Mean Streets

Across the kitchen was a swinging door, and he went through into a corridor. There was a flight of stairs leading up to the next level on his right, and a short hallway that led to the rectory's main office. He checked out the office next. All he found was an old grime-covered desk and a broken wooden chair.

Remy returned to the stairs and climbed to the next floor. He stood on the landing, shining his light across closed doors to rooms that would have once housed the priests of the Saint Mathias parish. There was a strong, musty smell of dampness on the second floor—and something else.

As Remy approached the first door, he tried to convince himself that in a building this old, and in such disrepair, the offending smell could have come from a number of sources: a dead mouse or rat, maybe even a pigeon.

He turned the old-fashioned metal knob. The first door swung open. A rusty box spring lay on the floor in the room's center. There was a clean spot on the yellowed wallpaper where a crucifix had once hung.

At the next door, the smell was stronger, and Remy prepared himself. He opened the door and found a rat, its withered carcass caught in a trap. He let the beam of light linger on the desiccated rodent corpse, surprised at the amount of stink that still emanated from the remains.

The third room proved to be the charm. This knob was warm to the touch, but he barely noticed as he swung the creaking door wide, moving the beam of his light around the nearly empty room.

Nearly empty. At first he thought it was a sleeping bag, the encampment of some vagrant who found shelter from the harsh New England cold. But then he realized otherwise.

Remy entered the room, his light trained upon the unmoving shape on the bedroom floor. It took him a moment to process what it was that he was looking at. It was a body, wrapped up in strips of heavy cloth like a mummy. Only the face was left exposed.

A face that Remy knew.

He held the light on Noah's face. Somebody had cleaned him up, washing the dried blood from his battered face and white beard.

Preparing him for burial.

Around the old man's body, somebody had dropped slides, as if in some sort of tribute, pictures of all the animal species the old man had saved escorting him on his way to the afterlife.

The sudden sound of a floorboard creaking behind him caused him to spin around, his flashlight beam searching out the source. But he found only an empty doorway, the door slowly closing on its own.

The ringing of his cell nearly gave him a heart attack.

He lowered his flashlight and fished the phone from his pocket. It was Francis.

That was when the creatures chose to make their move. There were three of them. Their pale flesh glowed translucently in the darkness of the room as they emerged from the shadows. They were lightning quick, swatting his cell from his hand. Remy could hear the faint voice of Francis, calling out his name as the phone slid across the floor.

Remy opened his mouth to try and communicate, to experiment with the theory that perhaps these creatures—these Chimerian, which he was pretty convinced they were—were not as threatening as Sariel had painted them to be.

But he didn't get the chance. Their strikes against him were savage, relentless, driving him to the floor beside the wrapped corpse of Noah. Just as he was about to call on the destructive forces that resided within him, he felt a taloned hand grip his hair. Savagely, the creature slammed his head back against the hardwood floor.

And as the flood of darkness rushed in to drag Remy down, he heard a voice cry out.

"No, do not harm this one," it said. "He isn't one of them."

A mysterious voice that saved his life.

TWELVE

I have something to show you, said the whispering voice, sounding very much like his Madeline, but he knew that it wasn't.

Something… someone was attempting to communicate with him, to show him something of great importance. All he had to do was accept the offer.

"Show me," Remy said aloud, suddenly finding himself awake.

At once he realized that he was no longer in the dusty old room of the Saint Mathias rectory.

There was cold stone beneath him, numbing his human flesh with its freezing temperature. Remy climbed to his feet, squinting in the darkness. He did not want to do it, but no longer in possession of his flashlight, he had no real alternative. Carefully he called upon the power of the divine once more, igniting his hand with the fires of Heaven.

In the illumination of its golden flame, he found that he was in some sort of vast underground chamber, its walls covered in thick glacial ice.

"Are you cold?" asked a voice from somewhere close by.

Remy directed the light of his hand toward an outcropping of jagged rock. A figure wrapped in a blanket sat on the ground, leaning back against a wall of ancient stone.

"You're welcome to share my blanket," he offered.