Thomas Sniegoski - In the House of the Wicked

Francis glared across the room.

“No worries,” Angus assured him. “Your secrets are safe with me.”

“You said something about Stearns being up to something.” Francis pinched the still-burning end of the cigarette to extinguish it and dropped the remains into the barrel beside the desk.

“As he fed on me, I tried to feed on him…and I saw that he is very hungry.”

“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.