Israfil shuddered, dropping the scroll as his body pitched forward into the sand.

"It hurts so damn much," he moaned.

"Let it go," Remy said, reaching out for the scroll. "Shed your human skin and return to the form that would know what you are doing is wrong." His fingers brushed against the ancient parchment. He almost had it, and then something had him.

Remy found himself suddenly airborne, viciously yanked away and hauled up into the sky.

"Can you hear it, Remiel?" Nathanuel spoke in his ear to be heard over the raging storm and the flapping of his wings. "It is the death cry of humanity."

Remy thrashed in the Seraphim's grasp as the angel's wings took them steadily higher.

"And there's nothing you can do about it."

Chapter eighteen

She saw the riders.

They sat upon their colored horses at the horizon, waiting to begin the death of the world.

But in the sky, above the giants of the Apocalypse, two figures were locked in struggle. One had powerful wings of blinding white, and the other seemed to be just a man, willing to fight the forces of Heaven itself for what he believed.

Just a man, but in fact, so much more.

Madeline gasped for breath, her eyes opening wide as she looked about the semidarkness of her room, the disturbing images that she suspected were so much more beginning to fade away, replaced with the reality of her present condition.

She was still alive.

And though numbed with pain medication, fed through an IV hanging beside her bed, Madeline knew that her life should have come to an end hours, if not days, ago.

Her husband had gone to take care of that problem. She remembered her dream.

Or was it a vision?

Madeline was suddenly afraid for him; wishing that he were there with her, by her side and holding her hand as she finally slipped away.

But he couldn't be. He needed to be elsewhere in order to make things right, in order for her, and so many others, to finally be allowed to go.

Remy had told her that he could hear them. Call them what you want: spirit, soul, inner self. He'd said that he could hear them trapped within prisons of flesh, begging to be free.

He said it was the saddest sound he had ever heard.

She saw the image flash within her mind again. The giants of the Apocalypse, her husband above them, locked in struggle with one of his former kind.

Madeline reached across, removed the IV needle from her arm, and pulled the oxygen line from her nose. Delving into a reserve of strength that she didn't know she had, she rose from her bed and shuffled barefoot across the cold tile floor to the window.

The storm was ferocious, the wind spattering heavy rains against the panes of glass. She saw herself there, reflected against the glass in the darkness beyond the storm, a reflection of who she had once been.

When she was healthy and full of life.

The reflection provided her with the strength necessary, and she lifted her arm, placing her hand against the cool glass surface.

She thought of her husband, the angel that had come into her life and given her so much, and about how much she loved him.

A love strong enough to hold back the end of the world.

Nathanuel's hands burned him like fire.

"You embrace this pathetic existence as if born to it," Nathanuel growled, his face monstrous in the light of the eerily glowing sky.

Remy clung to the front of the Seraphim's coat, frantically holding on.

Nathanuel pressed his hand against the side of Re-my's face, and searing pain coursed through his body as the flesh was burned away to reveal something else, something hidden beneath.

"You know what you are and where you truly belong, but still you run from it… hide from it in this suit of flesh and blood."

The smell of his burning humanity filled his lungs, choking Remy with its acrid stench. The Seraphim chief was incredibly strong, as if feeding on the encroaching catastrophe. And as they hovered above the deliverers of the end, held aloft by the beating of Nathanuel's powerful wings, he reached down, taking hold of Remy's hands, and began to peel his fingers away from their desperate hold on his coat.

Remy glared defiantly at the one he once called brother, his hold more and more precarious with each passing second. And just as he was about to fall, Natha-nuel caught hold of his wrist.

"You love them so much," Nathanuel cooed, dangling him above the world, a moment's respite from what Remy knew was inevitable. "Then go to them."

The Seraphim released him, and Remy began to fall.

Is this how it ends? he wondered as he tumbled to the earth, a victim of gravity's pull.

Was it all for nothing?

Something stirred deep within himself in response to his question.

Something that yearned for sweet release.

And it answered him… "No."

Marlowe watched helplessly as his master fell.

There was nothing he could do to help, and that angered the dog. He tossed his head back, howling his discontent.

The dog awakened with a start, unsure at first of where he was. He lifted his head and sniffed the air.

"What's the matter, boy?" Ashlie asked him, scooting over on the overstuffed sofa where they had been watching television to put her arm gently around him. "It's all right," she said soothingly as she patted his neck and kissed the top of his head. "It's only the storm. Remy will be back soon to take you home."

She lay against his side, as he rested his chin between his paws with a heavy sigh, afraid to drift off again.

So he listened to the sound of the storm raging outside and whined pitifully at the memory that roused him from his slumber.

A dream of his master falling from the sky.

He didn't remember passing out, but then, how else could he explain it?

Remy was back in Heaven.

But it was a Heaven of the past; a Heaven that he'd tried so hard to forget because it didn't really exist anymore.

From a gentle hilltop called Serenity he gazed down into the verdant valley of Awe, repulsed by the scene of violence that now overran the once-peaceful lowland.

Angel against angel, brother against brother; he listened to the cries of warfare, sounds that did not belong in a place such as this.

Though disgusted by what was transpiring below him, Remy found himself drawn toward the unfolding scene of carnage, moving down the sloping hill toward the raging battle.

And the closer he got, the more frightened he became, for he remembered this day.

Stepping over bodies of those with whom he had once soared through the skies in service to the All-Father, Remy continued toward the center of battle. Few remained standing, the last of the Morningstar's forces against one lone figure that fought with an unbridled fury for the glory of God.

Adorned in armor of gold, wings spattered with the blood of the vanquished, the angel set upon the last of his adversaries, his cries of fury mingling with the screams of those who fell beneath the savagery of his onslaught.

And then all was quiet as the last of the Morning-star's army joined the rest of the dead.

Remy stood on the outskirts of the circle of death, staring at the back of the winged figure as he slowly started to turn, alerted to Remy's presence. He wanted to avert his eyes from the sight of a Heavenly being capable of such brutality in the Lord's name, but he couldn't, his vision riveted to the sight of the warrior angel — a Seraphim.

The angel faced him, his features stained with the blood of the lives he had taken, and Remy felt immediately sickened by the sight.