In the House of the Wicked Read Online Free PDF Page A

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