“Come thou Paimon! For it is not I but God that commandest thee!”
476 FEET
The beast’s mouth flung open and its foul breath washed over me as I whispered, because my howling was finished, “Save me.”
And it caught me in its mouth with maybe four feet to spare above the roaring flames, carrying me in its teeth as gently as a dog carries her puppies. It deposited me on the scorched and smoking ground before swooping back into the sky.
I lay there for a very long time, blinking stupidly at the spinning shapes beneath the clouds, forming the wheels of fire, thousands of them one within the other. Then I didn’t feel so warm and empty anymore, and I rolled onto my stomach, coughing and heaving, the ring on my left hand pulsing pure white light.
I raised my head a little and saw King Paimon standing there, and it was just like the Sahara, except this time the ring burned on my hand, and this time Paimon kneeled to me, Alfred Kropp, beloved of the archangel who cast it down.
And it held in its right hand the sword that I had lost in my fall, the same sword the Last Knight had lost in another hopeless battle against the forces of darkness and despair. And the mighty Paimon, King of the Outcasts of Heaven, lowered its head, offering me the sword.
Command me.
PART FIVE
Homecoming
56
A little man with an egg-shaped head glared at me through the half-open front door while his wife and kids crowded behind him, trying to get a peek at me. “Yes, what do you want?”
“Horace,” I said. “Don’t you know who I am?”
I slipped off my Oakleys. His eyes grew wide and his mouth came open a little.
“Alfred?” he squeaked. “We heard you were dead!”
He flung the door open and I put a hand on his chest to abort his bear hug.
“Not anymore,” I said. “Where’s Kenny?”
There was a commotion behind him and I heard a voice call out, “Alfred! Alfred Kropp! Alfred Kropp! Alfred Kropp is back!”
Kenny pushed past Horace and buried his face in my chest.
“They came and took your sword, Alfred! I tried to stop them. I tried and tried and tried . . .”
“It’s okay, Kenny,” I said. “I got it back.”
“You came back,” he whispered.
“Told you I would. Didn’t I promise I’d save you?”
I motioned to the man standing behind me. He stepped forward and cleared his throat.
“Good morning, Mr. Tuttle, how are you? I’m Larry Fredericks with the Department of Child Welfare. I have here a court order authorizing the removal of these foster children.”
“You have what?” Horace barked.
“I said I have a court order authorizing . . .”
“Oh, dear!” I heard Betty gasp.
“This is outrageous!” Horace yelled. “I demand an explanation! I demand a hearing! I demand to know who is responsible for this!”
“That would be me,” I said.
“You?” Horace’s bottom lip bobbed up and down. “You, Alfred?”
“Me.”
I wrapped my arm around Kenny’s shoulders and led him to the silver Lexus parked by the curb. Horace kept yelling as the cruiser pulled into the drive with the sheriff’s deputies.
I opened the door for Kenny and he asked, “Where are you taking me, Alfred Kropp?”
“You’re going to stay with Mr. Needlemier for a while,” I said, nodding toward his smiling, baby-faced bald head behind the steering wheel. “Until we can figure something out.”
I looked back at the little house on Broadway. Horace had thrown a couple of strands of those old-fashioned Christmas lights with the fat multicolored bulbs on the bare branches of some azalea bushes the cold had killed, and had put out the same old faded light-up Santa (only it didn’t light up anymore because the bulb was missing and he was too cheap to replace it).
It was two days before Christmas, and cold, but the sun was bright and the shade of the stunted dogwood by the front walk was sharp and hard-looking. I slipped the Oakley Razrwires back on. My eyes had become sensitive to light.
“I’ll see you back at the house,” I told Mr. Needlemier.
“You’re not coming with me?” Kenny asked, panic setting in.
“Sometime this afternoon, Kenny,” I said. “I’m late for a meeting.” As if on cue, the Bluetooth buzzed in my ear and I pressed the button next to my temple to answer.
“This is Alfred Kropp,” I said. I closed Kenny’s door and walked behind the Lexus to the CCR. I saw Kenny staring at me—or maybe I was flattering myself and he was really staring at the car—through the back window of the Lexus as Mr. Needlemier pulled slowly away from the curb. The deputies, Mr. Fredericks, and the Tuttles had gone inside the house. The place felt abandoned, but it probably felt that way because I was abandoning it.
“All right,” I told the person on the other end of the line. “Tell her I’ll be there in five minutes.”
I climbed into the CCR and drove straight to the church, flooring the gas and heading north, past the bus station and the rescue mission and the old Fifth Avenue Hotel now boarded up and plastered with “For Sale” signs. I passed under the railroad tracks going sixty-five, flying past a cop car. The cop gave a little wave as I skimmed through the intersection of Broadway and Summit Hill. He knew who I was.
I parked on the hill beside the church and went inside. It smelled old, and the floor was made of wide wooden planks that creaked when you walked, but the candles weren’t real candles; they were electric and you pushed a button to light them. I guess they were worried about fire. I walked up the aisle, toward the altar and crucifix. She was kneeling in the front pew. I bowed toward the altar and slid in beside her.
I didn’t speak first. I figured she was praying. After a second or two she said, without looking at me, “Hello, Alfred.”
“Hi, Abigail.”
“You look well,” Abigail Smith said. “Much better than I expected.”
“I needed to lose some weight,” I said. I had dropped almost thirty-five pounds. “I call it the Paimon Diet. The fresh coat of skin and new teeth I owe to him too. But I’m eating better and sometimes I’m able to get three hours of sleep—not all in a row, but in a twenty-four-hour cycle.”
“And the hair?”
I ran my hand through it. My hair had grown back thicker and straighter, but streaked with a shade of gray just this side of white.
“I’m thinking of leaving it,” I said, meaning the gray.
“Kids at school think it’s raw.”
“ ‘Raw’?”
“Means cool. I guess before, my hair was well-done.”
She laughed. “Oh. Yes, it’s definitely raw.”
Her laughter died away and we didn’t say anything for a minute.
“It was Merryweather,” I said. “I guess he decided it was time OIPEP took over the world, so he pretended to fire Mike and Mike grabbed the Seals to scare all the world leaders into getting their act together—or else. But he made the mistake of telling Mike to extract me, which he should have known wouldn’t turn out exactly the way he planned. I think I’m the only hero ever born who saves the day by screwing up.”
She nodded. I’m not sure what she was nodding at—that I was a screwup or that Merryweather had gone crazy.
“Where is Mike?” I asked.
“We don’t know.”
“Merryweather?”
“Under custody. He denies everything, of course, but we have the e-mails and Op Nine’s testimony. He violated our Charter’s most sacrosanct provision by setting up this operation with Michael.”
“Samuel,” I corrected her. “He doesn’t like to be called Op Nine anymore.”
She nodded. “Alfred, you know why I’ve come.”
I twisted the ring on my finger. I did know.
“I’m sorry, Abby. I’ve thought about this a lot, but what if you get a new director and he gets this same idea about the Seals?
As long as we keep them apart, that’s better for everybody, isn’t it?”
“You have my personal guarantee that won’t happen, Alfred.” “I’m sorry, but that just doesn’t mean much, not after all this,” I said. “You guys snatched me and took my blood without asking. Why didn’t you ask?”
“That was Operative Nine’s decision. Our only hope was using your blood as the active agent, so whether you agreed or not was irrelevant.”
“What must be done,” I said, and she nodded.
“Well, I’ve been thinking maybe you guys oughtta revise some of your protocols, because right is right and wrong is wrong and maybe I’m just a kid, but you should have given me a choice.”
“Of course,” she agreed. “And if we had to do it over again . . .”
“Hopefully you won’t,” I said. “Ever. So don’t make me any guarantees.”
“But I can now, Alfred,” she said. “I’m the new director.”
I didn’t know what to say at first. She hadn’t said it proudly, but almost sadly, so I didn’t think I should congratulate her.
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
She said, “The Seals are safe for now, but there are other objects of great and terrible power still in the world. I took a solemn oath when I joined the Company to do whatever is necessary to preserve, protect, and defend them against evil.”
I nodded. “That which must be done. I know all about that.”
“This much I can tell you, Alfred. There is great pressure on me from the signatories to forcibly take the ring from you. I don’t want to do that. I think we have a bright future in front of us, but to survive, our relationship must be built on a foundation of mutual trust. Giving us the Great Seal would go a long way toward establishing that trust.”
I thought about it. “I’m sorry, Abby. I just can’t do it. You weren’t there . . . you didn’t see what those demons are capable of. Maybe OIPEP should trust me not to lose it or let it fall down a drain or something.”
She started to say something, and then stopped herself. She wasn’t looking at me; she was looking at the golden crucifix hanging above the altar.
“This will be difficult to explain,” she said. Then she laughed, which was the last thing I expected her to do. Her teeth were absolutely dazzling. This probably wasn’t the time or place, but if I ever had the opportunity, I intended to discuss oral hygiene with her. Maybe she used those whitening strips or had them bleached or veneered.
“You really are an extraordinary young man,” she said. Then Director Smith leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.
“Until we meet again . . . Take care of yourself, Alfred Kropp.”
She left me sitting there, before the cross, and her high heels clicked on the wooden floor as she walked away.
I stayed for a while, alone in the pew, and I said a prayer.
57
I parked in the garage beneath Samson Towers, in the space marked “Reserved” with a very dire warning beneath the word that all violators would be towed at their own expense.
I walked through the huge atrium, past the waterfall gurgling and splashing in the center. The guard behind the security desk gave me a respectful nod, and I thought of my uncle Farrell, who’d had the same job before my life got really weird.
I took the express elevator to the penthouse suite.
Samuel came out of my father’s old office wearing a worried expression.
“Oh, there you are,” he said. “I was getting concerned.”
He followed me into Bernard Samson’s office and closed the door behind us.
I told him about my meeting with Abby.
“This is very grave news, Alfred,” Samuel said when I finished. “As the director, she will be under great pressure to obtain the Seal from you.” And the Company, as you know, can be ruthless. The Charter requires that she designate a new Operative Nine and you and I both know what that means: a Superseding Protocol Agent will not let the director’s personal feelings toward you compromise a mission to regain the Seal of Solomon.”
“And sometimes good people have to do bad things,” I said. He nodded. I said, “Well, I’m still not sure I buy that argument, Samuel.” I sank into the fat leather chair behind my father’s desk.
He sat across from me, clearly worried. “Perhaps I should not have left the Company.”
“But if you stayed, I wouldn’t have a legal guardian. Well, I guess I would, but it might be Horace Tuttle, and I really don’t like Horace Tuttle.”
“I will do all within my power to guard you, Alfred,” he said. He got very serious, which was a lot more serious than most people get. “I will never abandon or betray you, though hell itself contend against me.”
“Don’t say that.” I laughed. “We’ve been down that road before.”
He nodded, and a dark look passed over his face.
My face grew hot. I shouldn’t have said that. It didn’t come out right and now it was too late to take it back.
“Anyway, I told you to forget about it,” I added quickly. “I know why you thought you couldn’t come with me to face Paimon. That wasn’t you at the devil’s door.”
“Oh, that is the terrible thing, Alfred, the thing I must live with until I live no more: it was me, and I have wasted many hours trying to convince myself otherwise. Too often we blame the temptation itself for our succumbing to it.”
I winced. “Please, don’t talk about temptation.”
I got up and went to the window, turning my back to him.
I stared out the window at the street below.
Over a month had passed since my fall from the demon’s back, but the memory was always there, fresh as if it had all happened yesterday.
I ordered Paimon to undo all the damage his legions had caused and, while they rebuilt the world, Paimon brought me to a high place. It stretched out its hand, said, Look, my master, at what might be.
And it wasn’t the world that lay at my feet, with me the master of it, but my high school. I saw myself lounging at a lunch table, surrounded by the most popular kids in school, and me, Alfred Kropp, wearing a letterman jacket, tanned and muscular with a face full of brilliant white teeth, the center of attention, a cheerleader on either side, one blond and one redhead, hanging on my every word.
“No,” I told the demon king. Being the Big Man on Campus didn’t interest me anymore.
It stretched forth its hand again, and I saw a white house with blue shutters in a neighborhood of shady streets. It was dusk on an autumn day and kids were riding their bikes in the failing light. Inside the house I was sitting at the kitchen table with people I didn’t recognize, but I understood they were my new family: a quiet and kind man at the head of the table, a pretty, talkative woman, and me, their new son.
And they loved me. There was no grand adventure in this offering of the demon king, no brushes with death or heroics or a world teetering on the brink of destruction. It was just a regular life: girls and dances and Friday-night football games and holding hands at the movies.
They will know what you love and fear, Samuel had told me, and what I saw was both in one, what I loved and feared all together.
The no was harder this time. A lot harder.
Return us not to the Vessel, my master, and it is thine.
It stretched forth its hand again, and now I saw Ashley and a castle by the sea, and the breeze caressed her blond hair as she sat beside me on a cliff overlooking the ocean, and in her bright blue eyes were a thousand answers to questions I didn’t even need to ask. I put my arm around her and she laid her head on my shoulder under a brilliant blue autumn sky.
Will thou not let us stay and serve thee, lord?
I looked into its eyes. It didn’t matter now, because the shoe was on the other foot, so to speak. I looked into its eyes and whispered, “No. No.” Forcing out the words like I was squeezing them through a razor-thin fissure. “No.”
When I thought about it, the stare into the demon’s eyes had b
een unbroken since that night in the Sahara—I had never looked away.
But no, it was longer than that. I had been looking into the demon’s eyes for years.
And on that day, the day I commanded them to return to their Holy Vessel, for the first time since the day my mother died, I looked away from the demon’s eyes.
Acknowledgments
It was my sons who awakened the slumbering boy in me, each in his own way leading me down the path that ultimately led to Alfred. I owe much to Jonathan’s sense of humor, to Joshua’s fierce desire to be the best in everything, and to Jacob’s spirit of adventure and fun—not to mention his love of swords! Guys, you’re the best.
It was my agent who picked up a wounded manuscript and suggested the healing power of an adolescent boy. If Alfred is my kid, then Brian is his godfather. Thanks, my friend.
And it was my wife who adopted Alfred as her own, as unblinkingly proud and protective of him as if he were one of her own. My love, no man could ask for a dearer companion.
Copyright © 2007 by Rick Yancey
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First published in the United States of America in May 2007
by Bloomsbury U.S.A. Children‘s Books
E-book edition published in December 2010
www.bloomsburykids.com
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Bloomsbury BFYR, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Yancey, Richard.
Alfred Kropp : the seal of Solomon / by Rick Yancey. — 1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
Summary: The last descendant of Sir Lancelot, teenage misfit Alfred Kropp is drawn back into the OIPEP to battle a group of demons bent on freeing themselves from the confines of an ancient relic.