Chapter Forty-Seven

 

 

12:02 A. M.

 

WESTIN HAD COME close to panicking when the lights had been extinguished. But then he remembered that the building had, thanks to Burnett’s insistence, a state-of-the-art backup generator. The realization had barely occurred to him when the lights flickered for a moment, then came back on with full brightness. All of their devices, which had also gone down briefly when the electricity was interrupted, were up and working again. The power had been off for fifteen seconds, at most.

Westin steeled himself for another look toward the monstrosity that had been confined inside the pentagram. His eyes behind the yellow goggles widened in shock as he realized the pentagram was empty.

He stared at the glowing five-pointed star at the base of The Door. The pentagram. The electric pentagram. The pentagram that needed electrical power to function, the power that had been withdrawn—but only for a few seconds, hardly any time at all.

The scientific part of mind continued to function even as panic was rising inside him, almost as if it was chastising him by putting into words what his central nervous system had already grasped: How much time do you think a demon needs, you idiot?

The answer was provided immediately by the voice behind him—which should have been Ted Burnett’s voice but manifestly was not—the voice that said, as if having read his mind, “Hardly any time at all.”