In the House of the Wicked

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

He hadn’t expected to wake up facedown on his living room floor, the droning sound of a television test signal buzzing in his ears.

Steven Mulvehill rolled onto his back and sat up, a wave of dizziness and intense nausea almost putting him down again. As he sat there, he felt a tightness on the skin beneath his nose and carefully brought his fingers there to find a wet, tacky substance that was revealed to be drying blood.

“What the fuck?” he muttered. Sure that the swimming in his head had passed, he attempted to stand. Swaying slightly, he stared at the television screen and at the message displayed there: We are temporarily experiencing technical difficulties. Thank you for your patience!

He remembered the child on the TV and how she had begun to speak, and then he remembered nothing. In his gut he knew that she-the child-had something to do with what had happened.

Mulvehill walked drunkenly from the living room into the kitchen, tearing off a sheet of paper towel and sticking it beneath the faucet to wet it. He wiped the drying blood from beneath his nose. The droning alarm of technical difficulties was replaced with the sound of voices, and he returned to the living room to see if there was any explanation for what had just occurred.

There was only one anchorperson now, and she looked a little worse for wear, her blouse and normally perfectly coiffed hair disheveled. He had to wonder if the same thing that had happened to him, had happened there in the studio. In the back of his mind he remembered a story about a Japanese television broadcast of some cartoon show that had triggered seizures in many of those who had been watching.

Has something like that happened here? he wondered.

He caught the tail end of the anchor’s explanation about losing the signal from Angelina’s broadcast, but she then began to talk about breaking news: There was an emergency being reported at the Hermes Plaza, where the child had been delivering her message.

Mulvehill was riveted in place, standing in the center of the living room as a live shot filled the screen. It was an aerial view of the Plaza, the focus on the smoldering upper floor of the Hermes office building. Mulvehill gasped at the sight, his mind already trying to fill in all the gaps of what could possibly have happened. Through the smoke he could see the twisted wreckage of the rooftop, girders bent by some powerful force sticking up through the thick, billowing smoke. Mulvehill found himself moving closer to the television screen, trying to make out what was happening through the smoke. There was a sudden flash behind a billowing gray cloud and the rumble of what could have been an explosion. The picture suddenly went to hissing static, the signal from the helicopter’s camera failing.

But not before he saw something that turned his blood to ice.

Smoke was pouring out from many of the Hermes Building’s shattered windows, but there was also something else. At first glance it could have been mistaken as smoke, thick and black, but Mulvehill noticed that it hadn’t moved the way it should have. Just as the image had gone to static, Steven Mulvehill saw the strange blackness flow out from one of the windows, dripping down the front almost like wax from a melting candle.

It wasn’t natural, and he felt that familiar surge of panic come upon him as he remembered his experiences of late. He looked toward his living room windows at the sun shining outside his Somerville apartment, and he could have sworn that he heard screaming.

Mulvehill closed his eyes and saw the darkness running down from the skyscraper, slithering like a thing alive.

The disheveled anchor had returned, talking about what they believed was happening down in the Copley Square area, that the Hermes Plaza had been cordoned off by the fire department and police, and that they were still trying to determine whether this was an accident or something of a more malicious nature.

He had turned off the TV before he even realized that he was doing it. His hands were shaking, and he craved a drink like never before.

It would be so easy to put a stop to these feelings, he thought. A few quick gulps of whiskey would do the trick nicely. He already imagined the warm sensation in his belly as the booze took effect.

But it didn’t change the fact of what was happening at the Hermes Plaza.

He’d seen it on the television, and now, as much as he’d like to, he couldn’t un-see it.

What happened to me is now going to happen to others, he thought, imagining the darkness as it spread down Boylston Street, doing God knew what to whoever it encountered.

Mulvehill was terrified, but he had been terrified since his collision with the supernatural more than two weeks ago.

There was a moment of temptation where he almost picked up the phone to call his friend, to call Remy Chandler to ask him if he’d seen the news, but he managed to stop himself.

As far as he knew, this wasn’t about Remy. It was about him and the world he lived in, a once-secret world that from what he had just seen on the television was no longer hiding.

Hiding.

Mulvehill knew that this was what he had been doing: hiding himself away from the reality of it all, hoping that it wouldn’t come for him again.

He was still scared but he was also angry, which was a good thing, because he was finally feeling something more than overwhelming fear. Mulvehill embraced the anger, fueling it with the shame he felt over hiding away in his apartment.

He knew the fear would kill him if he let it, slowly eating him away, making it so that he would be forced to leave the job that he loved. For how could he be a cop if he was afraid of what could be around every corner, hiding in every shadow?

The image of the darkness as it poured from the skyscraper came into his thoughts again, followed by a surge of panic, but he pushed it down beneath the fire of anger he’d continued to stoke.

What’s happening at Hermes Plaza? he wondered with equal parts fear and intense curiosity. He thought of others like him, before he’d learned the truth about the world- the real world — and experienced a surprising urge.

Mulvehill left the living room, entering his bedroom and going to the dresser in the far corner. Pulling open the bottom drawer, he rooted around beneath a stack of old sweatshirts for the cigar box he kept there. Opening the lid, he looked at the old service revolver, something he had kept as a backup weapon since first making detective. In the drawer there was also a box of ammunition, and he loaded the gun.

For what he was about to do, he thought that he might need some protection, and hoped that bullets fired from a gun would be enough.

He grabbed his jacket from the back of his closet door, shoved the loaded handgun into his pocket, and headed for the door.

Before he lost his courage.

Algernon Stearns wasn’t quite sure, but didn’t think he had ever seen anything so magnificent that filled him with so much rage.

A blast of fire so hot that it started to melt the metal of the apparatus he wore sprang from the fingertips of his foe. A quickly erected spell of shielding was the only thing that prevented him from becoming nothing more than smoldering ash on the studio floor.

He conjured his own offense, casting the spell at the sorcerer who appeared to be wielding power of some divine origin.

There had always been a part of him that suspected that Konrad Deacon had survived the cabal’s betrayal of him, that the sorcerer had gone off someplace to hide and lick his wounds, but Stearns never imagined him returning in such a way.

Commanding a level of power that practically made Stearns’ mouth- mouths — water.

He felt the hungry orifices on his hands open up, eager to feed upon the unimaginable power now in the control of his enemy.

Where did he go? And how did he come to possess a power this great? Stearns wanted to know as he evaded another rush of unearthly flame that scoured the rubble-strewn ground where he’d been standing.

The exoskeleton was still functioning on a reserve-battery charge, a precaution that he’d enacted when considering how important this operation was and how many things could possibly go wrong. Hiding behind a crumpled section of soundproofed wall, the sorcerer adjusted the suit’s functions to allow him to collect and utilize some of the energies that were now being cast at him.

“Are you hiding from me, Algernon?” Deacon asked, a sickening tone of superiority dripping from his words.

Stearns waited, wanting to be certain that the suit was functioning properly before reentering the fray. Seeing that everything appeared to be in working order, he uttered a spell of destruction, felt the magick of murder collect in his hands, and emerged from hiding, throwing the death spell with the controlled precision of the murderer he was.

“Hiding, Konrad?” Stearns asked, the magick leaving his possession in the form of a humming ball of roiling energy. “It appears your time away has certainly bolstered your confidence.”

One of Deacon’s fiery wings folded down to block the spell. The magick detonated just in front of its target, but its effect was still devastating, shrapnel of pure magickal force peppering the air and slicing into his body.

“What was that, Konrad?” Stearns asked, striking while the iron was hot. He unleashed another blast of concentrated magick, blowing away part of the floor beneath Deacon’s feet, causing him to stumble. Stearns watched as Deacon attempted to recover, imagining the death magick from the shards protruding from his foe’s skin already starting to permeate his blood, weakening him from within.

“Was that a scream? Don’t tell me that even with all that power you’ve managed to acquire, you’re still no more of a threat than a child.”

Stearns came in closer, a corruption spell now encircling his fist. He brought that fist down, connecting with Deacon’s face and driving him to his knees.

He was stepping in for another strike when Deacon retaliated. His wings of fire exploded to life, flapping wildly and flicking globules of divine fire.

Stearns was driven back, wiping frantically at the flashes of fire that clung to the armored skeleton he wore.

“Impressive,” he sneered. “But still not enough.”

Deacon’s body had begun to radiate an insane amount of heat, the air warping around his form as he readied himself for what was to happen next.

“It was my biggest fault, you know,” Deacon said, stalking toward Stearns.

Stearns was ready, hundreds of different spells floating around in his mind, just waiting to be used.

“No matter how powerful I became, or how much knowledge I acquired, I always felt myself second to you,” Deacon continued.

Stearns erected a shield of magickal protection while propelling another wave of pure, undiluted malice at his foe. Deacon responded effortlessly, catching the spell in his hand and allowing it to fizzle into nothing.

“Even when I knew that I was better, there was still that nagging voice at the back of my mind,” Deacon explained.

“A voice to trust,” Stearns said with a sneer, unleashing a barrage of destruction to attempt to drive his enemy back.

But Deacon kept coming.

“Now there’s a new voice speaking inside my head,” he said, a hint of a smile on his lips. “Whispering that the old Konrad Deacon is gone.”

A rush of hurricane-force wind swirled from Stearns’ fingertips; he hoped it would give him the time he required to consider his situation. He needed Deacon to be unprepared for what was to happen, unable to fight back when he began to feed on the energy he so coveted.

“But there was still something that nagged at me, that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.”

The wind drove Deacon back, but only by inches. The sorcerer planted his feet, the ground crumbling into dust as he held his place and started to advance again.

“And then I realized what it was,” Deacon said. He flapped his wings of fire and propelled himself across the brief expanse.

Stearns would be a liar if he said that he wasn’t afraid. But, as is often the case, from great fear comes great reward.

Deacon pounced on him, driving him back to the floor with inhuman strength.

“I realized that it was still you, Algernon,” Deacon said, looming over him. “No matter how powerful I felt or how powerful the new voice inside told me that I was, I knew that you were still out there.”

Lying on his back, Stearns looked up at Konrad Deacon. There was a fire in his eyes and something else-something that hadn’t been there seventy years ago.

It was madness.

“You were still out there, ready to take what belonged to me.”

Stearns watched as Deacon raised a hand that started to burn like a miniature sun.

Oh, how he coveted that power.

“So the only way that I could truly be at peace was to find and deal with you,” Deacon said. “To finally take something away from you…your life.”

“You’re quite the prophet,” Stearns spoke, focusing not on the idea that his own death was merely moments away, but that he would soon have his latest desire.

The mouths beneath his metal gauntlets were dripping in anticipation as Stearns raised his hand to Deacon’s face, grabbing hold of the magician’s cheek in a steely grip.

At first Deacon was smiling, amused by his enemy’s struggles, but that look quickly turned to unease and then to pain as the mouths, aided by the sorcerous mechanics of the exoskeleton, proceeded to feed.

“You should have heeded that voice, Konrad,” Stearns said gleefully. “For there is nothing that you can possess that I am not strong enough to take away.”

There’s no place like home… There’s no place like home…

The line from her favorite movie echoed over and over inside Ashley’s head as she and the others made their way slowly down the hallway.

Just seconds ago, they had passed a wicked old library, its high wooden bookcases stacked from floor to ceiling with books, and now they were in the corridor of one of those fancy office buildings. Ashley wondered what awaited them in the shadows up ahead and where they might be after they passed through them.

She pictured them all entering the cool shadow and emerging in the crowded and damp-smelling basement of her Beacon Hill home. The thought caused the corners of her mouth to tick upward as she imagined them all climbing the stairs up from the basement, she leading the way, eager to introduce her new friends to her parents.

My parents.

How long have I been missing? They must be worried sick.

Squire’s hand reached out, snagging her arm and violently yanking her back and from her thoughts.

“Pay the fuck attention!” the goblin screamed at her.

She was startled, and at first didn’t know what he was talking about, until she saw that she had been on the verge of treading across a circular patch of shadow. She stared into the blackness, witnessing a ripple of distortion across the liquidlike surface as something moved beneath it.

“Sorry,” she said. They were all stopped now, watching her. The building moaned like some kind of haunted house, and it sounded as if something big might be moving around behind them, where they’d just come from.

“I think there’s a stairwell up here,” the guy Francis said, taking all the attention from her.

He’d turned with the fat guy, and they were moving again.

“Here, take this,” Squire said beside her. She looked down to see that he was trying to force some sort of small sword into her hand. Ashley hesitated, slipping her hands into the back pockets of her jeans.

“No, that’s okay…I’m good.”

“Take it!” the goblin demanded, roughly pulling at her arm and shoving the cool grip of the weapon into her hand. It was heavier than she imagined it would be, and it served as yet another reminder of how absolutely insane this all was.

“I don’t want this,” she then said, letting the sword drop on the carpeted floor. “I can’t…”

“You can and you will,” Squire said angrily, picking up the sword and shoving it right back into her hand. “If you don’t, you’re gonna die.”

She was suddenly back in her senior college-placement biology class with Mr. Harpin. Adapt or die, she heard the old man with the extremely large Adam’s apple proclaim as they discussed evolution.

“Adapt or die,” she said aloud, clutching sword’s hilt.

“Yeah, something like that,” Squire agreed. “Now, let’s keep an eye on where we’re walking or…”

“Where are they?” Ashley asked.

Squire followed her gaze and saw that Angus and Francis were gone.

“Son of a bitch,” the goblin hissed. “Whatever the fuck is going on in this building must’ve caused shit to shift again. Who knows where those two are now? There goes our safety in numbers.”

She felt bad for slowing them down, causing them to lose their numbers.

“Yeah, but now I got this,” she said, waving the short sword around.

“Be careful you don’t poke your eye out,” the goblin grumbled. He grabbed her elbow more gently this time and urged her to start moving.

“Let’s go. Maybe we can catch up to them.”

They started down the hallway again, careful to avoid any puddles of shadow spreading across the red-carpeted floor. She was being extra careful now, hefting her sword, ready.

Ready for what?

Ashley didn’t know…didn’t want to know…She just wanted to get home and see her parents.

There’s no place like home… There’s no place like home… There’s no…

It was as if a curtain of solid black material had dropped down in front of them. Squire’s arm shot out to prevent her from going any farther, but she had already come to a complete stop.

“This is what I’m talking about,” the goblin muttered. “Everything’s shifting around.”

She could see that he was leaning forward slightly now, like he was sniffing the air in the darkness.

And then they heard the sounds.

“Hey, there you are,” said a voice from behind the curtain, and at first she thought that it sounded like Francis. But she realized that it was too happy-sounding for the balding man with the golden pistol, and before she could say something there was a flash, followed by a crack of thunder, and Squire went flying backward.

The white-skinned man with the tattooed face slithered out from behind the curtain of shadow, smoldering pistol in one hand, the stump of the other pressed to his chest, a length of leash leading to a collar around the creepy little boy, Teddy’s, scrawny neck, wrapped tightly around it.

“Thought we’d lost you,” the pale man said with an unnerving smile.

Squire lay on his side, clutching a bloody leg, weapons from his golf bag strewn about the hall.

“Get out of here Ashley. Run!” he roared.

There was a moment’s hesitation, as she didn’t want to leave her friend, but there was also something in the pale man’s eyes, something that told her that he was even more dangerous than the things that swam in the shadows. Ashley turned and started to run down the corridor. She had no idea where she was running or even what she might run into, but she knew that she had to do this if she was going to survive.

Running as fast as she could, avoiding the puddles of shadow on the floor around her, she heard the ominous words of the tattooed man following her.

“Go get her, Teddy… Bring your toy back to me.”