“Thinking an all-you-can-eat-buffet hungry?” Francis asked to help him gauge the level of importance.
“Hungry for the power that only the deaths of countless people would satisfy.” Angus finished his own cigarette, grinding it out on the bedside table and leaving it there.
Francis felt a sudden dip in the temperature of the room and knew it wasn’t a chill from Angus’ statement. The Pitiless pistol was in his grip once again as he stood, his every sense on full alert.
“What is it?” Angus asked nervously, throwing his tree trunk–sized legs over the side of the bed, ready to flee.
“It feels different in here.” Francis carefully stepped away from the desk, attempting to home in on the cause of the disturbance.
“I feel it, too,” Angus said. He extended his arms, fingertips wiggling. “It’s as if something is pulling the energy from the room—”
The fluorescents in the bathroom went dark with a hum, plunging the room into darkness.
“Don’t move,” Francis ordered, blinking to adjust to the sudden loss of light.
The room was awash in shadow, but for some reason he could not take his eyes from the covering of shadow that had appeared on the closet door. There was something about it, blacker than all the other shadows in the room. He moved closer to it, holding out his free hand, and felt an exhalation of cold.
“Got it,” he said, raising his gun to the shadow just as a short, stocky, hooded figure began to emerge. He almost began to fire, but quickly removed his finger from the delicate trigger of the Pitiless pistol when he noticed the form of a teenage girl slung over the creature’s shoulder, and the body of a man he was dragging from the darkness behind him.
Francis’ aim never wavered as the ugly creature let the girl’s still body drop to the floor, then turned to haul the man from the passage of shadow into the room. He would have liked to say that he was surprised to see the unconscious form of Remy Chandler lying on the floor before him, but when it came to his Seraphim friend, nothing surprised Francis anymore.
“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?” he ordered, aiming at a line of particularly thick wrinkles on the ugly wretch’s forehead.
The small creature slowly raised his eyes, as if realizing for the very first time that he wasn’t alone.
“Why don’t you put down that gun before I forget I’m on a mission of mercy and shove it up your ass?”
Squire glared at the man still holding the pistol on him.
“Okay, how about this: Why don’t you put down that gun before I forget I’m on a mission of mercy and shove it up your ass, please?”
“Well, since you said please,” the one with the gun replied, losing the weapon inside his suit jacket. He knelt down beside the man that Squire had dragged from the Shadow Paths. “Is he all right?”
Squire could tell right away that the two shared a special bond, something stronger than mere friendship. He guessed that this one was one of the good guys, too, but he could also sense another vibe from him, one that suggested he could go either way. He was well acquainted with those types, as well, and had put many in the grave for choosing the wrong side.
“Got knocked around pretty good, but he seems to be durable.” Squire pointed to the girl. “She’s probably going to need some attention.”
A fat guy that reeked of magick knelt with a grunt beside the injured girl.
“Wouldn’t do anything that might harm her, if I were you,” the goblin warned the magick user. “In fact, I’d do everything in my power to see that she makes it. This one seems pretty darn attached,” he said, pointing to the still-unconscious Remy. “And something tells me you wouldn’t want to get on his bad side.”
The one that had held the gun on him lifted the man from the floor. “This one’s a pussycat,” he said, carrying him to the bed and letting his body fall limply to the mattress.
The magick user carefully picked up the girl and laid her beside the man on the double bed.
“Now, why don’t you explain who you are and what you know about these two?” the man with the gun said, coming around the bed toward Squire.
“Nothing much to tell,” Squire said. His preternatural senses had already started to fan out, feeling this world for what it was. It wasn’t as far along as many of the others he had discovered off the paths that he’d wandered through the years, but he could still sense the potential for disaster.
This world seemed to have a much longer fuse than some of the others, but he imagined it would eventually end up as they had. The hobgoblin suddenly couldn’t stand to be there anymore; the temptation to stay was too great.
“My job is done,” he said, pulling his hood up over his blocky head and pointed ears. “Make sure they’re well taken care of.” He nodded toward the two on the bed. “I get a sense they’re special, and you don’t want to lose special.”
“Who are you?” the friend asked the goblin.
“Nobody, really,” Squire responded. He wanted to dive into the darkness, to be gone, to return to the Shadow Paths, but something held him there, savoring a world very much like his own.
A world he missed.
“I used to be a lot like you, living in a place a lot like this, but then things got out of hand….”
“And?”
“Let’s just say it didn’t end well. Take care of this place,” the hobgoblin said as he waded into the passage of darkness. “You never really know how much longer it’s going to be around.”
Even when he’d had the combined life forces of 166,000 Japanese coursing through his body, Konrad Deacon had never felt anything quite like this.
“It’s magnificent, Teddy,” he told his son, who cowered in a corner of the master bedroom, eyes reflecting the living fire that trailed from Deacon’s hand as he waved it in the air before him. “It’s like no other power I’ve ever experienced…. It’s as if it’s alive inside me.”
The fire rippled across the smooth muscles of Deacon’s newly invigorated flesh like solar flares on the surface of the sun. He admired himself in the reflective surfaces of the room, finding it difficult to tear his gaze away.
“Look at me,” he proclaimed to his frightened child. “If I had known it would take the life energies of only one angel to feel this way, I would have hunted one down years ago.”
He had always known that the world was a secret place, its many dark corners and angles filled with mysteries not for the common man to fathom, but now—as his mind filled with the knowledge of an angel—a divine light had been shined upon the darkness.
And Konrad Deacon knew so much more.
The world was a far more dangerous place than he had ever thought, and he realized that with this level of power within him, he now had the means to do something about it.
He now had the means to make it safe.
But to be successful, he knew that he must transcend his humanity, giving up all mortal frailties and embracing what he would become.
Deacon smiled, imagining wings of fire erupting from his shoulder blades.
And they did.
“I could become a god,” he told his child, whose eyes were wide and wild at the sight of the appendages of flame that gently fanned the stagnant air of the bedroom.
Deacon began to laugh, gently at first, but growing to near hysteria. He was laughing so hard that he was losing control of the divine fire, and burning feathers dropped from his wings, setting the floor and some of the furniture ablaze.
Teddy jumped up with a frightened yelp, running to the closed door, fumbling with the doorknob in an attempt to escape.
“Don’t be afraid, son,” Deacon called to his child. “It just takes some time to get used to.”
He was trying to absorb the holy fire back into his new form, but succeeded only in making it worse. The flames burned furiously, reducing objects in the room to blackened ash in a matter of seconds. Deacon imagined the fire being used on the flesh of his enemies and wondered if there was a way to slow
it down.
To prolong the agony.
That would be a wonderful thing.
The bedroom door flew open, slamming against the plaster wall already cracked by the passage of the home from earth to the shadowy realm. There was no talking to the boy in his current state, and Deacon allowed him to scamper off. There were far more important things to concern himself with at the moment.
He had to start thinking about his future and the future of the world. Not the world outside his window, but the world he had fled to escape his betrayers.
Deacon made his body glow like the sun, casting his holy light from the dingy windows to chase away the darkness—and anything that might be hiding within it.
Someone cleared his throat behind him, and Deacon slowly turned toward the sound.
Scrimshaw stood just inside the doorway.
“Scrimshaw,” Deacon said, and thrust out his arms for the golem to admire. “What do you think?”
“Quite impressive, sir,” the artificial man said. “I wanted to let you know that we’ve boarded up just about all of the broken windows, and reset the alarms. I’m waiting for a work crew to let me know how long it will be before the fence is—”
“Don’t bother,” Deacon interrupted his faithful servant.
“Excuse me, sir?”
“I said, don’t bother,” Deacon repeated. He slowly turned back to the bedroom window, allowing the fire that radiated from his body to grow all the brighter. “We’re not staying here.”
“Sir?” Scrimshaw questioned.
“You heard me,” Deacon said testily, crimping his annoyance, realizing that he must be above such emotions if he were to attain his new stature. “We’re leaving this place.”
“Leaving?”
Deacon looked to his servant. “How am I to attain godhood and save humanity from the hidden horrors of the supernatural if I remain in this desolate place?” he asked.
Scrimshaw, smart enough to know that it wasn’t a true question, didn’t answer.
“And besides,” Deacon added with a sly smile. “Now that I have all of this power, I can finally take my revenge on those who wronged me.”
“Shall I pack your bags, sir?” Scrimshaw asked, ever the faithful servant.
Deacon began to laugh again, amused by his servant’s naïveté.
“No need for that,” he said, turning his attention back to the window and the fleeting darkness outside.
“I brought it all here, and I intend to take it all back.”
Angus Heath could not sleep, and was tired of hearing about the little miracle girl who was waiting to deliver a message from God to the world.
The sorcerer sneered as he quietly passed the television reporting yet another story of the child and her promise. It was all bullshit as far as he was concerned. The Creator…God…or whatever it was being called now had lost interest in its earthly creations a long, long time ago, and the only message that Heath could imagine the little girl delivering was that the human race was a total disappointment.
Francis was deep in some sort of trancelike state that was as close to sleep as a fallen angel could manage, while the other—Remy was what Francis had called him—was still recovering from the injuries he had sustained in the place of shadows.
But it was neither of the two divine beings that interested him at the moment; it was the girl.
Angus moved around the bed to where she lay. The bathroom light had been left on, the door partially closed, shedding some light in the rented room.
Light from which he could check on his suspicions.
The girl had been hurt pretty badly, looking as though she had been mauled by some kind of animal. He had cleaned the wounds and bandaged them the best he could while Francis fretted over his unconscious friend.
That had been when he started to suspect that there was more to this young woman than initially met the eye.
Angus hovered over her as she slept, angling his body in such a way so as not to block the light leaking from the bathroom. Carefully, he reached out to peel back the girl’s covers. Her shirt was still unbuttoned, exposing her young flesh and the heavy bandages he had placed upon her wounds.
He could not deny the fact that he felt the pangs of hunger emerging, but doubted he would receive much in the way of sustenance from this one if his suspicions were correct.
Angus first pulled away a piece of the tape and, when he saw that his touch did not disturb her slumber, lifted the bandage to get a better look at the wound. It had already started to heal, far faster than it should have been able to. He leaned in closer and stuck his finger into the healing gash, attempting to pull the flesh apart to see what secrets lay beneath.
“What the fuck are you doing?” asked an angry voice, and he felt the cold barrel of a pistol against the back of his head.
Angus pulled his fingers away and froze.
“I’m checking something.”
“Looked a little nastier than that to me,” Francis said. “Planning an unauthorized midnight snack, perhaps?” the fallen angel suggested.
The sorcerer sighed. “If I’d planned to do that, I could have just kissed her.”
“What were you checking?”
Angus felt the pressure on the back of his head ease, and he turned to face Francis. “I was checking to see if she’s real.”
Francis looked at him, head cocked to one side. “Excuse me?”
“As I tended her wounds, I got a sense that maybe she isn’t as human as she appears to be.”
“You’re talking nonsense.”
“Perhaps, but that still doesn’t explain the strange aura I’m sensing.”
“Strange aura,” Francis repeated. “That pretty much says it all.”
Angus couldn’t stand it any longer; he needed to be vindicated. He turned again to the girl and reached out, plunging his fingers into the exposed stomach wound and ripping a portion of the flesh away.
Francis reacted as Angus thought he might, pistol-whipping him and throwing him to the floor.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” the angel said, going to the girl’s side but stopping cold when he saw what had been revealed.
“Not what you expected to see, is it?” Angus asked, rubbing the sore spot at the back of his head.
“That’s not what I think it is…is it?” Francis asked, moving in for a closer look.
“All depends on what you thought you might see,” Angus said, joining him at the bedside. “If you thought you’d see bloody flesh and exposed muscle, no, not at all.” He stared at the open wound and the damp gray material that lay beneath it. “But if you expected to find clay, then we were both right.”
“It isn’t her,” Francis said, eyes darting to the unconscious Remy on the bed.
“No, it isn’t,” Angus agreed. “She’s a golem…a very advanced golem, but a golem nonetheless.”
“Then where’s the real Ashley?” Francis asked, worry in his voice.
Angus looked over to the closet door, remembering the thick wall of shadow that had appeared there.
“Still over there, I’d imagine.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Never talk to strangers.
Ashley heard her mother’s voice over and over again, echoing inside her skull, growing louder with every utterance until she felt as though she might scream until her throat bled.
But she had already done that.
When she’d awakened inside the metal cage.
She opened her eyes quickly, hoping that something—anything—might have changed, but she was still there.
Cramped inside a cage, stuck in the corner of a filthy room that had been decorated for a small child a very long time ago.
There was a part of her that still hoped something was wrong with her, that maybe she’d had some sort of horrible illness, a fever so high that it caused her to hallucinate, or maybe she’d been in a car accident and this was some kind of head trauma. She would even accept being drugged at a party,
but she couldn’t remember the last time she’d even been to a party.
All she could remember was that afternoon, heading downtown and filling out job applications.
And the strange man.
Never talk to strangers.
She almost told her mother to shut up, but just the thought of her mother made her begin to cry, and she had been crying so often, for so long, that she barely had any tears left.
Ashley had first noticed the man in the antique store, watching her as she had petted the cat. She remembered how she was annoyed at first and then creeped out. She’d been tempted to tell the guy off, but instead she had moved on to the next on her list of potential employers.
Remy would have been proud of her, being aware of her surroundings and who was in them. He’d always drilled that into her: Pay attention to details, no matter how small. All good advice, like…
Don’t talk to strangers.
As she lay curled up on a dirty blanket draped across the bottom of the cage, Ashley realized that the alarms had stopped. The grating sounds had started suddenly and had seemed to go on and on for a very long time.
But they’d finally been silenced.
She had thought the alarms might have had something to do with her, that maybe somebody—Remy—had come to take her home.
But the alarms had stopped, and she was still here.
Remy hadn’t come.
She hadn’t a clue as to where she was or why she had been taken, so even though she didn’t want to relive it, she allowed the scene to replay in her mind. Maybe she had missed something.
She had finished her job search for the day and wanted something to drink. Knowing that there was nothing good back at the apartment, she had stopped at a convenience store not too far from her new home.
It was funny the details that she remembered leading up to…
Ashley began to tremble, pulling herself tighter into a ball. It was cold in the little kid’s room, and she reached out to pull a corner of the blanket over herself.
The convenience store had been empty. A song had been playing softly over the speakers. She’d recognized the tune but couldn’t remember exactly what it was; it had been mangled so badly in this horrible Muzak version.
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