Thomas Sniegoski - Walking In the Midst of Fire

“Next time you’re in,” the waitress said, eyeing the cash before slipping it into a pocket on her apron, “you be sure to ask for Katie.”

He stood up, staring at the three demons that had just entered the bar. Their eyes were shifting about the room. They were looking for him.

“I’ll be sure to do that, Katie,” Simeon told Katie, reaching out to take hold of her arm in a firm grip. “But I’m afraid that in a little bit you won’t even remember I’ve been here.”

She seemed a little startled, a bit perplexed at first, but then he watched his magick seep deep into her flesh, and spread throughout her body, and as he released his grip, she was already moving toward her next table.

His presence forgotten.

The demons had come closer, waiting for him to notice their presence.

He turned to them. “You’ve found me.”

“When we noticed you were gone . . . ,” one of them began.

“You were worried?” Simeon asked. His coat was hanging over the back of another chair and he retrieved it, pushing past the demons on his way to the door.

“Was it wise for you to come here?” another asked in a voice low and soft, so as not to be heard.

Simeon stopped as he hung his coat over his arm.

“Your concern is really touching,” he said, trying the smile again but certain to make it appear as obviously insincere as he could manage. “But it’s nothing you need to worry yourself about.”

“Hold this,” he ordered, handing his coat to one of the demons smart enough to keep her mouth shut.

Simeon walked away from his pale-skinned escorts and placed his hands together, allowing the two rings, one on the ring finger of each hand to briefly touch, before raising his hands in the air.

“Excuse me,” he called out, feeling the ancient power imbued in the two pieces of jewelry flow through his hands and out into the tavern’s patrons. “Just to be on the safe side,” he said as they listened. “I was never here.”

He watched the memory of him leave each and every one of those present, all of them going back to whatever it was they were in the middle of doing before the pale-skinned man with the curly black hair called on their attention.

“Happy?” Simeon asked the demon that had questioned him, stealing back his jacket from the other, and throwing it over his arm.

He headed toward the door, ahead of his entourage.

“Have a good night,” he told the minotaur as it opened the door for him and the demons that followed.

Remy stopped to let Marlowe sniff the base of the parking meter, before the dog lifted his leg to spray it with urine.

“Where do you keep it all?” Remy asked him.

“What?” the dog asked, already moving Remy along the nearly deserted early-morning street.

“The pee,” he said. “I can’t imagine one dog having so much of it inside him. You must have some sort of storage tank or something. Is that what it is? Do you have a storage tank?”

Marlowe had no real idea what Remy was talking about and answered in the expected manner.

“No.”

Remy chuckled, walking down Boylston Street with Marlowe sniffing at the ground and pulling slightly on his leash.

He and Marlowe had been careful not to make too much noise as they got ready to leave the house on their walk. Buttoning his shirt while Marlowe patiently waited just outside the door, Remy had watched Linda sleep. His body still tingled with the memory of their lovemaking, and he considered crawling back beneath the covers for another go, but a faint, pathetic whine from the hallway was enough to reignite his other purpose.

He had a call to make that couldn’t be made from his cell, and besides, he’d promised Marlowe a walk.

Remy loved the hum of the city by day and night, but this time of the early morning, when things were so remarkably still and quiet, was high up there on his list of favorite times. It was almost as if the day to come was waiting, tensed, at the starting line, eager for the pistol shot that would signal what was to come.

He loved this city and the humanity it coddled, which made the reason he’d left his lover, and his bed, to head out into the early morning, all the more pertinent.

If war was on the horizon, he needed to know exactly how close it was, and what could be done, if anything, to prevent it from overflowing onto the world of man.

Remy pulled back on Marlowe’s leash, standing on the corner of Boylston and Dartmouth, preventing the overeager beast from heading out into the street. Traffic was light, but all it would take was one taxi driver or delivery truck not paying attention.

“You really need to be more careful,” Remy told the dog.

Marlowe looked up at him, his dark eyes dark filled with adoration.

“You careful for me.”

The coast clear, the two crossed, passing by an entrance to the Copley Square T station, Remy tugging Marlowe past several early commuters, their eyes bleary as they headed for work. They stopped near an unobtrusive door in a darkened corner of the Old South Church, one of the last places of worship that Remy had been in.

He was about to take Marlowe into his arms and wrap his wings about them to take them inside, when something moving in a patch of shadow caught his eye. Remy shifted the configuration of his eyes to see that it was one of the many homeless people who slept on Boston’s streets. An old woman’s head popped up from a filthy sleeping bag to stare at them.

“No need to be scared, fella,” she said, addressing Marlowe.

It took everything that Remy had to keep the dog, tail wagging, from pulling himself over to her.

“Marlowe, no,” Remy ordered.

“It’s all right,” she said, her hands coming out from within the sleeping bag to eagerly clap. “C’mon over and see old Dottie.”

Remy let up on the leash, letting him go to the old woman. It wasn’t long before he was licking her weather-worn face, and she was scratching him behind his velvet soft ears, cooing affectionately to him.

“You’re a sweet one, aren’t ya?” she said as Marlowe administered some of his patented affection, licking every inch of her face, neck, and ears.

“Marlowe, go easy on the poor woman,” Remy said.

“Marlowe?” the woman asked. “Is that your name? Marlowe?”

If the dog could have crawled into the sleeping bag with her, he would have.

“‘Why should you love him whom the world hates so?’” old Dottie quoted, glancing at Remy to see if he was listening. “‘Because he love me more than all the world.’”

Remy realized that she was reciting from Elizabethan dramatist and poet Christopher Marlowe.

He smiled at her and nodded. “Nice,” he said. “But not that Marlowe, I’m afraid. He’s more Philip Marlowe.”

The woman laughed as the dog continued to lick her face.

“Ah!” she exclaimed. “Raymond Chandler.”

“That’s it,” Remy agreed.

“‘Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid,’” Dottie said, quoting Remy’s favorite author. “‘He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man.’”

The woman stopped, smiling a toothless grin.

“Pretty good, right?”

He gave her the thumbs-up. “Awesome.”

“I read a lot,” she told him, scratching roughly behind Marlowe’s ears, but the dog didn’t seem to mind. Not one little bit. “And stuff just seems to get stuck up there.” She stopped scratching Marlowe to point to her head, upon which sat a floppy, knitted hat. “Can’t forget the stuff even if I tried—especially if I like it.”

“Not so bad of a curse as far as curses go,” Remy told her.