by Vox Day
But in the flickering light of the flames, Jami saw Holli’s angel shoot a concerned glance at Paulus, and she could feel the weight of the darkness growing ever stronger. It surrounded them, it engulfed them, and worst of all, it called out to them. She crouched beside Holli behind the couch, shivering with fear as hundreds of high-pitched voices chittered like insects in the darkness outside. She could not understand their words, but she knew somehow that they were mocking her, taunting her, and feeding on her fear. They frightened her so badly that she could barely breathe, and yet she felt a terrible urge to scream and run out from the protection of the angels’ swords.
Holli cowered next to her for what felt like forever, squeezing her hand so hard it hurt, although it was only a few minutes before the terrible, overpowering presence abruptly released them from its grasp. The scary voices faded away, the lights came back on, and Jami breathed a sigh of relief as Holli released her hand and sat back on the floor. The awful danger had disappeared, at least for now.
The front door burst open and both girls screamed, but it was, thank goodness, only another angel, a strawberry-blonde angel dressed just like Aliel. But her long hair was all messed-up, she didn’t have a sword, and what appeared to be goth-punk chains dangled discordantly from her wrists.
“Where is Christopher?” the disheveled angel demanded frantically. Jami guessed that the redhead was her brother’s guardian, and even though she was still plenty freaked-out by the whole situation, she found herself smiling with sympathy. Christopher made her feel like that sometimes too.
“I don’t know.” Paulus answered, frowning at the sight of the chains. “Mariel, are you well?”
Mariel ignored him and looked desperately at the girls.
“He’s upstairs, in the office,” Holli said as she pointed towards the stairs. The strawberry-blonde nodded and rushed past Paulus up the stairs.
Jami saw Paulus glance at Aliel, then he shrugged and followed Mariel up the stairs. As she and Holli trailed behind the three angels, Jami suddenly felt a hot wave of anger flash through her mind. Something strange and scary and couldn’t-be-happening was totally happening before her eyes, and she knew, she just knew, it was all Christopher’s fault.
“Perhaps it was one of the Great Lords of the Fallen,” Aliel said, with a shaken look on her face. “It must have been strong, for Bloodwinter to humble himself so. His pride is great, and he is not one to be courteous unless he is forced.”
“I know,” Mariel replied. “I saw the shadow pass over my head, and its aura was so dark that it could have been one of the Averse Sefiroth.” The pretty angel shuddered, and tears began to streak her cheeks. “And now it has my charge.”
“The fault is not yours, Mariel,” Paulus said bitterly. “I should have gone with you….” He suddenly stopped talking and held up a hand. His eyes were distant, as if he was listening to something far away. “Hark! Something comes.”
The three angels stopped talking and listened. Jami strained her ears too, but she heard nothing.
“It’s bad,” Holli said unexpectedly. “Not as bad as that thing that was here, but there’s a lot of them. And they stink.”
Jami saw the three angels stare at each another, then at Holli. She’d obviously surprised them somehow.
“She smells Mordrim,” Paulus spoke first. “Their stench is strong.”
“And Malakim too, I fear,” Mariel added. “We must leave here, now.”
Jami glanced quizzically at Holli, but her twin only shrugged.
“I don’t know, there’s just this bad, like, odor in the air.” Her white curls bounced as she shook her head. “I can’t explain it, it’s just, like, there, you know?”
No, I don’t know! Jami wanted to scream and shake Holli’s shoulders, but that wasn’t about to solve anything or answer any of her questions. She looked back at the angels, and saw that they were in the middle of an argument. Paulus was pointing his sword towards the door.
“There are too many of them. We have to leave, now!”
“No!”Aliel shouted at Paulus, as she grabbed the big angel’s tunic with both fists. “We can’t leave the children!”
“Who said anything about leaving the children?” Mariel snapped at Aliel. “The shadow took Christopher, not me. They are after the children, and if we can’t protect them here, then we must take them somewhere we can keep them safe!”
“We’re not children,” Holli protested, but the angels ignored her. Jami wondered if she should tell Paulus about her father’s shotgun, but then, he probably knew about it already. And who knew if a shotgun could even hurt an angel anyhow?
“There is a school nearby,” Aliel suggested, her voice calmer now. “On this night, a band of Faithful gather there to praise and worship the Almighty.”
“Is it the school Christopher attended as a child?” Jami saw Aliel nod in answer to Mariel’s question. “Praise God, that’s less than a mile from here!”
“God be praised!” Paulus echoed. He turned towards the two girls. “Jami, Holli, you are in great peril. Do you understand me? You must come with us, for we are outnumbered by the foe and we cannot protect you here.”
Holli nodded. She had already taken one of Christopher’s parkas out of the closet, and held out a down ski jacket to Jami. “Come on, Jami, hurry up! You heard what they said. We can’t stay here.”
“Hurry up? But we can’t go outside!” Jami protested. “If there’s really something out there, that’s the last thing we should do!” When the house had gone dark, the evil voices had called her to them, called her outside where they could reach her and rend her with their terrible claws. She didn’t really believe they existed, but she had no desire to test that assumption, much less go where something could get her.
Paulus seemed to read her mind. With a sympathetic smile that caressed her like a touch of sunlight, he took her by the hand.
“I know your fear, Jami, but I tell you, the Lord Almighty sent me here to keep you safe. He will not allow you to come to harm.” His dark eyes were deep pools of strength and reassurance. “I will keep the shadows from you.”
Jami looked away, but she nodded and obediently reached out to take the quilted jacket from Holli. She was sure that Paulus meant well, but Mariel’s tear-streaked face seemed to bely his words. As she reluctantly followed Holli down the stairs, she glanced out the window and saw the distant stars looking down on her without pity.
They ran. Jami scanned the skies, hoping not to see the approaching danger, but also afraid to let it sneak up on her. Their little party had left the back of the house, running through the backyard, past the fence, and over the field that led to the railroad tracks. Aliel, her sword drawn and blazing, led the way, while Mariel ran between the two girls, holding their hands. Paulus brought up the rear, his sword drawn, constantly looking over his shoulder for signs of enemy pursuit.
“Where… is… it…?” panted Holli, short of breath. Despite her own fear, Jami still managed to worry about her twin. She was a cheerleader, not an athlete, and Jami knew it had been at least a year since Holli had done any running.
“Behind us,” Paulus answered curtly.
Jami glanced back, to the south, and saw that the stars in the southern sky had disappeared, swallowed up by an all-devouring blackness. As she looked, one constellation was slowly engulfed by the darkness, then another. It was an awful sight, and she redoubled her efforts.
Her lungs burned as she struggled up a small rise. She was still in shape from soccer, but it was hard running through the snow up the rough series of hills that stood in their path. She knew their route well, having gone to elementary school there only five years before. The ground was uneven, and it was hard to keep from slipping in the snow. She fell once, tripping over a frozen chunk of ice, but Mariel quickly hauled her back to her feet and Jami marveled at the surprising strength of the slender angel.
Finally, they reached the top of the last hill, and she breathed a thankful sigh when she saw
the bright lights of the school in front of them. They half-ran, half-slid down the snowy slope, and sprinted past the cars in the parking lot. She dared a quick glance back and was horrified to see that the sky behind them was entirely dark. Just like before, the evil felt as if it was crushing her to the ground, and she thought she felt its awful claws reaching out to grab her.
The door to the school was only six feet away when the shadows reached her. She screamed as something grabbed the hood of her parka and jerked her off her feet. She lost her grip on Mariel’s hand as she fell helplessly backwards and smacked her backside on the hard-packed snow of the parking lot. Half-stunned by the pain, Jami could barely make out the shape of her attacker, silhouetted against the building lights.
It was huge, shaped kind of like a man, but with bony ridges and giant, crab-like claws. It slobbered at her, making a weird screeching sound, and as it lunged close to her face, she saw that it had no eyes, only empty hollows where the eyes should have been. She screamed and beat at it with her fists, but it didn’t seem to notice. Its wintry blue skin was rough and warty, and its wild, stringy hair stuck out from its skullish head like twisted grey wire.
She screamed again as it tried to grab her with its claws, but before it got a grip on her, Aliel came to her rescue.
“For the Most High!” the angel shouted, and struck a devastating blow with her sword. The demonic being fell back into the darkness, howling, nearly cleaved in two by the burning fury of the blade. Holli’s guardian pulled Jami to her feet, then half-shoved, half-threw her through the open door, all the while brandishing her sword at the onrushing dark. Jami looked desperately for her own angel, but Paulus was nowhere to be seen. Only occasional flashes of flames from the parking lot hinted at his whereabouts, as he struck out against the evil that engulfed him.
As soon as Jami was inside, Mariel slammed the door shut behind her.
“What about Paulus?” Jami gasped in horror. “Aliel’s out there too! She just saved me from that… that thing!”
Holli, relieved, reached out to her, but Jami pushed her twin away and confronted Mariel.
“You can’t leave them out there!”
“Be quiet, child!” the blonde angel commanded, and Jami fell silent before her forceful gaze. Mariel nodded, and without explanation led the girls down the steps and into the school gymnasium.
They entered quietly through a back door, and Jami was surprised to see how many people were gathered there. The gym was almost full, and there had to be more than seven hundred people there. She looked around uncomfortably, afraid that someone there might know her, and was relieved when she didn’t recognize a single face. The people were sitting on undersized chairs laid out in rows, listening to a middle-aged man speaking from a stage cluttered with abandoned musical instruments. He had curly brown hair, a boyish personality, and he spoke in a rapid-fire, machine-gun manner from behind a lectern that was standing right in front of a big drum set.
“So what I’m saying is, the right approach isn’t to be telling God how you want him to bless you, but how you can best use the blessings that he elects to bless you with. Did you follow me on that one? Because I don’t care who you are, God wants to bless you. It’s just that everybody gets blessed…” He looked up, startled for a moment, and then continued. “…in different ways.”
He fell silent for a moment, staring fixedly towards the back of the gym. At first, Jami was afraid that the preacher was looking at her, and she looked at the floor, trying to avoid his eyes. She jumped when he suddenly closed his Bible with an audible thump, and set it back on the lectern.
“All right, people. I just got something laid on my heart. There’s some warfare stuff going on right now, and we’re gonna do something about it, right now. Can I get ten volunteers?”
He looked around the room. Ten hands were quickly raised, mostly by people sitting in the first few rows, and he nodded.
“Okay, I’m going to ask you to be our prayer cover, praying protection on this place and on everybody here, all right? But that’s just defense, and we need offense.” He reached for something in his back pocket. It was a pair of drumsticks, and he brandished them before the crowd as if they were weapons. “Anybody remember how the Israelites went into battle?”
“They went in singing!” a man called out.
“Hey,” Jami nudged Holli. “Is that church that you and Mom go to like this?”
“First Lutheran?” Holli had a strange look on her face. “No, not at all. This is different.”
“That’s right!” the preacher was shouting. “That’s how they did it. First the singers, and then the soldiers.”
He gestured at a large black man who was already mounting the stage. He was built like a football player, a six-foot-five giant with a shaved head who was followed by a motley group of men and women who began to pick up the instruments scattered about the stage.
“Jeez, he’s, like, huge,” Holli whispered to Jami.
“What are they going to do, have a concert? That’s really going to help. Those things are going to come in here any second!”
“Look, Aliel must have brought us in here for a reason,” Holli argued, although she didn’t understand why they were here either. “We can’t just keep running.”
“So, let’s crank it up,” the preacher was saying as the musicians took their places. “You know what the Word tells us, ‘not by power, not by might, but by my spirit, says the Lord’, and we need to call upon that Spirit right now!”
Jami watched, her eyes wide, as the entire congregation rose to their feet, and the preacher climbed behind the drums. He began pounding out a furious beat while one of the guitarists, a short fellow with strings of colorful yarn woven into his long, dreadlocked hair, joined in with massive power chords that threatened to shake the building’s foundation.
“Okay, this is too weird!” Jami told Holli. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Yeah, you really want to go out and let those things grab you again?” Holli shook her head. “These people are strange, but at least they’re not trying to kill us.”
“Well, okay, but I don’t like it!”
Holli understood why Jami was feeling so uncomfortable. She knew it had to be hard for her twin to suddenly be thrown into the middle of a bunch of people who lived in a world she’d never believed in. Holli herself wasn’t quite sure what to think; she went to church every couple of weeks, tried to be a good person, and had always considered herself a Christian. Now, after coming face-to-face with her guardian angel and the passion of the believers surrounding her, she wondered what she was. When was the last time she’d even looked at her Bible? She suddenly felt guilty, as if she was here under false pretenses.
“Hey, look, there’s Paulus and Aliel!” Jami interrupted her thoughts. “I wonder what happened with those things outside? Maybe they’re gone. Maybe we can go now.”
Holli glanced at Mariel, who was singing heartily along with the band.
“I don’t know, she doesn’t look like she’s about to go anywhere.” Holli wrinkled her plucked eyebrows. “Don’t you think we should wait and see what the angels tell us to do? Those things could still be out there.”
“I suppose.” The music really wasn’t bad, but Jami had a trapped look in her eyes.
“Let’s just wait and see what’s up,” Holli insisted. Although she hadn’t told Jami, she could still feel the dark presence of the evil lurking outside. Something was holding it at bay, though, for it wasn’t coming any closer. Was it Paulus and Aliel, or was it the sheer numbers of the crowd?
Jami nodded in half-hearted agreement, but she kept an eye on the door, desperately wanting to leave and yet afraid that the evil shadows might enter at any moment. Why wouldn’t they? There couldn’t be anything special about the school that would keep them out. Just then, the bass kicked in, and the giant black man began singing, in a voice that boomed through the room.
You are mighty, you are holy,
You ar
e awesome, in your power…
Jami had never heard the song before, but most of the people in the gym seemed to recognize it immediately, for they joined in right away, singing at the top of their lungs.
You are risen, you are worthy,
You have beaten the power of death…
Jami looked over at Mariel. Paulus and Aliel had joined her now, and like the rest of the crowd, they were singing and clapping along with enthusiasm.
Ha-a-a-lelujah, the angels joined their voices with the roomful of humanity. We-e will rejoice….
Ha-a-a-lelujah, we-e will rejoice!
As the music crested like a powerful wave, Holli suddenly realized why the shadows had not entered here, for there was power here too, a power nearly as strong as that first crushing darkness had been earlier. The fiery passion of the crowd was like a light flaming against the evil ones, driving them away, and with them, her fear. As her fear faded, her discomfort grew, but unexpectedly, she also felt a secret urge to join in with the rest of the crowd in singing the simple chorus, repeated over and over again. The crowd’s enthusiasm did not flag with the repetition, if anything, they were getting even more excited, raising their hands to the ceiling and waving them in the air.
You are awesome, in your power…
“Come on, church, raise the roof. Let those demons know whose side you’re on!” The black man raised a massive fist and shook it in the air. “Though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we will fear nothing, because Jesus won the victory. It’s a done deal! We just gotta claim it!”
“These people are nuts,” Jami whispered to her sister. She could feel something working insidiously inside her, but whatever it was, Jami would not allow it to touch her. It was like an alien force trying to possess her, and she determinedly forced it down, folding her arms and clamping her mouth firmly shut.
“Oh, they’re total freaks,” Holli agreed, but she was grinning now. “The thing is, you can, like, really feel something here, you know?”