In the House of the Wicked rc-5

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

  “I love it when you’re coy.” Francis headed off down another aisle. “Just as long as she keeps you from moping… I hate it when you mope. Follow me. The bullets for the twins are over here.”

  They found Angus pushing a battered shopping cart filled with boxes of books and ancient-looking scrolls toward them.

  “A shopping cart?” Remy looked at Francis.

  “Anything to make your experience at Weapons Mart a pleasant one.”

  “We just about done here?”

  Angus looked into his cart and nodded. “Yeah, I’d say so. Maybe a few more this and thats, but I think we’re good.”

  “Can you open a passage to my house?” Remy asked Francis. “There’s something I need to check before we get going.”

  “I think I could do that,” Francis said, putting the gym bag down and rubbing his hands together. “While you’re making your booty call, Angus and I’ll check out Stearns’ place.”

  Remy made a face, staring at Francis as if he didn’t know him.

  “Did you just say booty call?” he asked incredulously.

  “I did,” the former Guardian answered, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath before starting to conjure the passage that Remy would use to get to his car. “It was the word of the day on my calendar,” he said, as the air before them grew incredibly thin. He reached out to tear through it, revealing another place on the other side.

  “And I swore I’d use it in a sentence.”

  The little black bugs tasted like peanuts-peanuts boiled in bat piss and then sprinkled with dried shit, but, yeah, he could taste peanuts somewhere in the rancid mix.

  Squire took a handful of the squirming insects and dropped them in the pan of boiling black oil. He’d never get used to the screams the little fuckers let out when they went into the hot drink. This brought a smile to the hobgoblin’s face as he squatted before the tiny fire in the shelter he’d made from the skin and bones of one of the shadow region’s larger predators.

  There’s no place like home, he thought, stirring the boiling bugs. The little beasties had already started to break down, releasing their fine, stinking aroma.

  He couldn’t stop thinking of another home…not his home, but one that felt like the home he’d lost. All he’d seen was the motel room, but Squire got a sense of the world he’d passed into almost immediately. It wasn’t like the one he’d left in ruin, but then again, it was.

  Cable television, pork rinds, Internet porn, dollar stores, Doritos; he bet they were all there. He could feel it in the pit of his protruding belly. So much like the one he’d had to abandon.

  He poured his steaming bug stew into the open end of a hollowed-out shell and carefully began to eat.

  He couldn’t stop thinking about that other world, but he had to. There was no sense in getting attached to another, only to have it yanked away like the first. Squire wasn’t sure he could survive another loss like that.

  He sipped at the edge of the shell bowl, sucking pieces of beetles into his mouth. He chewed them quickly, searching for that peanut taste before the other, less appetizing ones, kicked in.

  Nope, this was his home now. And it was just the way he liked it: dark, cold and bleak. Nothing to get attached to.

  Through the membranous cover of the shelter he’d erected, Squire thought he saw a flash of something…something so bright that it cut through the pervasive shadow like an ax blade through muscle. He sat, sipping his meal, eyes locked to where he thought he’d seen it, waiting in case it happened again.

  And it did.

  The sudden explosion of light was bright, and it left dancing snowflakes of color on his eyes, now used to the total darkness of the world of shadow.

  Downing the remainder of his bug stew, he placed the empty bowl on the ground at his feet and rose to check out what was happening outside.

  Squire pulled aside the flap of skin and stepped out into the harsh environment. His goblin eyes scanned the shadows.

  “Big fucking surprise,” he grumbled as he caught sight of the mansion that had been nothing but trouble since it had entered his world.

  The explosion of light came again, and Squire witnessed firsthand the aftereffects. The air around the mansion pulsated like a long black curtain billowing in the wind. It was as if the very substance of the shadow realm was being tested, reminding him of the time just before the mansion had first appeared.

  “That ain’t good,” Squire muttered. He had a bad feeling about what he was seeing, and as he listened to the wails and moans of the various life-forms of this dark, alternate reality, he knew they could sense it, too. Squire always knew that the residents of the mansion were troublemakers, but now he suspected they were something worse than that.

  Another flash erupted from the front of the building and radiated out from all of the windows. A rapidly expanding halo of fluctuating darkness around the home again began to show signs of duress.

  Squire had a sudden, sinking feeling in his awesome gut that the shadow realm was being threatened, that whatever was going on inside that house was doing something to the fabric of this world’s shadowy existence.

  Something that it might not be able to recover from. And then where would that leave Squire?

  “Up shit’s creek without a paddle.” The hobgoblin answered his own question, knowing at that very instant what he had to do.

  Squire turned and went back into his shelter. He was going to need a few things. From the corner he hefted the old leather golf bag into a standing position and reviewed its contents. There were a few swords, a spear, and his personal favorite: a battle-ax. He had made many of those over the years, but these were the last of them. His babies, tools of his violent trade that he had not been able to part with.

  Squire figured that this would be more than enough to deal with what he would find inside the mansion. Slinging the bag over his shoulder, he headed out across the sprawling expanse of shadow.

  He’d been wanting to have a little chat with his new neighbors. Now seemed as good a time as any.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The passage that Francis had summoned brought Remy to the small backyard of his Beacon Hill brownstone, giving him enough time to zip into his house for a change of clothes. He doubted it would be wise to show up at his girlfriend’s place covered in blood.

  He’d already called Linda and found out she and Marlowe had returned to her apartment that morning to do some laundry. Remy had sensed a bit of tension in their conversation, and he’d guessed that it had something to do with the mysterious stranger she had met in the Common. When pressed, she had said that the guy had been kind of weird, but when she mentioned something about the Watchers going to do something terrible and that it was all because of him, Remy felt his blood go ice-cold.

  In his calmest voice, he’d told her that he would be there in a few minutes and ended the call. A familiar dread gripped him. It was that same horrible feeling he’d experienced when he’d realized that Ashley had been taken because of what he was.

  Now Linda had been touched, as well.

  Remy made amazing time from the Hill to Brighton, taking the first parking space he could find and sprinting to her building. She buzzed him in, and he took the steps two at a time, banging on her door perhaps a little too eagerly, hearing Marlowe’s barking response on the other side.

  Linda opened the door, an ecstatic Marlowe by her side.

  “Hey,” she said with a stunning smile, coming into his arms for a hug and kissing him on the neck before planting a noisy one on his lips.

  She pulled away, arms still around his neck, and looked at his face.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Is it Ashley? Is she all right?”

  “I don’t really know,” he answered in all honesty. Linda let him into the apartment, closing the door behind him.

  “Still no luck?”

  “Some nibbles,” he said. He would have loved to explain more but was unable. Marlowe was trying to get his attenti
on, jumping up to lick at his face, flipping his hands to be petted. He could see the dog was eager to communicate with him as he always had, but Remy found that he was now deaf and dumb to his best friend’s language.

  He looked deeply into Marlowe’s eyes, attempting to reach him on an emotional level, but all he could see was panic in the Labrador’s gaze.

  “What are you going to do?” Linda asked, as they sat side by side on the sofa.

  “I haven’t a choice, really,” he told her. “I’m going to keep flipping over rocks until I find something.”

  He didn’t want to alarm her any more than he already had, so he tried to be casual with his next question. “So, somebody approached you in the Common? I wonder who it could have been.”

  “I have no idea, but Marlowe certainly didn’t care for him,” Linda said.

  Remy was frustrated that he couldn’t talk with Marlowe, but the fact that his friend didn’t care for the mystery man was very telling.

  “He gave me a piece of paper with a phone number on it and said what I told you on the phone.” She stood up. “That he needed to speak with you…that it was an emergency and…”

  “That the Watchers were going to do something terrible,” Remy finished.

  Linda nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “For something that you did. What the hell does that mean?”

  He shrugged, trying not to show any emotion, pretending to be as perplexed as she. “Do you have that piece of paper?”

  “Sure,” she said as she headed for her bedroom. “It was in the pocket of my jeans. I took it out before I put them in the wash.”

  Marlowe was sitting at Remy’s feet, staring up at him with great intensity in his dark brown eyes.

  “I know that you can sense something is wrong with me,” Remy said softly, taking the dog’s blocky head in his hands. “And you’re right. Something has happened to the angelic part of me… Something has made it so that I can’t talk to you… I can’t understand you.”

  Marlowe barked and then began to whine, shifting himself closer in a panic. Remy could only guess that his basic message was getting through to the Labrador.

  He was still holding the dog’s heavy face in his hands, and Marlowe leaned his snout over to lovingly kiss his wrist.

  “We’re going to be okay,” Remy tried to reassure him. “I’m going to get better. All right? We’ll be able to talk to each other again very soon-I promise.”

  There was a twinge in his heart then, a feeling that told him that maybe he shouldn’t have made such a promise to the dog. He had no idea if what he was experiencing was only temporary.

  The dog jumped up, licking his face with his thick pink tongue.

  “You’re a good boy,” Remy told Marlowe, hugging the dog to him. “We’ll be chatting up a storm again in no time.”

  Linda returned from her bedroom, reading the piece of scrap paper, before handing it to Remy. He read, with zero recognition, the phone number that had been scrawled there.

  “He said it wasn’t my place to understand,” Linda said, as Remy read the number again. “But you would. Do you?”

  Remy shook his head slowly, not wanting to lie but having no choice. He and the Watchers-the Grigori-had a long, sometimes violent history, and they couldn’t have picked a worse time to start something new with him. He got up, slipping the paper into the pocket of his slacks.

  “Aren’t you going to call?” she asked curiously.

  “Not from here,” he answered. “I have to get back out there, follow up on a few things about Ashley.”

  Linda nodded, but he could see that she was disappointed. She was better off in the dark. He just couldn’t have anyone else he cared for being dragged into the unusual world he frequently lived in.

  “I’ll give you a call the next free minute I get,” he told her, leaning in for a kiss. “You and Marlowe still getting along?”

  She pulled him close for another peck on the lips.

  “He’s a bed hog, but we’re doing all right,” she said, eyes shifting to the animal who sat before them, tail wagging.

  “Talk soon,” he told her, eyes then dropping to Marlowe. He hoped that the statement was true on many levels.

  “Hey, Remy,” she called out just before he shut the door.

  He stuck his head back in.

  “You be careful, all right?”

  “Only because you asked,” he told her with a smile that he tried to make reassuring before closing the door and heading on his way.

  Deacon felt as though he could change the world. And wasn’t that what he had always wanted?

  As a child he had feared the dark-not so much the nighttime environment, but what he feared was lurking there, just beyond his vision.

  It was the fear that had fueled his desire to pursue the art of sorcery-that and some gentle urging from a Romanian housekeeper who had looked after him. He had shared his secret with her, how he feared the darkness, and she had shared with him the knowledge that his fears were justified, that there were things out there waiting for the opportunity to claim a life, a soul, a world.

  She had shown him real magick, and his world had been changed forever. In the mystical arts he had found a way to beat back the darkness, to protect himself and his loved ones from the sinister forces that lurked in the shadows. He became voracious, using his family’s wealth to pursue his hunger for the arcane, but also using that newly found power to increase his fortune exponentially.

  The more he learned, the more knowledge he acquired, the safer he could make the world. When he had first met the cabal, he believed that he had found like-minded individuals, that they all shared responsibility for protecting the world from encroaching supernatural threats-from the things in the dark.

  But he had been wrong, and the lesson had been a painful one.

  What he had learned as a result of his ill-placed trust was now the distant past to him, the power that coursed through him directing him only toward the future.

  Spells and incantations that had been fading from his memory as the years raced past during his banishment here in the shadow realm were now ever present at the forefront of his thoughts.

  The divine power of the Seraphim had changed him, making him so much better than he had ever hoped to be. Now he had the power not only to continue his prolonged existence, but to at last return to the world of his birth, where those who had betrayed him would pay the cost for their treachery.

  Konrad.

  Deacon paused in the hallway of his home, listening. Not hearing it again, he continued on his way, preparing himself and his home for the journey they were about to undertake.

  Konrad.

  He was sure that he’d heard it now.

  “Who’s there?” he called out. “Scrimshaw, is that you?”

  Konrad, it’s me, said the voice. And now that he was listening, it seemed so very familiar.

  He thought that it might be coming from farther down the hall, and proceeded forward until he reached the dining room, doors still hanging from their hinges.

  In here, said the voice.

  “Who is it?” Deacon asked, stepping fearlessly inside. For what would dare challenge him now?

  The dining room had yet to be cleared. It looked as though a war had been fought there, and in a way it had.

  “Hello?” Deacon called out, but found nobody inside.

  Deacon, said the voice, and suddenly he knew from where it had come.

  “Veronica?” he asked, moving farther into the room. “Is that you?”

  Who else would it be? she answered, her voice raspy and dry. You left me…you left me in here alone.

  He found her withered body lying on the floor under broken pieces of the dining room set.

  “I’m so sorry, my dear,” Deacon apologized, gently picking her up. “Things have become a little crazy.” He found an unbroken chair at the back of the room and set his wife down on it. Stepping back, he allowed the divine fire that pulsed through him to light up his new
body.

  “Things have changed,” he told her as he spread his arms to show off his magnificence.

  Have they? she questioned, her skeletal form slumped to one side in her seat.

  “Look at me,” he commanded. “Can’t you see how much has changed…how much I’ve changed?”

  I see the same man that I courted and married, she said. A man striving to be better for a world that barely realized he existed.

  Deacon was stunned by his wife’s hurtful words. Even after all this time, her opinion of him had still not changed.

  “But now I can…”

  You can what? she asked huskily. Show how powerful you are, only to have one more devious than you steal it all away?

  “That was then,” he muttered. “I would never allow Stearns to…”

  Stearns will smell your new might like a shark smells blood in the water, Veronica uttered harshly. And then he will come and he will take it from you.

  The power of the angelic now dwelling inside him surged with his rage, wings of fire unfurling at his back.

  “Stearns will do no such thing,” Deacon roared, body humming with the power to level cities in the name of God.

  I wonder what he will do with all that power, she pondered.

  “He will not have it!” Deacon raged.

  Perhaps after taking it from you, he will seek out others of a divine nature and take away their power, as well.

  “I won’t let him!”

  Maybe when all the power of Heaven on Earth courses through his veins, he will pay a visit to God.

  “He will not have it,” Konrad Deacon repeated, tendrils of living fire lashing out, setting the room ablaze…setting the corpse of his wife afire.

  “That power will be mine,” he told the woman he’d loved, whose dry flesh was burning away to reveal a yellowed skeleton beneath. “Algernon Stearns and all the members of the cabal will pay for their crimes…

  “And then I will make my way to God.”

  And even though Veronica’s skeleton had become blackened with the intensity of his fire, burning so hotly that the bone was gradually turning to ash, Deacon could still hear her inside his head.