“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.”
“Michael, we’re willing to negotiate,” Abby said. “But you are making that extremely difficult.”
“This isn’t a negotiation, Abby. It’s a wake-up call. You know, like the Russians putting up Sputnik. Whether it likes it or not, the world’s going to beat its swords into plowshares. Or else.”
He walked back to the monster camel with the mouthful of slobbery six-inch fangs. He turned to King Paimon, and then jerked his head back toward us.
“Kill them, Paimon,” he said. “Kill them all.”