Remy didn’t answer. Instead, he took a deep breath and stepped forward, immersing himself completely in the fluid darkness.

Though brief, the journey through the darkness made Remy think of every bad thing he had ever done, the ebony wetness seeping in through his pores, drawing out the poison, reminding him of how devastated—lost—he’d felt since the passing of his wife.

“Well, that was certainly pleasant,” Francis said, brushing traces of clinging dark matter from the sleeves of his suit jacket. He adjusted his glasses, a nervous habit, and looked about at their surroundings.

Remy tried to shake off the hungry sadness, but there was little else to occupy his thoughts these days.

Madeline is dead.

“You all right?” Francis was looking at him, the feeling behind the question emphasized by the intensity of his gaze.

“Yeah,” Remy lied, as he stepped away from the thick patch of shadow. “Where do you think we are?”

Francis shrugged. “Not far from where we started,” he said.

They were in a corridor that turned sharply to the right in front of them. To keep his thoughts at bay, Remy began to walk.

“Let’s see what we’ve got down here.”

He studied the walls as he went. The entire structure appeared to be made from shadow—from the darkness itself. An eerie inner light, a sort of bioluminescence, dimly illuminated their way from behind the black walls.

The hallway led to a larger room, empty but for a single table, upon which lay the body of an angel. A small cart, its surface littered with bloodstained surgical instruments, was positioned nearby.

Remy could only stare.

Francis had been the first to hear the rumor, a whispering among the unnatural community that the Denizens had acquired a full-fledged angel, and that its most holy body, every inch of it—a thing of great power—was for sale. He’d asked Remy to help him investigate, and the more they poked around—the more rocks and rotted logs they flipped—the more they realized that the disturbing rumor was indeed true.

And here it was, manifested in its true form, feathered wings splayed out beneath its naked, broken body. The angel’s flesh had been cut, strips of its skin peeled away to reveal the pink musculature beneath. Most of its hair had been shaved down to the scalp. Its face was a gory mask, two empty black sockets where its eyes had been. The chest had been cut open and the rib cage exposed—an angel’s heart was worth an absolute fortune.

Slowly Remy approached, fighting back a wave of revulsion. He did not recognize the angel, or the host from which it had come.

“Do you know him?” he asked Francis, unable to take his eyes from the disturbing vision before him—like some perverted version of dissection for a high school biology class, a creature of Heaven instead of a fetal pig.

Francis remained strangely quiet as he approached the surgical cart and picked up a plastic container. With a finger he flipped off the lid and reached inside. He pulled out what appeared to be a bloody piece of cloth, but what Remy quickly realized was a large section of flesh flayed from the angel’s body.

“He was a Nomad,” Francis said, holding the skin in the open palm of one hand, tracing the black tattoo in its center with a finger.

Remy leaned in closer to look and saw that Francis was correct. There was no mistaking the mark worn by the sect of warrior angels that had abandoned their violent ways after the Great War, departing Heaven, disillusioned, very much like himself. In the most archaic version of angelic script, the mark meant “waiting between Heaven and Hell.” What the Nomads were waiting for was the real question.

“How could he have ended up like this?” Remy asked, more than disturbed by the sight of something once so magnificent, now so horribly ugly.

“You actually have to ask that?” Francis questioned. “The war screwed a lot of us up. It isn’t easy to forget what some of us did back then.”

Remy had known it was a stupid question as soon as it had left his lips. He knew he wasn’t the only one to turn his back on Heaven. It was just so very rare that he encountered any other expatriates—they tended to keep to themselves.

“He didn’t deserve this,” Remy said as he reached out to place a hand on the angel’s shoulder. The flesh was cold beneath his fingertips, like the feel of a marble altar.

With a wet, sucking gasp, the angel rose to a sitting position, his wings flapping spastically as he took hold of Remy’s shoulders in a trembling grip. Remy stared in awe, unable to believe that something so horribly mangled could still be alive.

“The sins live on,” the angel gasped, the stink of rot exuding from his lacerated flesh. “They think it done… the war, but they deceive themselves, and the deceivers live on, the black secret of their purpose clutched to their breast.”

The angel’s head lolled upon his shoulders, his body wracked with spasms of excruciating pain.

“I could bear the deceit no longer… My secret sin consumes me… ”

The final words left the angel’s mouth in a gurgling wheeze, and he began to convulse. Flapping wildly, his damaged wings lifted him from the table but were not strong enough to support him. His damaged body crashed into the smaller table, spilling the bloody instruments. He lay atop the tools that had been used to dissect him, trembling and gasping for air.

“I’ve seen enough,” Francis said coldly. He dropped the angel’s flesh and removed a pistol from the holster beneath his arm. “Don’t have any idea what he’s talking about, secret sin and all, but nothing deserves to suffer like this.”

Remy blocked his companion’s way.

“What are you doing?” Francis asked, brandishing the weapon.

“I think we can do this another way.”

The angel was crying tears of blood, streaks of crimson draining from the blackness of his barren eye sockets.

“We think ourselves so smart… so clever, but it will be our ruin, and the ruin of all that we hold dear,” the injured creature of Heaven whispered as it writhed in pain upon the floor. “We should be punished… Oh, yes, we deserve so much more than this.”

“What’s he talking about?” Francis asked. He still had the gun in his hand.

“I don’t know, and I don’t think we’d get a straight answer if we asked.” Remy couldn’t wrap his brain around what he was seeing. This pathetic creature appeared to be here by choice. He was not bound or restrained in any way. He was going to let the Denizens have him—cut him up and sell his parts to the highest bidder.

“He’s in a lot of pain.”

“Then let me stop it,” Francis insisted.

Remy knew that the sight of the dying angel was getting to his friend—they were not used to seeing beings of such power in a state like this.

“Let me put him down. It’ll be quick and relatively painless… less painful than what he’s going through now anyway.”

Remy shook his head. “It is ugly, but after going through all this”—he gestured about the room, at the operating table, the bloody surgical instruments strewn upon the floor—“he deserves better than that.”

The angel had curled himself into a tight ball, his body trembling so severely that it practically blurred the sight of him.

Francis sighed. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to help him end it himself,” Remy explained. “I’m going to convince him to let go of his guilt… his pain, and return to the Source.”

How many times since Madeline’s passing had he thought of doing that very same thing? To abandon it all, to will himself and all that defined him into nothingness. To return to the energies that shaped the universe and all it entails.

“What makes you think he’s going to listen?” Francis asked.

“I don’t know if he will, but I have to try.” Remy stared at the pathetic sight shaking upon the floor. “I can’t imagine that whatever he’s done, he hasn’t at this point paid for it a hundred times over.”