Thomas Sniegoski - In the House of the Wicked

The white-skinned man with the tattooed face slithered out from behind the curtain of shadow, smoldering pistol in one hand, the stump of the other pressed to his chest, a length of leash leading to a collar around the creepy little boy, Teddy’s, scrawny neck, wrapped tightly around it.

“Thought we’d lost you,” the pale man said with an unnerving smile.

Squire lay on his side, clutching a bloody leg, weapons from his golf bag strewn about the hall.

“Get out of here Ashley. Run!” he roared.

There was a moment’s hesitation, as she didn’t want to leave her friend, but there was also something in the pale man’s eyes, something that told her that he was even more dangerous than the things that swam in the shadows. Ashley turned and started to run down the corridor. She had no idea where she was running or even what she might run into, but she knew that she had to do this if she was going to survive.

Running as fast as she could, avoiding the puddles of shadow on the floor around her, she heard the ominous words of the tattooed man following her.

“Go get her, Teddy… Bring your toy back to me.”

“Never let them take anything away from you,” Konrad Deacon remembered his dementia-wracked grandfather saying to him. “And if they do…make them pay dearly for taking it.”

Even as he experienced the excruciating pain of Algernon Stearns attempting to steal away his divine power, Deacon could still remember the old man’s urgings and the disturbing smile that adorned his ancient face as he spoke them.

“Make them pay dearly for taking it.”

As soon as Stearns laid his hands upon him, he’d felt his strength, his angelic power, gradually being drained away.

How is he doing this? Deacon wondered, always questioning, always the seeker of knowledge. He could see that his rival was adorned in complex mechanics-something akin to the exoskeleton he himself had worn to siphon the collected life energies from his golem receptacles.

But there was something different about Stearns, something that went beyond the special suit.

Deacon struggled in the sorcerer’s grasp, reaching up to pull away the hand that was pressed against his face. And that was when he saw how much Stearns had been changed by that experiment so many years ago.

That was when he saw the mouths.

“They’re hungry, Konrad,” Stearns said, “And now that they’ve gotten a taste of you, they’re absolutely ravenous.”

For a brief instant, Deacon had to wonder how drastically the others of the cabal had been altered by his experiment, but his thoughts were replaced by agony as Stearns laid his hungry hands on him and resumed his feeding.

From the corner of his eye, Deacon saw his wife. Of course she would be here to see this.

It’s exactly as I told you, she chided, never lifting a finger to help. Stearns is going to take it all away.

“No,” he screamed aloud, but that just made Stearns laugh, and he felt himself growing weaker all the faster.

A supernatural halo of fire had started to burn around his enemy’s head, and that infuriated him to the brink of madness.

This was his power… his…He had taken it from one of Heaven’s soldiers himself…not Algernon Stearns… Konrad Deacon.

He had taken it… He was the master.

Deacon looked up into Stearns’ smiling face and smiled back. He watched as his rival’s expression went from one of joy to confusion…

And then to concern.

This was his power…and he would control it.

Deacon reached within himself, stopping the flow of divine energy into Stearns’ body.

His wife’s nagging voice was replaced by that of his grandfather, urging him to make his enemy pay. Flashes of a moment from his past exploded within his memory as he took control of the power. He recalled the first time he had truly listened to his grandfather’s words.

When he was just a boy of six or seven, the family’s driver was a man named Keady, a cruel man who resented young Konrad and the life of wealth and privilege into which he’d been born. And on one particular day, when Mr. Keady was supposed to be driving Konrad to a child’s birthday party at the home of another family of wealth and privilege, that resentment reared its ugly head. Young Konrad was enjoying a lollipop-cherry flavored; he’d always loved cherries-when Mr. Keady ordered him to throw it away, or he wouldn’t be allowed in the car. Of course, he had protested, and the driver took full advantage of the authority he had been given when it came to the car, citing rules laid down by Konrad’s father himself that there would be no food or drink allowed in the vehicle.

And still Konrad had refused, attempting to climb into the back of the limousine with his cherry treat, which was when Mr. Keady happily acted, tearing the lolli from his mouth and tossing it to the ground.

Konrad remembered crying as if he’d lost a loved one, but he also remembered Mr. Keady laughing, as if this act of cruelty was one of the funniest things he had ever seen.

Konrad remembered.

The recollection of his past trauma now gave him the strength to stand. Stearns fought him, fought to feed, but Deacon had stopped the flow of power, keeping it all to himself.

Make them pay for taking it.

After he had gone to the birthday party, where treats of every conceivable imagining had been available to him, but not his cherry lollipop, he had gone to see his grandfather, to tell the old man what Mr. Keady had done.

Never mind the fact that he had already told his mother and father, who had ignored his indignant ravings; if there was anybody in his home that would understand, it would be his grandfather.

And his grandfather had understood perfectly well, and told him what he needed to do.

“Make them pay for taking it.”

Some of his mother’s special sleeping medicine crushed up and slipped into Mr. Keady’s nightly coffee was how he set his revenge in motion. He had been so careful and quiet that night-invisible. The driver knew nothing of his drugged drink, downing the coffee, and preparing a bath. The cruel man had collapsed on the bed in his bathrobe as the water had run, filling the tub.

Konrad didn’t know if he would be strong enough at that young age to do what he needed to. It had taken him close to two hours but he had done it, dragging the unconscious man to the now-filled tub and, with great effort, putting him into the bath.

One of the maids had found him the next morning, screaming at the discovery that Mr. Keady had drowned in the bath.

Konrad remembered how he had smiled when he heard the commotion caused by the discovery, and relived the satisfaction he had felt as he watched the man sink beneath the bath waters, the last of the bubbles from his mouth and nose popping to the surface.

It was similar to what he was feeling now as he watched his enemy struggle to regain control.

Veronica was there again, dancing at the corner of his vision. He could sense that she was about to tell him yet again what Stearns would do, and he didn’t want to hear it.

“Shut up,” Deacon snarled, letting the divine power that he had been holding back flow into his enemy’s body unabated.

For a moment, as the heavenly energy surged into his body, Stearns actually believed that he had won. Foolish man.

Remy Chandler was drunk on the life forces of thousands.

He could feel energy coursing through his veins like blood, sparks of memories, not his own, exploding in his mind in a cacophony of emotion, sight, and sounds.

He had never experienced anything so wonderful and yet terrifying. It was like he was being hit by tsunami-force waves, one right after the next.

Waves of people’s life experiences.