A Deafening Silence In Heaven - Thomas E. Sniegoski Page 0,94

with him. The demon dog dropped the mangled body at Remy’s feet.

“Found this guy spying on you and decided to surprise him.”

“Surprise,” Remy said aloud, looking down at the twisted angel’s corpse. This one had strange circular markings on its forehead and cheeks.

“It’s a scout,” Azza said. “Michael and the Filthies are probably not too far away. When this one doesn’t report back . . .”

“They’ll be on our tails,” Remy finished.

“Yes,” Azza responded.

“Then we should probably get going.” Remy looked at the group, and they all nodded their agreement. Even Baarabus.

“And where is it that we’re going?” Remy asked again.

“To find a door,” the Nomad said, turning away and leading them beneath the branches of the skeletal trees. “A door to fit your key.”

• • •

They’d been walking for hours when Remy began to see the fatigue in Samson’s children: the way they walked, the dullness that had appeared in their eyes. They may have been super strong, but they were still human, and humans needed to rest.

He’d convinced Azza to stop for a while, and they’d found a place to set up camp under the remains of a stone bridge. Remy guessed that at one time a river or stream had run beneath it, but now there was just dirt and rock. He also found it strange how the groups had segregated themselves—the Nomads clumped together on one side of the camp, Samson’s children on the other side. Even the old man sat off by himself, tending to the scabs that grew like moss upon his body.

Remy caught Leila’s eye, and she quickly looked away, which immediately drew him to her.

“Are you guys all right?” he asked as he approached her. They were eating some provisions that looked like tree bark, boiling some water that they’d found in an overturned light fixture. Remy had no recollection of any recent rain, but then again, he’d been himself for only a short while.

“We’re good,” she answered, eyes darting to her brothers, who watched her from their fire. They didn’t appear all that thrilled that Remy was talking to one of them. “Just not very happy with you at the moment.”

“With me? What did I do now?”

“It’s what you didn’t do,” she corrected. “They think you didn’t do enough to save Dante.”

“I had no idea what I was doing in that pit,” Remy confessed. “They’re probably right.”

“They’ve seen what you can do,” she told him. “It was like you were holding back.”

“Maybe I was. I had no idea what happened to the power of the Seraphim inside me.”

Leila seemed confused at first, but then remembered. “Right, you’re not you.”

“I did what I could,” Remy said. “If it wasn’t enough . . .”

“They’ll get over it,” she interrupted. “Isn’t like this is the first time we’ve lost a brother.”

Remy could feel the others’ icy glares on him. “You should get back to them.” He turned to leave.

“You might want to figure it all out,” Leila called after him.

He turned to face her.

“Figure it out?”

“You know, what we’re supposed to do when we get there, wherever there is.” And without waiting for a reply, she returned to her brothers’ fire.

Remy watched her for a few minutes, thinking about her words, then walked toward the Nomads where they sat together, gazing up into the Heavens, or at least whatever remained up there.

“What can we do for you, Remiel?” Azza asked without turning around.

“I need you to tell me what I don’t know.”

“But you do know,” the Nomad leader said. He stood and slowly turned, the others following suit. “It will take some time, but the knowledge is there, waiting to be used.”

“I think it would be nice if I could use it now.”

“After the failure of Unification,” Azza began, “we believed that the end of our kind—that the end of all things—was inevitable.” He stared at Remy with eyes that were suddenly alive with power.

Remy felt the sigils on his body begin to tingle and burn, and he ripped open his shirt to see them raised like welts on his flesh. “What are you doing?”

The Nomads opened their robes then, exposing similar tattoos on their own pale flesh.

“We are sharing,” Azza said. “Showing you that the answers are there, that you need only to be patient—the true plan will be revealed.”

Darkness welled up from their bodies, forming a cloud of writhing black that drifted above Remy’s head.

“You were that answer for us, Remiel.”

The cloud fell, engulfing Remy’s face. He tried to scream, but his