“Answers, Remiel,” Suroth stated. “The questions we had carried since the close of the war were suddenly answered.”

Another glance in the sideview showed that the Hellion was practically on top of them. It was squatting down now, tensing, ready to pounce.

Remy spun around, facing the creature as it leapt.

“Get down,” he screamed, pushing both Madach and Byleth out of the beast’s path.

The creature soared over their heads to land gracefully in front of the Nomad leader. The other two beasts slunk out from the other side of the van to join their brother.

The Nomad didn’t even flinch.

Suroth extended his hand, and Remy watched in awe as the Hellions cowered. Practically on their bellies, the ferocious beasts crawled toward the Nomad leader.

Something told Remy that things were about to become even more interesting.

“You brought them here?” Remy asked, shock and horror evident in his tone.

“Remarkable beasts,” Suroth said, lowering his hand to allow one of the Hellions to sniff at his fingertips. A bruise-colored tongue extended from its skull-like mouth to lick the offered appendage. “And exactly what was necessary to find the weapons of change. It took far less time than you would imagine training them, deceptively intelligent and so very eager to please.”

Remy didn’t know what to say.

“Sounds like another creation of the Almighty, doesn’t it, brother?” Suroth chided.

“You trained them,” Remy said, the gears turning and grinding inside his fevered brain. “You trained them to find the weapons.”

“We trained them to find the tools of change,” Suroth added. “And with them in our possession, the next phase of our plans can begin.”

“Why do I have a sick feeling that I don’t even want to know what that means?” he asked the Nomad.

“Know that it is all for the best,” Suroth said, “and that this time, the true victor will reign supreme in Heaven.”

It was as if all sound had been bleached from the air.

Remy’s thoughts raced at the speed of light, all the pieces of the puzzle trying desperately to come together. What did the Nomad leader mean exactly—the true victor will reign supreme in Heaven? He didn’t like the sound of that in the least.

The Hellions jumped to their feet with a grumble, the Nomads advancing toward them.

“Give them to us,” Suroth demanded.

The idea was certainly tempting. To be free of the weapons—of the crushing responsibility. For a moment it actually sounded like a pretty good plan.

Until he regained his sanity.

The Pitiless were weapons imbued with the power of Heaven’s greatest angel, crafted especially for the Morningstar in his bid to challenge the power of God, weapons that never had been used in the Great War, weapons that fell to Earth in the form of divine inspiration, spurring craftsmen to create these ultimate weapons—these precision instruments of killing.

These Pitiless daggers.

Yep, it certainly would be easy to hand them over to the Nomads, to make them somebody else’s problem, but much to his chagrin, Remy just didn’t work that way.

“No,” he said flatly.

Suroth recoiled.

“Something isn’t right here, and I’m not about to hand these bad boys over to you until I feel one hundred percent safe in doing so.”

The Nomads said nothing, their heavy robes billowing in a nonexistent wind, shimmering with all the colors of the rainbow, and some that were not.

“What are we going to do now?” Madach asked in a nervous whisper, his eyes still riveted to those blocking their path.

“We drive around them,” Remy said, starting to move to the back of the van. “I need to know more, lots more, before…”

He was interrupted by Denizens running down the alleyway, stragglers from the slaughter that had occurred inside Byleth’s garage.

Remy noticed the guns that they were carrying and the smile on Byleth’s face, just before it all went to hell.

It was like something out of the Wild West, the fallen angels coming to the defense of their boss… of their Satan. Bullets fired from pistols and sprayed from semiautomatic machine guns tore into the Nomads and their Hellish pets.

From their reaction, Remy knew that the ammunition was something special, something likely brought over from the plains of Hell. Man-made bullets would never have had this kind of effect on beings from Heaven.

The Nomads stumbled back, the bullets hitting their wonderful robes in small explosions of darkness. The Hellions squatted at their side, flinching from every bullet hit, waiting obediently for their master’s commands.

And then Remy sensed it, the hair on the back of his neck standing on end as the air became suddenly charged with an unearthly power. He reached out and grabbed Madach by the shirt, dragging him up the alleyway, toward a green metal Dumpster. That would have to do.

Bolts of crackling-white-hot energy seemingly pulled down from the Heavens erupted from the Nomads’ outstretched hands, forming a single bolt of jagged energy that skewered the front of the van with the most destructive of results.

The van flew into pieces, the vehicle torn asunder by the energy that now coursed through it. Singeing slivers of metal, plastic, and glass whizzed through the air, projectiles of death. Remy listend to the sounds of the shrapnel striking the Dumpster, and the screams of Byleth’s Denizens as they were cut to shreds by the razor-sharp debris.

The gunfire was silenced, and Remy peeked out from behind his cover.

“It could have been so easy,” Suroth droned, strolling through the smoldering pieces of twisted metal that now littered the alley floor. “But to be expected. Change is often so difficult.”

“They’re dead, aren’t they?” Madach said to Remy, gasping for breath.

The fallen was right; the bodies of Byleth’s soldiers lay bloody and torn.

But Byleth was still standing. Chunks of glass and pieces of the van stuck out of his body, making it look as though he was wearing some bizarre suit of armor. He had found the axe again, drawing strength from the powerful weapon to remain standing.

“Come at me, then,” he growled, blood dripping down from his mouth in a slimy trail. He spun the axe in his hands, swaying from side to side. “I’ve killed your kind before and am not afraid to do so again.”

Remy and Madach watched as some of the Nomads drifted about the wreckage of the van, retrieving the yellow transport cases. He felt Madach tense beside him and reached out to grab hold of his arm.

“But we can’t…”

“That’s right,” Remy agreed, turning his attention back to Byleth’s fate.

“It saddens me that you could not be made to listen to reason,” Suroth said to Byleth.

The Hellions stalked toward the Satan, stopping as he swung the axe at them.

“I’ve lost everything that’s ever mattered to me,” he grunted, stumbling toward the Hell beasts, swinging the axe in a wide arc that almost caused him to lose his balance. “And I’ll be twice damned if I lose this as well.”

The Nomads dropped the battered yellow cases at their master’s feet. One of them knelt down, opening a case and rummaging around inside. He carefully removed a pistol and handed it to his master. Even in the faint light of the darkened alleyway, it glistened like the most valuable thing in all the world.

Suroth admired the weapon, hefting the weight of it in his hand.

“The humans certainly do have their talents,” the angel said, pointing the weapon at a startled-looking Byleth.

“At least your suffering will be at an end,” the Nomad leader said as he pulled the trigger, firing a single shot like a clap of thunder into Byleth’s forehead. The Satan flipped backward to the ground, hands still clutching the body of the battle-axe.

The Nomads quickly moved to retrieve the weapon from his corpse as the Hellions darted forward and began to feed upon the bodies that littered the alley.