He knew the fear would kill him if he let it, slowly eating him away, making it so that he would be forced to leave the job that he loved. For how could he be a cop if he was afraid of what could be around every corner, hiding in every shadow?
The image of the darkness as it poured from the skyscraper came into his thoughts again, followed by a surge of panic, but he pushed it down beneath the fire of anger he’d continued to stoke.
What’s happening at Hermes Plaza? he wondered with equal parts fear and intense curiosity. He thought of others like him, before he’d learned the truth about the world- the real world — and experienced a surprising urge.
Mulvehill left the living room, entering his bedroom and going to the dresser in the far corner. Pulling open the bottom drawer, he rooted around beneath a stack of old sweatshirts for the cigar box he kept there. Opening the lid, he looked at the old service revolver, something he had kept as a backup weapon since first making detective. In the drawer there was also a box of ammunition, and he loaded the gun.
For what he was about to do, he thought that he might need some protection, and hoped that bullets fired from a gun would be enough.
He grabbed his jacket from the back of his closet door, shoved the loaded handgun into his pocket, and headed for the door.
Before he lost his courage.
Algernon Stearns wasn’t quite sure, but didn’t think he had ever seen anything so magnificent that filled him with so much rage.
A blast of fire so hot that it started to melt the metal of the apparatus he wore sprang from the fingertips of his foe. A quickly erected spell of shielding was the only thing that prevented him from becoming nothing more than smoldering ash on the studio floor.
He conjured his own offense, casting the spell at the sorcerer who appeared to be wielding power of some divine origin.
There had always been a part of him that suspected that Konrad Deacon had survived the cabal’s betrayal of him, that the sorcerer had gone off someplace to hide and lick his wounds, but Stearns never imagined him returning in such a way.
Commanding a level of power that practically made Stearns’ mouth- mouths — water.
He felt the hungry orifices on his hands open up, eager to feed upon the unimaginable power now in the control of his enemy.
Where did he go? And how did he come to possess a power this great? Stearns wanted to know as he evaded another rush of unearthly flame that scoured the rubble-strewn ground where he’d been standing.
The exoskeleton was still functioning on a reserve-battery charge, a precaution that he’d enacted when considering how important this operation was and how many things could possibly go wrong. Hiding behind a crumpled section of soundproofed wall, the sorcerer adjusted the suit’s functions to allow him to collect and utilize some of the energies that were now being cast at him.
“Are you hiding from me, Algernon?” Deacon asked, a sickening tone of superiority dripping from his words.
Stearns waited, wanting to be certain that the suit was functioning properly before reentering the fray. Seeing that everything appeared to be in working order, he uttered a spell of destruction, felt the magick of murder collect in his hands, and emerged from hiding, throwing the death spell with the controlled precision of the murderer he was.
“Hiding, Konrad?” Stearns asked, the magick leaving his possession in the form of a humming ball of roiling energy. “It appears your time away has certainly bolstered your confidence.”
One of Deacon’s fiery wings folded down to block the spell. The magick detonated just in front of its target, but its effect was still devastating, shrapnel of pure magickal force peppering the air and slicing into his body.
“What was that, Konrad?” Stearns asked, striking while the iron was hot. He unleashed another blast of concentrated magick, blowing away part of the floor beneath Deacon’s feet, causing him to stumble. Stearns watched as Deacon attempted to recover, imagining the death magick from the shards protruding from his foe’s skin already starting to permeate his blood, weakening him from within.
“Was that a scream? Don’t tell me that even with all that power you’ve managed to acquire, you’re still no more of a threat than a child.”
Stearns came in closer, a corruption spell now encircling his fist. He brought that fist down, connecting with Deacon’s face and driving him to his knees.
He was stepping in for another strike when Deacon retaliated. His wings of fire exploded to life, flapping wildly and flicking globules of divine fire.
Stearns was driven back, wiping frantically at the flashes of fire that clung to the armored skeleton he wore.
“Impressive,” he sneered. “But still not enough.”
Deacon’s body had begun to radiate an insane amount of heat, the air warping around his form as he readied himself for what was to happen next.
“It was my biggest fault, you know,” Deacon said, stalking toward Stearns.
Stearns was ready, hundreds of different spells floating around in his mind, just waiting to be used.
“No matter how powerful I became, or how much knowledge I acquired, I always felt myself second to you,” Deacon continued.
Stearns erected a shield of magickal protection while propelling another wave of pure, undiluted malice at his foe. Deacon responded effortlessly, catching the spell in his hand and allowing it to fizzle into nothing.
“Even when I knew that I was better, there was still that nagging voice at the back of my mind,” Deacon explained.
“A voice to trust,” Stearns said with a sneer, unleashing a barrage of destruction to attempt to drive his enemy back.
But Deacon kept coming.
“Now there’s a new voice speaking inside my head,” he said, a hint of a smile on his lips. “Whispering that the old Konrad Deacon is gone.”
A rush of hurricane-force wind swirled from Stearns’ fingertips; he hoped it would give him the time he required to consider his situation. He needed Deacon to be unprepared for what was to happen, unable to fight back when he began to feed on the energy he so coveted.
“But there was still something that nagged at me, that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.”
The wind drove Deacon back, but only by inches. The sorcerer planted his feet, the ground crumbling into dust as he held his place and started to advance again.
“And then I realized what it was,” Deacon said. He flapped his wings of fire and propelled himself across the brief expanse.
Stearns would be a liar if he said that he wasn’t afraid. But, as is often the case, from great fear comes great reward.
Deacon pounced on him, driving him back to the floor with inhuman strength.
“I realized that it was still you, Algernon,” Deacon said, looming over him. “No matter how powerful I felt or how powerful the new voice inside told me that I was, I knew that you were still out there.”
Lying on his back, Stearns looked up at Konrad Deacon. There was a fire in his eyes and something else-something that hadn’t been there seventy years ago.
It was madness.
“You were still out there, ready to take what belonged to me.”
Stearns watched as Deacon raised a hand that started to burn like a miniature sun.
Oh, how he coveted that power.
“So the only way that I could truly be at peace was to find and deal with you,” Deacon said. “To finally take something away from you…your life.”
“You’re quite the prophet,” Stearns spoke, focusing not on the idea that his own death was merely moments away, but that he would soon have his latest desire.
The mouths beneath his metal gauntlets were dripping in anticipation as Stearns raised his hand to Deacon’s face, grabbing hold of the magician’s cheek in a steely grip.
At first Deacon was smiling, amused by his enemy’s struggles, but that look quickly turned to unease and then to pain as the mouths, aided by the sorcerous mechanics of the exoskeleton, proceeded to feed.