Walking in the Midst of Fire (33 page)

Prosper steeled himself against the flood of memories, trying to keep them back. He didn’t want to remember what had been.

How it used to be before . . .

He was attempting to get away, the air thick with an oily black smoke that rose from the burning bodies of his comrades. Puriel had been wrong in siding with the Son of the Morning, and just wanted this to stop . . . wanted it to be the way it had been.

Blindly he had leapt into the air, his tattered yellow wings carrying him over the battlefield. Something hissed as it sliced through the air, cutting into one of his wings and sending him spiraling down to the corpse-littered ground.

He landed upon an angel named Celiel, who had once boasted that he would tell the Lord God Almighty how wrong He had been about humanity, and if He didn’t like it, he would spit in His eye. Celiel was now quite dead, blackened flesh showing through the gash in his armor that stretched from his neck down through his shoulder.

Rolling from atop the corpse, Puriel realized that he could no longer fly—a large portion of one of his wings having been cut away. He struggled to stand, eyes searching the roiling black smoke for a sign of the one that had struck him from the sky.

He remembered with sorrow how he had stood there, waiting for the inevitable.

Prosper let out a short scream, the glass of bourbon slipping from his hand and falling to the floor. The picture inside his head was as clear as day: an armored warrior of Heaven emerging from the billowing smoke, a sword of fire held tightly with purpose.

How could he ever have forgotten that face? The face of the one who spared him his life allowing him to be imprisoned in Tartarus.

The face of the angel Remiel.

“Son of a bitch,” Prosper growled, leaning over to pick up the glass that he’d dropped. His hand was still shaking, and it took more than one try to finally snatch up the tumbler and place it on the corner of his desk.

Prosper stood, breathing heavily through his nose, attempting to calm himself. It was no wonder that he’d reacted in such a way to the angel.

Grabbing the bottle of bourbon, he began to pour himself another finger’s worth.
Maybe I’ll pay the angel a visit myself,
he considered, downing the drink in one huge gulp. It would be something special for Remiel to remember
his
face this time.

The door into his office swung open then, and Prosper turned to see Bobbie coming in.

“Don’t you fucking knock?” he asked, his rage suddenly inflamed. Then he saw that she wasn’t alone, and once again the glass fell from his hand, this time shattering as it hit the floor.

The angel Remiel came into his study.

“I think you and I need to have a little chat,” the angel said.

It took all that Prosper had at that moment not to drop to his knees and pray for his life.

•   •   •

Remy saw Prosper begin a desperate dive for the phone on the corner of his desk, and met him halfway, knocking him to the floor with a solid slap across the face.

“Lock the door,” Remy said to Malatesta, who had entered behind him. “We don’t want anyone interrupting our discussion.”

The magick user stepped away from the door and lifted his hands, muttering beneath his breath as he sealed the door with a spell.

Prosper scrabbled across the floor away from Remy. “Do you have any idea who I am?” he asked. “The forces that I could call down upon your sorry ass?”

“I know, I know,” Remy said, humoring him. “You’re a very important person.” He casually sat on the corner of the desk.

“We can do this one of two ways,” he began. “You can answer all of my questions, truthfully, or you can fight me every inch of the way and I will take a certain amount of pleasure in breaking every bone in your body, starting with your hands.”

Prosper was now standing, moving toward the leather chair behind the desk. “Oh how the mighty have fallen,” he said with an idiot’s grin.

“What are you talking about?” Remy asked, confused.

“Look at you,” Prosper said. “The champion of Heaven, now nothing but a fucking thug. Guess it can happen to the best of us, too.”

Remy wasn’t sure exactly what he was getting at, but he got a sense that it had something to do with the old days.

He chose to ignore the comment, instead asking, “So, what’s it going to be?”

“I’m not telling you anything,” Prosper declared with a cocky smile, leaning back in the chair, as if daring Remy to do something.

At one time Remy would have thought his own reaction troublesome, that the often violent angelic nature that he worked so hard to contain was getting stronger, and perhaps even out of control.

But now he looked at it as something that happened when he needed it to.

His wings were out in an instant, launching him over the desk, where he landed atop Prosper, sending them and the chair upon which they struggled backward onto the floor. His hand was around the fallen angel’s throat.

Prosper was trying to scream, but Remy squeezed tightly, refusing to let anything out except a frightened-sounding squeak.

“You want to be a badass, you do it when the world isn’t on the verge of being burned to a cinder.”

Remy allowed a small amount of the divine fire that was so eager to come out into his hand, burning Prosper’s throat. Then he released his grip, and loomed above the choking fallen angel.

“Now are you ready to talk to me?” he asked.

Prosper looked as though he might continue to fight, but appeared to think better of it when he touched the reddened flesh around his throat.

“Good boy,” Remy said. “Tell me everything you know about this.” He pulled the wrinkled photo from his shirt pocket, and tossed it into Prosper’s lap.

The fallen angel picked it up, staring at it. “Cute,” he said with a smirk just begging to be swatted from his face. “Isn’t that how you’re supposed to react to human offspring?” He tossed the photo at Remy with a flick of his wrist. “I don’t know shit about it.”

Remy’s wing suddenly lashed out to savagely smack Prosper’s hand as he drew it back.

The fallen angel cried out, grasping his injured wrist.

“Fucking hell!”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Remy said, feigning compassion. “Reflex action toward douche bags. Didn’t even know I was going to do it.”

He smiled. “Tell me about the picture.”

“I told you,” Prosper began again.

Remy advanced, wings fanned out around him threateningly. “If I have to ask again . . .”

Prosper cradled his arm to his chest, eyeing Remy fearfully. Remy was pretty sure that the fallen angel’s wrist had been broken. There was no better an incentive than broken bones.

Remy sensed movement, and turned to see Bobbie darting toward him. He was about to act, lashing out again with his wings, when she avoided him, heading toward Rapture’s owner.

“I’ll get him to talk,” she said, and that was when Remy noticed the short-bladed knife in her hand.

She was at the fallen angel in an instant, pressing the knife to his throat just beneath his chin.

“Enough of your fucking games, Prosper,” she said, her voice trembling, eyes filled with tears. “Tell us what happened to the babies or I will cut your throat.”

Prosper yelped as she pushed upon the blade, a trickle of scarlet running down his neck to stain the collar of his dress shirt.

“You’re fucking done here,” he told her, snarling. “You’re over.”

“I pretty much figured that out as soon as I saw the picture,” she said. “Tell me about the children.”

“Not a hell’uva lot to tell,” Prosper said with a loud swallow. “What had once been nothing more than an accidental by-product of business suddenly was going to make me some money.”

“A by-product!” she screeched, pushing on the blade, forcing Prosper to lean back. “They were our babies—our children—and you told us they were dead.”

“How else were you going to give them up?” he asked. “The fact that lots of them did die gave me the perfect excuse. The babies died in birth. It was sad, but nobody gave it another thought.”

Prosper made his move then, ducking his head beneath the blade and grabbing Bobbie, twisting the knife from her grasp, and bringing it to her chest.

“Another fucking step, any of you, and I’ll open her up,” he warned.

“You’re a fucking monster,” Bobbie said, spitting in the fallen angel’s face. Prosper flinched, but didn’t release her.

“I’ll remember that when this is over,” he told her.

“Since you’ve already started talking,” Remy said, “why don’t you keep it up so we’re all on the same page?”

“Guy came to me out of the blue and said that the kids might be worth something down the line, and I asked him to make me an offer,” Prosper said. “I like a guy with vision, so I started turning the kids over. We kept them safe and sound.”

Remy attempted to find the angle, and could think of only one thing.

“For what?” he asked. “Blackmail?”

Prosper laughed. “Y’know, the blackmail angle was the first thing I thought of, too. But it turned out to be just the tip of the fucking iceberg.”

Remy cocked his head inquisitively.

“This guy had a plan all right,” Prosper continued. “Got to the point where I just did as I was told, and collected the money.”

“Sounds like things were pretty good,” Remy said.

“Yeah,” Prosper agreed. “They were.”

“Until Aszrus got murdered,” Remy said. “Bet that threw a monkey wrench in the works.”

Prosper’s face looked as though somebody had stuck a handful of shit beneath it.

“I fucking told them to watch the kids,” he said, shaking his head. “They were getting weirder.”

His eyes focused specifically on Remy. “You’re kind of the expert on living here,” he said. “It’s got something to do with being teenagers, right? Puberty, is it?”

Remy gave him nothing.

“Aszrus was coming around to Rapture more often, wanting to see them,” Prosper continued. “I think the general was actually getting attached.”

“One of the children did this,” Remy stated. “One of these offspring killed a general in Heaven’s army.”

It was Prosper’s turn not to answer.

“Doesn’t that make you the littlest bit nervous?”

There came the sound of the doorknob rattling, and then a pounding on the door.

“Boss? It’s me!” called a rumbling voice. “We just found Luke and Tony. The prisoners are—”

“They’re in here!” Prosper screamed, and things went from zero to crazy in a matter of seconds.

Malatesta’s magick did very little to hold back the zombies pounding on the other side of the door, and the flimsy wood shattered as the walking dead fought their way inside.

Remy heard the short scream, and looked away from the monstrous dead men to see Bobbie dropping to the floor, an expression of horror on her face as blood streamed from between her fingers, which she clutched to her stomach.

Prosper was already on the move, running to the back of the office. Thinking he had nowhere to go, Remy caught Bobbie as she fell.

“The children,” she said softly. It looked as though she was having a hard time breathing. “You’ve got to do something. . . .”

Remy hadn’t a clue what to do. He lowered her gently to the floor, and decided that handing out a vicious beating to Prosper would be a good start.

But the fallen angel was gone.

Remy stood, eyes darting around the back of the room searching for any sign of the charnel house owner, but he was nowhere to be found.

“Remy!” came a cry from behind him, and he turned to see that the zombies were fully inside the room now, and Malatesta was on the verge of being overwhelmed.

“I could use some help!”

The magick user’s spells were driving the dead men back, but they quickly recovered, surging at Malatesta again.

From the looks of it, Malatesta wasn’t going to last much longer, and besides, Remy had some serious frustration issues at the moment, and could certainly use an opportunity to blow off some steam.

He looked around the room for something that he could use, and saw that Prosper had dropped Bobbie’s knife as he fled. Remy darted toward the blood-stained blade, calling forth his wings and the power of the Seraphim that waited patiently, knowing that in Remy’s line of work these situations often had a tendency to arise.

Knife in hand, Remy took to the air, flying across the room. As he traveled, he willed the fire of Heaven down his arm and into the short, metal blade, transforming it from merely a knife, to a weapon of Heaven.

A short-bladed weapon of Heaven, but a weapon of Heaven nonetheless.

The zombies didn’t know what hit them.

Malatesta had been driven back, and lay atop Prosper’s desk, a shield of magick protecting him from the dead men’s fists that were attempting to pound him into pulp.

Remy landed among them, distracting them from the magick user. He wasted no time lashing out at the first of the animated corpses, the enhanced knife blade passing through the putrid flesh and bone of a zombie’s neck, severing the head from its body.

In one smooth move, Remy kicked that still thrashing body away, and acted upon the next of the undead attackers.

The burning knife-blade crackled as it cut through the air, before reaching its next target. The blade sliced down vertically through the chest, to the belly, allowing the no-longer-functioning internal workings to spill out onto the zombie’s feet and floor.

The look upon the dead man’s face seemed almost comical, as if he were embarrassed to have his innards exposed to the world.

Remy took away his embarrassment as he drove the burning knife into a waiting eye socket, igniting his head in glorious yellow flame. He looked like a jack-o’-lantern. The zombie’s hands immediately went to his burning face, his feet going out from underneath him as he slipped on his own intestines, which were coiled upon the floor.

A rock-hard fist struck with powerful force at the back of Remy’s head, knocking him down. The zombie wasn’t going to wait until Remy recovered, delivering a solid kick to Remy’s midsection and sending him hurtling across the room.

Using his wings, he sprang from where he’d fallen, shaking off the ringing in his ears, replacing it with his own scream of anger as he flung himself at the zombie that now charged at him. Remy smiled as he saw what the zombie was holding: a rusty machete, raised menacingly above his head.