I finally found the release button for ejecting the cartridge. It plopped hissing into the sand as I slammed a fresh one into the slot and yanked the trigger. About that same time, the demon swarm leaped straight up, dwindling into the velvet blackness of the desert sky.
A voice shouted in my ear, “Hold your fire! Hold your fire!”
The noise died away until all I could hear was my own ragged breath inside the helmet. Even the whispering faded, but the memory of it lingered, like a slowly dying echo. We watched their shapes circle high above in concentric rings of fire, each ring turning in the opposite direction of the other one.
The eerie silence was shattered by a terrific roar, and my heart jumped. Ashley tugged on my sleeve and pointed toward the main body of demons about three football fields away. Something was coming toward us, moving slowly across the desert, bellowing as it came.
Beside me, Op Nine murmured, “ ‘Behold the Ninth Spirit, Paimon, the Great King, second only to Lucifer, in the form of a Man sitting upon a Dromedary.’ ”
I didn’t know what he was talking about,
and I sure didn’t know what a dromedary was, but whatever it was, it didn’t sound good. Op Nine stood up and then everybody stood up and we waited for the bellowing thing to come.
It was huge, standing over ten feet from its hooves to the top of its slightly flattened head. Bulging red eyes, a neck thick and gnarled as a tree trunk, globules of slobber hanging from its open mouth.
“That’s not a dromedary,” I said. “That’s a camel.”
It stopped a dozen yards from our circle. It stopped, but the bellowing didn’t. This perverted memory of an animal was in some serious pain.
A man-shape balanced on the forward hump, with a shining face like those of the demon-lords who circled high above us, lean and almost girl-like with its large eyes, delicate nose, and full, sensuous lips. A crown glittered on its head, spewing radiant light, red and gold and aqua and green, that shot out from its brow like laser beams.
A dark shape fell away from the rear hump of the monster camel and dropped to the sand. It walked slowly toward us, and beside me Op Nine whispered, “Hold, hold.” He had pulled off his helmet, so the rest of us followed suit.
He was ordinary size, the man who now walked toward us, and he didn’t carry a flaming sword or burning staff or anything like that. His head was bare. He wore a white robe that had come open, so beneath it I could see his khakis and white Lacoste polo.
And, of course, he was smacking gum.
“Hey, guys, how’s it goin’?” Mike Arnold asked.
22
“Michael,” Abigail said.
“Abby Smith—hey, it’s pleasing as pickles to see you! I don’t care what they said in headquarters, you’re still a heck of a field agent in my book, and by the way you look just fantastic in that jumper.”
He looked at Op Nine. “Figured you’d be here, Padre. Sort of the culmination of your whole career, huh. No thanks necessary.”
Then he saw me. “Al Kropp! My God, is that you? Jeez, kid, you’re like the Forrest Gump of supernatural disasters— you’re always everywhere!”
He clapped his hands together. “So! This it? This all you brought for the greatest intrusion event in the past three millennia? I feel a little disappointed, to tell you the truth.”
“You’re not the only one who is disappointed, Michael,” Abby Smith said.
“Well, like the old saying goes, you gotta crack a few eggs to make an omelet.” He spread his arms wide, palms facing toward us.
I saw the ring then, the Great Seal of Solomon, shining on his right hand. Twice as thick as the average wedding ring, it shone with a reddish, coppery color.
“Tell us what you want, Michael,” Abigail said.
“Oh, it’s not what I want, Abby,” Mike said. “Or what anybody wants, really. It’s more of what we need.”
Abby and Op Nine exchanged a puzzled look.
“Look, I’m not going to bust your chops,” Mike went on. “It’s a damned shame, but sometimes damned shames are necessary. Kind of like the demons here. That’s my new best friend Paimon on the camel with the thyroid condition. I’ve freed all of ’em, down to the last demon, and they’re all angry as hell, if you’ll excuse the expression. They’ve been cooped up in a cell the size of a birdcage for the past three thousand years. Things got a little testy in there, as you can imagine.”
“Enough,” Op Nine said sharply. His tone was like a father who had run out of patience with a lippy kid. “What do you want, Arnold?”
“Oh, it’s a little bigger than that, Padre. I’m just an insignificant blip on history’s radar.”