A wave of scorpions, millions of them, their three-inch tails hissing and whipping, smashed against our ankles and rose to our knees. Their barbs stabbed through my pants again and again as I pushed Op Nine through the undulating river of their swarming bodies. The pain was excruciating, but I told myself they weren’t real; that if my mind held we’d make it out okay.
Then the river parted and the scorpions disappeared into the cracks and crevices of the walls. We were halfway to the stairs when the walls began to sag as if they were melting, and faces began to emerge in the undulating plaster. I saw my mother and Bernard Samson, Uncle Farrell, and Lord Bennacio. I saw the faces of all the people who died because of me and they didn’t say anything, but their eyes were sad and filled with the loss of betrayal. I lowered my eyes and kept moving.
I came to the head of the stairs, but the stairs were gone. We were teetering on the edge of a black chasm and I could actually see rivulets of light pouring down into it, like water over falls, and something very hot was bearing down on us from behind. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck curl and singe, and tasted acrid smoke on my tongue. I shook Op Nine as hard as I could and shouted in his ear, “This would really be a good time for you to wake up!” But he didn’t.
“Not real,” I muttered. “Not real.”
I couldn’t go back, but this was the worst thing yet, so I couldn’t go forward either. We teetered on the edge while the heat grew more intense behind us. Something told me if I turned around to face it, we were lost. I closed my eyes, took a huge breath, and whispered, “Let go. Let go. Let go.”
I wrapped both arms around Op Nine and jumped into the chasm.
We tumbled into the utter darkness until we smacked at the bottom of the stairs.
Looming in the open doorway was a ten-foot-tall being of shimmering golden light, a demon without the masks of my mom or Mike’s mom. It had assumed its true form, and its face was more beautiful than anything nature gave us ordinary people, only the eyes were black pits, black as the chasm I just fell through, as if something had torn or burned them away.
“We’re leaving,” I gasped at it. “Let us pass.”
It didn’t move. I felt something squeezing the inside of my head, like when Paimon raised its fist and popped the agent named Bert like a human grape.
Then its voice: Bring us the Seal.
I emptied the clip as I rushed it, holding the trigger down as I moved forward, pulling Op Nine along with me. I ducked my head, clinching my eyes tightly closed, and felt some kind of membrane stretching over my entire body, and then we popped through it into the night, into the storm of pelting, freezing rain.
I dragged Op Nine over the frozen walkway to the Ford, yanked open the passenger door, tossed the empty 3XD into the backseat, and slung Op Nine into the car. I raced around to the other side and threw myself behind the wheel. A hunk of ice the size of a baseball smashed into the windshield, sending cracks racing toward the four corners. I jammed the car into reverse and slammed down on the accelerator. I whipped the wheel hard to the right and we spun around, the tires screaming on the slick pavement.
“Hold on, Nine!” I shouted, throwing the Ford into drive. Huge hunks of ice rained down, smacking into the roof and the hood, only now it was burning, and big globs of fire dotted the pavement. I roared out of the neighborhood while fire rained down from the sky with no idea where I was going but determined to get there as fast I could.
40
By the time I found the interstate I was shaking so badly, I could hardly keep us on the on-ramp. The pain in my head blurred my vision, but I could see streaks of black and gold as the burning hail hurtled down from the sky, and the tires went whump-whump-whump as we drove on the fiery hunks.
This wasn’t illusion created by the demons to drive me mad; this was real and, looking to my left as we flew into the southbound lanes I saw orange and black everywhere, and the flashing red and white lights of fire engines. Chicago was burning.
“Op Nine!” I screamed. “Op Nine, wake up! You gotta tell me what to do!”
His head leaned against the window. His eyes were closed, but I could see him breathing, so he wasn’t dead.
The interstate was deserted except for some cars that had either pulled into the emergency lanes or had been run off the road by the firestorm. I pushed us up to ninety-five, heading south, formulating the beginnings of a plan that probably wouldn’t save the day but might save me and Op Nine long enough to fight tomorrow.
I looked into the rearview and saw a mass of black shapes, a flying wedge of short, fat creatures with soft, pointy hats rippling straight back as they raced toward us. I did a double take because it isn’t every day you look in your rearview mirror and see a squadron of yard gnomes mounted on vampire bats the size of rottweilers, wielding lances tipped with fire and flaming swords, bearing down on you.
I pushed the accelerator all the way to the floorboards and kept pressing till the pressure made my knee ache. The old Taurus rattled and shook as the needle leaped to 110 and wavered there.
But I knew I could be flying the X-30 at Mach 6 and I wouldn’t outrun these nasties. Op Nine might be a SPA, answerable to no laws except the natural ones, but these things answered to no rules period. They came before any of the rules had been written.
They swarmed around the car, and little flaming darts smacked against the windshield, the hood, and the trunk, exploding with firecracker-loud pops. The gnome riders were smiling and the bats’ razor-sharp fangs were about four inches long, dripping goo and glimmering in the streetlights. It was all I could do to keep us from skidding off the road and slamming into the concrete barrier separating us from the northbound lanes.
Four gnomes dropped off their mounts onto the hood. They attacked the windshield with flaming axes, hacking at the cracked glass with those ironic little smiles frozen on their faces. I heard more smacking and cracking behind me, and figured more gnomes were skittering
around on the trunk, chopping at the back window. Red and orange tracers lit the night sky as the flaming ice boulders rained down. Great hunks of concrete spun into the air with each impact. We roared by a car balanced on its roof and another one that had burned down to its axles.
I yelled at Op Nine to wake up. I yelled at the bat-riding gnomes to cut it out. I yelled at myself for looking into the demon’s eyes and then I yelled at myself for not giving the ring to Op Nine when I had the chance.
And when my throat was raw from all the yelling at everybody, I figured enough was enough and, if I didn’t do something drastic, the hell that had broken loose because of me was going to get a lot hellier, and “hellier” wasn’t even a damn word.
So I slammed on the brakes. The gnomes on the hood lost their footing and slapped into the windshield, then slid out of sight. The rear wheels locked and the car went into a skid. I actually laughed aloud at that point and shouted at them: “Ha! Guess you bats don’t got brakes, do ya? Do ya?” The Taurus careened sideways and that’s how we came to a stop, with fiery ice balls zipping and popping on the road all around us. I didn’t stop to think. There wasn’t time. I got out of the car and waited.
It was very quiet, except for the ice hissing on the pavement and the distant sirens of the fire trucks.