Peter laughed humorlessly and rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands.
“Okay. Whatever. So we got our holy gasoline and our holy lighters. What next?”
“Where are the deepest holes and basements on campus?” she asked.
For a moment, all three of them were silent. Basements weren’t common in Southern California.
“There’s a storage space under the cafeteria,” Jarret said after a moment. “It’s not really a basement, but it’s a room built into the side of that hill.”
“And I think there’s a crawlspace under the art trailer,” Ally added.
“They’ve been digging holes in north campus, although I don’t think they’ve poured any concrete yet,” Peter said.
“Well, the social sciences building is almost complete,” Ally said, “and the hole they dug for its foundation is pretty deep.”
“Isn’t there a basement in the science building, too?” Jarret asked.
“Okay, so where do we start?” Peter ticked off the list. “Caf, art trailer, north campus, social sciences, and science.”
“There probably isn’t much under the art trailer. If it’s even still standing,” Jarret said. The building was a temporary unit that had been kept in use twenty-five years longer than it should have, much to the art students’ chagrin.
“Well, from this parking lot, we could make a big circle.” Ally said. “Nordberg Road to north campus, the sidewalks to the caf, and then around to the art trailer, social sciences, and science. They’re all clustered together, so they’ll be easy to search.”
“If the snakes sense vibrations, we shouldn’t take the truck,” Peter said. “I don’t really want to walk around campus in the cold, but my SUV’s not exactly quiet.”
“Too bad none of Facilities’ electric carts are around,” Jarret said.
“Bikes?” Ally suggested. “There’s a rack by the dorms.”
“Yeah, that might work.” Peter nodded. “If they aren’t locked up.”
“Aw, c’mon.” Ally stood. “This is Vista Hills, the nation’s safest city. Nobody locks their bikes.”
“Nation’s safest city, my ass.” Peter scowled as he stood. “My mom is so gonna sue Cal Hills if I get killed.”
XXVII
“It is a sad fact of human life,” Penemue said, standing at the oak podium and looking out at the boys and girls in the chapel, “that our thoughts often turn to God only in times of trouble.”
About thirty students were listening, filling the front part of the chapel. Many of them were holding hands or had their arms wrapped around each other in that regrettable monkey-need for contact. Such an odd quirk of evolution, that of all the creatures that might have developed sentience, it had been the soft-skinned, vulnerable primates who had come to understand God.
Had matters been left to him, Penemue would have chosen to grant that revelation to the cetaceans. He still had hope for them, if humanity managed to kill itself off before it finished poisoning the oceans.
“And God is there, to be sure,” he continued. “The Divine is always there, waiting for you. But at such a late date, will you be ready for God? God is the perfect mother. You can ignore your mother, forget to talk to her or write to her, even argue with her or hate her. But when you’re in trouble, you turn to her, and the perfect mother is always there, her love steady and incorruptible despite all your shortcomings. But what about your love? After years of scorning her counsel, will you, even in your time of need, be able to humble yourself enough to take her advice? Or will your old habits reassert themselves? Even though you might be comforted by her love, will your pride keep you from doing what she says?”
The students were growing restless. They had come hoping for comfort, and he was pressing them on their religious observance. Penemue let a little of his illusion slip. He wanted their attention. He needed their attention.
“When you were a child, your mother made you do things that you didn’t want to do, but they were for your own good. So also does God ask you to do things you don’t want to do, for your own good.
“We face a great danger tonight. You’ve heard frightening things from your fellow students. They’ve told you about monstrous serpents that have come bringing death. They’re telling the truth.”
Students exclaimed aloud in shock and protest. Penemue let his illusion slip even farther, peeling away the guise of mortality that so facilitated his role as a Watcher. Let them see the light inside him; let the grey of his eyes flatten into silver mirrors; let the suit he wore stretch into the wings of his station.
Gasps and stares greeted his metamorphosis. Students squinted and lifted their hands to shield their eyes from the glare. Uncertainty and fear began to replace shock and anger.
“Fear not. You have come here seeking God’s assistance, and God will assist you. What has descended upon us are the creatures of רוקניא—the minions of that great emptiness that is the ultimate absence of God. Do you fear ha-satan? Let those who have ears to hear, hear me now: Ha-satan defies God but is of God. Ha-satan tests and destroys that which God has wrought, but in the end it is not outside of God. The enemies that have come upon us are neither of God nor Satan; neither of Creation nor Destruction. They come from the void. They are the creatures of the threshold, the creatures of lack; they are the creatures who dwelled in unfathomable moments before the Word, when everything was held in check and all that is, was not.
“The enemies that approach seek entrance to this universe from which they have been barred, and if they come, they will devour you with a force that will crush your immortal soul into a dark speck of antimatter that will float suspended in eternal emptiness and cold, where there is neither creation nor even hope of creation.”
Penemue walked around the podium to face the small congregation, his heart aching for their confusion. At the back of the room, the chapel doors opened and three newcomers stood, glaring at him. He recognized them from north campus. They were the ones who’d appeared from the spaces between.
The time for explanations was over. Penemue’s voice hardened.
“Your flesh and your blood are their doorway into this world, and we must not permit them entrance. Be not afraid, but let those doors be closed.”
“No!”
Penemue jerked backward, dropping the last of its illusory guise as a wall of bleeding stone dropped down in front of it from a sulfurous-smelling rip in reality. Appalled at the incursion of hellmatter into the chapel, the Watcher touched the wall and sent it hurtling back into the abyss.
“Penemue, Peneme, Penemuel, Tamuel, Tumael, Tamel, I command thee to halt!” The red-haired man stood in the middle of the aisle, his arms spread wide, grasping a crucifix in one hand and the Seal of Solomon in the other. Now completely in its celestial form, Penemue could see the gaping holes that marred the conjurer’s soul, but the man’s will was strong enough to send waves of coercion battering at it.
The students in the chapel had become all but invisible; Penemue could see only wisps and ghosts scrambling through the door, protected by a second man, a man who bore the shining mark of ordination and who protected the students with prayer like a knight flourishing a silver shield.
And the third man, the third man was nothing but a deep tunnel, a human-shaped doorway into the limis, with a devil looming over and behind him, its dark wings covering him and its toothed beak leering in mockery.
“Hellbender,” Penemue hissed with recognition. The Watcher had heard of this creature, this Edward Todd, whose true nature it could discern only now that it had regained the selective sight of the mal'akhim—Todd was the Walker Between the Worlds, the man who mocked both heaven and hell. “What have you brought upon us?”
The Walker’s figure moved forward, his torn silhouette filled with shifting doors and staircases, bridges and tunnels, walls and arches. He reached inside of himself to bring forth another wall, this one of sigil-covered silver that hummed and rang like a bell. The diabolic shadow behi
nd him flinched away as the Walker thrust the wall between them.
“Christ’s cross and Christ’s crown, Christ Jesus’ colored blood, be thou every hour good....” The conjurer was still working his coercion, his voice ringing through the chapel.
Penemue struck the silver wall, which sang so loudly that the stained-glass windows in the chapel shattered and fell, and said the word of unbinding that sent it back to the heaven from which it had been called.
“Watcher, thou be forbidden to raise a hand in the Celestial War,” the devil rebuked it, standing at the doorway of the chapel.
“Understand thee not?” Penemue demanded as the threads of the red-haired man’s binding sought to wrap themselves around it. “This be no war over mortal souls. The dragons of רוקניא seek to destroy both nephilim and b'nei elohim, and they will enter the world through mortal flesh and blood!”
“...God, the Father, is before me; God, the Son, is beside me, God....”
The humanoid emptiness was closer now, and Penemue felt the conjurer’s magickal binding closing around it. How could God permit such a blasphemy, forcing His angels to serve these squalling monkeys? Penemue turned on the speaker, drawing his name from him and breathing it out like a weapon.
“James Ignatius Langthorn,” it said, and the sorcerer’s voice faltered as the full blow of celestial recognition sent a cold wind blowing through the barren spots in his soul. “Halt!”
“...the...the Holy Ghost...."
“Jack!”
The ordained man’s prayers stumbled, too, but Penemue could no longer spare any attention for the escaping students. Hellbender stood before it, unfolding endless iterations of coiling superstrung walls and barriers around him, and Penemue was forced to repel each attack with words it barely remembered from the dawn of the universe, words that too easily slipped back into Hellbender’s nets and added themselves to the weave.
“So, you’re a Watcher,” the Walker said in a deep voice. “One of the Fallen, I presume, from the fact that you were about to kill a group of children.”
“Better to die in innocence than be devoured by רוקניא. sought only to preserve their souls from the void.”
“The arguments of ha-satan don’t get any more convincing with age, do they?” Hellbender stepped closer, up to the edge of the chapel stage. “What do you say, Amon? Shall I kill it?”
“It has broken the Divine Law.” The devil leered. “Strike it down, beloved.”
“...behind me.”
The words were just a trailing whisper, but Penemue felt the binding close around it. Furious, it lifted its wings to throw off the spell.
The Walker Between the Worlds swept open a great interdimensional door into a vast pit of light.
Three pulsing orbs of ivory swept out of the light and passed through Penemue.
Penemue felt the orbs disrupt its vibrations, the very energy of its existence, which had been first set into motion when the Creator had spoken its name. For one horrifying moment the fallen angel felt itself unraveling, and it cried the name of God.
Then the orbs snatched the Watcher out of the chapel and into the void, and Penemue frayed into a burst of spent energy that manifested itself as one last explosion of light and sound.
XXVIII
“Jack! Jack!”
Jack saw Andy’s face swimming in blurred duplicate. His head hurt, and he couldn’t quite remember where he was or what he was doing. He reached out and felt his friend grip his hand. The touch felt like an anchor, holding him in place. He turned his head and saw a huge, diabolic shadow against the back of the room, a shadow that smiled malevolently and beckoned to him.
So—he’d failed. Hell had come for him, after all.
Watch out, my brother, how you walk on the cross, 'Way in the middle of the air....
“Andy.”
“I’m here.”
Your foot might slip and your soul get lost, 'Way in the middle of the air.
“C—cre—no, confiteor—“
He heard Andy’s breath hiss with alarm, then felt his friend lean close, voice dropping to a soothing murmur.
“Easy, Jack. I’ll hear your confession,” Andy said softly, “but you’re not dying, not yet. Now, squeeze my hand for ‘yes.’ Do you regret and repent all of your sins, committed in thought and in word, committed in what you have done and what you have failed to do?”
Jack’s head was splitting open. He squeezed, as best as he could.
“And do you ask the forgiveness of God and seek reconciliation with his grace?”
Jack squeezed again, feeling his hand tingle.
“God, the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of his Son, has reconciled the world to Himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins, through the ministry of the Church. May God give you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
Jack tried to say “amen,” but he couldn’t remember the word. Frightened, he turned and saw the devil looming over him.
XXIX
“Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn!” Clancy pounded on the steering wheel, then grabbed it with both hands and took a deep breath. “Sorry, Reverend.”
“It’s all right,” Pastor Lindgren said, staring out the window at the deep pit. “I share the sentiment.”
“We’ll walk.” Clancy threw open the door, leaving the keys in the engine and the headlights shining across the broken asphalt. Lindgren followed the detective out, eyeing the wide furrow that had been plowed across the road, surrounded by chunks of pavement and dirt and toppled trees and fences.
“That looks wider than one of the snakes,” he remarked. “More...deliberate.”
“Yeah, like a trap,” Clancy said. He pulled out his gun, removed the empty clip, and replaced it with another. “Okay, on the count of three, we’re moving across as fast as we can, and we don’t stop running until we hit Trees Avenue, got it?”
Lindgren slowly nodded, hoping he could keep up. He hadn’t done any serious running for fifteen years. On the other hand, the idea of those giant snakes coming after him was excellent impetus.
“Ready?” Clancy gripped the gun, staring across the gap. “One. Two. Three!”
They slid down the rough side of the gully, dirt flying and chunks of asphalt tumbling around their heels. Lindgren felt his ankle twist and send a sharp pain through his leg, and he shook it out, hitting the sharply angled bottom. Clancy was several paces ahead of him, scrambling on threes up the opposite side of the gully, his gun pressed close to his chest for protection.
The earth started to shake.
“Hurry!” the detective shouted.
“I am!” Lindgren dug his fingers and shoes into the dry dirt, trying to get some momentum.
Then the earth heaved beneath him and he felt himself tossed aside. With a wordless cry he threw out his arms, fighting to stay upright as he was carried by a wave of dirt.
The snake’s fanged head snapped around, turning a blind, armored face toward him. Lindgren squirmed, kicking off dirt and twisting to face the monster head-on.
“Hey, you fuck!” Three sharp cracks echoed through the night and the serpent jerked away, dark holes marring its bone-colored carapace. Clancy knelt at the top of the gully, adjusting his aim.
Heart hammering, Lindgren pulled himself to his feet and lunged at the gully wall.
The serpent’s body moved forward, crushing dirt and pulverizing rock. Clancy pulled the trigger another three times, opening black wounds in the serpent’s neck, lower jaw, and skull.
“Least these bastards can be hit,” he muttered. “C’mon, get moving!”
Pastor Lindgren didn’t bother to answer as he clambered on all fours, fingers clawing at the crumbling dirt, tangling in broken roots and rocks.
The serpent swayed a moment, blood oozing from the bullet holes in its exoskeleton. Then, with a shrill, angry screech, it opened its mouth and lunged at the d
etective.
Clancy managed to fire two more times into the serpent’s maw before its jaws snapped shut on his upper torso, ripping it away from his guts and legs. The serpent yanked its prize into the air and opened its jaws again, swallowing, even as it died.
But Lindgren, trapped beneath the monster’s heavy body, wasn’t conscious to watch.
XXX
The three students froze at the faint sound of gunshots, then heard a shrill scream and more firing. They looked at each other, waiting.
Silence.
“Maybe that was the police,” Peter whispered.
“Maybe,” Alison said, not so certain.
“Well,” Jarret said, sweeping the room one last time with his flashlight, “whatever it was, there’s nothing down here.”
“Yeah. Let’s get going.”
They’d ridden their bikes past north campus, but it was empty and torn up, one lone spotlight beam showing that whatever foundations may have been dug there earlier were gone now. They’d silently biked back down to the cafeteria, where—after some argument—Peter had broken through the plate glass in the front door and they’d made their way down a service stairwell to the basement. It had been filled with old furniture, a water heater, a bunch of unmarked boxes that looked like they’d probably been there since the university began, and little else. Now they headed back up the stairs and out into the night, straining to hear any sign of rescue.
Sirens wailed in the distance. Car alarms were slowly sputtering down as they wore out their batteries. Nothing they hadn’t been hearing for hours.
“Maybe it wasn’t a gun?” Ally said. She’d only ever heard gunfire in movies before.
“No, it was a gun,” Peter said, sounding sure of himself.
“Let’s hope it’s not a looter,” Jarret said, flicking off the flashlight. “Disasters always bring out the worst in people.”
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