Walking in the Midst of Fire (16 page)

Remiel did not wish to speak of it, but the words came nonetheless.

“There is a simplicity here that speaks to me,” he said.

Tyranus chuckled. “Where you see simplicity, I see the complexities of this world . . . complexities that I must master.”

Remiel remained silent, hoping no more questions would come, but knowing better.

“How could you leave your God?” the old man asked. “For is He not your everything? Your sole reason for existing to answer His every whim?”

“It was.”

The images came again, the war and the killing of his brethren.

The death of so much more.

“There came a time when I could be there no more,” Remiel offered. “When the difficulties of Heaven weighed far too heavily upon my winged shoulders.”

Pope Tyranus studied the angel, his head resting against the back of the red velvet seat.

“Where is the difficulty in serving your master?” the Pope finally asked. “If there is trust in Him, there should be no question.”

Remiel saw the deaths of those he had once loved, those corrupted by the message of the Morningstar. He had hoped there would be another answer, that the Lord God Almighty would find a solution other than war.

But Remiel had been forced to take a side, and the solution was death to those who fought against His holy word.

“There was trust . . . ,” Remiel said softly. “For a time.”

This response seemed to rankle the holy man. “Are you saying that the Almighty is not to be trusted?”

“I’m saying that my trust in Him was tested,” Remiel explained. “And it was a test that I failed.”

The coach came to a sudden, lurching stop, leaning precariously to one side. Outside, Remiel could hear the chatter of the soldiers and the cries of horses in distress.

“What is happening?” the Pope asked, a slight tinge of fear evident in his voice.

Remiel cautiously opened the coach door, to be certain that they were not under attack. They were not, but somehow the soldiers had marched themselves deep into the center of a marsh, thick fog closing in on them from every direction. Several soldiers were attempting to lead their horses to solid footing, but to no avail, the panicked beasts’ cries echoing strangely across the misty moor.

“What is it? What’s happening?” Pope Tyranus demanded to know.

“Stay here,” Remiel ordered, leaping down to the muddy ground, slamming the carriage door closed behind him.

“Captain of the guard!” Remiel cried, feeling the earth suck at his boots, trying to lock him in place.

The sounds of the panicked horses, mingled with the screams of soldiers who had wandered into the bogs were eerily disturbing.

Remiel caught sight of the captain standing, holding tightly to his horse’s reins, staring out into the shifting mists.

“Captain,” he yelled, grabbing the man by the shoulder and spinning him around.

The man looked at him, eyes bulging with fear.

“How could you have led us into . . . ,” Remiel began to ask.

“We weren’t anywhere near a marsh,” the captain cried, shaking his head from side to side as his voice quaked with emotion. “A mist blew out onto the road, a mist so thick that . . .”

He stopped speaking and slowly turned back to the nightmarish scene as the wetlands claimed even more of the soldiers.

“And then we were here,” the captain finished. “May the Lord God Almighty preserve us, we were here.”

The captain let go of his horse’s reins, and the animal galloped madly off into the marsh. For a moment, Remiel lost sight of the animal in a writhing gray cloud, but then the cloud shifted; even the angel wasn’t sure of what he was seeing.

The captain’s horse was struggling mightily in the mire, which appeared to be hungry. When it seemed that the muscular beast would manage to free itself, something Remiel could not quite discern in the haze reached up from the water and mud to drag it back from whence it had escaped.

The Seraphim glanced toward the captain and realized he was no longer beside him. Remiel saw him wandering off in another direction, as if answering some siren call.

It was then that the angel sensed it. It had been hidden at first, mingling with the damp, heady smell of the marshlands, but the angel found it as the screams of animal and man intensified, and the shapes of things that might have once been human pulled themselves up from the clutches of the moors to shamble through the fog.

It was the scent of dark magick.

Remiel reached beneath his robes for the sword that hung there, the blade immediately igniting as it became engorged with the fire of the divine.

The light of the blade cut through the unnatural shadows and shifting mist, illuminating the horrors that were making their way directly toward him.

“What is the meaning of this?” Pope Tyranus cried out, clambering out of the carriage onto the moist ground. “I do not care to be kept waiting!”

It took a moment, but the Pope finally saw what was illuminated in the light of the angel’s sword.

“What in the name of all that is holy?” he stated, staring numbly ahead at the sight of the men, women, and children that had been sacrificed to the bogs so many years ago, their strangely preserved bodies . . .

Now returned to ghastly life.

•   •   •

It didn’t take Remy long to find Neal’s address, seeing as there was only one employee with that first name working at the Elite Limousine Company out of Warwick, Rhode Island. Doubting that they’d be willing to hand out personal information over the phone, Remy had paid a visit to the office.

It was quiet at Elite that morning, and willing himself unseen, Remy had whispered in the office manager, Ginny’s, ear that things were incredibly slow, and maybe she should go grab herself a coffee over at the Dunkin Donuts down the street to keep herself awake.

Ginny had heeded his suggestion, leaving him with access to the company’s files, where, after a little searching, he found the address of one Neal Moreland of Providence.

Seeing as the Mercedes that he’d borrowed from Aszrus’ garage had a GPS, it didn’t take long at all to find the driver’s residence in downtown Providence. Remy parked the car as close to the old apartment building on Pequot Street as he could, and walked around to the back of the building. There was a back door, and Remy quietly climbed the six steps up to it, peering in through the curtained window to see an entryway, and a back flight of stairs leading to the apartments above. He took a brief look around to see whether anybody was watching before unfurling his wings. He quickly wrapped himself in their embrace, and thinking about the hallway on the other side of the door, suddenly appeared there. According to Elite’s schedule book, Neal had had a late-night international pick-up at Logan last night and was supposed to be driving somebody back to the Boston airport later that afternoon, so this would probably be an awesome time to catch him. Remy slowly climbed the steps up to the second floor, and was making his way to the third when he felt it.

It was like walking into a curtain of spiderwebs, a strange tickling sensation across his bare skin alerting him that something of an unearthly nature had recently manifested itself in the area. He immediately went on guard, focusing his preternatural senses on his surroundings.

The wood creaked as he stepped onto the third-floor landing. A short hallway was before him, Neal’s apartment at the end.

Remy listened carefully to the sounds of the old building, hearing only the creaks of centuries-old wood, the distinct hum of multiple refrigerators, and in one apartment, the contented purr of a cat. Attuning his hearing to the apartment he wanted, Remy didn’t hear any signs of life, and was fearful that Neal had already left for the day.

Standing in front of the driver’s door, Remy was about to knock, just to be sure, when . . .

“He ain’t home,” said a voice from behind him, nearly causing him to explode out of his skin.

It took a second or two to realize that he knew that voice.

Remy turned to see Francis leaning against the wall behind him.

“Where the hell were you hiding?” Remy asked, annoyed, but also glad to see his friend. A second set of hands was always helpful.

“I’ve been right here all along,” the balding assassin said. “Guess those ninja correspondence courses were da bomb.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Working,” Francis said, pushing off the wall to approach the door. “But the person I was sent to check on isn’t home.”

“Huh,” Remy said, interested in the fact that they seemed to be here to see the same person. “And you’ve been sent here to see this person by your current employer?”

“I was.”

“This has the potential to be very bad,” Remy said to his friend.

He assumed that his friend’s mysterious new employer was Lucifer Morningstar, although Francis had never actually confirmed that.

“Care to share?” Francis asked, his eyes a cold and piercing gray behind his dark-framed glasses.

Remy wasn’t sure how much to say, for if Montagin’s suspicions about the legions of the Morningstar being responsible for Aszrus’ murder were correct, then this could very well blow up in his face, and spread exponentially from there.

“Let’s just say that I’m working on a potentially explosive case, and wanted to talk to the individual who lives in this apartment.”

Francis stroked his chin with a long-fingered hand. “A potentially explosive case,” he repeated. “And it just so happens to be somebody that I’m checking up on as well. What are the odds of that?”

“Those are some pretty crazy odds,” Remy agreed with a slow nod.

“Aren’t they?” Francis replied.

His friend had already turned to the door, and was reaching inside his pocket for the knife that had once belonged to one of Heaven’s most powerful angels. Francis had learned that he had been manipulated by this angel, part of his memory cut away by the very blade he now had in his possession.

Francis had killed that angel for the indignity, and for his troubles, had kept the knife.

He inserted the ultrathin blade into the lock on the door, and slowly turned it. The door swung open.

“Would you look at that?” Francis exclaimed. “It’s unlocked.”

“Imagine that,” Remy said, following the former Guardian angel inside.

The door opened into a small kitchen. They both looked around.

“See anything?” Francis asked.

The apartment was relatively tidy, all things considered, and Remy didn’t see anything that set off any alarm bells. Silently, he walked toward the living area, focusing on a tiny desk against the wall and the laptop that was resting there.

“Well, since you’re not being all that forthcoming, let me start,” Francis said. He was in front of the refrigerator, examining some notes held in place by magnets.

“Neal Moreland is doing some work for my employer.”

Remy quickly turned his gaze to his friend.

“A limousine driver from Providence, Rhode Island, is working for Lucifer Morningstar?”

Francis glanced at Remy, then back to the fridge.

“I never said who my employer was.” There was a hint of coldness in his tone.

“Cut the shit, Francis. I know,” Remy said. He was poking around the desk, careful to not mess anything up.

“How?”

“People usually don’t come back in one piece when the Hell dimension they’re trapped in is completely reconfigured by the most powerful fallen angel to exist. In fact, they usually don’t come back at all.”

“I’m lucky like that,” Francis said. He was now looking through the fridge, and was about to drink from a carton of orange juice.

“And you have the pistol,” Remy told him, remembering the case he’d taken not long after Madeline’s death that involved the Pitiless weapons. One of the Pitiless had been a Colt Peacemaker, a weapon that never missed its target.

A weapon that had been forged from the power of the Morningstar. A weapon that Francis now held in his possession.

Francis wiped his chin of orange juice, and carefully placed the carton back on the shelf in the fridge. “I know how you are about this shit which is why I kept it to myself,” he said as he joined Remy in the living room.

Remy didn’t care for secrets, no matter how badly they were kept, especially when they had something to do with an opposing force of Heaven.

“So, does this make us mortal enemies or something?” Francis asked.

“All depends on whether what you’re doing here has anything to do with starting a war.”

Francis stepped back, and made a face. “You’ve lost me.”

Remy stared at him, attempting to read his friend.

“Seriously.” Francis put up his hands in mock surrender. “I haven’t a fucking clue what you’re talking about. This face wouldn’t lie,” he added.

No matter what else happened between them, Remy trusted Francis not to lie to him, and if he said he didn’t know anything about a plan to start the war machine rolling, he believed him.

“Why don’t you start by telling me what Neal was doing for your boss? Then I’ll see if I can fill in the blanks from there.”

“I’m only agreeing to this because you’re my friend, and I hated to keep that shit about my employer secret,” Francis said.

Remy couldn’t help but think of the secret he had yet to share with Francis: his involvement with the woman with whom Francis had at one time been obsessed.

But there was a time and a place for everything, and this was neither for that.

“Neal is a driver with a local car service,” Francis began. “And one of his clients—”

“Is General Aszrus,” Remy stated flatly.

“Bingo,” Francis said, pointing at him. “So, Neal drives for the general, they chat a bit on the way to wherever it is they’re going, and when Neal drops off his customer, he makes a little call.”

“Neal was an informant?” Remy asked.

Francis nodded. “Yeah, kept the big boss in the loop as to how one of Heaven’s generals was spending his downtime.”

“I don’t suppose the big boss knows anything about the latest piece of hot information?” Remy said.

“And what might that be?”

“Aszrus is dead. Somebody cut his heart out.”