Walking In the Midst of Fire

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

In that bizarre state between waking and unconsciousness, Remy waited until he was able to pull enough of himself together to function again.

But in the cool, soothing darkness, he wasn’t alone.

“You’re really in a fix this time, Mr. Chandler,” said a voice that he missed with every fiber of his being.

Madeline was sitting beside him, wearing that yellow sundress she’d worn one day on Nantucket during their honeymoon.

“Hey you,” Remy said, forcing himself up to a sitting position. “Long time no see.”

“Aww, did you miss me?” she asked, with a tilt of her head.

If she only knew.

“Always.” He smiled at the woman who’d been gone from his life two years now.

“But you’re doing so well,” she said, leaning against him. “Personally, anyway.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, shrugging.

“I like her. She’s tough. I think she can handle the nonsense you’ll put her through.”

It was odd to hear his dead wife talk about Linda, but also strangely comforting to have her approval, even though she was only a manifestation of his subconscious.

“I hope you’re right,” Remy said. “Although I’m not sure even I can handle my current situation.”

“It is a bad one,” Madeline agreed. “What are you going to do?”

Remy shrugged again. “My original plan was to find out who was responsible, and then turn him over to the legions to defuse the situation. But now . . .”

Remy recalled the pain and anger in the boy Gareth’s voice as he talked about the angel that was his father. Gareth hated the Heavenly being, but at the same time, he seemed to hunger for his acknowledgement, to be recognized as his son.

Aszrus had finally begun to take an interest in Gareth and the other children. For a time, Gareth had actually started to believe he was something more than the forgotten by-product of an unholy union.

But then Aszrus had revealed his true motivation, his plan for the children to be used as weapons against the forces of Hell. Gareth’s dreams of belonging suddenly came tumbling down, and the full extent of his unnatural power began to take shape.

“You can’t turn them over,” Madeline said, speaking his own thoughts.

“No, I can’t.” Remy shook his head. “Although they are extremely dangerous.”

“Angry children,” Madeline said. “Not the easiest creatures to reason with.”

“Tell me about it.” Remy had tried to calm Gareth and the others, which resulted in one of the children reaching into his skull and giving his brain a good squeeze to shut him up.

And that was why he was here, but at least he was in very good company.

“So where does that leave us?” Madeline asked.

“It leaves us in a pretty bad place,” Remy admitted. “Gareth wants to lead his brothers and sisters from the island to confront the angels responsible for siring and abandoning them.”

“That’s probably something they’ve been wanting to do since they were old enough to know better,” Madeline said. “A power fantasy—if they couldn’t be loved by those who cast them away, then they would destroy them.”

“That sums it up,” Remy said.

They sat, silent in the cool darkness, each deep in thought.

“I can’t let them be hurt any more,” Remy finally said.

“Yeah, I figured you’d say something like that.”

“Am I that predictable?” Remy asked.

“All in a good way.” Madeline leaned over and kissed his cheek. “So what’s the plan?”

“Really not much of one,” he said. “I’ve got to convince Gareth not to attack, and then to stay hidden.”

“That’s it?”

“I told you it wasn’t much.”

“But it is a start.” She kissed him again, only this time longer, pressing her lips firmly against his cheek. Remy turned in to the kiss, eager to feel her lips against his own.

Even if it was only a dream.

• • •

Water dribbled down his chin as a cup was pressed to his lips.

Remy drank, but started to cough, and the figure kneeling in front of him moved the cup away.

“Are you all right?” the figure asked.

It took Remy a moment to get his bearings. His eyes darted around the first floor of one of Gunkanjima’s abandoned buildings. He could see Malatesta and Prosper sleeping to his right, both of them still tied up.

He remained bound as well, though not for much longer. He could already feel his strength returning, the interference in his brain that had laid him low no longer present.

“Who are you?” Remy asked.

The figure was tall, and quite thin, with a dull, sickly pallor.

“A friend,” he said. “I was trying to look after them.” His gaze turned toward the broken window. “But now . . . I’m afraid for them.”

Remy tried to sit up, but the rope and thick knots around his wrists and ankles made it incredibly awkward. He concentrated on the fire inside him, allowing it to leak just enough from his pores to weaken his bonds. Then straining just a bit, he broke them, the pieces of rope dropping to smolder upon the floor.

“I know what you mean,” Remy said. “Could I have some more water, please?”

“Certainly.” The man handed the cup to Remy.

“They’re not equipped to deal with the world outside,” he continued, as Remy quenched his thirst. “To challenge the angels responsible for their abandonment . . .” The man shook his head sadly.

“I want to help them as well,” Remy said. “But I’m afraid it might be too late. . . . They seem to have already made up their minds.”

The man was quiet, eyes fixed upon a particular spot, deep in thought. He played with a silver ring that adorned a finger of his left hand, turning it around and around.

“If there was some way they could be taken from here,” he said after a few moments. “Protected from harm. Taught to understand their abilities.”

Remy suddenly remembered Malatesta’s tale of being found by the Keepers, taken away, and taught how to deal with his affliction. Maybe there was a chance. . . .

“You look as though you might have an idea,” the man said to him.

“Yeah,” Remy answered slowly. He still didn’t trust the Vatican, but perhaps they really were the only hope the children had.

He turned and crawled across the floor to Malatesta.

The sorcerer lay on his side, and Remy gripped his arm, preparing to awaken him. “Constantin,” he said, knowing immediately that something was wrong.

Malatesta rolled onto his back, eyes wide and unblinking, his teeth clenched together in a rictus-like grin. His body twitched wildly, and Remy knew that there was nothing he could do right then.

There was a battle taking place inside the Vatican magick user—a battle for the soul of the sorcerer as the evil being within attempted to wrest away control.

Remy briefly turned his attention from the sorcerer to the man he’d just been talking with, but the stranger was gone.

Taking Malatesta’s hand in his, Remy tried to lend him the strength he would need to defeat the darkness inside him.

It was a similar battle to one that Remy himself had fought many times.

• • •

Simeon left the building, allowing himself to be swallowed up in the sharp angles of darkness around the rotting structures.

“Are we leaving, master?” Beleeze asked, nearly invisible in the shadows.

Simeon was staring back toward where he had come from, and the angel he’d left behind. It had been a very long time since last he’d seen him.

The forever man had often wondered what became of the angel that led the siege against Ignatius Hallow’s castle; and here he was, going by the name of Remy Chandler.

Funny how things work out, Simeon thought. It was this angel—this Remy Chandler—who had helped set him on the path to fulfilling his most heartfelt desire, and now the angel would assist him again.

The angel would never know that it was Simeon’s idea that the Vatican might provide for the children’s well-being. He would think it a solution that suddenly came to him, a bolt from the blue.

A chance for the children to survive.

Simeon frowned. No, that wouldn’t do at all.

“Yes, we’re going.” Simeon turned his attention to the demon that had already begun to weave the arcane magicks of his kind to take them from this place. The two other demons that also served the forever man stepped closer.

“Where to?” Beleeze questioned.

“Rome,” Simeon replied. “I need to speak with some old friends.”

Simeon rose from where he’d been thrown, eyes unable to move from the scene unfolding before him.

The angel stood there in the gloom of Castle Hallow, his holy radiance burning as if a miniature sun had suddenly taken up residence in its shadow-filled halls.

“It is the time of your reckoning, necromancer,” the angel’s voice boomed.

Simeon could not take his eyes from the being; this was a servant of the God who had rejected him, and he wanted to remember every detail about him.

He would remember this one. He would remember all of them, and he would rejoice as they fell, their God unable to help them.

The angel advanced toward Simeon’s ancient master. He was tempted to go and stand closer to him, but a brief glance from Hallow froze him where he stood.

As a being who believed nothing could harm him, there was a cockiness in the angel’s stride. But Simeon knew that if nothing else, Ignatius Hallow was full of surprises.

The necromancer raised his hand, adorned with the sigil of Solomon, and called forth the demons that were compelled by the ring to serve him. They swarmed to their master’s side and attacked en masse.

The angel was a sight to behold, his sword of fire cutting deadly swathes through the air as he battled the nightmare beasts. The demons fell dead at his feet, sometimes two and three at a time, but still they came, driven by the commands of their master. Simeon could not believe the number; most he had never laid eyes on. He imagined that they had been stored away somewhere deep beneath the castle, waiting for such a time as this.

The demons died one after the other, their wails of pain filling the cavernous entryway, as the angel advanced upon Hallow.

Simeon wanted to tell his ancient master to run, but Ignatius Hallow held his ground, arms extended, continuing to command the demonic beasts that were forced to serve his every whim, even if it meant their deaths. The angel did not slow, his golden armor stained black with the blood of his vanquished foes.

Simeon desperately wanted to go to the necromancer’s aid, but he had been warned not to interfere. In fact, he had been ordered to escape the castle through one of the secret underground passages that had been tunneled by demonic hands. Still, the forever man could not turn away.

He had to witness the power that could strike down one such as Hallow. For it would be power such as this that he would face when his plans for the future reached fruition.

Through a wall of burning demons the angel exploded, the creatures’ pathetic attempts at protecting their master failing horribly. Hallow still held his ground, staring defiantly into the face of the force that could so easily wipe him from the earth. The angel bore down upon him, but the necromancer did not flinch before the terrifying visage of the thing from Heaven.

“Do you know why you hate me, angel?” Hallow asked as the angel raised his mighty sword.

It took a moment, but the question seemed to permeate, the sword of fire hovering in the air.

More of the demonic surged into the entryway, and the angel spun toward them.

“Hold!” the necromancer commanded, and the demons did as they were told.

The angel looked back to him with eyes that burned with rage, but there was a question there as well.

“You are compelled to slay me, but I am certain that if you ask yourself the reason, you’ll find nothing to justify such an insatiable hunger for my death.”

The necromancer’s words appeared to be having some physical effect upon the angel. He blinked rapidly, then tried to raise his fiery sword, only to have it drop harmlessly to his side.

“You are bewitched, angel,” the necromancer stated, lifting his withered hand to show him the sigil ring upon it. “By the sibling of this very ring, created by the powerful magicks of Solomon.”

Simeon could not believe what he was seeing. His master was actually having some success in taming the fiery power of Heaven sent to destroy him. He emerged from his hiding place, desperate to bear witness to the unimaginable events transpiring.

“My ring gives me sway over the demonic, while its sister—”

The lance pierced the oily smoke wafting up from the bodies of the burning demons. It impaled the necromancer through the chest, exiting from his back in a hissing spray of crimson.

“No!” Simeon cried, as his master these past years fell limply to one side. He ran out into the open, dropping to his knees on the stone floor beside the injured man.

Hallow was still alive, but barely, eyes fixed upon the angel of God, the churning smoke behind him, and the figures that now emerged.

“Where is it?” demanded a figure clothed in the elaborate garb of the Pope of Christendom. “Where is the ring?”

The Pope’s cold, reptilian eyes touched upon the fallen necromancer.

“Remiel,” he growled. “Kill him for me.”

The angel immediately rushed forward to do as he was bidden.

But why?

He did not stop, but continued to question his own actions as he advanced upon the prone body of his enemy. The necromancer had been trying to convince him that he was somehow not in control of his actions.

But how?

Wings of crackling, Heavenly fire spread wide upon his back, the angel Remiel loomed above the necromancer, preparing to strike him dead.

The man did not appear afraid.

A servant bravely leapt to his master’s defense, standing between Remiel and his quarry.

“I curse you and all that you stand for,” the young man pronounced. “There will come a day when I see you, your brethren, and Heaven itself fall into ruin.”

“Do not waste my time!” Pope Tyranus commanded, eager for his Heavenly servant to complete his task.

Servant?

Remiel slapped the young man aside, feeling the bones in his face turn to paste with the ferocity of the blow.

“Kill him,” Tyranus ordered. “Kill him now so I may claim my prize!”

Remiel reached for the dying man, who continued to cling to life, gazing up at him defiantly.

“This ring . . . this ring controls the demonic,” the necromancer managed, rich arterial blood oozing up from his destroyed innards, flowing over the sides of his mouth. He plucked the ring from his finger, and strange wails rose up from the demons to echo through the castle halls.

Remiel reached down to close his burning hand around the man’s throat, and began to squeeze.

“Its sister controls that of Heaven,” the necromancer struggled.

“The angelic . . . A second ring controls the angelic.”

The words sank in, permeating the thick fog that had seemed to encase Remiel’s brain since . . . since first encountering the pope, Tyranus.

The old man was burning in the angel’s grasp, skin bubbling to fluid-filled blisters.

“Take it,” the necromancer croaked, pressing the ring against him. “Take it . . . take it and break the other’s hold upon you.”

“Kill him and allow me my prize!” Tyranus shouted from somewhere behind him.

Remiel continued to gaze into the necromancer’s eyes as the life left him. He could feel the ring pressed against his own armored chest-plate, as if it were attempting to melt through the metal forged in Heaven to the divine flesh beneath.

“Take it,” were the last words uttered by the magick wielder called Hallow.

And again, Remiel did what was asked of him, taking the golden ring from the burned and crumbling hand as the necromancer’s body fell away, breaking into smoldering pieces that hissed upon the floor.

The ring was like a piece of the harshest winter, yet at the same time it burned in the palm of his hand.

“Where is it?” the Pope demanded. “Give it to me.”

Remiel saw the brother ring adorning the holy man’s finger, as he closed his hand over what had been given to him by his dying enemy.

“Give it to me!” Pope Tyranus roared, extending his spidery hand greedily.

The angel Remiel’s thoughts became suddenly clear, and he understood the magnitude of what had been done to him.

And he became very angry.

• • •

Remy placed his hands upon Malatesta, trying to keep the man from hurting himself as he convulsed on the ground.

He could feel the sorcerer’s skin ripple, and saw the bones beneath his face distorting as he attempted to fight the evil that tried to usurp his control. From the looks of it, he wasn’t doing too well.

The disturbing sound of popping joints and the elastic-band snap of tearing tendons filled the space, and all Remy could do was beg the man to fight.

Prosper was suddenly awake and beside Remy, begging the angel to show the man some mercy, and put him down—for his sake, and for the sake of the world.

For a moment Remy actually considered the request.

The demon peered out through the Vatican magick user’s eyes, as he twisted and writhed on the floor, trying to escape the bonds that still held him. And then Remy noticed its gleeful expression change.

“Who is that?” the Larva asked, his struggles intensifying.

Remy turned to see a small shape standing just inside the door. It was one of the children.

“Hey,” Remy said, trying not to scare the youth.

The little boy, who appeared no older than six, shuffled farther into the room, the cuffs of his overly long sweatpants practically covering up his shoes.

“That man has something bad in him,” the child said, squatting down next to Remy, his gaze never leaving the panicking Malatesta.

“Keep him away,” the Larva roared, eagerly trying to get his hands free.

“I can see it,” the child said. “I did when he first got here, too.”

“You can see the bad thing?” Remy asked.

The child nodded. “I can see the good . . . and the bad.”

The child’s eyes seemed to twinkle with an eerie incandescence as he looked at Remy. “You’re a good guy,” he said, smiling. He was missing his two front teeth.

“I like to think so,” Remy replied.

Malatesta’s hand broke free of his bonds then. His fingers were horribly distended, and adorned with razor-sharp claws. He grabbed at the boy, but Remy was faster, grasping the deformed arm of the possessed by the wrist.

“He doesn’t like you,” Remy said to the boy.

“Yeah,” the child said, rubbing a filthy finger beneath his nose. “He knows I can see him hiding inside. . . . He knows what I can do.”

Malatesta started screaming, his body writhing in the throes of agony.

“Get that fucker away from me!” the evil spirit screeched in a voice that was filled with fear.

“What can you do?” Remy asked the little boy, as he struggled to hold Malatesta down.

The little boy looked down at his hands, dirty palms up.

“I can make him so he ain’t so strong,” the child said. He looked up into Remy’s eyes. “It’s my gift, I guess,” he added with a shrug.

It was then that Remy truly saw this child—these children—for what they were, for the potential they had, if they were allowed to survive long enough to show it.

“Would you use your gift to help my friend?” Remy asked.

“No!” the evil entity inside of Malatesta wailed. “No! No! Fucking no!”

“I never done it before,” the little boy said, nervously.

Remy was curious. “Then how do you know . . .”

“We all got something special,” the boy explained. “I just know what I can do.” The child looked at Remy again. “Does that sound crazy?”

Remy shook his head. “Not at all.”

The child smiled, then turned his attention to the man who lay upon the ground, violently twisting and turning. “That’s enough outta you,” he said, and placed his hands on Malatesta’s chest.

Malatesta’s neck stretched, and sharp teeth grew from his mouth as he tried to bite the child. Remy reached out, placing his palm against the man’s fevered brow and shoving his head back.

“Go ahead,” he urged the boy. “Do your thing.”

The child leaned forward upon his hands, looking as though he was going to start to perform CPR. Malatesta’s body went suddenly rigid, as if an electrical current was coursing through it. The Larva’s screams became higher and higher pitched until his mouth remained cavernously open.

Remy heard a sudden buzzing, and a swarm of flies, their bodies fat, shiny, and green, flew out of Malatesta’s gaping mouth. The sorcerer’s body had gone suddenly still, and Remy noticed that it had returned to normal. Malatesta’s eyes were fluttering now, about to open, as if coming up from a very deep sleep.

Remy looked to the boy, who was leaning back on his haunches.

“It’s weaker now,” the child said.

“It appears that way,” Remy said, amazed at what he had just seen.

The child was staring at him again, as if waiting for something.

“You did a very good job,” Remy told him, and the child beamed from ear to ear.

Malatesta awoke. “What . . . what happened?” he stammered. He sounded weak, but did not appear to be fighting the monstrous spirit that lived inside of him.

“This little guy here just saved you,” Remy said, placing his hand upon the boy’s shoulder. “And showed me that we need to do everything we can to help these kids.”

Remy burned away Malatesta’s bonds, and helped him to sit up.

“What can we do?” the sorcerer asked.

“We have to get them away from here—hide them,” Remy said.

“And how do you suppose we do that?”

“We’ll need some help,” Remy said as he fixed Malatesta in a powerful stare.

“That’s where your employer comes in.”