A Deafening Silence In Heaven - Thomas E. Sniegoski Page 0,28

gave it a quick shake. There was a faint, almost beelike buzz, and the metal ball began to glow like a miniature sun, floating in the air above Remy.

“Oh,” she said, mesmerized by the strange sight.

“It will provide me with the light I need,” he said, reaching over to take the scalpel from her.

She watched as Assiel leaned in closer to one of the stomach wounds. He reached up, took hold of the sphere, and moved it down a bit closer; then he placed the tip of the scalpel into the injury.

Linda wasn’t sure if it was a trick of the artificial light, but the surgical tool seemed to become liquid in the angel’s hand, flowing into the opening in Remy’s flesh. She looked up at Assiel to see that his eyes were closed.

“That’s it,” he whispered, then slowly drew back his hand. The scalpel’s end had become a three-fingered prong, and it held what looked to be a bloody piece of bone.

“What is that?” Linda asked, reaching for it.

Assiel pulled it away. “I believe it’s a tooth,” he said. “And I wouldn’t touch it; it’s highly poisonous.”

He set the tooth down on the bed beside him and placed the scalpel in another of Remy’s injuries.

“Did you know Remy . . . Remiel?” Linda asked, wanting to fill the silence.

Assiel’s eyes were once again closed. “I knew of him,” he said, tilting his head slightly to the right and carefully pulling back on the scalpel. “He was a force to be reckoned with . . . someone to fear on the battlefield.”

She laughed sadly. “I can’t really see that, but then again, after watching him fight that thing . . .”

“They say that the war—”

“The war?” she interrupted curiously.

“The war between God and the Morningstar,” Assiel explained. He dropped another tooth on the bed beside him. “They say it changed him.”

“Changed him how?”

Assiel shifted his position to get at the last of the wounds, pulling the floating miniature sun with him.

“They say that he was tired of the violence, and that he hated what Heaven had become. That’s why he came here to Earth.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” she said, desperate to know more about the man she loved, hoping she’d be able to ask him her questions someday.

Assiel removed the last of the poisoned teeth and again used the balm made from the soil of Eden to dress the wounds.

“Is that it?” she asked, as he cleaned the instrument with a cloth from the bag before plucking the glowing sphere from the air. He put both items away and snapped the bag closed.

“If only it were,” he said, his tone grim.

“What’s next?” Linda asked, not sure she really wanted to know.

“The foreign matter has been removed and the wounds cleansed,” he explained. “Physically he should heal . . . but that isn’t what I’m concerned about.”

“What is it, then?” Linda felt her heart begin to hammer.

Assiel reached up and pulled open one of Remy’s eyes. “He’s still alive, but . . . he isn’t here. Remy isn’t here.”

Linda felt as though she might throw up. “What do you mean? I don’t understand.”

“His life essence . . . the divine spark . . . what passes for an angel’s soul . . . It’s gone.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

He exists in a sea of memory, pushed and pulled by the tides of past deeds, of successes and failures. His history fills him up, flowing about and into his being, forcing him to see even if he cares not to remember.

Surrendering to the onslaught, he allows them their victory, and, caught in the undertow of the past, he relives the times that made him what he was.

What he is.

They come at him with such force, showing him, reminding him, and yes, he remembers, and yes, he accepts histories created by his actions—or inactions.

It is exactly as he remembers.

Until it isn’t.

It is a herculean effort, but Remy manages to slow a particular moment in his timeline. No, this isn’t how it happened at all, he recalls clearly and grabs hold of his memory of the events as they transpired.

This is how it was. . . . This is what truly happened.

The Japanese island of Gunkanjima—Battleship Island—where the forbidden children of Nephilim whores and archangels were hidden, only to have been discovered after the brutal murder of an angel general by one of these very sires. Judgment had been called down upon these unwanted by-products of illicit couplings, and Remy remembers—remembers distinctly—how he tried to