This Present Darkness (52 page)

They grabbed her wrists and held them behind her; she heard a click and felt the cold steel of the manacles. She heard herself screaming.

Kaseph went to his office, now a bare room except for a few remaining shipping crates and travel cases. He went directly to a small case covered with fine old leather and tucked it under his arm.

Then he went down the big staircase to the lower floor, through an imposing plank door and down another stairway into the deep basement below the house. He turned one corner, passed through another door, and entered a dark, candlelit room of stone. The strange little priest was already there, lighting candles and moaning some strange, unintelligible words over and over. Some of Kaseph’s closest confidants were present, waiting quietly. Kaseph handed the little case to the priest, who laid it beside a large, rough-hewn bench at one end of the room. The little priest opened the case and began to set out knives—Kaseph’s knives—ornate, jeweled, delicately wrought, razor-sharp.

TAL COULD SEE
the mountains ahead. He would have to stay in close to their rocky sides. He must not be seen.

Guilo and his warriors remained in the darkness, unglorified, stalking step by step downward toward the complex, concealing themselves behind rocks and old snags. Just above them now, boiling and towering like a thunderhead, the cloud of leering, laughing spirits continued to swirl. Guilo was sensing some prayer cover; surely the demons would
have noticed them by now, but their eyes were strangely unseeing.

Down below, parked very near the main administration building, was a large van. Guilo found a spot from which he could see the van clearly, then had his warriors fan out, keeping one warrior close by for special instructions.

“Do you see the upper window in the big stone house?” Guilo asked him.

“Yes.”

“She is there. On my signal, go alone and get her out.”

IN THE STRANGE
dark room below the house, Alexander M. Kaseph and his little entourage remained transfixed in deep meditation. Before them, just behind the rough wooden bench, stood the Strongman, flanked by his close guards and assistants. His sagging face was spread now with a hideous, drooling grin that bared his fangs as he chuckled with demonic delight.

“One by one the obstacles are falling,” he said. “Yes, yes, your offering will bring you good fortune, and it will please me.” The big yellow eyes narrowed with the command. “Bring her!”

Upstairs, sitting helplessly between the two guards, her feet and hands bound with manacles, Susan Jacobson waited and prayed. With all that was within her, she cried out to the one true God, the God whom she did not know but must be there, had to hear her, and was the only one who could help her now.

TAL REACHED THE
mountains and soared up their steep face, climbing, climbing, easing back his speed. He continued to slow as he neared the top, and then, just as he crested the summit, he stopped all motion and all sound, and let himself glide down the other side silently, invisibly. He noticed with concern that the cloud had grown even more since he’d been away. He could only hope the prayer cover would at
least be sufficient to blind these foul creatures.

Guilo had been watching for the captain, and his sharp eyes saw Tal descending like a silent hawk toward them.

“Get ready,” Guilo told the warrior at his side.

The warrior was poised, his eyes on that upstairs window.

Tal dropped down so low he was almost skidding along the ground. He finally came to rest right beside Guilo.

“We have the cover,” he said.

“Go!” Guilo commanded the warrior, and the warrior half-flew, half-ran toward the big stone house.

THE LITTLE PRIEST,
his eyes darting about with anticipation, made his way up the big staircase, humming and muttering a mantra to himself.

Kaseph and his people waited downstairs in a hushed silence, Kaseph standing right next to the knives.

Susan Jacobson tried to work the shackles loose, but they were clamped on tightly enough to cut into her even if she didn’t struggle. The guards only laughed at her.

“Dear God,” she prayed, “if You are truly the ruler of this universe, please have mercy on one who dared to stand for Your sake against a terrible evil …”

And then—as if she were no longer in that room, as if she were slowly waking up from a nightmare—the agonizing, heart-twisting fear began to ebb from her mind like a fading thought, like the slow, steady calming of a storm. Her heart was at rest. The room seemed strangely quiet. All she could do was look around with very curious eyes. What had happened? Had she died already? Was she asleep, or dreaming?

But she had felt this way before. The memory of that one night in New York came back to her; she thought of that strange, buoyed-up feeling she had had even as she clambered desperately through that window. There was someone in the room. She could sense it.

“Are you here to help me?” she asked in her heart, and the faintest little spark of hope came to life again somewhere deep inside her.

Clink! Her feet were suddenly released and could swing unbound from the chair. The shackles lay on the floor, opened. She felt something
break loose from around her wrists, and she pulled her arms free. The manacles clinked to the floor, just like the shackles that had bound her feet.

She looked at the two guards, but they were just standing there looking at her, still smirking, then looking elsewhere as if nothing had happened.

Then she heard a click, and looked just in time to see the window latch twist loose and the big bedroom window swing open all by itself. The cool night air began to waft into the room.

Whether this was illusion or reality, she accepted it. She jumped up from the chair—the guards did nothing. She ran for that open window. Then she remembered.

Still keeping a wary and unbelieving eye on those guards, she hurried to the bed, reached under it, and pulled out the suitcase that Kaseph and his people had not found, even in such an obvious hiding place! It felt strangely light for all the papers she had loaded in it, but nothing at this moment made much sense anyway, so she simply accepted how easy it was to carry the suitcase to the window and set it on the rooftop outside. She looked behind her. The guards were smiling confidently at an empty chair!

Feeling as if someone was lifting her, she climbed through the window and onto the roof. A thick vine grew up one side of the house. It would make a perfect escape ladder.

Outside the administration building, some security people were talking in hushed tones about the fall of the Maidservant and her imminent fate when suddenly they heard footsteps running across the parking area.

“Hey, look there!” someone shouted.

The security men looked just in time to see a woman dressed in black scurrying for one of the trucks.

“Hey, what are you doing?”

“It’s the Maidservant!”

They ran after her, but she had already reached a big moving van and climbed inside. The starter growled, the engine came to life, and with a lurch and a whine the van started rolling away.

Guilo leaped from his hiding place and bellowed, “YA-HAAA!” as his little troop of three and twenty popped into the air like fireworks
and trailed after the van. “Cover yourselves, warriors!”

THE LITTLE PRIEST
reached Susan’s bedroom, and his bony hand opened the door.

“We are ready,” he declared, and suddenly realized that he was talking to a pair of very dedicated guards making very sure an empty chair would not get away.

The little pagan had a first-class fit; the guards had no explanation.

THE VAN SLUGGISHLY
headed up the winding and precarious road that led out of the valley and over the mountains. Four angels swooped down behind it and started pushing it up the grade, helping it to top sixty. They were making good time, but looking back they could see an oncoming legion of demons in hot pursuit, the glimmer of their fangs and the red flicker of their blades filling the night sky.

From high above, Guilo watched the cloud. It remained where it was, covering the Strongman. Only a small contingent of demonic warriors had been sent after the runaway van.

Roaring up the mountain road in pursuit, four of Kaseph’s armed security men gave chase in a high-powered jeep. Even so, they had a surprising amount of trouble catching up.

“I thought that thing had a full load!” said one.

“It does,” said the other. “I loaded it myself.”

“How many horses does that thing
have
?”

By now Kaseph had gotten word of Susan’s escape. He ordered eight more armed men in two more vehicles to join the chase. They leaped into another jeep and a V-8 powered sports car and squealed out of the parking lot.

Demons and angels converged on the van, still chugging up the steep grade at more than sixty miles an hour, its tires growling and often skidding sideways across the winding, reeling gravel road. The four angels kept pushing it from behind while the other nineteen did their best to encircle it and ward off demonic attack. Demons dove down from above, their red swords gleaming, and engaged the heavenly warriors in fierce dogfights, the blades singing, droning, and clashing
metallically with bursts of sparks.