A Hundred Words for Hate Read Online Free Page B

closer. He tried to pull himself away from the burning fluid, but managed only to turn onto his back, where he could once again look up into the rubble-filled sky.
    Pieces of Hell and Tartarus had mingled together, a growing, swirling vortex of all the misery, hate, and sorrow that defined this horrible place created by a supposedly loving God.
    It wouldn’t be long until Francis too joined the maelstrom, sucked up with everything else into the yawning maw of the voracious funnel cloud.
    What did you do, Remy? Francis wondered as he felt the first, burning touch of liquid rock on his battered flesh. What did you find inside the prison that could have led to . . . this?
    And as if some higher power had heard his question and, knowing that he would soon no longer be among the living, took pity upon him, showing him the answer.
    The vortex spun above him, opening wider and wider. And inside its mouth, floating in the dust-, dirt-, and ash-choked air, untouched by the madness of what was happening around him, floated a figure.
    The figure . . . he was like the sun, repelling the darkness with a golden light that emanated from his perfect form.
    Francis remembered this being, and how he had once stood alongside the Almighty.
    The answer to his question hovered in the center of the storm.
    The Morningstar had risen.
    And Francis knew that nothing would ever be the fucking same again.

CHAPTER TWO
    “S o, what’s your story, Remy Chandler?”
    Linda Somerset’s voice echoed inside Remy’s head as he drove past the Museum of Science on his way to Somerville, where he’d promised to meet Steven Mulvehill for a nightcap.
    The date had gone well—nothing spectacular, but good. There were no fireworks or wedding plans or joint checking accounts in the foreseeable future, but the night had been okay. There’d been lots of small talk, conversation establishing a comfort zone for the two of them. Normally, Remy would have been bored to tears, but from Linda, it was like opening the window on a gorgeous spring day after a particularly harrowing winter.
    And it had been a harrowing winter .
    “So, what’s your story, Remy Chandler?”
    He heard her ask the question again. She had just finished talking about everything from her fear of spiders and her love for Japanese monster movies to her failed marriage and how it had taken her a very long time to get her head straight again.
    She had paused, brought her second merlot to her lips, and asked him over the rim of her glass:
    “So, what’s your story, Remy Chandler?”
    And strangely enough, he had told her. Not everything, of course, just the things that wouldn’t make her run screaming into the night. No, there’d be plenty of time for that business on the second date.
    The second date.
    The thought troubled him. It wasn’t that he didn’t want another; he’d had a pretty good time with Linda, but he just couldn’t shake the guilt.
    He felt as if he were cheating: cheating on the memory of Madeline.
    Remy parked his car at a meter across from the Bowman. The usual barflies were hanging out in front of the neighborhood tavern, smoking their cigarettes, even though the windchill had to be well below zero. The cigarette smoke mixed with the exhalation from their lungs formed thick clouds of white that billowed in the air before them.
    Remy passed through the cloud bank and pulled open the heavy wooden door to a blast of warm air that stank of stale beer and age. He looked around and found Mulvehill hunched over the bar, contemplating the secrets of the universe in a Scotch on the rocks.
    “Should you be drinking that now?” Remy asked as he joined his friend, removing his heavy leather jacket and placing it over the top of a high-backed stool. “Isn’t it a school night?”
    “I won’t tell if you don’t,” the homicide detective said, gesturing for the bartender. “What do you want?”
    “I’ll have whatever he has,” Remy told the proprietor as he took a seat