Thomas Sniegoski - In the House of the Wicked

“But I don’t feel special.” Angelina lifted her head to gaze into his eyes.

“If you only knew how special you really are,” he told her, for the first time being completely honest with the child.

“You’re special, too,” she said then, hugging him tightly in a fragile grip.

Stearns was finished here, and reached up to peel the girl away.

“Uncle needs to go now,” he told her as he laid her back down on the bed. “There is still much to do in preparation for the big day.”

She crawled beneath the covers, and he pulled them up to her chin.

“Rest now, my special girl.” He forced himself to lean forward and kiss the child’s damp forehead.

“What do you think it will be?” Angelina asked.

“What will what be?”

“The message,” she whispered. “What do you think God’s message will be?”

For a brief moment he heard a million voices raised in a scream of terror as their lives were stolen away.

“I have no idea,” he said, opening the door. “But I’m sure it will be something wonderful,” he added as he closed it behind him.

Stearns turned from the room to view the child’s immediate family standing there in the hallway, waiting for him.

“Was she happy to see you?” the child’s mother asked, wiping her hands on her apron. Her husband smiled, uneasy in Stearns’ presence, which he had every right to be.

Stearns was not used to being questioned by beings such as this; they were normally created only to carry out orders, but there was a charade to maintain.

A story to be played out.

Again, the Watchers had outdone themselves.

“As happy as I was to see her,” Stearns told the golem family. It all felt like a game to him, and he did not have the time or the patience for games. But if this plan, conceived in part by the fallen Grigori, was to succeed, he had to partake of this fiction.

The parents of little Angelina Hayward must fully believe in their humanity, just as completely as the little girl must believe that she was chosen by God.

If the life forces of millions were to be his.

It was the closest thing the fallen Guardian angel had to dreaming.

Remembering.

Francis remembered how scared he had been…how weak he had felt in the presence of God.

Where was the big, bad warrior then? he thought. Where was the angel that had chosen to fight on the side of Lucifer, just to help the Son of the Morning make his point to the Creator?

He had been but an insignificant bug kneeling before a force that had shaped the universe from nothing, and even though he had known it would help him naught, he had begged for the Almighty’s forgiveness, honestly believing he had learned the error of his ways.

And he’d waited for what seemed like an eternity for his punishment to come, but it never happened.

Instead, the Lord had given him a penance to perform, and that was where he had learned the art of dealing death.

Killing in the name of Heaven.

When he remembered like this, he saw their faces, all those who had somehow offended God or posed some sort of threat to the Golden City.

He saw their faces as they were before they died-before he killed them.

He saw them all now, but this time the expressions they wore were different. No longer did they appear surprised or angry or scared.

They seemed amused.

Smiling as if they knew something that he did not.

Francis opened his eyes.

“Now, that sucked,” he said with a grunt, rolling onto his side and attempting to stand.

The motel room where he’d last met with Remy Chandler was completely dark, and he used the side of the small wooden desk to steady himself as he searched the shadows for his companion, worried that he might have gotten lost along the way.

A toilet flushed noisily, and the bathroom door opened, illuminating the room in fluorescent harshness.

“Oh, good. You’re awake.” Angus stumbled back into the room, looking like death warmed over. “For a minute there I thought I might’ve killed you.”

“You thought you might have killed me?” Francis asked. The room seemed to be moving beneath his feet, and he pulled out the desk chair to sit down and ride out the storm.

Angus dropped down on the room’s double bed, mattress coils screaming out in protest. “I would have died if I hadn’t fed,” the sorcerer explained. “But I took only enough to keep on living.”

“So I’m guessing you’re not talking about room service or a quick jaunt to the burger joint down the street,” Francis said, not the least bit happy about where he knew this was going as he realized how weak he was feeling.

The sorcerer shrugged.

“You’re like the asshole that almost killed us in New Orleans,” Francis said, his voice becoming louder.

Angus nodded. “Like Stearns…yes.”

“You fed off me,” Francis stated, the words dripping with fury.

“Only a little,” Angus defended himself. “Stearns took so much from me that I would have died if I hadn’t-”

Francis was up with his gun drawn in a blink.

“If you hadn’t had taken a few nibbles from the Francis snack bar,” he finished, aiming the pistol at Angus’ fat, flushed face.

Angus raised his hands in surrender. “I would have asked if you had been conscious, but I had no idea when you were going to wake up. And this way at least one of us would be able to alert someone to Stearns’ plans.”

Stearns’ plans.

Even though he wanted to perforate the sorcerer’s round face, Francis lowered his gun and returned it to the bottomless pocket inside his suit coat.

“Tell me about this Stearns character,” he said, sitting on the desk chair before he fell down. “I thought the problem was with somebody named Deacon.”

Angus lay on the bed, legs splayed, head back against the headboard. “It appears that I was mistaken. It’s not the betrayed reaching out to kill us from beyond the grave at all… It’s one of our own.”

“And the mouths on his hands?” Francis asked, holding up his own as examples. “What the fuck’s up with that?”

“I told you before: The cabal was part of an experiment to use the life force of living things as an energy source, and it achieved everything we had hoped. But there was a price to pay, one that we didn’t realize at first.”

“It gave you nasty little mouths on your hands,” Francis said. He reached into his coat pocket and removed a crumpled pack of cigarettes. If there was ever a time for a smoke, it was now. He offered the pack to Angus.

“Thanks,” the sorcerer said, grabbing a cigarette and leaning forward so Francis could light it. “The magick obviously changed some of us more dramatically than others,” he continued to explain. “It appears, though, that we all must feed on the life energies of living things in order to survive, but I certainly haven’t grown mouths on my hands to do so.”

Francis wasn’t sure that he wanted to ask the next question, but he did, anyway. “So how do you feed?” he asked, blowing a cloud of smoke into the air.

Angus pointed a chubby finger to his mouth. “This works just fine.”

“You put that on me?” Francis felt his ire begin to climb again.

“Just a gentle peck on your cheek,” Angus said.

Francis could see that the fat sorcerer was struggling not to laugh. Maybe he would shoot him after all.

“What an interesting existence you’ve led, Fraciel.”

“Don’t call me that,” Francis warned.

“Aren’t you going to ask how I know about you?” the sorcerer teased.

Francis just puffed on his smoke, knowing that Angus would answer his own question.

“When we feed on your energies, we get a good taste of what you are…who you are…where you’ve been, what you’ve been up to…Your experiences become ours… We live them as you lived them,” Angus explained.