He liked the bugs better than the infernal crematoriums, though. If he had to take Todd’s twisty passages through space, he preferred them filled with natural creatures.
“If you say we can walk through both heaven or hell,” Andy was speculating aloud, “and all we’re perceiving is an interpretation of something too difficult for our mortal minds to comprehend, then why are our surroundings so grim? I, personally, would much rather be walking through a sunny orchard or on a pleasant beach.”
“Maybe the passage is taking us hellward.” Todd’s voice echoed through the tunnel and sent the insects rippling in reaction. “Hellward is darker than heavenward.”
“What exactly does that mean, ‘hellward’ and ‘heavenward’?” Andy complained. “Hell and heaven aren’t finite points on a map.”
“No, but the...the gravitational wells of Creation and Destruction warp space into dimensions beyond our own. I detect the varying effects of that warp as heavenward and hellward, even though they aren’t true directions. I have to work within the constraints of my own perceptions and language, too.”
“If this was really hell, there’d be mosquitoes,” Jack observed. “I hate mosquitoes.”
“Don’t give hell any ideas,” Andy chided him.
“The passages are malleable, but not so malleable that a casual thought will affect them.” Todd sounded like he was lecturing. “However, if all three of us began to obsess about a cloud of mosquitoes buzzing around in a swarm of bloodsucking frenzy, landing on our bare flesh and injecting itchy toxins under our—”
“Hah, hah. Very funny, Edward.”
Todd chuckled, deeply. “Well. We’re either here, or we’re not.” The beetles scurried away from his hand, revealing another door. “Let’s find out.”
The door swung open, revealing bright, artificial light that momentarily silhouetted Todd against its brilliance. Then the big man stepped through, and Andy and Jack followed with relief.
The relief vanished a moment later.
The field looked like a war had been fought over it, complete with body parts and broken, overturned equipment. Three large spotlights were on their sides, flickering as their gasoline generators coughed and chugged. The ground was trembling in regular waves, as though stirred by a giant stick.
In the center of the field hovered a cloud of twisting, polymorphous bubbles and tubes made of flesh and hair and claws, floating above a circle of swaying serpents that stretched up toward the sky, their jaws open in high-pitched screams.
Jack gaped, and a line from an old ballad floated through his head:
Rich Diverus, he sickened and died, And two serpents rose from hell, His soul thereto to guide....
The strangest thing, Jack thought with a sense of detachment, was that the creatures all cast long shadows across the field, shadows that stretched across the dirt to end at their very feet.
It was that little detail that made the whole scene so chillingly believable.
Three other humans were already there. To Jack’s right, on the edge of the field by the street, two men knelt in the dirt, staring at the serpents. Beyond the creatures, on the other side of the field, a single man stood upright, his white hair shining like a brand.
Jack’s wards gave a warning tingle as the white-haired man shifted his head to inspect them.
“What in God’s name are they?” Andy breathed, barely audible over the generators and serpentine screaming. He crossed himself. Jack reflexively followed suit.
“Guess that snake wasn’t Leviathan proper,” he said. “Unless it had kids.”
“Are they mal'akhim?”
“I hope so. I can handle mal'akhim. If they’re aliens, we’re screwed.”
“I think that’s Provost Penemue, on the other side of the field.”
“He seems to be taking it better than those other two.”
“He’s watching,” Todd said, a strange note in his voice. Jack glanced at him, then back at the strange display. Whatever was on the big man’s mind came in a poor second to the scene being played out right in front of them.
The floating creatures were dancing, moving inexplicably back and forth, up and down, getting bigger and smaller. The giant, bone-scaled serpents seemed to be singing, or maybe worshipping. They looked like cobras swaying before a snake charmer, except this time it was the cobra producing the music.
Jack licked his lips and longed for a shot of whiskey.
“I got a couple protections against snakes, but I don’t think they’ll work against anything that size,” he told Andy, reaching for his pack of cigarettes instead. “And most of them just keep snakes away; they don’t kill ’em.”
“Keeping them away would be a start.”
“Yeah. But I got nothing to ward off flying flesh-saucers.”
“They don’t seem to be paying any attention to us.”
For a moment they continued to stare.
“Well, Jack,” Andy said at last, “this isn’t exactly like exorcising evil spirits, is it?”
“We might just be out of our league.”
“I can’t imagine who’s in this league.”
“What do you think, Todd?” Jack asked, looking over. “Can you lure those things into one of your hellholes and lock ‘em away for good?”
“I don’t know what they are,” Todd said, sounding puzzled for the first time that night. “There’s something familiar about them, but—”
“Familiar? You must see some pretty strange things in those tunnels of yours.”
“I do. And I think we need to talk to the mal'akhim.”
“Like they ever give anyone a straight answer.” Still, Jack admitted, the idea had its merits. Right now a little advice from an angel, no matter how cryptic, would make him feel a hell of a lot better. “Andy?”
“Did you happen to notice whether that angel was still standing outside the ranch house?”
Jack scowled, trying to remember. “Nope. I didn’t see it, but I wasn’t looking for it, either. I was more worried about a giant snake bursting out of the ground.”
“Penemue knows something,” Todd said.
“How do you know?” Andy asked.
“I don’t know, but I have a strong suspicion. You’re the angelologist, Andrew. What does the name Gregory Penemue mean to you?”
Andy’s face went blank. Jack considered what he knew about angels, but Penemue didn’t mean anything to him. It wasn’t one of the archangels or ruling princes, he was sure of that.
“Gregory—Grigori?” Andy looked back across the field, puzzled. “Was Penemue one of the Grigori?”
“The only one I ever remember is Azazel, because his legend is so close to Satan’s,” Todd replied. “But look at him. Do you think a normal university administrator would stand so calmly in the face of all this madness?”
“We’re doing all right,” Jack pointed out.
“We’re not bureaucrats.”
Andy ignored him. He had pulled his cell phone out of his coat pocket and was furiously tapping the screen.
“Grigori...Book of Enoch...God bless the Internet, what did we ever do without it? Edward, you’ve just gone to the head of the class. Penemue taught mankind to write, ‘and thereby many sinned from eternity to eternity and until this day.’ Hmmm....” He tapped a few more times, squinting at the glowing screen.
“What are the Grigori, again?” Jack asked. “Fallen angels?”
“They’re the Watchers, the angels who descended from heaven and fell in love with the daughters of men,” Todd said as Andy remained hunched over his phone. “The story is apocryphal but popular.”
“Penemue taught children the ‘bitter and sweet, and the secrets of their wisdom.’ Sounds perfect for a university administrator, doesn’t it?” Andy looked up, gazing across the field at the provost. “What can you tell about him, Jack?”
“There’s magick here, but I can’t tell where it’s coming from. Though, come to think of it, I did get a prickle last time I saw him. I
thought my wards were detecting the angel, but they might have been sensing him, too. Maybe he’s what the angel was keeping an eye on.” Jack shrugged, his gaze returning to the strange ritual in the center of the field. “He doesn't look like any b'nei elohim I’ve ever seen.”
“He wouldn’t. The Grigori stand between,” Todd said. “Rather like me.”
The carapaced snakes had moved closer to the floating beings, which occasionally darted down to brush the snakes’ hard, pale scales. Was it a form of communication? A caress? Hypnotism? Jack thought he saw flashes of spined orbs and floating teeth among the swirling, polymorphous creatures, but the serpents didn’t seem threatened.
Then they stopped moving, dropping in heavy coils back to the ground. Their shrill, screaming song fell silent.
For a moment the only noise in the field was the chugging of the generators. Jack held his breath.
The floating swarms vanished.
The serpents shifted and twined a moment, then buried their heads in the dirt. With a massive flip of their spiny tails and a ground-shuddering shove, they dived underground once more.
Jack grabbed Todd’s arm for balance as the ground surged and rippled beneath them. For a moment he could actually see the creatures burrowing beneath the surface of the earth, moving back toward campus.
Another one of the generators sputtered and failed, its spotlight going out.
Only one light remained, its white beam stretched across the field, cutting a line between them and Penemue.
“Well,” Jack said, feeling the ground shuddering beneath his feet. “I got no idea what just happened. How about you?”
XX
Jarret drew back, his eyes wide. Peter’s arm tightened around Alison’s shoulders.
The broken and screaming bodies were gone, but the hole in the ground remained.
“Maybe an ambulance came and picked them up,” Peter ventured, without conviction.
Alison shook her head.
“The monsters took them,” she said, knowing that she was right because that’s what always happened in the movies. “To eat, or to turn into something else.”
She felt Peter shudder, even though he was doing his best to look brave.
“Monsters.” Still skeptical, Jarret edged forward and craned his neck, not getting too close to the broken dirt and sidewalk. He played a flashlight over the ground, then jerked the beam aside. “Is that blood?”
Alison swallowed and looked around. The dorms were pitch black. Everyone had run off—they’d seen a few students running across campus, toward the bright lights around the collapsed library, and they’d seen even more climbing into their cars and pulling out of the dorm parking lots.
Still, the campus wasn’t silent. She heard distant sirens and screeching, car horns, shouting. Sounds of life. Somehow, that was encouraging.
She put a cold hand over her mouth, trying to concentrate. She’d convinced the boys to go with her to get Peter’s SUV and see if the people who’d been hurt were okay, and on the way she’d told them her ideas about the big snake and the cold weather. Jarret hadn’t entirely believed them about the snake, but she thought he was coming around to their point of view.
“Come on,” Peter said, looking over his shoulder. “Let’s go.”
They made their way around the cracked, sagging dorm, Jarret’s flashlight picking out more craters in the ground where the giant snake had surfaced. Then they got to the parking lot and found more students huddled there, speaking in low, urgent tones.
Alison limped up to one of her classmates. “What’s going on?”
The girl turned, a look of barely restrained panic on her face.
“The roads are all torn up,”
“By the earthquake?” Jarret asked. The girl glanced at him, looking amazed.
“By the snakes,” she said, her voice expressing her disbelief. “Haven’t you seen them?”
“Uh, not yet.” He blinked, looking around. The rest of the students were all looking over their shoulders.
“Look.” One of them pulled out his cell phone and held it out. Alison craned her neck to see the picture he was showing Jarret.
“Looks like a blur,” Jarret said.
“It’s a monster snake!” Offended, the young man pulled his phone back. “I uploaded it to the web. I didn’t see any other giant snake pictures there yet, so I think I’m the first.”
“How bad can torn-up roads be?” Peter asked, sounding nervous. “My truck’s got four-wheel drive.”
“Like, canyon bad,” Ally’s classmate retorted. “People have been, like, just parking and climbing down and back out again, so it’s a total traffic jam, too.”
“Then the snakes aren’t trying to keep us from leaving; they’re just keeping vehicles from coming and going,” Alison said, frowning. “Like the police, or fire trucks. Or the Army. That’s bad. That means they’re intelligent.”
“They’re aliens,” someone said.
Voices immediately rose in argument, some pointing out how stupid it would be for aliens to invade such a small campus; others pointing out that the electricity was off, the land lines down, and the cell phones getting busy signals, so the same thing could be happening all around the world. The phone guy said he couldn’t find anything online about alien attacks. A girl testified that she’d gotten through to her mother in North Dakota and everything there was fine. Someone else said there was nothing aliens would want in North Dakota.
Alison wrapped her arms around herself, shivering despite Pastor Lindgren’s coat. She tried to blank out the argument and concentrate on what a hero in a horror movie would do next.
Either hike out and warn the National Guard, or go fight the snakes herself.
Fighting brought her back to the question of weapons. Neither Peter nor Jarret had thought that the construction companies would store dynamite on campus. After some consideration, she’d had to agree. Campus security didn’t even allow air guns and pocket knives on campus, much less explosives.
If this were a science-fiction movie, she’d be able to use some kind of cold ray to put the snakes into hibernation...or whatever...but she’d already taken her two mandatory science courses, and she hadn’t seen anything like a giant refrigeration unit in the science building.
“Look,” Peter said, “how far around campus have the snakes dug? Can we cut through somebody’s backyard?”
“Hello? Drive through someone’s yard? Are you crazy?”
“I’m not crazy! This is a emergency!”
“I’ll go with you,” one of the students volunteered. “We can drive around and find out if the snakes missed anything.”
Slowly the other students nodded, two of them volunteering to follow on their motorcycles.
Alison wavered, then finally decided they were right.
“We have to warn the authorities,” she said, as confidently as she could. “If the snakes are only here on campus, the cops might not know about them yet.”
That started another argument over alien-invasion logistics, but at least they were arguing as they pulled out their keys and headed for their vehicles.
XXI
Auctor inspected Viator’s captive with curiosity, his thousands of eyes scanning, analyzing, and recording. The captive bared its teeth and excreted some kind of liquid over Viator’s claws. Viator’s tentacular tongues flicked out and tasted it on several levels of hyperspace.
It is primarily photonic waves arranged in overlapping patterns, she said, bemused. Watch. She moved the captive into another space and its shape changed. Then she moved it to another, and it took yet a third form.
It was one of the sigil guardians, Auctor was almost certain, but it made no attempt to oppose them. An immature sigil-spawn, perhaps? Or a lesser creature that had camouflaged itself as a sigil-guardian to protect itself against predators?
Does it conceive of itself as matter or light? Auctor asked, carefully running an eye-covered feeler through the creature for an internal exam
ination. Its internalities seemed incomplete and illogical. Auctor compared its structure to that of the other hypospatial beings it had encountered in the past and wondered if this one were damaged.
I am not even sure it has self-realization. Viator brought the creature back into their preferred limis. Do you want to try to communicate with it?
Auctor choose the hypospace with the highest probability of being the creature’s native home and retracted the protective membranes from its communicative organs, reshaping them to work at a suitably mechanical level. He repeated his query several times, in the several different communicative patterns.
No response, although the thing quivered with more intensity. Auctor turned a few hundred eyes toward Viator.
You may be right. He meditated a moment. If it were an immature guardian, it should be destroyed. But if it were something else, it might generate useful data if it were tagged and released. Release it. Let us see where it goes.
As you wish. Viator dropped it back onto the path where she’d plucked it. They watched it race off, and then, taking pains to remain unseen, they followed.
XXII
Todd stared at the spot where the floating creatures had vanished, recognition tickling the edges of his consciousness. Their name was there, just out of reach. If he waited long enough, he was sure the answer would come to him.
“Andrew? Is that you?”
He turned, along with Markham and Jack Langthorn, and saw that the two men from the edge of the field had joined them, staggering as the earth shook. One of them was wearing a nylon Vista Hills Police Department jacket and kept his hand on the gun holstered under one arm. He was visibly shaking, his eyes constantly moving past them to check the center of the field. Todd recognized the other as Pastor Lindgren.
“Luther.” Markham and the pastor shook hands, their faces eerily lit by the remaining sputtering spotlight. “What do you make of all this?”
“Nothing good. What are you doing here?”
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