained defiantly. 'But I wouldn't tell him.' He shook his head from side to side. 'I thought I would die, but still I kept their secret. He wanted to know about this place, but I held my tongue.'

Remy was holding the children now, each of them completely comfortable with the other.

'How did you escape?' he asked.

'There are some among them-the Grigori-that feel as I do. They let me go so that I could try and get the children to safety before…'

Remy felt it inside his head, like fingers gently running across the surface of his brain. It wasn't an entirely unpleasant sensation.

Angel of Heaven, said the voice like a gentle summer breeze tickling inside his ear. I have something to show you.

Armaros must have heard it as well, because he smiled.