- A STEELE WALK THROUGH FIRE
Date: Thursday, November 02, 2000
- carkeehn@aol.com <carkeehn@aol.com>
COPYRIGHT: NOVEMBER 2000
THIS STORY IS WRITTEN FOR PLEASURE AND IS NOT INTENDED TO INFRINGE
ON ANY PREEXISTING COPYRIGHTS THAT MAY BE VIOLATED.
TITLE: A Steele Walk Through Fire
AUTHOR: Carla (carkeehn@aol.com)
ARCHIVE: Yes
COMMENTS/NOTES: Feedback is appreciated.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Many thanks to PandoraBlue33@aol.com
for the great title - it really was inspirational!
* * * *
Tick . . . Tick . . . Tick . . .Tick . . .Tick . . .
It was the steady, mechanical sound of the mantle clock which
penetrated the fog that shrouded his mind and brought the prone
figure to consciousness.
Remington Steele slowly opened his eyes and glanced around the
room, taking a moment to adjust to the darkness of his surroundings.
Was it day . . . or night? From his vantage point on the other
side of the room, Steele's attention was drawn to the thick,
black draperies that stood like sentinels on duty, keeping even
the smallest ray of light from illuminating the gloom.
The dark-haired man shifted uncomfortably as his senses returned.
Pain gnawed at his body, pricking at him like a red hot poker.
Whatever he was laying on wasn't helping either. The surface
beneath him was rough and scratched at his already battered body.
Steele's eyes traveled down. And that's when he saw it . . .
The blood . . .
On the front of his tattered shirt . . . his hands . . . on the
surface beneath him . . .everywhere . . .
Panic set in immediately. Steele swung his legs to the floor
unsteadily. A wave of dizziness rocked him and he sat for a moment,
head in his hands.
**I must be having a nightmare . . .** he thought while he waited
for the dizziness to pass. Steele took a deep breath. **Pull
yourself together . . .** he berated himself. **You're not some
ordinary bloke, you're the famous detective, Remington Steele
. . .**
He slowly raised his head and looked again his condition. At
that moment, he thought he looked more like something that crawled
out of a sewer than a famous detective. His silk shirt was torn
beyond mending, his tweed trousers mudstained. There was a smell
too, rancid and vile, that made his already queasy stomach lurch
all the more.
And the blood . . . was still there . . .
Steele's hands visibly shook as he stared at the red blotches
on his hands. A frightening image suddenly appeared in his mind.
The blood . . . It was Laura's blood . . .
"No . . ." he said, his voice raspy. A nightmarish
image appeared in his mind, the picture of his associate, Laura
Holt, cowering on her knees in front of him. Her face was a frozen
mask of terror as she cried and pleaded with him not to hurt
her.
Disembodied voices whispered fervently beside him, their voices
growing louder and louder until he could hardly think over the
din.
"Laura Holt is dead . . . You killed her . . . YOU killed
her . . ."
"Nooo - -" Steele moaned in agony.
There were many times during their partnership when Laura's devotion
to whatever case they were working on drove him to distraction.
When her reluctance to commit to a relationship frustrated him.
She put off his advances more times than he could remember. But
not matter how hard Laura tried to discourage him, her actions
had only made him want her more.
It wasn't that long ago that he would have considered just taking
what he wanted from her, regardless of the woman's feelings.
But he was a different man now. Steele knew that he owed everything
that he was to Laura. Through her, he'd been given an opportunity
to put the past behind him forever.
The voices continued to taunt him. "Killed her . . . killed
her . . . killed her . . ."
"NO! I - I couldn't ever hurt her!" He tried to convince
himself by saying the words aloud but the image of the frightened
Laura continued to haunt him.
Hazy scenes of the past 24 hours railed at him, hovering close
at hand, yet remaining out of his grasp. My mind is all mixed
up, like a bloody jigsaw puzzle . . . he thought to himself.
The voices suddenly stopped. Steele tried to suppress a shudder
as he struggled to gather his thoughts.
He remembered leaving for Laura's loft apartment to pick her
up for their dinner date. He had reserved a quiet table at the
best restaurant in town for the two of them, complete with chilled
champagne and softly playing violinists. Steele had resolved
that, for once, he was not going to let work get in the way of
their relationship.
His blue eyes flickered around the room as he studied the decrepit
surroundings around him. Large, hulking images of thread-bare
furnishings loomed before him, like run down soldiers on their
last legs. Steele shivered. Frigid air filled the room as it
rushed in through the disused fireplace.
The place was seedy and broken down. It reminded Steele of a
haunted house, the kind you'd find at an amusement park. Hardly
what he had in mind for a romantic evening with Laura.
Ding . . . Ding . . . Ding . . .Ding . . . Ding . . .
Steele jumped with a start as the mantle clock came to life again.
He counted the chimes silently, ten . . . eleven . . . twelve
. . . twelve o'clock . . .
He put a tentative foot down and the wooden floor groaned in
protest at the added weight. The tortured man used the last of
his strength to push himself up. Shakily, he moved over to the
window, falling against the wall for support and flicked a corner
of the draperies aside. The windows were shuttered closed but,
as far as he could tell, there was no light outside.
Twelve o'clock . . . midnight . . .the time when the wandering
souls of the night were restless . . .
"Dracula . . ." he suddenly began, talking faster.
"Universal pictures, 1933, Bela Lugosi . . . A man wakes
up in castle in Transylvania and finds himself trapped in a nightmare
. . ." he murmured. Thinking about his fondness for old
movies caused him to relax slightly.
"Just a bad dream . . ." he continued more confidently,
hoping that the macabre picture around him would disappear.
But his efforts to dispel the immaterial world around him were
fruitless. After a few moments, Steele sighed heavily. His shoulder's
slumped forward in defeat.
Even if he could wish himself to more pleasant surroundings,
there was still the blood on his hands - -
Just then, a sound broke the eerie silence. Steele stiffened,
his senses suddenly alert.
After a long moment, he heard the sound again . . .
It started out softly at first, then grew louder and louder,
until the faint sobbing turned into a mournful wailing.
"Crying?" Steele whispered in confusion. "Someone's
crying . . ." He took a shaky breath. Given a choice, he
preferred the crying to the disembodied voices that were plaguing
him earlier.
It suddenly occurred to Steele that if he wasn't having a nightmare
that maybe, just maybe, he'd crossed the fragile line which separated
sanity from madness. Perhaps years of using multiple identities
and manufacturing lies to make those identities seem real had
finally caused him to snap. He'd seen it happen before, of course,
to men that didn't have the sharpened survival instincts that
Steele had.
But if that were true, he wondered, why did it happen now, so
long after he'd put the past behind him and turned over a new
leaf?
He never had a chance to find out if there was an answer to the
question. The crying began anew.
The wrenching sobbing tore at him. "Laura . . .?"
Steele shot to his feet. The solution had been staring at him
right from the start but he'd been too absorbed in his physical
condition to see it. If he was trapped here, then Laura must
be too! The only way to end his torment was to find Laura. Find
her so they could both escape from the netherworld that had become
their prison.
"Laura!" Steele shouted. "Laura, where are you,
can you hear me?"
Steele tried to ignore the hammering of his heart as he listened.
"Laura, answer me!" He shouted again with a note of
desperation in his voice.
The crying stopped. The only answer to his pleas was the sound
of hissing air as it escaped from the antiquated pipes that ran
around the base of the walls.
"Have to find her . . ." Steele murmured. He fought
back another wave of nausea and staggered out of the room into
a darkened hallway.
A thin sliver of moonlight filtered in through the transom above
the front door, casting eerie shadows on the walls around him.
Steele paused at the door and gave the knob a firm grasp. "Locked
. . ." he murmured. "Windows shuttered closed, doors
that don't open . . ."
Escape, if that was possible, was going to be difficult.
He stood at head of the long corridor with great trepidation.
Should he press on and hope that he could somehow find Laura
and the two could escape? Fear of the unknown began to eat away
at his confidence. What if Laura wasn't there - what if she wasn't
the one crying? Breaking down the front door and escaping seemed
preferable to finding out who - - or what - - was waiting for
him at the end of that hallway.
At that moment, a faint voice called out to him, making the decision
for him.
"Mr . . . Steele?" He heard the speaker draw a painfilled
breath before continuing. "Mr. Steeeeeeele . . ."
Despite the distortion in the voice, he knew it was Laura. With
renewed purpose, he hurried towards the direction that he thought
the voice was coming from.
"Hurry," the voice implored. "Hurry, it's almost
too late . . ."
Steele considered himself a man of the world, a man who had witnessed
both the good and the bad inside of all men. But he realized,
as he abruptly stopped in the doorway of the room at the end
of the hall, that nothing could have prepared him for the sight
that was there to greet him.
- The specter was there, waiting for
him, hunched over in an overstuffed chair, facing away from the
door. The dim light from a nearby tiffany lamp cast a distorted
image of the slumped figure on a nearby wall.
He stood there a moment, afraid to speak, part of him of wanting
to know who was there in that room, part of him dreading knowing.
Then the figure began turned its face towards him, moving pitifully
slow.
Steele felt every inch of the agony that must have been coursing
through the battered body.
In the auric glow of the lamp, Steele sucked in a sharp breath
as he saw the stringy brown hair matted to the face. It was woman,
of that he was certain, her clothes torn to shreds, the surface
of her body covered in bruises.
The woman raised her face up to the light. One side was swollen
beyond belief, but still she managed to speak to him.
"Come back . . to admire your handiwork, Mr. Steele?"
She lisped painfully.
"Dear God . . ." he said, reeling in shock. The voice
was Laura's but the misshapen creature before him couldn't be
her . . . it couldn't be . . .
She seemed to enjoy the reaction that her condition elicited
from him. "If not admire," she continued, "perhaps
you've come back for more." She slumped back in the chair.
"Go on, take what you want," she said, tearing away
the last remnants of the shredded fabric that covered her breasts,
"I won't fight you this time - - I can't - -"
"No," Steele said, shaking his head to clear it. "Laura,
no, let me help you!" he cried, reaching out to her. He
wanted to hold her, to comfort her, but was afraid of the torments
that his actions would cause her.
"Too late for that . . ." she whispered, as life slowly
slipped away. "I used . . . to think that making love with
you . . . would be . . . beautiful . . ." She swallowed
hard. "You're a monster . . . an animal . . ." Her
breath was coming in painful gasps.
"No, Laura, no!" Steele rushed towards Holt and caught
her broken body before it could slip to the floor.
He had descended into the depths of either Madness . . . or Hell
. . . Each was a fitting description of his agony.
Steele crushed the limp form to his. "I swear, I didn't
do it . . . I couldn't . . . I love you, Laura! Laura, I love
you - -"
If only he'd said the words to her before. He felt Holt's body
shudder and realized that it was too late. Perhaps she'd heard
him, perhaps not. He'd never know.
"Oh, Laura . . .. I should have told you before how much
. . . I love you - -"
Finally, mercifully, the darkness overtook Steele. From far away,
he heard new voices softly speaking, their words distorted.
"Will he be all right, Doctor . . ." From beside the
hospital bed, Laura Holt looked away for a moment from the patient
and glanced up at the white haired doctor through tired eyes.
"Yes, I believe so, Miss Holt. Once the drug works through
your friend's system, the healing should proceed fairly quickly."
The relief evident on her face, Holt nodded. She felt Steele's
grip on her hand tighten suddenly and turned her attention back
to the bed, never noticing that the Doctor left the room.
"Never hurt you, Laura . . ." Steele whispered in his
delirium.
Holt smoothed the dark hair back from Steele's feverish brow.
She'd spent the past few days in turmoil, her emotions raging,
at Steele's sudden disappearance. At first she'd wanted to believe
that he'd just decided to walk out of her life, without a word.
But something inside of Holt refused to let her rest until she
was certain. And so, the hunt began, until finally, Steele had
been found, drugged and sick, in an abandoned warehouse near
the pier.
The trial for the Maddox case was scheduled for next week. Vaughn
Maddox was a cunning madman. Arranging for Steele's abduction
and drugging him to such a state that his sanity was in question,
Steele's credentials as a witness were certain to be torn apart,
guaranteeing that Maddox would receive a mistrial. An ingenious
plan, that had almost worked.
"Rest easy now, Mr. Steele, everything is fine . . ."
Holt whispered, her lips lightly resting on his.
"Laura? I love you . . . never hurt you . . ."
"Sssh, I know," Holt continued. Deep down, Laura was
pleased at whatever demons the drug had produced in Steele's
mind. His words opened up new possibilities in their relationship.
And there would be time enough later to discuss that, after Steele
had recovered from his ordeal.
It was a discussion that Laura looked forward to with great anticipation
. . .
The End
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