“What’s happening?” Stearns screamed over the labored hum of the infernal machines. He looked to the control room. The PA crackled that the entire building was experiencing some weird power fluctuations and that they were looking to fixing it.
“Fix it now!” Stearns shrieked, as the lights grew dim and the robotic cameras ceased to function.
And when the cameras stopped, so did the deadly Grigori transmission and so did death.
The room went completely dark and stayed that way, a sudden silence like a death pall falling over the room. Something was happening, more than just a power failure, and Remy hadn’t a clue as to what it was. And from the looks of it, neither did Stearns.
“What is this?” Stearns demanded. He lumbered over to the Grigori, who had dropped to their knees, blood pooling beneath them. Remy could see that they were somehow still alive, but just barely.
“What is happening?” Stearns screeched, reaching out with a gauntleted hand to grip the shoulder of Armaros. The angel was too weak to speak, tumbling onto his side as the room began to quake.
Dust rained down from above; loose tiles dropped from the ceiling. Remy could feel a change in the air, a sudden drop in the temperature and air pressure that made his ears ache.
“You!” Stearns screamed, pointing one of his armored fingers at him. “This has something to do with you. Doesn’t it?”
Remy wished that he could take the credit, but he barely had the strength to stand, never mind being behind whatever this was. Stearns reached up with his other hand, manipulating the sorcerous energies that surrounded Remy, shattering the sphere and letting him drop to the floor.
“You will stop it this instant,” Stearns warned, his metal-clad feet stomping across the floor toward him. He grabbed Remy by the front of his shirt and hauled him to his feet. “Do you realize how much is at stake?” Stearns bellowed, shaking him.
Remy couldn’t help but smile. “Was at stake,” he corrected.
He watched Stearns’ face twist with rage and he figured that he just might not survive what was sure to follow when the building around them shook with so much force that the sound of shattering glass could be heard drifting inside the soundproof room from outside.
Stearns lost his balance, releasing Remy as he fell.
Remy landed atop some broken ceiling tiles; the room continued to shimmy and shake beneath him. If they were in Los Angeles, he might have believed that the big one had finally arrived, but this was Boston.
Stearns lurched around the studio, desperate to salvage something from the events that were unfolding. He went to the child sitting on the bed. It was as if she had been frozen in time, her body rigid, eyes fixed to where the cameras had been focused on her.
Stearns started to disconnect himself from the machines, attempting to detach the cables that would have fed him the precious life energies as they’d flowed through the child.
Remy managed to rise to his knees, his body now more numb than pained, fooling him into thinking that he was better off than he actually was. Holding on to the corner of a small desk, he stood, swaying from side to side as the building did the same.
Glancing up, he saw that Stearns’ technicians were still running about, trying to fix the situation, but Remy doubted a solution was forthcoming.
At first he thought it was a trick of his eyes, a lingering effect of Stearns’ sorcery, but he soon came to realize it was more than that. There was something wrong with the shadows in the room, puddles of darkness expanding like liquid as the building violently shook again.
Stearns had frozen as he knelt before his damnable machine, and that was when Remy began to feel it.
This was more than a mere temperature shift or a change in air pressure. The air had become incredibly heavy as the darkness became even thicker, darker even than darkness should be…
And Remy found himself thinking of a world composed entirely of shadow, a world he had visited not too long ago, a world that still held a dear friend.
A world he had every intention of returning to once he was able.
The darkness had become all-encompassing, every existing speck of light swallowed up by the hungry dark. It was even getting difficult to breathe. An attempt to summon even the slightest hint of angelic fire, to throw some light within the studio, met with total failure as the air grew heavier.
The silence had become almost deafening. And then the room seemed to explode, the very structure of the place tearing itself apart as Remy was thrown into the air by the disintegrating environment.
The atmosphere of the room felt suddenly different, and as he again attempted to get back on his feet he found that the floor of the studio had become dramatically uneven, with what appeared to be metal girders rising through the floor. It was almost as if the building had been twisted by the hands of some unspeakable force.
Through the thick clouds of swirling dust, Remy saw the hint of light, an unearthly glow that drew him toward it. The unknown source illuminated the twisted remains of the studio, showing a place that no longer resembled the room it had been mere minutes ago. Remy wasn’t quite sure what he was bearing witness to, but it was as if another space-another room entirely-had somehow been crammed into the studio.
The little girl’s bed had been mercilessly tossed across the room by the traumatic upheaval, and Remy found the golem child curled in a ball on the floor. He knelt down beside her, pulling her into his arms. She was crying, as a small child would, and he could not help but comfort her.
“I don’t understand,” she kept repeating over and over, and Remy shared her confusion.
Kneeling on the floor, he saw now that the glow was coming from beneath a set of double doors that hung strangely askew at the top of a set of broken stone steps. Stearns stood at the bottom of those steps and started to climb.
It was when the doors came suddenly open, flying from their hinges in an explosion of light and sound, that Remy realized what he was looking at. He knew these doors and the broken stone steps that led up to them.
A striking figure stood just inside the doorway, his body glowing in its efforts to contain the power that was now housed within it, a power that Remy had known intimately, for it had belonged to him for many millennia.
Konrad Deacon stood in the entryway to his home, glaring at Algernon Stearns, who lay upon his armored back like a turtle unable to right himself.
“Hello, Algernon,” Deacon said, wings of fire unfurling. “It’s been a long, long time.”
They had temporarily stopped in the stairway, Angus needing a quick breather, before continuing on up to the television studio, when the building started to shake.
“Okay,” Francis said as the lighting flickered.
The temperature dramatically plummeted, and Francis was nearly overwhelmed with an odd sensation reminiscent of dropping down in an elevator.
“Did you feel that?” Francis asked.
“Yes,” Angus said, in between heavy breaths as the hallway went entirely to darkness. “And it isn’t anything normal.”
A dancing orange flame suddenly appeared, hovering above Angus’ outstretched palm, shedding some light in the stairway.
The building was rocking, a powerful vibration moving through the stairs and the metal handrail beneath their grips.
“Earthquake?” Francis suggested.
“Worse,” Angus answered, as cracks began to appear in the wall. “Much worse.”
And then they heard it from somewhere in the stairwell below them: a horrible roar unrecognizable to anything that existed in this world.
“I’m guessing that’s part of the problem you’re talking about?”
“A part,” Angus said. “We might want to get out of this stairwell as quickly as possible,” the sorcerer suggested as they listened to the new sounds of something large and growling dragging its considerable weight up the concrete stairs.