The other members of the cabal laughed.
“Daddy!” Teddy cried out. “They hurt Mommy!”
“Evidently, she had second thoughts once we began our search,” Stearns said. “She tried to stop us.” He laughed. “But I wasn’t about to leave until I got what I came for.”
“What do you want?” Deacon asked, looking up from Veronica’s body cradled in his arms. “All you had to do was ask me and-”
“I want it all, Konrad,” Stearns said. He waved his hands. “Everything you’ve done…everything responsible for this.”
He slid from the desk to show off his rejuvenated form.
“This was something, sir,” Stearns sneered. “Something to be truly proud of. You actually did it. You made me…” He looked quickly about the room at the others. “You made us strong again…stronger than we’ve ever been.”
Deacon could feel the anger at his core…the rage starting to grow.
“You killed my wife,” he said, his voice rising.
“I did,” Stearns said. “And I’m going to kill you, too, and take everything that belongs to you.”
“I’ll kill you first,” Deacon cried out, his own spell of destruction leaving his lips as he raised his hands and unleashed pure magickal force from his fingertips.
“You’ll try,” Stearns responded casually, erecting a shield of his own magickal force to deflect the attack. The blast went wild, blowing a burning hole in a nearby wall.
Deacon released his wife’s corpse, scrambling to his feet as his child cried out, “Daddy! Daddy!”
He wanted to go to his child, but he had to save himself first.
Stearns was unstoppable. Fiery blasts of arcane force rained down on Deacon. He did his best to shield himself, but the cabal leader had been made too strong, and each blow made it more difficult for Deacon to concentrate.
Deacon lay crumpled in a smoldering heap on the floor of his study. He could hear Stearns approaching, the fall of his shoes on the litter-strewn floor, and he prepared himself. He could not lose; everything that he was, everything he had done, depended on it.
The sound of the sorcerer calling forth a spell that would end his life flowed through the air, and Deacon sprang up, unleashing a blast of supernatural power summoned from the very core of his being. He watched as Stearns was engulfed in preternatural force, then turned his attention to the other members of the cabal.
“How dare you?” Deacon roared, enraged by the cabal’s betrayal.
Spells of violence started to fly; they were all so much stronger now. Deacon locked his eyes on his son as Angus Heath dragged the boy about the room, using his small body as a shield. The little boy twitched and writhed as magickal bolts of arcane energy struck him.
“No!” Deacon cried out in horror, throwing all caution to the wind as he hurled himself across the study.
Heath tried to strike him down, but the spell just missed its mark, nicking Deacon’s shoulder as he grabbed for his son. The three of them fell to the floor in a thrashing heap.
“Pig!” Deacon screamed, his fist landing heavily on Heath’s ruddy face, drawing a spray of blood. He punched again and again, the urge to reduce this vile creature’s face to so much pulp bringing him nearly to the brink of madness.
But then he heard the sound of his son calling his name, barely audible through his rage. He let Heath drop to the floor and turned to take his son into his arms.
“Teddy,” Deacon said, looking into the boy’s eyes, seeing that they had already begun to glaze. The magick was already going to work on him, like a powerful poison coursing through his young veins. It had been cast to kill Deacon; he could only imagine what it was doing to his child.
He searched his mind for spells-something, anything-that could stop it. Some were even more dangerous than what the child was experiencing, but what choice did he have?
Deacon leaned in close to the dying boy, lovingly stroking his cheek, and he began to utter the ancient words of a spell that might save his dwindling life…
But Deacon’s enemies would not have it.
A bolt of humming black energy struck him hard, hurling him to the floor atop his child. He tried to continue the spell, but the words would not come and his child’s life slowly ticked away.
He rolled over, gazing up into the sneering face of Algernon Stearns. It was bright red and blistered from the magick that had struck him, but Deacon could see that he was already healing.
The life energies from Hiroshima had made the sorcerer strong…had made them all strong.
“Please,” Deacon begged. “Let me save my son. Then everything I have…everything I know…it’s yours.”
The other members of the cabal came to stand beside their leader, all of them staring at Deacon with utter contempt in their eyes.
“Let me kill the boy,” Heath slurred through swollen lips and broken teeth.
Stearns ignored the fat sorcerer, his gaze fixed on Deacon.
“Please,” Deacon tried again, feeling his child’s life continue to slip away.
“It already belongs to me,” Stearns said, and he smiled as his hand began to pulse with an unearthly glow.
Still looking into Deacon’s eyes, Stearns thrust his hand downward, a flash of light leaving the tips of his fingers to strike the child laboring to breathe-fighting to remain alive.
And the child breathed no more.
Deacon lost all connection to the world with his son’s dying gasp. “Why?” he cried over and over again as he cradled his son tightly in his arms. “Why? Why? Why?”
“Because you gave me the power to do so,” Stearns said, leaning in close to whisper in his ear.
Deacon felt himself start to slip away, Stearns’ malignant words echoing down the lengthening corridor of his approaching unconsciousness.
He knew that he had the power to strike one last time, but also knew that it would be for naught; Stearns and the others would only strike him dead and take everything that he had worked so hard to achieve.
Though the darkness tugged at him, Deacon managed to wrest himself from its grip, forcing his way up through the ocean of oblivion, back to the realm of consciousness. Through bleary eyes he watched as they pillaged his study, as from deep within the recesses of his memory a spell slowly bubbled upward like a bloated, gas-filled corpse rising from the bottom of a murky lake.
And as he uttered the arcane words and the magick began to flow, the mansion started to shake-a slight tremor, barely noticeable at first-but growing in intensity and strength. Stearns stumbled as the floor beneath his feet bucked and heaved.
“You did this,” the sorcerer snarled, trying to keep his footing as he turned back to where Deacon still lay across the body of his son.
“Because I can,” Deacon echoed mockingly, trying with all his might to stay alive and to see the magickal manifestation of his power through.
The mansion began to creak and moan as its structure was challenged, and the shadows within became like a hungry thing, bottomless and black.
Drawing the house into its maw.
The Deacon estate, consumed by darkness.
CHAPTER FOUR
The vessel had to be filled before he could return to his creator.
Zeroing in on the collective pulse of multiple life energies, the vessel strolled down the quiet city street until he came upon the nightclub. He moved toward the door, drawn to the hum of vitality within, but he was blocked by a large, bearded man whose own body vibrated with excess vim and vigor.
“Fifty-dollar cover,” the man announced.
The vessel stepped back to assess the situation. He appeared human, although was far from it, and had the strength to easily snap this man’s neck and simply walk into the bar brimming with life. But his creator had also given him far less destructive means of getting what he required. He reached into the back pocket of his trousers and removed a wallet filled with several types of currency.
“Fifty-dollar cover,” the vessel repeated as he held out a fifty-dollar bill.