Thomas Sniegoski - In the House of the Wicked

“Dear God in Heaven!” Angus wailed, grabbing for anything that might give him purchase.

“Hold on,” Francis cried, as the Lincoln jumped the curb, barely missing gaggles of screaming pedestrians, and sped toward the front entrance of the building.

Leona’s engine roared like some great jungle cat about to take down its prey.

Something was wrong with the shadow path.

Squire could feel it deep in his rounded gut, the quill-like hair on the back of his thick neck standing at attention.

The first rule any hobgoblin learned about traveling the paths was to pay attention to location and the stability of the path. That very rule suddenly came to mind when he felt the darkness beneath his feet grow soft, and watched as Ashley stumbled in front of him, falling to her knees.

“Get up,” Squire ordered, fearing the worst. “Get up, get up…”

A gunshot rang out from behind them.

They had to get to the other end, and fast.

There were more gunshots, but the bullets were absorbed into the substance of shadow, likely coming out in some other dark place. Squire pictured some poor schmuck getting in some quality porn time when a bullet found its way out from a patch of black behind the La-Z-Boy. Could seriously ruin a guy’s evening.

The passage was breaking down, and that could mean only one thing was happening: The environment in which the path had originally existed was now different.

Squire came up close to Ashley, who was still struggling to regain her footing in the mudlike substance that was now the floor of the tunnel. He wrapped his arms around her tiny waist and hauled her back onto her feet, practically dragging her through the sucking surface.

The passage was closing in on them, growing smaller, narrower. If they didn’t find an exit soon, it would collapse in on itself and they would drown in this shit. Not a bad fate for the jerk-offs that were chasing them, but it wasn’t something that Squire was looking forward to.

More gunshots rang out, and he felt a bullet whiz past his face. The assholes were getting closer.

“We gotta move faster,” he urged Ashley. He did have to hand it to the kid: She was hanging in there pretty well. Most couldn’t handle five minutes in a shadow path, never mind being in one on the verge of collapse.

“I can’t go any farther,” Ashley screamed, pressing herself against a solid wall of shadow.

“Outta the way.” Squire pushed her aside. He placed his hands against the cold, sticky surface and closed his eyes. It was just as he thought: This had been the exit a few minutes ago, but since something was happening to the environment outside, it had almost healed over.

Almost.

Squire could still sense a place on the other side, and since he had no desire to suffocate within the stinking bowels of a shadow path, he decided to do something about it.

He swung the golf bag from his shoulder and rummaged through it, pulling out a battle-ax.

No need for anything dainty here.

“Get behind me,” he told the girl, as more gunshots rang out.

Squire raised the ax above his head, chancing a quick look behind him. The path was constricting faster, squeezing Tattoo Man and Dog Boy in its shrinking grip, buying him just enough time.

The goblin let out a scream, putting everything he had behind the strike as he brought the blade down on the hardening wall of shadow before them.

The blade buried itself deep within the solidified midnight, but he believed he could see a hint of a light from the world that still existed behind it. Yanking the blade back, he hefted the mighty ax, striking the wall again and again.

“We ain’t got much time,” he said to Ashley, hacking at the wall once more and then grabbing the edges of the cut and pulling.

Ashley hesitated at first but then joined Squire with gusto, sinking her fingers into the gelatinous dark and ripping away chunks to open the passage.

A sickly light leaked from the opening they’d torn, and it appeared large enough for them to get through, but the way the wall was healing up, it wouldn’t be for long.

“Now,” Squire ordered, pushing Ashley toward the hole.

She started to protest, fear creeping into her eyes, but he insisted, shoving her into the gradually diminishing crack and forcing her through to the other side.

He was about to follow her when he felt a powerful grip clamp down on his ankle.

“Going somewhere?” the tattooed man asked as he slithered on his belly through the intestine-like passage that was collapsing all around them. The schnauzer boy had managed to make it past his partner, crab walking toward him, mouth open to bite.

A quick backhand across the face was enough to discourage the youngster, but then Squire watched as Tattoo Man, who was still holding him with one hand, pulled his gun up in the other and prepared to fire.

Squire knew he had only seconds before the passage he’d cut healed up twice as thick as before, trapping him here, and he didn’t cotton to that at all. He glanced down, seeing the hilt of his ax sticking up from the softening surface beneath his feet, and yanked it free with a moist sucking sound. He managed to bring the ax down on the wrist of the hand that held his ankle, just as the tattooed man fired his gun with the other.

Yanking his foot back, Squire found that he was free, but he’d also been shot, the bullet punching its way into his shoulder, forcing him to drop his battle-ax.

But things weren’t any better for Tattoo Man.

He was screaming, clutching the stump of his hand, as Squire pushed himself backward toward the fissure-less than half the size it had been mere moments before.

Sensing that it was now or never, Squire dove headfirst into the passage, forcing his way through the tight squeeze of the wound he’d cut in the hardening blackness. It wasn’t easy; the walls of the passage attempted to crush him as he wiggled his way through. He’d always been curious as to what it would feel like to be born, and figured that this was probably the closest he’d ever get to having the experience again.

The passage was closing behind him, but he could see a hint of soft light ahead. His shoulder screamed in protest, but Squire didn’t listen. There’d be time for pain later, when he was still alive and on the other side with the time to bitch about it.

He clawed at the membranous caul that had formed over the exit, pulling himself through, out into the light with a series of grunts and a scream of freedom.

Out of the frying pan.

“Don’t want to be doing that again anytime soon,” he said, rolling on his stomach and starting to stand. He saw that Ashley was there, but her stare was fixed on something he had not yet noticed.

And then he saw that she was staring at a naked and perfectly muscled human figure standing with arms outstretched. Wings of fire grew from his back, and the words of some ancient magickal spell spilled from his mouth to seed the air.

Squire knew where they were, and they hadn’t gotten very far. They were back inside the old mansion, but he could feel that something wasn’t right. It was moving… The magick spell that the man was casting was taking the entire estate to someplace else.

Out of the frying pan, he thought, feeling reality whizzing past him.

And into the fire.

They were going to make him watch.

Remy was hauled to his feet by two of Stearns’ goons, as the deaths of more than a million people were set in motion.

There was a flurry of activity in the television studio. Technicians moved about a glass control room above the main studio while more of Stearns’ techs were attaching thick cables to the external skeleton of metal that the sorcerer wore, cables that trailed across the floor to the strange machinery that was part of the little girl’s bed.