In the House of the Wicked rc-5

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

  “Is power,” Stearns finished.

  He glanced around at the other four members of the cabal. They were all there: Daphene Molaar, Robert Desplat, Eugene Montecello, and Angus Heath-some of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful magick users. And they all appeared nervous, their eyes darting about the room.

  They stood in a circle in a subterranean room beneath Deacon’s estate, all naked except for the same metal vest that Stearns and Deacon wore. Cables trailed across the cold stone floor, connecting the vests to a series of complex machines that, in turn, were attached to an impressively large device that had been erected in the room’s center. Stearns understood that the device was a kind of antenna-an antenna that would attract vast amounts of life energies and distribute the raw power among those who wore the vests. If Deacon was right, his machine would transform the cabal forever.

  Konrad Deacon, the hero of the day.

  Stearns knew what the man was up to. Deacon coveted his position as leader of the cabal, and now the upstart believed that he had what was needed to steal away Stearns’ authority.

  Well, Stearns wasn’t about to let it go so easily.

  He thought about the night that had led to this. He had been tempted to stay in Spain and skip Deacon’s little party, but curiosity had made him change his mind. Even still, he had arrived late to Deacon’s mansion, and was amused by the relief he saw on his host’s face. In fact, the whole cabal shared the expression, for an affair of sorcerers could never convene without the presence of Algernon Stearns.

  It had been some time since they had last gathered, and Stearns was taken aback by how old and frail they all appeared. He wasn’t alone, after all; the use of magick was taking its toll on all of them.

  Then, as if on cue, Konrad Deacon had tapped the side of his crystal champagne flute with his knife, and all eyes were on him. He began his speech, and Stearns quickly grew impatient as Deacon welcomed them to his home, then launched into a dissertation on their responsibility to a world on the brink. The war in the Pacific lingered on and the instability in the world meant that nobody noticed the rise in supernatural activity, except for those in tune with the ways of the weird.

  These were all things that Stearns knew well, and he was considering walking out when the youngest member of the cabal made his daring pronouncement. He could give them back their vitality.

  Stearns was distracted from the memory of what had brought him back to the Deacon mansion for a party of a different sort. He watched as Deacon checked his machines once more. This was to be their rebirth-their bodies healed, transformed, and filled with the power to guide the world through troubled times.

  At first Deacon’s proposal had sounded like lunacy. Of course it had been a theory among the brotherhood of magick users that life energies could be used to restore the human form. Blood sacrifice had always been the method of choice within the cabal, but no one had ever been able to make the process work correctly, for the collected energies were expended far too quickly. They were having less and less effect, and the years of magickal abuse were quickly catching up to all of them.

  But if what they were up to tonight worked…

  “How much longer must we endure this discomfort?” Angus Heath grumbled. He shifted his great weight, threatening to disconnect himself from the machines.

  “Afraid you might miss a meal, Angus?” Stearns taunted.

  “The machine cannot be activated until the precise moment,” Deacon explained, hurriedly approaching the large man to make sure that his connections were still intact.

  “Patience, Angus,” Stearns said. “I hear it’s a virtue.”

  “Something that I never knew you to have, Algernon,” Daphene intoned, the crooked smile on her aged face hinting at their dalliances throughout the years.

  Stearns ignored her and returned to thoughts of Deacon’s plan. Over dinner that night, he had explained his advancements in the collection of life energies. The moment of death was when those energies were most powerful, he theorized, but multiple deaths were required if the energy was to have any prolonged effect.

  “So, what are we to do-murder entire cities in order to collect the proper amount of energy?” the oil baron Eugene Montecello had asked.

  Deacon’s answer had been startling and quite exciting.

  “We don’t have to murder anybody,” he had said. “We just have to be in the right place when somebody else carries it out.”

  Deacon returned to his space in the circle and glanced up at the clock hanging on the stone wall. “Our time is near,” he stated. “Prepare yourselves.”

  Evidently, this young upstart’s connections within the United States government ran deep, and those connections had given Deacon the answer to his-and the cabal’s-prayers. The military, growing weary of the seemingly never-ending war with the Land of the Rising Sun, had created a weapon, a bomb so terrible that it was guaranteed to bring Japan to its knees. They planned to drop it on a Japanese city, and Deacon had found a way to harness the energies of the many who would die as a result.

  “Ready in five…” Deacon began the countdown, eyes riveted to the clock.

  Stearns watched as well, as the second hand made its inexorable pass around the clock’s face.

  “Four…”

  He again wondered about this bomb.

  “Three…”

  Deacon said that they had nicknamed it Little Boy.

  “Two…”

  Certainly not a name that struck fear in the hearts of men.

  “One.”

  How powerful can it really be? Stearns wondered as the machine in the center of the room came suddenly to life with the most cacophonous of sounds.

  And the life energies of those instantly slain when the atomic bomb detonated over the Japanese city of Hiroshima were collected.

  And delivered unto them.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Remy was surrounded by sleep.

  He sat on the red couch in Linda’s apartment, his girlfriend curled up on one side of him and Marlowe, lying flat on his side as if he’d taken a bullet, snoring at his feet.

  The Housewives was over by the time Remy had arrived, but Linda had saved him some wine and they’d cuddled until sleep had claimed her. Shortly afterward, Marlowe had succumbed, as well, leaving Remy alone with the television.

  But mostly it had left him alone with his thoughts, and there was much to think about this night.

  Like what he had been doing traveling to New Hampshire to confront the murderer of Charlotte Marsh and her daughters. At the time it had felt like a completely rational thing to do, and that scared him.

  He wasn’t thinking like himself. And what about the next time? Would the angelic side of his nature persuade him that it was perfectly all right to mete out God’s justice on the wicked?

  It was only a matter of time before he started burning people who were double-parked with the flames of Heaven. That was what he had been afraid of, why it had taken him so long to allow his angelic essence to meld with his human persona. He would have to be careful in the coming days; obviously, there were still some bugs to be worked out in the unification of his two sides.

  And then there was Steven. Remy could fully understand his friend’s anger, but there was very little that he could do to make things right. The snake had been let out of the box, so to speak, and there was nothing Remy could do to put it back. Steven had gotten dangerously up close and personal with an aspect of the world not usually seen by humanity, and for that Remy was sorry, but that was really all he could be.

  It wasn’t as if he had some magical way to take away the memory of the experience. Besides, if that was the case, their whole friendship might as well be excised from Mulvehill’s mind. Remy remembered the night that Steven had lain dying at his feet, afraid of what awaited him. Wanting to offer him some peace, some certainty of what was on the other side, Remy had revealed his true face to the homicide detective.

  He’d never expected Mulvehill
to survive, but he had, and they had been close friends ever since.

  But now he had seen too much of Remy’s world and nothing could change that.

  Remy had no choice but to let things be as they were, to give Steven the space that he needed to process his experience. And maybe, with time, they could once again be friends.

  “I think that’s sad.” Linda’s sleepy voice spoke, as if commenting on Remy’s thoughts.

  “Excuse me?” he asked, startled, looking down at the top of Linda’s head as she snuggled up tightly beside him.

  “The little girl,” she said.

  “I have no idea what you’re…”

  “On the news,” Linda said groggily, and Remy looked at the television to see that the local news was on, and there was, in fact, a little girl on the screen.

  The child, no older than six or seven, lay in her bed surrounded by dolls and stuffed animals. People stood around her as reporters yelled out questions and pictures flashed.

  “What’s her story?” Remy asked.

  “Guess she’s been in a coma for a few years-some kind of accident. They never expected her to wake up.”

  Linda stretched, her arms reaching up over her head as she yawned.

  “And now she’s awake,” Remy said, still watching the TV. The cameras pulled in close to the child’s face as she peeked out from beneath her covers. There was something haunting about her eyes.

  “Awake and talking about all kinds of stuff.”

  “All kinds of stuff?”

  “Yeah, religious stuff. She says she has a message from God.”

  The station cut to a commercial break, leaving a bad taste in Remy’s mouth. He had little patience for supposed prophets proclaiming a direct line to Heaven.

  “What’s the message?” he asked, trying to hide his distaste.

  “No idea,” Linda said, sliding to the other side of the couch for her wineglass atop a side table. “She says He hasn’t told her yet, that it isn’t time or the world isn’t ready, or something like that.”

  Remy doubted very much that the child was responsible for the proclamation, guessing that an ambitious family member was likely to blame. He wondered how long it would be before they were selling vials of the little girl’s tears and displaying her features on special healing pillowcases or some such nonsense.

  “I find it very sad,” Linda was saying as she sipped the last of the wine from her glass. “A sick child being exploited like that.”

  The Seraphim stirred in agreement. Ever since the earth had been saved from the Apocalypse, more and more of these diviners, seers, and soothsayers had been crawling out of the woodwork with some vision of the future. The world was indeed in flux, but Remy seriously doubted that any of these people had the inside track on anything worth paying attention to.

  Linda set down her empty glass and yawned loudly. Marlowe sat up and yawned, as well, as if in solidarity.

  “Sleepy?” Remy asked her.

  “Yeah,” she answered with a nod. “You two want to stay over?”

  “Nah.” Remy stood. “I want to get to the office early tomorrow, and you’re a very bad influence on my work ethic.”

  “Your loss,” she said, shrugging. “But since I’m working both lunch and dinner shifts, we probably won’t see each other tomorrow.”

  Linda was a waitress at Piazza, a restaurant on the trendy Newbury Street. She also attended school, working toward her teaching degree. Sometimes it was a bit tough to see each other.

  “See what a bad influence you are? I’m not even out of your apartment, and already you’re working your wiles on me,” Remy said as he bent toward her.

  He kissed her noisily on the lips and she reached up, gently holding the back of his head, making him kiss her more.

  Bad influence or not.

  Remy didn’t mind in the least.

  The Catskill Mountains

  The Deacon Estate

  August 8, 1945

  Deacon had no idea if his mad plan would work.

  He had learned from a trusted, high-ranking source in the Pentagon where the first of the bombs was to be dropped, and had prepared to collect the energies that would be released when that bomb detonated.

  Using less-than-legal channels, he had managed to dispatch the most sophisticated golem he had ever created to the island of Japan, where it traveled to the target city to await the inevitable. This golem would be the receiver for the death energies, collecting the vast amounts of power and transmitting it back to the receiver in the Catskills and into the members of the cabal.

  At least, that was the plan. Whether or not it worked had yet to be determined.

  Hundreds of thousands of people had died when the atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima, and as their life energies were transferred to Deacon, he experienced the life of each and every one of them. A mad rush of images, feelings, and sensations poured into him, threatening to drown him in their intensity.

  He awakened with the screams of thousands upon his lips. He saw as they saw, their final memory of the fiery conflagration burned into his own.

  Quickly he touched his own flesh, needing to prove to himself that he had not been reduced to ash. His flesh was damp with sweat, but it also tingled with vitality.

  He sat up and held his hands out before him, flexing his fingers, feeling none of the aching pain that he’d been suffering. He felt his heart begin to beat faster, a pleasurable rush of blood to his head.

  Did it work?

  Deacon threw back the covers, exposing his nakedness. There was something different…the way he felt.

  I think it did.

  He swung his bare feet over the edge of the bed and touched the cold hardwood of the floor. Then he stood, experiencing a moment of stiffness as he lurched across the bedroom to his wife’s vanity. Deacon’s eyes widened as he caught his image in the large mirror that hung above it.

  It was as if the hands of time had been turned back and he was looking at a photograph of himself from when he was barely in his twenties.

  “It did work,” he whispered with wonder, bringing his fingers to his face to touch the healthy, taut flesh no longer ravaged by the passage of time and the use of corrosive magicks.

  He smiled a perfect, healthy smile and stepped back to admire his youthful body.

  “It worked!” he yelled, pointing at his magnificent reflection. It was then that he remembered the others…the cabal. If it had worked for him, then…

  He bolted toward the door, remembering his nudity only as his strong, healthy hands closed on the crystal knob. He went to his wardrobe and removed a silk dressing gown, marveling at the sensation of the material on his rejuvenated flesh.

  Then he dashed to the door and threw it open, tying the belt around his waist as he stepped out into the hall.

  “It worked!” he bellowed once again with a laugh as he proceeded down the darkened hallway toward the stairs.

  It was there that he discovered the first of his golems. It was one of his earlier, less-human-appearing designs, lying on the stairs on its stomach, as if it had fallen while ascending and was unable to rise.

  Still barefooted, Deacon started down the steps past the prone form, noticing the circular burn mark in the center of its back. His mind raced. He quickened his pace to the lobby, where more of his creations lay, limbs akimbo, their artificial lives stolen from them.

  Deacon immediately thought of his wife and son. “Veronica!” he cried, stepping over a fallen golem. “Teddy!”

  The large house was eerily still as he rushed through the many rooms, finding more of his inhuman servants struck down by some destructive magickal force.

  Were we attacked by the forces we plan to confront with our newly acquired life? he wondered as he passed through the kitchen and headed down another winding set of stairs toward his study.

  “Veronica!” he called out again, moving down the corridor to the heavy wooden door at its end.

  The door was ajar, something he n
ever would have allowed, but before he could consider it, he heard the cry of his son.

  “Teddy,” Deacon called out, pushing open the door and storming into the study.

  Where he froze, stunned by the sight before him.

  Teddy was struggling in the arms of Angus Heath, while the other members of the cabal pored through his belongings.

  “Ah, you’re awake,” a far-younger-appearing Stearns said from where he stood beside a file cabinet, one of its drawers wide open to expose all the secrets contained within.

  “What is the meaning of…,” Deacon began, but never finished.

  Stearns moved like quicksilver, his hand extended, a spell of violence on his lips. A bolt of magickal energy shot out from his fingertips, striking Deacon square in the chest, sending him across the length of room, where he smashed into a bookcase filled with scientific journals and fell to the floor.

  “Do you understand the meaning now?” Stearns asked, removing a handful of files from the cabinet drawer and sliding it closed. “Or would you like another example?”

  Deacon was flat on his belly, his entire body numb. As he fought to stand, he tilted his head to one side, catching sight of a body on the floor behind the great expanse of his desk. It was his wife, crumpled on her side, eyes wide in obvious death.

  “Veronica!” he cried out.

  He managed to get to his hands and knees, crawling toward her body.

  “I wouldn’t waste too much emotion on that one, Konrad,” Stearns said, coming to sit on the corner of the desk. “She was all too happy to show us your study.” He hefted the files he had removed from the cabinet, then tossed them on the desktop.

  Deacon reached his wife, gently pulling her limp body into his arms. “What…what have you done?”

  “Isn’t it obvious, man?” Stearns asked. “I struck her down.”

  The other members of the cabal laughed.

  “Daddy!” Teddy cried out. “They hurt Mommy!”

  “Evidently, she had second thoughts once we began our search,” Stearns said. “She tried to stop us.” He laughed. “But I wasn’t about to leave until I got what I came for.”