Where Angels Fear to Tread

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

  But before he was gone, Remy had questions that needed answering.

  “Who were they, Frank?” he urged. “Why did they attack you?”

  Frank’s eyes had started to close, but as Remy spoke, they slowly opened. “They wanted to know about Zoe . . . and Carl.”

  A chill vibrated down Remy’s spine.

  “Carl and Zoe?” Remy asked. “What did they want with them?”

  “Want them,” Frank grunted. He tried to move, but his face twisted in pain and he began to convulse. It wouldn’t be long now.

  “Parsons,” Frank said weakly. He reached up, grasping Remy’s biceps.

  “Dr. Parsons? What does he . . .”

  “Told them,” Frank gasped. “Told them where . . . where I lived. . . .”

  “Were Carl and Zoe here, Frank?”

  “Gone now . . . left . . . left this morning. They must know . . . ,” he said, his voice growing weaker. “Know how special . . .”

  “Who’s special, Frank?” Remy urged.

  “The child . . . little Zoe.”

  Even through his pain, Frank smiled at the mention of the child’s name. Then Remy felt the man’s grip on his arm suddenly strengthen.

  “Scared,” he managed, his eyes looking up into Remy’s.

  Remy pulled him closer. “Don’t be, Frank.” He loosened the mask of humanity he wore and allowed Frank to see him for what he really was.

  The last thing he would see before he passed from this world.

  The aura surrounding Frank was completely black now, and his hand slipped from Remy’s arm, dropping to the floor.

  The Angel of Death appeared in a flicker of time before them, taking what was his, before moving on to the next to feel his touch.

  A part of Remy was annoyed that Israfil hadn’t even acknowledged his presence. Even a simple Hey, how’s it going? would have been nice, for if it hadn’t been for Remy, Israfil would have triggered the Apocalypse and brought about the end of the world.

  But then again, angels with that magnitude of power and responsibility often had very short memories.

  At least that was what Remy liked to tell himself.

  Gently, Remy laid Frank’s head upon the kitchen floor. Israfil had taken what had defined the man as a human being, leaving only a husk behind.

  Remy remembered trying to explain that to Mulvehill during one of their late-night drinking binges on the rooftop patio of his Beacon Hill home. He thought the candy bar and wrapper analogy had worked best.

  He stood and stared down at Frank’s lifeless features. Now only the wrapper remained.

  His thoughts were suddenly interrupted by the sound of a moan from behind him. He turned to find the remaining creep gradually making his way back to consciousness. Remy planned on questioning the guy before calling the police, but first he wanted to have a quick look around Frank’s apartment. If Carl and Zoe had been here, perhaps they had left something that could shed some light on where they might have gone.

  Remy walked into the small den and scanned the debris left from his struggle with Frank’s killers. He bent down and picked up some old copies of the Boston Herald, revealing some crumb-covered plates and an empty juice box, a sure sign that a child had been here.

  He tossed the papers on the couch, then lifted up the largest piece of the broken coffee table, leaning it against the wall. He knelt on the area rug, poking through the pile of animated movies and princess coloring books, until something red caught his eye.

  He reached out and picked it up. It was a flyer advertising a place of worship called the Church of His Holy Abundance. Remy had never heard of the place, but that didn’t really surprise him—religions were popping up and dying all the time. This pamphlet was unusual though; some of the symbols drawn around its border were strangely old.

  He folded the flyer, placed it in his pocket, and continued to rifle through the piles of debris. He found more pamphlets and information the church had mailed to Frank, and then something familiar.

  “What’ve we got here?” he asked aloud, pulling the sheets of construction paper from beneath some more dirty plates.

  Remy stared at a drawing, unmistakably done by Zoe’s hand. At first he didn’t understand what he was looking at, and then suddenly it dawned on him. The picture was of a man, kneeling on the ground, and of another man behind him, carrying a knife.

  “Oh shit,” Remy said, and spun around to find that the knifeman was conscious again and bearing down upon him.

  Knife descending.

  The blade dropped in a silver arc, slicing through Remy’s shoulder as he tried to move out of the way.

  With a grunt of pain, he pushed backward, away from his attacker, but the man had murder on his mind.

  He threw himself at Remy, falling upon him, the knife raised again. Remy grabbed his attacker’s wrist as the weapon dove toward his throat, and was momentarily distracted by a strange mark on the back of the man’s hand. It resembled a pair of pursed lips.

  Then the Seraphim inside him howled its fury.

  And in a moment of startled weakness, Remy let slip the leash of control. The power of Heaven surged forward with a roar; the angel warrior that he was rejoiced.

  He squeezed the man’s wrist with all his divine might, feeling the bones crack beneath his grip. The man screamed in agony and tried to pull away, but the Seraphim would have none of that. Remy drew the man closer, inhaling his fear-tainted scent with a growl.

  Immediately his angelic essence recoiled, a convulsive reflex that caused him to hurl the man away and across the room. Remy began to cough, as if his lungs had been filled with some sort of corrosive gas, a foul taste coating the inside of his mouth making him gag.

  Remy struggled to rein in the angelic nature and force it back deep inside him where it belonged. Through watering eyes, he glanced up to see the last of the attackers escaping through the open door.

  “Shit,” Remy managed, slowly climbing to his feet.

  He tried to piece together what had just happened. It had something to do with his attacker’s scent. Something was different. . . . Something was missing . . . and in its place was only the poisonous stench of loss and despair.

  And then it hit him.

  It was what set humanity apart from all lesser things.

  The thing that most separated the human from the angelic.

  The man was missing his soul.

  Remy had to get out of there.

  He started through the kitchen toward the door, and his foot kicked something across the room. It was a wallet. He leaned down, picked it up, and opened it. The driver’s license inside belonged to his red-faced attacker, Derrick Bohadock, forty-six years old, from Michigan.

  Remy committed the name to memory, then dropped the wallet on the floor and left Frank’s apartment, willing himself unseen as he closed the door behind him, just in case the struggles inside the apartment had attracted attention from the neighbors.

  He was a few blocks away before he allowed himself to be seen again. He removed his phone from the holder attached to his belt and dialed an all-too-familiar number.

  “Mulvehill,” announced a weary voice on the other end of the line.

  “You are so sexy when you answer the phone like that,” Remy said.

  “I don’t know what it is,” the detective replied. “Sexiness just oozes from my pores; makes me feel bad for the poor bastards out there who don’t have a fraction of what I’ve got.” He barely stifled a belch before continuing. “Excuse me; that’ll teach me to have leftover Chinese for lunch. What can I do for you?”

  “Got a murder,” Remy said.

  “Finally, something to do. What’s the story?”

  “The victim is—was—Frank Downes, a therapy assistant at Franciscan Children’s.”

  “And what did Mr. Downes have to do with you?”

  “A person of interest in a case I’m working on,” Remy explained. “Looks like someone else found him interesting too, only that someone murdered him.”

  “Any idea who that somebody might be?”

  �
�There were four of them. I tried to help him, but I was too late. Although one of them did leave his wallet behind—Derrick Bohadock of Novi, Michigan.”

  He didn’t mention that the man apparently had no soul, putting this investigation heavily into that weird-shit category that Mulvehill liked to give Remy so much trouble about.

  “Are you on the scene?” Mulvehill asked.

  “No, I’m on my way back to the hospital to follow up on a few more things.”

  “Try not to get anybody else killed,” Mulvehill cautioned.

  “I’ll do my best,” Remy answered. “Come by the house tonight. I’ll fill you in, and if you’re good, there might even be a bottle of Jameson in the freezer.”

  “Will there be loose women?”

  “Sorry,” Remy said. “No loose women.”

  “Good, more Jameson for us.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Zoe was furiously drawing, her thumb stuck in the corner of her mouth.

  Carl returned to the table and dropped a colorful Happy Meal box down in front of her. “Here ya go,” he said. “Time to put your crayons away and eat your hamburger.”

  She dropped her red crayon and picked up the black, as if he had never spoken.

  “Zoe, you can finish that later,” Carl said firmly as he sat down across from her.

  The child continued her work, her face close to the paper, scrutinizing every line she drew.

  “All right.” Carl had had enough. “That’s it for now.” He reached across, pulling the paper out from beneath her moving crayon, and she continued to color upon the tabletop.

  “Hey!” he warned. “Stop that.”

  She seemed to realize what her father had done and set the crayon down beside the others, growing very still.

  “You can finish this after you’ve eaten,” Carl repeated as he moved to set the paper down on the far side of the table. But something caught his eye and he stopped, staring at the drawing.

  It was of a black man lying on the ground, a puddle of bright red circling his body.

  “What’s this supposed to be?” Carl asked the little girl, feeling a chill suddenly vibrate up his spine.

  “Frank’s dead,” Zoe muttered as she began to rock forward and backward, forward and backward. . . . “Frank’s dead.

  “Frank’s dead.”

  Over and over again.

  The sun was on its way down, but the heat still remained, a relentless humidity that made the air feel solid with moisture.

  Remy headed back to the hospital, his mind filled with questions. Were Frank’s other attackers missing their souls as well? What was so important about Zoe and Carl that they’d be willing to murder to find them?

  And what exactly did Dr. Parsons have to do with four soulless men, an autistic child, and her father?

  Remy wasn’t in the mood to be questioned, and so, having learned his lesson earlier in the day, he willed himself unseen as he stepped into the hospital lobby. The lovely receptionist, who had been immune to his charm that morning, was gone, replaced by another who was answering the phones with the same almost robotic efficiency.

  The traffic in the hallways was considerably lighter at this hour, and Remy had no problem getting to Dr. Parsons’ office. The door was open a crack, and he could hear talking from within as he approached. Peering inside, he could see the doctor talking on his cell, standing at his desk, the top of which looked as if a bomb had gone off, scattering papers everywhere.

  The conversation sounded intense, and Remy could hear panic creeping into the physician’s voice.

  “I told you I’m trying,” he was saying, nearly frantic. He fell silent, obviously listening to the voice on the other end of the line.

  Remy could just about make out the hum of that voice, buzzing in the doctor’s ear like a fly trapped between a screen and a storm window. He couldn’t make out what it was saying, but it didn’t sound the least bit pleased.

  “I’m sorry,” Parsons said with a pathetic whine. “Just give me another chance . . . please.” He sounded ready to cry.

  Then he began to paw through the papers on his desk. “I have some right here,” he said, picking up a piece of construction paper with drawings on it.

  One of Zoe’s drawings.

  “I’m trying to figure it out, but . . .”

  The buzzing from the other side of the phone grew louder, more intense.

  The expression on the doctor’s face became pained, and he dropped down into his office chair.

  “Please, just give me a chance. . . . Please. . . .”

  And suddenly, as if in a fit of rage and despair, Parsons threw the cell phone against the nearby wall. He was sobbing as he pulled open a side drawer of his desk and removed a pair of scissors, trying to saw through the flesh of his wrist with one of the blades.

  Remy instantly pushed open the door, strode across the office, and snatched the scissors from Parsons’ hand. “I don’t think you want to do that,” he said, tossing the scissors to the floor.

  Parsons stared at him for a moment, his face damp with tears. “I’ve tried so hard for her,” he finally sobbed, covering his face with his hands, shaking his head as he cried.

  And that was when Remy noticed the mark on the doctor’s neck, a dark patch on the cocoa-colored flesh—shaped like a pair of pursed lips.

  He called upon his angelic nature again, allowing his human senses to become something more. He sniffed at the air around the wailing doctor, taking the scent of the man into his lungs. He could smell his soul, but there was something not quite right about it.

  It was damaged, traumatized.

  “Get ahold of yourself,” Remy said, moving around the desk and placing a hand on the doctor’s shoulder.

  Parsons lifted his head and looked at Remy. “I . . . don’t know what to do,” he said, turning his attention back to the desk. He began to shuffle through a pile of Zoe’s drawings, looking at one colorful piece after another.

  “They’re supposed to help me,” he said. “They’re supposed to tell me how to find them.”

  “The girl and her father?” Remy asked.

  “Yes,” the doctor replied. “The answers are here, I’m sure of it, but I can’t figure it out.”

  He was crying again, his teardrops staining the corners of the child’s drawings.

  “Is that why you sent those men to Frank’s place?” Remy asked. “Did you tell them Frank would know where they were?”

  Parsons looked up again, his eyes red and wet.

  “I didn’t want to disappoint her,” he said, his voice quivering, and as he spoke he reached up to touch the mark staining the flesh of his neck. “I promised her. . . .”

  “Who?” Remy asked. “Who did you promise?”

  The man crumbled, sobbing and shaking.

  “I can’t,” Parsons said, suddenly standing. “I can’t do this anymore.”

  He lurched across the room, grabbing his suit jacket from the coatrack behind his door, and headed out into the hall.

  Remy felt as if he were standing in a minefield, at first not quite sure how to proceed. Then he figured he had probably gotten as much as he could from the doctor; the man was an emotional wreck. He turned his attention to the desk and picked up Zoe’s drawings. Maybe I can find something that Parsons wasn’t able to, he thought, folding them up and placing them beneath his arm.

  Remy left the office. Dr. Parsons was nowhere in sight, so he headed for the lobby and left the building, his mind once again ablaze with questions.

  He was halfway to the street and his car when the sounds of commotion distracted him. He turned back to the hospital and saw people running toward the side of the building. Someone called out an order to dial 911; another voice screamed, “He fell off the roof !”

  Before he even realized what he was doing, Remy was moving with the crowd as sirens filled the air with their banshee wails.

  Still clutching the child’s strangely portentous drawings, he made it to the edge of the gathering. A number of people were kneeling around something on the ground. And as one of them slowly rose to his feet, his form no lon
ger obscuring Remy’s view of a broken, bleeding body, he knew the victim wasn’t some poor soul who had accidentally plummeted to his death, but someone who had been in the depths of remorse, so painful that the only way to relieve it was to end his worthless existence.

  But by the look on Dr. Parsons’ face, frozen in death, not even that had been enough to free him from his agony.

  Remy sat on his rooftop patio with his closest human friend, a glass of Irish whiskey in his hand as he gazed out over the buildings of Beacon Hill to the Esplanade, almost visible through the hazy fog.

  His mind wandered as he allowed the first few sips of Jameson to affect him. And as his thoughts strolled the night, and his mental guards fell, he could hear the prayers of the devoted and desperate all across the city.

  The cacophony of voices filled his head to bursting, and he immediately pulled himself back, blocking out the petitions to a higher authority.

  “What is it?” Mulvehill asked, reaching for the chilled bottle of whiskey in the center of the circular table. He slid the bottle over and then reached for the ice bucket, filling his glass with more cubes. It was so humid that the ice seemed to melt as quickly as he dropped it into his glass.

  Remy took a sip from his drink and set it down on the tabletop. “I let my mind wander too far,” he said. “Sometimes that’s not such a good thing.”

  “Huh,” Mulvehill said, filling his glass for a third time. “Thinking about stuff you don’t want to think about?”

  “Sometimes,” Remy said, his eyes drawn to the city view again. “But if I’m not careful, I also hear things I don’t want to hear.”

  “You’re hearing voices now?” Mulvehill asked. He leaned back in his chair, resting his sweating tumbler on his rounded paunch of a belly. He picked up his already-lit cigarette and had a puff.

  “Prayers,” Remy said, swirling the liquid in his glass, making the ice tinkle like chimes. “I can hear the requests of all kinds of folks looking for a little divine intervention.”