It was a blind alley—sheer concrete walls and no escape.
The two men closed in behind her, silent, skillful. If they moved quickly enough, they could finish her before she had a chance to scream. One had a long scarf in his hands, the other held a gleaming knife.
Filthy spirits were there too, whooping and frothing, bouncing off the walls like golf balls down a gutter. This was it!
MOTA RODE ON the roof of Marv Simpson’s ranch wagon as it rolled lazily down Hannan Boulevard on the south end of the Bentmore campus. When it came to a corner, Mota’s wings burst forth like fireworks and the next thing Marv knew, he was in a right-turn-only lane and had to turn right, heading up the campus’s west side.
“Doggone,” he muttered.
“Weren’t we supposed to go the other way?” Claudia asked.
But he was looking this way and that and trying to change lanes, getting more and more frustrated. “Now how do we get out of here?”
SALLY BACKED AWAY until she came up against the sheer, featureless concrete at the end of the alley. So much for flight. Now for fight. She raised her duffel bag to shield herself.
No sound, only shadows blurring in the street lights. The scarf hit her face, her head hit the wall, one eye was covered, she couldn’t see.
A knife flashed!
Chimon was there and parried.
The knife deflected and lodged in the duffel bag.
A blow to her neck! She pitched forward, grabbing the knife man. He pulled the blade free and plunged it at her again.
The knife ripped through her coat. Her scream was muffled inside the scarf.
A searing blade opened Chimon’s shoulder. Two demons caught his backhanded sword and dissolved.
The knife slashed Sally’s coat open, but missed her flesh.
Scion came in low, ducked under a cluster of lashing, hacking spirits, and rolled into the knife man’s legs. He fell backward. The knife clinked on the concrete. Scion had rolled into the middle of a death trap. Twisting and spinning, he was able to fend off most of the demons’ blows, but one wild blade caught his leg, cutting it deep.
Chimon had a screaming, flopping, slobbering demon by the feet. He batted Scion’s attackers away in one powerful swing, then whipped the flailing body over his head and smacked the scarf man in the face.
The scarf slipped away. Sally could see again. She lunged forward and broke free.
The knife man grabbed her coat sleeve.
Signa dropped out of the sky, tracing an exclamation point of light. His sword caught the seam at Sally’s shoulder and the sleeve tore away.
She ran. Alive!
The knife man was looking for his knife. The scarf man couldn’t tell where he was in the dark.
Chimon, Scion, and Signa were cut, bruised, and limping, but they grabbed hold of Sally and got her out of that alley.
Destroyer saw it all, and screamed for his hordes. The spirits gathered from every corner of the campus, swords burning, wings roaring, ready for a kill. With Destroyer at the point of a massive arrowhead formation, they dove toward the street.
IN BACON’S CORNER, Lucy ran into Amber’s bedroom expecting blood, bruises, an accident, something horrible.
It was nothing of the kind. The child was beside herself, screaming, cursing, pounding the walls.
“Amber, what’s wrong?” her mother cried, trying to embrace her.
She spun around like a vicious animal and stood apart from her mother, her fingers curved like claws, her eyes wild and glaring, darting about the room as if watching distant events. “Cut her up! Grab her, take her, cut her up!”
Lucy backed into the wall and remained there, speechless. There was no stopping Amethyst when she was like this. She’d tried before.
Destroyer and his hordes were screaming out their war cry, their sulfurous breath forming yellow streamers that etched the sky like comb’s teeth.
MARV SIMPSON WAS looking for a place to turn around and getting more and more frustrated. He hardly noticed that woman running out of the alley.
“Oh my,” said Claudia, “what’s going on here?”
Tal dropped through the roof and filled the whole backseat with his massive frame. Stop and pick her up!
Marv saw her again. She was actually running into the street.
“Oh!” Claudia exclaimed, “she’s coming toward us!”
“Oh, man, a nut case! We’ve got to get out of here—”
Tal grabbed Marv’s head in his two huge hands and forced him to look toward the woman. PICK HER UP!
“Let’s pick her up,” said Claudia.
He pulled over.
GUILO SHOT INTO the sky, flanked by Nathan, Armoth, Cree, and Si. They intercepted Destroyer and his henchmen like a clap of thunder over the campus. The demons were like an irresistible wall, and the angelic warriors went tumbling and spinning aside. Destroyer and his horde resumed their course, dropping toward that station wagon; the five warriors recovered, circled, and dove down on the demons’ backs like falcons. The vile spirits fought them off, but they had to take precious time to do it.
“NEED A RIDE?”
Sally pulled the door open and clambered into the backseat. “Please. Get me away from here!”
Four men appeared on the sidewalk, two with radios. They saw her get into the car and quickly disappeared.
Marv was still lost. “How do I get out of here?”
“Left, up at the corner,” said Sally, “and then go under the tunnel.”
“Tunnel?”
DESTROYER AND HIS warriors skimmed over the top of the Physical Sciences Building and dropped toward the street, closing in on the station wagon. Tal and Mota clung to the car’s roof, swords ready, wings covering the passengers inside. Then Guilo shot out from a side street, Nathan and Armoth whipped around a bank building, Scion dropped from an overpass, Chimon and Signa weaved among the cars only inches above the pavement, Si came up through a manhole, and they all pounced on the car, covering every square inch of it, their drawn swords making it look like a glowing porcupine.
This would be it, a direct, power-for-power battle!
But suddenly, surprisingly, Destroyer pulled out of his dive and followed only twenty feet above them, passing through the traffic lights, telephone lines, and street signs, keeping an eye on them, sizing them up. The sight of the small band of warriors clinging to the vehicle, swords drawn for a last stand, made him laugh. It made his henchmen laugh.
Finally he shouted to them, “Call it a victory, captain! I call it progress! You are weaker than ever now, and the next time will be ours. The fruit will be ripe, and we will pluck it down with ease! And don’t concern yourself with hiding her. We will always know where she is!”
They climbed into the night sky and were just disappearing into the darkness when the car went into the tunnel.
“What now?” Chimon asked, holding his wounded shoulder.
“Name it, cap,” said Scion, holding his useless leg. “We’ll do it.”
“We are spent,” said Tal. “Even though we confused Khull’s men, Destroyer could have taken us, and it’s only by the hand of the Lord that he didn’t know it. It’s time we hid her in Ashton.”
“And let her hear of the Cross!” said Nathan.
“We’ll get her there and let the Spirit speak to her.” Then he added with an unabashed anger, “While we get back to Bacon’s Corner and root out this prayer blockage once and for all!”
“UH,” ASKED MARV, “where you headed?”
Sally was gasping for breath, sick with terror, and dripping with sweat. She was not entirely rational. “I don’t care. Anywhere. Anywhere away from here.”
Claudia looked over her shoulder at the pitiful creature slumped over in the backseat, weeping, panting, dripping with sweat. “You poor dear!”
Marv looked at her through the rearview mirror and could see the fear in her eyes. The Lord spoke to his heart. Yep, it was no accident that he’d picked her up. “Well, you just ta
ke it easy and try to rest. We’ll get you far away from here. I know just the place.”
CHAPTER 29
LUCY BRANDON WAS feeling weak and ill, but trying not to show it, even as she scribbled a forwarding address on still another letter from Sally Roe and slipped the letter into the bag of outgoing mail. She didn’t want to do it, but she could see no alternative. Her lawyers were pressuring her, her friends at LifeCircle were smiling and encouraging her, Sergeant Mulligan was watching her, the lawsuit was moving full speed ahead, and the momentum was overpowering, carrying her along like a runaway train.
But after no less than twenty of these letters, she’d seen enough. She was afraid, she was ignorant of legal strategy, and perhaps she was a little too trusting and gullible, but she wasn’t stupid. There was no question in her mind that Sally Roe was alive.
The more she thought about that, the more devastating it became. Gradually, just one small idea at a time, she was allowing herself to think the unthinkable: something more than a lawsuit was in progress and she was being lied to by someone, maybe everyone. If she was being lied to, she was probably breaking the law for all her friends and not for herself. If all that were true, then—she’d tried to bury this thought for weeks—she was being used.
She had no question that her daughter Amber was being used, if not by these legal eagles, then certainly by that once-cute little pony Amber had befriended in Miss Brewer’s fourth-grade class. The laughter, the fun and games, the cartoon-character charm were all things of the past. Amethyst was no friend of any kind.
But now Lucy was in so deep, how could she back out? What direction could she turn? How—
The bell rang at the front desk. Debbie was on her break, so Lucy hurried to the front.
This big man looked familiar. She’d seen him around town, but he wasn’t from around here. She immediately felt uncomfortable.
“Can I help you?”
“Hi. I’m Marshall Hogan. I’m a friend of Tom Harris, and I just got a letter here from the Omega Center for Educational Studies in Fair-wood, Massachusetts . . .”
He acted like he was giving her a cue, but she didn’t catch whatever it was. “Yes? Is there a problem?”
“Well . . . I suppose you know that they’re the publishers of the Finding the Real Me curriculum that Miss Brewer uses at the elementary school?”
“I still don’t see your point.”
“Well, I wrote to the Omega Center to order a copy of the Finding the Real Me curriculum, and they tell me here in this letter that they only make that curriculum available to educational institutions, and not to the general public. Don’t you think that’s a little strange?”
Lucy knew she didn’t want to talk about this. “I’m not the Omega Center, sir, and I’m not responsible for their policies. Now unless you have some business with the Post Office . . .”
Marshall looked behind him. No one else was standing in line. “I’ll just be a second. Let’s talk about that local group, uh, LifeCircle. I understand that LifeCircle is a major force in education around here: three of the school board belong to it, the principal of the elementary school—Mr. Woodard—belongs to it, Miss Brewer belongs to it, and you belong to it. The school board adopted the Omega Center curriculum, Mr. Woodard implemented it, Miss Brewer’s teaching it, and your daughter Amber contacted her inner guide, Amethyst, because of it.”
Only a week ago Lucy would have felt invaded, and very angry. Today was different. “What about it?” She really wanted to know.
She was trying to look strong and unshakable, but Marshall caught the curiosity in her eyes. “Let me ask you this: Why do you suppose Miss Brewer couldn’t produce the curriculum when we asked to see it, and neither could Mr. Woodard, and neither could the school board, and now the Omega Center itself won’t allow me to order a copy of it? When I consider how all you people are connected, it sure makes me wonder if your lawsuit against the Good Shepherd Academy might have something to do with it. Do you suppose there’s something in that curriculum your friends don’t want us to see?”
Lucy didn’t answer for a long moment. She’d never thought about the question before. She wanted an answer herself. “I don’t know, Mr. . . .”
“Hogan. Marshall Hogan.”
“What are you, an investigator or something?”
“Sure, something like that. Mostly just a friend of your opponents in this lawsuit.”
“Well, obviously I can’t talk about any of this.”
“I understand. Thank you very much for your time.”
“You’re welcome.”
He left the building, and Lucy returned to her work, or at least tried to return to it. If she was pensive and troubled before her visit with this Mr. Hogan, now she was totally distracted. What else did that man know, and why didn’t she know it?
Marshall got back to Ben and Bev’s, and placed a collect long-distance call.
Back at his newspaper, a young, pretty, bespectacled brunette answered the phone from inside Marshall’s glass-enclosed office. “Ashton Clarion, Bernice Krueger speaking.”
“Hey, Bernice, this is Marshall.”
“Well, well!” She closed the office door against the outside clamor and plopped down at his desk, ready for the latest. “Can any good news come out of Bacon’s Corner?”
“Well . . . the walls of the fort are getting thin, but no break-throughs yet.”
“Keep digging.”
“That’s why I called. You remember I told you about that curriculum at the elementary school?”
“Right. The kids getting into alpha mind control and spirit-guides. Did you ever get a copy of it?”
“No dice. They’re stonewalling it, as far up the ladder as Omega itself. Are you still in touch with that guy in Washington, what’s-his-name . . . ?”
“Cliff Bingham. Sure. He got me some inside stuff on the last election.”
“I’m wondering if he couldn’t check with the Library of Congress and find an original copy of this thing.”
Bernice grabbed a pen and started writing herself a note. “I’ll call him. What exactly do you want?”
“Finding the Real Me, a curriculum for fourth-graders.”
She wrote it down. “Published by Omega Center . . .”
“Uh . . . Omega Center for Educational Studies, Fairwood, Massachusetts.”
“Any idea what year?”
“Beats me.”
“Okay. We will see what we will see.”
“Okay, now let’s talk about the Tuesday edition. Pull that malt shop story; John likes it, but his wife will have a fit . . .”
They talked business. Bernice took notes, pulled files, read copy over the phone, and got orders from her boss.
OUTSIDE, THE MIDWEEK, midday business in the town of Ashton was in full swing; people, grocery carts, and vehicles were circulating through the parking lot at Carlucci’s Market; the fire fighters were hosing down the apron at Station Fifteen and shining up the pumper; Clyde Sodeberg and his sons were beating the still-green concrete off some forms over at the new Midwest Savings and Loan project.
Driving past it all, and then stopping at the second of four lights along Main Street, Marv and Claudia Simpson introduced Sally Beth Roe—they thought her name was Betty Smith—to their town.
“It’s a great place to live and do business,” said Marv. “At least it is now. We’ve had our share of trouble, but things have settled down quite a bit, and I think we’re having a turn for the better.”
The light turned green and Marv piloted the big station wagon further down the street, past the small stores, the True Value Hardware, the local newspaper . . .
“That’s the Ashton Clarion,” said Marv. “It comes out on Tuesdays and Fridays, and the editor’s a saint. I think he’s been out of town for a while; I don’t know what he’s been doing.”
They drove past the high school. It was new this year, because enrollment was up.
Marv turned left at the third light and drove u
p a gradually graded street into a quiet neighborhood with massive oak trees lining the street, small, garishly painted bicycles leaning against the oaks, and orange basketball hoops on every other garage. The lawns were neat, the sidewalks were clean, and the cars all seemed to know their proper parking places.
Marv turned left again and came to a row of large, turn-of-the-century homes with white, beveled siding, large chimneys, massive roofs, cozy dormers, and wide, roomy front porches. He pulled over and parked in front of the third house on the right, probably the most inviting house of all, with a perfectly manicured lawn, colorful planted borders, a pillared front porch, and an inviting porch swing. In front, just beside the walkway, was a small, unpretentious sign: Sara Barker’s Boarding House.
“Here’s the place I told you about,” said Marv.
“It’ll be just right, I think,” said Claudia. “You’ll have time to think things through and get your head clear.”
Sally took their hands and held them tightly. “You’ve done me a wonderful kindness. Thank you very much.”
“You’re welcome,” said Marv. “We’ll have you out to the dairy sometime.”
“I’d love that.”
“Oh, here’s Sara now,” said Claudia.
“Sara’s a good gal; you’ll like her.”
Sara was, and Sally did. The house actually belonged to Sara and her husband Floyd, but they thought using just her name on the sign would be more charming. Floyd was a tall, thin man of few words who had recently retired from the grain business and was now trying his hand at being a writer when he wasn’t serving as the handyman for the boarding house—which he was at the moment. He was glad to meet her and shook her hand warmly. As for Sara, she impressed Sally as everyone’s idea of the perfect grandma, a short little woman with close-cropped gray hair, little round glasses, and a cute story about most everything.
“We used to have eight kids, and now they’re gone, so we have all these rooms empty and ready for the right people,” she explained, showing Sally through the big house. “We’ve had mostly single women here; some have troubles at home and need to stay away, some are on their way somewhere else—you know, between things—and the two that are here right now are here for keeps until they get married, I suppose.”