Thomas Sniegoski - Walking In the Midst of Fire

Or bad.

Remy glanced nervously toward the door and wondered how Malatesta was holding up.

He had a bad feeling. With the two of them separated, the potential for disaster was pretty damn high.

The woman, Morgan, emerged from the bathroom where she’d gone to freshen up. She had relieved herself of her black leather jumpsuit, and was dressed only in a lacey bra and panties.

“Hope you don’t mind that I changed,” she said with a sexy smirk. “That jumpsuit can be a bit warm.”

Remy took a sip from the glass of scotch she had poured for him, as she padded barefoot across the room.

“So,” she continued, sitting beside him on the leather couch, curling her bare legs beneath her. “I know pretty much all I need to about your friend, but what do you like, Remiel?”

Remy shifted to face the beautiful woman. He was reading something from her, but couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. There was something different about her.

“Tell me about my friend,” he said, waggling his eyebrows as he took another drink of his scotch.

“Oh, you’re like that,” she purred. “Well, let’s just say that the general likes his playtime rough,” Morgan told him.

“Really,” Remy said. “How rough?” He was goading her on, trying to make her think that this sort of thing was a turn-on for him.

“Very,” she said, her voice nearly a whisper. “Very, very rough.”

“Did he hurt you?”

She nodded vigorously as she unfurled herself and crawled atop Remy. “Would you like to hurt me?”

Remy didn’t want this, but to reject her advances might destroy his opportunity for information.

She straddled his lap, facing him. “I asked you a question, Remiel,” she urged, as she removed her lacy bra.

He could see the deep scarring in the flesh around her nipples as she leaned forward, pressing her breasts against his chest.

“Did he do that to you?” Remy asked her.

“Uh-huh,” she whispered softly in his ear. “But that’s all right, I heal quickly. Would you like to leave your own scars?”

She leaned back, and dug one of her long, scarlet fingernails into the flesh above her left breast, causing the blood to flow.

“You can if you like,” she told him.

She began to grind her hips against Remy’s lap, as she dipped her fingertip in her blood and brought it to his lips. He tried to move his head, but she was insistent, smearing her blood on him. As soon as it touched his lips, as soon as the coppery scent of it filled his nostrils, Remy saw what she actually was.

The blood triggered an explosion of images in his mind; Morgan’s life-stuff telling the story of a mother’s interaction with divinity, the conception and abandonment of a half-breed child, and the life that she—the child—had been forced to lead in the wake of her rejection.

Remy tried to shake his head clear and reached up, gripping the writhing woman by the shoulders, looking her straight in the eyes.

“You’re Nephilim.” He watched surprise register on her face, then her expression quickly changed to one of pleasure.

“Of course I am,” she said. “How else could I survive the kind of shit you guys like?”

In the eyes of the various angelic hosts that served the whims of God, the Nephilim were considered a blight. The offspring of angel and human were the trickiest of things. Most of the time they appeared perfectly normal, until puberty, and then the end result was usually anything but. An actual human form imbued with the power of Heaven was a recipe for disaster.

Now here was one of those children, forced into this kind of life, a sexual plaything for the unearthly.

“What, you have something against Nephilim?” Morgan asked. “If that’s the case, you’re in the wrong fucking place. All the playthings here are Nephilim.”

Morgan’s blood still engulfed Remy’s senses; the smell and taste, and the images continued to bombard him as he twitched upon the couch beneath her. He saw Aszrus in this very room, wrapped in the throes of passion with multiple Nephilim. Suddenly, the women were cast aside; Aszrus cried out as a knife plunged into his chest. And then Remy could see the attacker, a young man with shaggy blond hair. His attack on the angel general was vicious—relentless—as he drove the blade into the angel’s chest again and again.

And then he began to cut, slashing and digging with his fingers, trying to reach the still-beating prize inside.

“Are you all right?” Morgan asked. She climbed off of him, and stood in front of him, staring. He could see that her breast had already healed. “Are you having a bad trip or something?”

It took a moment for Remy to pull his wits together, and then he asked her, “Did something happen to Aszrus here?”

“I’m not supposed to talk about other—”

Remy flew from the couch and grabbed the girl by the arm.

“This is very important, Morgan,” he said with the intensity of the Seraphim.

“Yeah,” she said quickly. “A few nights ago . . . some crazy got in and came at the general.”

“A crazy?”

“Yeah, Prosper didn’t know who it was.”

“Prosper?”

“Rapture’s owner.”

“So Aszrus was attacked?”

“Yeah, guy came out of nowhere with a knife, started screaming and trying to stab the general.”

“What happened then?”

She shrugged. “I didn’t hang around to find out—security came. I can’t tell you how relieved I was to see Aszrus tonight and know—”

The door to the room suddenly slammed open then, and the zombie that had been checking IDs at the door stormed in with a group of five other walking dead.

“What the fuck, Charlie?” Morgan shrieked, just as he backhanded her across the face.

The six zombies then turned toward Remy, who allowed his true nature to emerge. He sprang from the couch and plowed into the first of the walking dead, driving him back into the others and causing them to tumble like bowling pins. Then he grabbed an ashtray from a nearby side table and infused it with the fire of Heaven, until it glowed like a tiny star, tossing it at the first zombie to rise to its feet.

The burning ashtray bounced off the zombie’s chest and landed on the floor, hissing like a giant snake.

It took a second for Remy to grasp what had happened, which was just long enough for the zombies to reach him. As he struggled with the mass of living dead men, he caught sight of the jewelry around their necks, confirming his suspicion that they were magickally protected against beings such as him.

Of course they are, he thought, as they pummeled him with fists like cinder blocks, driving him to the floor. Remy dropped to his knees, struggling against multiple blows. His gaze fell on the doorway, where he saw more zombie security guards entering the room; Malatesta was in the hallway, no longer wearing the guise of the angel general, his face swollen and bloody, his hands bound behind his back.

There were far too many now, and Remy’s wild swings landed harmlessly on flesh that had been dead for some time. As he fell to the floor beneath a sea of fists and kicking feet, he caught sight of Morgan, now in a silk robe, watching the beating with a certain amount of interest.

It was all he could do to stay conscious, and he was just about to give in to the sweet arms of oblivion when he saw Morgan reach for something on the floor. It took him a moment to realize it was the picture he had found in Aszrus’ secret room—the picture of the baby with the thumbprint burned into it.

She looked at it, and then to him.

Her look told him that it meant something to her.

And then everything faded to black.