Thomas Sniegoski - Walking In the Midst of Fire

The angel soldier stared at the haze of bubbles, and at the fading spot on the rug beneath them. Dropping heavily to his knees, Dardariel bent closer to the carpet, his nose mere inches from the bloody blemish.

It was Azrus’ blood; of that there was no doubt.

Dardariel heard the pathetic whimpering of the human woman and turned, eyes aflame with rage and indignation, toward where she had fallen. She lay upon the floor, up against the book-lined wall, her limbs bent and twisted unnaturally.

“Where is he?” Dardariel demanded.

“I—I don’t—,” she stammered between grunts of pain. She flopped around upon the floor of the study like a wounded bird.

Dardariel rose to his feet and stomped across the room. “What has happened to the general?” he demanded, grabbing the woman’s broken arm and hauling her to her feet.

Her scream was piercing, but it was music to his ears if it would supply him with the information he sought.

“The general,” he repeated, shaking the woman’s arm, feeling the broken bones grind beneath their fragile flesh covering.

Her eyes fluttered, and she moaned. He was afraid that she would lose consciousness, so he drew her close, blowing the breath of the divine upon her face, and watching her instantly revitalize.

“You’re . . . you’re so beautiful,” the blind woman said, her empty eyes tearing up as her senses were overwhelmed.

“Who are you?” Dardariel asked, trying to keep his voice calm.

“Marley,” she said. “My name is Marley.”

“Tell me, Marley,” Dardariel said, still holding on to the woman’s arm, his face mere inches from hers. “What has occurred here? What has happened to your master?”

He could still smell the blood, and it made him want to scream, and rage, and tear this dwelling down to the ground.

“Something . . . something bad,” she said, and started to sob again.

The fire of Heaven surged within Dardariel, and it took all that he had to keep himself from burning like the sun.

“What?” he asked. “What . . . bad, has happened here?”

“I don’t . . . I don’t know,” she told him. “He kept us away. . . . I tried to see, but . . .”

“Who kept you away?” Dardariel asked.

“Montagin,” she said in a pain-filled whisper. “Montagin did not want us to know that something . . .” She started to writhe in his clutches. “But I knew. . . . I could feel it. . . . My love of him was too strong. . . . I knew that something had happened to him.”

She was crying again, sobbing for the love of her master, and perhaps for the pain she was currently enduring.

His eyes were drawn back to the mark on the carpet, almost as if it were calling to him, mocking him. What did it all mean, he needed to know. Here they were on the precipice of war, and now this.

“Where is he?” Dardariel demanded.

“I don’t know,” she said. “They took him away from here. . . . I wanted to see him. . . . I needed to. . . .”

He was suddenly sick of her babble and cast her aside without further thought. Again there was screaming, but he didn’t care. Dardariel was back at the stain. Reaching down with a finger, he scraped his elongated nail along the fibers, attempting to raise the scent.

The smell grew stronger. He brought his finger to his nose and, moving past the chemical stink, took in the scent of blood. Then his tongue darted out, licking his fingertip, and his senses came alive.

Dardariel found himself screaming, his head tilted back as he proclaimed his fury to the world. There was fire on his body now, radiating from his armor, his hands, his wings, and the top of his head.

There was no more keeping it in. He had what he needed; there was nothing more to be learned in this place. And as for what had happened here, like the stain the human had been attempting to remove, it would be cleansed from the earth.

The fire leapt from his body, engulfing a nearby chair and sofa, leaping onto the first of the bookcases, and the books upon the shelves.

Marley had rolled onto her stomach, and was lifting her head to capture his eyes. Dardardiel rewarded her tenacity by looking at her.

“I loved him,” she said, her voice a screeching mess as the flames blossomed, and rushed to claim her.

The angel could not help but laugh as his wings fanned the burgeoning fire.

“What does something like you know of love?”

Dardariel listened, wondering whether she would try to answer him as she was consumed, but as he expected, he heard only screaming.

With the scent of Aszrus’ life-stuff in his nostrils, the angel leapt into the air, crashing up through the ceilings and floors until he was hovering above the burning estate. He tilted his head back and cried out for his brothers, calling them to him, as he began to follow the trail.

Following the scent of spilled angel blood that would lead them to their wayward general.

The general’s body was starting to stink.

Francis and Montagin had moved Aszrus from his Newport abode to the basement apartment of the Newbury Street brownstone, and the corpse now lay on the floor of Francis’ living room, a trash bag shoved beneath him just in case he leaked.

“A stinking body is bad,” Francis said, gazing down at the corpse, his hands on his hips. “A stinking angel body is really bad.” He paused, remembering the position of authority Aszrus held in the angelic hierarchy. “The stinking body of an angel general is so bad that I’m getting a headache even talking about it.”

“We should have left him where he lay,” Montagin fretted. “With the sorcerer’s magicks at work, there was a chance we could have lasted until Chandler got back.”

“A chance,” Francis said. “But a slim one. If the general’s playmates stopped by once, they’ll definitely stop by again. We couldn’t take the risk.”

“But the smell,” Montagin said. He pulled a monogrammed handkerchief from the inside pocket of his suit jacket and held it to his nose.

“Yeah, it’s getting pretty bad,” Francis agreed, staring at the bloated corpse on the floor. He’d met Aszrus a few times in Heaven, before the beginning of the war, and had never really liked him. The guy was pretty full of himself.

Now look at him, he thought. Full of nothing but gas.

“We gotta move him,” Francis said aloud.

Montagin looked at him incredulously. “Again?” he whined. “We just moved him here.”

“Yeah, I know,” Francis said. He was already heading toward the door. “But we can’t just leave him here, stinking to high heaven. A smell like this could lead the general’s buddies right to my door.”

“Where would you suggest we put him, then?” Montagin asked. “There’s not a place on earth that—”

“Exactly,” Francis interrupted. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

He climbed the stairs from the basement to the lobby, and on up to the third floor. The smell of violence lingered in the hallway, and Francis remembered that someone had tried to punch Angus Heath’s ticket there the other day. He noticed a dark, ashen stain on the rug in the corridor, and made an educated guess as to what had left it.

Francis approached the door and gave it a solid kick. “Hey,” he said, leaning in close. “Quit spanking it to porn and open the door.”

The door opened suddenly and Francis was staring down into the ugly, hobgoblin face of Squire.

“What, do you have a fucking hidden camera in here?” he asked with a snarl.

“Nope,” Francis said, pushing his way into the apartment. “Just figured that’s what you’d be doing.”

“To what do I owe this visit?” Squire asked, slamming the door behind him.