to the Son of the Morning during the Great War.
But the Morningstar had returned, taking Tartarus and the world upon which it sat and shaping it into a kingdom he could call his own. A sprawling city to rival Heaven’s golden spires.
It was to be called Pandemonium.
That was what Remy saw.
“Hell’s city . . .” A sharply angled metropolis that seemed to have been chiseled from polished black stone. “Pandemonium was there.”
The old man smiled his sad smile, his lips cracking and starting to bleed. “Well, of course it was. As was the Garden of Eden. How else could Heaven be made whole?”
“Unification,” Remy said aloud, as the images of the Golden City, the Garden, and Pandemonium beginning to merge—to come together as one—exploded in his mind. “I see it.”
But then there came a sensation of dread. He could feel it building the deepest, darkest corners of this memory, a pressure intensifying, growing to critical mass before . . .
There were flashes of utter devastation; buildings composed of darkness and light crumbling toward one another, a jungle as old as reality burning, all plummeting from the sky to the earth below.
Remy recoiled, trying to push back the memories, afraid that they would most certainly be the death of him.
“Did you see?” the Fossil asked him.
“I saw the end, the death throes of Paradise.”
“And the cause?”
There were images, but unformed. “Nothing yet,” he said, feeling warmth upon his face and reaching up to find blood trickling from his nose.
“Certain memories can be dangerous things,” the Fossil counseled.
Remy wiped his nose with the sleeve of his heavy coat.
“I can’t avoid them forever.”
“No, you can’t.”
Remy reached into his pocket to find something to stifle the flow of blood and pulled out a filthy handkerchief. As he stared at the stained piece of cloth, that niggling sense of something dancing on the periphery of his brain was there again.
Something was wrapped in the handkerchief.
“What have you got there?” the Fossil asked.
Within the crusty folds, Remy found an old key. Images flashed again inside his skull. He saw a rounded, heavy wooden door, a broken neon sign hanging above it. He could make out some of the letters—M, T, H, S.
“Do you know what it’s for?” the Fossil asked him.
“A door,” Remy replied. “A door that I need to find.”
• • •
The Bone Master known to his clan as Ripper of Souls loomed above his latest assignment, watching her die.
She had once been part of a powerful coven of witches, but a greed for power had gotten the best of her and she’d stolen the coven’s Book of Shadows—the source of their power—to sell to the highest bidder.
The leader of the coven had not appreciated the betrayal and had contracted the Bone Masters to deal with it.
Ripper of Souls had little difficulty in locating the thief, whose name was Amanda Blite. Her mother, who was suffering from a rare form of bone cancer, had recently moved into a very exclusive, very expensive hospital for the terminally ill. All the Bone Master had to do was stake out the hospital and wait for the inevitable visit by the caring daughter.
It was all too easy, almost as if she wanted to die.
Standing above his prey, he stroked his weapon as he watched the light of life go out of her eyes. Blite had tried to fight back, but her magickal power had little effect once the first of his tainted bullets entered her flesh.
What was that saying that humanity used to reward a valiant yet fruitless trouble? An A for effort? Yes, that was what he would give this target.
An A for effort.
The bones of his weapon vibrated beneath each of his affectionate strokes, pleased that yet another victim had fallen to its venom.
More, the weapon thought, excited for yet another kill.
The sound of something falling to the floor triggered an instantaneous reaction in the assassin. Ripper of Souls spun around, aiming the head of the animal skeleton that he held in his hands. But he did not will the weapon to fire, for it was not a threat at all.
The old woman lay on the hospital bed, reaching for the device that would sound an alarm and bring her aide. However, Ripper had already disabled it.
The dying woman locked eyes with the assassin, and he believed that if she had the ability to slay with a glance, he would most assuredly have suffered grievously.
A humorous thought crossed his mind at that very instant. What if she