Walking in the Midst of Fire (25 page)

Navigating the crowd, Remy made his way toward them, catching Malatesta’s eye as he approached.

“Ah, here he is now,” Remy heard the sorcerer say.

The woman looked in his direction and smiled predatorily.

“Hello there,” she said. He was surprised that she wasn’t licking her lips as she gave him the once-over.

“Hi,” Remy said.

“This is Morgan,” Malatesta said. “She and I enjoy each other’s company.”

Could he have said that any more awkwardly?
Remy wondered. A couple more lines like that and red flags would be going up all over Rapture.

“Oh you do?” Remy said. “Is she one of the ones you were telling me about?” He sipped his drink, gazing over the rim of his glass at the woman, who covered her mouth demurely as she laughed.

“It’s not polite to talk to your friends about our personal business,” Morgan said to Malatesta, wagging a scarlet-nailed finger.

He chuckled, sipping from his goblet. Remy wondered what the golden cup contained, and whether it was healthy for the sorcerer to be drinking.

“He didn’t tell me much,” Remy interjected, causing the woman to turn her attention to him. “Only the juicy parts.”

He imagined Linda hearing him speak like that, and the beating that would have followed.

Morgan laughed, gliding closer to him.

“And how did he describe my juicy parts?” the woman asked without even cracking a smile. He was amazed that she had the ability to say something like that and not start laughing.

“Spectacularly?” Remy suggested, taking a long sip from his drink.

“Sounds about right,” Morgan said, and entwined her arm with his, leading him from the alcove. “Why don’t we go someplace where you can judge for yourself?”

Remy turned to see that Malatesta had been approached by yet another employee of Rapture. It appeared that the general was quite familiar with, and popular among, the staff of the charnel house.

“Don’t worry about him,” Morgan said, squeezing his arm. “She’s almost as good as I am.”

And as they walked, the crowds moved aside, like Charlton Heston as Moses, parting the Red Sea, leading his people to salvation.

Remy doubted that there would be anything even slightly reminiscent of salvation to be found at the end of this journey.

•   •   •

“I swear he’s gotten heavier,” Montagin said with exertion, holding on to Aszrus’ shoulders as they maneuvered the angel general’s corpse through the opening Francis had slit in reality from his basement apartment to where Squire was waiting.

“Maybe it’s the stink,” Francis said, gripping the corpse’s legs as he stepped through the fluttering passage. “Stink has to weigh something, right?”

Montagin came through and they prepared to lay the body down.

“Got any tarps or trash bags handy?” Francis asked, remembering how the body had leaked.

“Got a few
Boston Herald
s lying around,” Squire responded.

“Yeah, that’ll do,” Francis said.

The hobgoblin shot into the kitchen, returned with a small stack of newspapers, and began to lay them on the floor.

“Got it,” he said as he finished.

Francis had begun to position himself to lower the bottom half of the dead Aszrus down, when Montagin released his end, the angel general’s skull sounding like a dropped bowling ball as it bounced off the hardwood floor beneath the newspaper.

Francis just glared at the angel.

“What?” Montagin protested. “It isn’t like he’s going to feel it.”

He was about to wipe his hands on his pants when he thought better of it.

“I need to wash my hands,” the fussy angel proclaimed.

“Go right ahead,” Squire told him. “But I’m fresh out of lavender bath soaps.”

Montagin fixed the hobgoblin in a withering stare.

Squire looked right back at him, refusing to back down.

Francis knew that he liked the little guy for a reason.

Montagin left the scene disgusted as he went in search of a sink to wash his hands.

“Don’t forget to lift the seat, Mary,” Squire grumbled beneath his breath as the angel passed.

The passage Francis had cut from his apartment to here healed shut noisily with a sucking sound, leaving nothing behind to show that the tear had ever been there.

“Now what?” Francis asked.

“Now we get him someplace where it won’t matter if he stinks to high fucking hell.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Francis agreed.

Squire rubbed his stubby hands together. “First off, we need a nice piece of shadow.”

The hobgoblin was in the process of moving his sparse furniture around, so that the sun coming in from the unshaded window provided them with the largest area of shadow that they could have, when the explosion caused the apartment to shake.

“What the fuck?” Squire cried out.

Francis was already on the move, pistol in his hand as he left the living room, in pursuit of the commotion going on down the hallway in the first bedroom.

He wasn’t sure what he expected to see, and was relieved that it was only Montagin, his chest burning from where he had been struck. He rose to his feet, wings spread.

“You dare use your filthy magick upon me!” the angel bellowed, facing off against an unknown assailant in the bedroom.

A blast of crackling energy whipped out, striking where the angel had just been standing. He leapt above the latest assault, propelling himself into the bedroom with a thrust of his wings.

Francis aimed his pistol from the doorway, the racket of battle rising up from the skirmish unfolding before him.

“For the love of Christ,” he cried, slipping away his gun. “Break it up you two!”

He entered the room, careful to avoid magickal spells that were missing their intended target and striking nearby walls. If this kept up he could see some pretty hefty repair work in his building’s future.

“Knock it off!” the former Guardian angel screamed again as he watched Montagin and the sorcerer, Angus Heath, thrashing about on the floor of the bedroom.

There was a flash of divine fire, and Francis knew that things were about to get even more serious as he dove forward to grab Montagin by the shoulder, hauling him backward with a show of inhuman strength.

“Get your filthy hands off of me,” the angel said with a snarl, turning a flaming hand toward Francis.

The gun was shoved up underneath Montagin’s nose.

“I will turn the top of your head into a fucking Frisbee,” Francis snarled.

A blast of magickal energy struck Montagin from behind, causing him to cry out. He fell to the ground, his body crackling in a magickal corona.

“Oh, don’t make me threaten you, too,” Francis said, aiming his gun at Heath.

“He attacked me,” Heath proclaimed, swaying unsteadily on stumpy bare feet.

“I used the bathroom to wash my hands,” Montagin said, rising to his knees, his wings slowly fanning away the excess magickal power that had engulfed him.

“I didn’t know who you were,” Heath explained.

“Montagin, Angus Heath,” Francis said. “Angus Heath, Montagin. We all BFFs now?”

Squire appeared in the doorway. “Is it safe?” the hobgoblin asked.

“Yeah, everything’s just hunky-dory,” Francis said, putting his gun away. “Think we might be able to—”

The building shook.

“It wasn’t me,” Heath immediately responded, covering his ass.

Montagin was staring at Francis. Clearly the angel felt it, too—that certain feeling in the air when
they
were around.

“What the fuck now?” Squire grumbled.

“Angels,” Francis said, already on his way from the room. “We’ve just been fucking invaded.”

•   •   •

Constantin Malatesta wore two masks.

The woman who had brought him to the small apartment, off a winding hall away from the main lobby, stood above him as he sat, her eyes fixed upon him hungrily.

“Can I get you anything?” she asked. She’d told him that her name was Natalia, and that she had heard things about him.

Things that she wanted to experience for herself.

He didn’t know what to do; any slight deviation in his concentration could cause the spell that allowed him to masquerade as the angel general to slip, and where would he—and Remy Chandler for that matter—be then?

“A drink? Drugs? Something stronger?” Natalia asked. She had already taken his goblet and was holding it in her hands, suggestively running them along the shaft of the golden cup.

Malatesta didn’t even want to look at her, for it made his thoughts go places that he would rather they not—for the sake of the glamour spell that he wore, as well as the mask of sanity that had been his for these many years, since being indoctrinated into the ways of the Keepers.

Two masks that could potentially fall away if . . .

Natalia tossed the goblet aside and dropped to her knees in front of him.

“Or we could just begin with this,” she suggested, leaning into him, resting her arms on his legs as he sat. One of her hands began to wander in the direction of his crotch.

Panic—sheer, electric panic—shot through him.

Malatesta suddenly stood, nearly knocking the woman over.

Natalia appeared shocked, but then began to laugh.

“I know Morgan is your usual, but there’s no need to be shy,” she told him with a throaty chuckle.

Not knowing what to do, he fixed his gaze upon the golden goblet lying there, and snatched it up from the floor.

“I think I will have something to drink,” he said, just to have something to say, doing everything in his power to maintain his masquerade.

“You go right ahead,” she told him. “We’ll have many hours to get used to one another . . . many hours to play.”

He felt his heart begin to hammer in his chest as he approached the bar cabinet in the corner of the room. Letting his eyes wander over the multitude of bottles, he settled on what he thought was whiskey, and poured himself a full cup.

It wasn’t supposed to be this difficult; he’d been trained for years by the Keepers to keep these dangerous feelings in check.

To keep the Larva locked away.

Malatesta had been sixteen when first approached by the Keepers. At that time he was imprisoned in a boy’s reformatory for crimes of sexual deviancy against the women of his village. Constantin had been told by the village priest that he had a devil living inside of him, for he had been born out of wedlock, and on the Sabbath. Malatesta would struggle with that evil spirit infestation for as long as he was alive, the priest had said. In moments of lucidity, he would pray that he would be kept locked away for his own good, and for the good of the world. Nobody, especially those of the female persuasion, would be safe if he was allowed to roam free.

But his condition did not cause the Keepers concern; in fact, they had sought him out because of it.

Malatesta stiffened, spilling the contents of his goblet as the woman came up behind him, wrapping her arms around his chest.

“I didn’t figure you for shy,” Natalia said into his back, her eager hands caressing his chest and stomach.

He began to find himself aroused, and with that, so was the Larva—the evil spirit locked away inside him.

The Keepers believed he was perfect for their cause, a lost soul already infected by the blight of the supernatural—these were the types that they were looking for: those already inclined to the ways of the weird. And they had been right. Once they secured his release from the reformatory, they brought him to a secret monastery where his training began in earnest.

But first they showed him how to keep the monster inside him in check, and for many years, other than the occasional backslide when he was younger, foolish, and overconfident, he had done just that, and had continued to do so while serving his Vatican masters.

Until now.

The Larva was fully awake, clawing at his insides, demanding to be paid attention to. Malatesta fought to remember all that he had been taught, every last bit of the minutiae he had been shown to control the filthy spirit that resided within him.

Natalia’s hands were all over him, traveling down to the forbidden place that grew hard as she teased him. It was like ringing a dinner bell for the damnable fiend inside him.

Using all the strength he could muster, Malatesta held on to the beast, but in doing so felt the glamour spell begin to slip.

And he could not allow that.

Malatesta abandoned his drink, spinning himself around to face the woman who gazed at him longingly. The spirit was there, taking full advantage of this weakness. It grabbed Natalia by the shoulders in a grip surely meant to hurt.

The woman gasped as he squeezed, the monster inside him wanting to turn the flesh and bone in his grasp to a red pulp that would ooze from between his fingers.

Constantin was expecting her to cry out; the look in her eyes was one of shock and awe. The Larva liked that. It would feed off of her fear, but slowly. It had been a very long time since it had fed, and it wanted to take full advantage of the meal that was being presented.

Her mouth opened, and he prepared himself for the inevitable screams, but surprisingly, they did not come.

“That’s it,” Natalia said, her face flushed from the pain he was inflicting. “Show me what you can do. . . . Show me what you like.”

Malatesta was shocked by the words, but the spirit—the spirit had just been given the main course. He was nauseated by its excitement, its unbridled enthusiasm, as it tore free of any restraint that he had managed to maintain.

Though he wanted to look away, he couldn’t. His eyes—now the demon’s eyes—were locked upon their prey. Malatesta wanted to say that he was sorry, and that he would pray for her soul when the atrocity was complete, but the Larva refused to let him as it picked the woman up from the floor and savagely threw her across the room, where she struck a high part of the wall, leaving behind a bloody impression before dropping to the bed, and rolling onto the floor.

Malatesta wanted to cry out his sorrow, but the Larva had taken that away as well, replacing it with a hysterical laugh.

Temporarily sated, he was able to restrain the beast, to use the mental constraints taught to him by the Keepers to wrestle the beast into submission.