“The CIA is going to question where the intelligence came from. That could lead back to some channels we’d like to keep intact.”
“What was the weapon our terrorist was taking to Philadelphia?”
“A bomb.”
“Nuclear? Dirty?”
“No.”
Jacob sighs in relief. “Good. Make it happen. I don’t want anything left.”
“How?”
“I don’t care. But do it now, before the Guard shows up.”
“What about Jonathan and the ring?”
“If the legends are true, then the ring will be fine. But the abandoned cars suggest the chase has moved away from the highway, anyway.”
Stephen’s cell phone rings in his pocket. After taking it, he reports, “The plane is waiting for you. The car is out front.”
After placing his rings in a wall safe and sealing it shut, Jacob turns and walks past Stephen, heading for the door. “The terrorist detonated the bomb when confronted by soldiers. That’s as far as any investigation should get. Nothing about the helicopters shooting motorists.”
“Understood.” His cell rings again.
“What is it?”
“Another helicopter crashed.”
“Clean this up, and mobilize another force to go after the ring. I want Jonathan dead.”
“Military?”
“No. Use our own this time.” He walks out the door, heading for the car waiting to take him to one of his private jets. He has an appointment with the president that must be kept. The future scope of the Society and the fulfillment of its purpose within this lifetime could well depend on it.
****
He freezes, caught completely by surprise by what happens when the black man takes the ring into his hand. The connection, the
voice
, is broken. Lost. He stares at the young man, eyes boring holes into his soul, and he knows. Knows why he hasn’t been able to acquire the ring, what has been preventing his reunion with the ancient relic. His former inclination, back at the woman’s house, was correct.
The black man. The Negro.
He isn’t a racist like his father was. At least not exceptionally. He hates all people groups. But then, he suddenly realizes looking at this man, maybe the Mormons were right about black skin being God’s judgment on some former sin. But the thought is ludicrous, he knows, the man before him the furthest thing from being cursed by God. Such a realization sickens him and only reinforces his need to usher in a new world—a world that will be void of such pollutants. How could God look down at this man and choose him?
It!
This subspecies. How could God love
that
? It doesn’t matter. He promised the man that he is going to kill him, and indeed, he is. But first…
He whips the knife back behind his head and launches it forward, sending it screaming through the air, end over end, straight at the girl’s face.
The black boyfriend shouts out, his hand thrusting forward in protest, and the knife moves to the side, missing the girl’s face and disappearing into the darkness.
Jonathan narrows his serpent eyes, hatred coursing through his veins.
No
, he thinks.
It’s impossible.
And yet it happened. His strike missed the mark, moved away by the pleading of the Negro.
The angels are present, summoned by the righteousness of the ring-bearer.
Never before has Jonathan witnessed the ring in the possession of a qualified being, one deemed worthy. The legends told of the boy Solomon gave the ring to, and the boy, with it, was able to bring Asmodeus in chains before Jerusalem’s king. And though Solomon had also used the ring to enslave the demons, over time, due to the corrupting influence of his pagan wives and his increased involvement within the Occult, even Solomon himself had become “a sport of demons.” That the man before him could have been sentenced by the dark judgment stone as pure is a phenomenon that only proves his theory as to why the ring has been so elusive. It was never just the four passengers in the rental car. Like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, there had been another Presence in the fire, keeping them one step ahead of him. He thinks back through the legends, through Solomon’s Testament, tries to think of which angel could be here in their midst. Raphael? Michael? The Lookers. He searches for his glasses, can’t find them.
It doesn’t matter, he convinces himself. Let them see into his soul. They can’t have it. He is the Crest of Dragons, and not even God Himself or all His hosts will keep him from fulfilling his destiny this night.
He turns his attention from the girl, who is now on her knees and sobbing like a little bitch, and takes steps toward the black man.
****
She cowered beneath the intensity of Ian’s brown eyes. They were more than just balls of jelly, more than a physiological and biological ingredient resting in the skull. It’s the reason the big toe isn’t called the window to the soul. The fingernail, the ear, the nipple, the anus… There’s only one window in the human body that communicates something beyond the mere physical. And right now, the depths of that other stuff, whatever it was, focused on her in a way that was both overwhelming and terrifying. She prayed—though to whom she didn’t know—that Ian would believe her words, that, unlike his first fiancée, she never would’ve gone through with aborting his child.
Her
child. She believed it now, for herself, but would those probing eyes detect the sincerity of such a conviction through her own pleading eyes? There was no doubt in her mind that her life depended on it.
“Ian…please…” she cried, begged.
He continued to study her, examining the truth of her words. And just like that, the anger burning across his face disappeared. A softness returned, and the muscles around his mouth and eyes relaxed. He exhaled, his body sagging as if suddenly free from some tremendous strain.
“The ring,” he mumbled. “It did something…inside me.”
Heather crawled to him and wrapped her arms around him, scared but needing to do anything within her power to keep the Ian she knew and loved present with her. “You’re scaring me, baby.”
For a while, he didn’t say anything, and then, “Maybe you should go on without me. Just in case.”
She shook her head. She couldn’t go on alone. Not in the storm and not with the driver of the Camaro out there. She could already feel the sluggish pull of sleep and cold surrender seeping into the marrow of her bones. Exposure would end her life within an hour. But then she began to wonder. What if, just over the hill and through the woods, rested a warm neighborhood, its arms open wide and beckoning?
An explosion in the distance lit the sky for a moment.
No, she couldn’t just leave him to die out here. This was her fiancé, the man she loved more than anything in the world. She was carrying their child in her womb. She couldn’t give up on him now. There had to be a way to—
He pulled away from her, his head whipping to the right. Something in the white-washed void had captured his attention. She looked in the same direction and saw nothing.
“What is it?” she asked, afraid to know.
“Marcus and Ashley.” He stood up. “The driver is here.” He took off, racing into the open mouth of the blizzard, and in a second, he was gone.
Heather screamed after him.
When he didn’t reappear, she started running after him, staring down at the ground and following his footprints, which were now the only discernible things in her world.
****
Marcus could tell that touching the ring had done something, something the man hadn’t expected. But whatever that something was, it didn’t seem to trigger anything within him. He didn’t feel bold and aggressive like Ashley had, and he certainly didn’t feel the fury it had conjured in Ian. He felt the cold smoothness of the metal in his hand but nothing more.
For a moment, as he watched the demon begin walking toward him, the tunnel of snow still encompassing the encounter, he considered the possibility that the ring itself might not contain any supernatural powers or abilities. Perhaps the object worked like a Ouija board, nothing mysterious in its composition, but rather a catalyst for connecting the user with the paranormal. Or maybe the ring was just being blamed for horrors that belonged solely to the corrupted hearts of the people around it. Whatever it was or wasn’t, Marcus gained no new experience by holding it in his hand.
He looked over at Ashley. She had dropped to her knees, her confrontation with certain death and all that it implied leaving her paralyzed. The terror experienced, manifested in the form of a gleaming blade, had taunted her with all it had in store… The fact that the knife missed its mark, and that she was still alive, was not relief enough to immediately overwrite the horror of what almost was. Ashley was gone, her mind slipping back down into that dark pit dug out by the sight of Joyce’s disemboweled body swaying back and forth from a tree.
Raising his head in defiance to the monster, Marcus set his back straight, puffing out his muscled chest, and squeezed the ring tight in his grasp. “‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…’”
The man laughed. “You think your God will save you now, Blackman?”
The tunnel shrank, closing behind the scarred man as he walked forward. The thick snow flying around them became a source of some light and blocked out the darkness beyond. Here, within this vacuum, neither the wind nor the snow touched them.
Marcus stepped forward, closing the gap between him and the demon a little quicker. The tube followed after him, passing over Ashley and leaving her condemned to the elements outside it. Maybe that was a good thing; maybe she could get away now. He prayed that she’d find the strength to run again.
The thirty feet that had separated the Light from the Darkness was now a mere fifteen.
The dark man erupted in flames.
Marcus blinked.
The man’s smile broadened. Dragon’s wings grew from behind him, stretching upward and puncturing the sanctity of the strange tunnel. The flames didn’t seem to bother him, only to feed his insanity.
Marcus closed his eyes, seeking strength from the countless martyrs that had gone before him, those that had been strapped to the stake and burned for not renouncing their humble King. The Christians that had been torn apart by lions in the amphitheatres, crucified, flayed and impaled, many of them heard singing hymns as they died, heads turned toward heaven. He turned his own head toward heaven now…and prayed. For Ashley. If this was his time, then he would embrace it in good faith. God worked in mysterious ways, and surely his death was no exception. Those evil forces from the church basement had finally tracked him down, reached into the future and found him, an adult, a lawyer, a man of faith, a man in love… But it was God that would always have the final say, and there was something strangely comforting in that fact, in this faith beyond understanding.
And then he was holding out his hand. He opened his eyes and found himself a mere foot away from the creature. The flames were gone, as were the wings, but he stood no less intimidating. He stared down at Marcus, his eyes hollow things leading to a soulless pit. Marcus could see dancing figures circling his pupils.
Us
, he had always said. Give
us
the ring. The man was possessed. He was under the control of hell, imprisoned by the very darkness that must have promised him freedom from whatever pain had first opened the door to such a presence. The scars…the man had already gotten a taste of his future, the flame’s melting touch marking his body as a constant reminder of his ultimate fate. Marcus knew, however, that the man’s Company had promised something else entirely.
Marcus’ eyes must have shown pity, something the demon-possessed giant didn’t care for. He raised his arm, bare fingers outstretched, and pushed…just pushed out into the air as if, like some comic book superhero, he expected Marcus to fly backward, struck by an invisible force flung from his gloved hand. But that didn’t happen. Nothing happened.
Marcus raised his upturned hand, the ring resting on his palm, in offering to the man. “Take it,” he said. “Take it and be gone, James.”
A stunned expression lit those lifeless eyes, and the driver took a step backward, his head turning this way and that, looking out into the storm as if searching for a presence he suddenly realized had been there all along.
“I don’t want it,” Marcus said, stepping forward, not letting the man escape. “Take the ring! You went through all this trouble to get it, so take it and leave us alone!”
The man stared at him, doubting. He reached forward to take it.
But just before his fingers touched the bronze band, something exploded out of the blizzard and penetrated the tunnel, tackling the dark man to the ground.
Marcus stood, shocked, as Ian straddled the monster’s chest, throwing punch after punch into his face.
****
Where this unprecedented power and rage was stemming from, Ian had little doubt. But at least now it was aimed at something less than innocent. All the rage that had been creeping up in him since wearing the ring was now bursting forth like a tsunami exploding a dam. Standing there with Heather, afraid again that he would hurt her worse than before, he’d heard the Dark Man’s voice cry out through the night, and he knew that Marcus and Ashley were in trouble.
Give it to us
. He’d left Heather behind, taking off in a blind run. Like a missile locked onto a target, he’d followed whatever power within was guiding him. Now here he was, beating the demon’s face in. It felt good, and yet it terrified him. For in an instant, he saw himself in the man’s place. It was
his
scarred face he was beating in, but whatever meaning the vision might hold, he’d have to figure it out later. Right now, he needed to end this mad adventure and save the lives of his friends. He turned toward Marcus. “Get the hell out of here! Take Ashley and go!”
This time, however, when the Dark Man stretched out his hand, the results were much different. Ian went flying upward, through the tunnel’s snowy ceiling, and disappeared into the storm.