Tal, at the crest of the wave, dove like a hawk, his wings straight back, his sword a needle of light at the end of his outstretched arm. His war cry could be heard above all the tumult, and his sword was the first to strike.
They flew into the heart of the black cloud, like piercing a black, boiling thunderhead. The swords of spirits clashed, wings slapped and fluttered, red smoke fogged the air. Tal kicked, cut, spun like a scythe, and fought his way downward, downward. He could hear the roar of Guilo, the Strength of Many, just above and to the left, batting at demons and mowing them down, flipping them sideways to meet other blades, kicking and grabbing what hides he could find, cutting a widening swath, gutting the cloud at its core.
THE STRONGMAN SLAPPED his demon lords about the room to bring them to their senses. “Are you commanders or not? To your posts! Defend us!”
The demons scattered to their posts, leaving the room almost empty except for the demons of Broken Birch.
The Strongman glared at Destroyer. “The woman has lit a fire that will consume us. There is nothing more we need from her. Finish her before we are finished!”
Destroyer shot a glance at Khull’s demons.
KHULL RAISED HIS knife.
“Mr. Goring!” came a cry from upstairs. “Mr. Goring! Something terrible is happening!”
Footsteps! People were in the chalet!
Khull grabbed Sally from behind, clapped his hand over her mouth, and poised his knife at her throat. His message was clear.
“Mr. Goring!” came the shout again.
Santinelli pushed Goring. “Answer them! Stop them before they find us!”
“My word,” said Goring. “Those letters! They’re right up there on the table!”
He hurried to the stairs, turning off the basement lights.
“Mr. Goring, are you here?”
He ran up the stairs. “Yes, right here! What is it?”
AMETHYST CUPPED HER wings open and came to an abrupt halt just short of the big white house. LifeCircle was under attack! Angels were everywhere! The spirits there, her masters, were fleeing!
CLAIRE AND JON scurried about the office, finding documents, papers, anything and everything that might connect them with this miserable lawsuit and everything it entailed. They would deny everything, of course. It was all they could do. Maybe they’d get through okay, maybe they wouldn’t—they didn’t know, they couldn’t think about it, they could hardly think at all; they were just too scared.
They’d gotten the tip-off: Lucy was talking; there were copies of Roe’s letters in the wrong hands. The lid was coming off!
Jon jammed papers into a trash can until it was full, muttering angrily, “I knew we should have gotten out of this long ago! We’ve overreached ourselves!” He ran to find another container.
Claire had the telephone propped on her shoulder. She was talking to Miss Brewer, Amber Brandon’s fourth grade teacher. “That’s right. You’d better come up with some good explanations for what happened to Amber. Lucy Brandon’s done an about-face, and she’s blaming it all on you. Hey, don’t blame us! You didn’t have to select that curriculum; that was entirely your own choice, and we had nothing to do with it! No, I never heard of any Sally Roe; that’s your concern, not ours!”
She slammed down the phone just as Jon rushed back into the room with a garbage can. “Jon, what about that curriculum? Can that be traced to LifeCircle?”
Jon found some documents and held them up for Claire to see. “Not after I burn these!”
OVERHEAD, THE SWARM of survivors from the LifeCircle rout turned tail and fled before a wall of angels. They flew toward the elementary school. Ango the Terrible would be there with all his mighty hordes! He would know what to do!
GORING REACHED THE upstairs and found the two psychics from the morning discussion group all in a dither.
“Here now,” he said, “what’s all the commotion?”
“Bad energy,” said the woman attorney. “I can’t explain it, but all the psychic energy around here is horribly disturbed!”
The fifth grade teacher nodded in agreement, his eyes wide with horror. “We’re being invaded! That’s the only word I can think of to describe it!”
IN THE BASEMENT, Sally, Khull, and the others stood in the dark, overhearing the conversation. Sally tried not to stir; she could feel Khull’s blade against her throat.
Goring was trying to calm them. “Well, just take it easy. Let me encourage you to combine your insights with others around the campus. Perhaps we can all learn and benefit from this experience.”
“It’s scary!” said the lady.
“I’m so disoriented,” said the man.
KHULL PULLED SALLY’S head back so hard, she thought her neck would snap. He huffed into her ear, “They’re feeling you, lady! You and your filthy Jesus!”
THE CLOUD OF evil spirits closed ranks and drew in tight, swords ready, as all around angelic warriors continued to thunder down the mountainsides like an avalanche and swirl around them like a cyclone. The Host of Heaven struck the cloud at the base, and it collapsed downward to fill the gap; they assaulted the pinnacle and it shriveled, bleeding a shower of stung demons; they shot like fatal bullets through its center, and the cloud’s mass began to thin. They harried it, struck at it, sliced it into weaker segments. The cloud was thick, tough, and tenacious, but it was weakening.
Tal hacked an attacker, mowed through four more, spun and kicked another spirit aside, and then spotted a sudden, instantaneous gap in the demonic mantle just over Goring’s chalet. He folded his wings above his head and dropped through it.
SALLY AND THE others could hear Goring having a bit of trouble with his distraught psychics.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” said Goring, “I do have some urgent business to attend to.”
“What could be more urgent than this?” said the man, his voice coming close to the basement stairway.
“Please!” said Goring, coming after him. “Use the front door! Go out the way you came in!”
Maybe, just maybe, that man would hear her. Sally steadily filled her lungs.
“Wow!” said the woman. “What are all these letters? Fan mail?”
SALLY SCREAMED, PUSHING the sound against Khull’s hand with all the diaphragm she could muster. The scream came through Khull’s thick hand a pitiful, muffled moan. No one heard it.
Khull had his excuse. He dug in with the knife.
“AWWW!”
“Khull!” said Santinelli. “What is it?”
Khull just moaned something unintelligible.
“Get the lights!”
“Where are they?”
Cursings, fumblings in the dark, tripping, stumbling, Khull growling, cursing, bumping into things, the wooden chair toppling.
“WHAT WAS THAT?” said the man upstairs.
“Out!” said Goring. “Get out of this house!”
STEELE FOUND THE lights.
“Khull!” said one of Khull’s men.
Khull was holding his chest; his shirt was slashed, red with blood. He’d carved a wound across his own ribcage.
“Where’s the woman?” he cried, his eyes wild with rage.
THE STRONGMAN AND Destroyer were blinded for an instant. Something had struck them. They blinked and squinted, trying to recover.
“Where’s the woman?” the Strongman howled.
Destroyer stared in horror at the spirits of Broken Birch—they were strewn about the room as if by a bomb blast, dazed, disoriented. The Strongman’s aides looked this way and that, but saw nothing.
“There!” a spirit shouted.
THE LIGHT OF day hurt Sally’s eyes. She was out in the morning air. She could see the herb garden and people gathered there.
A huge man held her, his face like bronze, his hair like gold. He set her down and pointed toward the mountains.
“Run, Sally! RUN!”
New strength coursed through her legs, and she ran.
THE DEMONS HURLED themselves a
t Tal with suicidal abandon, their eyes crazed with bloodthirst. He darted, dodged, feinted, meeting their swords with his own, kicking whom he could, swirling, dashing, jabbing, keeping them back.
“YAHAAA!” came Guilo’s voice behind him. Now Tal had some help. Struck demons began to fly across his vision, limp and dissolving.
He could see Sally Roe, still in the clear, still running. Run, girl! RUN!
CHAPTER 43
SALLY RAN LIKE a frightened gazelle, her thoughts set on that front gate, her stride never breaking. She bounded into the herb garden and whisked right past the blond singer and his little group.
“Hey, who’s that?” someone asked.
Then came Sybil Denning’s voice. “Well . . . ! Sally! Sally Roe! Sally, is that you?”
Sally didn’t look back, she didn’t slow down; she just kept running, her long hair blowing in the wind behind her, her arms pumping, her legs grabbing up distance. She dashed out of the herb garden, across a lawn, down a pebbled path, and into the main parking lot. She could see the main gate.
GORING WAS JUST herding the two psychics out the front door against their protests when someone else ran up full of questions.
“Hey, who was that we saw running? What’s going on around here?”
Goring asked directly, “Was it a woman?”
“Yeah. Man, she looked scared—”
“Which way did she go?”
“We’re all scared! What’s happening?”
“Which way did she go?”
“Well, toward the front gate. She was splitting the place!”
“I’ll look into it.”
Goring closed the door right in their faces and called to Khull’s men. “She’s outside, heading for the front gate!”
Khull’s four hooligans were just bringing Khull upstairs.
Goring was indignant. “Don’t bring him up here! You’ll drip blood on my carpet!”
“Get the woman!” said the Strongman.
Destroyer shoved and swatted the Broken Birch spirits into action. “You heard him! Get the woman!”
KHULL ORDERED HIS men, “Get her! Bring me the pieces!”
They bolted for the back door.
AMETHYST WAS ONLY one of a mob of hysterical demons who converged on the Bacon’s Corner Elementary School, but there was no rescue here either. The Host of Heaven had already struck the place, and demons were scattering from the roof, from the playfield, from all around the school, like hornets from a burning hive.
Ango, the boastful lord of the school, was fluttering about the sky with half a wing gone, wailing, cursing, spitting his hatred and screaming for help; but all his hordes had forsaken him and fled. Out of control, he careened crazily into a cluster of brilliant warriors, met their swords, and exploded in several directions, vanishing in trails of red smoke.
IN THE SCHOOL office, Miss Brewer was having a face-to-face confrontation with Mr. Woodard, the school principal.
“No way!” she said in a voice just below a scream. “I’m not responsible for selecting that curriculum, no matter what anybody says! You told me to teach it! You and that LifeCircle bunch were behind this whole thing, and I’ll tell that to anyone who wants to know! I’m not going to take the rap for this, not for anyone! You’re the principal! You’re the one responsible! You can fire me if you want, but I won’t be your patsy. Is that clear?”
“I’ll look into it,” said Mr. Woodard, looking pale.
Miss Brewer went back to her classroom. Mr. Woodard picked up the phone and dialed Betty Hanover, the Number One power-holder on the school board. “Betty? Bruce Woodard. Listen, I don’t know what’s going on here, but I want you and the rest of the school board to be clear on where I stand in these matters. I will not be left holding this thing, understand? I can be heavy-handed if I have to be . . .”
The demons from LifeCircle and now the survivors from the elementary school turned and fled before the pursuing angels. Terga, the Prince of Bacon’s Corner! He controlled the school board! Surely he could stem this tide and stand against this attack!
Amethyst was not quick to flee, but indecisive. Where was Ango?
The demons rushed away, leaving her behind. She searched for Ango. Was he here?
STUNG! An angelic sword caught her under the arm and she went spinning, plummeting down toward the school. She reached toward that black tar roof, even pushed toward it with the power of her wings. It was a safe place. She’d flourished in those rooms before. Maybe someone below could help her, hide her . . .
The black roof slapped by her, then the rafters, the insulation, the ceiling, a classroom full of children—
SWIPE! A warrior finished her, and she fell dissolving to the floor, a smoldering heap just behind Miss Brewer, just below a crayon drawing on the wall, a marvelous picture of a purple, winged pony under a rainbow.
SALLY RAN TOWARD the big stone gate. Right now that gate seemed like the gateway to Hell itself, but she was getting out, she was escaping, she was breaking free! Come on, girl, get through that thing!
Khull’s men raced through the hedges and down an obscure pathway toward the highway to head her off. So far they hadn’t been seen by any conferees, but that was due more to luck than caution.
“THE WOMAN!” CRIED the spirits, their attention diverted from the battle overhead to the fleeing figure on the ground. That diversion cost many of them their presence in this world. The angels were there, swords flashing, and no one could stop Sally Roe.
SHE REACHED THE gate. There was no invisible barrier, no burly thug to stop her, no dirty hands grabbing. She passed through it like a bird out of a cage, her heart soaring. O Lord God, my Savior Jesus, will You save me? Are You running with me now?
She crossed the highway and ducked into the forest on the other side. First she would get some distance behind her, then perhaps double back to the village, get a ride, hike out, whatever. Just stay alive, Sally, just stay alive! Hang on!
KHULL’S MEN SAW her cross the highway. They fanned out. The demons of Broken Birch stayed close to the ground and followed them, goading them on, filling their blackened minds with thoughts of blood and murder.
THE CLOUD OF spirits began to change shape. The base began to shift sideways, crawling up the mountainside, spreading a mantle over the path of that solitary, fleeing figure.
TAL SHOUTED TO his commanders, “Keep her covered, but let them follow!”
They understood, and backed away before the advancing demonic hordes.
The thick mantle over the Summit Institute began to pull away, leaving it open and vulnerable.
DEMONICALLY SPEAKING, LIFECIRCLE was a desolate ruin, the elementary school had fallen to the enemy, and now as the wilting, bleeding leftovers from those two defeats fled to the homes and businesses of the Bacon’s Corner school board, they discovered Terga, their mighty prince, all by himself, flying in crazy circles over the town, screaming in rage.
“Cowards!” he shrieked. “Deserters! Come back and stand!”
The demon lords under his command were nowhere to be seen, but had fled before the advancing flood of heavenly armies. The Oriental, Signa, was right at Terga’s heels. Terga was as good as finished and presently out of his mind.
MOTA HAD ALREADY led a powerful contingent of warriors on a bold sweep through the home of board chairwoman Betty Hanover, routing the ruling demons of that household and leaving Mrs. Hanover feeling unsure of herself—especially now, when a federal postal agent was on the phone.
“Just trying to track down some information,” he said. “We understand your elementary school was using a curriculum written by the woman in question, a Sally Beth Roe.”
“Uh . . . well, I don’t know anything about that.”
“We understand that Sally Roe lived right in your area.”
“Really?” Betty tried to sound surprised, but never was much of an actor.
“Well, we’re just trying to find her. We have to follow up on a complaint.”
“Complaint?”
“Mail tampering, for one thing.”
“Well . . . you might try talking to Claire Johanson . . .”
“Already did. She said to call you.”
“She—” Betty buttoned her lip, but cursed Claire up one side and down the other in her mind.
“Hold on,” said the agent. “I’ve got the name of the curriculum right here . . . Yeah . . . Finding the Real Me. Ring any bells?”
“The Omega Center!”
“Beg your pardon?”
“The Omega Center for Educational Studies in Fairwood, Massachusetts! They’re the publishers of that curriculum! They’d know the author, I’m sure. We don’t know anything about the author. All we did was buy the curriculum from Omega. They’re the ones you should talk to. We don’t know anything.”
“All right. Do you have their number, address, all that good stuff?”
“Just hold on.”
She gave him the information and hung up the phone, unable to stop shaking.
The phone rang again. It was school board member John Kendall. “Betty, I’m calling to warn you—”
“You’re too late,” she told him.
School board member Jerry Mason called right after she hung up on John Kendall. He wanted to know what she knew about this Sally Roe/mail tampering/lawsuit/curriculum thing, and didn’t Sally Roe commit suicide a while back? She wanted to know what he knew, they both wanted to know what Claire Johanson knew, and both agreed that none of them knew a lot and that all of them wanted to know a lot more, especially what the feds knew.