So easy not to be human anymore, to no longer feel the agony of his loss.

Madeline is dead.

It happened at the most peculiar times: taking a shower, grocery shopping, walking the dog, trying not to be shot. It was always there, eager to remind him just how much it hurt to lose the love of his life, making him relive the most painful experience of his existence.

Three more shots brought him back to reality, allowing him to forget the gnawing pain in his heart for now. He could hear them moving closer.

Where was his backup?

He looked around his hiding place for something to use as a weapon and found an old crowbar beneath an oil-stained tarp. Remy hefted the heavy piece of metal in his hand. It wasn’t as deadly as a gun, but it would do in a pinch.

And this was most certainly that.

Holding the crowbar ready, he listened for the sounds of his attackers, but they had gone strangely silent. Carefully Remy peered out from behind the crates to see a lone figure standing in the center of the open room, two unmoving bodies at his feet.

“Where the hell have you been?” Remy asked Francis as he stepped out from his hiding place.

“Sorry,” his friend replied, cleaning the blood from a fierce-looking blade with a white handkerchief. “I ran into a few of their buddies outside having a smoke. Always said that smoking was dangerous.”

The bodies of the two fallen angels had already started to burn, their corporeal forms dissolving away to nothing as they ceased to exist. Their time on earth had been their last chance at redemption, and they had failed miserably.

“Learn anything?” Francis asked, sliding the knife into a concealed pocket on the inside of his gray suit jacket.

A pain-wracked moan filled the air, and Remy looked to see that Eddie was somehow still alive, although clearly not for long. He had propped himself against the corrugated metal wall, his breath coming in short, labored gasps. Plumes of smoke, like those from the head of an extinguished match, drifted from the bullet holes in the front of his dirty T-shirt.

“Won’t be long now,” Francis said, adjusting his black horn-rimmed glasses, the faint light of the warehouse glinting off the top of his bald head.

Remy knelt beside the Denizen, who seemed to be staring off into space, perhaps taking a good long look at the oblivion that awaited him.

“Did you hear that, Eddie?” Remy asked him. “It won’t be long now.”

Eddie turned his head slightly and looked into Remy’s eyes.

“But there might still be a chance for you,” Remy continued. “Do something right before it’s over. Tell me where he is… the angel whose eyes you tried to sell me… What did you do to him?”

“Fucking Seraphim,” Eddie spat, then gasped as a spasm of pain wracked his body.

“Maybe we need the knife?” Francis suggested, pulling open his jacket to expose the hilt of the blade peeking from the top of the pocket.

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” Remy said.

“If you say so.” Francis shrugged.

“Can you feel it, Eddie?” Remy asked calmly. “That’s oblivion barreling down the tracks to meet you. No more chances, pal. You’re done, unless…”

The smoke from the bullet holes was thicker and carried with it the smell of rotting meat. Eddie tried weakly to staunch the flow with his good hand, but the effort was futile.

“I wanted… wanted to go home… to Heaven; I really did,” Eddie began, his voice quavering. “It gets inside you… Hell does, makes it so you never forget.” He shook his head quickly. “I never forgot… How can you—something like that?”

Remy reached out, gripping the fallen angel’s shoulder. The leather of his jacket was hot. “Where is he, Eddie?”

“He said he couldn’t stand it anymore… wanted to die. Wanted to pay for his sins.”

The words ended in an awful scream as flames shot from the dying angel’s wounds, expanding across his torso, up his chest, and down his legs. Remy managed to push himself away from the Denizen as, with a final burst of strength, he surged upward, flailing in the unnatural, hungry fire.

Remy caught Francis pulling a gun from another pocket. “No,” he said, his eyes on the dying former creature of Heaven.

Eddie made it halfway across the warehouse before dropping to his knees. His body burned with a pulsing orange glow, the shape within the fire becoming less and less human. Then slowly he raised what remained of an arm, pointing to an area of darkness at the far end of the warehouse before succumbing to the final death, his body pitching forward, nothing more than orange embers burning upon the floor. And within moments those too were gone, leaving behind nothing to show that the fallen angel had ever existed.

“Stubborn prick,” Francis growled. “You’d think that after nearly an eternity in Tartarus they’d be ready to leave this evil shit behind them.”

The mention of Hell’s prison sent an icicle of dread up and down Remy’s spine. “You heard him,” he said, approaching the spot where Eddie had fallen. “It gets inside you. It changes you, makes it so you can’t do the right thing.”

“But some do,” Francis reminded him.

“Yeah, some do.”

Remy continued toward the back of the warehouse and peered into the darkness. There were more crates and some scaffolding, but nothing of any significance that he could see.

“Wonder what they’d pay out there for my eyes,” he heard Francis say.

Remy turned to see his friend holding the cooler. He had fished out one of the angel eyes and was looking at it. “Mine are as nice as this—maybe nicer.”

“But you’re not pure,” Remy told him.

“Not right now, but I’m working on it,” Francis said as he dropped the eye back into the fog created by the dry ice.

Francis had once been one of the Lord’s most powerful Guardian angels, but even the greatest sometimes make mistakes. In the beginning, he had sided with Lucifer during the rebellion, but soon saw the error of his ways. He threw himself on the mercy of the Creator, begging his master’s forgiveness. But the Lord does not forget slights easily and forgives them even less so. Still, He gave the former Guardian angel a special job—custodian of one of the many gateways between Hell and Earth.

Not the nicest of jobs, but better than a stint in Tartarus, and Francis made the best of it, even using some of the deadlier skills he’d learned from his time in the nether regions to become a highly paid assassin.

Yeah, he’s working real hard on being pure.

“I think I found something,” Remy called to his friend.

He wasn’t sure exactly what, but he could feel the hair on his arms and at the back of his neck stand on end as he moved closer to a particular area. The shadows seemed thicker there, almost palpable.

“It’s a doorway,” Francis said, coming up beside him and sticking his hand inside the thick, inky blackness. “There’s another room beyond it.”

“Must be where my two friends back there came from,” Remy said. He too stuck a hand into the shadows. The darkness was cold and damp, like the bleakest November night.

“Angel magick,” Francis observed. “Ain’t it something?”

Angel magick had been created by the Watchers, the first of the angelic hosts to be banished to Earth. Even though fallen angels were stronger and more durable than the average human, they were nothing compared to a full-fledged angel. Denizens used the magick as well as weapons chiseled from the black stone walls of Tartarus and smuggled out by parolees to protect their illegal dealings from angels and humans alike.

Use of either was considered a sin against God, but that didn’t stop the Denizens.

“I think Eddie answered my question as he died,” Remy said.

“Wouldn’t be the first Denizen to see the light as their own was being permanently extinguished. So are we going in?”