Walking In the Midst of Fire

CHAPTER NINE

Remy slipped the phone back into his pocket, and was considering heading back inside the study to see how Malatesta was doing, when he noticed one of the female staff members staring blankly ahead from the end of the corridor.

It was as if she was watching him, but he knew that wasn’t the case. Maybe sensing him was more like it.

“Hello,” he called out to her. “Is there something I can do for you?”

She advanced slowly, carefully, her fingertips running along the wall to guide her way.

“He’s gone,” she declared.

Remy was taken aback, but tried not to show it. “Excuse me?”

“The master . . . He’s gone.”

“That’s something you’re going to have to take up with Mr. Montagin,” Remy said, turning toward the door to the study.

“I knew it was only a matter of time,” she said. “Only a matter of time before the sin of the world had its way with him.”

Remy froze for a moment, then slowly approached the woman.

She was younger than she looked initially, straggly blond hair falling down across her face. She smiled, chasing away the years.

“He called himself a creature of God,” she began, her fingernails scratching at irregularities in the wall. “If that’s the case, I wasn’t aware that God was so awful and cruel.”

It wasn’t the first time Remy had heard that servants to the angels were treated less than humanely. Many of the divine creatures considered humanity little more than God’s pets.

Sea Monkeys in an aquarium.

Remy was standing directly in front of the woman now. The fingers that had just been picking at the wall wagged before him.

“Do you fancy yourself a creature of God?” she asked, and he caught a hint of disdain in her tone.

“Aren’t we all?” Remy asked.

The woman laughed, a high-pitched sound that very easily could have been tinged with madness. Serving angels certainly took its toll.

“What’s your name?” Remy asked her.

She considered the question for a moment before answering.

“Marley,” she said, almost in a whisper. “And you’re Mr. Chandler.”

“Remy,” he told her. “Call me Remy.”

Marley smiled again. “All right.”

“Why do you think that something bad has happened to your master, Marley?”

“It was inevitable,” she answered matter-of-factly. “Even the divine will fall when surrounded by so much . . . sin.”

“I don’t understand,” Remy admitted. “What was Aszrus surrounded with?”

Marley remained silent, picking at the wall again.

“Marley, what was your master doing that was so bad?”

Her face twisted up in disgust. “He was no better than the vermin that walk the streets,” she snarled. “He let himself be tempted. And it changed him.”

“Tempted by what?”

“Things, Remy,” she replied. “Are you tempted by things?”

“I don’t really understand what—”

“I’ll show you,” Marley interrupted, reaching out for his hand. She led him down the corridor, abruptly stopping just before the kitchen. She turned toward the wall and pushed on a wooden panel. “Secrets,” she muttered, as part of the wall slid inward with a click.

She led Remy through the tiny opening, closing it behind them and plunging the small hallway into total darkness. Remy altered the configuration of his eyes so that he could see where they were.

A stairway stood directly in front of them. Marley, still holding tightly to his hand, led him up the steps.

“Where are we going, Marley?” Remy asked.

She giggled. “Where the sins are, where he hid them.”

There was another door at the top of the stairs, and Marley paused briefly. She let go of his hand long enough to reach into the pocket of her maid’s uniform to extract a key. Feeling for the lock, she inserted the key and turned it, opening the creaking door.

“I was the only one he allowed inside,” Marley said. “The only one that he would let tidy up.”

She reached for Remy’s hand again, and drew him inside.

“This is where he would come,” she told him. “Where he would spend hours upon hours surrounded by his vices.”

Though he could see perfectly fine, Remy reached out to a table lamp to bring some light into the gloom. The light came on, and to say he was taken aback by what he saw there in the room was an understatement.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said, taking it all in.

Marley stifled a laugh and crossed her arms defiantly in front of her chest.

“These were his prizes,” she said with disdain. “His most cherished possessions.”

The room looked as though it might have belonged to a teenage boy, or maybe a first-year college student. Video game systems sat on the shelves of an elaborate entertainment center; empty plastic cases littered the floor. Aszrus appeared to have been a fan of first-person-shooter games. There were stacks of magazines just about everywhere: magazines about cars, about food, and porn—more porn than anything else, which complemented the plethora of pornographic DVDs stacked haphazardly beside a high-backed leather easy chair in front of a sixty-inch television monitor.

Remy slowly turned in the center of the den, taking it all in. There was a wheeled bar cart not far off, loaded with liquor—all top shelf. A tiny refrigerator hummed beside it.

On the table that held the lamp beside the easy chair, there was an ornate box, and he could only imagine what he would find inside. Remy reached out, carefully removing the carved lid. The inside of the case was compartmentalized: loose pot on one side, with rolling papers in another section beside it. In another section was what looked to be cocaine, and beside that what he guessed to be heroin. There was a hypodermic in its own thin section beside it.

From what he could see, every human vice was represented in some degree here. Remy had heard of angels becoming obsessed with the ways of the Earth; hell, even he had been accused of it, but he would never imagine an angel of Aszrus’ stature falling so hard.

“He loved this . . . stuff more than those who would give their lives for him,” Marley said. Lurching suddenly to one side, toward the small table beside the chair, she shoved the box of illicit drugs and the lamp to the floor. The room was again plunged into darkness. “And then not even this would do; he had to go even farther from us, outside the home to find whatever it was he was searching for.”

“Where outside the house?” Remy asked, taking advantage of a potential opportunity.

She was breathing heavily now, the fear of repercussions for her actions weighing upon her. It looked as though she was thinking that perhaps she’d gone too far.

“What was he doing outside the house?” Remy pressed.

Marley carefully squatted down, attempting to clean up after herself, her fingers carefully picking up the pieces of the shattered lamp.

“It got to be that he barely acknowledged our existence,” she said, quietly. “It was like we weren’t even there anymore, our presence invisible as the car pulled up in front of the house, and he left for the evening, not returning until the early morning hours.”

“He used a car?”

Marley slowly stood, broken lamp pieces carefully held in her hand. “It was another of his vices. . . . He loved cars and has an entire underground garage filled with them.”

“But you said a car came for him.”

“Yes, it would beep its horn once to let him know it had arrived.”

“So he had a driver,” Remy prodded.

“Yes,” Marley agreed.

“Does this driver live here with the other staff members?”

Marley shook her head, a broken piece of the lamp in her hand falling to the floor from the movement.

“No,” she said. “Normally he would drive his own cars.”

“But in some instances he chose not to drive himself to wherever it was he was going.”

Marley was quiet, her blind eyes staring into the darkness around them.

“Elite Limousine,” she said.

“That was the name of the service he used?”

“Yes,” she answered him. “I heard him through his office door once . . . and he asked for Neal to drive him.”

Now they were getting someplace.

“You’ve been very helpful, Marley,” Remy said gently. “Thank you.”

He went for the door, turning toward the young woman.

“Are you coming?” Remy asked her.

She shook her head. “I’d like to clean up.”

So he left here there, standing perfectly still in the darkness of the room, a darkness she had grown accustomed to.

Beleeze quickly left his master’s presence so as not to incur his wrath.

His master had the most unpredictable of natures, and sometimes, when things did not go as planned, he would display a vicious temper.

Images that had branded themselves in the demon’s mind flashed before his eyes, images of those that had brought their master news that he deemed . . . disappointing.

Beleeze still found disconcerting the memory of one of his kind being turned inside out, and yet still living. None who still served Master Simeon cared to put their own endurance to the test.

They had survived too much to suffer such an ignoble fate.

Beleeze and the other demons were of the species Demonicus, extracted from the darkness of oblivion by the necromancer, Ignatius Hallow, and enslaved by the power of Solomon’s ring. They had served the death wizard for nearly a century before their servitude was transferred to the one named Simeon.

But with that transference, came the birth of purpose.

The demon descended the refuse-strewn steps into the main lobby of the deserted office building to find the others waiting.

“Well, at least you’re still alive,” Dorian commented.

Is that actually concern in her dark eyes? Beleeze wondered.

“How did he take it?” Robert asked.

Beleeze had yet to get used to the demon’s change of names. Robert had been Tjernobog until a few centuries ago, when he’d changed it to fit in better with the world in which they existed.

Even though they were all working toward seeing it brought to ruin.

“Surprisingly well,” Beleeze replied.

“What did he say?” Dorian asked. She was standing closer to him now, the long, spidery fingers of her hand briefly touching the sleeve of his jacket.

Is it possible that after all this time, she finally realizes the feelings I have for her?

Beleeze slowly shook his head. “He didn’t say anything.”

Robert hissed. “That’s not good,” he said, and started to pace. “Not good at all. That’s the same thing that happened with Teloch.”

“Teloch?” Beleeze questioned. There had been so many more of them—so many that had met their fates at Simeon’s angry hand.

“Teloch!” Robert boomed, barely stopping his pacing. “Short, circular mouth ringed with teeth? Loved intestines and bone marrow?”

Beleeze remembered his demon brother, and his fate.

“He didn’t say anything to Teloch, either, and then . . .”

Images flashed through Beleeze’s memory—images of Teloch’s body suddenly swelling as if filling with fluid, and then exploding like a human child’s toy balloon.

Beleeze did not recall the news Teloch had brought their master that had garnered such a horrendous response, but as he dwelled upon it, he realized that it could have been nearly anything: an ingredient for a particularly complex spell not being readily available, the premature return of the Morningstar to his hellish domain, the weather in whatever corner of the world they were currently residing being too hot, too cold, or too rainy, or the ancient god Dagon meeting with an untimely demise.

It could have been something, or really nothing at all. It didn’t matter.

They were all quiet then, in the lobby of the dead building, thinking of Teloch and so many others that had met an ugly fate after delivering messages that did not please their master.

Would they be next?

It is possible, Beleeze thought worriedly. But what choice did they have? Master Simeon had the ring, and as long as he did, there was nothing else but for them to obey.

But despite the looming potential for death, the demons and their eternal master shared a common goal. They both hated God, the Almighty, the Lord of Lords, or whatever else the Being that brought forth the light to a universe that was once only darkness, was called.

Those who served and worshipped this heartless Deity believed that there was nothing until He made His illuminating declaration, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

There were things living in the sea of black that existed before He even became aware of His own existence; worlds and peoples thriving in the cold, endless void.

And so many met their end with the birth of this creation, their lives burned away with the utterance of four little words:

Let there be light.

Beleeze recalled the blinding flash and the screams of millions as they died, but somehow he, and others of his kind, had managed to survive, finding pools of shadow deep enough to hide themselves.

For where there is light, there must also be shadow.

Beleeze left his thoughts at the sound of footsteps.

“This is it,” Robert muttered with a gulp.

But Beleeze did not believe it. Though their master might sometimes be unpredictable in his wrath, Beleeze felt somewhere deep down in the pocket of shadow that churned at the center of his being that their mutual hate would spare him.

The others he did not know about, but as for himself, he somehow knew that his and Master Simeon’s fates were intertwined. They would witness the fall of Heaven together, and watch the world and the universe around it, gradually return to darkness.

Simeon stepped into the lobby, his dark eyes fixed upon the demons.

The others averted their gazes, but Beleeze was not afraid.

“Take me to the island,” their master commanded, pulling at the white cuffs of his shirt just below the sleeves of his dark sports jacket. “Let’s see what I can do to keep this from turning into one huge cluster-fuck.”

Overjoyed that they were not murdered, Beleeze watched as Dorian and Robert conjured a circle of transport upon the lobby floor that would take them all to their destination.

And toward what Beleeze believed would eventually be his destiny.

Remy found his way back down to the first floor of the mansion alone, exiting from the secret door into Montagin’s path.

“Where have you been?” the angel demanded, eyeing him, and the door, as Remy closed it behind him with a click.

“Finding stuff out,” he said.

“Stuff?” Montagin asked. “What kind of stuff?”

The angel moved around Remy to examine the door. “Where does this go?” he asked. “I’ve never seen it before.”

“Doesn’t surprise me,” Remy said. “Seems as though your boss might have been keeping some things pretty close to the vest.”

“Things?” Montagin questioned with a sneer.

“Looks like Aszrus was a little more infatuated with this world than he led you to believe.”

He could see that the assistant’s demeanor was changing, his ire on the rise. There was nothing somebody like Montagin hated more than to not be aware of the total picture.

“Explain, Seraphim,” Montagin demanded.

Remy looked him straight in the eyes with a stare that suggested he back off.

The angel’s demeanor softened.

“Did you find something that could explain who . . .”

“Maybe,” Remy said, starting back toward the study with Montagin eagerly walking beside him. “It seems that your boss liked to hit the town some nights, and he used a limousine service to get there.”

“Why would he do that?”

“That’s what I’m hoping to find out,” Remy said as they approached the study doors. Montagin used his key to open the door, and they were greeted by the sight of Malatesta kneeling beside the dead angel’s body, one of his hands buried deep within the open wound that had allowed the angel’s killer access to his heart.

The sorcerer looked up from his work.

“I’m not quite finished here, but—”

“I have to leave,” Remy interrupted. “Finish what you started and lend a hand if necessary.” He turned to Montagin again, and saw that spark of panic ready to ignite once more. “You just keep it together until I get back with some answers.”

“I’ll try,” Montagin replied, his eyes drifting over to the globe-shaped liquor cabinet in the corner of the room.

Remy was just about to leave when he remembered something he would need. He stopped, turning back toward Montagin.

“Do you think I can borrow a car?” he asked. “I hear there’s an entire underground garage of the things.”