Walking In the Midst of Fire

much danger the world of man would be in.

It was time to make a call.

He moved away from the sink and caught sight of Marlowe watching him from the corner, his shiny black coat blending with the shadows. The dog’s tail immediately started to wag.

“What?” Remy asked.

“What?” the dog repeated in a throaty growl.

Remy was just about to ask him if he wanted to go for a ride, when suddenly they were no longer alone.

Linda sleepily rubbed at her eyes as she leaned against the kitchen doorframe. “What are you guys doing?” she asked, stifling a yawn.

Remy couldn’t help but stare at her. She was wearing the gray, extralarge Walking Dead T-shirt they had bought at Newbury Comics the week before and nothing else, her long, shapely legs looking even longer and shapelier than they usually did. Her hair was tousled, suggesting that she had been asleep for a bit. She ran her fingers through the long, dark locks, pushing them back from her face.

Though half-asleep, Linda smiled at him, and he felt that sudden flush of humanity that he had learned to appreciate so much.

“Want to fool around?” she asked, biting at her lower lip, her hair falling back over one half of her face.

She couldn’t have been sexier if she’d tried.

“What kind of a man do you take me for?” he asked, crossing his arms in mock indignation.

She padded toward him. “The kind that stands around in a dark kitchen with his dog, stinking of booze,” she said. She kissed him hard upon the lips, then pulled away.

“And tasting of booze, too,” she added, making a face.

She turned, heading back for the doorway, walking in such a way that he had no choice but to watch her. “If you have any interest at all in my offer, you know where I’ll be,” she called over her shoulder as she passed through the door into the room beyond.

“Huh.” Remy looked at Marlowe.

“Bed?” Marlowe asked, his blocky head cocked to one side.

“Eventually,” Remy said. “A little playtime first.”

“Playtime?” Marlowe repeated eagerly. He looked about the darkened kitchen for one of his toys.

“Sorry, pal. Not that kind of play.” He patted the dog’s head as he passed him. “People play.”

He heard Marlowe sigh pathetically behind him, and turned to see his friend sitting dejectedly, head low, in the darkened kitchen.

“I’ll tell you what. Once Linda and I are finished playing, I’ll take you out for a walk.” Remy told him.

The Labrador’s thick tail thumped furiously on the kitchen floor.

“Walk!” Marlowe barked, his sadness suddenly forgotten.

Remy placed a finger to his lips, warning the dog to be quiet. “After playtime,” he assured the dog, starting toward the flight of stairs that would take him up to his bedroom. Once again, Marlowe rushed past to get there first.

“Stay off the bed!” Remy warned as the dog bounded up the stairs. The sound of Linda’s surprised scream, followed by hysterical laughter and a dog’s playful growl proved that the one obedience class they’d attended had certainly done the trick.

England

1301

Since being touched by the Nazarene, Simeon could not die.

It was not as if he hadn’t tried; it was just that death would not have him.

Even the passage of time could not harm him, the man looking just as flush with life as he had before he’d died so very long ago.

Plagued by the curse of immortality, he chose to wander, to experience everything that this world—now his prison—had to offer.

The good as well as the bad.

Simeon found himself drawn to the darker corners. Where the sane and rational mind might flee the terrors that hid in the shadows, the eternal man found himself moving toward them eagerly.

He was desperate to know what secrets they might share, how they might help him someday to see Heaven fall from the sky. Simeon had gathered much in the way of knowledge over the centuries he had lived and wandered, but it was the ways of sorcery and black magick that had proven the most useful.

The forever man had an aptitude for the black arts, and his hunger for this particular type of knowledge had become insatiable.

During his travels, as he sought out those in special circles who could teach him, there was one name often spoken in both reverence and great fear.

Some said he was only a legend, an amalgam of all the world’s greatest sorcerers and wizards, while others believed that he truly did exist, a living repository for all the magickal knowledge that had ever existed.

The name of the legend was Ignatius Hallow, and Simeon had traveled long and far to finally find him.

Standing on English soil, in the pouring rain, the forever man looked upon the ruins of the castle he had been directed to, and felt the beginnings of despair.

“How can this be?” he asked the foul elements, as he stumbled through the mud toward the ruins.

In a tavern in the town of York he had met an old man whose neck had been broken but he still managed to be alive. Those in the tavern whispered that this one was so insane that neither God nor the Devil wanted him, and they had sent him back to the world. They also said that the man with the twisted neck knew things—dark secrets that he would share for a price.

That had been good to know, for Simeon had need of such information.

By its appearance, the castle had been taken a long time ago, in some long-forgotten conflict that had caused its battlements to fall. There was not a sign of life to be found.

Simeon snarled as the realization that he’d been had began to sink in. He and the insane old man had made a deal: the first digit of his little finger from his right hand in exchange for the whereabouts of the legendary magick user. A bizarre price to pay, but it was what the man with the broken neck had demanded for his services. The madman had said that he could see the remnants of many years in Simeon’s eyes, which made him—as well as pieces of him—so very special.

The eternal man could still hear the old-timer’s cackle as he wondered aloud whether perhaps Simeon had been discarded by Heaven and Hell as he himself had been.

Simeon stared down at the bloody bandage wrapped around his hand. He could feel it throbbing with the angry beat of his heart as what had been cut away slowly, painfully, grew back.

Looking out over the ruins as he was assaulted by wind and rain, Simeon debated his next course of action. There was a part of him that wished to continue on his way, wandering to the next location, hoping for a piece of forbidden knowledge to add to his growing arsenal.

Or he could return to the tavern in York, for a piece of the twisted old man.

The wind pushed him even closer to what remained of the forgotten castle’s walls, as if the elements were urging him to be certain that the madman had indeed been wrong. He was about to step back, to prepare himself for the long trek to York, when the ground in front of him began to churn.

At first he believed it to be a trick of his eyes, the way the heavy rain pelted the muddy patches of exposed earth, but he quickly came to realize that wasn’t the case at all.

The vines, their bodies as fat as the thickest rope, and covered in large thorns that looked as though they could strip the flesh from his body, erupted from the saturated ground in a writhing tangle. Simeon managed to throw himself back, away from the thorn-covered tendrils, only to have another patch of the virulent growth explode from the ground behind him. Everywhere he looked the ground churned, and more of the serpentine vines grew, reaching for him, ensnaring him in their constricting embrace.

Simeon screamed as the thorns dug into his skin, tearing it through his garments. The tentacle-like growths