In the House of the Wicked (39 page)

“Where are you going?” the tattooed man asked, firing his weapon wildly.

How many fucking bullets does this guy have?
Squire asked himself as he dove, his injured body hitting the pool of darkness, the substance of darkness swallowing him whole.

He emerged on the other side of this particular path. It looked as though he was in some kind of warehouse, the smell of the ocean close by making the hairs in his pronounced nose tingle. It had been a long time since he’d smelled a living ocean.

Squire crawled from the passage, using the moment of calm to check out his wound. The tattooed man’s bullet had hit him in the meaty part of his leg, but it looked as though it had passed through. He was lucky; if it had hit bone, he would have been a sitting duck. He would heal, but it would take a little time.

His attacker surged up from the pool of black.

“Bet you didn’t think I could follow you,” he said, aiming his weapon as Squire scrambled to his feet. “But it seems I’ve developed a knack.”

He got off one shot, and then the gun clicked once, twice, three times on an empty chamber.

About fucking time.

“Huh. Outta bullets,” the pale assassin said as he tossed the gun aside and pulled a nasty-looking hunting knife from his side. “Guess we’re gonna have to do this up close and personal…which is fine by me.”

Squire had lost his golf bag along the way, but he still had a few tricks up his sleeve. His eyes scanned the warehouse, and he sniffed at the air, getting past the salty goodness of the thriving ocean. What he was looking for…what he needed wasn’t to be found here.

He would have to take this conflict elsewhere.

“Up close and personal is good,” Squire said, limping on the injured leg, making it seem as though Paleface might actually have the upper hand. “Why don’t you start without me, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

The goblin was running again, eyes scanning the various shadows, searching out one that could give him what he needed, a nice, ripe patch, one with real potential.

The tattooed man was running full tilt, knife by his side.

“I can follow you wherever you go,” he growled. “And as soon as you get tired…oh man, the fun will start.”

The guy was a complete asshole, and Squire couldn’t wait until his piehole was shut for good, but he was gonna need to be very careful and play this just right, or he’d wind up with the shitty end of the stick.

The stink of a ripe passage was close by, and Squire stopped momentarily to tilt his head back. Down an aisle of shelves, behind a wooden crate spray-painted with the words MACHINE PARTS, he found what he’d been searching for.

“You mean the fun hasn’t started already?” Squire called out. “Thought we’d reached our full fun potential when I cut off your hand. Don’t know if my poor old constitution can take anymore.”

He dove at the shadow, waiting for the cold, enveloping sensation as he entered the passage to another place but feeling only the viselike grip close around his ankle.

Squire thudded to the floor of the warehouse with a grunt, the shadow path just beyond his reach. He flipped over to see that the tattooed man was on his belly, holding on to him with his one good hand.

“Look at that,” the pale man growled. “You made me drop my knife.”

Squire struggled to squirm free, but the man’s hold on him was ferocious.

“Guess I’m just gonna have to use my teeth,” the tattooed man said, smiling like a great white, beginning to drag his weightier bulk up Squire’s body.

Squire lashed out, bringing one of his legs up and kicking the pale man squarely in the face. He felt the sensation of something breaking through the sole of his boot.

“You fucking monkey,” the tattooed man groaned, letting go of Squire to clutch at his own broken face. He picked at some loose pieces of white skin, revealing what looked like some sort of wet stone beneath.

“Wonder how long I can keep you alive,” the pale man growled, then lunged for Squire.

Squire did a tumble, rolling away into the embrace of a shadow passage. He felt himself falling, then landed unceremoniously on something soft and rubbery.

The killer landed atop him with a grunt, and Squire took full advantage of the fact that his adversary was stunned by the landing. The goblin dug his stubby fingers into the man’s face and pulled wet chunks away.

The tattooed man screamed like a banshee, arms flailing wildly. There was a glint of something in the dark, and Squire realized that his foe had managed to find his knife again. Reaching down to the floor of their confined space, Squire grabbed at something—anything—that he could use to block the blade.

The sneaker he brought up from the floor was just the thing.

Sneaker?

The killer was going wild, slashing out with his blade. Squire tried to stay low, reaching up to find what he suspected he would find: hands wrapping around the cool, metal knob and giving it twist.

The two tumbled from the closet into a child’s bedroom.

The little boy sat up in his bed, screaming that the monsters were coming out of his closet.
If only you knew how right you are,
Squire thought as he tried to get away.

In the faint glow of a night-light, he could see the damage he had done to the pale man’s face. It looked as though most of his nose and even more of one of his cheeks were gone. The tattoos didn’t look half as impressive anymore.

“Shut your fucking mouth, brat!” the pale man roared at the child, as he surged after Squire.

Squire had found an aluminum bat on the bedroom floor and used it to his fullest advantage. Swinging with all his might, he connected with his attacker’s leg, driving him to his knees.

“Are we having fun yet?” Squire asked, hitting him again across the back.

The pale man dropped to the floor, and Squire felt as though his arm was going to fall off.

He glanced at the child, staring wide-eyed from the bed, and was about to tell him that everything was going to be all right when the tattooed man unexpectedly struck.

What is he, the Energizer Bunny, for fuck’s sake?

The knife blade slashed across Squire’s chest, cutting at least a five-inch-long gash.

“Son of a bitch!” Squire hissed, jumping back and away before any more damage could be wrought.

His attacker was already standing. It looked as though he was having difficulty with one leg, but he still seemed like he could do some serious damage.

Squire decided to get the fuck outta Dodge. He turned his back on the man, already searching for an exit, and found it beneath the kid’s dresser. Not wanting to waste any time, he reached the piece of furniture, flipped it over, and dove inside.

He didn’t even have to look to know that Paleface was following. Exploding out the other end of the path, he hit the ground at a run. His chest felt as though it were on fire, the pain blending with the pain of his shoulder and leg wound; one big, happy fucking pain family. He could feel the blood running from the wound beneath his shirt, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, considering the situation he hoped to create.

He knew immediately when he was in the right place. His balls grew incredibly tight, disappearing up inside him, and if he could’ve disappeared inside himself, he would have, too.

“Where are you, you ugly fuck?” the pale assassin screamed as he emerged from the path, gunning for bear.

“Look who’s talking,” Squire goaded, sensing where he needed to be. “Think there might be some difficulty in the A Face Only a Mother Could Love competition.”

The pale man stalked toward him, knife blade still clutched in his hand.

“Wait a minute,” Squire said, backpedaling. “Did you even have a mother? From the looks of it, I’m going to be taking home first prize.”

“Gonna cut your face off and wear it like a mask,” the assassin said as he lunged.

Squire managed to avoid the attack, but barely. He was starting to slow down, the loss of blood and the accumulated pain of his injuries getting to be too much.

But if he did this right, it wouldn’t take much longer…. And if he didn’t do it right, nothing would really matter anymore.

An icy tendril of fear ran down the goblin’s spine. Squire stopped, remaining perfectly still as the pale man limped closer.

“What’s the matter—too tired to run?”

“No, I could probably keep this going quite a bit longer, but I really don’t see the need.”

“The first rational thing you’ve said so far,” the killer said, a glint of madness in his cruel, dark eyes.

“Yeah, I figure we’ve come full circle, and we might as well end this here and now.”

The tattooed man started, looking around, for the first time taking note of where they were. “We’re back where we started?” he asked, sounding somewhat uncertain.

“Yeah, back in the Shadow Lands, minus the ugly house, of course.”

“Fitting,” the pale man said with finality. “This is where I became obsessed with you, and this is where it all comes to an end.”

The killer lurched forward.

Squire was looking off into a particularly deep patch of gloom, searching…searching…and felt the hair on his entire body jump to attention.

“Yeah, it pretty much ends now.”

He pulled up his shirt, revealing his bleeding wound. He placed his hand beneath the gash, wetting his fingers, and then flicking the blood into the darkness.

“Shouldn’t pick at that,” the pale man said with a hiss. “It’s gonna get infected.”

And then he lunged, knife blade ready to take another bite out of Squire….

Just as something struck from the expanse of darkness.

It was large, probably one of the bigger shadow serpents that existed in the Shadow Lands. Squire had always been lucky enough to avoid it, but he knew that it had been aware of him. They’d both gotten each other’s scent.

The goblin dove back as the serpent hit the pale man’s side, flinging him violently across the blackened landscape. He must’ve lashed out with the knife as he was struck, because the serpent had reared back, away from its prey.

Squire managed to find an outcropping of solidified darkness to hide behind and watch the horror unfold.

The pale man was hurt pretty badly, what passed as blood oozing from his side, but he didn’t seem to be concerned with protecting himself from the inevitable second strike. He seemed concerned with something else entirely.

The serpent’s strike had torn away a section of the killer’s shirt, and something had spilled from the top pocket.

Through squinted eyes, Squire watched as the killer dropped to his knees to collect what had fallen to the ground. They looked like photographs, and he crawled across the frozen darkness, desperately snatching them up and clutching them lovingly to his chest.

He had grabbed the last of the objects; his gaze had just found Squire’s when the shadow serpent struck again.

The great beast latched onto the pale man, his precious objects flying into the air as the serpent yanked him back toward the darkness of its lair.

Squire tentatively emerged from his hiding place, the curiosity of what had been so important to his attacker drawing him like a beacon. They were exactly what he thought they might be: photographs. Squire looked at each of them, frozen moments in time with no rhyme or reason, until the last image.

It was a driver’s license, and it belonged to the girl, Ashley. Squire slipped the plastic identification into a pocket, just in case, before starting to search for a passage to take him back.

Ashley ran until she couldn’t run anymore.

It looked as though she’d made it inside a company lounge of some kind, big, overstuffed couches and chairs positioned around modern-looking coffee tables covered with magazines. One entire wall was nothing but large, tinted windows looking out over the city.

She came to a stumbling stop at the windows, peering out through the smoky glass at the spectacular view below, but the view was the least of her concerns.

The short sword still in hand, she spun around to face her pursuer.

“Stay back, Teddy!” she warned, but she couldn’t see the youth.

Her eyes scanned the darkened room as she stepped away from the floor-to-ceiling glass. With Squire’s warnings to avoid puddles of darkness prevalent in her thoughts, she was careful where she stepped as she looked for the wild boy.

Heart hammering in her chest so hard that she thought it might bust a rib, she moved toward the chairs but still could find no sign of the youth that had tried to keep her as a pet. She had no idea what was wrong with the boy, only that she’d heard his father say something about magick having killed his humanity, leaving only the beast behind.

It sounded right to her.

Ashley stood in the middle of the lounge, eyes darting about, searching for any sign of movement. There still was nothing, and she began to wonder if he had fallen victim to one of those shadow pools.

The back of her leg bumped up against the edge of the glass coffee table, and she stumbled back ever so slightly, her gaze falling to the clear surface of the table, reflexively reading the titles of the magazines lying there.

It was to the left of
Cooking Light
that she saw the grinning face peering up at her through the glass.

Ashley let out a scream, jumping away as Teddy surged up from where he had hidden beneath the coffee table. He was growling like a mad dog as he came at her.

She tried running again, her panic making her blind, and she ran head-on into the sofa, falling up against it as Teddy pounced.

Ashley cried out as the boy landed atop her, his jagged fingernails scratching her skin as he attempted to restrain her.

“Teddy, no!” she cried out, hoping to reach what little humanity might still exist.

The wild boy tried to pin her against the couch, but she continued to thrash. She felt his groping hands on her body and felt another piece of her sanity snap off and drift away. It was then that she realized she was still holding the sword and lashed out with it, hoping to drive her attacker away.

“Stop it!” she cried out, the flat of the sword connecting with the boy and actually knocking him back to land on the coffee table, shattering the top into what appeared to be a million pieces.