Thomas Sniegoski - In the House of the Wicked

Hesitating, he watched the thing. The serpent appeared dead, and Francis had to wonder if eating Angus had somehow poisoned it. He stepped closer to the dead monster to retrieve his bag of weapons when he saw movement ahead-not from the shadow beast, but from the now bubbling pool.

What the fuck now? the Guardian angel wondered, dashing ahead to quickly snatch up his bag and get as far away as he could before some other nightmare emerged.

And something did rise from the tarlike body of liquid, coughing and sputtering as it reached to grab hold of the edge of the floor. It was Angus, but there was something bubbling up from below behind him.

“Angus!” Francis cried out, pulling his pistol as the other shape and another behind that one swam up behind the sorcerer, helping to push him from the pool.

“Put that fucking thing away,” said a voice that was vaguely familiar to him.

Francis came forward and bent down to grab hold of Angus’ arm and pull him from the sucking blackness, careful to not fall in himself.

“Nice to see you again,” Francis said. “Didn’t think you’d made it.”

The sorcerer coughed, spitting filth from his mouth. “Wouldn’t have…if…if it wasn’t for them.”

Two more figures had crawled out of the black lake, a smaller, stockier form helping the thinner, more petite.

It didn’t take Francis long to recognize the goblin that had brought Remy back from the shadow realm and the teenage girl that Remy had been so desperate to save.

“Are you responsible for that?” Francis asked, as the goblin walked over to the dead serpent, brushing off the clinging remnants of liquid shadow from his clothes. The goblin squatted down and with a grunt rolled the massive body of the snake over. There was a nasty-looking knife blade protruding from its lower body.

“Yep,” the goblin said, removing the blade and letting the body flop back heavily to the floor. He wiped the thing’s black blood on the leg of his pants.

“Impressive,” Francis said.

“Thanks.”

The goblin went to stand beside the girl, who was peeling away the darkness that clung to her, flicking it onto the floor. There was a look in her eyes, something that probably hadn’t been there before all this, when she was just Remy’s neighbor, looking after his dog.

“You all right?” Francis asked her.

She just stared at him with those intense eyes. Eyes that had seen so much in such a short period of time.

“Ashley, right?” Francis said, positive that this time she was the real thing and not some artificial life-form created from magick and clay.

She nodded quickly. “Do I know you?”

“No, but you know my friend…Remy.”

“Remy,” she said.

“Yeah. I’m going to take you to him, all right?” Francis said.

Ashley nodded again. “Remy will take me home,” she said, a hint of hope in her voice.

“That’s the plan,” Francis said, his mind already on to the next obstacle.

It wasn’t going to be easy.

The two sorcerers stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity, but it was Stearns who blinked first.

Remy watched as the exoskeletoned Stearns uttered some guttural spell, casting a wave of destructive power toward his opponent. Reacting instinctively, Remy threw his body over that of the little girl, shielding her from the devastating repercussions that were sure to follow.

From the corner of his eye, Remy watched as Deacon cast his own spell, a shield of protection that deflected the magickal outburst from Stearns toward the ceiling with catastrophic results.

There was a cacophonous rush of air as the ceiling of the skyscraper exploded in a shower of rubble, glass, and steel. Remy could not help but turn his gaze to the nightmare unfolding above him, coming to the sickening realization that things were even worse than he suspected.

He’d pictured the wreckage of the skyscraper rooftop plummeting to the streets of Boston below, never imagining that the rubble wouldn’t get the chance to fall. In the dark and tempestuous sky above him, there was a black and swirling whirlpool; a spinning hole in the fabric of reality, sucking up the pieces of refuse blown into the air by the deflection of Stearns’ magickal attack.

“Dear God,” Remy uttered. He could feel the pull of the vortex, and knew without a doubt where it had originated. Somehow by coming here, Deacon had created some sort of opening-a breach between the shadow realm and the world outside it.

It was Deacon’s turn to attack now, the fires of the divine flowing from his outstretched hands to incinerate Stearns below. Remy could feel the power move as it flowed from the air, hungry to consume its adversary, a familiar tugging at the core of his being for the divine might that once was his.

Stearns awkwardly leapt from the path of the hungry fire, already unleashing another magickal attack on his adversary. Explosions of supernatural energies were decimating what remained of the television studio, and Remy knew that it wouldn’t be long until he and the child were left exposed and helpless.

“We have to get out of here,” he told her over the near-deafening sounds of a sorcerers’ duel. The child began to protest as Remy bent down to lift her, and he was startled by what he saw. A section of wall had fallen on the child’s lower body, the injuries exposing the truth about her.

“Leave me here,” she said, attempting to push him away.

Though her lower body was revealed to be made from clay, Remy saw genuine pain in the artificial child’s eyes then, and it moved him to not even consider her request.

He tossed the section of wall away and lifted her up from the ground, the pull on him from the swirling maelstrom in the sky above becoming stronger. It was something he didn’t even want to consider, but he could feel the dark dimension tugging on his clothes as he made his way across the pieces of rubble, toward where he remembered the door leading into the studio had been.

“I’m going to take you someplace safe and…”

“And then?” Angelina asked, her voice frightfully soft over the sounds of magickal conflict going on behind them.

“Don’t you worry about that,” Remy said, finding the twisted remains of the staircase that would bring them down to the level below the studio.

“I would have killed them,” Angelina said into his ear as he carefully descended the broken steps.

On the next level, he found a safe place to set her down beneath a section of ceiling that still appeared relatively intact.

“Don’t think of that now,” he said, gently leaning her back against a section of wall.

“If the attack hadn’t come, I would have killed everyone who was watching and listening to me,” she said.

He didn’t argue, knowing that what she said was indeed the truth.

“I knew that something was wrong when I felt them-the angels-inside my head.” The little child paused, eyes welling with tears. “They were hurting so bad,” she said. “And they actually believed that their hurt could make things better.”

Something exploded above them, plaster dust raining down on them like a fog.

“But we don’t have to worry about that now,” Remy told her. “I have to go,” he started to explain. “But I want you to stay here and be safe until…”

“Until,” she said.

“I have to try to do something,” he told her.

She smiled at him, tears running down her filthy cheeks. She lifted a hand and placed it on his face.

“You’re special, aren’t you?” she said. “You’re like them…the angels. But instead of sadness, you’re filled with hope.”

He tried to leave her, but for some reason couldn’t.

“I can feel something inside you,” she said, still touching him. “Something buried so very deep…It wants to come out, but it’s hurt…weak.”