Walking in the Midst of Fire Read Online Free PDF Page A

able.”
    “And did you face your fears?” Remy asked.
    “I don’t know what I fucking faced,” Steven said. “It was pretty horrible . . . but I faced it, and I lived to tell about it.”
    Remy raised what was left in his glass to him in a toast.
    Steven lifted his empty glass in response.
    Remy finished off his drink, thinking of how he was going to word his next question.
    “So what now?” he asked. He decided to have something more to drink. “Are you planning on walking the mean streets looking for evil to vanquish?”
    Steven smiled. “Nothing so dramatic,” he said. “I’m back at work, doing my thing, but I see things differently now.”
    “How so?”
    “I know what’s really out there now, waiting in the shadows, as do a lot of people, I think, since what happened at the Hermes Building.”
    “They were blind, but now they see,” Remy said grimly.
    “Yeah, but I at least understand what I’m seeing,” the homicide detective said.
    “So, you’re good?” Remy asked. “You’re dealing with this okay?”
    “As good as can be expected,” Steven said in all truthfulness. “Am I still afraid of what could be waiting for me around the next corner? You bet your ass I am, but I’ll be damned if I let the fear win.”
    They again raised their glasses in a toast, both of them drinking at the same time.
    “Marlowe wasn’t the only one who missed you,” Remy said casually.
    “You just missed the free booze,” Steven said with a knowing nod.
    “Am I that transparent?” Remy asked.
    “I was blind but now I see,” he said, throwing Remy’s quote back at him. Steven was smiling and finishing his latest cigarette when . . .
    “Ah!” he said, turning in his chair toward his friend.
    “‘Ah’?” Remy asked. “‘Ah’ what?”
    “Malatesta,” Steven said, snapping his fingers. “The guy from the Vatican . . . What was that all about?”
    “Guy from the Vatican?” Remy asked. “What guy from the Vatican?”
    A sick feeling swirled with the alcohol that had pooled in his belly.
    “His name was Malatesta,” Steven explained. “He was waiting for me outside my apartment right after the business in Back Bay.”
    “What did he want?” Remy asked cautiously.
    Steven shrugged. “He wanted to know what I could tell him about you.”
    “And you told him . . .”
    “Everything,” Steven said, his face suddenly very serious.
    Remy wasn’t quite sure how to react when his friend caved.
    “I’m just fucking with you,” the detective said. “I told him that I knew you were a Boston PI, and that we’d crossed paths a few times in our chosen professions, but that was about it.”
    “Did he ask you anything else?”
    Steven shook his head. “He verified your office address, thanked me, and left. I figured he was on his way over to talk to you.”
    “No, never saw him,” Remy said, suddenly slightly concerned, and very curious.
    “I wonder what it’s all about,” Steven pondered.
    “I haven’t a clue,” Remy answered.
    “The Pope doesn’t know that you’re . . .” Steven made flapping movements with his hands.
    It was a tricky question, and one that Remy wasn’t sure he wanted to answer in detail at the moment, so he decided to keep it simple. “No. No, he doesn’t.”
    But there had been other popes in his lifetime upon this planet, and one in particular a very long time ago.
    On the Outskirts of London Town
1349, During the Time of the Great Pestilence
    The angel Remiel, wearing the guise of a man, sat upon the edge of the child’s cot, holding her hand.
    The plague was about to claim her life, as it had her father, mother, older brother, and sister.
    And he did not wish her to pass from life alone.
    The child was burning with fever; the fingernails on the tiny hand that he held were black with gangrene. She thrashed on the straw-filled mattress, and he leaned in close to whisper words of comfort and ease her into the arms of death.
    “Fight it no