Thomas Sniegoski - Walking In the Midst of Fire

“I called him,” he said.

Remy glared.

“What?” the hobgoblin protested. “Vatican boy said he’d give me fifty bucks every time I saw you. A guy’s gotta make some scratch on the side somehow.”

He then turned his stare back to Malatesta.

“I needed to know where you were, what you were up to,” Malatesta explained. “The Keepers believe . . .”

There was a moan of pain from the doorway behind them.

“Holy crap, Angus,” Squire said. “You look like shit.”

The sorcerer slid down the doorframe to the floor, as Remy was on the move.

“I think he’s been shot,” Remy told them.

Squire and Malatesta helped get the injured sorcerer back into the apartment, dragging him over to an overstuffed sofa in the living room.

Adjusting his towel as it began to slide off, the hobgoblin then tore open Heath’s shirt to get a look at the wound. It was nasty looking, seeping blood as well as some other yellow, viscous fluid.

“That doesn’t look right,” Squire said. “What was he shot with?”

Remy remembered that he was still holding the weapon, and held it out for Squire to see.

“Oh, isn’t that cute?” the hobgoblin said. “Does it fire regular bullets?”

“No,” Remy stated. “It looked like it fired teeth.”

“Swell,” Squire muttered, just as Heath began to convulse, a spurt of blood and puss erupting from the wound.

Squire tore the towel from around his waist, bringing it down on the strange bullet wound.

“Get out of the way,” Malatesta said, pushing Remy aside, and kneeling down beside Heath convulsing upon the couch.

“Remove the towel,” the Vatican representative said.

The hobgoblin started to protest, but shut his mouth when he saw that the man’s hand had started to glow an eerie blue, and pulled the towel away.

The sudden blast of stink was almost palpable, and Remy stepped back.

“What’s wrong with him?” Remy asked.

“The projectile has released its poison,” Malatesta said. “If I don’t act quickly . . .”

The Vatican representative plunged his fingers down into the wound, the blue energy radiating from the tips of his fingers causing the blood, puss, and flesh to froth and sizzle.

Heath moaned in his unconsciousness, head thrashing from side to side, the agony great as it wreaked havoc on his body.

Most of the fingers of Malatesta’s right hand were buried deep inside the wound as blood and discharge bubbled and smoked.

“I have done all I can,” he said finally, withdrawing his gore-covered fingers. He held them up, showing the broken pieces of what used to be a tooth. “Hopefully I got them all.”

Malatesta then took the towel from Squire and wiped his hand.

“I would suggest covering the injury with a bandage,” he said. “Wouldn’t want it to get any more infected than it already is.”

“Is he gonna be all right?” Squire asked. He had left the living room, and had gone into the kitchen, returning with a roll of paper towels and a bottle of whiskey.

“I believe I got all of the projectile, and hopefully burned away most of the poison,” he explained. “If his constitution holds out, he’ll probably recover over time.”

Remy watched as Squire tended to his friend, cleaning the wound with paper towels soaked in the whiskey.

“So I’m guessing he’s out of the picture for a while,” Remy said.

“I doubt he’ll regain consciousness anytime soon,” Malatesta answered. “Would I be forward to ask what it was that you needed him for?”

Remy considered the situation, and suddenly found himself with an answer.

“I’m in the middle of a job and require somebody with a certain skill set,” Remy said, looking away from the unconscious Heath to the Vatican agent, who was still wiping the blood from his hands. “But I think I might’ve found an alternative.”

Malatesta cocked his head inquisitively.

“From what you did to the assassin out in the hall, and what you did to save our friend, it looks as though you have some special talents.”

“Yes?” Malatesta inquired.

“Exactly how good of a sorcerer are you?”

Simeon stood in the window of the office building, looking out through the cracked and broken panes of glass onto the abandoned Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

The forever man remembered how dangerous it had once been, the levels of radiation so high as to cause skin to blister, and wreak irreparable damage at a cellular level.

It had been a true place of death, which is why he had first been drawn to it. No matter how many times he had failed in his pursuit of the final sleep, Simeon never gave up hope that perhaps, someday, he would at last be given that which he desired most of all.

That at last he would be granted the bliss of death.

But the Almighty was unnaturally cruel, allowing everything within a thirty-kilometer radius of the damaged facility to wither and die.

Everything except for him.

In the first days following the evacuation of the city of Prypiat and some of the villages closer to Chernobyl, Simeon had walked the lonely streets, feeling the effects of the deadly radiation, but never succumbing.

Though it did not give him what he most wanted, he grew to admire this place, reveling in its eerie quiet.

It was as if a tiny corner of the world had simply stopped.

A place of death, and it gave him something to aspire to.

But all good things . . .

From the window, Simeon watched a rabbit emerge. It scampered out from beneath some overgrowth, near a section of rusted chain-link fence that had been taken down by a fallen tree.

Twenty years later, life was slowly returning to the region. He’d even heard rumors that people were again being allowed to walk the evacuated streets, a once-forbidden curiosity to be explored.

He so despised letting go of things he’d grown to love. If he had to be around forever, so should at least a few of the things that gave him some bit of happiness. Simeon snarled, and wondered what his chances were of finding some discarded nuclear material to spread around in order to raise the radiation levels and preserve the solitude of this place.

And then he realized he was no longer alone.

The demon Beleeze stood silently in the doorway to the office.

“Yes,” Simeon sighed, knowing that what was to follow would not be good, for he had left specific instructions that he not be disturbed.

The demon flowed farther into the room.

It always impressed him how silent this species was, as if sound itself was scared away by the primordial creatures.

Beleeze still did not speak.

“Tell me,” Simeon commanded, twisting the ring upon his left hand.

“There’s a problem,” the demon said.

“Where?” Simeon asked, catching sight of a tuft of brown fur as it blew across the cursed earth. He had taken his eyes from the rabbit for only a moment, but it was gone now, tufts of bloody white and brown fur all that remained. Whatever had happened had only taken an instant.

It reminded him of how quickly things could go awry.

“The island,” Beleeze grunted, as if the words themselves were adorned with razor-sharp edges that savagely cut as they left his mouth.

England

1349

They had retired to a great den in the nearly empty castle, the stone walls covered in fine tapestries, a roaring fire burning in the huge stone fireplace.

The Pope sat upon a formidable wooden seat—a throne, really—its upholstery the color of fresh blood. Remiel sat in his own chair, a simple chair in comparison to Tyranus’, but it suited the angel just fine. Both had been set before the fire, a small table for their wine goblets positioned between them.