I study them, fascinated at seeing them in the daylight. Blaise is taller and thicker than the other two. His long black wings are ready to snap into flight. The jagged scar across his nose enhances his frightening appearance.
Who gave you that? Was it an angel?
I think of that strange man who shoved me into the grass and fought Blaise until he fled in terror. Matthew was convinced it was an angel. Are there angels fighting the demons? Why can’t I see them?
Whether there are or not, seeing Blaise makes the darkness swell in me. It grows and claws to get out, like my lapse earlier has made it stronger. I gasp for air and struggle to hold it back.
Blaise realizes that I am studying him, and he growls with rage. He snaps an order to Liam and Henry, like a master to his hounds.
So you order the vampires around?
I should be running, but I can’t. I’m too fascinated by the exchange I’m seeing. I thought vampires were free and powerful and did whatever they wanted.
There’s a flash of anger from Henry. I don’t think he likes being ordered around. He shakes his head and protests.
Blaise roars in fury. He grabs Henry by the throat. He raises him in the air, holding him aloft. Henry kicks and claws but can’t break free.
“You will obey, maggot!” The demon yells.
Blaise throws him down. Henry tumbles through the air before twisting to his feet like a cat. He glares at Blaise.
“Kill the girl and bring the boy to me!” Blaise orders while he points at me.
I jump, brought back to my senses, but before I can run, two strong hands pin my arms to my sides. I yell as I struggle.
“Let me go!” I yell.
“It’s me, idiot,” Rob mutters. “Come on!”
He grabs my arm and pulls me toward the truck. I get one foot down for every ten feet. His grip on my arm hurts. Before they catch up, we reach the truck where Megan is pacing.
“What’s taking you so long?” she snaps.
Rob interrupts me.
“Go!” he orders. He slaps the side of the truck to make his point.
Henry and Liam are crossing the meadow at a dead run. Blaise is now in the air, above them, gliding on his wings like a huge eagle, watching the scene play out below him.
What are you waiting for?
We jump into the truck, and I turn the key to start the truck. It roars as Henry and Liam are halfway through the meadow. I glance at Rob, raise a hand as thanks, and throw the truck into reverse.
“Put your belt on,” I order Megan.
She doesn’t say a word. The truck lurches violently backward. It dies, and we roll onto the dirt road. I groan, hating driving stick shift, and jam the clutch back to the floor.
“GO!” Rob roars.
Henry and Liam are almost to us. I pause with my hand on the key in the ignition.
I look back over my shoulder, ignoring Megan’s demands that I get the truck going, and see Catherine standing on the crest of the hill, watching us flee.
Is she really on their side?
The truck leaps forward into first gear. We bump over the huge ruts in the road. I glance in the rearview mirror. Henry and Liam are closing the distance.
I growl with frustration. “Put your seatbelt on, Megan.”
She nods but doesn’t move her hands from where she’s holding on for balance. I kick it into second and then third.
I can hardly control the truck. It tilts and sways from rut to rut. My injured arm is aching from wrenching the wheel. But I’m not going to slow down. I have to make sure we don’t roll.
I risk a glance in the rearview mirror. We are pulling ahead of Liam and Henry. Above us, Blaise follows with slow flaps of his wings. He points at us when we pass from the meadow into the woods.
“Don’t let them leave!” he orders to the other demons.
I glance at the tops of the trees and see every tree swaying like large birds have pushed off them. Blaise has sent an army of demons after us.
Chapter Forty-Six
Seatbelt
The demons shoot through the air to catch up with the truck. I yank the truck around corners and wrestle with the wheel to stay on the road, but they are a large black cloud following us, gaining on us. The road in front of us dims and fades before I shake my head to clear it.
What if it takes over? Will I squeeze the trigger this time?
The left tires get stuck in a rut. I pull it out with a violent tug, and the truck careens to the right. I pull it back to the center of the road. Megan is whipped back and forth.
“Slow down!” she yells. “You’re driving like a manic! Look! They’re gone. We made it.”
I risk a glance at her. She’s gripping the door handle, but she still hasn’t put her seatbelt on like I told her to do.
“It’s not over yet,” I mutter.
“What do you mean?” Her blue eyes grow wide. “What do you see? You said you’ve seen things like I did once. What do you see?”
Knowing the questions Megan loves to ask, she’ll pull out the whole story of last year, and I’ll have to see her disgust and horror as I tell her what Mr. Peterson almost made me do.
But, like it or not, Megan has involved herself in this situation. That means she has every right to know what is pursuing us now.
“I see…” I can’t say it. I can barely think it. I take a deep breath. We whip around a corner. “I can see demons. And there’s an army of them following us right now.”
Megan sucks in her breath and grips the handle until her knuckles are white. We speed around a corner. The gravel slides under the tires. Then we straighten and barrel down the next section of the road.
“Is that what I saw in the shadows that night?” she asks.
“I don’t know what you saw in the shadows,” I snap. I’m so sick of hearing about her shadows when I have bigger problems to worry about.
“Watch out!” Megan shouts.
The truck’s left tires fall into a rut. The truck tips to the left. Megan falls on my injured arm. I yell as she tries to push herself off me. I hit the clutch and reach for the stick shift, but Megan’s hand is in the way.
“Move your hand!” I order.
She does and falls back on my arm. I groan from pain. The bottom of the truck scrapes against the road. If this rut gets any deeper, we’ll get stuck, and that will end our race and probably our lives.
But I don’t slow down. I can’t slow down. The cloud of demons is closing in on us. The rut levels out, and the truck straightens. I step on the gas harder. Megan gets back to her side. My arm throbs like crazy.
“Put your seatbelt on!” I snap.
She nods and reaches for it, but before she can grab it, there’s a thump behind us.
Megan freezes. “Is that one?” she asks, barely audible about the truck’s engine.
I glance back to the truck bed. A tall skinny demon leers at us through the window. Scars lace across his arms, and his nose is deformed like it was broken many times. Long wings behind him spread out, balancing in the wind, as the truck lurches back and forth.
The darkness inside of me longs to break free of my control. I swallow the bile that rises in my throat and pray I can keep everything under control long enough to save Megan.
The demon sneers through the glass. “Why are you running? You can’t hide from us.”
“There’s one right behind us, isn’t there?” Megan’s voice is filled with panic. She twists and tries to see.
I nod.
The darkness swirls around me. And then it occurs to me that in all the times I’ve seen demons, I’ve never actually seen them do anything with the physical world. I only saw them whisper suggestions. The demon never took Mr. Peterson’s gun and shot anyone. I slow down and laugh.
Why does it matter how many demons pursue us?
Megan notices the change in speed. “What?” she cries. “Are you crazy?”
“They can’t hurt us,” I smile. “They might play with our minds a
bit, but they don’t do anything. We’ll be fine.”
The demon in the bed of the truck snarls and punches the glass in the back window. It shatters into a thousand fragments that fly through the cab and pellet the back of my head. Megan screams and ducks.
I was wrong!
Terrified by what may happen, I yell and jerk the truck to the right in an effort to knock the demon off, but he doesn’t budge. The road veers sharply to the left and begins a steep descent down a cliff that has nothing to stop us from sliding off the edge, down the slope that’s been cleared of trees by the logging companies. If we go off, we will fall thousands of feet to the bottom.
I wrench the truck around the corner. The tires skid on the gravel. I straighten the rig out, and we race down the hill. Megan is curled up into a small ball on the far side of the cab.
The demon reaches an arm into the cab and grabs the wheel. I beat on his arm, but it doesn’t do any good. The demon begins jerking the wheel back and forth. We creep closer and closer to the edge of the cliff as I fight to get control of the truck.
The demon yanks the wheel to the left. There is only open air beneath me and a hillside littered with stumps and discarded trees that have been cut and then thrown down haphazardly.
I wrestle the truck back to the road seconds before the tires drop off the side. The truck speeds to the embankment on the other side. Megan lets out another scream, even louder than the first.
“What are you doing?” she hollers.
She can’t see the demon!
I must look like a psycho batting at the air and tussling with the steering wheel.
“It broke the glass,” I say in between trying to regain control of the truck.
“Really?” she says sarcastically. “So you just decide to throw us off the cliff?”
“Not throwing us off,” I grunt. The demon is pulling us to the left, and it’s harder and harder to fight.
Megan is still waiting for an answer.
“He’s got the wheel.” I glance at her for one brief second and see the horror on her face. “And put on your seatbelt, for Pete’s sake!”
We whip around another corner. The tires lift into the air as we turn, but I don’t let up on the gas. The demon laughs and tugs on the steering wheel. Now it’s jerking it back and forth so I can’t keep a good hold on it.
I risk a look in the rear view mirror. The sky is black behind us with tons of demons. They are scarred and hideous, flying like hate-driven bats.
How can I protect Megan when I have no way to fight them?
Sweat pours down my face. My arms ache from trying to keep control of the truck. We slide around another corner. The small dirt track straightens for a long stretch before twisting to the bottom of the cliff and shooting through the trees.
I want to cheer that we’ve almost made it, but my heart feels like it’s stopped beating when I see that the straight path is littered with the deepest ruts and bumps I’ve seen.
The demon cackles and yanks the truck to the left straight for the biggest rut. A second demon lands in the bed. A third joins it. Then a fourth.
I take all of my strength and jerk the wheel in slow spurts back and forth while I use a free arm to beat the demon back. Megan sees what I’m doing and starts flaying at thin air. She doesn’t see it, but she can feel it when she scores a hit.
I holler with excitement when the demon lets go and pulls back out of the cab.
We did it!
“Get your seatbelt on!” I yell and settle down to take us through the ruts and bumps. “It’s gone for now!”
But before I can straighten on the truck or she can grab the belt, the demon launches through the back window so most of his upper body is in the cab. He backhands my face and wrenches the wheel from my hands.
I wince from the sting of its hit, tasting blood from my cut lip, and blink back the sudden tears. I grab the wheel, but my arms give out, shaking and exhausted from my effort. The demon wins control and takes us straight for the deepest rut I’ve seen.
Chapter Forty-Seven
The Abyss
Mal shifted impatiently while he watched the small prayer meeting drift away from prayer and into chatting and gossiping. Matthew tried to bring the four other teens back to their purpose for meeting, but any topic brought up resulted in more talking. No one was praying.
The tall leader of the angels glanced around Matthew’s living room, trying hard to be patient. Sari stood by the couch, whispering encouragement to pray to the teens, but they didn’t notice the plea. Chas stood in the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest, as if to say that he tried and he was done struggling with the young ones.
Other angels filled the room. Their numbers had been increasing over the days. They came disguised as humans on buses or driving old cars. Despite their plain appearance, Mal knew them to be great warriors. But their numbers remained far too small.
“We should pray for Ashley,” one girl piped up. The room filled with silence. “Her grandparents were the ones who were killed in Florence.”
Matthew jotted down the girl’s name and the request on a pad of paper supported by his Bible. Mal grinned. Now the kids were getting down to work.
“And did you hear that she broke up with her boyfriend?” the girl across the room said. “I guess he was drinking a lot and then promised to quit, but Megan saw him drinking last Saturday night and told Ashley.”
“How did Megan see him?” the guy next to Matthew grinned. “Maybe we should pray for her, too!”
Mal couldn’t stop the groan as the rumors continued. Frustration was building up inside him. He wished he could shake the kids and force them to pray.
I know, Creator. I must be patient. They don’t see the battle like we do.
Mal couldn’t shake the feeling he was needed somewhere else. There was a need for his sword and work to be done, but he didn’t know what it was. He could tell by the irritated looks on the faces of the other angels that they felt the same.
Matthew sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “All right, guys, we have quite a list here. How about we start praying?”
The talk ceased as the kids avoided Matthew’s eyes and stared at the carpet or their hands. No one wanted to pray. Chas looked like he was going to explode if something didn’t happen soon.
“I know this is hard,” Matthew continued, noticing the reluctance. “But this is important. God wants us to pray to Him so we can have a relationship. Isn’t that awesome? The God who created everything wants to have a relationship with you.”
No one in the room looked too thrilled about what Matthew was saying.
Matthew paused and then continued. “Besides, I feel like we need to pray for the war around us. It’s weird, but something happened to me that made me realize the spiritual battle around us. We don’t see the angels and demons, but they are there, and we need to pray. In fact, I feel like something is happening right now.”
Everyone in the room stopped what they were doing and listened to Matthew. Even the angels leaned in closer. Mal shot Chas a glance and then turned to pay attention to the boy.
Is this a word from our Creator?
“I feel like...” Matthew searched for words. “That there’s a battle going on right now. Someone needs our prayers as they run from darkness, both past and present. Let’s start there.”
Matthew put down his list and opened the prayer. Mal turned to Chas.
“Nic?”
Chas nodded. “I feel the same. Could this be a word from the Creator?”
“I can think of no other way Matthew would have chosen those words,” Mal replied.
Sari joined them. “Think he went to Florence again?”
“Let’s check,” Mal said. “Azrael, you’re in charge. You know what to do.”
The bronze-skinned angel saluted with a smile. “For the King.”
“And for the Forgiven,” Mal answered.
The three angels left the small room, drew their flaming swords, a
nd burst into flight, ready for battle.
* * *
I fight to gain control of the truck, but there’s no strength left to use. Pain shoots up and down my right arm, making it hard to close my fingers around the wheel. My left arm is trembling from exertion. The demons have almost won.
I’ve seen them win two horrible times. I don’t want them to win anymore. I want to see them defeated and their plans ruined. In the few minutes that I’ve run from them, it’s very clear I cannot escape, much less fight them.
Isn’t there someone who can help us?
I want to apologize to Megan for treating her so badly and getting her into this. I wish I could say goodbye to Aunt Kate.
But there’s no time.
There never is time when death comes. It takes what is most precious to you, leaving you with words so desperately needed to be said. Words that can be said now, but they fall on ears that no longer hear. All that’s left is the ache of regret, wishing you could hold the person once more and tell them you love them. But you can’t. Not ever again.
The tires on my side drop into the rut. The air goes out of me as the springs of the truck flex, and we lean dangerously close to the edge. Megan falls onto me, smashing the demon in between us. She tries to claw her way back to her seat.
Why hasn’t she put on her belt?
The rut deepens. I could slow down, but the cloud of demons would descend on us. I push harder on the gas pedal. Perhaps if we get through this fast, the truck won’t have time to flip.
The rut drops a few more inches. I yell out of anger and frustration and let go of the wheel. The rut has complete control of the truck, whether I like it or not. The road is scraping the bottom of the truck, and the tires on the right side begin to rise in the air.
The truck tips. Megan falls on my arm. I yell again. The pain from my arm is unbearable.
The demon gives the steering wheel a yank to the left, and the truck is barreling through the air and straight over the cliff.
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