“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.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“Never let them take anything away from you,” Konrad Deacon remembered his dementia-wracked grandfather saying to him. “And if they do…make them pay dearly for taking it.”
Even as he experienced the excruciating pain of Algernon Stearns attempting to steal away his divine power, Deacon could still remember the old man’s urgings and the disturbing smile that adorned his ancient face as he spoke them.
“Make them pay dearly for taking it.”
As soon as Stearns laid his hands upon him, he’d felt his strength, his angelic power, gradually being drained away.
How is he doing this? Deacon wondered, always questioning, always the seeker of knowledge. He could see that his rival was adorned in complex mechanics-something akin to the exoskeleton he himself had worn to siphon the collected life energies from his golem receptacles.
But there was something different about Stearns, something that went beyond the special suit.
Deacon struggled in the sorcerer’s grasp, reaching up to pull away the hand that was pressed against his face. And that was when he saw how much Stearns had been changed by that experiment so many years ago.
That was when he saw the mouths.
“They’re hungry, Konrad,” Stearns said, “And now that they’ve gotten a taste of you, they’re absolutely ravenous.”
For a brief instant, Deacon had to wonder how drastically the others of the cabal had been altered by his experiment, but his thoughts were replaced by agony as Stearns laid his hungry hands on him and resumed his feeding.
From the corner of his eye, Deacon saw his wife. Of course she would be here to see this.
It’s exactly as I told you, she chided, never lifting a finger to help. Stearns is going to take it all away.
“No,” he screamed aloud, but that just made Stearns laugh, and he felt himself growing weaker all the faster.
A supernatural halo of fire had started to burn around his enemy’s head, and that infuriated him to the brink of madness.
This was his power… his…He had taken it from one of Heaven’s soldiers himself…not Algernon Stearns… Konrad Deacon.
He had taken it… He was the master.
Deacon looked up into Stearns’ smiling face and smiled back. He watched as his rival’s expression went from one of joy to confusion…
And then to concern.
This was his power…and he would control it.
Deacon reached within himself, stopping the flow of divine energy into Stearns’ body.
His wife’s nagging voice was replaced by that of his grandfather, urging him to make his enemy pay. Flashes of a moment from his past exploded within his memory as he took control of the power. He recalled the first time he had truly listened to his grandfather’s words.
When he was just a boy of six or seven, the family’s driver was a man named Keady, a cruel man who resented young Konrad and the life of wealth and privilege into which he’d been born. And on one particular day, when Mr. Keady was supposed to be driving Konrad to a child’s birthday party at the home of another family of wealth and privilege, that resentment reared its ugly head. Young Konrad was enjoying a lollipop-cherry flavored; he’d always loved cherries-when Mr. Keady ordered him to throw it away, or he wouldn’t be allowed in the car. Of course, he had protested, and the driver took full advantage of the authority he had been given when it came to the car, citing rules laid down by Konrad’s father himself that there would be no food or drink allowed in the vehicle.
And still Konrad had refused, attempting to climb into the back of the limousine with his cherry treat, which was when Mr. Keady happily acted, tearing the lolli from his mouth and tossing it to the ground.
Konrad remembered crying as if he’d lost a loved one, but he also remembered Mr. Keady laughing, as if this act of cruelty was one of the funniest things he had ever seen.
Konrad remembered.
The recollection of his past trauma now gave him the strength to stand. Stearns fought him, fought to feed, but Deacon had stopped the flow of power, keeping it all to himself.
Make them pay for taking it.
After he had gone to the birthday party, where treats of every conceivable imagining had been available to him, but not his cherry lollipop, he had gone to see his grandfather, to tell the old man what Mr. Keady had done.
Never mind the fact that he had already told his mother and father, who had ignored his indignant ravings; if there was anybody in his home that would understand, it would be his grandfather.
And his grandfather had understood perfectly well, and told him what he needed to do.
“Make them pay for taking it.”
Some of his mother’s special sleeping medicine crushed up and slipped into Mr. Keady’s nightly coffee was how he set his revenge in motion. He had been so careful and quiet that night-invisible. The driver knew nothing of his drugged drink, downing the coffee, and preparing a bath. The cruel man had collapsed on the bed in his bathrobe as the water had run, filling the tub.
Konrad didn’t know if he would be strong enough at that young age to do what he needed to. It had taken him close to two hours but he had done it, dragging the unconscious man to the now-filled tub and, with great effort, putting him into the bath.
One of the maids had found him the next morning, screaming at the discovery that Mr. Keady had drowned in the bath.
Konrad remembered how he had smiled when he heard the commotion caused by the discovery, and relived the satisfaction he had felt as he watched the man sink beneath the bath waters, the last of the bubbles from his mouth and nose popping to the surface.
It was similar to what he was feeling now as he watched his enemy struggle to regain control.
Veronica was there again, dancing at the corner of his vision. He could sense that she was about to tell him yet again what Stearns would do, and he didn’t want to hear it.
“Shut up,” Deacon snarled, letting the divine power that he had been holding back flow into his enemy’s body unabated.
For a moment, as the heavenly energy surged into his body, Stearns actually believed that he had won. Foolish man.
Remy Chandler was drunk on the life forces of thousands.
He could feel energy coursing through his veins like blood, sparks of memories, not his own, exploding in his mind in a cacophony of emotion, sight, and sounds.
He had never experienced anything so wonderful and yet terrifying. It was like he was being hit by tsunami-force waves, one right after the next.
Waves of people’s life experiences.
Births, deaths, celebrations of every conceivable kind; one tumbling into another, his every sense on fire with the phenomena. He felt himself starting to slow, being driven to the ground by the perpetual onslaught, but he knew that he couldn’t falter.
The fate of so many more were depending on him.
As he used to do with the power of the Seraphim, he forced the bombardment down, pushing it deep within, where it threatened to explode from its confines. But he could not think of that.
Remy found the broken stairway and made his way upward to where the television studio had once been, but now was nothing more than rubble open to the world.
His attention was immediately drawn to the struggle going on across the expanse of wreckage: Deacon versus Stearns. The energy that radiated from the battling pair was incredible; he could feel its intensity on his face from where he stood.
And then his eyes turned skyward, and he gazed in awe and horror at the swirling maelstrom of darkness that had opened there. It had grown larger in the short time since he’d last laid eyes on it, and it made the current situation all the more dire.
Remy moved from the ruined doorway, up farther into the demolished studio. He found himself drawn to the sorcerers’ struggle, sensing that the fight was over the power that once belonged to him.
The power of the Seraphim.
A power that he would need if he had any hopes of stopping this madness.
He gazed at the magick users in mortal combat through flying rubble and smoke, and had no idea what he should do.
But he had to do something.
His gaze dropped down to see the body of the Grigori Armaros slumped back against a section of broken wall. The other Watchers lay around him, all of them with the hilts of daggers protruding from their chests.
A surge of memory like a bolt of lightning caused him to gasp aloud as it filled his mind. He was about to wrestle it, to shove it back away with the others, when something made him pause.
And remember.
Remy experienced the memory of the Grigori leader as he was given his gift of death. Hands from an impenetrable wall of shadow reached out to present the Watcher leader with something rolled in ancient sackcloth.
“To still the heart of Heaven’s own,” said a silken voice as Armaros took the gift. “And create believers of us all.”
The memory seemed to fast-forward as Armaros held the ancient dagger poised above his heart, and the explosion of pain and joy that was experienced as his life-and those of his brethren-came to an end.
Their life energies surging outward into the golem child, and then out into the world.
Remy gasped for breath as the memory released him, and he found his eyes locked on the hilt of the mystical blade protruding from the dead, fallen angel’s chest.
To still the heart of Heaven’s own, he heard the mysterious voice echo within the halls of his thoughts, as he turned his gaze to the spectacle of battle still going on across from him.
It appeared now that Deacon was winning.
He squatted down, hand temporarily hovering over the hilt of the blade, before taking it in his hand.
And pulling it from the angel’s stilled heart.
Francis stopped at the stairwell door and turned.
“Where the fuck are Squire and Ashley?” he asked.
Angus turned to the corridor and the darkness that eventually swallowed it.
“They were right here a minute ago,” the sorcerer said.
“Damn it,” Francis snarled.
“Should we go back for them?” Angus asked.
The building trembled violently again, helping to shake loose his decision.
“No,” the former Guardian answered. “We’ve got to reach Chandler if we don’t want this all going to shit,” he said, hand on the doorknob. “That Squire is one tough puke. I don’t think he’ll have any problems holding his own.”
Francis pushed open the door, and they found themselves in a stairwell untouched by hungry shadows.
“Isn’t this nice?” Francis commented, already moving toward the stairs that would take them higher. “Too bad we couldn’t hang for a bit. Have some lunch; maybe take a nap.”
“I would love a nap right about now,” Angus said.
“You and me both, but we’ve got some shit going on up above that’s going to need our attention.”
On the next level they found another door, and another stairway that led up into a wall of solid shadow.
“Something tells me I don’t want to go to the next floor,” Francis said.
Angus had already pulled open the door, holding it for his companion.
“After you,” the sorcerer said.
“I would think you were being nice if it wasn’t for the fact that there could be some shadow beast just inside, waiting to eat my ass.”
“You wound me, sir,” Angus said, as Francis passed through.
“Looks pretty clear,” he said.
The office space was obviously a prime location, the walls of one entire side of the expanse covered in floor-to-ceiling windows. Francis found himself drawn to them, curious as to what might be happening outside the building.
“Holy crap,” the angel assassin gasped.
The streets below them were filled with chaos, crowds of people surging away across the expanse of plaza. He could see the flashing lights of emergency vehicles, as well as some that may have had a connection to the military.
A tendril of darkness flowed down from above, past the window, slithering to the streets below.
“What the fuck was that?” Francis asked, pressing his face against the cold glass to see what was happening directly below.
“The same thing that’s happening in here,” Angus answered. “The shadow realm is flowing into this world. By coming back here, Deacon must’ve somehow punctured a hole between realities.”
“And that’s bad because…,” Francis urged.
“That’s bad because the shadow realm could easily continue to flow into this one, eventually breaking down all barriers and flooding this world with total darkness.”
Francis watched through the window as more and more streams of slithering black rolled down the front of the skyscraper to the streets below.
“We’ve got to plug that hole,” he said finally.
“Is that all?” Angus answered.
Francis couldn’t stand to see anymore, leaving the window to find the next se
t of stairs that would take them closer to where they needed to be.
Just another thing added to his to-do list.
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.”
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