Thomas Sniegoski - In the House of the Wicked

The little girl’s bed had been mercilessly tossed across the room by the traumatic upheaval, and Remy found the golem child curled in a ball on the floor. He knelt down beside her, pulling her into his arms. She was crying, as a small child would, and he could not help but comfort her.

“I don’t understand,” she kept repeating over and over, and Remy shared her confusion.

Kneeling on the floor, he saw now that the glow was coming from beneath a set of double doors that hung strangely askew at the top of a set of broken stone steps. Stearns stood at the bottom of those steps and started to climb.

It was when the doors came suddenly open, flying from their hinges in an explosion of light and sound, that Remy realized what he was looking at. He knew these doors and the broken stone steps that led up to them.

A striking figure stood just inside the doorway, his body glowing in its efforts to contain the power that was now housed within it, a power that Remy had known intimately, for it had belonged to him for many millennia.

Konrad Deacon stood in the entryway to his home, glaring at Algernon Stearns, who lay upon his armored back like a turtle unable to right himself.

“Hello, Algernon,” Deacon said, wings of fire unfurling. “It’s been a long, long time.”

They had temporarily stopped in the stairway, Angus needing a quick breather, before continuing on up to the television studio, when the building started to shake.

“Okay,” Francis said as the lighting flickered.

The temperature dramatically plummeted, and Francis was nearly overwhelmed with an odd sensation reminiscent of dropping down in an elevator.

“Did you feel that?” Francis asked.

“Yes,” Angus said, in between heavy breaths as the hallway went entirely to darkness. “And it isn’t anything normal.”

A dancing orange flame suddenly appeared, hovering above Angus’ outstretched palm, shedding some light in the stairway.

The building was rocking, a powerful vibration moving through the stairs and the metal handrail beneath their grips.

“Earthquake?” Francis suggested.

“Worse,” Angus answered, as cracks began to appear in the wall. “Much worse.”

And then they heard it from somewhere in the stairwell below them: a horrible roar unrecognizable to anything that existed in this world.

“I’m guessing that’s part of the problem you’re talking about?”

“A part,” Angus said. “We might want to get out of this stairwell as quickly as possible,” the sorcerer suggested as they listened to the new sounds of something large and growling dragging its considerable weight up the concrete stairs.

The light from the hovering flame showed them that they were near an entrance to one of the upper floors, and Francis darted toward it, pulling open the door.

What they found on that particular floor was not at all what they had expected.

“What the fuck is this?” Francis asked, totally taken aback. It looked as though they were in the hallway of some great old mansion run through a fun-house mirror. Everything was skewed to a bizarre angle.

“It’s what I suspected,” Angus said, moving the flame around to pierce the darkness so that they could better see their environment.

“Which is?”

“We’re no longer in Stearns’ building,” the sorcerer said.

“What the fuck are you talking about, we’re no longer in the building?”

“Right now we’re no longer inside the building,” the sorcerer repeated. “Outside that door, yes, we’re in the building… Down the staircase a floor, where we heard the unnatural sounds…probably not.”

“You’ve fucking lost me,” Francis said.

“Don’t ask me how,” Angus started to explain. “But I believe that Konrad Deacon has returned, and in doing so has somehow transferred his estate back to this realm, occupying the same space as Stearns’ office building.”

“So the two are sort of smooshed together,” Francis asked, eyes darting around the corridor. He slowly removed the Pitiless pistol from within his jacket.

“If you want to be scientific,” Angus responded.

The shadows in the hall appeared to be moving, shifting, flowing along the walls and floor. There were sounds coming from the ever-expanding pools of blackness.

“Anything to say about that?” Francis asked, watching the flowing darkness.

“Nothing other than it appears as though some of the shadow world where Deacon has been living seems to have leaked through along with his house.”

“That can’t be good,” Francis said, watching something large and covered with black spines erupt from the shadow pool, leaping from one body of darkness to disappear into another.

“It’s not good at all,” Angus agreed, his fingers beginning to crackle with defensive magick. “Especially if it’s still leaking.”

“Leaking is never good.”

“No.”

Francis felt what little hair he had left on the back of his neck suddenly stand straight on end. He didn’t have time to utter a warning or to tell Angus to get away; the former Guardian angel just reacted, spinning around and firing at the large, serpentine shape that had silently risen from a body of shadow that had formed behind them.

The pistol roared angrily, a seemingly endless supply of bullets entering the thick, trunklike body of the snakelike thing that appeared to be molded from tar. Seemingly unfazed by the gunshots, the creature lunged, its cavernous maw open to consume at least one, or maybe even both, if it were lucky. Francis dove from its path, continuing to fire into the serpent’s shiny black face.

Angus clothed himself in a shield of crackling blue energy. The monster’s snout struck the obstruction violently and made its already sunny disposition all the more pleasant. Frustrated, the serpent reared back, opening its mouth wider, its jaws unhinging as if getting ready to swallow an egg.

The gunshots weren’t helping matters, and Francis slipped the pistol back inside his jacket and went through his duffel bag of weapons in the hopes of finding something that could damage the beast of shadow.

The serpent clamped down upon Angus’ bubble, its curved obsidian fangs actually penetrating the energy sphere. It pulled back savagely, dragging the bubble, and Angus with it, toward the body of liquid darkness from where it had originated.

Francis found an ornate short sword and lunged at the beast. It was probably only supposed to be used for special rituals, but beggars couldn’t be choosers, and he swung the sword with all his might. The razor’s edge bit deeply into the oily black flesh of the monster, but it failed to slow its progress. With horror, Francis watched as the serpent disappeared back into the bubbling liquid pitch, dragging the energy sphere, with the screaming Angus inside, down beneath the shadow.

At the edge, Francis looked down into the still surface, not a ripple showing what had just transpired. He considered diving into the pool in search of the sorcerer, but decided against it. He didn’t like the sorcerer that much, and, besides, he suspected that Angus had already met a nasty fate.

He stepped away from the edge, not wanting any surprises. There were strange noises coming from other patches of expanding shadow all around him, and he figured it would probably be in his best interest to get the fuck out of there and try to find another section of the office building that didn’t have a leaking problem.

Turning his back, he returned to the duffel, tossing the short sword back inside, and was just about to take hold of the handles when he again sensed something happening behind him.

Francis barely had time to turn as the great serpent surged up from the lake of darkness, a shriek of ferocity escaping from its cavernous mouth. Leaving the duffel, Francis leapt toward the corridor in front of him, evading puddles of darkness that littered the floor as he ran. He chanced a quick glance over his shoulder and was shocked to see the upper trunk of the shadow beast pitch forward, landing heavily on the floor outside the pool to lie perfectly still.