In the House of the Wicked

CHAPTER ONE

It had been quite some time since Remy had last listened.

That was why he was here, standing before the high front gates of the New Hampshire Correctional Facility, staring at the harsh angles of the prison beyond.

He had come because he had listened again.

Thunder crashed, lightning pulsed across the nighttime sky, and rain fell in straight sheets to the earth. Remy was soaked to the skin, but he didn’t give it a thought, his mind occupied with the reason for his being in this inhospitable place on this most inclement of evenings.

He had come in answer to a prayer.

A prayer that he, a former emissary of Heaven, had overheard as someone had pleaded for God’s attention. And although Remy had struggled to block out those prayers in his quest to be human, tonight he had heard and was compelled to act.

Invisible to the video cameras that watched the comings and goings from the prison, Remy spread his powerful wings to their full span and, with a single mighty thrust, lifted himself up and over the fence to the open yard beyond.

The world was changing. He could smell it in the air, taste it on the tip of his tongue, feel it like a faint electric current on the surface of his skin. Remy knew it had to do with how close the earth had come to the Apocalypse a year or two back, a catastrophe that he had had a major role in averting. Ever since then, life had been growing stranger, deadlier, with every passing day-as if being that close to the end had set the world on a different path.

Stirred things up like silt from the bottom of a lake.

Remy had changed, as well, for the love of his life had died, and without her strength, he’d found himself fighting to hold on to the humanity that he’d worked so hard to fabricate. His human nature had begun to tatter, his angelic essence trying to assert itself as he drifted further away from the mundane existence he had created as a private investigator-and husband.

But as the world that he loved-and fought for-continued to transform, Remy had to face the fact that the warlike nature of the Seraphim was needed. If he was going to continue to protect this changing world and all he loved from the rapidly escalating supernatural threats, the two warring natures at the core of his being would have to unite.

Finally, with the help of the memory of his beloved Madeline, Remy had embraced a side of his nature that he had been attempting to stifle for thousands of years. Remy Chandler was transformed.

Whole.

The human and the angelic were one. He was a creature of both Earth and Heaven, and tonight he had chanced a listen to the prayers of humanity. It was a mother’s plea that had touched him tonight, compelling both the human and the Seraphim to action.

Remy walked across the puddle-covered blacktop of the prison yard and stopped beside a guard who stood outside the main entrance, smoking a cigarette beneath an overhang. Patiently, he waited in the steady fall downpour as the man finished his smoke, then followed him into the brightly lit building, the heavy metal door slamming closed behind them.

Remy had been relaxing on the roof of his Beacon Hill brownstone, sipping a glass of Scotch as his canine friend, Marlowe, snored loudly at his feet. The rain hadn’t started, but the dampness permeated the air, and he’d known that it was only a matter of time before it did.

He had seen the glow of the lights at Fenway Park and absently wondered if the Sox would be able to get their game in before the deluge. He had allowed the effects of the alcohol to wash over him. His psychic connection to the world’s inhabitants danced in the corners of his perception. Normally he would have blotted it out, not wanting to eavesdrop on the pleas of the needy and devout, but something about this particular night had encouraged him to open himself up to the cacophony of prayers.

It had been like being in a sea of sound, a multitude of voices in every worldly dialect, all speaking at the same time.

Remy had been tempted to pull back from the deafening roar but forced himself to concentrate, whittling down the sounds of many to a select few, until he was focusing on only one, the strongest and most plaintive of them all.

The prayers of Catherine Perlas.

Remy was deep inside the prison now. The noxious smell of violence and desperation hung stagnant in the air, despite the nearly overwhelming stink of industrial cleaner. He’d left his escort to wander on his own and was passing the prison infirmary when his acute hearing picked up the sound of heavy breathing-someone fast asleep.

He stepped inside a darkened office to find an older man sleeping at his desk, file folders spread out before him as if sleep had claimed him in the midst of work. Silently, Remy approached the man.

“Robert Denning,” he said softly in the voice of an angel.

The man twitched with a grunt and slowly raised his head, leaving a small puddle of drool on one of the folders. He looked around the room, bleary-eyed and still mostly asleep, searching for the source of the voice.

“Where can I find him?” Remy whispered into the man’s other ear.

The man could barely keep his eyes open. His head bobbed up and down as sleep tried to pull him into its embrace once more.

“Where is Robert Denning?” Remy repeated.

“Maximum Security,” the man mumbled. “Special Housing, Unit Six.”

His eyes closed again, and this time they did not open. His breathing grew deeper as he laid his head back down on his pillow of folders. He was snoring as Remy looked around the office, searching for some kind of floor plan. On the back of the door he found an emergency map of the facility and quickly located the maximum-security wing.

Catherine Perlas had lost her daughter and twin grandchildren to murder, and prayed with all she had that God would punish their killer.

The story had been all over the local news. Charlotte Marsh, a thirty-three-year-old single mother, and her six-year-old daughters had been found brutally murdered in their Camden, New Hampshire, home. They had been together, maimed to render them unable to escape, and Charlotte had been the last to die.

Who could do such a thing and why? asked everyone who heard the tale of horror. The answer was far from satisfying, and more disturbing than most could bear.

Robert Denning was a twenty-year-old college dropout and, according to the testimony at his trial, had always been curious about how it would feel to take a life. After a particularly taxing day when he’d fought with his girlfriend, Robert had felt the overwhelming desire to satisfy that murderous curiosity.

He’d seen Charlotte and her daughters, Amanda and Emily, at a local supermarket and followed them home. He had parked his car and waited, unnoticed, until the house grew dark. Then he’d entered through an unlocked door in the garage. Details were sketchy, but they said he’d taken his time with them.

Remy found his way into Maximum Security, transporting himself through the locked doors by wrapping his wings about his body and picturing the other side.

It was as if the prisoners asleep behind the doors of the cells could sense his divine presence; many of them cried out pathetically as he strolled past. Most simply returned to a restless sleep when he paid them no mind-the prowling Seraphim on the hunt for a specific prey.

Denning had tried to escape human justice by declaring that he was insane at the time of the murders, but the jury hadn’t bought it, agreeing with the prosecutor, who had portrayed the man as a cold, calculating killer.

Remy stopped before a white metal door, the number 6 stenciled large and black above the single Plexiglas window. He stood for a moment staring at the door, imagining what was on the other side. A part of him- his human side — yearned to sense some unspeakable evil emanating from the cell, something beyond the norm that would explain why Robert Denning had done what he had.

A form of demonic possession or some such manifestation of evil.

A way to make some strange kind of sense from the senseless.

But Remy felt nothing out of the ordinary, and that just made it all the more maddening.

The angel stepped closer to the cell, peering into the small, darkened space, seeing a shape huddled beneath a blanket on the bed.

He opened his wings, wrapped them about himself once again, and he was there on the other side of the door, beside the bed, watching the figure in the embrace of a seemingly peaceful sleep. Remy wondered briefly about Catherine Perlas, wondered if it was possible for the poor woman to sleep peacefully again. Or would she be forever haunted by the memories of her murdered family?

His emotions had never been more acute as they had since embracing his angelic side once more. Even the most mundane feelings affected him with startling acuity. Never had he experienced love so strongly, or, as in this particular instant-

Hate.

“Robert Denning,” Remy said into the darkness, his voice resonating with divine presence. “Awaken.”

Denning stirred on the bed, the angel’s command pulling him into the waking world.

“What? Who’s there?” the young man asked sleepily, pushing himself up on his elbows, squinting into the shadows.

Remy chose to remain visible this time and had not hidden his wings. The brilliant white of their feathers cast an unearthly radiance about the cramped cell.

And Robert Denning saw what had come into his room. He sat up with a sucking gasp, throwing himself back against the wall, clutching his blanket tightly beneath his chin.

His eyes were wide and filled with fear, and Remy wondered if the young man was thinking of Charlotte, Amanda, and Emily then…thinking of how afraid they had been in his presence that night he had yearned for and sampled the act of murder.

Remy hoped that he was.

“What the fuck?” Denning screamed.

“Keep your voice down,” Remy commanded, not wanting the murderer’s cries to summon any of the prison staff.

Denning opened his mouth to cry out again, but Remy was across the small room with the speed of thought, snatching up the prisoner by the front of his jumpsuit. “You will not cry out again,” Remy ordered, his face mere inches from that of the young man.

He had taken on the full guise of the Seraphim warrior, his body adorned in golden armor, stained with the blood of recent battles, of which there had been many.

Denning’s mouth moved like that of a dying fish desperate to feel the flow of water over its gills again.

Remy looked into his eyes… really looked into his eyes. They were welling up with tears, but there was little else there; no sign of some otherworldly evil that might have taken up residence in a frail human shell.

All Remy saw was a terrified human being.

“I…” Denning was trying to speak but was having difficulty forcing the words from his gaping mouth. “I…I’m…”

“What?” Remy snarled. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

“I’m…sorry,” Denning managed, and then fell limp, sobbing uncontrollably in Remy’s grasp.

“You’re sorry?” Remy asked incredulously, barely able to control the anger in his voice. “You took the life of a mother and her two children in cold blood, and you’re sorry?”

Remy could feel the divine fire building up inside him, traveling through his body as he remembered the prayers of a mother who had lost so much. It took a mighty effort not to allow the hungry flame to emerge, to consume the flesh of the lowly human he held, to award him an excruciatingly painful death.

It would be the closet thing to Hell that Remy could manage.

The fire…the fire of Heaven would start with the soul first, burning it away before moving on to the physical…the flesh and blood, organs and bones. It would happen quickly, but a pain like that would seem to last forever.

And it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

The flames moved down Remy’s arm toward his hand, and he struggled to hold it back, trying to convince himself that this wasn’t want he wanted to do.

But it was what he wanted…what the Seraphim wanted.

He heard Catherine’s plaintive prayers again echoing inside his skull, begging the Almighty to punish the man who had taken her loved ones.

And wasn’t that what the angel Remiel had been created to do? To carry out God’s will? To be His divine messenger?

Denning was looking up at him, tears streaming down a face flushed with emotion as he jabbered on.

“I never believed in you…I never knew… So sorry for what I did…sorry that I didn’t believe…so, so sorry…”

Remy could feel the fire at his fingertips now, straining to be released.

Hungry to feed on the flesh of the sinner. To return this one to the dust from whence he had come.

Suddenly his fingers began to glow, and Remy knew he could no longer hold it back.

With a growl, he roughly tossed the young man away, back onto the bed. Then Remy threw his wings about himself like a cloak of feathers and was transported high above the prison into the storm-swept sky, where he released the fire of Heaven into the night, his own furious screams drowned out by the roar of thunder.

His rage temporarily spent, Remy returned to the prison cell to find Denning kneeling, his face pressed to the floor, his body trembling uncontrollably and stinking of urine, as he prayed for forgiveness to a God who was not listening.

Denning slowly raised his head, and Remy felt a certain satisfaction when he spotted five circular burns on the man’s face where he’d gripped him with a hand engorged with Heavenly fire. And in the young murderer’s eyes was terror, a terror that had taken him beyond the brink.

It had been a struggle not to kill him, but Remy had come to the realization that it wasn’t his place. Human justice had prevailed here, and now, for as long as he lived, Robert Denning would never know another moment without fear.

Fear of living, and what awaited him beyond.

For now that would have to be enough.

Spain 1945

The magick was killing him.

But it was also keeping him alive.

Algernon Stearns clutched the knife in his hand all the tighter as black spots blossomed before his eyes.

The irony of the situation was not lost to him as he stumbled forward, grabbing hold of one of the child’s spindly legs in an attempt to keep from falling. The boy tried to scream, but the gag in his mouth stopped the sound. His body, hanging upside down from a thick metal hook in the stone ceiling of the basement chamber, began to swing like a pendulum.

Algernon’s old flesh tingled and he sweated profusely beneath his scarlet robes, despite the chill temperatures in the secret room beneath the Spanish castle. He opened his mouth and took in large gulps of air, trying to keep from losing consciousness.

The preparations for the spell had taken more out of him this time than they usually did-another sign that his time was growing short. How many times had he performed this very ritual? A parade of young faces coursed past his mind’s eye, reminding him of those he had sacrificed to extend his life over the past twenty years or so.

And he needed to perform the ritual more frequently.

The dizziness finally passed, and Stearns reached out to steady the struggling child.

“That’ll be enough of that,” he said in the boy’s own tongue, but it did nothing to calm the youth, for he knew that his life would soon be forfeit.

But better the child’s life be extinguished than Stearns’ own. There was much he still desired from the living world, and he meant to have it all.

Stearns gazed down at the circle drawn on the floor beneath the youth’s head, wanting to be certain that the sigils were intact. They had been meticulously drawn in chalk molded from the bones of a Catholic nun impregnated by a demon conjured from the region of the seventh veil. To have even a single line out of place meant certain death for the conjurer.

And this conjuring was all about keeping himself very much alive.

He slid the knife through the belt of his robes and turned toward the altar, where he’d arranged the items he would need. Grabbing the copper bowl, he carefully bent down and placed it in the center of the mystic circle, directly beneath the child’s head. Then he retrieved the ancient tome from its place on the altar, opening to the page that held the spell to prolong his life. He hoped he had enough strength left to see it through.

The old man began to read ancient words of power transcribed when humanity was still very young. The words flowed from his mouth, and the power they carried chipped away at his life force. His eyesight began to blur, and tufts of hair, once a golden yellow, fell from his dry scalp to obscure the arcane words on the page from which he struggled to read.

Every time he performed this spell, Stearns had to wonder if this would be the time he expired before he could finish.

The air was suddenly charged with arcane energies as the last words of the spell slipped from lips numbed by age and weakness. The boy hanging from the ceiling began to spin slowly above the circle, moved by the powers that had answered the sorcerer’s summons.

Stearns let the book fall from his grasp, not having the strength to return it to its place upon the altar. He lurched toward the spinning youth, plucking the sacrificial knife from beneath his belt.

The child spun round and round, and Stearns waited for his opportunity. He had to strike at precisely the right moment, severing the jugular exactly as it presented itself.

To miss would be disastrous.

Through eyes failing by the moment, Stearns watched as the boy’s throat came round once more, the vein that carried the source of life- his continued life — pulsing beneath the thin covering of tanned flesh.

And he struck, almost missing the mark, but still managing to puncture the skin and nick the vein. It meant that the child would die more slowly, but Stearns didn’t care, as long as he got what he needed.

Blood poured from the child’s throat into the copper bowl beneath his head. Weakness drove Stearns to his knees upon the cold stone floor as he waited for the bowl to fill, his hands ready to snatch it up.

“Come on,” he growled, surprised by the sound of his own voice, his vocal cords ancient and dry, the image of a mummified corpse struggling to speak filling his fevered thoughts.

He pitched forward, unable to stop himself from falling, but at least still having the dexterity to avoid disturbing the chalk circle. He lay on his side, eyes transfixed by the thread of scarlet raining down from the dying child’s throat.

Maybe it’s enough, he thought, willing his hands to reach into the circle, but then reminding himself that all the blood must be within the bowl to have any lasting effect on him. Slowly, he withdrew his withered hands.

And still the blood continued to drain.

The vision of red had turned to black, and Stearns did not even realize that he had lost consciousness. He struggled in the pitch darkness, feeling the pull of death upon him and hearing the unfamiliar sound of wings flapping in the chamber around him.

Was this the angel of death arriving at last to claim the prize that had evaded him for so very long?

And then there came the taste of revitalizing blood on his lips.

The warm fluid flowed into his mouth, and Stearns immediately felt its rejuvenating effects-the horrible burning pain as his body began to repair itself.

Stearns gulped the blood; the faster the magically enhanced life stuff entered his system, the quicker he could reclaim the vitality almost permanently leeched from him.

Returning from the brink of death, the old sorcerer finally opened his eyes.

“What madness is this?” he asked at the sight of a small, gargoylelike creature drawing back the nearly empty bowl of blood from his lips.

The creature did not appear to be of flesh but of some kind of stone, and it stared at Stearns with eyes that were no more than pinpricks of light in the craggy makeup of its face.

“What are you?” Stearns asked, more fascinated now than anything else. This strange thing had saved him. But why?

The stone creature lurched toward him, bowl in its three-fingered hands, offering its contents once more. Stearns took it and drained the remainder of the blood in one mighty gulp.

His skin tingled as the cells repaired themselves; the burning on his scalp told him that his blond hair was again starting to grow.

The gargoyle watched intently as Stearns carefully placed the empty bowl on the ground beside him.

“Did someone send you?” he asked the creature, wiping the blood from his lips with the sleeve of his scarlet robe.

He stood easily, the movement sending the beast into the air, fluttering impossibly on wings of stone before landing atop the sorcerer’s altar.

“You must have come here for a reason,” Stearns continued. “Tell me why you have saved my life. Show me why you are here.”

The gargoyle stared silently at him for a moment, then sat down on the altar, wrapping its spindly arms around its knees and opening its mouth.

Stearns watched in awe as the creature’s mouth opened wider and wider still, and then a voice emanated from the darkness within.

A voice shockingly familiar.

“Greetings, Algernon. So happy to be of assistance.”

“Deacon?” Algernon questioned, drawing closer to the creature. “Is that you?”

“It is, my friend,” the voice of Konrad Deacon replied. “It has been too long.”

Deacon spoke the truth. It had indeed been a very long time since Stearns had last seen him, or any other member of their sorcerers’ guild, for that matter. The members of the cabal had become more concerned with pursuits of an individual nature, amassing power and building their own personal empires.

“To what do I owe your timely visit?” Stearns asked.

“I come bearing a gift.” Deacon’s excited voice drifted out from the mouth of the gargoyle. “The gift of life.”

“Life? What do you mean?”

“Exactly that. Life, my brother. More life than you could possibly imagine.”

Stearns was intrigued, for life was something that the sorcerer could always use more of.

In fact, he was quite greedy in his desire of it.

One could say he was insatiable.

The air warped and rippled just above the road outside the New Hampshire Correctional Facility. There was a brief flash of white and the sound of wings beating the air as a rend in the fabric of time and space appeared to disgorge Remy Chandler.

The Seraphim stumbled as he came forth, folding away his appendages of flight as he caught his balance and began to walk.

Remy knew that he’d done the right thing in leaving the young murderer alone with his fear, but a part of him still wasn’t satisfied, and if he’d stayed any longer, Denning would have been dead.

That was what he’d always been wary of, why he’d pushed the angelic essence of the Seraphim deeper and deeper inside himself, locking it away. It had always been wild, always reacting on instinct only.

It was what Remy feared.

What if he continued to think more like an angel? What if the more rational, human side of his dual nature hadn’t won this time?

The urge was still there, like an itch at the center of his spine, taunting him to scratch.

A vibrating sensation from the pocket of his jacket suddenly, thankfully, distracted him from his troubling thoughts, and Remy pulled out his phone and saw that Linda was calling.

He guessed that he would call her his girlfriend, but something still didn’t feel quite right about that. It was odd talking with another woman after having been with Madeline for so long; even odder to know that he was beginning to develop feelings for Linda. He still felt guilty at times that he was somehow cheating on his dead wife. His issue, of course, and something else that he would have to deal with.

“Hey,” he answered.

“Hey yourself,” Linda replied. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing much,” Remy lied, as he continued to walk down the center of the deserted road. The rain had temporarily ceased, but the air was still saturated, causing a writhing mist to snake up from the ground as the evening temperature gradually cooled. “Just wrapping up some stuff for work. What’s going on with you?”

“I got out of class early,” she said. “I’m planning a date with some lounging clothes, a bottle of Merlot, and the Real Housewives of New Jersey.”

“Sure one bottle will be enough for all of you?” Remy joked. “I hear those housewives can really put it away.”

She laughed, and he was reminded again of how much he liked the sound-and her.

“I miss you,” she said.

Remy stopped walking, experiencing that moment of electricity that proved he wasn’t the only one starting to have those kinds of feelings.

“I miss you, too.”

“So, what are you doing now?” Linda asked again.

He was about to suggest that he join her and the housewives when he remembered that he still had something left to do.

“I was planning on stopping by Steven Mulvehill’s,” he said.

“Has he returned any of your calls?” she asked, concern in her voice.

Linda was aware that a rift had formed between the two friends, but she hadn’t been made privy to the specifics. The homicide detective had become involved in one of Remy’s recent cases and had received a full dose of the kind of world that Remy often walked in.

A kind of world that Steven would have preferred never to have seen.

“No, he hasn’t,” Remy admitted. “But I’m thinking of dropping by his place, anyway, to try to straighten this business out face-to-face.”

“Good luck with that,” she wished him.

“Thanks. I think he just needed some time to himself. Things should be fine once we’ve had a chance to talk. No worries.”

“Do you want to stop by after?” she asked.

“I’d love to, but Marlowe’s been alone for most of the day, and-”

“Bring him with you,” she interrupted.

Remy felt himself smiling at the suggestion. It had been a few days since the dog had seen Linda, and Remy knew he’d jump at the chance to go for a ride in the car, especially if it meant seeing his new friend. It would definitely make up for having been left alone for most of the day.

“Let me see how late it is once Steven and I get finished.”

“No pressure,” Linda said. “Just thought it would be nice to see you.”

“And Marlowe?”

“And Marlowe.” She laughed. “I’ve been missing him, too.”

“I’ll give you a call when I leave Steven’s, okay?”

“I’ll be here.”

“Talk to you later.”

“Bye.”

Remy put his phone back in his pocket and looked around, surprised to see how far he’d wandered while chatting. The prison was off in the distance now, practically hidden by the thickening fog.

Far enough away that he was able to resist the temptation to go back.