Maybe it was the bright light that suddenly shone through a crack in Jack’s darkness that lit the way out. He could see its brilliance even with his eyes closed. It had been dark—all ashes and burned air. And then Andi screamed, “Nooooo!” and a brilliant light appeared that lit up his whole mind even though he couldn’t see it.
Maybe that light had awakened who Jack was, shook him by the shoulder, brought him back.
Jack had been searching for himself in a dream, in a world where doors opened onto long hallways with more doors and more hallways and it was all gray and misty.
He’d gotten lost somewhere inside himself. Came unhooked from reality. No, actually he had hooked up to reality for the first time in a long while and his psyche flat out didn’t like what it saw. Reality was that his beautiful Lyla was dead—like the three thousand three hundred other people who died that day. She’d died at the hands of terrorists who would one day stand before God and have to give an accounting of their lives. Jack wouldn’t want to be in their shoes when they did. Thirty-three virgins—good luck with that, pal!
Militant monsters had killed Lyla. Jack had not. It wasn’t his fault.
And perhaps he had to hear that accusation out of the mouth of evil itself to see it for the lie it was. He’d spent a good many years whispering that lie into his own ears. He was done with that. And he was done with running, cowering here inside himself. Becca had gotten lost in the same place, chased up and down the corridors of her mind by monsters too hideous to describe. He might have come very close to going over the edge into that lost world himself, but he’d been brought back just in time. By the brilliant light. No, before that—he’d been brought back by Andi’s scream.
Andi.
You killed me because you hate children.
Now there was a lie that smelled like sulphur because it had sprung from the very bowels of hell itself. He couldn’t have loved Andi more if she had been his own flesh and blood. She had come back from death when he’d called out to her—because he needed her. Now, she needed him.
It took all the strength he had to force his eyelids upward. He peeked out, then opened his eyes wide to see a brilliant, shining creature made of a light with a shadowless radiance, a light you could look full into without squinting. The beauty took his breath away.
Where the angel in jeans and a denim jacket over a T-shirt had been only moments—hours? minutes? days?—ago now stood a being whose beauty was the perfect counterpart to the ugliness of the blackened creature in the fiery lake. Standing fifty feet tall, she towered over them. Her robe—was it a robe? a gown?—shimmered with light, maybe was actually made out of millions of points of perfect light—like fiber-optics. Each crystal reflected and refracted the light from the one next to it so there was an illusion of movement even in stillness. The light spread out from the angel in all directions, a brilliance that somehow seemed to have substance, like you could touch it, and if you did, it would feel soft, like a baby’s blanket. It lit every crack, every crevice in the chamber, flowing around corners like bright warm honey—except within the pentagram marked out in black chalk on the floor, where there were swirling shadows, lit only by an ever-shifting ugly red glow.
Jack was certain that the angel’s light shone out into every corner of the whole cave—of all the caves, every cavern and tunnel, all the thousands of miles of them that lay beneath the county—and that great streaks of brilliance radiated out into the world beyond the caves from beneath rocks or cracks on the hillsides. He could envision the rolling Kentucky countryside lit from within by an unfathomable brilliance, and streaks of bright illumination shooting up into the sky to connect to the twinkling stars. Everything and everybody touched by that light was safe from all harm, guarded from all evil.
Though the angel in jeans was clearly female, this being could have been either sex or none at all. Blond hair so pale it was almost colorless flowed in waves over her shoulders and down her back. The features were strong—straight nose, eyes a shade of gray so light as to be almost translucent, high forehead and a mouth set in a firm, determined line. Rising up behind the angel were great wings the downy white of a baby duck’s bottom, that moved gently back and forth, creating a slight breeze that smelled of sunshine and honeysuckle. It appeared there was more than one set of wings—Jack couldn’t tell for sure. What he could see clearly was what lay in the angel’s hand—a sword of burnished silver, a flawless weapon both brand new and unutterably ancient at the same time. The angel held it with an easy confidence.
“You cannot harm them,” the angel said. The voice was as low and vibrant as the tolling of a cathedral bell.
“And you cannot save them,” the beast snarled back. “They stand or fall on their own.”
Jack had a flash, a vision of this angel and the beast in the fiery lake engaged in combat, sword against scimitar, light against darkness, a scene from a world of spirits. But they wouldn’t do battle here, not like that. Theresa’d said that in this world, occupied by the enemy, under the rule of the Father of Darkness for a time it had been given to men—not angels—the task of standing against evil.
He wasn’t sure he could stand, that his legs would bear his weight. So he simply crawled the few feet across the polished floor of the cavern to the spot where sweet Andi lay curled in a ball, sobbing. He reached out and gathered the little girl into his arms.
Theresa spotted him soon as she and Becca stepped out of the service elevator. The wide hallway behind the ballroom was empty now because the ball was still goin’ on and all the people was inside.
All except Chapman Whitworth.
Dressed in a suit and tie instead of in some Halloween getup, Whitworth had obviously just left the ballroom by one of the two small back doors because he was striding purposefully down the back hall toward the atrium around the corner and the bank of guest elevators.
He’s sneaked out. The fireworks is about to start.
Lord, we ain’t ready!
“Hey you, efreet,” Becca called out in a firm, clear voice. “I want to talk to you.”
Whitworth was only a short distance down the hallway. He turned in their direction and the little red tailless demon set out across the expanse of empty tile flooring between them, leaving Theresa to slip through a doorway just down from the service elevator on the wall opposite the ballroom. The ’lectronics room was at the end of a short hall at the top of a small flight of stairs.
What was that child gone do? Theresa couldn’t begin to imagine.
Keep him occupied for a couple minutes.
Don’t need but a couple. Surely, won’t nothing blow up long’s he’s still here.
Theresa snatched a serving tray with a water pitcher off a cart sitting in the hallway and balanced it on the palm of one hand as she plowed up the steps to a door marked Employees Only.
Don’t let it be locked, please!
The knob turned and she used her considerable backside to shove open the door. A man sat in a dark room next to an empty chair in front of a huge control board with more buttons, dials and switches on it than the cockpit of a 747—not that Theresa’d ever seen the cockpit of a 747. He was looking at a big monitor, where the image was divided into six sections that showed views of the ballroom from the front, both sides and the back—some close-up, some wide-angle. The monitor screen provided the only light in the room.
The man didn’t turn around when he heard Theresa come in, just said, “You told them mustard, not mayo, right?”
Theresa didn’t even break stride, merely stepped out of the shadows and launched the full pitcher of water out onto the control board.
The board exploded in a hail of sparks and the man leapt to his feet, sputtering and cursing. The lights on one side of the ballroom flickered and blinked out, and the screen with a wide-angle view of that side went black, blinked back on, went black again, then flickered.
The man turned around, squinting into the gloom. He’d been staring at the lighted screen and could make out nothing more than her shape in the shadows.
He took a menacing step in her general direction, looking around for her.
“What do you think you’re—”
Theresa elbowed him out of the way. He fell backward, tripped over the chair and sprawled on his back on the floor. Good thing he was a little scrawny fella. Her eyes raked over the steaming, sputtering board, looking for…There it was! The switch the bellhop had showed Nyree on the wall above the board on the left side of the monitor. A normal light switch except the toggle was red. It wasn’t identified in any way, though. If she wasn’t rememberin’ right or that bellhop was just blowin’ smoke…
She leaned over and flipped the switch.
Daniel dropped into black nothing, plunging toward the depths of a bottomless abyss.
He didn’t know the knot in his shirt sleeve had let go until he was falling.
A second, maybe two to respond.
He clutched with all his strength at a rope that was no longer attached at one end and banged into the wall on the far side of the crevice, smacking into the rocks with brutal force. His head whacked so hard his vision blurred and the rope was almost yanked out of his grasp. He didn’t let go, though, and hung on with the strength of desperation, dangling at the end of a thirty-foot stretch of rope held together with a double fisherman’s knot and attached now to a lone stalagmite on the cavern floor above.
Using his foot to swing himself around so he was facing the rock wall, he felt around on it with his toes, searching for any kind of outcrop or ledge or just a lump where he could rest his weight. He figured he had less than five minutes before his fingers could no longer grip the rope.
Nothing. The rock face was smooth. His toes scoured the stone, searching for any—
There!
His right toe found a bump on the rock face. Hardly a ledge, it extended out about an inch, but he was able to step onto it, balancing with the rope, and allow the rock to bear the majority of his weight. He sucked in big gulps of air and tried to still his hammering heart, set into overdrive by the drop into nothingness. Then he felt around with his left foot higher up on the rock and his toes found a small crack. Jamming as much of his foot as he could into the crack, he shifted his weight onto it, then lifted his right foot off the mini ledge and felt around with his toes for something higher than the crack. Nothing protruded, but he discovered that the crack where he’d jammed his left foot extended at an angle up the rock face, getting wider as it went. Daniel shoved his right foot into the crack above his left, pulled his weight up onto it with the rope and rose higher on the wall.
He inched his way up the widening crack, feeling for footholds, pulling his weight with the rope again and again. But his arms were tiring rapidly. By the time he pulled himself up high enough that his head cleared the rim of the crevice, his arms had begun to tremble.
Just a little more. Please. A little more strength.
He felt with his left foot in the crack and found a slanting surface where he could place the whole length of his foot. He stepped onto the surface, pulled with all his strength on the rope and lifted his body up another twelve inches or so.
One more pull. He’d have to make it in one more because his arms were shaking badly and his fingers had begun to cramp. He felt above his left foot with his right. Nothing. The crack he was climbing widened there to about three feet, too wide to jam his foot into. As he felt frantically for a hold with his right foot, his right knee slipped onto a ledge. He pulled hard to get his knee firmly up onto the ledge, straightened, then held tight while he replaced his knee on the ledge with his left foot. When he pushed upward with that foot, the upper part of his body rose above the rim of the crevice.
Time was running out. The image of an hourglass with only a few grains of sand left to fall filled his mind. His fingers were cramping and his arms were shaking violently.
He was losing his grip on the rope. Crouching with his weight on his left foot on the ledge, he lunged upward, throwing his body forward. His chest flopped over onto the cavern floor; he pulled the rope tight and used the last of his strength to drag the rest of his body out of the crevice.
Scooting forward on his belly away from the edge, he let go of the rope and collapsed, fighting a sudden nausea from the exertion. He rolled over onto his back, gasping. He flexed his cramped fingers and shook his trembling arms, trying to still the shaking. Then he lurched to his feet, his knees quaking, and staggered toward the cave opening illuminated only by an ugly red glow.