In the House of the Wicked

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Squire didn’t care to be shot again; he was funny like that. His shoulder already hurt like hell, and now his upper thigh felt like shit.

The hobgoblin surged up onto his stubby legs, ignoring the pain, running to where he saw a particularly inviting patch of shadow.

“Where are you going?” the tattooed man asked, firing his weapon wildly.

How many fucking bullets does this guy have? Squire asked himself as he dove, his injured body hitting the pool of darkness, the substance of darkness swallowing him whole.

He emerged on the other side of this particular path. It looked as though he was in some kind of warehouse, the smell of the ocean close by making the hairs in his pronounced nose tingle. It had been a long time since he’d smelled a living ocean.

Squire crawled from the passage, using the moment of calm to check out his wound. The tattooed man’s bullet had hit him in the meaty part of his leg, but it looked as though it had passed through. He was lucky; if it had hit bone, he would have been a sitting duck. He would heal, but it would take a little time.

His attacker surged up from the pool of black.

“Bet you didn’t think I could follow you,” he said, aiming his weapon as Squire scrambled to his feet. “But it seems I’ve developed a knack.”

He got off one shot, and then the gun clicked once, twice, three times on an empty chamber.

About fucking time.

“Huh. Outta bullets,” the pale assassin said as he tossed the gun aside and pulled a nasty-looking hunting knife from his side. “Guess we’re gonna have to do this up close and personal…which is fine by me.”

Squire had lost his golf bag along the way, but he still had a few tricks up his sleeve. His eyes scanned the warehouse, and he sniffed at the air, getting past the salty goodness of the thriving ocean. What he was looking for…what he needed wasn’t to be found here.

He would have to take this conflict elsewhere.

“Up close and personal is good,” Squire said, limping on the injured leg, making it seem as though Paleface might actually have the upper hand. “Why don’t you start without me, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

The goblin was running again, eyes scanning the various shadows, searching out one that could give him what he needed, a nice, ripe patch, one with real potential.

The tattooed man was running full tilt, knife by his side.

“I can follow you wherever you go,” he growled. “And as soon as you get tired…oh man, the fun will start.”

The guy was a complete asshole, and Squire couldn’t wait until his piehole was shut for good, but he was gonna need to be very careful and play this just right, or he’d wind up with the shitty end of the stick.

The stink of a ripe passage was close by, and Squire stopped momentarily to tilt his head back. Down an aisle of shelves, behind a wooden crate spray-painted with the words MACHINE PARTS, he found what he’d been searching for.

“You mean the fun hasn’t started already?” Squire called out. “Thought we’d reached our full fun potential when I cut off your hand. Don’t know if my poor old constitution can take anymore.”

He dove at the shadow, waiting for the cold, enveloping sensation as he entered the passage to another place but feeling only the viselike grip close around his ankle.

Squire thudded to the floor of the warehouse with a grunt, the shadow path just beyond his reach. He flipped over to see that the tattooed man was on his belly, holding on to him with his one good hand.

“Look at that,” the pale man growled. “You made me drop my knife.”

Squire struggled to squirm free, but the man’s hold on him was ferocious.

“Guess I’m just gonna have to use my teeth,” the tattooed man said, smiling like a great white, beginning to drag his weightier bulk up Squire’s body.

Squire lashed out, bringing one of his legs up and kicking the pale man squarely in the face. He felt the sensation of something breaking through the sole of his boot.

“You fucking monkey,” the tattooed man groaned, letting go of Squire to clutch at his own broken face. He picked at some loose pieces of white skin, revealing what looked like some sort of wet stone beneath.

“Wonder how long I can keep you alive,” the pale man growled, then lunged for Squire.

Squire did a tumble, rolling away into the embrace of a shadow passage. He felt himself falling, then landed unceremoniously on something soft and rubbery.

The killer landed atop him with a grunt, and Squire took full advantage of the fact that his adversary was stunned by the landing. The goblin dug his stubby fingers into the man’s face and pulled wet chunks away.

The tattooed man screamed like a banshee, arms flailing wildly. There was a glint of something in the dark, and Squire realized that his foe had managed to find his knife again. Reaching down to the floor of their confined space, Squire grabbed at something-anything-that he could use to block the blade.

The sneaker he brought up from the floor was just the thing.

Sneaker?

The killer was going wild, slashing out with his blade. Squire tried to stay low, reaching up to find what he suspected he would find: hands wrapping around the cool, metal knob and giving it twist.

The two tumbled from the closet into a child’s bedroom.

The little boy sat up in his bed, screaming that the monsters were coming out of his closet. If only you knew how right you are, Squire thought as he tried to get away.

In the faint glow of a night-light, he could see the damage he had done to the pale man’s face. It looked as though most of his nose and even more of one of his cheeks were gone. The tattoos didn’t look half as impressive anymore.

“Shut your fucking mouth, brat!” the pale man roared at the child, as he surged after Squire.

Squire had found an aluminum bat on the bedroom floor and used it to his fullest advantage. Swinging with all his might, he connected with his attacker’s leg, driving him to his knees.

“Are we having fun yet?” Squire asked, hitting him again across the back.

The pale man dropped to the floor, and Squire felt as though his arm was going to fall off.

He glanced at the child, staring wide-eyed from the bed, and was about to tell him that everything was going to be all right when the tattooed man unexpectedly struck.

What is he, the Energizer Bunny, for fuck’s sake?

The knife blade slashed across Squire’s chest, cutting at least a five-inch-long gash.

“Son of a bitch!” Squire hissed, jumping back and away before any more damage could be wrought.

His attacker was already standing. It looked as though he was having difficulty with one leg, but he still seemed like he could do some serious damage.

Squire decided to get the fuck outta Dodge. He turned his back on the man, already searching for an exit, and found it beneath the kid’s dresser. Not wanting to waste any time, he reached the piece of furniture, flipped it over, and dove inside.

He didn’t even have to look to know that Paleface was following. Exploding out the other end of the path, he hit the ground at a run. His chest felt as though it were on fire, the pain blending with the pain of his shoulder and leg wound; one big, happy fucking pain family. He could feel the blood running from the wound beneath his shirt, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, considering the situation he hoped to create.

He knew immediately when he was in the right place. His balls grew incredibly tight, disappearing up inside him, and if he could’ve disappeared inside himself, he would have, too.

“Where are you, you ugly fuck?” the pale assassin screamed as he emerged from the path, gunning for bear.

“Look who’s talking,” Squire goaded, sensing where he needed to be. “Think there might be some difficulty in the A Face Only a Mother Could Love competition.”

The pale man stalked toward him, knife blade still clutched in his hand.

“Wait a minute,” Squire said, backpedaling. “Did you even have a mother? From the looks of it, I’m going to be taking home first prize.”

“Gonna cut your face off and wear it like a mask,” the assassin said as he lunged.

Squire managed to avoid the attack, but barely. He was starting to slow down, the loss of blood and the accumulated pain of his injuries getting to be too much.

But if he did this right, it wouldn’t take much longer… And if he didn’t do it right, nothing would really matter anymore.

An icy tendril of fear ran down the goblin’s spine. Squire stopped, remaining perfectly still as the pale man limped closer.

“What’s the matter-too tired to run?”

“No, I could probably keep this going quite a bit longer, but I really don’t see the need.”

“The first rational thing you’ve said so far,” the killer said, a glint of madness in his cruel, dark eyes.

“Yeah, I figure we’ve come full circle, and we might as well end this here and now.”

The tattooed man started, looking around, for the first time taking note of where they were. “We’re back where we started?” he asked, sounding somewhat uncertain.

“Yeah, back in the Shadow Lands, minus the ugly house, of course.”

“Fitting,” the pale man said with finality. “This is where I became obsessed with you, and this is where it all comes to an end.”

The killer lurched forward.

Squire was looking off into a particularly deep patch of gloom, searching…searching…and felt the hair on his entire body jump to attention.

“Yeah, it pretty much ends now.”

He pulled up his shirt, revealing his bleeding wound. He placed his hand beneath the gash, wetting his fingers, and then flicking the blood into the darkness.

“Shouldn’t pick at that,” the pale man said with a hiss. “It’s gonna get infected.”

And then he lunged, knife blade ready to take another bite out of Squire…

Just as something struck from the expanse of darkness.

It was large, probably one of the bigger shadow serpents that existed in the Shadow Lands. Squire had always been lucky enough to avoid it, but he knew that it had been aware of him. They’d both gotten each other’s scent.

The goblin dove back as the serpent hit the pale man’s side, flinging him violently across the blackened landscape. He must’ve lashed out with the knife as he was struck, because the serpent had reared back, away from its prey.

Squire managed to find an outcropping of solidified darkness to hide behind and watch the horror unfold.

The pale man was hurt pretty badly, what passed as blood oozing from his side, but he didn’t seem to be concerned with protecting himself from the inevitable second strike. He seemed concerned with something else entirely.

The serpent’s strike had torn away a section of the killer’s shirt, and something had spilled from the top pocket.

Through squinted eyes, Squire watched as the killer dropped to his knees to collect what had fallen to the ground. They looked like photographs, and he crawled across the frozen darkness, desperately snatching them up and clutching them lovingly to his chest.

He had grabbed the last of the objects; his gaze had just found Squire’s when the shadow serpent struck again.

The great beast latched onto the pale man, his precious objects flying into the air as the serpent yanked him back toward the darkness of its lair.

Squire tentatively emerged from his hiding place, the curiosity of what had been so important to his attacker drawing him like a beacon. They were exactly what he thought they might be: photographs. Squire looked at each of them, frozen moments in time with no rhyme or reason, until the last image.

It was a driver’s license, and it belonged to the girl, Ashley. Squire slipped the plastic identification into a pocket, just in case, before starting to search for a passage to take him back.

Ashley ran until she couldn’t run anymore.

It looked as though she’d made it inside a company lounge of some kind, big, overstuffed couches and chairs positioned around modern-looking coffee tables covered with magazines. One entire wall was nothing but large, tinted windows looking out over the city.

She came to a stumbling stop at the windows, peering out through the smoky glass at the spectacular view below, but the view was the least of her concerns.

The short sword still in hand, she spun around to face her pursuer.

“Stay back, Teddy!” she warned, but she couldn’t see the youth.

Her eyes scanned the darkened room as she stepped away from the floor-to-ceiling glass. With Squire’s warnings to avoid puddles of darkness prevalent in her thoughts, she was careful where she stepped as she looked for the wild boy.

Heart hammering in her chest so hard that she thought it might bust a rib, she moved toward the chairs but still could find no sign of the youth that had tried to keep her as a pet. She had no idea what was wrong with the boy, only that she’d heard his father say something about magick having killed his humanity, leaving only the beast behind.

It sounded right to her.

Ashley stood in the middle of the lounge, eyes darting about, searching for any sign of movement. There still was nothing, and she began to wonder if he had fallen victim to one of those shadow pools.

The back of her leg bumped up against the edge of the glass coffee table, and she stumbled back ever so slightly, her gaze falling to the clear surface of the table, reflexively reading the titles of the magazines lying there.

It was to the left of Cooking Light that she saw the grinning face peering up at her through the glass.

Ashley let out a scream, jumping away as Teddy surged up from where he had hidden beneath the coffee table. He was growling like a mad dog as he came at her.

She tried running again, her panic making her blind, and she ran head-on into the sofa, falling up against it as Teddy pounced.

Ashley cried out as the boy landed atop her, his jagged fingernails scratching her skin as he attempted to restrain her.

“Teddy, no!” she cried out, hoping to reach what little humanity might still exist.

The wild boy tried to pin her against the couch, but she continued to thrash. She felt his groping hands on her body and felt another piece of her sanity snap off and drift away. It was then that she realized she was still holding the sword and lashed out with it, hoping to drive her attacker away.

“Stop it!” she cried out, the flat of the sword connecting with the boy and actually knocking him back to land on the coffee table, shattering the top into what appeared to be a million pieces.

Ashley didn’t waste any time, climbing over the back of the overstuffed sofa onto the other side. The sound of something thrashing among pieces of broken glass could be heard behind her, but she didn’t want to turn around.

Teddy tackled her, his limbs entwining with her legs and bringing her hard to the lounge floor.

The air punched from her lungs, Ashley lay there stunned, the boy straddling her, as she rolled onto her back. In a flash of panic, she realized that she had dropped her sword and tried to find it, but the wild child appeared to sense this and bore down on her.

Ashley was wild, fighting beneath the boy’s weight, but he kept her pinned, leering down at her, his lips pulling back to reveal sharp, yellowed teeth. Her panic set in as he leaned toward her, his mouth opening as he got closer to the soft flesh of her throat.

Close enough to bite.

I’m going to die, was the first thought that shot through her mind as she watched the animal child’s open mouth come closer. After all that she had been through, this was the way that she was going to go out.

She imagined what it would feel like when the boy bit into her flesh, the popping of her skin as the teeth broke through, the ripping sensation as he tore away the first bite.

Ashley didn’t want to feel it, but if that was the case, then she had to live.

She had to survive.

Adapt or die. She heard Mr. Harpin’s nasty old voice echo through her mind, and Ashley knew what she had to do.

Teddy’s breath was hot on her throat when she lost it, screaming like a madwoman and bucking her body so violently that she flipped the boy off her.

She knew that she couldn’t hesitate, not one little bit, or he would be back at her. Teddy was getting to his feet and coming at her just as she found her sword. Without a moment’s pause, she snatched it up from the carpeted floor and spun to face her attacker.

“Get the fuck away, or I’ll kill you!” she screamed, but it didn’t slow the boy down. He came at her full force, and there was only one thing she could do.

Ashley brought the sword down with all her might, the blade striking off the top of his shaggy head and continuing down across his shocked face.

The wild child cried out in pain and backed quickly away. His trembling, clawed hands went to his wounds and came away covered in scarlet.

Teddy stared at her with eyes that said, How could you do this to me?

Ashley remained perfectly still, blade ready to strike again, if necessary.

“I warned you,” she said, the sound of her voice scaring her with its ferocity.

Teddy whined, rubbing at the blood that now flowed freely down his face, but the whine quickly turned to a growl as he tensed to come at her yet again.

“Teddy…,” she started to warn, but he was already hurling himself at her.

Ashley struck him again, this time sinking the sword blade deeply into the fleshy area between shoulder and neck. Blood was now squirting from the wound, as he stumbled back and away from her.

The air was filled with a strangely metallic odor that she guessed was fresh blood, and would have likely gotten sick from the stink if she hadn’t been preoccupied with the wild child’s next attack.

Bleeding profusely, Teddy lunged, and Ashley defended herself. She swung the blade with excellent precision, cutting into the boy again and again, feeling the arterial spray of his blood hitting her face as she finally cut him down.

Teddy at last dropped to the floor, his lifeblood seeping from multiple wounds into the carpet, as he lay there for a moment longer before expiring.

Ashley stood over him, sword still poised, waiting for him to rise, waiting for him to come at her again.

But he didn’t.

It took a little bit longer for it to sink in-what she had done.

She didn’t know how long she had been standing there, staring at the boy’s dead body, when Squire found her.

“Hey, Ashley. You all right?” she heard the goblin ask her as he emerged from a particularly dark section of shadow near a tall potted plant.

She would forever remember the look on his face as she turned toward him, bloodstained sword in hand.

“It was just like Mr. Harpin said,” she told him. “Adapt or die.

“I adapted.”

Mulvehill could drive only as far as Mass Ave before the traffic came to a complete standstill. Waiting for the traffic to move just far enough, he found an alleyway with No Parking signs posted and pulled his car down to do just that. He had a Police Business placard in his glove compartment and placed it in his window as he climbed from the car.

There was a constant, hurried flow of foot traffic coming down Boylston Street, and he moved against the current, going toward where they were coming from. He knew that he had to go there; it was practically calling to him, even though he had no clue as to what he would find.

And the unknown was terrifying.

His hand drifted down to the weapon inside his coat and he felt a surge of courage flow through him, giving him that extra bit more to continue on.

The street was blocked off at Fairfield, two uniformed officers nervously standing on one side of the yellow wooden horses, occasionally calling out to the people who flowed passed them to keep moving.

Mulvehill recognized one of the young officers, having worked with his father, and approached. At first the police officer didn’t recognize him and was preparing to keep him from passing, but Mulvehill already had his badge out to flash at the man.

“Sorry, Detective Mulvehill,” the officer said. “Didn’t recognize you.”

“That’s all right, DeWitt,” Steven said, looking past the man, up the street to where he needed to go. “What’s the story?”

The young cop looked over as the other officer approached.

“We’re really not sure… We’re hearing all kinds of shit,” DeWitt said, a twinkle of fear in his dark brown eyes.

“Heard it might be a terrorist act,” said the other cop. “Or maybe just an electrical fire. They got the whole plaza cordoned off, and we’ve been told to keep the foot traffic moving and the curious away.”

“Interesting,” Mulvehill said, moving past the young officer and behind the barrier.

“Are you going in, Detective?” DeWitt asked.

Mulvehill took his eyes off his destination for just a moment.

“Duty calls,” he said with a chuckle. “And on my fucking day off, too.”

Both of the officers laughed nervously.

A woman approached them with a panicked expression, asking how she was going to get home if her car was parked in the garage below the plaza.

“I’ll catch you two when I’m coming out,” Mulvehill told them with a wave. “See if I can’t get you a better handle on what’s going on.”

They both waved, appreciative of his offer, as they began talking to the panicked woman.

Mulvehill continued up Boylston. One more block and he saw it: the Hermes Building, looming off in the distance, towering above many of the other buildings surrounding it. It looked as though there was a thick black cloud surrounding the top of the skyscraper… And what’s that swirling around in the sky above it? he wondered. It looked like a whirlpool in the sky.

The crowds and emergency personnel in front of him appeared impenetrable, so he headed back down Exeter Street, hoping to cut through on St. James Ave and approach the building from the other side. He was still moving against the flow of traffic, the looks in people’s eyes reminiscent of the news reports he had seen on 9/11. What did they experience? he wondered, fear whirling like the thing in the sky, but in the pit of his stomach. Then he was reminded of the weight of his gun by his side, and it allowed him to go on.

Mulvehill found it odd that the closer he got to the location, the darker it seemed to be getting. It was almost as if he were entering a different time zone or something, the shadows of dusk crawling across the faces of businesses and brownstones, but in all reality it would be hours before the sun started to set.

The fear churned, almost as if he could sense the unnaturalness of it all. Maybe I’ve developed some kind of weird shit detector, he considered, still moving forward.

The crowds were becoming more sparse, and when he did see anyone coming from that area, they were running…running as if the Devil himself were chasing them.

Or something worse.

Images of the things he had faced while helping Remy Chandler flashed before his mind’s eye, and he actually found himself flinching. Mulvehill slowed slightly, blinking his eyes repeatedly as he tried to force the terrifying recollection to pass.

There was a through alley on his left that would take him that much closer to the Hermes, and he decided that he would cut through to see how close he could actually get. There was a woman, a cute blonde, in jogging shorts and a T-shirt coming down the opposite side. A little bit of a thing, no more than five-one, she must’ve been out for an afternoon run when the shit hit the fan.

He wasn’t exactly sure why, but he wanted to tell her to hurry it up, to move as quickly as she could through the dark, shadow-filled alley to get to someplace safe.

Where there were lights and others.

He was just noticing that she was wearing earbuds, an iPod attached by a band around her biceps, and that she wouldn’t have heard his urgings, anyway, when the shadow on the brick wall to her left seemed to explode.

It didn’t make a sound as something long and snakelike shot out from the dark patch on the wall, wrapped itself around the woman’s bare legs, and yanked her violently to the filthy ground.

The woman had no idea what had happened as she went down and was dragged across the alley toward the area of shadow that undulated and moved like the surface of a lake on a windswept day.

Mulvehill did not hesitate; he did not question what he was about to do, even though fear had grasped his heart in an ever-tightening grip and he thought that he might actually be having a heart attack.

But he wasn’t listening to the pain or the panic; all he saw was the look of fear on the jogger’s face as she was dragged toward the shadow moving on the wall.

“Hold on!” Steven cried, taking his gun from his jacket pocket. He doubted that she could even hear him, deafened by the iPod and her terror. He ran to her side, holding his pistol at the ready, and she began to scream as she saw him.

His gaze fell on the pool of darkness from where the limb-the tentacle? — originated. He didn’t want to fire the weapon too close to the woman, so he decided to shoot where the limb came from.

Taking aim, he fired at the base of the black arm, one shot right after another hitting his target.

And the terrible limb reacted.

The tentacle recoiled, releasing the woman from its grasp and withdrawing into the pool of shadow on the wall.

The woman lay on the floor of the alley, hysterical, and he went to her, helping her to rise.

“Thank you. Thank you so much,” she said over and over again between gasping sobs.

Mulvehill checked her out to be sure she was okay. She had circular bruises along both shapely legs but otherwise seemed unscathed.

There was a sudden explosion of some kind from close by, and he could feel it in the air, a vibration that made the skin of his face tingle and itch. That was followed by screams off in the distance.

“Get out of here,” Mulvehill told the woman, waving his gun around as he turned his attention to the other end of the alley.

He did not watch her leave, feeling the pull of his destination at the end of the alley.

There was no stopping him now; Mulvehill knew exactly where he needed to go.

Where he needed to be.