Thomas Sniegoski - Walking In the Midst of Fire

The promise of substantial payment for his services didn’t hurt, either.

“I’m going to need some things from my apartment,” Heath announced to him as they came through the double doors into the bar.

“Where are you going?” Methuselah asked, pouring a guy wrapped from head to toe in heavy robes a drink of something red and churning.

“There’s something I need to take care of,” Heath said. “But I’ll be back before the dinner crowd shows.”

Methuselah glared at him.

“Would it help if I told you that it’s something really important?” Remy asked, following Heath to the door.

“Isn’t that how it always is with you, Chandler?” Methuselah asked. “Make sure you get him back here in one piece. He’s the best cook this place has had in over seven hundred years.”

“Take it easy, Phil,” Remy said to the minotaur as he passed, and the tavern’s door was loudly slammed closed behind them.

“I take it that you and the minotaur don’t get along,” Heath commented as they walked along the stone corridor to the doorway waiting for them at the end.

Heath pulled a fancy-looking gold key from inside his pants pocket, and slid it inside the lock, opening the door.

“Had an entrance installed inside my apartment,” the sorcerer said, putting a finger up to his mouth as if uttering a secret he didn’t want repeated. “Takes the problem of being late for work when I oversleep off the table,” he said, swinging open the door into a pool of shadow.

Remy followed Heath inside and was closing the door behind him when something was suddenly in the Methuselah’s alley—something desperate to join them.

It moved more quickly than even Remy could see, forcing its way through the doorway and into the cool space beyond.

“What the fucking hell!” Remy heard Angus bellow, as the door slammed closed on them, and they were all engulfed in total darkness.

There was a struggle in the pocket of black, and a strange sound like blasts of air being shot down a hollow tube. Remy reacted, jutting out his arm and filling his hand with the fire of the divine, which illuminated a closed door in the shadowy oblivion before them.

Then there followed a rush of flame, and the door disintegrated in a flash of smoke and fire. They emerged from the closet into the apartment.

“What is going on?” Heath asked in a near hysterical shriek, and Remy noticed that the sorcerer’s chest was bleeding.

“You’ve been hit,” Remy said, holding on to the large man as he began to fall to his knees.

That strange blowing sound filled the air again, and Remy reacted in an instant, throwing himself atop Heath’s body.

The apartment was filled with smoke from the exploding door and the smoke alarm wailed. Remy brought forth his wings, flapping them wildly to clear the air and find their attacker.

The shooter took aim from the kitchen and Remy recognized him to be the cloaked customer at the bar for whom he’d seen Methuselah pouring a drink as he and Heath had left.

The shooter raised a long, sleeved arm and fired again.

Remy leapt above the intense blasts, and angled his descent down toward his assailant, connecting with him before he could fire his weapon again.

Landing atop the would-be assassin, Remy drove him savagely to the floor. There was a clattering sound as they hit, and Remy watched as the weapon flew from the attacker’s hand and slid across the black-and-white linoleum tile.

The weapon was unlike anything he’d ever seen before. It appeared to be made out of yellowed bone, and looked almost like the intact skeleton of something that had once been alive, petrified into the shape of a gun.

The figure lashed out at the angel straddling him, the strength of the blow knocking Remy to the floor.

Scrabbling across the kitchen, the assassin went for his weapon. Remy dove as well, grabbing handfuls of the attacker’s robes, and willing them to burn.

The cloth went up as if doused in gasoline.

The assassin screeched, throwing off the burning garment to reveal his true form.

There was no doubt that the attacker was a member of a demon species, one of the mysterious races of creature that angels believed existed in the darkness before God brought forth the light of creation, but even that was purely speculation.

His pale, naked flesh scorched by divine fire, the demon snarled, showing off yellow, razor-sharp teeth as he snatched up his bony weapon from the floor and began to shoot.

Remy beat his wings powerfully, propelling himself back and through the kitchen as the demon fired. In a dish strainer beside the sink Remy found a cast-iron frying pan, using the cooking tool as a means to defend himself.

As well as a weapon.

He infused the metal handle with the fire of God, the metal beginning to glow white-hot almost instantly in his grasp. The demon shot, and Remy lashed out, swatting the projectiles aside, listening as they clattered noisily to the floor. Remy glanced down to where one of the bullets had landed, and was shocked to see something that resembled a tooth lying there.

The assassin dashed from the kitchen, his movements so fast that it was almost as if he had disappeared. Burning frying pan in hand, Remy pushed off with his wings, the cramped conditions of the apartment preventing him from being able to take flight.

Remy saw the demon pulling the door open to make his escape, and hurled the burning pan in his direction. The demon ducked as the pan struck the doorframe beside his pale head. He snarled once more, raising his gun of bone and firing multiple shots again before racing out the door.

Remy barely managed to get out of the way as the organic-looking bullets chewed into the wall not far from his face.

He was already in pursuit when he heard the most ungodly of screams emanate from the hallway outside the apartment, and he quickened his pace to get there.

Careful, just in case he might be fired upon again, Remy darted from the apartment in a low crouch, prepared for just about anything that might follow.

Except for what did.

What was left of the demon lay upon its back in the middle of the corridor, the pale flesh now burned to a blackened crisp. Jagged bolts of supernatural energy wove through the body’s ashen remains, as if searching out any part of the demon’s form that was still flesh.

The energy then shot from the remains, like serpents of electricity, causing the blackened assassin’s body to crumble away, leaving nothing more than a large pile of ashes in a humanoid shape.

The energy then returned to the man standing no more than five feet away, coalescing in the palm of his outstretched hand.

“Thought you might need a hand,” Constantin Malatesta said as the magickal energy he’d wielded was absorbed back into his flesh.

“I certainly hope you don’t mind.”

Remy withdrew his wings as he walked toward the assassin’s remains.

“Have you been following me, Mr. Malatesta?” Remy asked, kneeling down to sift through the ashes, retrieving the strange weapon of bone.

“I didn’t care for how our first meeting ended,” the Vatican representative said. “So I made a conscious effort to reconnect with you. Lo and behold, you were summoned to Rhode Island, as was I.”

Remy stood, eyeing the man.

“You weren’t at the mansion.”

“Not inside, but I was there,” Malatesta explained. “I received a message from one of my Keeper informants that something was going on, and that you had been called in. Let’s just say, my curiosity was piqued.”

“Doesn’t explain how you ended up here,” Remy said.

There was a click and the creak of a door opening as Squire stepped out into the hall, his stocky, leathery-skinned body wrapped in a bath towel.