In the House of the Wicked

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

There were monsters in the darkness.

But as Remy dragged Ashley around Deacon’s property, he hoped they would be safe as long as they stayed close to the patches of light thrown from the house. There had been an all-too-familiar flash moments ago that had driven many of the larger beasts back into the depths of the shadows.

Remy was weak. He was amazed that he was actually moving, the need to get Ashley back to her family probably lending him strength, but he knew it wouldn’t last. He had remembered that Scrimshaw had driven the old car around to the back of the house and figured there’d be a garage of some sort back there. That was their objective now: get to the car and drive back across the Shadow Lands, hopefully finding some way out.

The mansion was still in turmoil, but at least the alarm had been silenced. Primitive golems rushed about, making repairs and clearing debris. The chaos helped shield Ashley and Remy’s movements as they crept around to the back of the house.

And there was the garage. Remy had been right.

They stopped behind the skeletal remains of a bush, backs pressed against the house, and Remy took a moment to check Ashley. The girl was breathing heavily, eyes red from so much more than crying. He could imagine what this was like for her, and that just strengthened his resolve to get her home.

He studied the scene before him. The old vintage car that had brought him to the estate was parked outside the multicar garage. Light from a spotlight over the open door of one of the bays illuminated the area in a green-tinged glow. Two golems stumbled about the vehicle, cleaning it with rags.

Remy turned, leaning in close to Ashley’s ear so that she could hear his whisper.

“We’re going to take that car,” he told her. “Your job is to get inside; that’s it. I’ll take care of everything else. Do you understand?”

He looked into her eyes, hoping to see some trace of the vibrant young woman he had watched grow up on Beacon Hill, but only a shadow of that person remained.

A shadow would have to do.

“Follow me,” he said, still holding tightly to her hand.

There was nothing to hide their approach, so Remy waited until the two golems turned their stone backs. He tugged on Ashley’s hand and started across the expanse of driveway, dragging her behind him.

The vehicle was a four-door limousine, and he aimed her toward the driver’s-side rear door.

“Get in,” he called out.

The golem that had been cleaning the windshield reacted at once, silently charging at him.

Remy met the attack, grabbing hold of the stone man’s face and using all the strength he had remaining to shove the creature away. It was like pushing aside a brick wall, but he managed nonetheless, and the golem tumbled backward to the ground.

He turned quickly as Ashley began to scream. The other golem was attempting to drag her from the car. Remy threw an arm around its throat, hauling the stone man away from her. The golem attempted to reach behind itself, stone fingers grabbing hold of Remy’s shirt, and with a burst of unnatural strength, pulled Remy over its shoulder, slamming him against the side of the car.

Remy dropped headfirst to the ground, vision clearing just in time to see the golem reaching for him, and the other that he had knocked to the ground advancing.

Scrambling to get to his feet, he tried with all that he had remaining inside to stir his angelic nature, but it seemed so very far away. The closest of the golems grabbed the front of his shirt, hauling him up from the ground. Remy watched as it pulled back its ill-defined arm of stone, clenching a fist with the sound of rock grating against rock. Remy realized that if he took this hit, it would likely rip his head off.

The creature threw its punch, and Remy reacted, angling his head downward, feeling the breeze of cold stone as it passed across his cheek. The golem was off-balance. Remy took a risk, placing his leg between and behind the golem’s pillarlike limbs. He then surged forward, putting all his weight behind a thrust that drove the stone man back, making him trip over Remy’s leg.

The golem went down on his back, but that still left the other to grab at him with both hands.

The tire iron connected with the other golem’s simple face, breaking away part of its primitive nose and part of its cheek. It actually appeared stunned, stumbling back a bit, hands going to its damaged face. Remy was a little stunned, as well, turning to see Ashley standing there, ready to swing the cross-shaped metal tool again.

They were far from out of trouble, but she had bought them some time.

“Get in,” Remy told her, and, still holding the tire iron, she jumped into the backseat as he climbed behind the steering wheel.

At least there was a little bit of luck to be had. The keys were still in the ignition, and Remy turned over the engine just as the golem began to lumber toward the car. He threw it in reverse with a grinding of gears and drove the car backward, away from the stone men. But still they came, arms outstretched.

Remy put the old car in drive, gunning the engine and driving right at the pair. They showed no signs of moving, and he plowed into them, scattering them like bowling pins as he continued across the yard, taking a sharp turn and driving around to the front of the house.

He kept his eyes on the road before him illuminated in the glow of one headlight. The closed metal gate loomed before him.

“Hang on,” Remy told Ashley, quickly glancing at her in the rearview mirror. She sat in the center of backseat, clutching the tire iron like a crucifix to her chest.

Remy stamped down hard on the gas. Holding tightly to the wheel, he gritted his teeth as the front of the car struck the center of the wrought-iron gate, tearing both sides from their worn hinges.

Driving into the total darkness, away from the estate, Remy chanced a look behind him in the rearview. He saw Scrimshaw standing just beyond the gate.

And the golem with the elaborate facial tattoos was blowing them a kiss good-bye.

Armaros of the angelic host Grigori continued to gaze out the window of the skyscraper overlooking an awakening Boston. But he did not see the city sprawling below him.

Instead he saw another place, another time, when their kind had been sent to the world of man to fulfill the most special of purposes. They were to observe the newly emerging human species, to guide them away from wrong, if sin should entice.

They were to be humanity’s watchers, there to prevent the Almighty’s favored young race from straying from the path of righteousness.

Armaros remembered how amused they had all been by their mission. These creatures had already defied the Lord of lords, and had been evicted from Paradise, yet still God loved them and wanted them to succeed.

But there was something about this species.

None of them really knew what had happened. Perhaps the Watchers had felt the same kind of love for them that the Creator had. But whatever it was that had caused it, the Watchers had found themselves enmeshed in the day-to-day lives of the young species, teaching them things that they were not meant to know.

And, in turn, the Grigori were taught the ways of humanity-of desire and the pleasures of the flesh. In a way, the Grigori had become human, and that, in turn, had taken them down a most dangerous path.

They had tutored the humans in the art of weapons making, of astrology and astronomy, of adornment and cosmetics.

And some they taught the ways of magick.

Armaros believed that was what had annoyed the Lord God most and was the reason for their punishment.

The Creator had stripped them of their wings and denied them entrance to the Kingdom of Heaven. They were banished to the earth, almost as if to say, “If you love them so much, you will live with them for all eternity.”

At first it wasn’t so bad, for humanity worshipped them, but then they began to feel the pangs of what they had lost.

If it wasn’t for their leader, they would have surely gone mad.

Armaros stepped back from the glass, overwhelmed by a wave of sheer emotion at the memory of his beloved Sariel. He gazed quickly at his brothers, afraid that they might have felt this flagrant example of emotion.

But they just continued to stare as they had done since the loss of their leader, since the one who was going to guide them back to Heaven was taken from them.

Murdered by the Seraphim Remiel.

Armaros always suspected that nothing good would ever come from their relationship with the angel whose ties to this earthly realm were so firm. Here was a being of Heaven on Earth by choice; not banished, not exiled for an offense against the Lord. Remiel was here by choice and could go back anytime.

He chose not to.

And those of the Watchers despised him for that.

It had been Sariel’s plan to win back the affections of Heaven by making amends for past wrongdoings. Correcting what they had done in hopes that Heaven…that the Lord God Almighty would notice them…accept their penitence, and open His loving arms to them once again.

But the earthly angel cared not for their methods, blocking their path to absolution with such vehemence that it resulted in the death of their leader, Armaros’ true love.

Love.

Something else he had learned from humanity and wished he could forget. Something else that continued to cause him immeasurable pain.

Perhaps this was just another way that God wished to punish them.

An image of Sariel in death flashed before the Watcher’s mind. He saw his love consumed by Heavenly fire, his flesh and bone rendered to ash by the wrath of the warrior angel.

Armaros fixed his stare on an intricately carved wooden box that rested on a tall stack of plasterboard. In the wooden box were the remains of their leader-his love-and, sometimes, if the mood was right, Armaros swore that he could hear him-his Sariel-reassuring him that everything was going to be all right.

Of course, Armaros believed himself going mad; the death of their leader sent all of the Grigori deeper into sadness and further into the embrace of decadence that only humanity could provide. They were lost in their grief, and every waking moment they strayed farther from the path that would return them to Heaven and God’s love.

Sariel’s voice eventually grew silent.

But then a stranger came.

Armaros recalled emerging from a drug-induced stupor to find a stranger among them. He had sat in the shadows, turning a ring on his finger, the wooden casket that held Sariel’s remains resting on his lap.

He told them he had come to save them, and he warned them that a war was imminent, a war between two powerful forces. Then the stranger, his features still hidden in shadow, had placed his pale hand flat upon the lid of the box that held Sariel’s remains and had promised that God would notice them once more.

Armaros recalled the hand resting upon the box, his eyes drawn to the signet ring adorned with a six-pointed star.

“But there will be a price to pay,” the stranger had said.

A price to pay in magick and in human life.

And Armaros had said, “So be it.”

The machinations were set in motion, and now, ever so slowly, they were nearing the end of plans that would free them from their torment and give them the means to soar again.

Armaros thought of Stearns and their last conversation.

Such a selfish little monkey, he thought.

If only he knew what was really going to happen.

The sounds of a struggle drifted out over the Shadow Lands, and the hobgoblin smiled.

Standing atop an outcropping of solidified darkness, the diminutive creature squinted through the gloom at the elaborate estate in the distance, now under siege by some of the more destructive beasts that called this deep section of the endless realms of black their home.

Squire chuckled with each new roar that filled the constant night, and the flashes of gunfire that attempted to drive back the attackers.

“Good luck with that,” the hobgoblin said with a laugh.

There had been lots of comings and goings from the estate of late. Squire tried to remember how long it had been since the estate had torn through the darkness to drop down uninvited into his solitude. He couldn’t remember, although he also couldn’t remember how long it had been since he had been driven from his adopted home world to take up residence in the land of shadows.

This place of perpetual night did things to the memory, made it hard to recall specifics. All Squire knew was that he’d been there for quite some time. And the invaders of his long-sought-after peace?

They’d been there too fucking long.

Which was why he’d instigated this latest wave of attacks, taunting the monsters of the shadow realm into laying siege to the mansion.

The monsters who called this place home could have the estate and everybody inside it, for all he cared. Squire just wanted to be left alone, without a hint of anything that he had been forced to leave behind.

Or the friends who he had lost.

He was squinting through the darkness again, savoring the sounds of battle, when there came a flash.

Squire was violently knocked from his perch atop a petrified piece of shadow as it was eaten away by the explosion of brilliance. He tumbled to the ground below, where he lay perfectly still for a moment.

“What the fuck was that?” he growled, rising on shaky legs. Strange blossoms of color, like a kaleidoscope, swirled before eyes now accustomed to total darkness. It took a little while, but his vision finally cleared, and he began walking across the darkness, drawn toward the estate.

He had no idea what that light had meant, but he knew that it wasn’t good. The goblin had been around power such as that and knew its potential for destruction in the wrong hands… Even in the right, it was a force to be reckoned with.

His thoughts began creeping toward the past, and he quickly pushed them away. They were gone, as was the world he’d called his home. This was his home now, the Shadow Lands, and he needed to find out what that light was all about.

His pointed ears picked up a distinct sound carried on the still air.

The goblin stopped to listen, searching the horizon for the source of the mechanical rumble and finding the shape of a vintage car as it barreled across the expanse of darkness, kicking up clouds of granulized blackness.

It looked as though this time trouble had decided to cut him a little slack. This time he didn’t have to go looking for it.

This time it was coming to him.