They had temporarily stopped in the stairway, Angus needing a quick breather, before continuing on up to the television studio, when the building started to shake.
“Okay,” Francis said as the lighting flickered.
The temperature dramatically plummeted, and Francis was nearly overwhelmed with an odd sensation reminiscent of dropping down in an elevator.
“Did you feel that?” Francis asked.
“Yes,” Angus said, in between heavy breaths as the hallway went entirely to darkness. “And it isn’t anything normal.”
A dancing orange flame suddenly appeared, hovering above Angus’ outstretched palm, shedding some light in the stairway.
The building was rocking, a powerful vibration moving through the stairs and the metal handrail beneath their grips.
“Earthquake?” Francis suggested.
“Worse,” Angus answered, as cracks began to appear in the wall. “Much worse.”
And then they heard it from somewhere in the stairwell below them: a horrible roar unrecognizable to anything that existed in this world.
“I’m guessing that’s part of the problem you’re talking about?”
“A part,” Angus said. “We might want to get out of this stairwell as quickly as possible,” the sorcerer suggested as they listened to the new sounds of something large and growling dragging its considerable weight up the concrete stairs.
The light from the hovering flame showed them that they were near an entrance to one of the upper floors, and Francis darted toward it, pulling open the door.
What they found on that particular floor was not at all what they had expected.
“What the fuck is this?” Francis asked, totally taken aback. It looked as though they were in the hallway of some great old mansion run through a fun-house mirror. Everything was skewed to a bizarre angle.
“It’s what I suspected,” Angus said, moving the flame around to pierce the darkness so that they could better see their environment.
“Which is?”
“We’re no longer in Stearns’ building,” the sorcerer said.
“What the fuck are you talking about, we’re no longer in the building?”
“Right now we’re no longer inside the building,” the sorcerer repeated. “Outside that door, yes, we’re in the building… Down the staircase a floor, where we heard the unnatural sounds…probably not.”
“You’ve fucking lost me,” Francis said.
“Don’t ask me how,” Angus started to explain. “But I believe that Konrad Deacon has returned, and in doing so has somehow transferred his estate back to this realm, occupying the same space as Stearns’ office building.”
“So the two are sort of smooshed together,” Francis asked, eyes darting around the corridor. He slowly removed the Pitiless pistol from within his jacket.
“If you want to be scientific,” Angus responded.
The shadows in the hall appeared to be moving, shifting, flowing along the walls and floor. There were sounds coming from the ever-expanding pools of blackness.
“Anything to say about that?” Francis asked, watching the flowing darkness.
“Nothing other than it appears as though some of the shadow world where Deacon has been living seems to have leaked through along with his house.”
“That can’t be good,” Francis said, watching something large and covered with black spines erupt from the shadow pool, leaping from one body of darkness to disappear into another.
“It’s not good at all,” Angus agreed, his fingers beginning to crackle with defensive magick. “Especially if it’s still leaking.”
“Leaking is never good.”
“No.”
Francis felt what little hair he had left on the back of his neck suddenly stand straight on end. He didn’t have time to utter a warning or to tell Angus to get away; the former Guardian angel just reacted, spinning around and firing at the large, serpentine shape that had silently risen from a body of shadow that had formed behind them.
The pistol roared angrily, a seemingly endless supply of bullets entering the thick, trunklike body of the snakelike thing that appeared to be molded from tar. Seemingly unfazed by the gunshots, the creature lunged, its cavernous maw open to consume at least one, or maybe even both, if it were lucky. Francis dove from its path, continuing to fire into the serpent’s shiny black face.
Angus clothed himself in a shield of crackling blue energy. The monster’s snout struck the obstruction violently and made its already sunny disposition all the more pleasant. Frustrated, the serpent reared back, opening its mouth wider, its jaws unhinging as if getting ready to swallow an egg.
The gunshots weren’t helping matters, and Francis slipped the pistol back inside his jacket and went through his duffel bag of weapons in the hopes of finding something that could damage the beast of shadow.
The serpent clamped down upon Angus’ bubble, its curved obsidian fangs actually penetrating the energy sphere. It pulled back savagely, dragging the bubble, and Angus with it, toward the body of liquid darkness from where it had originated.
Francis found an ornate short sword and lunged at the beast. It was probably only supposed to be used for special rituals, but beggars couldn’t be choosers, and he swung the sword with all his might. The razor’s edge bit deeply into the oily black flesh of the monster, but it failed to slow its progress. With horror, Francis watched as the serpent disappeared back into the bubbling liquid pitch, dragging the energy sphere, with the screaming Angus inside, down beneath the shadow.
At the edge, Francis looked down into the still surface, not a ripple showing what had just transpired. He considered diving into the pool in search of the sorcerer, but decided against it. He didn’t like the sorcerer that much, and, besides, he suspected that Angus had already met a nasty fate.
He stepped away from the edge, not wanting any surprises. There were strange noises coming from other patches of expanding shadow all around him, and he figured it would probably be in his best interest to get the fuck out of there and try to find another section of the office building that didn’t have a leaking problem.
Turning his back, he returned to the duffel, tossing the short sword back inside, and was just about to take hold of the handles when he again sensed something happening behind him.
Francis barely had time to turn as the great serpent surged up from the lake of darkness, a shriek of ferocity escaping from its cavernous mouth. Leaving the duffel, Francis leapt toward the corridor in front of him, evading puddles of darkness that littered the floor as he ran. He chanced a quick glance over his shoulder and was shocked to see the upper trunk of the shadow beast pitch forward, landing heavily on the floor outside the pool to lie perfectly still.
Hesitating, he watched the thing. The serpent appeared dead, and Francis had to wonder if eating Angus had somehow poisoned it. He stepped closer to the dead monster to retrieve his bag of weapons when he saw movement ahead-not from the shadow beast, but from the now bubbling pool.
What the fuck now? the Guardian angel wondered, dashing ahead to quickly snatch up his bag and get as far away as he could before some other nightmare emerged.
And something did rise from the tarlike body of liquid, coughing and sputtering as it reached to grab hold of the edge of the floor. It was Angus, but there was something bubbling up from below behind him.
“Angus!” Francis cried out, pulling his pistol as the other shape and another behind that one swam up behind the sorcerer, helping to push him from the pool.
“Put that fucking thing away,” said a voice that was vaguely familiar to him.
Francis came forward and bent down to grab hold of Angus’ arm and pull him from the sucking blackness, careful to not fall in himself.
“Nice to see you again,” Francis said. “Didn’t think you’d made it.”
The sorcerer coughed, spitting filth from his mouth. “Wouldn’t have…if…if it wasn’t for them.”
Two more figures had crawled
out of the black lake, a smaller, stockier form helping the thinner, more petite.
It didn’t take Francis long to recognize the goblin that had brought Remy back from the shadow realm and the teenage girl that Remy had been so desperate to save.
“Are you responsible for that?” Francis asked, as the goblin walked over to the dead serpent, brushing off the clinging remnants of liquid shadow from his clothes. The goblin squatted down and with a grunt rolled the massive body of the snake over. There was a nasty-looking knife blade protruding from its lower body.
“Yep,” the goblin said, removing the blade and letting the body flop back heavily to the floor. He wiped the thing’s black blood on the leg of his pants.
“Impressive,” Francis said.
“Thanks.”
The goblin went to stand beside the girl, who was peeling away the darkness that clung to her, flicking it onto the floor. There was a look in her eyes, something that probably hadn’t been there before all this, when she was just Remy’s neighbor, looking after his dog.
“You all right?” Francis asked her.
She just stared at him with those intense eyes. Eyes that had seen so much in such a short period of time.
“Ashley, right?” Francis said, positive that this time she was the real thing and not some artificial life-form created from magick and clay.
She nodded quickly. “Do I know you?”
“No, but you know my friend…Remy.”
“Remy,” she said.
“Yeah. I’m going to take you to him, all right?” Francis said.
Ashley nodded again. “Remy will take me home,” she said, a hint of hope in her voice.
“That’s the plan,” Francis said, his mind already on to the next obstacle.
It wasn’t going to be easy.
The two sorcerers stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity, but it was Stearns who blinked first.
Remy watched as the exoskeletoned Stearns uttered some guttural spell, casting a wave of destructive power toward his opponent. Reacting instinctively, Remy threw his body over that of the little girl, shielding her from the devastating repercussions that were sure to follow.
From the corner of his eye, Remy watched as Deacon cast his own spell, a shield of protection that deflected the magickal outburst from Stearns toward the ceiling with catastrophic results.
There was a cacophonous rush of air as the ceiling of the skyscraper exploded in a shower of rubble, glass, and steel. Remy could not help but turn his gaze to the nightmare unfolding above him, coming to the sickening realization that things were even worse than he suspected.
He’d pictured the wreckage of the skyscraper rooftop plummeting to the streets of Boston below, never imagining that the rubble wouldn’t get the chance to fall. In the dark and tempestuous sky above him, there was a black and swirling whirlpool; a spinning hole in the fabric of reality, sucking up the pieces of refuse blown into the air by the deflection of Stearns’ magickal attack.
“Dear God,” Remy uttered. He could feel the pull of the vortex, and knew without a doubt where it had originated. Somehow by coming here, Deacon had created some sort of opening-a breach between the shadow realm and the world outside it.
It was Deacon’s turn to attack now, the fires of the divine flowing from his outstretched hands to incinerate Stearns below. Remy could feel the power move as it flowed from the air, hungry to consume its adversary, a familiar tugging at the core of his being for the divine might that once was his.
Stearns awkwardly leapt from the path of the hungry fire, already unleashing another magickal attack on his adversary. Explosions of supernatural energies were decimating what remained of the television studio, and Remy knew that it wouldn’t be long until he and the child were left exposed and helpless.
“We have to get out of here,” he told her over the near-deafening sounds of a sorcerers’ duel. The child began to protest as Remy bent down to lift her, and he was startled by what he saw. A section of wall had fallen on the child’s lower body, the injuries exposing the truth about her.
“Leave me here,” she said, attempting to push him away.
Though her lower body was revealed to be made from clay, Remy saw genuine pain in the artificial child’s eyes then, and it moved him to not even consider her request.
He tossed the section of wall away and lifted her up from the ground, the pull on him from the swirling maelstrom in the sky above becoming stronger. It was something he didn’t even want to consider, but he could feel the dark dimension tugging on his clothes as he made his way across the pieces of rubble, toward where he remembered the door leading into the studio had been.
“I’m going to take you someplace safe and…”
“And then?” Angelina asked, her voice frightfully soft over the sounds of magickal conflict going on behind them.
“Don’t you worry about that,” Remy said, finding the twisted remains of the staircase that would bring them down to the level below the studio.
“I would have killed them,” Angelina said into his ear as he carefully descended the broken steps.
On the next level, he found a safe place to set her down beneath a section of ceiling that still appeared relatively intact.
“Don’t think of that now,” he said, gently leaning her back against a section of wall.
“If the attack hadn’t come, I would have killed everyone who was watching and listening to me,” she said.
He didn’t argue, knowing that what she said was indeed the truth.
“I knew that something was wrong when I felt them-the angels-inside my head.” The little child paused, eyes welling with tears. “They were hurting so bad,” she said. “And they actually believed that their hurt could make things better.”
Something exploded above them, plaster dust raining down on them like a fog.
“But we don’t have to worry about that now,” Remy told her. “I have to go,” he started to explain. “But I want you to stay here and be safe until…”
“Until,” she said.
“I have to try to do something,” he told her.
She smiled at him, tears running down her filthy cheeks. She lifted a hand and placed it on his face.
“You’re special, aren’t you?” she said. “You’re like them…the angels. But instead of sadness, you’re filled with hope.”
He tried to leave her, but for some reason couldn’t.
“I can feel something inside you,” she said, still touching him. “Something buried so very deep…It wants to come out, but it’s hurt…weak.”
The entire building was shaking again, the fight above intensifying. He had no idea what the two sorcerers were capable of; it was a distinct possibility that the city could be destroyed as a result of their confrontation.
He took her hand and started to pull it away.
“I need to go, Angelina,” he told her.
“I have some of their life still inside me,” she said.
Remy didn’t understand.
“When I began the angels’ message, some of those who were listening passed away, and their life energies were passed into me,” the golem child said.
“Didn’t Stearns…”
“He received some, but not all. When the power went out, for a little bit, there was still energy flowing into me.”
“I don’t understand what that has to do with me,” Remy told her.
“I can use that power… I can wake it up,” she said.
Remy cocked his head, still unsure where this was going.
“The thing inside you,” the child said. She pulled her hand from his, laying it flat against his chest. “I can give it the strength it needs…the strength you need…”
“What are you…” Remy started to ask, as a surge of something entered his chest.
He cried out, falling backward as something exploded inside him. He lay in the rubble-strewn hallway, the sound of magickal conflagration happening all around, and felt the fires
surge inside him.
“What did you do?” he croaked, his body now racked with incredible pain as the spark of the Seraphim surged hungrily to life.
“I’ve given it what it needs,” the child said, barely able to keep her eyes open, her head lolling to one side. Her skin had taken on a sickly gray pallor, more like cold stone-or wet clay-than flesh.
Fire trailed from Remy’s fingertips, but it was a fire the likes of which he had never known. It was a fire fed by life, and it burned hotter and faster than the divine fire that had been stolen from him. It filled his mind with the experiences of thousands, pieces of their lives; moments of tenderness, joy, hope, fear, misery, and sadness. All these were now his, part of the fire that fed his angelic nature, making it drunk on the life forces of thousands.
It took everything that Remy still had to keep his power in check; it wanted to explode from him, to wreak vengeance on those who had humbled it so. It wanted to make them all pay.
And while it was at it, it would make the world pay.
“No,” Remy roared, flexing the muscle of his will. He had finally unified his dual natures and was not about to let that of the Seraphim rip free now, no matter how much this new power desired to do so.
Remy had fought too hard to make this so.
Angelina looked even worse than she had before, her once-beautiful dark hair now dried and brittle like straw and falling from her head as the life left her.
“It will soon be dark for me again,” she said, withered hands playing feebly with a clump of hair that had fallen into her lap.
Remy breathed in and out, holding on to the power-to the myriad emotions that threatened to push him over the edge.
“But that’s all right,” she told him. “As long as we were able to stop this…”
The building violently shook, dust and pieces of ceiling raining down, as the shadows around them unnaturally started to expand.
“As long as you are able to stop this.”
He felt compelled to hold her as life ran out, and he knelt down amid the rubble and put his arms around her.
“The angels’ message was a lie,” she told him sleepily. “But I heard another.”
Remy looked down at the artificial child, startled to see that her childlike features were now completely gone. It was like he was looking at the beginning of a clay sculpture, the rudimentary shape implying that it would soon resemble the human form.
In the House of the Wicked rc-5 Page 27