Mean Streets

He walked where they had kept the animals, remembering how it had looked then: the pens, primitive tanks, corrals and stalls, as far as the eye could see, built to hold the myriad varieties of life that the old man and his family had been instructed to save.

Remiel, whispered the voice of the Mother.

"Yes," he said aloud, walking farther into the cavernous belly of the ark.

Remember the days long past, when the Maker's world was young.

As he trudged along, images flooded his mind, rapid-fire pictures across the surface of his brain as the Mother began to show him.

He saw the world as it had been, young and vibrant, fertile with life. A dark, indigo-skinned people-the Chimerian-made their homes among the rocky hills of the primordial world. They were a beautiful people, their skin the bluish color of dusk.

Somehow they knew that the Maker did not favor their continued survival, and they begged Him to have mercy on them, but the All Powerful had already made up His mind, already created something to replace them.

But the Chimerian did not give up hope, continuing to pray, and to make sacrifices in hopes that their Maker would not forsake them, that He would see that they were worthy to live.

And they believed themselves saved when the emissaries came, living among them. Living like them.

Teaching them.

But the emissaries had come only for their own selfish reasons, immersing themselves in the earthly pleasures of food, drink and carnal acts, knowing that it was only a matter of time before the Chimerian were extinct.

Remy saw the emissaries inside his mind, saw their leader in the midst of revelry as he and his brethren partook of all mortal excesses.

He saw Sariel and his Grigori.

And then he saw a Chimerian woman, her belly swollen with life.

The fallen angel became enraged.

It cannot be, the Grigori leader ranted, and the woman cowered. Your kind were supposed to be barren.

And she looked to him with hope in her eyes, hope for her and all her kind, as well as the children to be born of Chimerian women and fallen angels.

A gift of our union, the beautiful woman with the night-colored skin said to Sariel.

She reached out, took Sariel's hand, and placed it on her stomach.

A gift to show the Maker we are worthy to live.

A final image was burnt into Remy's mind: it was of the Chimerian women, clad in hooded cloaks stitched from animal skins, clutching bellies swollen with life.

They stood upon the rocky hills as the rain fell in torrents, and the waters rose, watching as those deemed worthy to live filed aboard the ark.

Unworthy to exist.

Forsaken.

Remy came away from the sad vision in an area of the ark darker than even the light of the divine could illuminate.

He knew that she was here, somewhere in the ocean of night, hiding herself away.

"How?" he asked the darkness. "How did you survive?"

The feeling inside his head was immediate, like a long, sharp finger slowly pushing into the soft gray matter of his brain, but he did not fight it. Remy let the answers come.

It was like looking out through dirt-covered windows, the scenes unfolding, desperate to find a place inside his already crowded skull.

Remy stumbled and fell to the ground, fighting to stay conscious.

The Chimerian people bobbed upon the waters, one by one taken by the merciless sea. But some survived, the women of the tribe, those who had been touched by the Grigori. Somehow they had been changed by their experiences with the fallen ones, their bodies evolving, making them able to endure the catastrophe.

The impregnated women clung to the side of the great ark, their bodies enshrouded-protected-by thick cocoons made from magick and sorrow.

And they survived like that, hiding from those who wished them gone, sleeping through the passage of ages, waiting for a time-a safe time-to emerge.

Through a thick gauze of webbing Remy watched as a man clad in heavy winter garb, protected from the harshness of the elements, moved toward them.

Noah.

Sensing changes in the world, and in him, they had reached out, drawing him to their hiding place. And begging their forgiveness, he pulled them from their womb of shadow.

Noah at last finding his Chimerian orphans.

Remy felt the hold on him released, and he peered again into the limitless depths of the darkness, searching for the one who had called to him.

He got to his feet and moved farther into the nebulous embrace, the light of his hand nearly useless in the supernatural environment.

"Are you here?" he asked. "Show yourself to me."

The Mother responded to Remy's request; her form, as well as the forms of the other Chimerian survivors, gradually moved into focus.