Conquer the Dark (36 page)

Wings spread, he ran across the deck and launched himself into the air. Moonlight turned the golden desert sand an eerie blue-gray, and he spotted a piece of cloth that had her signature on it … her blood, her sweat, the sweet saliva from her mouth. Panic made him hit the sand
in a one-knee crouch. But as soon as he pulled the strip of fabric out of the ground, it was as though he’d detonated a grenade, and he knew he’d been set up.

Thousands of vicious, biting scarabs frothed from the sand, tearing at his skin, infesting his wings, burrowing into his skin, and trying to enter his nose and mouth. He stood up like a burning force of nature, jettisoning the refuse from him by going still for two seconds, then glowing blue-white hot, causing the evil little beetles to scream and crackle-fry. Then off in the distance the insects converged into a tall black pillar that soon resolved into the injured body of a hooded messenger demon.

The wicked creature stared at him with a sinister grin, maggots crawling through the putrefied skin of its skeletal face. Its eyes gleamed red and cruel as it gripped its scythe with rotting, skeletal hands. “The master says you have something of his, avenger! He will make a trade.”

“Tell him yes,” Azrael shouted. “Tell him to meet me in Philadelphia—where I can return her safely to her home and her people.”

“You are in no position to bargain,” the demon said smugly, then hissed.

“Nor are you,” Azrael said calmly, then with lightning speed threw his blue-white battle-ax.

Asmodeus smiled as a
demon head burst through the air with a sizzling battle-ax and cleaved into his floor.

“He homed it to the demon’s energy, which brought it back to us. Very dangerous that he’s aware we are so near.
Our only saving grace, not that we have such a thing anymore, is that he’s showing amazing restraint because of the girl,” Rahab said calmly, kicking the smoldering head away and making the ax clatter to the floor.

She waited until the weapon slowly disappeared into the ether before going to retrieve the head. Picking it up by its bloody hood, she brought it to her scrying table in Asmodeus’s office.

“Hmmm, so what did the avenger say? How did he take the threat?” Forcas smiled and placed a finger to his lips. “From the looks of things he didn’t take it well and definitely killed the messenger. Just a guess, but I don’t think he’s in a hostage-bargaining mood, milord.”

“Stop toying with that disgusting thing and read the response,” Asmodeus snapped, then eyed Forces with a warning when he smiled.

After a moment Rahab looked up. “You broke him.” She stared at Celeste and smirked at Celeste’s horrified expression. “An angel violating the ultimate rule, and he’ll trade the lives of humanity all for her. Really? Do you know how many angelic Laws that violates—to turn away from one’s mission to be concerned about all of humanity to only care about one mere mortal … if you are not a Guardian Angel? This is so rich!”

“You must have interpreted incorrectly,” Asmodeus said, walking up to the table and shoving her aside.

“Feel for yourself,” Rahab said, folding her arms. “He’s panicked and worried and will do a trade in her hometown
tonight
.” She threw back her head and laughed. “The man is totally smitten by her. Oh, you should feel this, and so naive that he thinks if he gives us the key, she
can just go back to West Philly like none of this ever happened. How cute.”

“Do you know how many wars in antiquity began because of a woman? How many betrayals and poor strategic moves were made because a man or a general was blinded by emotion? I never thought that I would live to see the day that the Angel of Death was so moved.” Asmodeus shook his head. “Pull her through a demon door and set up the ritual elements on the Philadelphia site. We raise an army tonight!”

“It’s awfully quiet, mon,”
Isda said in a low mutter as they crept around the building that was only five hundred feet north of Independence Hall.

Bath Kol nodded. “Too quiet. The Liberty Bell Pavilion sits just east of the mansion in what was the president’s garden, according to the map. We need to get an aerial view—but if they’ve got gargoyles on patrol in the building rafters, not good.”

“You think they took the bait?” Paschar glanced at Gavreel.

“We’ll know soon enough,” Gavreel whispered, then made a fist.

They all looked at Azrael.

“I don’t like you going into that center alone, mon.”

“Either I walk in there alone or they send her out in pieces,” Azrael said, keeping his eyes on the building. “And she can still live so they wouldn’t be violating the Law. They can chop off her fingers, her ears, her toes, shear sections of flesh off her body, or send me her beautiful eyes
in a bag, and leave her alive for a human ambulance. She would survive, but I would not.”

He stood and walked across the wide street. There was nothing left to discuss. Asmodeus’s demons were already here. He could smell their sulfur. Bodies moved within the glass-enclosed structure. They’d defiled the building and, deep within it, had set up for a ritual—he could see that right through the glass.

His old nemeses stood back by the wall as he took in the horror of what they’d done to Celeste and what they were about to visit upon the world. A glass sarcophagus with ancient gold bones was in the center of a pentagram with Celeste also tied to a chair, the tablet in her lap, waiting on the key, blood dripping from her arm into a chalice set on the floor. Black candle flames licked the air and added tallow to the sulfuric sick stench wafting off the demons.

Eyes filled the ceiling rafters. A carpet of insects waited for the order to devour. Snarling beasts haunted the shadows. Asmodeus’s inner circle of fallen brandished weapons, remembering their deaths at his hands. Malpas, Appollyon, Bune, Onoskelis, and Pharzuh, killed by Celeste, all wounded and rotting and seething for their chance to exact revenge. Forcas bowed and smiled a vicious grin. Celeste looked so weak that she could barely lift her head. The sight of that alone was enough to make his eyes glow white-hot with pure warrior-angel rage.

Asmodeus stepped out of a fold of darkness with Rahab. She left his side and went to the pentagram and dipped her finger into Celeste’s blood.

“You are the Angel of Death and yet you have a problem with death,” Asmodeus said, smiling. “Ahhh, just like the self-righteous, you talk a good game, but when it comes to you following the same rules …” Asmodeus wagged his finger at Azrael. “Are you sure you can still go home? Or are you banished, like us? What other bad things have you done while here?” Asmodeus turned and laughed with his demons, but his inner circle of fallen didn’t even smile. “You are standing on very shaky ground, Azrael. Why not join us? The pay is excellent, the benefits are Cadillac … you can even have her back when we’re done.”

“Our deal was that I get her now and walk out of here with her unharmed.” Azrael looped the key over his head and dangled it in front of Asmodeus, allowing a battle-ax to fill his other hand. “All I want is her.”

“You would allow me to raise an army that could wipe out half of humanity, for her?”

“We’re early. Twelve twenty-one twelve is a couple of weeks away yet. Much can happen in that time.” Azrael swung the key back and forth like a taunting pendulum. “We conquered the army of darkness before when it was full strength; I have no problem doing so again. So we will meet on the battlefield soon enough, but she is not a part of our conflict. Take it or leave it.”

“You’re surrounded,” Asmodeus said calmly. “Look around.”

“Do you know that you are not?” Azrael said, arching an eyebrow. “The one thing you do know from the old days in the Light is that I cannot lie. If I say that I will give you this key for Celeste, then my word is bond. I want her away from this.”

“We
need her
to open the book,” Rahab hissed. “The key is made of silver.”

“You already have her precious blood in the chalice,” Azrael said in an unwavering tone. “
I
will put the key in the book. But she comes with me before you turn the key—I want her away from here! Sacrifice a demon to turn it to open it. That is my final offer.”

Tense quiet strangled the room as Celeste’s head lolled back.

“Put the key in the book,” Asmodeus murmured, his eyes glowing black.

Azrael nodded and crossed the symbol that was drawn on the floor. Celeste looked up at him bleary-eyed and shook her head.

“No,” she whispered weakly when he thrust the key into the crystal opening.

Wary and watching the evil entities that surrounded them and the pentagram that was in the center of the room, he placed an arm at her back and under her legs, dissolving the twist ties, and stood slowly, then instantly spun into the nothingness with her in his arms and the book on her lap.

The glass blew out of the Liberty Bell Center. Asphalt rippled and stacked slab against slab against itself, tossing cars, setting off alarms as black-winged fallen burst forth from the building. Gargoyles screamed their discontent, drowning out Asmodeus’s roar. The grassy knoll in front of the Constitution Center erupted with demon warriors on nightmare horsebacks.

Celeste lifted her head and clutched the book to her chest, letting the fake key that was silversmithed in
Aswan fall to the ground as Azrael flew up Market Street toward City Hall—the goal to reach the cathedral on the Parkway.

Isda’s hands shook as he gave her the true key from around his neck midair. He looped the chain around her neck, then somersaulted back in the air to add cover, sending an RPG shell into the dark flock. But expert fliers veered off and the shell took out a section of the Constitution Center without slowing down the pursuit.

Gavreel, Bath Kol, and Paschar formed a protective barrier between Azrael and the mob of mutant ravens that split off from Malpas’s twisted body. But Onoskelis and Rahab flew up parallel streets, sending from between buildings black-energy charges toward them that looked like black lightning-bolt strikes.

“Do it now!” Azrael shouted. “We may not get to hallowed ground!”

Working quickly, Celeste opened the book. The moment she did, the radiant light pouring from it scorched demons that were dive-bombing at their flanks.

“I call the ancestors, the warriors of Light from the pharaoh’s armies, the Nubian armies, the armies of antiquity … chariots, palace guards, cavalry, infantry! I call the men of this land that had good ideals but did not live up to them then—here is your chance now to bring your armies forward against the darkness! Rectify the wrongs of the past with this right! We fight together against that which divided us. I forgive you; forgive yourselves and change the future!”

The book slammed itself shut. A concussive blast blew Azrael and Celeste five blocks against the top clock of City
Hall. Bath Kol hurled into a glass office building. Gavreel hit a hotel with Paschar. Isda went into the plate-glass window of a restaurant.

Suddenly a massive blue-white orb swept out from the book, like a fast-moving carpet of energy, and stopped everything and everyone, demons included, from falling, stopping time, soaking up sound, freezing their motion as Celeste’s eyes fluttered blue-white. It was as though time stopped, motion stopped, sound evaporated, in a blue-white miasma. Everything she witnessed connected psychically to Melissa, Maggie, and Aziza as it coursed through Azrael. Knowing slammed into Azrael as the contents of the book filled Celeste’s mind and then fused with his.

Then suspended time snapped back to real time. Demons and the fallen crashed to the ground. Warriors of Light slowly stood. Azrael caught Celeste in the air, still clutching the book, her body convulsing in a frightening seizure as the asphalt turned to desert sand. Mighty armies parted the ocean of sand; soldiers raised gleaming blades. Desert warriors released high-pitched battle cries and took off toward the Liberty Bell. Warriors from different eras emerged from beneath paved streets, running in the same direction like a bizarre tapestry of uniforms and weapons not in correct time sequence. Cannon fire from Revolutionary infantries punched the air. Demon bodies exploded in cinders as expert fighters hacked and cut back the darkness.