Thomas Sniegoski - In the House of the Wicked

Teddy reacted with a hiss, springing at Remy, teeth bared.

And pure instinct powered Remy’s response. He slapped the child roughly to the ground, and, like a dog struck with a newspaper, the boy fled across the room to glare at him from a distance.

“We have to go now,” Remy said, reaching for Ashley.

She pulled away, putting her face against the wall, her eyes tightly closed.

“Please, Ash,” he said, firmly gripping her arm.

She turned from the wall to look at him. What he saw-or didn’t-in her gaze disturbed him greatly, but he couldn’t let it deter him. He lifted her to her feet and pulled her to the entrance of the dining room, its double doors blown from their hinges by the release of his angelic might.

They walked across the fallen doors, into the corridor. The sound of alarms still filled the air, and as they turned the corner to the passage that would bring them to the large foyer, Remy saw what had triggered the security system.

Deacon’s golems, some dressed as household staff, others just human-shaped pieces of clay, fought against multiple attackers. Things with skin blacker than total darkness were attempting to gain access to the home, things that slithered, flew, and crawled were being held at bay by Deacon’s supernatural creations.

Ashley hesitated at the sight of an ebony serpent that surged through the open front door to grab up a golem in its cavernous maw. The artificial man struggled as it was dragged into the darkness outside.

Which, if they had any intention of escaping, was where Remy and Ashley needed to go.

Remy gave Ashley’s arm a yank, and they ran down the short hall toward the still-open door.

The darkness beyond the pale green lights of the Deacon estate beckoned, promising them one of two things.

A chance at freedom.

Or a fate worse than death.

Scrimshaw watched the angel escape the dining room. He was tempted to go in pursuit, but he had to know if his master had survived.

The explosion of energy was like nothing the golem had ever experienced before. He doubted there was any way that Deacon could have lived through it, but he had to be sure.

The dining table had been shattered, and Scrimshaw carefully pulled away the broken sections to get to his fallen master’s remains.

He sensed that he was being watched, and stopped for a moment to find Teddy staring at him, concern in his semihuman eyes. The boy had seriously deteriorated since surviving the attack by the traitorous Algernon Stearns. It was Deacon who had truly saved him-if that’s what he called it-using arcane magicks to retrieve him from the brink of death. But something had been lost in the process. It was as if the child’s humanity had been damaged by Stearns’ assault, and even though Teddy’s body had been restored to life, his soul had continued to die.

Even still, Scrimshaw could see that Teddy feared for the one who sired him. Normally he would have reassured the boy, telling him that everything would be all right, but Scrimshaw did none of that now.

Instead, he carefully picked through the rubble, gradually exposing the tuxedoed body of the man he called master trapped beneath the wreckage. He gently uncovered the man’s head and face and was shocked by what he found.

Konrad Deacon as Scrimshaw remembered him more than fifty years ago: hair a stark black, skin free of wrinkles, unblemished and taut.

Scrimshaw reached out to check for a pulse, and Deacon’s eyes opened wide as his hand shot out and grabbed the golem’s wrist.

“The angel?” Deacon asked excitedly. Golden energy, like liquid fire, drifted from his eyes.

“He’s escaped,” Scrimshaw managed, completely taken aback. “He took the girl, as well.”

Deacon seemed to consider this a moment, then released his hold upon Scrimshaw’s wrist. The golem gazed at the burns left by his master’s touch.

Teddy howled his pleasure, crawling across the rubble to get to his father. But as Deacon rose, he extended his arm and a wall of flame roared from his fingertips, driving back the screaming young boy.

Deacon shrugged off the broken pieces of table and dinnerware, and Scrimshaw saw that he no longer wore the exoskeleton that had helped his fragile body to move. It was as if he’d somehow shed his old form to reveal something shiny and new beneath. Tears in the dusty old tuxedo revealed new muscle and flesh beneath. His master had somehow been transformed into a perfect specimen.

But a perfect specimen of what?

The alarms still assaulted their senses as Deacon turned and walked from the dining room. Scrimshaw took the frightened Teddy’s hand, and, with a little urging, the two followed into the melee outside.

The golem was about to drag Teddy to someplace safe when he saw his master walk dangerously close to an open window. There was a flurry of movement on the other side of the broken glass, and Scrimshaw pushed the wild child away as he darted to intercept his master, who seemed totally oblivious to the potential harm.

A tentacle as black as ink flowed in through the broken window, ready to embrace the man. Scrimshaw grabbed a jagged piece of wood from the floor just as the muscular appendage wrapped about the transformed Deacon.

There was a searing flash of white.

Scrimshaw shielded his eyes from the sudden brilliance, then dropped his hands to see the stump of the tentacled monstrosity withdrawing through the broken window, the wail of the injured beast ear piercing over the still-insistent alarms.

The release of divine light had driven not only Deacon’s attacker away, but all the mansion’s attackers. Scrimshaw watched as the golem staff gradually began to recover.

Deacon turned his glowing gaze to Scrimshaw. “Turn that off, will you?” he said, hand indicating the blaring alarm around them.

Scrimshaw called to one of the other stone men to shut down the alarm, and in a matter of seconds, it was quiet in the house again. He watched as his master strolled to the door, peering outside at the now-still shadow place.

“Do you want me to go after them?” Scrimshaw asked, and Deacon turned his attention to him.

“The angel and the girl…do you want me to go after them?”

Deacon began to smile as he looked back through the open doors. “No need.” He held up his hands, tongues of divine fire leaping from the tips of his fingers. “I’ve already gotten far more than I could ever have hoped.”

Angelina Hayward did not want to go to sleep.

If the little girl could have had her way, she would never go to sleep…never ever, for she believed that she had already spent way too much of her time unconscious to the excitement going on around her.

Since awakening from a coma that the doctors swore she would never recover from, the girl had become the center of a maelstrom. Not only was her return to consciousness considered a minor miracle, but she had also awakened with the promise of a very important message for the world.

A message from God.

The little girl sat in her bed, propped up by multiple pillows. She was trying to put the pretty new dress that her uncle had bought on her favorite baby doll. She was supposed to be resting, but how could she do that when her mind was racing round and round?

Angelina’s life was now filled with excitement. Everybody wanted to speak to her. She’d been afraid of the television people at first, with their cameras and the pretty ladies who never stopped talking and smiling, but she had grown used to their visits and their questions.

The same questions, over and over.

When is God going deliver His message?

And Angelina would just smile at them and tell them that God was very busy, although as soon as He contacted her, they’d be the first to know.