knees upon the cold stone floor as he waited for the bowl to fill, his hands ready to snatch it up.
“Come on,” he growled, surprised by the sound of his own voice, his vocal cords ancient and dry, the image of a mummified corpse struggling to speak filling his fevered thoughts.
He pitched forward, unable to stop himself from falling, but at least still having the dexterity to avoid disturbing the chalk circle. He lay on his side, eyes transfixed by the thread of scarlet raining down from the dying child’s throat.
Maybe it’s enough, he thought, willing his hands to reach into the circle, but then reminding himself that all the blood must be within the bowl to have any lasting effect on him. Slowly, he withdrew his withered hands.
And still the blood continued to drain.
The vision of red had turned to black, and Stearns did not even realize that he had lost consciousness. He struggled in the pitch darkness, feeling the pull of death upon him and hearing the unfamiliar sound of wings flapping in the chamber around him.
Was this the angel of death arriving at last to claim the prize that had evaded him for so very long?
And then there came the taste of revitalizing blood on his lips.
The warm fluid flowed into his mouth, and Stearns immediately felt its rejuvenating effects-the horrible burning pain as his body began to repair itself.
Stearns gulped the blood; the faster the magically enhanced life stuff entered his system, the quicker he could reclaim the vitality almost permanently leeched from him.
Returning from the brink of death, the old sorcerer finally opened his eyes.
“What madness is this?” he asked at the sight of a small, gargoylelike creature drawing back the nearly empty bowl of blood from his lips.
The creature did not appear to be of flesh but of some kind of stone, and it stared at Stearns with eyes that were no more than pinpricks of light in the craggy makeup of its face.
“What are you?” Stearns asked, more fascinated now than anything else. This strange thing had saved him. But why?
The stone creature lurched toward him, bowl in its three-fingered hands, offering its contents once more. Stearns took it and drained the remainder of the blood in one mighty gulp.
His skin tingled as the cells repaired themselves; the burning on his scalp told him that his blond hair was again starting to grow.
The gargoyle watched intently as Stearns carefully placed the empty bowl on the ground beside him.
“Did someone send you?” he asked the creature, wiping the blood from his lips with the sleeve of his scarlet robe.
He stood easily, the movement sending the beast into the air, fluttering impossibly on wings of stone before landing atop the sorcerer’s altar.
“You must have come here for a reason,” Stearns continued. “Tell me why you have saved my life. Show me why you are here.”
The gargoyle stared silently at him for a moment, then sat down on the altar, wrapping its spindly arms around its knees and opening its mouth.
Stearns watched in awe as the creature’s mouth opened wider and wider still, and then a voice emanated from the darkness within.
A voice shockingly familiar.
“Greetings, Algernon. So happy to be of assistance.”
“Deacon?” Algernon questioned, drawing closer to the creature. “Is that you?”
“It is, my friend,” the voice of Konrad Deacon replied. “It has been too long.”
Deacon spoke the truth. It had indeed been a very long time since Stearns had last seen him, or any other member of their sorcerers’ guild, for that matter. The members of the cabal had become more concerned with pursuits of an individual nature, amassing power and building their own personal empires.
“To what do I owe your timely visit?” Stearns asked.
“I come bearing a gift.” Deacon’s excited voice drifted out from the mouth of the gargoyle. “The gift of life.”
“Life? What do you mean?”
“Exactly that. Life, my brother. More life than you could possibly imagine.”
Stearns was intrigued, for life was something that the sorcerer could always use more of.
In fact, he was quite greedy in his desire of it.
One could say he was insatiable.
The air warped and rippled just above the road outside the New Hampshire Correctional Facility. There was a brief flash of white and the sound of wings beating the air as a rend in the fabric of time and space appeared to disgorge Remy Chandler.
The Seraphim stumbled as he came forth, folding away his appendages of flight as he caught his balance and began to walk.
Remy knew that he’d done the right thing in leaving the young murderer alone with his fear, but a part of him still wasn’t satisfied, and if he’d stayed any longer, Denning would have been dead.
That was what he’d always been wary of, why he’d pushed the angelic essence of the Seraphim deeper and deeper inside himself, locking it away. It had always been wild, always reacting on instinct only.
It was what Remy feared.
What if he continued to think more like an angel? What if the more rational, human side of his dual nature hadn’t won this time?
The urge was still there, like an itch at the center of his spine, taunting him to scratch.
A vibrating sensation from the pocket of his jacket suddenly, thankfully, distracted him from his troubling thoughts, and Remy pulled out his phone and saw that Linda was calling.
He guessed that he would call her his girlfriend, but something still didn’t feel quite right about that. It was odd talking with another woman after having been with Madeline for so long; even odder to know that he was beginning to develop feelings for Linda. He still felt guilty at times that he was somehow cheating on his dead wife. His issue, of course, and something else that he would have to deal with.
“Hey,” he answered.
“Hey yourself,” Linda replied. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing much,” Remy lied, as he continued to walk down the center of the deserted road. The rain had temporarily ceased, but the air was still saturated, causing a writhing mist to snake up from the ground as the evening temperature gradually cooled. “Just wrapping up some stuff for work. What’s going on with you?”
“I got out of class early,” she said. “I’m planning a date with some lounging clothes, a bottle of Merlot, and the Real Housewives of New Jersey.”
“Sure one bottle will be enough for all of you?” Remy joked. “I hear those housewives can really put it away.”
She laughed, and he was reminded again of how much he liked the sound-and her.
“I miss you,” she said.
Remy stopped walking, experiencing that moment of electricity that proved he wasn’t the only one starting to have those kinds of feelings.
“I miss you, too.”
“So, what are you doing now?” Linda asked again.
He was about to suggest that he join her and the housewives when he remembered that he still had something left to do.
“I was planning on stopping by Steven Mulvehill’s,” he said.
“Has he returned any of your calls?” she asked, concern in her voice.
Linda was aware that a rift had formed between the two friends, but she hadn’t been made privy to the specifics. The homicide detective had become involved in one of Remy’s recent cases and had received a full dose of the kind of world that Remy often walked in.
A kind of world that Steven would have preferred never to have seen.
“No, he hasn’t,” Remy admitted. “But I’m thinking of dropping by his place, anyway, to try to straighten this business out face-to-face.”
