In the House of the Wicked by Thomas E. Sniegoski Read Free Book Online

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,