Mean Streets

"Sariel tried to make me talk," Armaros explained defiantly. "But I wouldn't tell him." He shook his head from side to side. "I thought I would die, but still I kept their secret. He wanted to know about this place, but I held my tongue."

Remy was holding the children now, each of them completely comfortable with the other.

"How did you escape?" he asked.

"There are some among them-the Grigori-that feel as I do. They let me go so that I could try and get the children to safety before…"

Remy felt it inside his head, like fingers gently running across the surface of his brain. It wasn't an entirely unpleasant sensation.

Angel of Heaven, said the voice like a gentle summer breeze tickling inside his ear. I have something to show you.

Armaros must have heard it as well, because he smiled.

"She wants to talk with you," the fallen angel said. He opened his arms, calling the children to him. "Go to her." "Who?" Remy asked, feeling a psychic tug upon him, turning in the darkness like the needle of a compass, pointed toward where he needed to go.

"The Mother," Armaros said.

There wasn't a moment's hesitation; this was what he had been waiting for. Remy headed off into the vast underground cave system.

She was calling to him.

The Mother was calling, and he had no choice but to answer.

THIRTEEN

It felt as though he'd been walking for days, but he knew that wasn't the case. The chamber went on, and on, up and over hills of ice older than recorded history, the only source of illumination being the divine fire that burned around his hand.

Dripping stalactites, like the teeth of a giant beast, hung over his head as he slid down from the other side of a black rock wall and onto a path that seemed to be taking him even deeper into the cavernous surroundings.

At first he had not the slightest idea what it was that loomed out of the darkness in front of them, believing it to be another enormous wall of rock and ice, an obstruction that could very well prevent him from going any farther.

Remy lifted his burning hand, staring at the obstruction, and realized that he was looking at something else altogether.

That he had reached his destination.

Remy nodded in satisfaction, taking it all in, absorbing the sight of the ancient craft that appeared to have become part of its rocky underground surroundings.

It must've been swallowed up by changes in the Earth's surface. Pulled farther and farther beneath the ground as time passed, he thought as he looked upon what was left of the ark.

The remains of Noah's ark.

Over the passage of time the wood had ossified, becoming like stone, blending with its geological surroundings. The front of the once gigantic ship protruded from the stone as if sailing through a monstrous ocean swell that had been frozen in time.

It made sense that this was where they'd be, Remy thought as he was drawn toward the ancient transport. Denied passage on the great craft, but now…

Wedging his fingers deep into cracks between the rock and ice, Remy started to climb, the gentle voice of the Mother driving him on.

The answers are inside, Remy told himself, the all-too-human flesh of his fingers feeling the rigors of the harsh elements.

And Remy needed answers.

From the beginning, when Sariel had first come to him, he had sensed that something wasn't right, that he wasn't getting the entire picture.

It was all so much bigger than what the Grigori leader had cared to share.

Remy reached the top of the ark, jumping from an icy ledge to the side of the craft, and climbing over onto what had once been the deck. Countless millennia of shifting, geological change had done its job on the ship, holding the vessel in its cold, rocky clutches like a prized toy in the mouth of a playful dog.

There were gaping holes in the surface of the deck, and Remy could feel the tingle of something ancient and magickal wafting up from the darkness below.

Moving toward one of the holes, he peered down into the ship's hold. Memories from days long past exploded inside his head, of the ship's bowels filled to bursting with life of every conceivable size and shape.

Life that had been deemed worthy to survive the coming storm.

No real thought went into his next action. The Mother was waiting for him, and he simply lowered himself through the hole and into the waiting darkness below. Using protrusions of rock and ancient, ossified wood, Remy climbed down into the ship's limitless hold.

Touching bottom was like being on the ocean floor, not a lick of light to be found. He let the fire of divinity burn brighter from his hand to light the way.