Montagin smiled. “Just happened to be listening and I wasn’t too far away. Actually it should have been Aszrus who answered, but he had some business to take care of tonight.”
The mention of Aszrus caused an icy chill of concern to pass through Remy’s body. “Aszrus is here?” he asked.
Montagin nodded. “Has been here for quite some time. We’ve always anticipated that what’s happening would occur.”
“And what exactly is that?” Remy asked.
Montagin chuckled coldly. “You’re not that far removed from what you are, Remiel,” he said. “You’d have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to know—not to see—what’s been unfolding all across this planet.”
“You mentioned a war,” Remy prompted.
“And that will likely be the end result,” Montagin acknowledged, slowly rotating his foot. Remy was reminded of a cat’s tail languidly swishing back and forth just before it pounced.
“I’m sure you know that the Morningstar has returned to Tartarus and is in the process of reshaping it into who knows what?” Montagin leaned forward toward Remy.
“Yeah, I’d heard something about that.”
“Good,” the angel said. “Then you’re not as far gone as I feared.”
“So this is all about the Morningstar,” Remy said, ignoring the barb.
Montagin was staring intensely now.
“Are you just playing dumb, or are you really that stupid?” he finally asked.
“I just don’t see an imminent threat,” Remy told him.
“Lucifer has returned to power,” Montagin said a little slower and a little louder. “Lucifer has returned to power, and has gone back to Tartarus . . . back to Hell.”
“So he’s gone back to where the Almighty put him to begin with.”
“Is this what living here among the monkeys does to one of us?” Montagin asked with a sneer.
“What does it do, Montagin?” Remy retorted. “Does it make me ask questions, and not fly off the handle at the slightest things? If that’s the case, then yeah, I guess living here has done that to me.”
The angel’s face wore an expression of absolute disgust.
“Even after everything you saw during the war, you can still be blind to what Lucifer is capable of.”
“I know what he’s capable of, but the question is, what is he doing now?”
Montagin rose to his feet, buttoning his suit jacket as he stood.
“If you can’t see his influence in everything that has been happening here on the world of man, then I’m afraid there’s really nothing more I can say to you.”
“Are you serious?” Remy questioned. “You think that what’s been happening here is all Lucifer’s fault?”
“Whether it is or isn’t doesn’t matter to the overall picture,” Montagin said. “The fact is that Lucifer Morningstar is free, and as long as he is, he poses a danger to God and the Kingdom of Heaven.”
“And Earth?” Remy asked the million dollar question.
“Yes, to Earth as well,” Montagin said, almost begrudgingly. “To think of the Morningstar in control of this world . . . We will not stand for it.”
“So that’s why Aszrus is here,” Remy stated.
“As well as others in various aspects of reconnaissance,” Montagin said. “I just so happen to have been assigned to assist the general.” He stepped into the far aisle. “And I believe I’ve answered your pleas.”
Remy could feel his disbelief turning to anger. “After everything we’ve already been through,” he began incredulously, “after everything we lost, we’re willing to do this all again?” He stood and moved back into the center aisle. “Didn’t we learn anything?”
Montagin considered the question as brown wings reached from his back, readying to embrace his form.
“Maybe we learned that the Lord God Almighty was far too merciful to those who challenged His holy word.”
Remy couldn’t believe his ears. What had happened to these supposed divine creatures to make them so bitter?
“That if He’d tempered His mercy then, we wouldn’t be having this conversation now,” Montagin continued, as his wings folded about him.
And he was gone, as silently as he’d appeared.
* * *
Dottie and Marlowe were right where Remy had left them, only the old woman had rolled up her sleeping bag, and the two were sitting side by side, Marlowe draped partially across her lap. They were sharing a bag of Cheez-Its.
Marlowe was first to notice the angel’s return. “Hello,” he woofed, spewing orange crumbs.
Dottie turned toward him and smiled, popping a Cheez-It into her mouth. “There he is,” she said to the dog. “I told ya he wouldn’t be long.”
Marlowe’s tail wagged as she gave him another one of the treats.
“He wasn’t any trouble was he?” Remy asked.
“No trouble at all,” Dottie said, reaching out to pat Marlowe’s head. “He even watched my stuff while I ran in the store to get us something to eat.”
“A regular watchdog,” Remy said, bending over to scratch his friend’s ear.
“Watchdog!” Marlowe barked, and then began sniffing for stray Cheez-It crumbs.
“Well thank you for watching him, Dottie,” Remy said, taking the end of the leash from the woman.
“No problem at all, it was a pleasure,” she said. “So how did it go?”
Remy cocked his head, unsure of the question. “Go?”
“Inside.” She motioned toward the church with her head. “Did you get to talk to who you wanted to.”
“Not really,” Remy acknowledged, giving the leash a slight tug so that Marlowe would stand.
“Huh,” Dottie said. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“I’m afraid it isn’t.” Remy found himself thinking of his dream and the foreboding words of the old man, and what Dottie had said earlier about seeing angels on the streets.
The old, homeless woman was carefully watching him as he wrapped the leash around his hand and started to lead Marlowe away.
“Thanks again,” he said, turning to head back up Boylston toward home.
“So what’re you gonna do?” Dottie’s voice called after him.
Remy turned to face her.
“What are you gonna do?” she asked again. “You know, to fix the problem . . . what’re you going to do?”
It was a very good question, and one that Remy didn’t have an answer for. Instead, he shook his head, then turned back up the street, her question hanging in the air like a bad smell.
CHAPTER FOUR
The weeks that followed were without catastrophic event, but the potential for disaster was never far from Remy’s mind, and he found himself watching for angels in the strangest of places.
What are you gonna do?
The answer to old Dottie’s question still evaded him.
I honestly don’t know, Dottie. I really don’t.
He was doing the last bit of paperwork on a workman’s comp job he had done for an insurance company out of Lexington—an incapacitating neck injury that wasn’t so incapacitating that it kept the claimant from participating in a bodybuilding competition—when there was a knock at his office door.
“Come in!” Remy called out, stapling the pages of his report together and placing them inside a file that also contained some photos taken at the Mr. Power Competition in Tampa.
The door into the office swung open and a man stepped in. He was wearing a dark suit on his average-sized frame, his blond hair cut short. He looked around the office, taking it all in as he carefully closed the door behind him.
Something wafted off of him like the smell of aftershave.
Something with the potential for danger.
“Can I help you?” Remy asked as he stood, all of his senses on alert.
“Remy Chandler?” the man asked, a hint of an accent in his voice. Italian, most definitely Italian.
“That’s right,” Remy said, feeling the power e
xude from the man in waves.
“My name is Malatesta,” he said, stepping forward and extending his hand. “Constantin Malatesta.”
Remy had been wondering when the Vatican representative who had paid Steven Mulvehill a visit would finally get around to meeting him face-to-face. He shook his hand, a strange electrical tingle coursing up through the angel’s arm reaffirming what he had felt in the air when the man entered.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Malatesta?” Remy asked, feigning ignorance of the man’s identity as he released his hand and gestured for him to take a seat in front of the desk.
“Thank you.” Malatesta unbuttoned his suit coat as he took the offered chair. “First, let me say how good it is to finally meet you.”
The man smiled.
“Have you been wanting to meet me, Mr. Malatesta?” Remy asked, curious, as he cocked his head.
“For quite some time,” the man acknowledged. “But it’s only been recently that there has been a reason to make the journey to Boston.”
“You have me at a disadvantage,” Remy said. “You obviously know who I am, but I can’t say the same of you.”
“Where are my manners?” Malatesta said, reaching into his suit coat pocket to extract a small, leather identification case. He opened it, and leaned forward to place it on the desk in front of Remy.
Remy examined it and smiled. “Yep, you’re from the Vatican, all right,” he said, and handed it back to his guest.
“Ah, so you are aware of me?” Malatesta asked.
“Detective Mulvehill informed me that somebody from Rome was asking questions about me, yes.”
“Then you lied a moment ago,” the man said, putting his identification away. “You do know something about me.”
“Only what Detective Mulvehill could tell me, which wasn’t much. But what I’d really like to know is what could the Vatican possibly want with a private investigator from Boston?”
Malatesta crossed his legs and smiled, saying nothing.
“Well?” Remy prompted. “Care to explain?”
“Our records on your whereabouts were relatively accurate until the mid-thirties,” the man said, picking a piece of lint from his pant leg and letting it drop to the office floor. “But then things got a little sketchy.”
Remy remained silent, glowering at the man sitting across from him.
“There were a few sightings here and there, but it wasn’t until a few years ago that we received some solid information on your location.”
Remy leaned back in his office chair, hands clasped behind his head. “You keep mentioning we.”
“Of course, the people that I work for.”
“At the Vatican.”
“Yes, at the Vatican.”
“May I ask who these people are?”
Malatesta chuckled softly. “I doubt that you’ve ever met any of them, but they are very familiar with you, Mr. Chandler. They are the people charged with tracking things of . . . an unusual nature. Many of these things—these items in our possession—are ancient writings and artifacts of power, while others are of a more transient nature.”
“And do these people have a name?”
“They’re known simply as Keepers,” Malatesta said.
“And, are you a Keeper, Mr. Malatesta?”
The blond-haired man seemed amused by the question. “Oh, no, Mr. Chandler. I simply do their bidding,” he explained, slowly shaking his head. “I am but one of their humble agents out in the world.”
Remy knew where this was going and resigned himself to the fact.
“Would you like some coffee?” he asked, rising from his desk chair and going to the coffee cart he had set up in the corner beside an old file cabinet.
“Yes,” Malatesta answered. “That would be lovely.”
Remy went about the steps to prepare a pot. He’d had multiple cups at home before leaving for the office and hadn’t even thought about making coffee when he’d gotten in that morning. That alone should have told him that something was off about this day.
As the machine burped, hissed, and gurgled, Remy spurred the conversation on. “So your employers, the Keepers of the Vatican’s secrets, have sent you out into the world looking for me.”
“They sent me to Boston, yes,” Malatesta said. “There have been quite a few incidents in this region of the world that have caught their attention of late.”
Remy should have seen this coming, and deep at the back of his mind, maybe he had. With what was going on out there in the world, and the potential for so much worse, he just couldn’t bring himself to care all that much about what the masters of the Catholic Church would be up to.
But whether he wanted to know or not, now he did, and it appeared that they had been looking for him.
“There has been quite a lot going on around here lately,” Remy acknowledged with a knowing nod.
Malatesta reciprocated with his own slow nod. “Quite a bit, yes.”
The coffee was just about done, and Remy looked to see if the mugs he had were clean. One was. The other wasn’t, its bottom covered with a gross brown stain. Remy took the cup and went to the small washroom at the far end of the office space. He ran the hot water into the cup and washed away the old coffee residue.
“So, I’m curious,” he said, leaving the bathroom. “How did you narrow it down? How did you find me?”
Malatesta folded his hands in his lap, shifting his weight, as if he was considering what exactly he should share, and what he shouldn’t.
“There are others out there in the employ of the Keepers, even though most are totally unaware that the data they provide is being collected, compared, and contrasted. The name Remy Chandler has popped up a number of times in connection to some of the more unusual data that was being reviewed.”
Remy poured his company a cup of coffee.
“And the more bizarreness that occurred in this region . . .” He brought the mug over to his guest. “Do you use sugar? I don’t have any milk, but I might have some powdered creamer if . . .”
“Black is fine,” Malatesta said, taking the offered mug. “Thank you.”
He brought the edge of the mug to his mouth and sipped.
“More bizarreness in a particular corner of the world would cause us to focus our attentions, and narrow said focus on certain locations . . .”
“Or people,” Remy finished, bringing his own cup of coffee back to his desk, careful not to spill it as he sat down.
“Or people,” Malatesta agreed, having some more of his steaming drink. “Your name quickly moved to the top of our list.”
“Lucky me,” Remy said.
The Vatican representative chuckled. “We were very discreet in our interview process,” he said.
“Who else did you talk to beside Detective Mulvehill?”
Malatesta was bringing the mug up to his lips. “Some former clients who all spoke very highly of you . . . if they spoke at all.”
Remy cocked his head, confused by the statement.
“Some of those we talked to would give us only the basic information, as if they were somehow protecting you . . . protecting your secret.”
“Most don’t even know that I have one,” Remy said, taking a sip of his coffee. “It’s something that I work on.”
“I can imagine it would be complex,” Malatesta acknowledged. “You said most. . . . There are some who . . .”
“Very few.”
“Detective Mulvehill?”
“Let me guess. He got all squirrelly when you started asking about me.”
“Squirrelly,” Malatesta repeated and laughed. “Yes.” He drained his coffee and leaned forward to set the mug on the edge of the desk.
“Want another cup?” Remy asked. “I’ve got a whole pot.”
“No, thank you,” Malatesta said. “I’m trying to limit my caffeine, and I’m afraid to say that cup has put me over my allotted amount.”
“No worries,” Remy answered, as he stood and headed fo
r the pot. “More for me.”
“So, now that I know how you found me, Mr. Malatesta,” he said, filling his mug, “why don’t you tell me what I can do for you?”
“Not for me per se, Mr. Chandler,” Malatesta answered. “It is what you can do for a changing world.”
Remy chose to stand, steaming cup of coffee in hand.
“And what, I’m afraid to ask, is that?”
“The Keepers of the Vatican wish you to work for them, Remy Chandler.”
Remy thought about this for a moment before bringing his mug up to his mouth. “I worked for the Vatican once, a long time ago,” he said, taking a sip of the hot liquid, reveling in the scalding sensation as it burned his lips and tongue. “Let’s just say it didn’t turn out so well.”
England
1349
“Do you eat?”
Pope Tyranus did not rise from the head of the vast banquet table as Remiel was led into the dining hall by the soldiers of the Vatican.
The table was covered with all forms of repast: roasted chickens, quail, a wild boar the size of a small child, and bowls of peas, carrots, and potatoes. There was enough to feed a small village laid out before the holy man.
“Would you prefer that I speak in Latin?” the Pope asked in the tongue of the Church, seemingly impatient with the lack of immediate response. “Or perhaps Italian?”
Remiel fixed the old man in an icy stare. “Occasionally I indulge,” he replied to the first question. “But it is not necessary for my survival.”
“Then, will you do me the honor of indulging me?”
The old man gestured for him to take a seat at the corner, by his side. Remiel noticed the jewelry that clattered upon his wrist, and the rings that adorned his long, slender fingers.
There was something in the tone of the holy man’s voice, something that told him to acquiesce to the Pope’s request of him.
Pope Tyranus smiled as Remiel approached the table.
A servant appeared from a shadowed corner of the hall, pulling out the heavy wooden chair so that the angel could sit, before scampering out of view again.
“She’s actually one of the few left alive here,” Pope Tyranus said, drawing Remiel’s attention back to himself. “The lord of this manor, his family, and most who served them have succumbed to the pestilence.”
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