Thomas Sniegoski - In the House of the Wicked

Something that made him start to scream and the blood begin to gush from his nose, now that he had looked.

Unable to look away.

And the message of the dying Grigori poured out over the ether, transmitted through the child and into a digital signal picked up by Algernon Stearns’ cameras, broadcast to a waiting world.

The message reached out to those who were watching and listening, grabbing them in a steely grip, as it started to fill their brains with the sad lament of the Grigori’s passing.

And all who saw and heard this mournful dirge were touched as they had never been touched before.

Even trapped within the sphere of magickal energy, Remy could feel what was happening.

He could feel the Grigori dying, their life energies leaking out of their bodies, their psychic communication-their terrorist act against an unsuspecting public-flowing from their dying minds and into the child-shaped golem and out across the ether.

It was the most horrible thing that he had ever seen, and he had seen much on this world since he’d decided to walk it.

The child had begun to speak…

The machines beneath her bed had started to hum ominously, gauges and dials illuminated as the first inklings of death energy began to flow.

The sorcerer gasped at his first taste, face twisted in ecstasy as the trickle of accumulated life force was delivered. His exoskeleton sparked and glowed with unearthly power, the hum of the great machines growing louder and louder, like a hive of angry bees.

Remy again attempted to summon what strength that he could, pushing against his magickal confines in the hopes that he might free himself to do something- anything — to prevent this travesty.

The magick struck him down once more, like the crack of a million whips on his nervous system. The pain was everywhere, and he dropped back to the floor of the energy sphere that held him aloft.

He lay on his stomach, too weak to rise, waiting, when he noticed something.

It was the flicker of lights that caught his attention.

Remy watched the figures in the control booth start to scramble. He perked up, watching, waiting for what could be an opportunity.

The lights went dim again, the hum and pulse of the machinery beneath the child’s bed sounding a bit strained as its flow of power began to be tested.

It’s the power, Remy thought, pushing himself up into a sitting position. Something was straining the electricity to the building-to the studio.

The look on Stearns’ face was priceless: ecstasy replaced with shocked surprise, blending into absolute rage. If Remy hadn’t felt like a hundred miles of bad road, he would have laughed.

“What’s happening?” Stearns screamed over the labored hum of the infernal machines. He looked to the control room. The PA crackled that the entire building was experiencing some weird power fluctuations and that they were looking to fixing it.

“Fix it now!” Stearns shrieked, as the lights grew dim and the robotic cameras ceased to function.

And when the cameras stopped, so did the deadly Grigori transmission and so did death.

The room went completely dark and stayed that way, a sudden silence like a death pall falling over the room. Something was happening, more than just a power failure, and Remy hadn’t a clue as to what it was. And from the looks of it, neither did Stearns.

“What is this?” Stearns demanded. He lumbered over to the Grigori, who had dropped to their knees, blood pooling beneath them. Remy could see that they were somehow still alive, but just barely.

“What is happening?” Stearns screeched, reaching out with a gauntleted hand to grip the shoulder of Armaros. The angel was too weak to speak, tumbling onto his side as the room began to quake.

Dust rained down from above; loose tiles dropped from the ceiling. Remy could feel a change in the air, a sudden drop in the temperature and air pressure that made his ears ache.

“You!” Stearns screamed, pointing one of his armored fingers at him. “This has something to do with you. Doesn’t it?”

Remy wished that he could take the credit, but he barely had the strength to stand, never mind being behind whatever this was. Stearns reached up with his other hand, manipulating the sorcerous energies that surrounded Remy, shattering the sphere and letting him drop to the floor.

“You will stop it this instant,” Stearns warned, his metal-clad feet stomping across the floor toward him. He grabbed Remy by the front of his shirt and hauled him to his feet. “Do you realize how much is at stake?” Stearns bellowed, shaking him.

Remy couldn’t help but smile. “Was at stake,” he corrected.

He watched Stearns’ face twist with rage and he figured that he just might not survive what was sure to follow when the building around them shook with so much force that the sound of shattering glass could be heard drifting inside the soundproof room from outside.

Stearns lost his balance, releasing Remy as he fell.

Remy landed atop some broken ceiling tiles; the room continued to shimmy and shake beneath him. If they were in Los Angeles, he might have believed that the big one had finally arrived, but this was Boston.

Stearns lurched around the studio, desperate to salvage something from the events that were unfolding. He went to the child sitting on the bed. It was as if she had been frozen in time, her body rigid, eyes fixed to where the cameras had been focused on her.

Stearns started to disconnect himself from the machines, attempting to detach the cables that would have fed him the precious life energies as they’d flowed through the child.

Remy managed to rise to his knees, his body now more numb than pained, fooling him into thinking that he was better off than he actually was. Holding on to the corner of a small desk, he stood, swaying from side to side as the building did the same.

Glancing up, he saw that Stearns’ technicians were still running about, trying to fix the situation, but Remy doubted a solution was forthcoming.

At first he thought it was a trick of his eyes, a lingering effect of Stearns’ sorcery, but he soon came to realize it was more than that. There was something wrong with the shadows in the room, puddles of darkness expanding like liquid as the building violently shook again.

Stearns had frozen as he knelt before his damnable machine, and that was when Remy began to feel it.

This was more than a mere temperature shift or a change in air pressure. The air had become incredibly heavy as the darkness became even thicker, darker even than darkness should be…

And Remy found himself thinking of a world composed entirely of shadow, a world he had visited not too long ago, a world that still held a dear friend.

A world he had every intention of returning to once he was able.

The darkness had become all-encompassing, every existing speck of light swallowed up by the hungry dark. It was even getting difficult to breathe. An attempt to summon even the slightest hint of angelic fire, to throw some light within the studio, met with total failure as the air grew heavier.

The silence had become almost deafening. And then the room seemed to explode, the very structure of the place tearing itself apart as Remy was thrown into the air by the disintegrating environment.

The atmosphere of the room felt suddenly different, and as he again attempted to get back on his feet he found that the floor of the studio had become dramatically uneven, with what appeared to be metal girders rising through the floor. It was almost as if the building had been twisted by the hands of some unspeakable force.

Through the thick clouds of swirling dust, Remy saw the hint of light, an unearthly glow that drew him toward it. The unknown source illuminated the twisted remains of the studio, showing a place that no longer resembled the room it had been mere minutes ago. Remy wasn’t quite sure what he was bearing witness to, but it was as if another space-another room entirely-had somehow been crammed into the studio.