Mean Streets

by Jim Butcher

  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.

  “She wants to talk with you,” the fallen angel said. He opened his arms, calling the children to him. “Go to her.”

  “Who?” Remy asked, feeling a psychic tug upon him, turning in the darkness like the needle of a compass, pointed toward where he needed to go.

  “The Mother,” Armaros said.

  There wasn’t a moment’s hesitation; this was what he had been waiting for. Remy headed off into the vast underground cave system.

  She was calling to him.

  The Mother was calling, and he had no choice but to answer.

  THIRTEEN

  It felt as though he’d been walking for days, but he knew that wasn’t the case.

  The chamber went on, and on, up and over hills of ice older than recorded history, the only source of illumination being the divine fire that burned around his hand.

  Dripping stalactites, like the teeth of a giant beast, hung over his head as he slid down from the other side of a black rock wall and onto a path that seemed to be taking him even deeper into the cavernous surroundings.

  At first he had not the slightest idea what it was that loomed out of the darkness in front of them, believing it to be another enormous wall of rock and ice, an obstruction that could very well prevent him from going any farther.

  Remy lifted his burning hand, staring at the obstruction, and realized that he was looking at something else altogether.

  That he had reached his destination.

  Remy nodded in satisfaction, taking it all in, absorbing the sight of the ancient craft that appeared to have become part of its rocky underground surroundings.

  It must’ve been sw
allowed up by changes in the Earth’s surface. Pulled farther and farther beneath the ground as time passed, he thought as he looked upon what was left of the ark.

  The remains of Noah’s ark.

  Over the passage of time the wood had ossified, becoming like stone, blending with its geological surroundings. The front of the once gigantic ship protruded from the stone as if sailing through a monstrous ocean swell that had been frozen in time.

  It made sense that this was where they’d be, Remy thought as he was drawn toward the ancient transport. Denied passage on the great craft, but now . . .

  Wedging his fingers deep into cracks between the rock and ice, Remy started to climb, the gentle voice of the Mother driving him on.

  The answers are inside, Remy told himself, the all-too-human flesh of his fingers feeling the rigors of the harsh elements.

  And Remy needed answers.

  From the beginning, when Sariel had first come to him, he had sensed that something wasn’t right, that he wasn’t getting the entire picture.

  It was all so much bigger than what the Grigori leader had cared to share.

  Remy reached the top of the ark, jumping from an icy ledge to the side of the craft, and climbing over onto what had once been the deck. Countless millennia of shifting, geological change had done its job on the ship, holding the vessel in its cold, rocky clutches like a prized toy in the mouth of a playful dog.

  There were gaping holes in the surface of the deck, and Remy could feel the tingle of something ancient and magickal wafting up from the darkness below.

  Moving toward one of the holes, he peered down into the ship’s hold. Memories from days long past exploded inside his head, of the ship’s bowels filled to bursting with life of every conceivable size and shape.

  Life that had been deemed worthy to survive the coming storm.

  No real thought went into his next action. The Mother was waiting for him, and he simply lowered himself through the hole and into the waiting darkness below. Using protrusions of rock and ancient, ossified wood, Remy climbed down into the ship’s limitless hold.

  Touching bottom was like being on the ocean floor, not a lick of light to be found. He let the fire of divinity burn brighter from his hand to light the way.

  He walked where they had kept the animals, remembering how it had looked then: the pens, primitive tanks, corrals and stalls, as far as the eye could see, built to hold the myriad varieties of life that the old man and his family had been instructed to save.

  Remiel, whispered the voice of the Mother.

  “Yes,” he said aloud, walking farther into the cavernous belly of the ark.

  Remember the days long past, when the Maker’s world was young.

  As he trudged along, images flooded his mind, rapid-fire pictures across the surface of his brain as the Mother began to show him.

  He saw the world as it had been, young and vibrant, fertile with life. A dark, indigo-skinned people—the Chimerian—made their homes among the rocky hills of the primordial world. They were a beautiful people, their skin the bluish color of dusk.

  Somehow they knew that the Maker did not favor their continued survival, and they begged Him to have mercy on them, but the All Powerful had already made up His mind, already created something to replace them.

  But the Chimerian did not give up hope, continuing to pray, and to make sacrifices in hopes that their Maker would not forsake them, that He would see that they were worthy to live.

  And they believed themselves saved when the emissaries came, living among them. Living like them.

  Teaching them.

  But the emissaries had come only for their own selfish reasons, immersing themselves in the earthly pleasures of food, drink and carnal acts, knowing that it was only a matter of time before the Chimerian were extinct.

  Remy saw the emissaries inside his mind, saw their leader in the midst of revelry as he and his brethren partook of all mortal excesses.

  He saw Sariel and his Grigori.

  And then he saw a Chimerian woman, her belly swollen with life.

  The fallen angel became enraged.

  It cannot be, the Grigori leader ranted, and the woman cowered. Your kind were supposed to be barren.

  And she looked to him with hope in her eyes, hope for her and all her kind, as well as the children to be born of Chimerian women and fallen angels.

  A gift of our union, the beautiful woman with the night-colored skin said to Sariel.

  She reached out, took Sariel’s hand, and placed it on her stomach.

  A gift to show the Maker we are worthy to live.

  A final image was burnt into Remy’s mind: it was of the Chimerian women, clad in hooded cloaks stitched from animal skins, clutching bellies swollen with life.

  They stood upon the rocky hills as the rain fell in torrents, and the waters rose, watching as those deemed worthy to live filed aboard the ark.

  Unworthy to exist.

  Forsaken.

  Remy came away from the sad vision in an area of the ark darker than even the light of the divine could illuminate.

  He knew that she was here, somewhere in the ocean of night, hiding herself away.

  “How?” he asked the darkness. “How did you survive?”

  The feeling inside his head was immediate, like a long, sharp finger slowly pushing into the soft gray matter of his brain, but he did not fight it. Remy let the answers come.

  It was like looking out through dirt-covered windows, the scenes unfolding, desperate to find a place inside his already crowded skull.

  Remy stumbled and fell to the ground, fighting to stay conscious.

  The Chimerian people bobbed upon the waters, one by one taken by the merciless sea. But some survived, the women of the tribe, those who had been touched by the Grigori. Somehow they had been changed by their experiences with the fallen ones, their bodies evolving, making them able to endure the catastrophe.

  The impregnated women clung to the side of the great ark, their bodies enshrouded—protected—by thick cocoons made from magick and sorrow.

  And they survived like that, hiding from those who wished them gone, sleeping through the passage of ages, waiting for a time—a safe time—to emerge.

  Through a thick gauze of webbing Remy watched as a man clad in heavy winter garb, protected from the harshness of the elements, moved toward them.

  Noah.

  Sensing changes in the world, and in him, they had reached out, drawing him to their hiding place. And begging their forgiveness, he pulled them from their womb of shadow.

  Noah at last finding his Chimerian orphans.

  Remy felt the hold on him released, and he peered again into the limitless depths of the darkness, searching for the one who had called to him.

  He got to his feet and moved farther into the nebulous embrace, the light of his hand nearly useless in the supernatural environment.

  “Are you here?” he asked. “Show yourself to me.”

  The Mother responded to Remy’s request; her form, as well as the forms of the other Chimerian survivors, gradually moved into focus.

  It was as if they were lying in a great nest crafted from the stygian gloom, six of them, several still pregnant with the fruit of their union with the emissaries. They appeared to be asleep, but their minds were active.

  Remy could feel them all reaching out to him, attempting to communicate, but one voice remained the loudest.

  The Mother.

  Remiel, she spoke inside his mind.

  He looked down into the nest, and for a moment he saw the love of his life as he had watched her so many times, fast asleep.

  The picture of a sleeping Madeline quickly changed to that of the Chimerian Mother. She appeared smaller than the others, having already borne her young.

  The children that he’d encountered.

  I felt you out there, the Mother whispered wearily. A compassionate consciousness to hear our plea.

  “What would you have me do?” Remy
asked, kneeling down beside the nest.

  Will you speak for us, warrior of Heaven? she asked. When we are at last gone, driven from existence, will you remember us?

  “I’ll help Armaros,” Remy told her. “We’ll continue what Noah began and—”

  Too late for that, she said resignedly. Our time draws near. Tell me that you will remember us for what we were, and not as some blight upon the early land.

  “I’ll help you,” he said, the words leaving his mouth just as the Mother began to scream.

  Remy didn’t know what to do. Reaching down, he took her hand in his. “What’s happening?” he asked.

  It has begun. The end of us . . .

  “What can I do?” he demanded. There had to be something.

  The other women began to moan and writhe, as if held in the grip of some terrible nightmare. The smell of magick was suddenly in his nostrils, and Remy turned in the darkness.

  Something was appearing behind him, a jagged, lightning-bolt tear was ripped in the shroud of shadow that had protected the Chimerian women. Remy sensed the danger at once, rising to his feet and allowing the warrior side of him to bubble to the surface.

  The Grigori spilled from the open wound into the chamber, their eyes gleaming with bloodlust.

  “No!” Remy screamed in the voice of the Messengers, his wings of feathered gold spreading from his back, forming a barrier between them and the Chimerian women.

  And then he felt her touch again, pulling him back. Drawing him down.

  The Mother had brought him into a vision.

  They were at the Maine cottage, standing inside the extra room. Wearing the image of his wife, she attempted to console him.

  “There’s nothing that you can do,” she said, standing before the open window, the wind pulling at her clothes. It had become like night outside, the air electric with the coming storm.

  “Don’t let them do this,” Remy said, unable to keep the tremor of emotion from his voice.

  “We always suspected that it could end this way,” the Mother, wearing the guise of Madeline, said. She reached out and cupped the side of his face.

  “Remember.”

  Then the storm was upon them, and the rain began to fall.