Walking In the Midst of Fire: A Remy Chandler Novel

  “Sounds like a plan,” Francis agreed.

  Squire rubbed his stubby hands together. “First off, we need a nice piece of shadow.”

  The hobgoblin was in the process of moving his sparse furniture around, so that the sun coming in from the unshaded window provided them with the largest area of shadow that they could have, when the explosion caused the apartment to shake.

  “What the fuck?” Squire cried out.

  Francis was already on the move, pistol in his hand as he left the living room, in pursuit of the commotion going on down the hallway in the first bedroom.

  He wasn’t sure what he expected to see, and was relieved that it was only Montagin, his chest burning from where he had been struck. He rose to his feet, wings spread.

  “You dare use your filthy magick upon me!” the angel bellowed, facing off against an unknown assailant in the bedroom.

  A blast of crackling energy whipped out, striking where the angel had just been standing. He leapt above the latest assault, propelling himself into the bedroom with a thrust of his wings.

  Francis aimed his pistol from the doorway, the racket of battle rising up from the skirmish unfolding before him.

  “For the love of Christ,” he cried, slipping away his gun. “Break it up you two!”

  He entered the room, careful to avoid magickal spells that were missing their intended target and striking nearby walls. If this kept up he could see some pretty hefty repair work in his building’s future.

  “Knock it off!” the former Guardian angel screamed again as he watched Montagin and the sorcerer, Angus Heath, thrashing about on the floor of the bedroom.

  There was a flash of divine fire, and Francis knew that things were about to get even more serious as he dove forward to grab Montagin by the shoulder, hauling him backward with a show of inhuman strength.

  “Get your filthy hands off of me,” the angel said with a snarl, turning a flaming hand toward Francis.

  The gun was shoved up underneath Montagin’s nose.

  “I will turn the top of your head into a fucking Frisbee,” Francis snarled.

  A blast of magickal energy struck Montagin from behind, causing him to cry out. He fell to the ground, his body crackling in a magickal corona.

  “Oh, don’t make me threaten you, too,” Francis said, aiming his gun at Heath.

  “He attacked me,” Heath proclaimed, swaying unsteadily on stumpy bare feet.

  “I used the bathroom to wash my hands,” Montagin said, rising to his knees, his wings slowly fanning away the excess magickal power that had engulfed him.

  “I didn’t know who you were,” Heath explained.

  “Montagin, Angus Heath,” Francis said. “Angus Heath, Montagin. We all BFFs now?”

  Squire appeared in the doorway. “Is it safe?” the hobgoblin asked.

  “Yeah, everything’s just hunky-dory,” Francis said, putting his gun away. “Think we might be able to—”

  The building shook.

  “It wasn’t me,” Heath immediately responded, covering his ass.

  Montagin was staring at Francis. Clearly the angel felt it, too—that certain feeling in the air when they were around.

  “What the fuck now?” Squire grumbled.

  “Angels,” Francis said, already on his way from the room. “We’ve just been fucking invaded.”

  • • •

  Constantin Malatesta wore two masks.

  The woman who had brought him to the small apartment, off a winding hall away from the main lobby, stood above him as he sat, her eyes fixed upon him hungrily.

  “Can I get you anything?” she asked. She’d told him that her name was Natalia, and that she had heard things about him.

  Things that she wanted to experience for herself.

  He didn’t know what to do; any slight deviation in his concentration could cause the spell that allowed him to masquerade as the angel general to slip, and where would he—and Remy Chandler for that matter—be then?

  “A drink? Drugs? Something stronger?” Natalia asked. She had already taken his goblet and was holding it in her hands, suggestively running them along the shaft of the golden cup.

  Malatesta didn’t even want to look at her, for it made his thoughts go places that he would rather they not—for the sake of the glamour spell that he wore, as well as the mask of sanity that had been his for these many years, since being indoctrinated into the ways of the Keepers.

  Two masks that could potentially fall away if . . .

  Natalia tossed the goblet aside and dropped to her knees in front of him.

  “Or we could just begin with this,” she suggested, leaning into him, resting her arms on his legs as he sat. One of her hands began to wander in the direction of his crotch.

  Panic—sheer, electric panic—shot through him.

  Malatesta suddenly stood, nearly knocking the woman over.

  Natalia appeared shocked, but then began to laugh.

  “I know Morgan is your usual, but there’s no need to be shy,” she told him with a throaty chuckle.

  Not knowing what to do, he fixed his gaze upon the golden goblet lying there, and snatched it up from the floor.

  “I think I will have something to drink,” he said, just to have something to say, doing everything in his power to maintain his masquerade.

  “You go right ahead,” she told him. “We’ll have many hours to get used to one another . . . many hours to play.”

  He felt his heart begin to hammer in his chest as he approached the bar cabinet in the corner of the room. Letting his eyes wander over the multitude of bottles, he settled on what he thought was whiskey, and poured himself a full cup.

  It wasn’t supposed to be this difficult; he’d been trained for years by the Keepers to keep these dangerous feelings in check.

  To keep the Larva locked away.

  Malatesta had been sixteen when first approached by the Keepers. At that time he was imprisoned in a boy’s reformatory for crimes of sexual deviancy against the women of his village. Constantin had been told by the village priest that he had a devil living inside of him, for he had been born out of wedlock, and on the Sabbath. Malatesta would struggle with that evil spirit infestation for as long as he was alive, the priest had said. In moments of lucidity, he would pray that he would be kept locked away for his own good, and for the good of the world. Nobody, especially those of the female persuasion, would be safe if he was allowed to roam free.

  But his condition did not cause the Keepers concern; in fact, they had sought him out because of it.

  Malatesta stiffened, spilling the contents of his goblet as the woman came up behind him, wrapping her arms around his chest.

  “I didn’t figure you for shy,” Natalia said into his back, her eager hands caressing his chest and stomach.

  He began to find himself aroused, and with that, so was the Larva—the evil spirit locked away inside him.

  The Keepers believed he was perfect for their cause, a lost soul already infected by the blight of the supernatural—these were the types that they were looking for: those already inclined to the ways of the weird. And they had been right. Once they secured his release from the reformatory, they brought him to a secret monastery where his training began in earnest.

  But first they showed him how to keep the monster inside him in check, and for many years, other than the occasional backslide when he was younger, foolish, and overconfident, he had done just that, and had continued to do so while serving his Vatican masters.

  Until now.

  The Larva was fully awake, clawing at his insides, demanding to be paid attention to. Malatesta fought to remember all that he had been taught, every last bit of the minutiae he had been shown to control the filthy spirit that resided within him.

  Natalia’s hands were all over him, traveling down to the forbidden place that grew hard as she teased him. It was like ringing a dinner bell for the damnable fiend inside him.

  Using all the strength he cou
ld muster, Malatesta held on to the beast, but in doing so felt the glamour spell begin to slip.

  And he could not allow that.

  Malatesta abandoned his drink, spinning himself around to face the woman who gazed at him longingly. The spirit was there, taking full advantage of this weakness. It grabbed Natalia by the shoulders in a grip surely meant to hurt.

  The woman gasped as he squeezed, the monster inside him wanting to turn the flesh and bone in his grasp to a red pulp that would ooze from between his fingers.

  Constantin was expecting her to cry out; the look in her eyes was one of shock and awe. The Larva liked that. It would feed off of her fear, but slowly. It had been a very long time since it had fed, and it wanted to take full advantage of the meal that was being presented.

  Her mouth opened, and he prepared himself for the inevitable screams, but surprisingly, they did not come.

  “That’s it,” Natalia said, her face flushed from the pain he was inflicting. “Show me what you can do. . . . Show me what you like.”

  Malatesta was shocked by the words, but the spirit—the spirit had just been given the main course. He was nauseated by its excitement, its unbridled enthusiasm, as it tore free of any restraint that he had managed to maintain.

  Though he wanted to look away, he couldn’t. His eyes—now the demon’s eyes—were locked upon their prey. Malatesta wanted to say that he was sorry, and that he would pray for her soul when the atrocity was complete, but the Larva refused to let him as it picked the woman up from the floor and savagely threw her across the room, where she struck a high part of the wall, leaving behind a bloody impression before dropping to the bed, and rolling onto the floor.

  Malatesta wanted to cry out his sorrow, but the Larva had taken that away as well, replacing it with a hysterical laugh.

  Temporarily sated, he was able to restrain the beast, to use the mental constraints taught to him by the Keepers to wrestle the beast into submission.

  Malatesta leaned upon the bar, breathing heavily from the exertion of keeping the monster from emerging again while also maintaining the glamour. He thought about leaving the room and finding Remy Chandler before his act was discovered, and they were all put in jeopardy.

  He walked toward the door, but was compelled to stop—to stare at the body of Natalia. The bloody smear on the wall above the bed told him that she was injured, quite possibly even dead, but he needed to know.

  The Larva chattered excitedly inside his head, eager to deface the woman’s body in some foul way; but Malatesta remained strong, holding the leash tight.

  Natalia lay crumpled upon the floor, her limbs bent in ways that suggested to him bones broken in more than one place. And the way her head hung limply to one side . . .

  He believed that she might be dead.

  The Vatican sorcerer had begun to utter a special prayer for the dead when he saw the body twitch. For a brief moment he was overjoyed by the idea that he hadn’t killed her, but was still nauseated by what he—the Larva—had been allowed to do.

  Compelled to move closer, Malatesta found himself kneeling before the woman, reaching out to lay a comforting hand upon a leg bent disturbingly in the wrong direction.

  Natalia’s eyes came open, staring.

  He could not contain the gasp that escaped his lips as she began to thrash, hauling herself upright against the bed.

  Wanting to tell her to stop before she could injure herself further, Malatesta remained strangely silent, watching entranced as she adjusted herself accordingly, setting limbs and bones straight, the way they should have been.

  Natalia saw that he was watching, and laughed.

  “I knew the bad angel that Morgan told me about was in there somewhere.” She adjusted her arm, bone grinding against broken bone. “Just give me a minute to heal, baby,” she told him, her lips stained with blood.

  “Then we can really have ourselves a party.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  It was as if the building on Newbury Street and Francis were connected on some level. He had lived in the brownstone since its construction back in 1882, and they’d been through quite a bit together, seen a lot of things.

  This angelic incursion was just the latest.

  Standing silently in the lobby, Francis closed his eyes and reached out, feeling as the building felt, hearing the sounds, smelling the smells both old and new.

  The angels had come in from the roof. The magickal wards that Francis had set up so many years ago were signaling the invasion. He doubted that the invaders had even noticed them, and if they had, they hadn’t given them a second thought.

  These were angels of Heaven’s war legion, and Francis seriously doubted they gave one lick that they were trespassing.

  Which was why he was going to teach them a little lesson on respecting others’ space.

  Still standing in the entryway, senses fanning out through the building like a spider’s web, he was able to trace their movements. There were six of them, spread out, investigating every apartment, probably trying to pick up the scent of the general’s stinking body.

  Francis opened his eyes, and pulled his knife from inside his suit coat pocket. Squinting from behind his dark-framed glasses, he found a weak point in reality, and swiftly cut a passage that would take him to the first of the home invaders.

  The first of his prey.

  • • •

  The angel Montagin looked as though he might burst into tears at any moment.

  “We’re dead,” he whined, as he nibbled on a fingernail. “Might as well just accept our fate.”

  “I’m not accepting anything,” Squire said. “What I am gonna do is what Francis asked me to.”

  The angel watched him.

  “You’re going to hide the body?” he asked. “What’s the use?”

  Squire turned at the door. “You have a better plan, Mary? Gonna stand here and wait to be slaughtered? I don’t fucking think so.” Squire stopped, eyeing Heath and Montagin. “Are you coming or not?”

  It didn’t take Heath long to make up his mind. “Your plan is better than no plan,” he said, walking as if drunk, still experiencing the effects of the Bone Master’s poisonous bullet.

  Squire continued to stare at the angel. “I’m not gonna ask you twice.”

  “So what, then?” Montagin asked as he strode over to join them. “We hide Aszrus’ body, and then what of us? Are you going to hide us, too?”

  Squire led them down the hall to the living room where the angel general’s corpse was still waiting.

  “One thing at a time, Tinkerbell.” Squire stopped in front of the dead angel’s body. “Now help me move this furniture around. I’m gonna need the biggest shadow we can make.”

  • • •

  Taking down an angel of the Lord was all about surprise, and capitalizing on their sheer arrogance. As far as angels were concerned, nobody was as badass as they were.

  Francis begged to differ.

  He stepped from the rip he’d cut in the stuff of time and space, and quietly darted for a patch of shadow in the upper corridor, just as one of the angel soldiers rounded the corner. The angel was armored, what light there was on the abandoned floor glinting off Heavenly forged metal. In one hand he held a sword, and it glowed as if just pulled from the heart of the sun.

  This guy had meanmotherfucker written all over him, but Francis wasn’t fazed in the least. He’d watched a lot of mean motherfuckers cry for their mothers when faced with something meaner than them.

  Francis put away his knife and drew his pistol, waiting for the angel to come closer. He stepped from the shadows, striking at the soldier of Heaven. The angel did not even have the opportunity to raise his fiery sword before Francis drove the butt of his weapon into the angel’s forehead.

  Wings of chocolate brown flecked with white erupted from behind the warrior of Heaven like a parachute. Perhaps it was to startle his attacker, or maybe to provide a means of escape, but either way, it didn’t work. For Francis
stuck to him like glue, hitting him again and again, until the angel crashed to the floor and remained still.

  The blood was flowing freely from the fissure that Francis had put in the angel’s forehead, but at least he was still alive. How easy it would have been to slip the knife from inside his pocket and end this being’s life permanently, or fire a single shot from his gun into the unconscious soldier’s heart, or skull.

  But that wasn’t what this was all about. Instead, he stifled his urge to kill, and used the knife to cut another passage to his next encounter.

  Besides, he didn’t want to have to listen to Remy complain about his use of excessive force.

  • • •

  Montagin watched as the hobgoblin and the sorcerer moved the furniture, using what little sun was coming through the window to create a particularly large patch of shadow.

  “Thanks for the help, Precious,” Squire said as he finished moving the recliner.

  “You’re welcome,” Montagin responded, before realizing that the little creature was being entirely sarcastic.

  He had never encountered one of these hobgoblin creatures before, and now figured it was probably because they had all been slain for their infuriating, antagonistic ways.

  At least that was why he would kill one.

  “Now, what should we do with this patch of shadow?” the angel asked.

  “We do nothing,” Squire retorted. “But I will use my special gift to open a passage to a place that exists on the other side of all shadows, and remove this particularly fragrant bag of angelic rot from this plane of existence.”

  The hobgoblin’s words were like a blow to the heart, but Montagin managed to suppress his anger at the creature’s lack of respect.

  “You’re going to put him in the dark,” Montagin said, going to Aszrus’ corpse, and kneeling down beside it.

  “Yeah, it’s pretty dark there on the shadow paths.”

  Montagin wasn’t a particularly emotional being—most angels were not—but during his time upon Earth, he’d found that certain human characteristics had begun to rub off on him. He’d developed quite the affection for the general over the course of his service to him.