Walking In the Midst of Fire rc-6 Page 4

  Thorny vines.

  That was all it took to stir the memories of long ago.

  He pulled his eyes from the tattoo to gaze up into the woman’s face. She was attractive in that used sort of way, the deep lines around her eyes and smiling mouth hinting at a hard life.

  “Quite lovely,” Simeon told her, forcing a friendly smile. He didn’t want to be rude and draw attention to himself.

  “I had it done when I was just a kid,” she said, taking his empty wineglass and placing it on her tray. “Wished I hadn’t as I got older, but now I think it’s kinda nice.”

  She smiled again, as he agreed.

  “You’re new in here, aren’t you?” she then asked, becoming more personal.

  This was what he’d hoped against. Simeon had needed to get away by himself, away from the demonic trio that served him, even for just a single drink.

  Methuselah’s was the best place he could think of. He’d always wanted to patronize the strange bar that catered to the most unusual clientele. And looking around, he was glad that he had.

  A golem of stone wiped the surface of the bar with a damp rag, as a minotaur checked identification at the heavy wooden door. In one corner of the darkened establishment sat creatures more reptile than human, served by a waitress whose skin was nearly translucent, her internal workings on view for all to see. Four succubi that had followed a group of humanoid travelers down a hallway leading to the restrooms emerged from the darkened passage, dabbing at their mouths with lacy handkerchiefs.

  Methuselah’s was a most fascinating place, and Simeon was glad he’d come, but he caught sight of what was coming through the door and knew it was time to leave.

  He smiled again at the waitress, ignoring her question as he took some bills from his pocket and placed them on her tray. “Keep the change.”

  “Next time you’re in,” the waitress said, eyeing the cash before slipping it into a pocket on her apron, “you be sure to ask for Katie.”

  He stood up, staring at the three demons that had just entered the bar. Their eyes were shifting about the room. They were looking for him.

  “I’ll be sure to do that, Katie,” Simeon told Katie, reaching out to take hold of her arm in a firm grip. “But I’m afraid that in a little bit you won’t even remember I’ve been here.”

  She seemed a little startled, a bit perplexed at first, but then he watched his magick seep deep into her flesh, and spread throughout her body, and as he released his grip, she was already moving toward her next table.

  His presence forgotten.

  The demons had come closer, waiting for him to notice their presence.

  He turned to them. “You’ve found me.”

  “When we noticed you were gone . . . ,” one of them began.

  “You were worried?” Simeon asked. His coat was hanging over the back of another chair and he retrieved it, pushing past the demons on his way to the door.

  “Was it wise for you to come here?” another asked in a voice low and soft, so as not to be heard.

  Simeon stopped as he hung his coat over his arm.

  “Your concern is really touching,” he said, trying the smile again but certain to make it appear as obviously insincere as he could manage. “But it’s nothing you need to worry yourself about.”

  “Hold this,” he ordered, handing his coat to one of the demons smart enough to keep her mouth shut.

  Simeon walked away from his pale-skinned escorts and placed his hands together, allowing the two rings, one on the ring finger of each hand to briefly touch, before raising his hands in the air.

  “Excuse me,” he called out, feeling the ancient power imbued in the two pieces of jewelry flow through his hands and out into the tavern’s patrons. “Just to be on the safe side,” he said as they listened. “I was never here.”

  He watched the memory of him leave each and every one of those present, all of them going back to whatever it was they were in the middle of doing before the pale-skinned man with the curly black hair called on their attention.

  “Happy?” Simeon asked the demon that had questioned him, stealing back his jacket from the other, and throwing it over his arm.

  He headed toward the door, ahead of his entourage.

  “Have a good night,” he told the minotaur as it opened the door for him and the demons that followed.

  * * *

  Remy stopped to let Marlowe sniff the base of the parking meter, before the dog lifted his leg to spray it with urine.

  “Where do you keep it all?” Remy asked him.

  “What?” the dog asked, already moving Remy along the nearly deserted early-morning street.

  “The pee,” he said. “I can’t imagine one dog having so much of it inside him. You must have some sort of storage tank or something. Is that what it is? Do you have a storage tank?”

  Marlowe had no real idea what Remy was talking about and answered in the expected manner.

  “No.”

  Remy chuckled, walking down Boylston Street with Marlowe sniffing at the ground and pulling slightly on his leash.

  He and Marlowe had been careful not to make too much noise as they got ready to leave the house on their walk. Buttoning his shirt while Marlowe patiently waited just outside the door, Remy had watched Linda sleep. His body still tingled with the memory of their lovemaking, and he considered crawling back beneath the covers for another go, but a faint, pathetic whine from the hallway was enough to reignite his other purpose.

  He had a call to make that couldn’t be made from his cell, and besides, he’d promised Marlowe a walk.

  Remy loved the hum of the city by day and night, but this time of the early morning, when things were so remarkably still and quiet, was high up there on his list of favorite times. It was almost as if the day to come was waiting, tensed, at the starting line, eager for the pistol shot that would signal what was to come.

  He loved this city and the humanity it coddled, which made the reason he’d left his lover, and his bed, to head out into the early morning, all the more pertinent.

  If war was on the horizon, he needed to know exactly how close it was, and what could be done, if anything, to prevent it from overflowing onto the world of man.

  Remy pulled back on Marlowe’s leash, standing on the corner of Boylston and Dartmouth, preventing the overeager beast from heading out into the street. Traffic was light, but all it would take was one taxi driver or delivery truck not paying attention.

  “You really need to be more careful,” Remy told the dog.

  Marlowe looked up at him, his dark eyes dark filled with adoration.

  “You careful for me.”

  The coast clear, the two crossed, passing by an entrance to the Copley Square T station, Remy tugging Marlowe past several early commuters, their eyes bleary as they headed for work. They stopped near an unobtrusive door in a darkened corner of the Old South Church, one of the last places of worship that Remy had been in.

  He was about to take Marlowe into his arms and wrap his wings about them to take them inside, when something moving in a patch of shadow caught his eye. Remy shifted the configuration of his eyes to see that it was one of the many homeless people who slept on Boston’s streets. An old woman’s head popped up from a filthy sleeping bag to stare at them.

  “No need to be scared, fella,” she said, addressing Marlowe.

  It took everything that Remy had to keep the dog, tail wagging, from pulling himself over to her.

  “Marlowe, no,” Remy ordered.

  “It’s all right,” she said, her hands coming out from within the sleeping bag to eagerly clap. “C’mon over and see old Dottie.”

  Remy let up on the leash, letting him go to the old woman. It wasn’t long before he was licking her weather-worn face, and she was scratching him behind his velvet soft ears, cooing affectionately to him.

  “You’re a sweet one, aren’t ya?” she said as Marlowe administered some of his patented affection, licking every inch of her face,
neck, and ears.

  “Marlowe, go easy on the poor woman,” Remy said.

  “Marlowe?” the woman asked. “Is that your name? Marlowe?”

  If the dog could have crawled into the sleeping bag with her, he would have.

  “‘Why should you love him whom the world hates so?’” old Dottie quoted, glancing at Remy to see if he was listening. “‘Because he love me more than all the world.’”

  Remy realized that she was reciting from Elizabethan dramatist and poet Christopher Marlowe.

  He smiled at her and nodded. “Nice,” he said. “But not that Marlowe, I’m afraid. He’s more Philip Marlowe.”

  The woman laughed as the dog continued to lick her face.

  “Ah!” she exclaimed. “Raymond Chandler.”

  “That’s it,” Remy agreed.

  “‘Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid,’” Dottie said, quoting Remy’s favorite author. “‘He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man.’”

  The woman stopped, smiling a toothless grin.

  “Pretty good, right?”

  He gave her the thumbs-up. “Awesome.”

  “I read a lot,” she told him, scratching roughly behind Marlowe’s ears, but the dog didn’t seem to mind. Not one little bit. “And stuff just seems to get stuck up there.” She stopped scratching Marlowe to point to her head, upon which sat a floppy, knitted hat. “Can’t forget the stuff even if I tried—especially if I like it.”

  “Not so bad of a curse as far as curses go,” Remy told her.

  “I guess.”

  Marlowe had plopped down beside the woman, shimmying as close to her as he was able. He was a good judge of character; if Marlowe liked her, this woman was probably special.

  They were silent for a bit, as old Dottie continued to stroke Marlowe’s ebony fur.

  “He likes that,” she said, looking deeply into the dog’s dark eyes.

  “That he does,” Remy said.

  Dottie let her eyes leave Marlowe’s and fixed her gaze on Remy. He could see that she was staring really hard, squinting her watery eyes as if she was having some difficulty focusing her sight.

  “What is it, Dottie?” Remy asked. “Something wrong with your eyes?”

  “No,” she said, with a shake of her head. “No problem . . . just that I see things a little differently from most.”

  Remy continued to listen to her, sure that she was about to say more.

  “I see things about folks that they can’t see themselves,” she said.

  “That another curse?” Remy asked her. He had moved closer to them, squatting down so that he, too, could pat his dog.

  “All depends on how you look at it,” she said. “Makes it kinda tough to have a normal life . . . to keep a job and stuff.”

  She was staring at him again, old eyes squinting.

  “Do you see something with me?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I do,” she said. “You’re not like everybody else, are you?”

  Remy smiled. It wasn’t entirely unusual, but it was rare. There were a select few people out there in the world with the ability to see things—those who could peer into the shadows and see what was actually lurking there behind the veil.

  Those who could see things as they truly were.

  “No, I’m not,” Remy said, looking away from the intensity of her gaze.

  “So, what’s your story?” she asked him, her face now very serious. “Haven’t come to take me, have you?”

  Remy laughed as he patted Marlowe’s head. The dog was in heaven with all this attention.

  “Not my job,” he told her with a shake of his head. “So no worries there.”

  “Good,” Dottie said, happy that he wasn’t the Angel of Death. “Been seeing a lot of your types walking around recently, and have gotten a little nervous.”

  Dottie’s words hit him hard, her observations worrying.

  “You’ve seen a lot like me around?” he asked her to be sure.

  The old woman nodded. “Oh yeah, just strolling around.” She waved a hand around in the air. “Like they were checking the place out or something.”

  Or something, Remy thought, certain that the angels she had seen were doing reconnaissance . . . but for which side? Perhaps both? It was truly bothersome, but it made what he had come to the Old South Church for all the more pertinent.

  “Was that what they were doing?” Dottie asked him, interrupting his train of thought.

  “Yeah, it probably was.”

  “Something up?”

  “That’s something I need to find out,” Remy answered, rising to his feet and looking at the church before him.

  He needed to get himself inside to do what he had to do. He had been planning on taking Marlowe in with him, but now maybe he wouldn’t.

  “Hey Dottie, want to do me a favor?” he asked the old woman.

  “Sure, if I can,” she said, stroking Marlowe’s side.

  “Want to keep an eye on Marlowe while I take care of some business?” he asked her.

  She smiled warmly, looking to the dog.

  “What do you think, pal?” she asked him. “Can you stand to hang around here with Dottie for a little while longer?”

  Marlowe panted heavily, his tail wagging happily in response.

  “Will you be okay, buddy?” Remy asked the Labrador.

  “Okay with Dottie,” Marlowe grumbled, extending his thick neck to give her another big wet kiss on the side of her face.

  “That’s great. I should only be a little while,” he told the dog.

  “Take your time,” Dottie called out as he started to walk around to the back of the building.

  To make his direct call to Heaven.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Remy pictured in his mind’s eye the Old South Church as it was the last time he had entered, and willed himself inside with a rush of air and the flutter of wings.

  He had attended a fund-raiser for the Congregationalist parish to help finance repairs of damage done by the ravages of age and nearby construction. Tonight, it was just as beautiful as he remembered, even in darkness.

  Remy pulled his wings back into his body and strolled down the center aisle, admiring the elaborate woodwork and stained glass. His eyes fixed upon the enormous organ pipes to the left of the altar, and he remembered the glorious sounds they had made when played at the fund-raiser.

  If he listened very carefully, straining his preternatural senses to their maximum capacity, he could still hear the lingering residue of the countless prayers that had been spoken here.

  Now he was about to add his own to the fray.

  Remy stood no more than a few feet from the altar and turned his gaze to the ceiling. Shedding his human visage, he appeared as the angel, Remiel, Seraphim and soldier of Heaven. Wings spread wide and armor-covered arms outstretched, the angel began to pray. Up through this place of worship, Remiel projected his petition, spoken in the language of the Messengers, hopefully to the ears of God.

  Or whoever might be listening on His behalf.

  Remiel needed answers. He had to know if the world that he cared so deeply for, the people that he loved, would be safe. He needed to know if there was anything that could avert the coming hardship.

  It had been a very long time since Remiel had asked Heaven for anything, but now it was time to put aside old hostilities for the sake of something so much bigger.

  Exhausted, Remiel fell to his knees, listening with all his might for an answer, but except for the sounds of the city coming to life outside, the place of worship remained silent. Slowly, the angel climbed to his feet, abandoning the guise of a Heavenly warrior and slipping comfortably back into the guise of humanity he had worn for so many years.

  Remy looked around the church, senses on the alert, but still there was nothing.

  Still there was no response.

  Is this how it’s to be now? he
wondered. Is no one listening to me anymore? Or is there some other reason that my prayers go unanswered?

  Perhaps the drums of war beat much louder than even he suspected.

  He was ready to leave, ready to reveal his wings again and take himself back outside to reunite with Marlowe and Dottie, when he felt a sudden change in the atmosphere of the church.

  As if something had been added.

  Remy turned, eyes scanning his surroundings, and he found it—someone sitting tall in one of the pews, staring straight ahead toward the altar.

  “Hello?” Remy called out.

  At first the figure did not react. But then he spoke, his voice soft yet powerful. “Hello, Remiel.

  “I would have come sooner,” the figure continued as he turned eyes as dark as space to Remy, “but, as you can probably guess, things are terribly hectic.”

  “There’s a war brewing, don’t you know.”

  * * *

  His name was Montagin, and Remy had not seen him since the first war against the Morningstar. How apropos that he would be the one to come to Remy now.

  “How long has it been?” Montagin asked, turning to face the angel as Remy slid into the pew.

  “Let’s just say that it’s been a long time,” Remy replied, trying to keep it friendly.

  “It was right after the war, wasn’t it?” the angel asked. His eyes twinkled mischievously.

  This was one of the many reasons that Remy had left Heaven: Angels were basically assholes.

  “It was,” Remy agreed tightly.

  “Right before your little tantrum that ended up with you settling . . .” Montagin’s dark eyes darted about, seeing not only the church, but the world outside it. “Here.”

  Remy didn’t respond to the angel’s malicious grin.

  “So how have you been?” Montagin then asked, unbuttoning his suit coat so that he was able to cross his long legs without wrinkling the linen. The off-white suit appeared very expensive, and he was wearing what looked to be Italian loafers, without socks.

  Very stylish for a creature of Heaven; Remy had to wonder how long he’d been in this world.

  “Fine,” Remy said, casually nodding. “I’m surprised to see you.”