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Authors: David Leadbeater
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pulled away from Lucy and was another step closer. Time stood still. I saw heaven and hell waiting on either side of my next decision and thought about poor old Johnny, the second of the Chosen to have fallen since we met on Miami Beach and, I was sure, not the last.
My hand closed around a bottle of Bud. I heard an intake of breath at my shoulder then a hand clamped down over my wrist.
“Are you crazy, you w hacked-out fruit and nut?” a distinctive voice said. “What you’re doing is wrong in about a dozen different ways. It’s not easy to face death, Logan. I do it every hour of the day. But you can never run away from it. Not like this.”
I let go of the bottle, a little reluctantly. “The urge never goes away.”
“It helps you forget, not survive. It drags you in deeper, never giving you a lifeline. It changes your personality, not your position in life.”
I turned to Belinda . “We might not see tomorrow.”
She shrugged. “Neither might the rest of the world. These things we do now, the actions we take, will shape the future of mankind for centuries to come. Think on that the next time Anheuser Busch looks like a tasty alternative. You really wanna be remembered as the ‘alcoholic dropout’?”
I watched as she creaked away, joining a table where sat Cheyne and Giles, Cleaver and Lysette . She sat with her back to me, showing me the options. My eyes sought Lucy’s and weren’t shocked to see her in the company of Ethan. The vampire kid looked as somber as the rest of us, and stared sadly toward the still weeping Natalie Trevochet. Tanya Jordan had stepped up to comfort her, the Hawaiian’s easy-going, calm manner no doubt casting a small but welcome balm over the situation.
I drifted over to Belinda’s table as Ceriden also approached. Cheyne had a cellphone held against her ear.
“Thank you,” I heard, and then looked expectantly as she folded closed the phone.
“All right.” She looked around at us. “ Do you remember the Text of Seven? The archaic document that Emily Crowe stole from the Louvre. It’s how she conjured the seven hierarchy demons to our earth, our realm, but it’s the source of much more than that. It holds information, valuable resources that we need to stop this. I just spoke to the Library of Aegis,” she nodded at the phone, “and they’re e-mailing and faxing a copy across.”
“Let’s hope we can make some sense of it.” Giles rose as they heard the nearby fax-machine ring.
I placed my hands on Belinda’s shoulders and whispered, “Thank you.”
“No worries. We’re all running in the same race, Logan.”
I looked across the room toward Lucy. Her face was not as forgiving.
EIGHT
Emily Crowe, ex-lead singer of the all-girl rock group Supernatural, and once one of Gorgoroth’s Destroyers, albeit a double-agent for the Devil, had tricked, conned and beaten everyone to the punch. It was she that had engineered the return of the hierarchy even as the ridiculous humans struggled and died trying to defeat the World-Ender and, in doing so, paved the way for a grand future of hell on Earth. The affair was not without its hitches and glitches, but what glorious battle plan ever was?
She sat now, cross-legged in the desert, a flickering camp fire in front of her. Across the other side her new acolyte, Melissa Thorne, sat rigid in the same pose. Above them, the clear vault of the skies seemed to stretch forever, from one side of Death Valley to the other. Old rocks and hills , and flat stretches of salt lay all around, attesting to the ancient nature of this place.
It held many secrets.
And it would become her base, their base, the base of newly emerged evil. It was large and powerful enough to contain them. The creatures of hell would come here, and from here they would conquer all. But first—the problem.
A well-established trailer park sat quite close to the national park, so close that it would have to be eradicated. Crowe had known it as
My hand closed around a bottle of Bud. I heard an intake of breath at my shoulder then a hand clamped down over my wrist.
“Are you crazy, you w hacked-out fruit and nut?” a distinctive voice said. “What you’re doing is wrong in about a dozen different ways. It’s not easy to face death, Logan. I do it every hour of the day. But you can never run away from it. Not like this.”
I let go of the bottle, a little reluctantly. “The urge never goes away.”
“It helps you forget, not survive. It drags you in deeper, never giving you a lifeline. It changes your personality, not your position in life.”
I turned to Belinda . “We might not see tomorrow.”
She shrugged. “Neither might the rest of the world. These things we do now, the actions we take, will shape the future of mankind for centuries to come. Think on that the next time Anheuser Busch looks like a tasty alternative. You really wanna be remembered as the ‘alcoholic dropout’?”
I watched as she creaked away, joining a table where sat Cheyne and Giles, Cleaver and Lysette . She sat with her back to me, showing me the options. My eyes sought Lucy’s and weren’t shocked to see her in the company of Ethan. The vampire kid looked as somber as the rest of us, and stared sadly toward the still weeping Natalie Trevochet. Tanya Jordan had stepped up to comfort her, the Hawaiian’s easy-going, calm manner no doubt casting a small but welcome balm over the situation.
I drifted over to Belinda’s table as Ceriden also approached. Cheyne had a cellphone held against her ear.
“Thank you,” I heard, and then looked expectantly as she folded closed the phone.
“All right.” She looked around at us. “ Do you remember the Text of Seven? The archaic document that Emily Crowe stole from the Louvre. It’s how she conjured the seven hierarchy demons to our earth, our realm, but it’s the source of much more than that. It holds information, valuable resources that we need to stop this. I just spoke to the Library of Aegis,” she nodded at the phone, “and they’re e-mailing and faxing a copy across.”
“Let’s hope we can make some sense of it.” Giles rose as they heard the nearby fax-machine ring.
I placed my hands on Belinda’s shoulders and whispered, “Thank you.”
“No worries. We’re all running in the same race, Logan.”
I looked across the room toward Lucy. Her face was not as forgiving.
EIGHT
Emily Crowe, ex-lead singer of the all-girl rock group Supernatural, and once one of Gorgoroth’s Destroyers, albeit a double-agent for the Devil, had tricked, conned and beaten everyone to the punch. It was she that had engineered the return of the hierarchy even as the ridiculous humans struggled and died trying to defeat the World-Ender and, in doing so, paved the way for a grand future of hell on Earth. The affair was not without its hitches and glitches, but what glorious battle plan ever was?
She sat now, cross-legged in the desert, a flickering camp fire in front of her. Across the other side her new acolyte, Melissa Thorne, sat rigid in the same pose. Above them, the clear vault of the skies seemed to stretch forever, from one side of Death Valley to the other. Old rocks and hills , and flat stretches of salt lay all around, attesting to the ancient nature of this place.
It held many secrets.
And it would become her base, their base, the base of newly emerged evil. It was large and powerful enough to contain them. The creatures of hell would come here, and from here they would conquer all. But first—the problem.
A well-established trailer park sat quite close to the national park, so close that it would have to be eradicated. Crowe had known it as
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