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"I know where you are," Remy said, feeling his pulse quicken and his heart begin to race. He removed one of the yellowed Polaroids and stared at it.
"I know."
He shoved the picture into his coat pocket, grabbed the briefcase from the desk, and left the office. He would first hook up with Francis and Lazarus to find a safe place to store the scrolls, and then they would…
Remy froze as he turned the corner to the long corridor that would lead him back to the tu
Listening.
Where before he'd heard the cry of a single lab animal, now he was hearing the cries of what sounded like hundreds. He listened to their frenzied voices, trying to decipher the cause of their panic.
Slowly, he began to walk down the hall, toward the laboratory door. He was surprised to see that it was open, and that someone was standing in the center of the room.
Somebody he knew. Somebody he would not have expected to see here in a million years, but then again, a few days ago he would never have expected to see him in his office either.
The angel's name was Galgaliel, and once he was a brother to Remy.
"Why are you here, Seraphim?" Remy asked the angel, who was clad entirely in black, his pale complexion almost corpselike in its appearance.
Galgaliel had been staring at the caged animals, and he slowly turned his attention toward Remy. "I think you have found something that we've been looking for," the angel said, the look in his pitch-black eyes more chilling than the inhospitable fall weather outside, as more pieces of the enormous puzzle began to drop into place with foreboding precision.
Remy turned to head toward the tu
The problem was getting that opportunity.
Galgaliel appeared in front of him, wings of speckled brown spread wide, blocking his way before he was even aware that the angel had left the laboratory. He lashed out, a savage blow hurling Remy backward.
"Give that to me!" the Seraphim demanded, pointing to the briefcase.
Head ringing, feeling the pulse of his heart in his swelling lip, Remy got to his feet, but Galgaliel was there before he could recover. The angel grabbed hold of the briefcase, attempting to wrest it from his hands, but Remy held on tightly.
"Do you truly understand what you're doing?" he asked, struggling to hold on to the case. "Whose wrath you will incur?"
Galgaliel hit him again, and he lost his grip on the briefcase as he was propelled back into the laboratory.
The animals were berserk, the sounds of their howls and screeches nearly deafening in the confined space, the stink of their fear nauseating.
Remy climbed to his feet as he watched the Seraphim bending down to pick something up from the ground where it had fallen.
The beach house photograph.
His hand quickly checked his pocket and found it empty.
Galgaliel stared at the frozen image, the corners of his mouth twitching in what could have been an attempt at a smile, before sliding the photograph into a side pocket on the briefcase.
Remy's thoughts hummed with the possibilities of what he could do to the Seraphim, and the likelihood of failure, when Galgaliel turned his attention toward the cages.
"This is the one who wishes you harm," the Seraphim said, speaking in the tongue of the wild so that all would understand. "The one that wishes to cut your flesh and open your bellies."
The cages rattled with the ferocity of the animals' panic.
"That is, unless you harm him first."
And with his final words, Galgaliel flapped his majestic wings, stirring a moaning wind as tendrils of crackling angelic energy coursed from his fingertips to caress the cages.
One after another, the doors exploded open and the animals once confined within bounded toward Remy.
Eyes blinded with madness and malice.
Chapter thirteen
Galgaliel left the lab, the door slamming closed behind him with a deafening finality as the monkeys swarmed.
They were insane, eyes wild, teeth bared, grayish-colored fur puffed up with aggression, making strange barking sounds as they charged, slapping at the ground with elongated fingers.
Remy lifted his arm to shield himself from their assault. They bounced off his body, weighing much more than he would have believed. It was like being hit with multiple bags of wet laundry.
Knocked backward by the shrieking mass, Remy slammed against a table in the far corner of the room. Beakers tumbled over, rolling to the edge and off into oblivion to crash upon the floor. He spun around, looking for something — anything — to defend himself with. There was a metal folding chair leaning against the wall, and he grabbed it, placing it out in front of himself as a sort of shield. All he needed now was a whip.
But the chair wasn't enough.
Where there had been only monkeys before, now he was faced with a wave of furious animal life: rats, mice, rabbits, pigeons, and cats had formed a seething wave, with the sole focus of doing him harm.
Their cries were deafening; a miasma of shrieks, snorts, and wails. Brandishing the chair to keep them at bay, he tried to speak to them, to appeal to an area of their small brains not inflamed by the words of the renegade Seraphim, but they wouldn't listen — couldn't listen — their simple thought processes stuck on the response of survival.
To remain alive, they had to kill him.
The monkeys saw their moment, taking hold of his makeshift weapon, pulling it from his grasp, and tossing it away.
And then they were upon him.
Remy struggled to remain standing as he was engulfed by the swarm; a writhing mass of fur and claws, driven by fear and hate, biting, clawing, and ripping at his beleaguered form. But the weight of the assault was too great, and he stumbled back, his heels crushing the tiny bodies of those that scurried excitedly below his feet. The pigeons dove for his eyes, pointed beaks darting forward to peck at the soft flesh of his face. Remy waved his arms, one of his hands reaching out to wrap around a bird's neck, squeezing it with all his might, feeling the hollow bones beneath the thin layer of feathers and flesh snap and pop within his grasp. The monkeys screeched all the louder as he threw the broken yet still twitching body to the floor.
But no matter how many he disabled, there were ten more to take their places.
Finally, he lost his footing on the bodies and blood of the rodents, his feet sliding out from beneath him as he fell backward to the cold linoleum floor. He rolled onto his side, curling up into a ball, attempting to protect his face. Remy didn't know how much more of this he could take. His entire body was bleeding; deep scratches and bites weeping freely, the scent and taste of his blood further exciting the fury of the attacking menagerie.
Remy didn't want to hurt the poor beasts, feeling a certain amount of sympathy toward their pitiful existence, but at that moment his options were severely limited.
He could either lie there, his body gradually being ripped to pieces, and in the meantime the scrolls were being opened, readying the apocalypse, or…
Or he could again awaken his angelic nature.
It was like opening a Pandora's box; he knew it would be like this since he'd summoned his i
Something forced its way beneath his hand, sinking its teeth into the flesh of his neck.
But what choice do I have?
Remy delved deep within himself, like plunging from high rocks into the freezing embrace of a furious ocean. But he didn't have far to go. The power was there, waiting for him like an addiction.