Walking In the Midst of Fire

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Montagin watched the magick user weave his spell.

“How much longer?” the angel asked before taking a long drink of his second scotch.

Malatesta continued to mutter, pausing only when he appeared to run out of breath.

“This is a more difficult task than normal,” the Vatican sorcerer finally said. “We must repel not only the household staff, but also those of an angelic nature. For such a spell to work on an angel, it must be layered, spell upon spell, magick atop of magick.”

“And that will keep any and all away?” Montagin asked, not sure if he truly believed that was possible.

“I certainly hope so,” Malatesta said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

The sorcerer went back to work, laying down another layer of magick to keep the contents of the study a secret—how long it would last was a question that gnawed at him.

Montagin finished his drink, and poured another. He was allowing the alcohol to calm him. It was the only thing keeping him from panic. What he was helping to hide here could very well lead to a war that would rival the one already fought in Heaven so very long ago. The angel brought the glass to his mouth, gulping the liquor, eager to dull the anxiety that nibbled at the periphery of his thoughts. All he had to do was stay focused until Remiel returned. Hopefully, he would have the answers they needed.

But what if Remiel’s investigation verified what Montagin had first suspected: that the legion of the Morningstar was indeed responsible, and this was but the first attack?

“Are you sure you’re a proper sorcerer?” Montagin suddenly blurted out.

Malatesta glared at him, his hands suddenly aglow with preternatural power. “I began my training with the Keepers of the Vatican before my tenth birthday. Before puberty, I had risen to the top of my class in almost all forms of spell casting.”

Montagin stared, uninterested, finishing up his latest attempt at calming his fragile nerves.

“If you wish me to finish this spell, you will leave me alone,” the sorcerer demanded. “No more questions . . . no more interruptions. Do I make myself clear?”

The angel seriously contemplated lashing out against such disrespect. Instead, he strode across the room, placing his empty glass upon a bookshelf as he headed for the door. He was just about to open it when he felt the disturbance. At first he thought it was a manifestation of his nerves, but quickly realized that wasn’t the case.

“Angels,” Malatesta said.

“Damn it,” Montagin hissed.

He turned to the sorcerer, doorknobs in hand. “Finish what you have started, or we’ll all be dead,” he proclaimed before stepping out into the hall and closing the double doors tightly behind him.

Montagin stopped just outside the study doors and took a deep breath, centering himself, before he marched down the corridor toward where he sensed the emanations were strongest. Turning the corner at the end of the hallway, he found the servant, Marley, bowing her head in reverence to a gathering of three angels who stood in the entryway.

The three wore human appearances and attire, exuding discomfort as they looked in his general direction.

“Ah, Dardariel,” Montagin said, attempting to hide his own unease. “To what do we owe this visit?”

“The general,” the angel responded curtly. “Take me to him at once.”

Montagin suddenly felt as though his verbal skills had completely left him. He stared at the three soldiers of the divine.

“He isn’t here,” he managed, feeling as though millennia had passed before he was able to answer.

Dardariel glared, his dark predatory eyes glistening in the light of the hallway.

And then the laughing began—not from the angels, but from the girl.

“Silence, woman!” Montagin roared, his body momentarily taking on the guise of his true form, a being of fiery light.

The blind woman sensed his displeasure, and carefully backed away from the angels. “I meant no disrespect,” she said, although Montagin could see that she was still stifling a smirk.

“Leave us,” Montagin commanded, and Marley quickly turned, hand upon the wall as she nearly ran from them.

“Why do you tolerate such lack of respect?” Gromeyl asked, a look of disgust on his smooth, perfect features.

Montagin once again assumed his human form. “That one, I’m afraid, is a bit touched in the head,” he explained. “But a favorite of the general.”

“I cannot even begin to understand how you bear to have them among you,” Sengael said. “They are such filthy, untrustworthy beasts.”

“And yet the Lord God Almighty loves them so,” Montagin added.

The three angels turned their gazes to him, and Montagin resisted the nearly overwhelming urge to step back.

“Until He doesn’t,” Dardariel said, his voice as cold as the vacuum of space.

“Perhaps,” Montagin begrudgingly agreed.

“Take us to the general,” Dardariel repeated. “He told us to meet him here, on this day, at this time. A commander of Heaven’s armies would not be so vulgar as to not be here.”

“And I’m telling you that—”

“I know not what games you’re playing, Montagin,” Sengael snarled.

Dardariel sniffed the air. “He is here,” the angel soldier stated. “And you will not keep me from him.”

He brusquely shoved Montagin aside, the two other soldiers following close behind, glaring menacingly as they moved past him down the corridor.

“And don’t think the general will not be told of this,” Gromeyl threatened.

Montagin didn’t know what to do. He seriously considered an attack on the three, but realizing the folly in that, entertained the idea of coming clean.

Letting them know exactly what was going on—what had happened.

“Please, my brothers,” Montagin stated, following the angel soldiers. “The general’s essence covers this dwelling; there isn’t an inch that doesn’t hold his powerful scent.”

He’d managed to come around them just as they reached the study, blocking the doors with his body.

“Why would I wish to keep you from your meeting?” Montagin asked, desperately hoping that they could not read his panic.

Dardariel reached out, laying a hand menacingly upon Montagin’s shoulder.

“Get out of the way,” he ordered, and Montagin began to feel the heat of Heaven’s divine fire start to flow from the soldier’s hand.

The doors to the study opened abruptly and Montagin released a pathetic scream as he turned to look into the face of General Aszrus.

“General,” Montagin stated in disbelief.

“What is the meaning of this?” the general demanded, stepping out farther into the hall, closing the doors behind him.

“General Aszrus,” Dardariel said, stepping back along with his two companions, all three bowing their heads. “You’re attendant was attempting to keep us from . . .”

“My attendant was doing exactly as he was told,” the angel general said, looking to his aide.

Montagin shrugged off the shock. “I tried, General,” he said. “But they did not wish to listen.”

Aszrus fixed them all in a withering stare.

“Then perhaps they’ll listen to me,” he stated. “Leave my home. I have no time for conference today.”

“But General,” Dardariel began. “The war council is meeting in two days and . . .”

“Have you lost the gift of tongues, soldier?” Aszrus asked. “Am I speaking some language that you are incapable of understanding?”

“No, sir,” the angel soldier answered quickly, averting his eyes.

“Then leave,” Aszrus commanded. “Do not return until you are summoned again.”

The three angels raised their eyes to their superior. Montagin waited for some sort of challenge, but it did not come.

“As you wish, my general,” Dardariel responded, obviously chagrined.

Dardariel’s gaze then fell upon Montagin, and the angel did all he could to suppress a smile of petulant satisfaction, and supreme relief.

Without another word, the three soldiers opened their wings, and with a rush of air, were gone from the mansion.

It was a moment before Montagin could react.

“What madness is this?” he shrieked as he turned to face the general.

The general’s appearance began to melt away, revealing the form of the smiling Vatican sorcerer.

“Besides being top in my class for offensive and defensive spells,” Malatesta offered, “I also excelled in the art of glamour.”

Castle Hallow

1349

Simeon could not find his master.

He’d searched high and low, but the whereabouts of Ignatius Hallow were unknown even to his demonic servants.

The old necromancer had mentioned that Simeon’s lessons would start earlier than usual, and would be more challenging than ever before.

Simeon’s thoughts raced through the years he had spent in service to the necromancer called Hallow. None of them had ever been easy, and many of the things he had learned had resulted in his own death. But that was not such a high price to pay when cursed with eternal life.

Hallow had called him the perfect student, hoping if he’d had time to sire a son, he would have been as obedient—and enduring—as Simeon.

But today Simeon was to be challenged.

He had searched everywhere for his master—every place but one, which was forbidden to him.

Hallow called it his sanctum, a place only for him. Simeon always believed that was where the most powerful of the necromancer’s knowledge was kept, and he wondered if this day would be the day that the special room was revealed to him.

The sanctum was located in a hidden chamber, deep beneath what was believed to be the final room in the castle. It was part dungeon, part torture chamber, and part wine cellar. The only reason Simeon even knew of its existence was that he’d followed his ancient master one night, and unseen, watched as the old man opened the secret door and descended even further into the bowels of the earth.

Simeon moved aside some old wooden barrels and began to search for a way to make the entrance appear. Eyes squinted and hand glowing with a supernatural light he ignited with a simple spell of illumination, he looked, but could not find any trace of a door.

He was about to call forth a spell of unraveling, when the door suddenly appeared. It began as a spot of shadow, growing steadily until a dark passage was revealed.

Smiling with the belief that this was the day he yearned for, Simeon entered the cool darkness, carefully making his way down steps that appeared constructed from bricks of solid shadow. His breathing quickened, and his heart beat at a frantic, excited pace. Simeon could only imagine the magick that was stored here, and how it could eventually help him toward his purpose.

The descending passage seemed to go on forever, but then he saw the hint of a flickering light below him. Careful not to stumble—he might have been immortal, but he still would rather not go through the rather unpleasant experience of breaking his bones—Simeon continued down the steps.

Unsure if he had reached the bottom, he reached out with a foot to test the darkness, probing for something solid with the tip of his boot. The darkness beneath it was firm, and did not yield, and he knew that he had arrived.

The dancing light was not too far ahead, and he plunged into the sea of pitch black, moving toward it like an insect to flame. It was not long before he realized that he had been traveling a long, stone corridor that emptied out into an enormous, domed chamber.

“There you are, Simeon,” said an ancient voice from within the underground room. “I suspected you would find me.”

Simeon stepped into the vast, circular room, and found his suspicions confirmed. The room was indeed a vast storeroom of ancient texts, scrolls, and rare arcana.

But what he then witnessed almost brought a scream to his lips.

Ignatius Hallow had taken his books and scrolls and had placed them all in an enormous pile upon the stone floor. Squatting, huge and loathsome, not far away was a monstrous entity of some twisted kind. It resembled a gigantic toad filtered through the mind of a madman, the bulbous black eyes protruding up from its lumpy head riveted to the necromancer before it.

Hallow, wielding a shovel, was taking large scoops of the ancient works and tossing them into the cavernous, gaping maw of the demon toad, which was filled with unnatural flame.

“Stop!” Simeon cried, running across the room toward his master. “You can’t do this!”

“I can, and I will,” Hallow said, grunting as he shoveled a particularly large shovelful of texts and scrolls into the waiting mouth of the beast. The fire hissed and billowed as the writings were consumed, the great demon toad chewing and swallowing noisily before opening its mouth once more.

Hallow was digging for more when Simeon grabbed hold of the shovel.

“You can’t,” he bellowed, taking Hallow by surprise.

The demon toad let out a horrific sound of warning, steam escaping from its nostrils with a hiss.

“I know what this must look like to you, boy, but I do what needs to be done,” the necromancer told him. He pulled the shovel away from Simeon with a display of great strength. “There isn’t much time. . . . They’re almost here.”

Hallow bent and dug into the dwindling stack.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Simeon said, watching as scrolls and forbidden, flesh-bound volumes made their way into the inferno inside the great, reptilian beast’s mouth. “This knowledge is irreplaceable, why would you see it destroyed?”

“This knowledge is power,” the necromancer spoke. He paused to wipe away the sweat pouring out from beneath his copper skull-cap. “And I cannot afford for him to have any more than he already has.”

“Who?” Simeon demanded, unable to take his eyes from the potential knowledge and power being eaten by the flames within the monster’s mouth.

“I always knew this day would come,” Hallow said, resuming his task. “That he would someday gather a force, and have enough power to come at me . . . to take what I have collected.”

“Who?” Simeon asked again, his voice a plaintive cry. He stepped into the path before more could be tossed within the demon toad’s furnace of a mouth.

Hallow stopped midtoss, the books upon the shovel falling to the stone floor.

“The leader of the Church,” Ignatius Hallow said. “Pope Tyranus . . .”

Hallow paused, his glassy eyes reflecting the fire from inside the demon toad’s mouth.

“My brother.”

It was as if Simeon has been physically struck. “Your . . . brother?”

“The one born in light,” the necromancer explained. “Who seeks my birthright of darkness.”

Hallow leaned on the shovel, showing a weariness that Simeon had never seen in him before.

“That is why this all must be destroyed,” he explained. “He can never have it.”

“We will fight him,” Simeon proclaimed. “We will be the ones to take away his birthright instead.”

The old man smiled sadly. “I’m afraid my brother has grown quite powerful since last we dueled, and the spirits of the dead tell me that he has acquired an even more powerful ally.” Hallow paused, as if not wanting to say aloud what it was they would be facing. “A soldier of Heaven serves his cause.”

Simeon could not believe what he was hearing; from what he understood, the winged messengers served only one master.

“How?” he asked incredulously. “How is it that an angel of God serves a being of mere flesh? Is it his position of authority with the Church?”

Hallow raised his right hand, showing Simeon the ring that adorned his middle finger. “I wear this ring forged for King Solomon to control the demonic; my brother wears its opposite.”

“But Solomon had only one ring,” Simeon said, feeling foolish in correcting his master.

The necromancer slowly shook his head. “There were two sigil rings: one to control the demonic . . .”

Simeon was stunned.

“And the other to control the angelic.”

“Now do you see?” Hallow asked. “Now do you see why these texts and scrolls must be destroyed?”

“But—,” Simeon began to protest.

“But nothing,” Hallow roared. “My brother is ravenous for the power contained within these walls. . . .” He held up his hand again.

“And what rests upon my finger.”

Francis cut a tear in the fabric of reality with his fancy knife, and he and Remy stepped from an alley in Providence to . . .

“Where are we now?” Remy asked, standing beside his friend, taking a look around.

The cut quickly healed behind them, the makeup of the universe not tolerant of holes in the material of existence.

“This is where I saw Neal take Aszrus,” Francis said. “Although in daylight it doesn’t look like much of a happening place.”

They were standing outside a tall, chain-link fence that surrounded a vast property, which looked as if it was being prepared either for demolition or renovation.

“Are you sure this is it?” Remy asked, his fingers gripping the fence as he peered through the links.

“As sure as if I’d done it myself,” Francis said.

Remy studied the brick building. There was a cornerstone with 1913 chiseled into it just after the broken concrete steps that led up to the front entrance. Over the rounded stone entryway, it read LEMUEL.

“I think I know what this is,” he said, turning to his friend.

Francis was already on the other side, walking toward the entrance. “Connecticut,” he said over his shoulder.

Remy unfurled his wings and flew over the fence.

“We’re in Connecticut,” Francis said again. “There’s a sign for the demolition company hanging on the fence.”

“Then I definitely know what this is,” Remy said as they entered the cool shade thrown by the ominous brick building looming above them.

“Gonna share?” Francis asked.

“This is the Lemuel Institute,” Remy explained. “A prominent psychiatric facility that ended up with quite the reputation when some of its more experimental methods of rehab were exposed in the sixties.”

“Let me guess,” Francis said. “They were less than humane.”

Remy started up the steps toward the doors. “Sounded like it was a regular house of horrors—the mentally retarded mingling with the criminally insane, and the medical staff working practically unsupervised. The reports of unauthorized medical procedures were staggering. The place was finally shut down in the early seventies.” He stood at the door, peering through the filthy glass at the corridor beyond.

“Are we going in?” Francis asked.

“Yeah,” Remy sighed. “Not that I want to, but we need to figure out why Aszrus would come here.”

Remy stepped closer to Francis, sweeping him up into his winged embrace, and the two disappeared from the front steps to reappear in the hallway beyond the front door.

The institution was no more pleasant on the inside. It was in the midst of decay, the floors covered with plaster from broken walls and collapsed ceilings. It was obvious that trespassers had frequented the building, leaving behind their own, spray-painted scars upon various surfaces.

“Okay,” Francis said, looking around. “I’m not seeing why a general in the army of Heaven would have any business here.”

To the right of the entrance was what looked to be a large sunroom. Filthy blankets and fast-food trash were strewn about the floor.

Something flashed briefly, and Remy gradually changed the shape of his eyes to better focus. Shades of people—some standing before the windows staring out, other sitting in chairs in front of an old nineteen-inch television, others pacing back and forth as if in a trance—appeared to him.

Residual impressions left upon the building.

Ghosts by any other definition.

They did not see him, and wouldn’t, even if he attempted to communicate with them. This was perfectly common for buildings such as this, with powerful emotional energies charging the very environment like a battery.

“We’ve got ghosts,” Remy announced, hooking a finger toward the sunroom as he started to follow Francis, who was standing at the far end of the corridor in front of a pair of swinging doors.

“No shit,” Francis responded, pointing through the broken glass of one of the doors.

Remy came up alongside him to see what he was pointing at.

There was a nurse in the hallway, wearing a proper white dress and cap with a blue stripe around the top. She was pushing a cart filled with trays of small, paper soufflé cups, disappearing into rooms to dispense her meds before coming out again. They could actually hear her white, rubber-soled shoes squeaking on the tiled floors as she went about her business.

“Probably a residual haunt,” Remy said. “Just like the ones in the sunroom.”

The nurse suddenly lifted her gaze to them.

“Are you going to stand there and gawk, or are you going to help me?” she asked.

“I don’t think she’s residual,” Francis said.

She placed her ghostly hands upon her hips and stared at them in annoyance. “Don’t tell me that agency has sent me another couple’a newbies,” the nurse said in disgust. “I’ve got five nurses out with the trots, and I don’t have time to hold hands with new nurses. You two either help me with this med pass, or you can head on out of here.”

She left the cart, passing through a closed door into the room beyond it.

“She thinks we’re nurses,” Francis said.

“And new ones at that,” Remy answered.

“What should we do? Ignore her?”

“That would be sort of rude, wouldn’t it?”

Francis shrugged. “It’s not like we could really help her.”

“Yeah,” Remy agreed. “I wonder if she could help us though.”

“What, like maybe she saw something?”

Remy nodded and pushed through the swinging door, cutting a swath through the plaster and other detritus left on the corridor floor.

The nurse walked through the wall and stopped to stare at him.

“Well?” she asked petulantly.

“Sorry,” Remy said. “But we can’t help you.”

“Then what did they send you for?” she asked huffily.

Remy shed his human guise, allowing his true form to manifest itself: a winged being of radiance, transcending humanity.

“They didn’t,” he said, stepping closer to the nurse. The name tag pinned to the front of her white dress identified her as LeeAnne.

LeeAnne’s expression turned to one of panic.

“No,” she cried, stepping back. “I’m not ready to go. There are still so many who need their medicine . . . who need to be taken care of. . . . Please . . .”

“Great,” Francis said from where he stood just outside the door. “You’re scaring the shit out of her.”

“I don’t see you doing anything to help,” Remy quipped.

“Hey, I got us here.”

Remy returned to his human shape, hoping it would calm the spirit.

“It’s all right, LeeAnne,” he said, soothing her fears. “No one is going to take you anywhere you don’t want to go.”

She was still in a tizzy. “There’re so many here . . . so many that need looking after.”

And she was right.

Remy looked down the corridor to see the ghostly shapes drifting out from behind the walls and closed doors, slowly floating down the hallway toward their caregiver.

“This could be bad,” Francis warned.

“We’re not here to hurt you,” Remy tried to explain. “We’re not here to hurt anybody.”

The ghosts stood just behind LeeAnne, and Remy could see evidence of some of the twisted medical experiments. Even in their nearly translucent form, jagged lobotomy scars showed upon their shaved skulls.

“Then why are you here,” LeeAnne asked.

“We’re looking for some answers,” Remy said. “Someone like me was here not too long ago, and we’d like to know why.”

“Like you?” LeeAnne questioned.

“Angel,” Remy said. “A powerful angel.”

The nurse shook her translucent head.

“There hasn’t been any like you here that I can remember,” she said. She nibbled at a ghostly fingernail as she thought. “But it’s been so busy . . .” She seemed to drift off then, staring at something Remy could not see.

“LeeAnne?” Remy prompted.

But it was as if she could not hear him. She turned and went back to her medication cart, resuming her duties.

“Well, I guess that’s that,” Francis said, still at the swinging door.

The patient-apparitions drifted off as well, many fading away as they headed farther into the building.

Remy shrugged and was heading back toward his friend when Francis suddenly pointed down the corridor past him.

“Look.”

Remy turned around to see a single ghost dressed in pajamas and a bathrobe standing there, watching them.

“Hello?” Remy called to him.

“Let me try,” Francis said, passing Remy on his way down the hall toward the ghost.

“Did you see something, old-timer?” Francis asked.

The ghost began to shuffle off.

“Hey,” Francis called after him.

The ghost stopped, turned ever so slightly, and motioned for them to follow him.

Remy joined Francis, and they did as the ghost had ordered.

Nurse LeeAnne was back at her cart again, fussing over ghostly meds as they passed her.

“Are you going to help me?” she asked them.

“We’re supposed to be working another floor,” Remy told her.

She seemed to accept that with a shrug, and resumed medicating the patients on the first floor.

Remy and Francis continued to follow the old ghost. Every once in a while he would stop, as if resting, and then he would continue.

The place was labyrinthine in its design.

“Do you think he knows where he’s going?” Francis asked when the ghost had stopped yet again at another set of double doors.

The sign above the doors indicated SURGERY.

Remy felt a change in the atmosphere almost immediately, a sense of weight, as if the air had gained some sort of substance. “Feel that?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Francis answered. “And it doesn’t feel right. . . . In fact, it feels awful.”

“I’m guessing some really bad shit went down in this part of the building.”

The ghost disappeared through the doors and Remy pushed through them after him. The ghost was gone, leaving Francis and him in the darkness of the corridor.

“Where’d he go?” Francis asked.

They may have lost their guide, but the corridor was filled with others.

These ghosts were agitated. Snippets of their moans and shrieks could be heard upon the periphery of sound, and given the way this section of the facility felt, Remy could understand why.

“We’re close to ground zero,” he said.

He felt that they had arrived before seeing it. In a deep patch of bottomless shadow there was a doorway darker than the darkness surrounding it.

“Here,” Remy said.

The specters were watching him, some trying to warn him of something, but he continued forward, passing through the chilling dark of the doorway into the room.

The room.

He knew where he was the minute he stepped inside.

Francis cautiously joined him. “Feels awful in here.”

“Awful is what was done here,” Remy replied. He could see staccato images of this room’s past: surgery after surgery, skulls cut open and brains played with as if nothing more than modeling clay.

“Shit,” Francis said.

Remy looked toward his friend. The old ghost who had led them to the surgery was standing beside a rusted operating table upon which was his own body. A bloodstained surgical team surrounded him.

“He wanted us to see this,” Remy said.

“There’s something else, though.” Francis’ eyes were riveted to the nightmarish scenes unfolding around them.

Remy looked away from the ghosts. “What?”

“I didn’t think of it until now,” Francis said. “Charnel houses.”

“Charnel houses?” Remy repeated. “Isn’t that another name for a slaughterhouse?”

“Yeah, among other things; but it’s also the name used for special places of ill repute.”

“A whorehouse?”

Francis nodded. “For special customers with special tastes.”

“What do they have to do with . . .”

“They’re not located in this reality,” Francis started to explain. “You can find them on other planes of existence—really bad places that have been sealed off.”

A ghostly surgeon with a saw was cutting into the head of a man who struggled against his restraints, sending geysers of phantom blood into the air.

“So how would one get to these charnel houses?” Remy asked.

“There are weak spots,” Francis explained. “Wounds in the flesh of reality that allow these bad places where the charnel houses exist to temporarily bleed through.”

“And where can these weak spots be found?” Remy asked, the pieces starting to fall into place.

“From what I understand they move around, appearing at random times in places where the most horrible acts of cruelty have occurred.”

“So you think that a passage to a charnel house opened up here?” Remy asked.

They watched as the doctors worked, feeling the psychic scars that the surgeons were leaving behind in this reality.

“This place would be a prime candidate,” Francis said.

Remy walked farther into the operating room, passing through the lingering specters. “So, what, you just show up in a place where something really bad happened, and hope that the entrance to one of these charnel houses opens up?” he asked, turning back to his friend.

“It’s not as random as that,” Francis said. “These houses are pretty exclusive.”

“So you’d have to be a member or something?”

Francis nodded. “Yeah, something like that.”

“An invitation?” Remy suggested.

Francis shrugged. “Wouldn’t know where to show up without one.”

“We should head back to the mansion,” Remy said, passing Francis as he walked from the operating room out into the hall.

The old ghost that had led them there bidding them good-bye with a wave.