Dancing On the Head of a Pin rc-2 Read online

  Francis had been the first to hear the rumor, a whispering among the unnatural community that the Denizens had acquired a full-fledged angel, and that its most holy body, every inch of it—a thing of great power—was for sale. He’d asked Remy to help him investigate, and the more they poked around—the more rocks and rotted logs they flipped—the more they realized that the disturbing rumor was indeed true.

  And here it was, manifested in its true form, feathered wings splayed out beneath its naked, broken body. The angel’s flesh had been cut, strips of its skin peeled away to reveal the pink musculature beneath. Most of its hair had been shaved down to the scalp. Its face was a gory mask, two empty black sockets where its eyes had been. The chest had been cut open and the rib cage exposed—an angel’s heart was worth an absolute fortune.

  Slowly Remy approached, fighting back a wave of revulsion. He did not recognize the angel, or the host from which it had come.

  “Do you know him?” he asked Francis, unable to take his eyes from the disturbing vision before him—like some perverted version of dissection for a high school biology class, a creature of Heaven instead of a fetal pig.

  Francis remained strangely quiet as he approached the surgical cart and picked up a plastic container. With a finger he flipped off the lid and reached inside. He pulled out what appeared to be a bloody piece of cloth, but what Remy quickly realized was a large section of flesh flayed from the angel’s body.

  “He was a Nomad,” Francis said, holding the skin in the open palm of one hand, tracing the black tattoo in its center with a finger.

  Remy leaned in closer to look and saw that Francis was correct. There was no mistaking the mark worn by the sect of warrior angels that had abandoned their violent ways after the Great War, departing Heaven, disillusioned, very much like himself. In the most archaic version of angelic script, the mark meant “waiting between Heaven and Hell.” What the Nomads were waiting for was the real question.

  “How could he have ended up like this?” Remy asked, more than disturbed by the sight of something once so magnificent, now so horribly ugly.

  “You actually have to ask that?” Francis questioned. “The war screwed a lot of us up. It isn’t easy to forget what some of us did back then.”

  Remy had known it was a stupid question as soon as it had left his lips. He knew he wasn’t the only one to turn his back on Heaven. It was just so very rare that he encountered any other expatriates—they tended to keep to themselves.

  “He didn’t deserve this,” Remy said as he reached out to place a hand on the angel’s shoulder. The flesh was cold beneath his fingertips, like the feel of a marble altar.

  With a wet, sucking gasp, the angel rose to a sitting position, his wings flapping spastically as he took hold of Remy’s shoulders in a trembling grip. Remy stared in awe, unable to believe that something so horribly mangled could still be alive.

  “The sins live on,” the angel gasped, the stink of rot exuding from his lacerated flesh. “They think it done… the war, but they deceive themselves, and the deceivers live on, the black secret of their purpose clutched to their breast.”

  The angel’s head lolled upon his shoulders, his body wracked with spasms of excruciating pain.

  “I could bear the deceit no longer… My secret sin consumes me… ”

  The final words left the angel’s mouth in a gurgling wheeze, and he began to convulse. Flapping wildly, his damaged wings lifted him from the table but were not strong enough to support him. His damaged body crashed into the smaller table, spilling the bloody instruments. He lay atop the tools that had been used to dissect him, trembling and gasping for air.

  “I’ve seen enough,” Francis said coldly. He dropped the angel’s flesh and removed a pistol from the holster beneath his arm. “Don’t have any idea what he’s talking about, secret sin and all, but nothing deserves to suffer like this.”

  Remy blocked his companion’s way.

  “What are you doing?” Francis asked, brandishing the weapon.

  “I think we can do this another way.”

  The angel was crying tears of blood, streaks of crimson draining from the blackness of his barren eye sockets.

  “We think ourselves so smart… so clever, but it will be our ruin, and the ruin of all that we hold dear,” the injured creature of Heaven whispered as it writhed in pain upon the floor. “We should be punished… Oh, yes, we deserve so much more than this.”

  “What’s he talking about?” Francis asked. He still had the gun in his hand.

  “I don’t know, and I don’t think we’d get a straight answer if we asked.” Remy couldn’t wrap his brain around what he was seeing. This pathetic creature appeared to be here by choice. He was not bound or restrained in any way. He was going to let the Denizens have him—cut him up and sell his parts to the highest bidder.

  “He’s in a lot of pain.”

  “Then let me stop it,” Francis insisted.

  Remy knew that the sight of the dying angel was getting to his friend—they were not used to seeing beings of such power in a state like this.

  “Let me put him down. It’ll be quick and relatively painless… less painful than what he’s going through now anyway.”

  Remy shook his head. “It is ugly, but after going through all this”—he gestured about the room, at the operating table, the bloody surgical instruments strewn upon the floor—“he deserves better than that.”

  The angel had curled himself into a tight ball, his body trembling so severely that it practically blurred the sight of him.

  Francis sighed. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to help him end it himself,” Remy explained. “I’m going to convince him to let go of his guilt… his pain, and return to the Source.”

  How many times since Madeline’s passing had he thought of doing that very same thing? To abandon it all, to will himself and all that defined him into nothingness. To return to the energies that shaped the universe and all it entails.

  “What makes you think he’s going to listen?” Francis asked.

  “I don’t know if he will, but I have to try.” Remy stared at the pathetic sight shaking upon the floor. “I can’t imagine that whatever he’s done, he hasn’t at this point paid for it a hundred times over.”

  Francis slid the lethal weapon back inside its holster. “So what now?”

  “Make sure the building is empty,” Remy told him as he knelt beside the tormented angel. “Things could get a little destructive if he abandons this form.”

  The former Guardian nodded, turning to head back the way they’d come. “Are you going to be all right with this?” he asked from the doorway.

  “I’ll be fine,” Remy replied, gently pulling the angel into his arms, attempting to stifle the bone-breaking spasms that wracked the Heavenly creature’s body. “We’re just going to have a little talk.”

  Francis remained in the doorway, unmoving.

  “Go on,” Remy urged. “I want to get this over with. He’s suffered enough.”

  “I’ll see you outside,” Francis said over his shoulder as he turned into the hallway of shadow.

  Remy leaned forward, his mouth at the angel’s ear, and spoke in the language of the Messenger—the language of God’s winged creations.

  “Are you ready, brother?” he whispered. “Are you ready to let go of the wreckage that is this material form?”

  The angel turned his face toward Remy, and he could not help but stare into the sucking black of the empty sockets.

  “I deserve no such thing,” the angel rasped, clutching the front of Remy’s jacket with a bloodstained hand. “We’re no better… than those cast down into the inferno.”

  “Let go of your sin, brother,” Remy soothed. “Return to the Source and know the forgiveness of—”

  The angel suddenly pushed him roughly away. “I would never dream of tainting the purity of the Source,” he cried, rising to his knees.

  Remy tried to stop him, b
ut the angel moved with surprising swiftness, his hand finding what appeared to be the sharpest of the knives and gripping it tightly.

  “No!” Remy reached out to stop the action, but he was swatted aside by one of the angel’s flailing wings.

  “I deserve no less,” the angel spat, and plunged the blade into his heart. He withdrew the knife and repeated the horrific action again, and then again, before falling to his side, legs thrashing as if he were trying to run, as the life left his body.

  Remy was stunned. By taking his own life, the angel had damned himself, trapping the life force within the body, to slowly dwindle away as the corpse decayed.

  He couldn’t bear to see the body of the holy being left to the devices of scavengers. Reaching deep within himself—into the resources of his own suppressed divinity—he laid his hands upon the angel’s waxen brow and carefully called upon the power within.

  The fiery essence of the Seraphim ignited his hand and spread onto the dead Nomad’s body. The fires of Heaven were voracious, consuming the flesh, muscles, bones, and feathers.

  Hand still burning with an unearthly orange radiance, Remy pulled the fire back into himself, struggling to stifle the urge to burn away his own human guise and let his angelic identity roam free. And slowly the power was returned to that deep, dark place inside.

  A place where it waited for him to abandon the charade that he had begun since leaving the golden plains of Heaven.

  Remy rose to his feet, backing toward the exit, watching, waiting for the sign that he was expecting.

  The body of the angel lay upon the ground, consumed in holy fire. Its grinning skull peered out at him from within the marigold flame, before collapsing in upon itself with a loud crack like a gunshot. At that point the fire grew larger, burning brighter—hotter—igniting the floor before spreading to the walls of the chamber, burning away even the shadows.

  Satisfied that there would be nothing left for the scavengers to salvage, Remy left the room, the spread of divine flame burning hungrily at his back.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The fire burned hotter than any earthly flame. The entire warehouse, every inch of brick, steel, mortar, and glass, was engulfed in a matter of minutes.

  Remy was lucky to get out with his skin intact.

  But would it really have been so bad—to let the scourging flames eat away the fragile human form he had constructed for himself, to abandon this charade and return from whence he came? A tiny piece of him screamed its approval, but the remainder of the man was not yet ready to say good-bye to the world that had been his home for so long, even with all its imperfections.

  “Did you get everybody out?” Remy asked Francis as they stood on the corner of Summer Street watching the building burn.

  The Boston Fire Department arrived with a wail of sirens, the firemen leaping from their vehicles to battle the raging conflagration. But before they could even mobilize their hoses, the warehouse collapsed in upon itself with a mournful roar.

  “There was nobody alive inside,” Francis said, taking a pack of Tic Tacs from his pocket and shaking some into his mouth. “Though I did tell a few rats that they might want to find other accommodations.” He shook a few mints into his mouth. “Thanks for helping me out with this one,” he continued after a moment.

  “No problem,” Remy answered. “It was the least I could do. The idea of one of us in the hands of the Denizens is not—”

  “One of you,” Francis interrupted. “It’s been a long time since I had my wings.”

  The disturbing imagery of the tortured angel filled Remy’s thoughts as he watched the fire burn. “What could have brought him to that?” he asked aloud.

  Francis’ face was illuminated by the light of the roaring fire; twin images of the inferno reflected on the surface of his eyeglasses. “I can think of a few things,” he said. “Things you would give anything to make right.”

  Remy didn’t press him. Francis was still making penance, and would be doing so for a good long time.

  “He was a Nomad,” Francis said, glancing at his palm where he’d held the angel’s flesh. He wiped the hand on the side of his pants. “Can’t remember the last time I’ve see one of them.”

  “They’re around,” Remy answered, still watching as the intensity of the flames began to die down. “Don’t come out in the open often, too busy contemplating their place in the grand scheme of things, or something like that.”

  Francis grunted in understanding.

  “I should probably try to contact Suroth,” Remy said reluctantly. It wasn’t something he was looking forward to. He didn’t care for anything that reminded him of what he’d left behind.

  He felt something being forced into his hand and looked down. “What’s this?” he asked, holding the same roll of money he had used to pay Eddie for the angel’s eyes.

  “Retrieved it before getting out of the building,” Francis explained. “It belongs to you now, for services rendered.”

  “Forget it,” Remy said.

  Francis jumped back, arms spread. “No arguments. You’ve taken time away from your own business to help me. You’ve earned it.”

  As much as Remy hated to admit it, his friend was right. He had been delinquent from the agency for quite some time. Since Madeline’s death he’d barely worked at all, finding it hard to generate interest in just about anything. The money would come in handy to pay some bills.

  “Thanks,” Remy said, putting the roll inside the pocket of his jacket.

  “No, thank you.”

  Clouds of white steam billowed up into the night air as the firemen were finally able to turn their hoses on the smoldering wreckage of the warehouse.

  “Want to go for a drink?” Francis asked.

  It would have been nice to go someplace else, to delay the inevitable, but Remy had somebody waiting for him back at the house.

  “Marlowe probably needs to go to the bathroom,” he said, feeling warm pangs of affection for the black Labrador retriever fill him.

  “How’s he doing?” Francis asked. “You know, with the whole Madeline thing?”

  “He still asks about her from time to time,” Remy said. “But I think it’s just in a dog’s nature to accept the inevitable and move on.”

  “And you?”

  Remy looked at his friend, not sure what to say, his silence conveying more meaning than mere words could express.

  Remy read the yellow Post-it note pressed to the window of the entrance to his Pinckney Street home. Homicide detective Steven Mulvehill had stopped by. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen his friend.

  He pulled the note down, crinkling it up and shoving it into his pocket. He dug for his keys, letting himself into the foyer, and smiled faintly at the sound of an excited dog barking on the other side of the door.

  “Just a sec, buddy,” he said as he put the key in the lock and opened the door.

  The black Labrador surged out into the hall, his toenails clicking like castanets on the tile floor as he danced around Remy.

  “Hello to you too,” Remy said, bending down to accept the fervent attentions from Marlowe’s eager tongue.

  “Miss you,” the dog said.

  “And I missed you,” Remy told him. “C’mon, let’s go inside.”

  “Yes, inside. Yes,” the animal agreed.

  “Did Ashley take you for a walk?” Remy asked as he took off his jacket and hung it in the hall closet.

  “Yes. Walk, yes. Ashley. Like Ashley.”

  “She is something, isn’t she?” Remy didn’t know what he’d do without Marlowe’s teenaged sitter, and dreaded to think of the fix he’d be in when she went off to college.

  He stood in the hallway, feeling like a stranger in the home that he had lived in for more than thirty years.

  It was when he was standing still that the problems arose.

  “Do you want an apple?” he quickly asked the dog.

  “Yes! Apple,” Marlowe barked. “Want apple.”
/>   “I knew that was a stupid question.” Remy moved toward the kitchen with the excited Labrador by his side. “And I think I’ll have some coffee.”

  He had to do something, anything, or his thoughts would begin to wander. He would hear things, see things: echoes of the past. And he couldn’t stop them.

  He saw her standing there, his beautiful Madeline. Her back was to him as she stood before the stove in her white terry-cloth robe. She was making a cup of tea, and by the way she was holding herself he could tell that something was wrong.

  The conversation had gone something like…

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, just a little sore today.”

  “Are you telling me the truth?”

  She had slowly turned around, holding on to the stove for support, and her eyes had filled with tears.

  “No.”

  Marlowe whined and the past momentarily fled.

  Remy was standing in front of the kitchen counter, apple in hand. The dog was staring intently, a puddle of drool on the floor beneath his mouth.

  “I’m sorry, pal,” Remy said, reaching for a knife. He was cutting the apple into strips when the memories returned unbidden.

  Again they were standing in the kitchen. She had her heavier jacket on, looking small and fragile within its folds. There was a suitcase at her feet, and she was looking around.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, coming to stand beside her. Remy took her in his arms and gently kissed the side of her head.

  “I’m committing it to memory,” she said. “I don’t want to ever forget what it looked like.”

  “Don’t be silly; you’ll be back before you know it,” he told her, squeezing her close.

  The disease had progressed faster than they had expected, the amount of care she now required more than he could provide.

  “They’ll get you on the straight and narrow, and you’ll be home before you know it.”

  He’d known it was a lie, and so had she. But she hadn’t let on, allowing him his fantasy.

  “The straight and narrow can’t come fast enough,” she said, leaning in to kiss the side of his neck.