Thomas Sniegoski - In the House of the Wicked

Konrad Deacon, the hero of the day.

Stearns knew what the man was up to. Deacon coveted his position as leader of the cabal, and now the upstart believed that he had what was needed to steal away Stearns’ authority.

Well, Stearns wasn’t about to let it go so easily.

He thought about the night that had led to this. He had been tempted to stay in Spain and skip Deacon’s little party, but curiosity had made him change his mind. Even still, he had arrived late to Deacon’s mansion, and was amused by the relief he saw on his host’s face. In fact, the whole cabal shared the expression, for an affair of sorcerers could never convene without the presence of Algernon Stearns.

It had been some time since they had last gathered, and Stearns was taken aback by how old and frail they all appeared. He wasn’t alone, after all; the use of magick was taking its toll on all of them.

Then, as if on cue, Konrad Deacon had tapped the side of his crystal champagne flute with his knife, and all eyes were on him. He began his speech, and Stearns quickly grew impatient as Deacon welcomed them to his home, then launched into a dissertation on their responsibility to a world on the brink. The war in the Pacific lingered on and the instability in the world meant that nobody noticed the rise in supernatural activity, except for those in tune with the ways of the weird.

These were all things that Stearns knew well, and he was considering walking out when the youngest member of the cabal made his daring pronouncement. He could give them back their vitality.

Stearns was distracted from the memory of what had brought him back to the Deacon mansion for a party of a different sort. He watched as Deacon checked his machines once more. This was to be their rebirth-their bodies healed, transformed, and filled with the power to guide the world through troubled times.

At first Deacon’s proposal had sounded like lunacy. Of course it had been a theory among the brotherhood of magick users that life energies could be used to restore the human form. Blood sacrifice had always been the method of choice within the cabal, but no one had ever been able to make the process work correctly, for the collected energies were expended far too quickly. They were having less and less effect, and the years of magickal abuse were quickly catching up to all of them.

But if what they were up to tonight worked…

“How much longer must we endure this discomfort?” Angus Heath grumbled. He shifted his great weight, threatening to disconnect himself from the machines.

“Afraid you might miss a meal, Angus?” Stearns taunted.

“The machine cannot be activated until the precise moment,” Deacon explained, hurriedly approaching the large man to make sure that his connections were still intact.

“Patience, Angus,” Stearns said. “I hear it’s a virtue.”

“Something that I never knew you to have, Algernon,” Daphene intoned, the crooked smile on her aged face hinting at their dalliances throughout the years.

Stearns ignored her and returned to thoughts of Deacon’s plan. Over dinner that night, he had explained his advancements in the collection of life energies. The moment of death was when those energies were most powerful, he theorized, but multiple deaths were required if the energy was to have any prolonged effect.

“So, what are we to do-murder entire cities in order to collect the proper amount of energy?” the oil baron Eugene Montecello had asked.

Deacon’s answer had been startling and quite exciting.

“We don’t have to murder anybody,” he had said. “We just have to be in the right place when somebody else carries it out.”

Deacon returned to his space in the circle and glanced up at the clock hanging on the stone wall. “Our time is near,” he stated. “Prepare yourselves.”

Evidently, this young upstart’s connections within the United States government ran deep, and those connections had given Deacon the answer to his-and the cabal’s-prayers. The military, growing weary of the seemingly never-ending war with the Land of the Rising Sun, had created a weapon, a bomb so terrible that it was guaranteed to bring Japan to its knees. They planned to drop it on a Japanese city, and Deacon had found a way to harness the energies of the many who would die as a result.

“Ready in five…” Deacon began the countdown, eyes riveted to the clock.

Stearns watched as well, as the second hand made its inexorable pass around the clock’s face.

“Four…”

He again wondered about this bomb.

“Three…”

Deacon said that they had nicknamed it Little Boy.

“Two…”

Certainly not a name that struck fear in the hearts of men.

“One.”

How powerful can it really be? Stearns wondered as the machine in the center of the room came suddenly to life with the most cacophonous of sounds.

And the life energies of those instantly slain when the atomic bomb detonated over the Japanese city of Hiroshima were collected.

And delivered unto them.

Remy was surrounded by sleep.

He sat on the red couch in Linda’s apartment, his girlfriend curled up on one side of him and Marlowe, lying flat on his side as if he’d taken a bullet, snoring at his feet.

The Housewives was over by the time Remy had arrived, but Linda had saved him some wine and they’d cuddled until sleep had claimed her. Shortly afterward, Marlowe had succumbed, as well, leaving Remy alone with the television.

But mostly it had left him alone with his thoughts, and there was much to think about this night.

Like what he had been doing traveling to New Hampshire to confront the murderer of Charlotte Marsh and her daughters. At the time it had felt like a completely rational thing to do, and that scared him.

He wasn’t thinking like himself. And what about the next time? Would the angelic side of his nature persuade him that it was perfectly all right to mete out God’s justice on the wicked?

It was only a matter of time before he started burning people who were double-parked with the flames of Heaven. That was what he had been afraid of, why it had taken him so long to allow his angelic essence to meld with his human persona. He would have to be careful in the coming days; obviously, there were still some bugs to be worked out in the unification of his two sides.

And then there was Steven. Remy could fully understand his friend’s anger, but there was very little that he could do to make things right. The snake had been let out of the box, so to speak, and there was nothing Remy could do to put it back. Steven had gotten dangerously up close and personal with an aspect of the world not usually seen by humanity, and for that Remy was sorry, but that was really all he could be.

It wasn’t as if he had some magical way to take away the memory of the experience. Besides, if that was the case, their whole friendship might as well be excised from Mulvehill’s mind. Remy remembered the night that Steven had lain dying at his feet, afraid of what awaited him. Wanting to offer him some peace, some certainty of what was on the other side, Remy had revealed his true face to the homicide detective.

He’d never expected Mulvehill to survive, but he had, and they had been close friends ever since.

But now he had seen too much of Remy’s world and nothing could change that.

Remy had no choice but to let things be as they were, to give Steven the space that he needed to process his experience. And maybe, with time, they could once again be friends.

“I think that’s sad.” Linda’s sleepy voice spoke, as if commenting on Remy’s thoughts.

“Excuse me?” he asked, startled, looking down at the top of Linda’s head as she snuggled up tightly beside him.