Walking in the Midst of Fire (36 page)

Remy could see that she was getting upset. He backed away a bit, hoping that if he kept his distance . . .

“Gareth said that you want to teach us to kill and stuff,” she said suddenly. “To be an army . . . to fight a war . . . World War Three!”

“Is Gareth one of your brothers?” he asked, trying to calm her down.

“Yes, he’s my oldest brother and he didn’t want us to do any fighting for the angels so he ended up doing something really bad.”

Remy knew what Gareth had done.

“He killed an angel, didn’t he?” Remy said. “Gareth killed an angel called Aszrus.”

She was picking at stuff in the dirt again, pulling things out, looking at them, and tossing them aside.

“Yes, he did,” Kitty said. “And he got into really bad trouble . . . but that was before they knew he had powers.”

Remy didn’t quite understand. “Powers?” he asked. “What kind of powers?”

Kitty was still poking around in the mud. She shrugged her shoulders. “All kinds,” she said. “We all got ’em now—well most of us. Some of the babies don’t.”

Remy felt that horrible feeling begin to form in his stomach, the horrible feeling that told him things were much worse than he thought.

“Do you have powers?” he asked, realizing as the words left his mouth that it might not have been the question to ask right then.

Kitty was looking at him again, and smiling.

“Uh-huh,” she said. “Do you want to know how I know so much about this island?” she asked.

Remy didn’t respond.

“All those people who died here a long time ago?” she asked. “They told me.”

She poked at the things she’d been pulling from the mud and dirt.

“Here are some of their bones. If their bones are here, they’re here, too.”

Remy watched as a thick mist seemed to erupt from the muddy bones, growing in size to form a grayish cloud that transformed into multiple ghostly shapes with eerily burning yellow eyes.

“Guess what my power is?” Kitty asked, and then she started to giggle.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know that something bad was about to happen.

“Kitty, you don’t have to do this,” Remy tried to persuade her. “I don’t mean you, or your brothers and sisters any—”

“I control the ghosts!” she proclaimed. “And I can get them to do whatever I want.”

“Kitty,” he tried again, calling forth his wings because it might be necessary.

“Get ’im!” the child ordered.

The ghosts glided through the air, their mouths open in a disconcerting psychic scream that Remy could hear—
feel
—inside his head. He tried to evade them, flying up into the rain-filled sky, but the spirits clung to him, swarming around his body, filling him with the weight of their sorrow.

As hard as he tried to shake them, the ghosts held on, filling his thoughts with the pain and misery they had suffered there as prisoners of the Japanese. Remy was having a difficult time concentrating. He crashed into the side of a nearby building, breaking one of the few panes of glass that had managed to remain intact.

The ghosts wanted him to know them—their loves, their hates, what they so desperately missed. He knew it would be impossible to escape them, so he landed, dropping to his knees on the muddy ground. He wrapped himself in his wings and rocked to the psychic onslaught, experiencing each and every thing they wanted to him to know.

Remy could feel the heat of life slipping away from him, the spirits eagerly taking anything they could use to manifest themselves more strongly in the living world. He felt cold, and colder still as the ghosts of Gunkanjima grew more powerful.

It was time to make his move. Calling upon the divine power that resided within him, Remy communicated with the disembodied dead, telling them that it was time to move on.

The ghosts fought him at first, having been tormented for so long, bound to the island. But Remy showed them the light, and what it would mean if they let go.

And as he’d hoped, the spirits calmed, soothed by his message of eternal rest. Their torture would end. They would at last know peace, their ghostly energies finally able to travel on to join the stuff of the cosmos.

The stuff of creation.

“What’s he doing to my ghosts?” Remy heard Kitty cry from somewhere far away. Before he could react, he was struck by a bolt of energy that picked him up from the ground and tossed him against the side of a building.

The ghosts were in a panic once more.

Remy crawled to his knees, raising his head, certain that he wasn’t going to like what he was about to see.

And he was right.

Kitty had been joined by some of her brothers and sisters.

They were of various ages, some a little younger than Kitty, while others looked as though they were in their teens. The angels at Rapture had been busy.

“I don’t . . . ,” Remy started again, wanting them to know that he wasn’t there to hurt them. But his words fell upon deaf ears.

One of the young teens approached him, a smile on his dirty, pimply face. His hands were outstretched, and from the tips of his fingers flowed streams of some kind of bioenergy. It was like being touched with a power cable, and Remy’s body immediately convulsed.

The ghosts were back as well, their number growing by the second, and Remy’s mind became so crowded with horror and misery that he could barely put his own thoughts together enough to stand.

“Please,” he begged. He had no desire to hurt them, but if they kept this going . . .

The wind kicked up, and Remy felt as though he’d been clutched by a giant, elemental hand. He was picked up, his wings flapping uselessly, and tossed back to the ground by the invisible hand of some angry, and powerful godlike being—a godlike being controlled by a fourteen-year-old child in a torn Sex Pistols T-shirt, jeans, and scuffed-up cowboy boots.

Remy was about to plead with them again, but their eager faces told him they were having way too much fun. Instead, he decided he should consider getting the hell out of there before the sadistic brood ended his life for good.

The invisible hand had him again, this time by the legs, and whipped him savagely against the ground. He could hear the children’s excited cheers as he was tossed aside like a rag doll, rolling to a stop in the center of a street now lush with vegetation. He lay there, playing dead, gathering his wits. No matter how badly his warrior nature railed inside him, he would not hurt children, no matter how bloodthirsty they appeared.

They were approaching him. He could hear their feet scuffing across the ground over the wailing of the dead still inside his mind. This was it.

Remy sank his fingers deep into the muddy ground, and willed the fire that churned inside of him forward. It exited his fingertips in an excited rush, pouring into the ground and causing the vegetation and anything else lying within it to explode in bright yellow flames.

The children began to scream, and Remy took to the sky, beating the rain-filled air unmercifully as he flew away from the angry tribe, maneuvering between the abandoned buildings as he sought a place to set down, to rest and gather his thoughts.

He hadn’t been paying attention to the airspace in front of him until it was too late.

The teenage girl hung in the air as if floating in water, her hands held out on either side of her churning with some bizarre mutation of divine fire. As he grew closer, he saw her mouth twist in a grimace of exertion, and as he dropped from the sky in an attempt to escape, she tossed the flaming orbs of hissing fire where he’d just been.

Evading the fireballs, Remy twisted in the air above another street that had succumbed to the elements, and saw another gathering of children.

Almost as if they’d been waiting for him.

The wind picked up suddenly, savagely, and it took all that he had to stay aloft. A wall of air pushed down upon him, and Remy found himself striking the side of another building, his wings beating as hard as they could to keep him airborne as the screaming winds forced him back down to the street.

Twisted by the ferocity of the unnatural air, Remy was slammed down upon his back, the oxygen forced from his lungs in a wheezing explosion. Colors danced before his eyes, and he did everything he could to maintain his consciousness. He could only imagine the fate that awaited him if the children found him helpless.

A piece of pipe lay upon the ground, and Remy reached out to snatch it up. He needed a weapon, and if a sword or gun wasn’t handy, then this would have to do. Willing some more of his inner fire into the body of the makeshift club, he watched as it began to glow.

By the light of the divine fire he saw something that took his breath away.

Malatesta and Prosper were tied to twin posts sticking up from the ground. The fallen angel was unconscious and looked as though he’d been beaten within an inch of his life, while the Vatican magick user, though bloody and bruised, at least was awake.

“I’d ask if you’re all right, but you’d probably tell me to go fuck myself,” Remy said, flaming pipe in hand.

“You’re probably right,” Malatesta answered weakly.

At least the sorcerer was in control again.

“Prosper?” Remy asked, keeping his eyes on the children, who were now coming closer.

“Alive,” Malatesta said. “But just barely.”

The teenage girl dropped down from the sky to land before Remy. Her hands blazed as if dunked in gasoline and lit on fire.

“Anything you can tell me that could help me out?” Remy asked.

“Not that I can think of at the moment,” Malatesta said. “One of them seems to be able to broadcast directly into my head, making it rather difficult to think straight, never mind cast spells.”

“So much for asking for a hand,” Remy said.

He was watching the group, sensing power the likes of which he’d never encountered. Holding the flaming piece of metal out before him, Remy decided that fighting would lead to nothing good, and let the makeshift weapon clatter from his hands to the street.

“I don’t mean any of you harm,” he said, raising his hands in surrender, and allowing his wings to fold upon his back.

The teenage girl just laughed, and threw one of her balls of fire directly into Remy’s chest. It exploded on impact, knocking him backward to the ground where he found that he no longer had the will—or the strength—to rise.

The children gathered around, staring down upon him—some with curiosity and the wonder of youth, others with distrust, fear, and hate.

He wanted to tell them again that he wasn’t like the general, that he wasn’t like Aszrus, but the girl’s fireball had taken away everything he had left.

Suddenly, Remy noticed movement in the gathering and a murmur passed through the crowd. Then they moved aside, allowing another of their number to step forward.

He was an older boy, probably sixteen or so, and in his eyes Remy saw something that scared him.

In the young man’s eyes were anger and defiance.

“He wanted to turn us into weapons,” the young man said as he stared down upon Remy.

“I guess his wish has come true.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I
n that bizarre state between waking and unconsciousness, Remy waited until he was able to pull enough of himself together to function again.

But in the cool, soothing darkness, he wasn’t alone.

“You’re really in a fix this time, Mr. Chandler,” said a voice that he missed with every fiber of his being.

Madeline was sitting beside him, wearing that yellow sundress she’d worn one day on Nantucket during their honeymoon.

“Hey you,” Remy said, forcing himself up to a sitting position. “Long time no see.”

“Aww, did you miss me?” she asked, with a tilt of her head.

If she only knew.

“Always.” He smiled at the woman who’d been gone from his life two years now.

“But you’re doing so well,” she said, leaning against him. “Personally, anyway.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, shrugging.

“I like her. She’s tough. I think she can handle the nonsense you’ll put her through.”

It was odd to hear his dead wife talk about Linda, but also strangely comforting to have her approval, even though she was only a manifestation of his subconscious.

“I hope you’re right,” Remy said. “Although I’m not sure even I can handle my current situation.”

“It is a bad one,” Madeline agreed. “What are you going to do?”

Remy shrugged again. “My original plan was to find out who was responsible, and then turn him over to the legions to defuse the situation. But now . . .”

Remy recalled the pain and anger in the boy Gareth’s voice as he talked about the angel that was his father. Gareth hated the Heavenly being, but at the same time, he seemed to hunger for his acknowledgement, to be recognized as his son.

Aszrus had finally begun to take an interest in Gareth and the other children. For a time, Gareth had actually started to believe he was something more than the forgotten by-product of an unholy union.

But then Aszrus had revealed his true motivation, his plan for the children to be used as weapons against the forces of Hell. Gareth’s dreams of belonging suddenly came tumbling down, and the full extent of his unnatural power began to take shape.

“You can’t turn them over,” Madeline said, speaking his own thoughts.

“No, I can’t.” Remy shook his head. “Although they are extremely dangerous.”

“Angry children,” Madeline said. “Not the easiest creatures to reason with.”

“Tell me about it.” Remy had tried to calm Gareth and the others, which resulted in one of the children reaching into his skull and giving his brain a good squeeze to shut him up.

And that was why he was here, but at least he was in very good company.

“So where does that leave us?” Madeline asked.

“It leaves us in a pretty bad place,” Remy admitted. “Gareth wants to lead his brothers and sisters from the island to confront the angels responsible for siring and abandoning them.”

“That’s probably something they’ve been wanting to do since they were old enough to know better,” Madeline said. “A power fantasy—if they couldn’t be loved by those who cast them away, then they would destroy them.”