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I'm sure it would be fine if you gave me a bite of that sandwich.

Mrs. Provost convulsed violently as his mind gently brushed against hers. The table shook, spilling thecup of coffee next to her plate. Gabriel stepped back, startled.

She had set her sandwich down for a moment, but picked it up again, opening her mouth to take a bite. Again, Gabriel lightly prodded, suggesting that it would be very nice of her to share. She froze andgradually turned in her chair. His tail wagged in anticipation as he came closer. But the old woman staredat him, a strange expression on her face, as if she hadnever seen him before. She was still holding thesandwich in her hand, and he continued to hope that he would get some of it, but a primitive instinct toldhim that something was wrong. He felt the hackles of fur on his back begin to rise. Quickly the doglooked about the kitchen for signs of danger, his nose twitching eagerly as he searched for a scent thatwas out of the ordinary. There was a hint of something, but he did not know what it was.

Mrs. Provost made a strange noise at the back of her throat, and the skin around her neck seemed to

expand, like a bullfrog. And then she blinked, a slow, languid movement, and Gabriel saw that same

milky covering over her eyes that he'd seen on the rabbit in his dream.

Suddenly he didn't care whether he got a bite of the meat loaf sandwich. He backed toward thedoorway never taking his eyes from the strange old woman. Her scent had changed. It was like theocean—but older. He had to get to Aaron.

Gabriel spun around and bolted for the front door. Again, he jumped up and grabbed the knob with histeeth. He could hear sounds of the woman's approach behind him. The knob turned, and he heard theclick of the latch—and another sound. The woman was coughing loudly, hard. Gabriel had just pulled thedoor open when he felt the first of the projectiles hit his left leg. He chanced a quick glance and saw acircular object, smaller than a tennis ball covered in wet, glistening spines, sticking in his thigh. He wantedto pluck it out with his teeth, but feared the spines would hurt his mouth.
Aaron will get it out,
 
Gabrielthought as he turned back to the open door.

But Mrs. Provost was coughing again and he felt the pricks of more barbs as they struck him. Suddenlythe door seemed so very far away.
How can this be?
 
Gabriel wondered. He was running as fast as hecould, yet he didn't seem to be going anywhere. It was all so confusing. A horrible numbness wasspreading through his body, and he slumped to the floor in the doorway, his nose just catching a hint ofthe smells of theMaine town outside.

But there was something else that he smelled, and it came from the woman. Gabriel felt her handsroughly grab at him and drag his body back into the hallway. If smells
wrong,
 
he thought as he slowlydrifted down into oblivion,
like something from the ocean.

Like somethingbad
from the ocean.

Aaron couldn't believe what he had committed himself to.

His thoughts raced as he let himself into Mrs. Provost's home.
I've got to be out of my mind.
 
But it wastoo late now; he had agreed to help Katie search the abandoned factory, and that was what he was goingto do.
 
Who knows,
 
hethought,
maybe I'll be able to figure out why I've
been feeling so strangely, orwhere Camael's gone, for
 
that matter.

"Mrs. Provost?" he called out, walking toward the kitchen. He was hoping for something to eat before his
Mission: Impossible
 
began. It would be just as easy to make a sandwich, but he wanted to be sure his host wasn't planning for something else. He didn't want to annoy her; something told him that would be a bad thing.

The kitchen was empty, but he noticed a plate with a half-eaten meat loaf sandwich on the table. Aaronreturned to the hallway and called again. "Mrs. Provost? Are you home?"

Getting no response, he decided to go upstairs and check on Gabriel. He would need to clean the dog'swound, then feed him, and most likely make himself something to eat before embarking on his nighttimemaneuvers with Katie.

"Hey, Gabriel, how you feeling, boy . . . ," Aaron said as he pushed open the door and stepped into the room. His eyes fell upon the empty bed, then went to the comforter on the floor, and he saw with a growing unease that it, too, was missing his best friend. Aaron stepped farther into the room, leaving the door open wide behind him.

"Gabriel," he called again as he peered around the bed, finding nothing. He began to panic. Maybe the dog had injured himself so badly that he'd had to be taken to the veterinarian, whichwould also explain the half-eaten sandwich and Mrs. Provost's absence. Aaron decided to give Katie a call, just to be sure. He turned to the doorway and stopped.

Mrs. Provost stood in the hall, just outside the door.

"You scared me," Aaron said with a surprised smile. Almost immediately he knew something wasn't

right. "What's wrong?" he asked, advancing toward her. "Where's Gabriel—is he all right?"

The woman did not respond. She simply stared at him oddly with eyes that seemed much darker thanthey had before.

"Mrs. Provost?" he asked, stopping in his tracks. Instincts that could only be connected to the inhuman

part of his identity began to scream in warning, "Is there something ..."

The old woman's neck suddenly swelled. She bent forward, coughed violently, and expelled somethingtoward him.

The sword from his nightmare was suddenly in Aaron's hand, and instinctively he swatted aside theprojectiles. Most exploded into dust upon contact with the blade of light, but pieces of some fell to thehardwood floor, and he tried to make sense of what he saw. They looked like fat grapes, fat grapes withsharp-looking quills sticking out of them.

The old woman grunted with displeasure, a wet gurgling sound like a stopped-up drainpipe, and he sawthat her throat again had begun to expand. Aaron swung the blade of white light, directing its powerfulradiance toward what he had been fooled into believing was a pretty cool old woman.

"No more," he heard himself say in a voice that did not sound at all like his.

The blade's luminescence bathed Mrs. Provost in its unearthly light, and her throat immediately deflated,expelling a noxious cloud of gas. Her callused hands rose to shield her eyes against the searing light, andhe saw something that chilled the blood in his veins—a second eyelid.

Aaron advanced toward her. "What are you?" he asked, his voice booming. "And where is my dog?

Where is Gabriel?"

The woman crouched on the floor. His mind raced with the strangeness of it all, and he thought of thethings frozen in the basement of the veterinary clinic.
Is it all connected?
 
he wondered, and a voice deepdown inside him said that it was.

Mrs. Provost sprang from the floor, an inhuman hiss escaping her mouth as she lashed out at him,attempting to swat the blade away. The strangely sweet scent of burning flesh perfumed the air, and Aaron stumbled back, startled by the attack. The old woman screamed, but it sounded more like thesqueal of an animal in pain. She threw herself from the room, clutching at her injured hand, where she hadtouched his weapon.

Aaron wished the awkward sword away and ran after her. Mrs. Provost was running erratically towardthe stairs, as if she was no longer in control of her motor functions. He could only watch in horror as herfeet became entangled and she tripped, tumbling down the stairs in a shrieking heap.

Aaron ran down the steps as the woman's body spilled limply into the foyer. He knelt beside her andreached to touch her neck for a pulse. Her heart rate was erratic, and her hand had begun to blister, butother than that, she seemed relatively unscathed. A low, murmuring gurgle escaped from her throat, andshe began to writhe upon the floor.

Aaron reached down and pried open her mouth, keeping an eye on her throat for swelling. He tilted herhead slightly so that he could see into her mouth. Something in the shadows at the back of her mouthscuttled away, escaping down her throat. Disturbingly enough, based on the quick glimpse, whatever itwas reminded him of a hermit crab he'd once had as a pet. He quickly took his hands away.

Something was living inside Mrs. Provost. Again, he thought of the frozen animals in the freezer back atthe clinic, their bodies changed— twisted into some new and monstrous form of life. He wondered ifthey, too, had something hiding away inside them.

He touched the woman's chin again, pullingopen her mouth slightly.
"What are you?"
 
he asked, hopingthat by using his preternatural gift of languages he could speak to the thing hiding away inside Mrs. Provost. If it worked on dogs and other animals, why not on this?

Her body shuddered, the flesh beneath her clothes beginning to writhe.

"
What are you ? "
he asked again, more forcefully.

It started as a grumbling rumble in what seemed to be the old woman's stomach, and he watched withincreasing horror as the bulge that formed in her abdomen traveled upward, toward her chest—and thenher throat. The skin of her neck expanded, and Aaron immediately backed away. He was about tosummon his weapon of light when Mrs. Provost's mouth snapped open and a horrible gurgling laugh filledthe air, followed by an equally chilling voice.

"What am I?"it asked in a language composed of buzzes and clicks.
"I am Leviathan. And we are

legion."

"Come,"a voice boomed in the darkness, echoing through the endless void that had become his being.

"Hear my voice and come to me."

Stevie knew not why, but he found himself responding, drawn to the powerful sound that invaded hissolitude. It reverberated through his cocoon of shadow, touching him, comforting him in ways that thedarkness could not.

"Oblivion shall claim you no longer."

And then there was a light, burning through the ebony pitch—and he winced, turning his face away,blinded by its awesome intensity.

"Fear not the light of my righteousness,"the voice said.
"There is a powerful purpose awaiting you

beyond the Stygian twilight
—
work to be done."

And the radiance continued to grow, consuming the darkness, pulling him from the embrace of shadowand into the heart of illumination.

"Come to me,"said the voice, so very close.
 
"And be reborn."
Reborn.

Verchiel knelt before he who mere moments before had been a child. Silently the Archons watched asthe angel held the face of the magickally augmented boy in both hands and gazed into eyes vacant of

awareness.

"Do you hear me?" he asked. "Your lord and master has need of you."

The angel examined the magnificently muscled body of the boy-turned-man, pleased with the work of hismagicians. The arcane symbols that had been painted, then burned into his naked flesh, had formedpermanent scars decorating the perfect physique. These were marks that would set him apart from allothers; symbols that proved he had been touched by the divine, transformed into something thattranscended simple humanity.

Again, Verchiel looked into the eyes of the man. "I call upon you to come forth. There is so much to bedone," he whispered. Lovingly he touched the man's expressionless face, running his long, delicate fingersthrough the blond, sweat-dampened hair. "Ihave need of you," he hissed, leaning his mouth close to theman's own. "The Lord God has need of you."

Verchiel brought a hand to the man's chin, pulled open his mouth, and blew lightly into theopen maw, anicy blue flame briefly illuminating the cavern of the open mouth. The body of the man, who had once been Stevie, twitched once and then was still. Verchiel continued to stare, willing the man to consciousness, avacant shell ready to be shaped into a tool of surgical precision.

An instrument of redemption.

The man's body began to thrash, flopping about on the floor of the sunroom, and a smile languidlyspread across Verchiel's pale, scarred features. "That's it," he cooed. "I'm waiting— we're all waiting."

Awareness suddenly flooded into the man's eyes, and his body went rigid with the shock of it. He beganto scream, a high-pitched wail of rebirth that tapered off to a wheezing gasp as he rolled from side to sideon the cold solarium floor.

Verchiel gestured toward the door, and several of his soldiers entered the room. They lifted the man,mewling and trembling, from the ground and held him aloft.

"Look at you," Verchiel said, a cold, emotionless smile on his face. "The potential for greatness emanates from you in waves." He held up a single, long, and pointed finger to the man who was crying pathetically. "But there is something missing. Something that will make you complete." He turned to the Archons, who held pieces of an armor the rich red color of spilt blood. "Dress him," the Powers' leader ordered.

And the magicians did as they were told, covering the man's body in crimson metal forged in the fires of Heaven. When they completed their task, they stepped away, and Verchiel approached. Every inch ofthe man's transformed flesh was encased in bloodred metal—all except his head. He was a fearsomesight in his crimson suit of war, but he gazed pathetically at Verchiel, eyes streaming tears of fear andconfusion.