Walking In the Midst of Fire rc-6 Page 3

  “No, never saw him,” Remy said, suddenly slightly concerned, and very curious.

  “I wonder what it’s all about,” Steven pondered.

  “I haven’t a clue,” Remy answered.

  “The Pope doesn’t know that you’re . . .” Steven made flapping movements with his hands.

  It was a tricky question, and one that Remy wasn’t sure he wanted to answer in detail at the moment, so he decided to keep it simple. “No. No, he doesn’t.”

  But there had been other popes in his lifetime upon this planet, and one in particular a very long time ago.

  On the Outskirts of London Town

  1349, During the Time of the Great Pestilence

  The angel Remiel, wearing the guise of a man, sat upon the edge of the child’s cot, holding her hand.

  The plague was about to claim her life, as it had her father, mother, older brother, and sister.

  And he did not wish her to pass from life alone.

  The child was burning with fever; the fingernails on the tiny hand that he held were black with gangrene. She thrashed on the straw-filled mattress, and he leaned in close to whisper words of comfort and ease her into the arms of death.

  “Fight it no longer, sweet one,” Remiel whispered into the tiny ear inflamed with fever. “Let the sickness that has already taken your family take you, and you will no longer be alone.”

  She was looking up at him now, eyes red and bleary with the intensity of the warmth radiating from her small body, mouth moving as she struggled to speak.

  The angel listened intently, trying to understand. Squeezing her hand in his, he brought it to his mouth and kissed it gently, lending her some of his own strength.

  “What is it, child?” Remiel asked her. “What are you trying to say?”

  She was fighting to breathe, lungs clogged with congestion, the glands beneath the skin of her throat black and swollen; but despite her condition she continued to fight to get the words out.

  “Where . . . ?” she wheezed.

  He was about to answer her, to tell her where her force of life would soon be, joining with her family and the many others who had been taken by the plague this day, but she had not yet finished her question.

  “Where’s . . . Dolly?”

  Remiel did not understand what it was she asked.

  “Dolly?” he repeated. “You want to know the whereabouts of Dolly?”

  “Where . . . Dolly . . . ?” the small child gasped, now moving about more wildly upon her bed as if searching for somebody . . . or something.

  He was holding her down, to keep her from rolling onto the cold, dirt floor, when he saw it lying crumpled in the corner, beside the hearth. A doll of straw, wearing a dress of burlap.

  A dolly.

  He left the child momentarily to retrieve the toy and bring it to her upon the bed.

  “Is this what you were asking for?” Remiel asked, showing it to her before placing the doll in her waiting arms.

  Her bloodshot eyes became wider as she took the toy, hugging it to her body, and she seemed to relax, beginning the process of giving in to the sickness that consumed her.

  “That’s it,” Remiel whispered, tenderly wiping a lock of sweat-dampened hair from the child’s forehead. “You can go now that Dolly is here with you.”

  She seemed to grow smaller, her body, once tense with the pain of disease and impending death, now relaxing under his watchful gaze. The child’s face grew slack, and there was a brief crackle of bluish white energy that only he could see.

  Israfil, the Angel of Death, then appeared to collect the last of the child’s life energies, but the powerful angel did not acknowledge Remiel’s presence there.

  The Angel of Death departed as quickly as he had come, and Remiel stood up, looking down at the shell of cooling flesh that had once housed the stuff of life. He looked about at the remains of the child’s family, their bodies in more advanced stages of decay, having passed from the world earlier. It was a house void of all life now, except for the disease and vermin that thrived upon the corpses that rested there.

  Remiel let his arms drop to his sides and called forth the fire of God, allowing it to flow into his hands. The fire was hungry, eager to consume anything it was set upon. The angel walked about the tiny home gently caressing the sparse furniture and the bodies that lay putrefying in death, leaving behind the fire of Heaven to quench its insatiable hunger.

  Stepping through the door, roiling fire at his back, the angel Remiel wondered how many more he would need to comfort on their way to death before the virulent plague ran its course.

  The whinnying of horses distracted him from his thoughts, and the angel, clad in the clothes of a simple man, looked to see that he was now being watched.

  The knights sat upon their horses, watching him with suspicious eyes. He could have easily willed himself invisible and gone on his way unhampered, but these armored soldiers, there was something about them.

  Something that made him curious.

  The shack behind him had become like a ball of fire, and he continued to watch the knights, their horses made nervous by the intensity of the divine flames.

  “There was great sickness here,” Remiel spoke above the roar of the flames. “But I have put an end to it.”

  The knights continued their silence, watching him with scrutinizing eyes.

  “Is there something I can do for you, brave knights?” Remiel asked, his curiosity getting the better of him.

  “Our master wishes an audience,” said one of the soldiers.

  “With me?” Remiel asked. “Why would someone of obvious power wish to speak with one such as me?”

  “He knows what you are, soldier of God,” said the knight, bowing his head.

  The other knights followed suit in reverence to the angel.

  “Will you accompany us to nearby Bohner Castle to speak with the Holy Father?” the knight asked.

  “Holy Father?” Remiel repeated, curious about the title they had given their master.

  “Yes, warrior of Heaven,” the knight said. “The Holy Father, Pope Tyranus of the Holy See.”

  They had brought along a riderless horse, and presented it to him.

  “Will you ride with us?” the knight asked him, as the other knights watched. “Or would you prefer other means in which to reach our destination?”

  Remiel had grown temporarily disenchanted with the wearisome task of ministering to the dying, and believed that this might be just the kind of distraction that he required at that moment.

  “Take me to your master,” he said, climbing up onto his mount. The flaming home behind him collapsed with an animal-like roar, tongues of angelic fire lapping eagerly at the damp, night air.

  “Take me to Pope Tyranus.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Steven’s visit had left Remy’s mind buzzing.

  After his friend had decided to pack it in for the evening, he’d stayed on the roof for a while pondering the questions of an uncertain future.

  His dreams warning of an impending war, and now the Vatican looking for him, made him very anxious indeed.

  But what to do about it?

  Remy downed the last of his scotch, not allowing himself to feel the effects of the alcohol. Marlowe was looking up from the floor where he lay.

  “We should think about heading down,” Remy said, his mind still annoyingly abuzz.

  “Yes,” Marlowe agreed, in the voice of his species.

  Remy stood, grabbed the nearly empty bottle of scotch and the two tumblers, and started for the doorway. Marlowe cut him off, zipping down the stairs in front of him to get inside first, his toenails clicking on the wood steps as he made his way down.

  “Don’t make too much noise,” Remy warned the beast. “You don’t want to wake up Linda. You know what she’s like when you wake her up.”

  Remy laughed as he heard Marlowe’s bark of a response. “Monster!”

  “Exactly,” Remy replied as they reached
the first floor.

  Most of the lights were off, but Remy had no problem moving around in the darkness. With just a thought, he could adjust the structure of his eyes, and see in the black as though the sun was coming in through the windows.

  Marlowe drank sloppily from his bowl of water in the kitchen corner as Remy set the bottle on the counter and put the dirty glasses in the sink.

  No matter how hard he tried to slow it down, his brain simply refused to cut him that slack. Something was brewing, and he knew that it likely had to do with the return of Lucifer to the prison dimension of Tartarus to remake it in his own image.

  To turn it into Hell.

  Remy had always feared something like this happening—the forces of God once again pitted against the Morningstar.

  He needed to know what was happening; needed to know how close the impending disaster was, and how much danger the world of man would be in.

  It was time to make a call.

  He moved away from the sink and caught sight of Marlowe watching him from the corner, his shiny black coat blending with the shadows. The dog’s tail immediately started to wag.

  “What?” Remy asked.

  “What?” the dog repeated in a throaty growl.

  Remy was just about to ask him if he wanted to go for a ride, when suddenly they were no longer alone.

  Linda sleepily rubbed at her eyes as she leaned against the kitchen doorframe. “What are you guys doing?” she asked, stifling a yawn.

  Remy couldn’t help but stare at her. She was wearing the gray, extralarge Walking Dead T-shirt they had bought at Newbury Comics the week before and nothing else, her long, shapely legs looking even longer and shapelier than they usually did. Her hair was tousled, suggesting that she had been asleep for a bit. She ran her fingers through the long, dark locks, pushing them back from her face.

  Though half-asleep, Linda smiled at him, and he felt that sudden flush of humanity that he had learned to appreciate so much.

  “Want to fool around?” she asked, biting at her lower lip, her hair falling back over one half of her face.

  She couldn’t have been sexier if she’d tried.

  “What kind of a man do you take me for?” he asked, crossing his arms in mock indignation.

  She padded toward him. “The kind that stands around in a dark kitchen with his dog, stinking of booze,” she said. She kissed him hard upon the lips, then pulled away.

  “And tasting of booze, too,” she added, making a face.

  She turned, heading back for the doorway, walking in such a way that he had no choice but to watch her. “If you have any interest at all in my offer, you know where I’ll be,” she called over her shoulder as she passed through the door into the room beyond.

  “Huh.” Remy looked at Marlowe.

  “Bed?” Marlowe asked, his blocky head cocked to one side.

  “Eventually,” Remy said. “A little playtime first.”

  “Playtime?” Marlowe repeated eagerly. He looked about the darkened kitchen for one of his toys.

  “Sorry, pal. Not that kind of play.” He patted the dog’s head as he passed him. “People play.”

  He heard Marlowe sigh pathetically behind him, and turned to see his friend sitting dejectedly, head low, in the darkened kitchen.

  “I’ll tell you what. Once Linda and I are finished playing, I’ll take you out for a walk.” Remy told him.

  The Labrador’s thick tail thumped furiously on the kitchen floor.

  “Walk!” Marlowe barked, his sadness suddenly forgotten.

  Remy placed a finger to his lips, warning the dog to be quiet. “After playtime,” he assured the dog, starting toward the flight of stairs that would take him up to his bedroom. Once again, Marlowe rushed past to get there first.

  “Stay off the bed!” Remy warned as the dog bounded up the stairs. The sound of Linda’s surprised scream, followed by hysterical laughter and a dog’s playful growl proved that the one obedience class they’d attended had certainly done the trick.

  England

  1301

  Since being touched by the Nazarene, Simeon could not die.

  It was not as if he hadn’t tried; it was just that death would not have him.

  Even the passage of time could not harm him, the man looking just as flush with life as he had before he’d died so very long ago.

  Plagued by the curse of immortality, he chose to wander, to experience everything that this world—now his prison—had to offer.

  The good as well as the bad.

  Simeon found himself drawn to the darker corners. Where the sane and rational mind might flee the terrors that hid in the shadows, the eternal man found himself moving toward them eagerly.

  He was desperate to know what secrets they might share, how they might help him someday to see Heaven fall from the sky. Simeon had gathered much in the way of knowledge over the centuries he had lived and wandered, but it was the ways of sorcery and black magick that had proven the most useful.

  The forever man had an aptitude for the black arts, and his hunger for this particular type of knowledge had become insatiable.

  During his travels, as he sought out those in special circles who could teach him, there was one name often spoken in both reverence and great fear.

  Some said he was only a legend, an amalgam of all the world’s greatest sorcerers and wizards, while others believed that he truly did exist, a living repository for all the magickal knowledge that had ever existed.

  The name of the legend was Ignatius Hallow, and Simeon had traveled long and far to finally find him.

  Standing on English soil, in the pouring rain, the forever man looked upon the ruins of the castle he had been directed to, and felt the beginnings of despair.

  “How can this be?” he asked the foul elements, as he stumbled through the mud toward the ruins.

  In a tavern in the town of York he had met an old man whose neck had been broken but he still managed to be alive. Those in the tavern whispered that this one was so insane that neither God nor the Devil wanted him, and they had sent him back to the world. They also said that the man with the twisted neck knew things—dark secrets that he would share for a price.

  That had been good to know, for Simeon had need of such information.

  By its appearance, the castle had been taken a long time ago, in some long-forgotten conflict that had caused its battlements to fall. There was not a sign of life to be found.

  Simeon snarled as the realization that he’d been had began to sink in. He and the insane old man had made a deal: the first digit of his little finger from his right hand in exchange for the whereabouts of the legendary magick user. A bizarre price to pay, but it was what the man with the broken neck had demanded for his services. The madman had said that he could see the remnants of many years in Simeon’s eyes, which made him—as well as pieces of him—so very special.

  The eternal man could still hear the old-timer’s cackle as he wondered aloud whether perhaps Simeon had been discarded by Heaven and Hell as he himself had been.

  Simeon stared down at the bloody bandage wrapped around his hand. He could feel it throbbing with the angry beat of his heart as what had been cut away slowly, painfully, grew back.

  Looking out over the ruins as he was assaulted by wind and rain, Simeon debated his next course of action. There was a part of him that wished to continue on his way, wandering to the next location, hoping for a piece of forbidden knowledge to add to his growing arsenal.

  Or he could return to the tavern in York, for a piece of the twisted old man.

  The wind pushed him even closer to what remained of the forgotten castle’s walls, as if the elements were urging him to be certain that the madman had indeed been wrong. He was about to step back, to prepare himself for the long trek to York, when the ground in front of him began to churn.

  At first he believed it to be a trick of his eyes, the way the heavy rain pelted the muddy patches of exposed earth, but he quickly came to r
ealize that wasn’t the case at all.

  The vines, their bodies as fat as the thickest rope, and covered in large thorns that looked as though they could strip the flesh from his body, erupted from the saturated ground in a writhing tangle. Simeon managed to throw himself back, away from the thorn-covered tendrils, only to have another patch of the virulent growth explode from the ground behind him. Everywhere he looked the ground churned, and more of the serpentine vines grew, reaching for him, ensnaring him in their constricting embrace.

  Simeon screamed as the thorns dug into his skin, tearing it through his garments. The tentacle-like growths held him tight, and began to squeeze the life from his body.

  The more he struggled, the tighter the vines became, until his bones began to snap like pieces of dry wood.

  Simeon’s screams filled the night, diminishing to little more than a pathetic whine as his blood flowed, watering the hellish vegetation. He was waiting for the inevitable death that would not hold, when through a darkened stone doorway in the ruins of the castle something appeared and began to move toward him.

  The man was tall and of indiscriminate age, clad in robes that seemed to be cut from the fabric of night. He leaned on a staff as he slowly approached—a walking stick that appeared to have been carved from bone.

  The figure stopped mere inches from him, and stared deeply into his eyes.

  “You should be dead,” the magick user, Ignatius Hallow, said in a voice ripe with curiosity.

  “That I should,” Simeon managed, though his throat was clogged with bile and blood.

  “Why have you come?” the sorcerer asked.

  Though it took all the strength that he had remaining, Simeon managed to answer.

  “To . . . learn.”

  And then he died, his body no longer able to sustain his life as a result of the abuse his fragile human form had endured.

  But as before, death would not have him.

  Now

  “Do you like it?”

  Simeon’s eyes were focused on the bare skin of a waitress’s arm, or more specifically, on the tattoo that curled its way around her pale flesh.