In the House of the Wicked

CHAPTER THREE

Remy was surrounded by sleep.

He sat on the red couch in Linda’s apartment, his girlfriend curled up on one side of him and Marlowe, lying flat on his side as if he’d taken a bullet, snoring at his feet.

The Housewives was over by the time Remy had arrived, but Linda had saved him some wine and they’d cuddled until sleep had claimed her. Shortly afterward, Marlowe had succumbed, as well, leaving Remy alone with the television.

But mostly it had left him alone with his thoughts, and there was much to think about this night.

Like what he had been doing traveling to New Hampshire to confront the murderer of Charlotte Marsh and her daughters. At the time it had felt like a completely rational thing to do, and that scared him.

He wasn’t thinking like himself. And what about the next time? Would the angelic side of his nature persuade him that it was perfectly all right to mete out God’s justice on the wicked?

It was only a matter of time before he started burning people who were double-parked with the flames of Heaven. That was what he had been afraid of, why it had taken him so long to allow his angelic essence to meld with his human persona. He would have to be careful in the coming days; obviously, there were still some bugs to be worked out in the unification of his two sides.

And then there was Steven. Remy could fully understand his friend’s anger, but there was very little that he could do to make things right. The snake had been let out of the box, so to speak, and there was nothing Remy could do to put it back. Steven had gotten dangerously up close and personal with an aspect of the world not usually seen by humanity, and for that Remy was sorry, but that was really all he could be.

It wasn’t as if he had some magical way to take away the memory of the experience. Besides, if that was the case, their whole friendship might as well be excised from Mulvehill’s mind. Remy remembered the night that Steven had lain dying at his feet, afraid of what awaited him. Wanting to offer him some peace, some certainty of what was on the other side, Remy had revealed his true face to the homicide detective.

He’d never expected Mulvehill to survive, but he had, and they had been close friends ever since.

But now he had seen too much of Remy’s world and nothing could change that.

Remy had no choice but to let things be as they were, to give Steven the space that he needed to process his experience. And maybe, with time, they could once again be friends.

“I think that’s sad.” Linda’s sleepy voice spoke, as if commenting on Remy’s thoughts.

“Excuse me?” he asked, startled, looking down at the top of Linda’s head as she snuggled up tightly beside him.

“The little girl,” she said.

“I have no idea what you’re…”

“On the news,” Linda said groggily, and Remy looked at the television to see that the local news was on, and there was, in fact, a little girl on the screen.

The child, no older than six or seven, lay in her bed surrounded by dolls and stuffed animals. People stood around her as reporters yelled out questions and pictures flashed.

“What’s her story?” Remy asked.

“Guess she’s been in a coma for a few years-some kind of accident. They never expected her to wake up.”

Linda stretched, her arms reaching up over her head as she yawned.

“And now she’s awake,” Remy said, still watching the TV. The cameras pulled in close to the child’s face as she peeked out from beneath her covers. There was something haunting about her eyes.

“Awake and talking about all kinds of stuff.”

“All kinds of stuff?”

“Yeah, religious stuff. She says she has a message from God.”

The station cut to a commercial break, leaving a bad taste in Remy’s mouth. He had little patience for supposed prophets proclaiming a direct line to Heaven.

“What’s the message?” he asked, trying to hide his distaste.

“No idea,” Linda said, sliding to the other side of the couch for her wineglass atop a side table. “She says He hasn’t told her yet, that it isn’t time or the world isn’t ready, or something like that.”

Remy doubted very much that the child was responsible for the proclamation, guessing that an ambitious family member was likely to blame. He wondered how long it would be before they were selling vials of the little girl’s tears and displaying her features on special healing pillowcases or some such nonsense.

“I find it very sad,” Linda was saying as she sipped the last of the wine from her glass. “A sick child being exploited like that.”

The Seraphim stirred in agreement. Ever since the earth had been saved from the Apocalypse, more and more of these diviners, seers, and soothsayers had been crawling out of the woodwork with some vision of the future. The world was indeed in flux, but Remy seriously doubted that any of these people had the inside track on anything worth paying attention to.

Linda set down her empty glass and yawned loudly. Marlowe sat up and yawned, as well, as if in solidarity.

“Sleepy?” Remy asked her.

“Yeah,” she answered with a nod. “You two want to stay over?”

“Nah.” Remy stood. “I want to get to the office early tomorrow, and you’re a very bad influence on my work ethic.”

“Your loss,” she said, shrugging. “But since I’m working both lunch and dinner shifts, we probably won’t see each other tomorrow.”

Linda was a waitress at Piazza, a restaurant on the trendy Newbury Street. She also attended school, working toward her teaching degree. Sometimes it was a bit tough to see each other.

“See what a bad influence you are? I’m not even out of your apartment, and already you’re working your wiles on me,” Remy said as he bent toward her.

He kissed her noisily on the lips and she reached up, gently holding the back of his head, making him kiss her more.

Bad influence or not.

Remy didn’t mind in the least.

The Catskill Mountains

The Deacon Estate

August 8, 1945

Deacon had no idea if his mad plan would work.

He had learned from a trusted, high-ranking source in the Pentagon where the first of the bombs was to be dropped, and had prepared to collect the energies that would be released when that bomb detonated.

Using less-than-legal channels, he had managed to dispatch the most sophisticated golem he had ever created to the island of Japan, where it traveled to the target city to await the inevitable. This golem would be the receiver for the death energies, collecting the vast amounts of power and transmitting it back to the receiver in the Catskills and into the members of the cabal.

At least, that was the plan. Whether or not it worked had yet to be determined.

Hundreds of thousands of people had died when the atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima, and as their life energies were transferred to Deacon, he experienced the life of each and every one of them. A mad rush of images, feelings, and sensations poured into him, threatening to drown him in their intensity.

He awakened with the screams of thousands upon his lips. He saw as they saw, their final memory of the fiery conflagration burned into his own.

Quickly he touched his own flesh, needing to prove to himself that he had not been reduced to ash. His flesh was damp with sweat, but it also tingled with vitality.

He sat up and held his hands out before him, flexing his fingers, feeling none of the aching pain that he’d been suffering. He felt his heart begin to beat faster, a pleasurable rush of blood to his head.

Did it work?

Deacon threw back the covers, exposing his nakedness. There was something different…the way he felt.

I think it did.

He swung his bare feet over the edge of the bed and touched the cold hardwood of the floor. Then he stood, experiencing a moment of stiffness as he lurched across the bedroom to his wife’s vanity. Deacon’s eyes widened as he caught his image in the large mirror that hung above it.

It was as if the hands of time had been turned back and he was looking at a photograph of himself from when he was barely in his twenties.

“It did work,” he whispered with wonder, bringing his fingers to his face to touch the healthy, taut flesh no longer ravaged by the passage of time and the use of corrosive magicks.

He smiled a perfect, healthy smile and stepped back to admire his youthful body.

“It worked!” he yelled, pointing at his magnificent reflection. It was then that he remembered the others…the cabal. If it had worked for him, then…

He bolted toward the door, remembering his nudity only as his strong, healthy hands closed on the crystal knob. He went to his wardrobe and removed a silk dressing gown, marveling at the sensation of the material on his rejuvenated flesh.

Then he dashed to the door and threw it open, tying the belt around his waist as he stepped out into the hall.

“It worked!” he bellowed once again with a laugh as he proceeded down the darkened hallway toward the stairs.

It was there that he discovered the first of his golems. It was one of his earlier, less-human-appearing designs, lying on the stairs on its stomach, as if it had fallen while ascending and was unable to rise.

Still barefooted, Deacon started down the steps past the prone form, noticing the circular burn mark in the center of its back. His mind raced. He quickened his pace to the lobby, where more of his creations lay, limbs akimbo, their artificial lives stolen from them.

Deacon immediately thought of his wife and son. “Veronica!” he cried, stepping over a fallen golem. “Teddy!”

The large house was eerily still as he rushed through the many rooms, finding more of his inhuman servants struck down by some destructive magickal force.

Were we attacked by the forces we plan to confront with our newly acquired life? he wondered as he passed through the kitchen and headed down another winding set of stairs toward his study.

“Veronica!” he called out again, moving down the corridor to the heavy wooden door at its end.

The door was ajar, something he never would have allowed, but before he could consider it, he heard the cry of his son.

“Teddy,” Deacon called out, pushing open the door and storming into the study.

Where he froze, stunned by the sight before him.

Teddy was struggling in the arms of Angus Heath, while the other members of the cabal pored through his belongings.

“Ah, you’re awake,” a far-younger-appearing Stearns said from where he stood beside a file cabinet, one of its drawers wide open to expose all the secrets contained within.

“What is the meaning of…,” Deacon began, but never finished.

Stearns moved like quicksilver, his hand extended, a spell of violence on his lips. A bolt of magickal energy shot out from his fingertips, striking Deacon square in the chest, sending him across the length of room, where he smashed into a bookcase filled with scientific journals and fell to the floor.

“Do you understand the meaning now?” Stearns asked, removing a handful of files from the cabinet drawer and sliding it closed. “Or would you like another example?”

Deacon was flat on his belly, his entire body numb. As he fought to stand, he tilted his head to one side, catching sight of a body on the floor behind the great expanse of his desk. It was his wife, crumpled on her side, eyes wide in obvious death.

“Veronica!” he cried out.

He managed to get to his hands and knees, crawling toward her body.

“I wouldn’t waste too much emotion on that one, Konrad,” Stearns said, coming to sit on the corner of the desk. “She was all too happy to show us your study.” He hefted the files he had removed from the cabinet, then tossed them on the desktop.

Deacon reached his wife, gently pulling her limp body into his arms. “What…what have you done?”

“Isn’t it obvious, man?” Stearns asked. “I struck her down.”

The other members of the cabal laughed.

“Daddy!” Teddy cried out. “They hurt Mommy!”

“Evidently, she had second thoughts once we began our search,” Stearns said. “She tried to stop us.” He laughed. “But I wasn’t about to leave until I got what I came for.”

“What do you want?” Deacon asked, looking up from Veronica’s body cradled in his arms. “All you had to do was ask me and-”

“I want it all, Konrad,” Stearns said. He waved his hands. “Everything you’ve done…everything responsible for this.”

He slid from the desk to show off his rejuvenated form.

“This was something, sir,” Stearns sneered. “Something to be truly proud of. You actually did it. You made me…” He looked quickly about the room at the others. “You made us strong again…stronger than we’ve ever been.”

Deacon could feel the anger at his core…the rage starting to grow.

“You killed my wife,” he said, his voice rising.

“I did,” Stearns said. “And I’m going to kill you, too, and take everything that belongs to you.”

“I’ll kill you first,” Deacon cried out, his own spell of destruction leaving his lips as he raised his hands and unleashed pure magickal force from his fingertips.

“You’ll try,” Stearns responded casually, erecting a shield of his own magickal force to deflect the attack. The blast went wild, blowing a burning hole in a nearby wall.

Deacon released his wife’s corpse, scrambling to his feet as his child cried out, “Daddy! Daddy!”

He wanted to go to his child, but he had to save himself first.

Stearns was unstoppable. Fiery blasts of arcane force rained down on Deacon. He did his best to shield himself, but the cabal leader had been made too strong, and each blow made it more difficult for Deacon to concentrate.

Deacon lay crumpled in a smoldering heap on the floor of his study. He could hear Stearns approaching, the fall of his shoes on the litter-strewn floor, and he prepared himself. He could not lose; everything that he was, everything he had done, depended on it.

The sound of the sorcerer calling forth a spell that would end his life flowed through the air, and Deacon sprang up, unleashing a blast of supernatural power summoned from the very core of his being. He watched as Stearns was engulfed in preternatural force, then turned his attention to the other members of the cabal.

“How dare you?” Deacon roared, enraged by the cabal’s betrayal.

Spells of violence started to fly; they were all so much stronger now. Deacon locked his eyes on his son as Angus Heath dragged the boy about the room, using his small body as a shield. The little boy twitched and writhed as magickal bolts of arcane energy struck him.

“No!” Deacon cried out in horror, throwing all caution to the wind as he hurled himself across the study.

Heath tried to strike him down, but the spell just missed its mark, nicking Deacon’s shoulder as he grabbed for his son. The three of them fell to the floor in a thrashing heap.

“Pig!” Deacon screamed, his fist landing heavily on Heath’s ruddy face, drawing a spray of blood. He punched again and again, the urge to reduce this vile creature’s face to so much pulp bringing him nearly to the brink of madness.

But then he heard the sound of his son calling his name, barely audible through his rage. He let Heath drop to the floor and turned to take his son into his arms.

“Teddy,” Deacon said, looking into the boy’s eyes, seeing that they had already begun to glaze. The magick was already going to work on him, like a powerful poison coursing through his young veins. It had been cast to kill Deacon; he could only imagine what it was doing to his child.

He searched his mind for spells-something, anything-that could stop it. Some were even more dangerous than what the child was experiencing, but what choice did he have?

Deacon leaned in close to the dying boy, lovingly stroking his cheek, and he began to utter the ancient words of a spell that might save his dwindling life…

But Deacon’s enemies would not have it.

A bolt of humming black energy struck him hard, hurling him to the floor atop his child. He tried to continue the spell, but the words would not come and his child’s life slowly ticked away.

He rolled over, gazing up into the sneering face of Algernon Stearns. It was bright red and blistered from the magick that had struck him, but Deacon could see that he was already healing.

The life energies from Hiroshima had made the sorcerer strong…had made them all strong.

“Please,” Deacon begged. “Let me save my son. Then everything I have…everything I know…it’s yours.”

The other members of the cabal came to stand beside their leader, all of them staring at Deacon with utter contempt in their eyes.

“Let me kill the boy,” Heath slurred through swollen lips and broken teeth.

Stearns ignored the fat sorcerer, his gaze fixed on Deacon.

“Please,” Deacon tried again, feeling his child’s life continue to slip away.

“It already belongs to me,” Stearns said, and he smiled as his hand began to pulse with an unearthly glow.

Still looking into Deacon’s eyes, Stearns thrust his hand downward, a flash of light leaving the tips of his fingers to strike the child laboring to breathe-fighting to remain alive.

And the child breathed no more.

Deacon lost all connection to the world with his son’s dying gasp. “Why?” he cried over and over again as he cradled his son tightly in his arms. “Why? Why? Why?”

“Because you gave me the power to do so,” Stearns said, leaning in close to whisper in his ear.

Deacon felt himself start to slip away, Stearns’ malignant words echoing down the lengthening corridor of his approaching unconsciousness.

He knew that he had the power to strike one last time, but also knew that it would be for naught; Stearns and the others would only strike him dead and take everything that he had worked so hard to achieve.

Though the darkness tugged at him, Deacon managed to wrest himself from its grip, forcing his way up through the ocean of oblivion, back to the realm of consciousness. Through bleary eyes he watched as they pillaged his study, as from deep within the recesses of his memory a spell slowly bubbled upward like a bloated, gas-filled corpse rising from the bottom of a murky lake.

And as he uttered the arcane words and the magick began to flow, the mansion started to shake-a slight tremor, barely noticeable at first-but growing in intensity and strength. Stearns stumbled as the floor beneath his feet bucked and heaved.

“You did this,” the sorcerer snarled, trying to keep his footing as he turned back to where Deacon still lay across the body of his son.

“Because I can,” Deacon echoed mockingly, trying with all his might to stay alive and to see the magickal manifestation of his power through.

The mansion began to creak and moan as its structure was challenged, and the shadows within became like a hungry thing, bottomless and black.

Drawing the house into its maw.

The Deacon estate, consumed by darkness.