This Present Darkness (77 page)

How much longer could that bleeding demon keep this up?

THE OTHER DOOR
of the conference room burst open, and the body of Alexander Kaseph rolled across the hallway floor. He was retching
and screaming.

THE GENERAL SWUNG
his sword at the Strongman again and again, weakening him, cutting him more and more frequently as the Strongman continued to lose his power.

“You will not defeat me!” the Strongman still boasted, as did Kaseph, but the boast was empty and futile. The Strongman was gushing red vapor and tar like a wretched and broken sieve. His eyes were full of evil and hate and he slashed with his big sword, but the prayers …! The prayers could be felt everywhere, and the General could not be defeated.

BERNICE HAD HER
group of vindicators gathered in the lobby downstairs, and she was trying to figure out where to start explaining everything when Marshall and Sandy burst out of the stairway door.

“Get yourselves upstairs!” Marshall hollered, holding his weeping daughter. “Someone’s been shot!”

Lemley’s feds went right into action. “Call the police! We’ll cordon off the building!”

Bernice remarked, “I see some cops outside there …”

The police had come purely in response to a call about all these religious fanatics assembled on the campus. They were trying to break up the gathering when Norm Mattily and one federal agent ran out to them, identified themselves, and ordered them to close off the building.

Brummel’s men were no fools. They obeyed.

RAFAR DARTED AND
weaved all over the sky, still trailing a stream of red smoke from his wound. With that telltale marker it was easy to follow him, and Tal kept up the chase unrelentingly. Rafar sped toward a very large warehouse several blocks away.

He shot through the outside wall at about the third floor, and Tal dove into the building after him. This floor was open, with no places to hide; Rafar dove immediately to a lower floor, and Tal followed that
trail of smoke. The gray, concrete floors came up at them.

Tal came out on the first floor and could see the smoke trail veering off sideways and corkscrewing through the distant wall. He shot after it. The wall slapped around him as he passed through.

Impaled!

A burning edge cut through his side! He spun and spun from the impact and the sword went flying from his hand. He tumbled to the floor, doubled up with pain.

There stood Rafar, bent and wounded, his back against the wall Tal had just come through. He had been waiting in ambush. The tip of his ugly sword was still draped with part of Tal’s tunic.

No time to think! No time to feel pain! Tal dove for his fallen sword.

Crash! Rafar’s sword came down with a shower of sparks. Tal rolled and fluttered out of the way. The big red sword ripped through the air again, and the keen edge whistled just over Tal’s head. Tal clapped his wings and jerked sideways several feet.

Whoosh! That horrible sword sliced the air with brilliant red streaks. Rafar’s eyes turned from yellow to red, his mouth frothed with putrid foam.

The huge wings roared, and Rafar came at Tal like a pouncing cat. His powerful arm raised that blade to strike again.

Tal lurched forward and ducked under Rafar’s raised arm, his head butting into Rafar’s chest. The sulfur exploded from those huge lungs as Tal spun around Rafar’s body and beyond the tip of that red blade as it slashed through the air.

This was what Tal needed: he was now between Rafar and his fallen sword. He dove at it, grabbed it, and turned.

Clang! The blade of hell came down upon Tal’s sword with a flash of fire. They faced each other, swords held ready. Rafar was grinning.

“So now, Captain of the Host, we are alone together, and evenly matched. I am opened, and you are opened. Shall we assail each other for
another
twenty-three days? We will be finished long before that, eh?”

Tal said nothing. This was Rafar’s way; cutting words were part of his strategy.

The swords met again, and again. An envelope of darkness began
to fill the room: Rafar’s creeping, growing evil.

“Is the light fading?” Rafar sneered. “Perhaps it is your
strength
we now see ebbing away!”

Saints of God, where are your prayers?

Another blow! Tal’s shoulder. He returned with a swipe that caught Rafar under the ribs. The air was filling with darkness, with red vapor and smoke.

Several more clashes of the fiery blades … ripping hides, tearing garments, more darkness.

Saints! Pray! PRAY!

WHEN THE POLICE
reached the third floor, they thought at first that Kaseph was the gunshot victim. They found out differently when this wild animal threw them off as if they weighed nothing.

“You cannot defeat me!” he screamed.

THE GENERAL SLASHED
at the Strongman again, and the Strongman screamed again. The swords clashed and sang and flashed with fire.

“You cannot defeat me!”

THE POLICE AIMED
their guns. What was this nut going to do next?

Hank shouted, “No, take it easy! It’s not him!”

They did not understand that statement at all.

Hank stepped forward and gave it one more try: “Strongman, I know you can hear me. You
are
defeated. The shed blood of Jesus has defeated you. Be silent and come out of him and depart from this region!”

Now the police were aiming at
Hank!

But the Strongman could take no more of this praying man’s rebukes. He wilted. His sword dropped. The General took one swipe with his flashing blade, and the Strongman was gone.

KASEPH COLLAPSED TO
the floor and lay there as if dead. The lawyers
and regents shouted from the conference room, “Don’t shoot!” and came out with their hands raised whether ordered to or not. The police still did not know who to arrest.

“In here!” someone shouted from the lounge. The police ran in and found the pitiful wreck that Alf Brummel had become, and the very deceased Juleen Langstrat.