Walking In the Midst of Fire

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Prosper stumbled from the passage into the freezing rainstorm.

He hated this fucking island more than anything, but it had been Simeon’s choice, and who was he to argue with the mysterious figure.

A chill, surprisingly not caused by the rain dripping down the length of his spine, caused him to shudder.

First, it had been losing track of one of the kids and the chaos that followed. Now, it was the angel Remiel flipping over rocks and getting too close to their business. Prosper could already hear Simeon’s words: Why didn’t you just kill them?

It was a good question—one that he really didn’t have the answer to at the moment. He was too fucking busy trying to keep himself alive.

Thunder boomed so loudly above him that he found himself recoiling from the intensity of the burst. “What the fuck?”

Prosper began to run, the rain falling so hard that it obscured most everything around him. It took him a moment to realize that there weren’t any of the usual security teams present to meet him.

That just made him all the more angry.

The rain was falling harder now—if that was even possible—and Prosper stopped momentarily in the deluge to get his bearings. He placed a hand to his forehead, shielding his eyes from the severity of the storm. He couldn’t remember ever feeling more miserable.

Something moved ahead of him, dark shapes behind a curtain of rain.

“You there!” Prosper called over the hissing downpour.

There was no response, and the fallen angel’s ire rose to an unbridled level as he trudged ahead, hand still shielding his eyes from the heavy rain.

The sky was suddenly filled with a flash of unearthly light. At first he believed it to be lightning from the storm—what else could it be? But something didn’t feel quite right.

Prosper stopped, scanning the tumultuous sky, seeing only fat, billowing storm clouds, like smoke. He waited, curious to see if the strange phenomenon would repeat itself.

Again it happened, the sky lighting up as a snaking tendril of raw, luminescent energy shot up from somewhere ahead of him, to illuminate the sky. Prosper was drawn to the source of the flash, but not before there came another explosion of thunder. The sky grew bright, as if lit up by multiple klieg lights, and for the briefest of moments, before his eyes were seared, he saw . . .

Prosper froze, averting his gaze, rubbing at his stinging eyes. To be sure of what he thought he saw, he again turned his vision skyward.

A figure floated in the air, gazing down at him. He recognized her; she was one of the children. Her name was Mavis.

“What—what are you doing?” he stammered, realizing how foolish the question sounded as it left his mouth.

The girl drifted closer, as if carried by invisible wings on the rain-swept winds.

He heard her laugh then. “Poor Prosper,” she taunted. “Not even enough sense to come in out of the rain.”

Before he had a chance to react, she flew at him like a bullet, snatched him up from the ground, and carried him into the sky—up into the storm.

Prosper saw that they were not alone.

And once again, he knew the power of fear.

• • •

Francis had some difficulty opening his eyes.

He’d thought that he would avoid more beatings by mentioning Remy Chandler to Michael, but instead, the Archangel had simply left the dungeon, leaving him alone with Dardariel.

The cold stone floor actually felt good against his swollen face, but he decided to forgo the pleasure to assess his current situation.

He managed to push himself up along the stone wall into a sitting position. Through swollen, blood-encrusted eyes Francis saw that he wasn’t alone.

“Well, look at that,” Montagin said. “You’re alive—your middle name must be Lazarus.”

“You wouldn’t have a couple of Advil on you, would you?” Francis asked, exhausted from the effort of righting himself.

He heard Montagin make a sound of disgust, not even bothering with a reply.

He caught sight of a larger shape huddled in the corner beside the angel, and guessed it was Heath. The sorcerer wasn’t making any noise.

“How are you holding up there, Angus?” Francis asked.

Angus grunted, which at least told Francis that the magick user was still alive. Then Heath shifted his weight so the faint illumination from the lone skylight in the ceiling shone on his face.

Francis actually gasped at what he saw.

Heath’s face was bloody and swollen, his lips sewn together with thick black thread.

To prevent him from uttering any spells, Francis gathered.

Heath’s bloodshot gaze bore into his.

“That certainly doesn’t look pleasant,” Francis said.

Heath grunted, and leaned his bulk back against the wall.

Francis moved his arms, feeling the weight there, and hearing the rattle of chains. He looked down to see the golden manacles, etched with angelic sigils.

“Shit,” he grumbled. “Anybody got a paper clip?”

“Could you really pick those locks if you had a paper clip?” Montagin asked.

“Probably not,” Francis admitted. “But I’ve seen it done in movies lots of times. How hard could it be?”

“Idiot,” Montagin grumbled.

“At least I had an idea,” Francis retorted. “What have you got?”

“What does it matter?” the angel answered. “We’re all as good as dead.”

“That’s the one thing I like about you,” Francis said. “Your upbeat attitude.”

It sounded as if Heath tried to laugh, but it turned to a moan.

“Sorry, Angus,” Francis said.

Montagin continued to be a ray of sunshine. “I should never have gone to Chandler,” he complained. “I should have gone right to Michael and shown him what had happened.”

“And what good would have come of that?” Francis asked.

“I wouldn’t have been tortured and thrown into a filthy jail cell with the likes of you two. I wouldn’t be awaiting my inevitable demise for withholding information from the legions of Heaven.”

“No, you’d be watching the earth being turned into a battleground, with humanity caught right in the fucking middle.”

“That will happen anyway,” Montagin said. “Right now we’re only delaying the inevitable, and have signed our death warrants in addition.”

Francis tried to get comfortable on the damp, stone floor, but no matter how he maneuvered, his body ached. “We did exactly what we were supposed to do.”

“What, die?” Montagin demanded. “We were supposed to die? I don’t remember volunteering to—”

“We needed to buy him time,” Francis interrupted. “Let’s just hope that Remy found what he needed to keep all the flaming swords in their sheaths.”

They were silent for a bit, and Francis had begun to drift off when Montagin’s voice called him back.

“Do you seriously believe it will matter?”

“What?” Francis asked. “What Chandler’s doing? Yes . . . yes, I do.”

Montagin chuckled. “You obviously haven’t been around them—the soldiers and generals. They’re just looking for an excuse. I’m surprised that Aszrus has actually managed to hold them off this long. He was as hawkish as any of them, but it was as if he was waiting for something, that one last thing that would say it’s time.”

Francis felt Montagin’s gaze upon him.

“Maybe it was his own murder he was waiting for,” Montagin continued, “and he just didn’t know it.”

“Or maybe it was the success of Toddlers In Tiaras,” Francis suggested.

The dungeon fell silent again, which was fine by him.

“I hate that show,” Montagin said after a few minutes, and Francis could not help but laugh, which ended up being one of the most excruciating experiences that he’d endured in quite some time.

“Serves you right,” Montagin added, which only made Francis laugh all the more.

The laughter eventually subsided, and then it was the wait for the pain to die down. The cell was silent, occasionally interrupted by the rattle of chains and moans of discomfort from Heath.

Francis was lost in pain-addled thought, wondering where they might go from there. They had no idea if Remy had been successful, and the former Guardian was sure that information wouldn’t be shared by their captors. Angels could be real cocks when they wanted to be, and since they had them, why would they bother to let them go?

Especially since they had such a hard-on for his employer.

Francis thought about his current boss, and wondered if the Morningstar was fully aware of the situation. Lucifer knew that Azsrus was murdered, and that it could be used for political purposes, which was why he had put Francis on the case.

But Francis had to wonder how in the loop his boss actually was. He decided that it probably couldn’t hurt to find out.

He shifted again, grunting in pain as his limbs made it known they didn’t care to move in those specific directions.

“Can’t you just die in your sleep or something?” Montagin asked. “I’m tired of hearing the two of you voicing your discomfort.”

“I’m going to try something,” Francis said, searching for a section of the cell where the darkness seemed almost liquid.

“What?” Montagin asked.

“I’m going to try to contact my boss,” he said.

“You’re what?” Montagin questioned. “Are you mad? Do you seriously believe that Lucifer Morningstar would intrude on a stronghold held by one of Heaven’s legions?”

“You’ve forgotten how strong he is,” Francis said, focusing on the darkness. “And if he can get us out of here, why the fuck not? Especially if we’re all going to die anyway.”

“I want nothing to do with this,” Montagin said, and Francis could hear the angel trying to move as far away from him as possible, while Heath moaned about the the invasion of his space.

“Fine,” Francis said. “I’ll leave you here to rot, and Angus and I will take off. Right, Angus?”

Francis heard a noise that he took to be an affirmative answer.

He was concentrating on the darkness, reaching out with his mind to where he imagined the Morningstar would be. He had no idea if this would work, but he didn’t see any other options.

“What are you doing?” Montagin demanded.

“I’m trying to contact him.”

“Will that work?”

“We’ll have to wait and see, won’t we?”

“I wish you’d been beaten to death,” the angel snapped.

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

Francis suddenly felt the pull of the darkness on him. Concentrating all the harder, he attempted to follow the pool of shadow down to its source.

To a sea of bottomless black, and beyond that, to what he hoped would lead to his master’s ear.

Something moved in the ebony pool, surging up from the inky gloom. His concentration momentarily broken, Francis sat back.

“Well?” Montagin questioned.

Francis wasn’t sure how to respond.

“I don’t know,” he said, keeping his crusty eyes on the shadows.

The darkness undulated, as if something moved behind it.

“What have you done?” Montagin demanded. “If you’ve brought more ruin upon me, I will do everything in my power to—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Francis said. “But before you get your panties in more of a bunch, why don’t we make sure that I’ve actually done something, all right?”

The shadows grew denser, like oil, beginning to churn as whatever it was that was concealed beneath it moved closer.

Francis gazed quickly away from the moving patch to see Montagin staring, mesmerized, Heath leaning slowly forward, his eyes also drawn to the spot where something was about to appear.

He didn’t know why he said it—he really didn’t know why he said half the shit he did—but he just couldn’t help himself.

“Thar she blows!” Francis cried as something pushed upon the veil of shadow, causing it to stretch outward as if made from rubber.

It actually made a kind of wet, ripping sound as the shape tore away from the liquid embrace, and landed upon the jail cell floor.

It took Francis a moment to realize that his call had not reached his intended, and that he had gotten the wrong number. “You’re not Lucifer Morningstar,” he said.

“No shit,” Squire said, wiping oily drippings of concentrated darkness from his shirt and pants. “You haven’t gotten any smarter in the month you’ve been gone.”

“Month?” Francis exclaimed. “It’s only been a day.”

“Yes!” The hobgoblin pumped a fist in the air. “Thought I’d get here too late and find a big fucking crater or something.”

“You’ve been looking for us for a month?”

Squire nodded. “Looks like it,” he said, sitting down on the floor. He rubbed his stubby hand along the back of his neck. “The shadow paths can be pretty tricky, even for the experienced,” the hobgoblin said. “Must’ve taken a wrong turn someplace.”

“Tell me about it,” Francis said. “How did you track us anyway?”

“Your blood,” Squire said. “Fallen angel blood has a real distinct odor—can’t miss it. Shot back to the apartment after you’d been taken, used an old sock to soak up some of your juice, and here I is.”

“What’s it smell like?”

“What? Your blood?” Squire asked. “You know those little sheets that you throw in the dryer to keep your clothes smelling fresh and the static cling away?”

“Yeah. It smells like that?”

“No,” Squire said shaking his head. “Smells worse than shit, really.”

Montagin cleared his throat.

“Hey, Mary! I didn’t know you were here, too.”

Heath leaned forward so Squire could see him.

“Angus . . .” The hobgoblin noticed what had been done to his sorcerer friend. “Holy shit, does that hurt?”

Heath tilted his head in a way that said, What the fuck do you think?

Squire reached into one of the pouches on his belt and withdrew a pair of scissors. He approached his friend carefully.

“Hold still,” he said, and started to snip at the stitching that held the sorcerer’s lips closed.

With each cut of the thread, Francis could not help but wince. Heath’s lips had started to bleed again, blood running down from his face onto the T-shirt that he wore.

“How’s that?” Squire asked as he cut the last of the threads.

“Better,” Heath managed.

“So,” Francis said, lifting the golden manacles that hung from his wrists. “You wouldn’t happen to have a paper clip in that bag of tricks, would you?”

• • •

The rain was torrential. Remy unfurled his wings, extending them in such a way as to provide cover from the onslaught as he scanned his surroundings.

He saw that he was in a city of some kind, but from its dilapidated appearance, it had been abandoned for quite a long time. An electric chill passed down his spine, as he was reminded of a recent cable television program that tried to show what the world would be like after mankind had gone.

After humanity had died.

From what Remy could see, this was pretty damn close, and the bleak surroundings also reminded him that a fate even worse-looking than this could very well be waiting for the planet if he didn’t get all the facts straight about a certain murdered angel general.

He took to the air, flying above the cracked and weed-covered streets, the vegetation pushing up defiantly through the asphalt. The air was rich with the smell of the ocean, and as he flew higher he saw that he was on an island in the middle of a choppy gray sea.

Interesting, he thought, gliding back down, still on the lookout for Malatesta and, if he was lucky, Prosper. Searching for something—a sign that would give him a clue as to where he was—he landed in front of what looked to be an administrative building. Sticking out from a clump of twisting vines beside the building, Remy found a rusted sign with what appeared to be Japanese characters on it. He brushed away some mud, and could just about make out the name: GUNKANJIMA.

“Gunkanjima,” said a young voice over the pelting downpour. “Battleship Island.”

Remy spun around, hiding his wings away.

“That’s all right,” the pale little girl in the tattered, pink Hello Kitty raincoat said. “I already know what you are—no sense in hiding it.”

“Hi,” Remy said, dropping the bent metal sign. “What is this place?”

She was wearing torn and faded blue jeans, and sneakers split at the sides, as if too small for her growing feet. “Used to be a coal-mining facility, but then it got turned into a prison during a big war . . . the second one . . . war number two.”

“World War Two?” Remy helped her.

She nodded and he got a better look at her. The child couldn’t have been any older than eight, but her skin was terribly pale and sickly looking.

“The Japanese kept Koreans here and forced them to work really, really hard,” the little girl stated. She was poking around in the dirt with the toe of her sneaker. “A lot of people died here.”

Remy moved a little closer.

“Do you live here?”

She stopped digging with her toe when she saw that he was getting closer. “Of course I do,” she said, warily. “I live here with my brothers and sisters.”

The little girl was Nephilim, of that he had no doubt. This was where they were kept, for what reason he had no idea.

But he was going to find out.

“I wouldn’t come any closer if I was you,” the child warned.

Remy stopped where he was. “I don’t mean you any harm,” he told her. “My name is Remy. . . . What’s yours?”

“Kitty,” she said, smiling simply. She pointed to the chubby white corporate symbol on her torn raincoat. “That’s what they call me ’cause I always wear this coat.”

“That’s quite a coat, and a really nice name,” Remy told her.

“Thanks,” she said, kicking at the dirt in earnest.

“So you live here with your brothers and sisters?” Remy asked.

“Uh-huh,” she answered. She squatted and began digging with her hands.

“Do you think that I might be able to meet them?”

Kitty stopped digging, turning her pale gaze toward him.

“I know what you’re up to,” she said.

Remy shook his head. “Not up to anything, Kitty.”

“You’re like that other angel,” she said. “The one who was all nice and everything, but was really mean.”

Remy could see that she was getting upset. He backed away a bit, hoping that if he kept his distance . . .

“Gareth said that you want to teach us to kill and stuff,” she said suddenly. “To be an army . . . to fight a war . . . World War Three!”

“Is Gareth one of your brothers?” he asked, trying to calm her down.

“Yes, he’s my oldest brother and he didn’t want us to do any fighting for the angels so he ended up doing something really bad.”

Remy knew what Gareth had done.

“He killed an angel, didn’t he?” Remy said. “Gareth killed an angel called Aszrus.”

She was picking at stuff in the dirt again, pulling things out, looking at them, and tossing them aside.

“Yes, he did,” Kitty said. “And he got into really bad trouble . . . but that was before they knew he had powers.”

Remy didn’t quite understand. “Powers?” he asked. “What kind of powers?”

Kitty was still poking around in the mud. She shrugged her shoulders. “All kinds,” she said. “We all got ’em now—well most of us. Some of the babies don’t.”

Remy felt that horrible feeling begin to form in his stomach, the horrible feeling that told him things were much worse than he thought.

“Do you have powers?” he asked, realizing as the words left his mouth that it might not have been the question to ask right then.

Kitty was looking at him again, and smiling.

“Uh-huh,” she said. “Do you want to know how I know so much about this island?” she asked.

Remy didn’t respond.

“All those people who died here a long time ago?” she asked. “They told me.”

She poked at the things she’d been pulling from the mud and dirt.

“Here are some of their bones. If their bones are here, they’re here, too.”

Remy watched as a thick mist seemed to erupt from the muddy bones, growing in size to form a grayish cloud that transformed into multiple ghostly shapes with eerily burning yellow eyes.

“Guess what my power is?” Kitty asked, and then she started to giggle.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know that something bad was about to happen.

“Kitty, you don’t have to do this,” Remy tried to persuade her. “I don’t mean you, or your brothers and sisters any—”

“I control the ghosts!” she proclaimed. “And I can get them to do whatever I want.”

“Kitty,” he tried again, calling forth his wings because it might be necessary.

“Get ’im!” the child ordered.

The ghosts glided through the air, their mouths open in a disconcerting psychic scream that Remy could hear—feel—inside his head. He tried to evade them, flying up into the rain-filled sky, but the spirits clung to him, swarming around his body, filling him with the weight of their sorrow.

As hard as he tried to shake them, the ghosts held on, filling his thoughts with the pain and misery they had suffered there as prisoners of the Japanese. Remy was having a difficult time concentrating. He crashed into the side of a nearby building, breaking one of the few panes of glass that had managed to remain intact.

The ghosts wanted him to know them—their loves, their hates, what they so desperately missed. He knew it would be impossible to escape them, so he landed, dropping to his knees on the muddy ground. He wrapped himself in his wings and rocked to the psychic onslaught, experiencing each and every thing they wanted to him to know.

Remy could feel the heat of life slipping away from him, the spirits eagerly taking anything they could use to manifest themselves more strongly in the living world. He felt cold, and colder still as the ghosts of Gunkanjima grew more powerful.

It was time to make his move. Calling upon the divine power that resided within him, Remy communicated with the disembodied dead, telling them that it was time to move on.

The ghosts fought him at first, having been tormented for so long, bound to the island. But Remy showed them the light, and what it would mean if they let go.

And as he’d hoped, the spirits calmed, soothed by his message of eternal rest. Their torture would end. They would at last know peace, their ghostly energies finally able to travel on to join the stuff of the cosmos.

The stuff of creation.

“What’s he doing to my ghosts?” Remy heard Kitty cry from somewhere far away. Before he could react, he was struck by a bolt of energy that picked him up from the ground and tossed him against the side of a building.

The ghosts were in a panic once more.

Remy crawled to his knees, raising his head, certain that he wasn’t going to like what he was about to see.

And he was right.

Kitty had been joined by some of her brothers and sisters.

They were of various ages, some a little younger than Kitty, while others looked as though they were in their teens. The angels at Rapture had been busy.

“I don’t . . . ,” Remy started again, wanting them to know that he wasn’t there to hurt them. But his words fell upon deaf ears.

One of the young teens approached him, a smile on his dirty, pimply face. His hands were outstretched, and from the tips of his fingers flowed streams of some kind of bioenergy. It was like being touched with a power cable, and Remy’s body immediately convulsed.

The ghosts were back as well, their number growing by the second, and Remy’s mind became so crowded with horror and misery that he could barely put his own thoughts together enough to stand.

“Please,” he begged. He had no desire to hurt them, but if they kept this going . . .

The wind kicked up, and Remy felt as though he’d been clutched by a giant, elemental hand. He was picked up, his wings flapping uselessly, and tossed back to the ground by the invisible hand of some angry, and powerful godlike being—a godlike being controlled by a fourteen-year-old child in a torn Sex Pistols T-shirt, jeans, and scuffed-up cowboy boots.

Remy was about to plead with them again, but their eager faces told him they were having way too much fun. Instead, he decided he should consider getting the hell out of there before the sadistic brood ended his life for good.

The invisible hand had him again, this time by the legs, and whipped him savagely against the ground. He could hear the children’s excited cheers as he was tossed aside like a rag doll, rolling to a stop in the center of a street now lush with vegetation. He lay there, playing dead, gathering his wits. No matter how badly his warrior nature railed inside him, he would not hurt children, no matter how bloodthirsty they appeared.

They were approaching him. He could hear their feet scuffing across the ground over the wailing of the dead still inside his mind. This was it.

Remy sank his fingers deep into the muddy ground, and willed the fire that churned inside of him forward. It exited his fingertips in an excited rush, pouring into the ground and causing the vegetation and anything else lying within it to explode in bright yellow flames.

The children began to scream, and Remy took to the sky, beating the rain-filled air unmercifully as he flew away from the angry tribe, maneuvering between the abandoned buildings as he sought a place to set down, to rest and gather his thoughts.

He hadn’t been paying attention to the airspace in front of him until it was too late.

The teenage girl hung in the air as if floating in water, her hands held out on either side of her churning with some bizarre mutation of divine fire. As he grew closer, he saw her mouth twist in a grimace of exertion, and as he dropped from the sky in an attempt to escape, she tossed the flaming orbs of hissing fire where he’d just been.

Evading the fireballs, Remy twisted in the air above another street that had succumbed to the elements, and saw another gathering of children.

Almost as if they’d been waiting for him.

The wind picked up suddenly, savagely, and it took all that he had to stay aloft. A wall of air pushed down upon him, and Remy found himself striking the side of another building, his wings beating as hard as they could to keep him airborne as the screaming winds forced him back down to the street.

Twisted by the ferocity of the unnatural air, Remy was slammed down upon his back, the oxygen forced from his lungs in a wheezing explosion. Colors danced before his eyes, and he did everything he could to maintain his consciousness. He could only imagine the fate that awaited him if the children found him helpless.

A piece of pipe lay upon the ground, and Remy reached out to snatch it up. He needed a weapon, and if a sword or gun wasn’t handy, then this would have to do. Willing some more of his inner fire into the body of the makeshift club, he watched as it began to glow.

By the light of the divine fire he saw something that took his breath away.

Malatesta and Prosper were tied to twin posts sticking up from the ground. The fallen angel was unconscious and looked as though he’d been beaten within an inch of his life, while the Vatican magick user, though bloody and bruised, at least was awake.

“I’d ask if you’re all right, but you’d probably tell me to go fuck myself,” Remy said, flaming pipe in hand.

“You’re probably right,” Malatesta answered weakly.

At least the sorcerer was in control again.

“Prosper?” Remy asked, keeping his eyes on the children, who were now coming closer.

“Alive,” Malatesta said. “But just barely.”

The teenage girl dropped down from the sky to land before Remy. Her hands blazed as if dunked in gasoline and lit on fire.

“Anything you can tell me that could help me out?” Remy asked.

“Not that I can think of at the moment,” Malatesta said. “One of them seems to be able to broadcast directly into my head, making it rather difficult to think straight, never mind cast spells.”

“So much for asking for a hand,” Remy said.

He was watching the group, sensing power the likes of which he’d never encountered. Holding the flaming piece of metal out before him, Remy decided that fighting would lead to nothing good, and let the makeshift weapon clatter from his hands to the street.

“I don’t mean any of you harm,” he said, raising his hands in surrender, and allowing his wings to fold upon his back.

The teenage girl just laughed, and threw one of her balls of fire directly into Remy’s chest. It exploded on impact, knocking him backward to the ground where he found that he no longer had the will—or the strength—to rise.

The children gathered around, staring down upon him—some with curiosity and the wonder of youth, others with distrust, fear, and hate.

He wanted to tell them again that he wasn’t like the general, that he wasn’t like Aszrus, but the girl’s fireball had taken away everything he had left.

Suddenly, Remy noticed movement in the gathering and a murmur passed through the crowd. Then they moved aside, allowing another of their number to step forward.

He was an older boy, probably sixteen or so, and in his eyes Remy saw something that scared him.

In the young man’s eyes were anger and defiance.

“He wanted to turn us into weapons,” the young man said as he stared down upon Remy.

“I guess his wish has come true.”