It seemed to be following the black, swooping thing, which was now bearing the Shen ring away across the sky. Raphael recognized the wide, dark, feathery wings, the long body, the jerky yet graceful movement, but Chin spoke before he could.
“Oberon is free,” he said darkly.
“Yeah,” Raphael finished. “And now he’s got the ring.”
Chapter 29
Rick yelled with exhilaration as Oberon swooped under him, picked him up, and flew around above the abandoned factory. Rick tried to touch the ring, but Oberon held it away from him.
“Oh, no, my boy—this is not for such as you,” Oberon scolded, gentle but firm. “This is as close to it as you’ll ever get.”
Then he descended, set Rick down on the ground, and flew on through the forest, his black wings propelling him forward only a few feet above the foliage as he maneuvered around tree trunks. Even with all the power Rick’s demonic body contained, alternating between sprinting like a man and scrambling on all fours like a beast, it was all he could do to keep up.
“Awesome!” Rick shouted over the wind. Killing Clarisse’s drug-dealer friends was the culmination of the growing blood lust he’d felt for the last year, and he was now reveling in the afterglow. Stealing that ring from Raphael Kain fired him up even more.
“Enjoying yourself, aren’t you?” Oberon shouted back at him. “I knew you would. I knew you would make a fine servant, and you have not disappointed.”
It irked Rick to hear anyone call him a servant, but he was having so much fun he wasn’t going to complain about it. Besides, he was already trying to figure out how he might eventually steal the ring that Oberon now clutched in his hands. It was a beautiful thing, whatever it was—a treasure—and Rick was already imagining all the fun he could have with its power when he was the king of Middleburg—and the Dark Territory, too.
“What do we do now?” Rick panted, still struggling to keep up with Oberon.
“First, my boy,” Oberon said, “we open the doors to hell—and then we open the entrance to the higher realm so we can take Azaziel’s army there and defeat the exalted ones.”
* * *
From the cockpit of a Black Hawk helicopter, Hackett gazed down at the rooftops of the rundown neighborhood called the Flats. In the last six hours, he’d blockaded the city and called in major reinforcements. When the police station started getting calls about military choppers flying over rooftops east of town, he’d immediately known that it must be the Chinese agents. The cops at the precinct gave the order to sound the town air-raid siren as a precaution, and Hackett had scrambled his own helicopters and taken to the air to track the enemy down. So far, however, there had been no sign of Feng Xu’s forces.
“Sir, we got something!” one of his men shouted. He was staring down at the screen of a tablet computer.
“What?” Hackett shouted over the roar of the rotors.
“Major energy spike, sir.”
“The ring pieces?”
“Either that or somebody built a nuclear plant in the last two minutes and forgot to tell us about it.”
“Where?” Hackett asked.
The agent pointed toward the east. “Looks like its moving. Heading away from the Middleburg Materials Factory. It’s moving toward town, sir.”
“Take us that way, Sanders!” Hackett ordered the pilot. “And go in low and fast!” Moments later, they were skimming the treetops of the forest that bordered the train tracks south of town. “Pull the energy-tracker window up on the nav screen,” Hackett shouted above the noise of the rotors, and a moment later the screen from the agent’s computer display was linked with the flight computer and displayed holographically in front of the chopper’s windshield.
“Looks like its right below us, moving in the same direction as we are—moving fast, sir,” the pilot said.
“Jones, look out—see if you can get a visual,” Hackett commanded the other agent, craning his neck to look down through the sparse canopy of newly budded spring leaves.
“There—twelve o’clock!” the pilot said, and Hackett looked through the front glass again. Ahead and below them, something was moving through the trees.
“That’s it—that’s the energy source!” Jones shouted.
The figure below looked like a massive bird with what had to be a fifteen-foot wingspan. Its body was the shape of a human’s, but the color of a stealth bomber’s paint job. Another creature, on the ground, bounded along behind it. It looked like a cross between a person, a bear, and a hairless stampeding bull partially dressed in human clothing. One of its arms (or forelegs) seemed to be made of metal, and it glinted rhythmically in the sunlight.
“What the hell is that?” Hackett said.
“I don’t know, sir,” Jones answered, sounding a bit shaken.
“Whatever you do, stay with them,” Hackett told the pilot.
“What’s the plan, sir?” Jones asked nervously.
Hackett thought for a moment before replying. “The plan is to pray that the reinforcements get here soon,” he said. “Because whatever’s going on in this town, it’s a hell of a lot bigger than us.”
At that moment, another black helicopter swooped into view, its guns blazing, and Hackett felt the chopper he was in shiver as the bullets rattled against its armored hull. Feng Xu’s men must have detected the energy spike, too. They had come out to play after all, Hackett thought with a mix of terror and triumph. The battle was on.
* * *
Zhai stood with Kate atop a vast hill. A beautiful, sweeping view lay behind them, but Zhai wasn’t taking in the scenery. He was staring at the smoldering remnant of the Shao mansion.
When the severity of what was happening in Middleburg became clear, Chin had ordered everyone to find their families and bring them to the Middleburg United Church. With its thick ancient stone walls, it was the city’s designated fallout shelter, and by far the safest place in town. Zhai knew it was important to go after the ring, but by the time they’d reached the bottom of the tunnel mound, Oberon was nowhere to be seen, and he realized that he couldn’t wait any longer. Even if it meant he would risk losing the ring, he had to find out if his dad or Lotus were still alive. Of course, Kate had insisted on coming with him—and Nass had come along too, to check on his family in the guesthouse.
The fire had destroyed the Shao mansion so completely that now only a few charred pieces of lumber jutted up from the ash and debris. Firemen in dingy yellow suits and helmets hustled around rolling up hoses.
“We’re still trying to determine the cause,” the fire chief was saying. He’d been speaking for some time now, but Zhai hadn’t heard most of it. He was just staring, stunned, at the smoldering rubble. “As I said, there were two bodies. We believe one was male and the other female, but we’ll have to use dental records to make the identification.”
“It was my father and stepmother,” Zhai said tonelessly. “They were the only ones home. They were having a fight when I saw them last.”
The chief nodded sympathetically. “Well, I’m sorry for your loss,” he said. “I’m sure they were good people.”
Zhai was silent. For as long as he remembered, he hadn’t felt as normal people did. Now that he was with Kate, he’d begun to experience a true emotion—love—but at this moment, he felt nothing else. Not sadness at his father’s loss, not anger at his death—nothing. He felt just like the ruins of the house: charred, broken, empty. Kate squeezed his hand, and he finally looked away from ruins of what had once been his home.
The fire chief cleared his throat, took out a business card, and offered it to Zhai. “Anyway, here’s the number you call to collect the remains and get the autopsy information,” he said and walked away.
“Zhai, are you okay?” Kate asked softly.
Zhai shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t know,” Zhai said again. “I really don’t.”
From the valley below came the long wail of the air-raid siren. It was a frightening mournful drone, and to Zhai it was the perfect sound for the moment. From somewhere in the distance came the chittering rumble of a helicopter again, too.
“What’s that?” Kate asked, alarmed.
“Air-raid siren,” Zhai said. “They usually only use it if there’s a tornado sighting.”
Residents began to come out of their houses to stand on their front stoops, looking around curiously, as if trying to determine what was going on.
Zhai heard loud voices and turned to see Nass leading his mother and father up the walkway from the backyard.
“Chin said for us all to go to the church, where it’s safe,” he was saying.
“You think—maybe it’s just a drill?” Amelia Torrez asked hopefully.
“Definitely not,” said Zhai. “Where’s Clarisse? Is she with you?”
“She’s gone,” Mrs. Torrez said. “Back to L.A. I got a text from her last night.”
“Yeah,” added Nass. “She didn’t tell us she was leaving. She just split. Come on—we have to hurry!”
Zhai took one last long look at what was left of his house, then he, Kate, and the Torrez family piled into the Shao’s Maybach and raced down the hill.
* * *
Raphael emerged from the woods that bordered Golden Avenue and stopped to stare at the scene before him. He was exhausted, emotionally drained, and his nerves were frayed; he had no words to process what he was seeing now.
Several helicopters bolted through the gray-streaked sky above, shredding the quiet day with the deafening chuckle of machine guns and the concussion of exploding missiles. A mile or so north, a large green plane flew higher in the sky, and he could see paratroopers drifting down from it, their chutes open to catch the wind. As he was taking all this in he heard the earth-rattling explosion of a bomb detonating somewhere in the downtown area, followed by a chorus of screams. People were running—men, women, children—all flooding north from the Flats, up toward Golden Avenue.
Raphael watched as they all hurried off the roadway and onto the sidewalk. A Humvee barreled toward them, the machine gun affixed to its roof rattling off a series of deafening rounds skyward, at one of the passing helicopters. When it was gone, the fleeing refugees took to the street again, struggling north as fast as they could. It was surreal. Middleburg was a war zone.
“How long have I been gone?” Raphael muttered to himself. Whatever was happening, he had no doubt that it all had to do with the Obies, the ring, and Oberon.
While everyone else had gone down the north side of the mountain to their parked cars, following Chin’s orders to collect their families and take them to the church, Raphael had sprinted straight down the steep hillside in pursuit of Oberon. It was a reckless move, maybe, but he was desperate to track down his nemesis and take back the ring. But he’d lost sight of Oberon moments after he’d disappeared into the woods. Raphael had gotten bogged down in the thick underbrush while Oberon soared above it; he had no idea where he might find him now.
He wondered what terrible calamity would strike Middleburg if he didn’t.
At that thought, his mind flashed to the horrible apocalyptic visions that the Magician had shown him and Zhai after their first quest, and to the terrible, desolate version of Middleburg he’d traveled to in the future with Aimee. Could this be the beginning of a war that would bring about that miserable future? All he could hope was that whatever was going on, he and his friends could somehow find a way to stop it before the whole town—and maybe the world—got destroyed. But how?
And then he heard a series of screams off to his right, further up Golden Avenue, and he caught sight of a flurry of black wings, flying low in the sky. It was Oberon, and he was heading straight toward Middleburg United Church. Rick was on the ground below him, running at full speed and occasionally glancing up, keeping the fallen angel in sight. Oberon did a gliding turn, and Raphael saw that he still had the ring. Without hesitation, Raphael gave chase.
* * *
Savana Kain’s screams echoed through the stone-walled room, but that wasn’t what was bothering Aimee. It was the increasing sounds of explosions and machine-gun fire coming from outside.
As soon as Chin had instructed everyone to go and look after their families, Aimee had thought of Savana, who was at Lily Rose’s house, going into labor. Immediately, she’d slipped there. The wise old woman had assessed that Savana’s baby was coming soon, and she’d told Aimee to teleport them to the church.
“Not the hospital in Benton?” Aimee asked, confused.
“No,” Lily Rose had replied firmly. “This baby’s got to be born on sacred ground. Just get us there—as fast as you can!”
As soon as they arrived, Lily Rose had set up a makeshift delivery room in the kitchen, and they’d been there for about ten minutes when the explosions outside had started and people began streaming into the church. Aimee hadn’t stopped moving since then. Dalton arrived as the first of the Flatliners and Toppers began to straggle in with their families, and Emily Banfield was already there, acting as assistant midwife. Emily put Aimee and Dalton to work, telling them to bring Lily Rose towels and hot water and try to keep Savana comfortable. Not knowing what else to do, they adjusted Savana’s pillow and wiped the sweat from her forehead. In every spare moment Aimee was stealing glances out the window, where the signs of battle seemed to be increasing, and running out to peek into the nave of the church, where the crowd of frightened citizens was growing ever larger.
She was staring out the window with a rising sense of dread when she saw a nightmare vision that she’d hoped never to see again. It was Oberon, in his natural form. As she watched, he winged his way upward, toward the top of the church, and disappeared from view. Aimee thought for a second that he’d simply flown over the church. Then, a deep boom vibrated the whole building.
“Um, Lily Rose . . .” Aimee said.
The old woman looked up from her patient. “I know,” she said wearily. “That shadow train’s a steamin’ into town again, bringing a whole freight load of destiny with it. You go out and fight, if you need to. Hold ’em off for as long as you can. I’ll be here, bringing this baby into the world. Go on—I’ll bolt the door behind you.”
“What do you mean, fight?” Emily protested. “Okay—you were pretty impressive in old-time Middleburg, but I’m not going to let you—”
Aimee grasped her hand, interrupting her. “I’m different than when you left, Mom. I’m stronger. I’ll be fine,” she said.
That left her mother momentarily speechless. Then Emily nodded. “Okay, honey. Okay. Just be careful,” she said.
Aimee hurried away. In her excitement, though, she was too impatient to wait for her feet to carry her into the sanctuary. She slipped there instead and appeared in the middle of the crowd, startling everyone. Most of the people she knew in town were already assembled there, including the Toppers and Flatliners and their families. Maggie’s cheerleader pals were also there, gathered in one corner and talking in voices that were shrill and hysterical.
Her dad was there, too, pacing up by the pulpit in his customary gray suit and yelling into his cell phone. “I don’t give a damn what your protocol is! You put me on the phone with the governor! You tell him if he doesn’t have the entire Kansas National Guard up here within the hour, he can kiss his reelection goodbye!”
Aimee shook her head. At least some things never changed.
She was crossing the room, heading for the place where Zhai, Nass, and the rest of the Flatliners and the Toppers were gathered, talking to Master Chin, when she felt a sudden vibration shoot through her body. Instinctively, she stare
d up at the ceiling. Several people around her did, too. There was a strange sound coming from above, a massive vibratory hum that seemed to rattle every cell inside her, every molecule of the air, and every stone of the church.
Great, she thought, what now?
* * *
Raphael had cut through the woods and was charging ahead, dodging the ancient headstones that filled the churchyard, when he caught sight of Oberon again. He had flown up to the bell tower of the church and disappeared into its arched opening, even as dozens of terrified people crowded into the broad entrance of the church below. Raphael gritted his teeth and ran faster. What could Oberon be planning? he wondered. Was he going to use the ring to bring the whole structure crashing down on everyone in the town? Or something even worse?
Raph had taken only a few more steps when he saw an explosion of blue-green light rip from the bell tower, in three concentric circles. The shockwave of energy seemed to blow a fuse in Raphael’s brain for a second, and the blast knocked him off his feet. When he sat up again, he saw that a great beam of white light was shining out of the arch in the bell tower, blasting like an impossibly bright spotlight toward the south. There was another fainter, vaguely spiral-shaped shaft of light that shone straight upward, as far as he could see, until it vanished in the clouds. As Raphael watched, two figures—Oberon and Rick—stepped out into the beam of light, and it carried them south at incredible speed before disappearing above the treetops.
Raphael groaned, exhausted by the prospect of chasing Oberon back the way they’d come. After a second, however, another round of machine-gun fire roused him, and he stood.
He had to track Oberon down, he decided. But first he knew he should go and investigate the two lights now shining out of the bell tower. They must have something to do with whatever Oberon was up to, he thought. If he could shut them off somehow, maybe he could avert the disaster the Magician had foretold. With a sense of renewed determination, he charged once again toward the church.
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