Walking in the Midst of Fire (30 page)

“So you’re gonna turn me—us—into profit?” Remy asked. “Is that what you’re saying?”

Prosper folded his hands in front of himself and stared. “In my business I have all sort of clients, and some of those clients have certain needs that are very specific, and quite difficult to fulfill.”

“I’ve heard that,” Remy said. “Like General Aszrus, he liked to play a little rough.”

This time Prosper didn’t wait for his living-dead bodyguard to do the dirty work. The fallen angel delivered a succession of blows that showed Remy he had struck a nerve.

Go him.

“You had to go poking around.” Prosper shook his hand out and Remy could see that his knuckles were torn and bloody.

That’ll show him.

“Just doing my job,” Remy managed from a mouth feeling swollen and out of shape. “Like you . . . making my client happy.”

He thought he might get hit again, but Prosper managed some level of restraint.

“Glad you understand,” he said instead. “I have clients who would give me anything I want for some time with the likes of a Seraphim.”

Prosper smiled. There was definitely some pleasure there, but it was the dirty kind that made the hair at the back of the neck stand up, and the skin prickle.

“Now would this be a dinner date, or just lunch?” Remy asked, knowing the question would probably be bad for him, but it felt good to ask.

Prosper surprised him by laughing out loud. It wasn’t too pleasant a sound. “Yeah, you could call it that. A dinner date, yeah.” He was laughing again. “You’ll be the fucking dinner and they’ll be eating you alive, among other things.”

That idea made him laugh all the harder. Remy could just imagine the perversity inside the fallen angel’s head, and was glad that he couldn’t share in it.

A knock at the door interrupted their fun.

One of the zombies opened it a crack, and Remy caught sight of a pretty, older woman standing outside.

“What?” Prosper said, without even looking, annoyance in his tone.

“Got a problem upstairs,” the woman said.

He looked in her direction then. “What kind of problem?”

“The kind that can cause a shitload of damage if it’s not taken care of,” she stated. “A Summerian battle god whacked out of his gourd on joy juice is threatening to rip the roof off the place if somebody doesn’t bring him a ten-year-old virgin.”

“Son of a bitch,” Prosper spat, moving toward the door. “We don’t have any?” he asked as he and his zombie thugs pushed past her, closing the door behind them.

Remy was left alone to deal with his own problem. He looked at Malatesta who was coming to, moaning as if being prodded with a hot poker.

The doorknob rattled again, and he was half expecting to see Prosper back for more fun and games, but instead the woman entered, closing the door quietly behind her.

“Forget something?” Remy asked.

The woman glared as she stalked toward him.

“Where did you get it?” she asked, tension like that of a coiled spring ready to snap in her voice.

“I don’t understand,” Remy said, looking into her distressed eyes.

“Where did you find it?” she repeated, as if English was his second language. She reached into her pocket and removed the picture that Morgan had picked up from the floor in her room. “This,” the woman held it out to Remy, “where did you get it?”

She was frantic, her eyes darting between Remy and the door, obviously expecting Prosper and his buddies to return.

“What does it mean?” Remy asked her.

She looked at the picture, a look of genuine longing spreading across her face.

“I was told they had died at birth,” she said. “But this . . .”

“Why would Aszrus have that picture?” Remy asked, watching the woman’s reaction.

“Aszrus,” she repeated. “You got this from Aszrus?”

She was looking at the picture again, tears welling in her eyes.

“Who is it?” Remy asked.

She seemed to be struggling with his questions. “They weren’t supposed to be able to have babies,” she finally said, sobbing. “But here they were, pregnant.”

“Who?” Remy prodded, desperate for answers. “Who was pregnant?”

“My girls,” she said. “It wasn’t natural, but it happened.”

“The Nephilim?” Remy asked. “The Nephilim were getting pregnant?”

He’d never heard of such a thing, and as far as he knew, it wasn’t even possible. Nephilim were supposed to be sterile.

There was a muffled sound from outside the room, and the woman turned, bolting for the door.

“Who got the girls pregnant?” Remy asked as she turned the knob, ready to flee. “Was it the angels? Was it Aszrus?”

The look on her face told him all he needed to know as she quickly slunk out of the room, carefully closing the door behind her.

Remy had more than he did before, but the puzzle’s picture was still not yet defined. He had to get out of here.

He looked over to Malatesta, who was again muttering in Latin.

“Listen,” Remy said. “We’re in some pretty big trouble here,” he told the sorcerer.

Remy didn’t know whether he was listening, but went on, assuming that he was.

“We need to get out of here as quickly as we can before we end up as part of the entertainment.” He was straining against his chains again, feeling the magick charging up to prevent him from getting much farther.

“As much as it kills me to admit it, I’m useless right now—these chains prevent me from doing anything that could be even remotely useful, and I’m guessing that whatever is keeping you in that chair has probably done a job on your magickal mojo as well.”

Malatesta’s head turned ever so slightly, looking at him from the corner of a swollen eye.

“I’m going to ask you to do something pretty horrible,” Remy said, letting his words permeate a bit before he continued. “And it involves that thing inside you.”

“No,” Malatesta objected outright. “You . . . you don’t understand what you’re asking.”

“I know exactly what I’m asking, and I’m sorry, but it’s the only way. The spirit, or whatever it is inside you, is our get-out-of-jail-free card—they don’t know about it, so they didn’t do anything to prevent it from getting free.”

Malatesta was crying and furiously shaking his head.

“I can’t. . . . I can’t. . . . You don’t understand what that would mean.”

Remy knew exactly what the sorcerer was talking about, having spent the last hundred years, give or take a century, attempting to keep the warlike aspect of his angelic nature in check.

“You’d be surprised at what I know,” he said. “But if we’re going to get out of here, you have to trust me—this is the only way.”

“No,” Malatesta said again, now starting to thrash around in his chair. “I won’t let the Larva out, I’ve worked too hard to—”

There was the muffled sound of voices from outside, and Remy knew that time was just about up.

“Do you hear?” Remy stressed. “This is it—they’re coming for us.”

Malatesta had tucked his chin deep into his chest, straining to keep the monstrous force inside him imprisoned.

“It’s almost too late,” Remy roared.

Malatesta continued to struggle, his body racked with sobs of terror and strain.

“As a soldier of the Lord God . . . as an angel of Heaven I command you to set it free.”

The voices were louder now, almost to the door.

Malatesta was looking at him, his gaze begging Remy not to ask this of him.

“I command you,” Remy said again.

“Please . . . ,” Malatesta whined.

“Do it.”

Malatesta’s eyes slowly closed, and his head sank down, his chin touching the top of his chest. “I hate you,” he whispered. “I hate you with all my heart and soul.”

“I’m sorry,” Remy replied, hearing the sound of the door opening. “If there was any other way . . .”

Two zombie security guards entered.

“Hey, guys,” Remy said. “Miss us?”

The zombie that liked to hit came at him, hands like catchers’ mitts, reaching. He guessed that they were being taken elsewhere, maybe to a certain someone who’d paid a lot of money to do something really horrible to a soldier of Heaven.

The other guard had gone to Malatesta, and was trying to haul him up from the chair. Remy glanced over to see that the zombie was having a bit of trouble, Malatesta’s hands holding on to the back of the furniture.

“I’ll break those hands,” the zombie murmured menacingly.

But that just made Malatesta start to laugh and laugh, and that was when Remy realized it wasn’t the sorcerer who was laughing.

The laughing abruptly stopped, and then Remy heard what could only have been the muffled sounds of bones popping from their joints. He watched in awe as Malatesta was suddenly free from his restraints, his arms bending in directions that should have been impossible.

Malatesta was laughing again, as he sprang onto the seat of his chair, then up and over the towering zombie, grabbing hold of the walking corpse’s chin and yanking back as he went. There was a loud crack as the zombie’s neck was broken, and he tumbled backward to the floor.

The zombie that had been beside Remy was already on the move toward Malatesta. The possessed sorcerer continued to laugh and giggle, evading the zombie with ease, even springing up onto, and sticking to the side of the wall like Spiderman.

The zombie lunged, crashing into wooden crates of wine and boxes of booze as he attempted to rip the insectlike sorcerer from his perch. The zombie with the broken neck was now struggling to stand, his heavy head lolling about horribly as he tried to assist his partner.

“Larva!” Remy called out, still restrained.

Malatesta was padding across the ceiling and looking down on those who were attempting to reach up for him. The demon turned his eyes from his foes to Remy.

“What are you wasting time for with mere animated corpses, when you could be tangling with a soldier of Heaven?” Remy asked it, enticing the accursed thing.

The evil spirit laughed at him, reaching down from the ceiling to rip at one of the zombie’s faces, snatching away one of its eyes and popping it into his mouth like a cherry tomato.

The zombie flailed about, now partially blind.

“Come on,” Remy taunted. “When was the last time you tasted angelic flesh?”

He wasn’t sure if the spirit ever had, but figured if it hadn’t, it certainly would want to. It continued to taunt the zombies.

“Now I know why Malatesta was able to keep you locked up for so long,” Remy stated over the commotion. “You’re weak . . . a minor entity. Nothing more than an annoyance.”

He was counting on the thing’s arrogance and stupidity, and he wasn’t disappointed.

Forgetting its zombie opponents, the Larva came scrabbling across the ceiling, and dropped down atop Remy, sending the chair flipping violently backward to the floor. Remy heard the sound of the chair moaning beneath their weight, as the evil entity hissed and slashed. He rocked from side to side, straining the chair’s integrity while attempting to evade the creature’s razor-sharp claws.

He needed something more to get free of the chair, and his prayers were answered in the form of two linebacker-sized zombies, one with a funky neck, barreling across the room to get their escaped prisoner back under wraps.

They hit the Larva like two runaway freight trains, landing atop them in a heap of powerfully muscled dead flesh that ended up doing exactly what Remy had hoped for. The chair’s back snapped beneath their thrashing bodies, allowing Remy to slip free of the magickally enhanced chains.

He’d had just about enough of animated corpses wrestling atop him and brought forth the fires of Heaven. The light of divinity caused his body to glow, sending the spirit screaming away, and attaching itself again to the ceiling like a spider.

The zombies were driven back from the light, still wearing the protections that kept him from dealing with their likes before. Not wanting them to have a chance, Remy acted, grabbing for the leg of the broken chair that had held him and smashing it into the side of one of the zombie’s heads, and then the other’s.

One of them crashed into a stack of boxes, causing the bottles of liquor inside to smash to the floor in an expanding puddle.

Seeing as they were already dead, Remy didn’t hesitate, flicking his fingers as if flipping droplets of water; but instead of water he was flipping fire.

The zombie went up in a rush of flame, the sprinkler system in the ceiling raining water down upon the room in an attempt to extinguish the fire. The other zombie, his head flopping about loosely, made a dash for the door, but the Larva sticking to the ceiling above had other ideas.

The possessed man dropped down upon its prey, finger claws slashing, ripping away the zombie’s clothes, and finally the dead flesh beneath.

Remy turned his focus to the burning dead man. The zombie was attempting to roll around on the ground, trying to put out the flames. Approaching the flailing figure, Remy took the chair leg, and drove it down into the zombie’s face, and into the brain, shutting the burning corpse down for the count.

He then returned his attention to the Larva.

The possessed Malatesta was crouched atop the zombie, his head buried in a gaping hole that he had torn in the dead man’s gut.

Remy was disgusted.

But there hadn’t been any choice.

“That’s enough of that,” he said, using a tone of authority.

The Larva turned its bloody face to him and smiled, a flap of zombie flesh dangling wetly from the corner of his face as he continued to chew.

“Give me Constantin back,” Remy said, moving closer.

The evil spirit chuckled, licking his bloody fingers one by one.

“Constantin is gone now,” the Larva told him in its horrible voice. “Now only I am here.”

Remy surged forward, catching the creature by the throat as it was about to leap up onto the ceiling. The Larva screeched and struggled in his grasp.

“You will give me Constantin Malatesta or I will destroy you, and this host body,” Remy ordered.

The Larva continued to struggle. “You lie, Creature of God.”

Remy willed fire into his grip, starting to burn the flesh of the host body’s throat. From the sound that came from the spirit entity, it was quite painful.