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.
It came alone, three feet tall, wearing a pointy red cap, a green shirt, blue suspenders, and brown shoes, with a smile frozen on its face, and I knew without knowing how I knew that this was the same creature that had posed as Mike’s mom and my mom. The same eyeless creature that had blocked my way out at the front door.
I held up my hands.
“I’m unarmed!” I called over to it. It stopped about fifty feet away and cocked its little gnome head at me.
“I’ve had enough!” I continued. “You win. I’ll get you the Vessel, but you gotta stop harassing me like this!”
I paused, waiting for the gnome to say something. It didn’t.
“Just tell me where to find you once I have it.”
The lips didn’t move; I heard the voice inside my head.
Meet us at the gate.
“The gate?” I shouted. I wasn’t sure why I was shouting.
“What gate?”
The gateway to hell. The devil’s door.
“And where’s that? Where’s the devil’s door?”
Two days, Alfred Kropp.
“Two days or what?”
It didn’t answer. It didn’t need to. Op Nine had already told me: They will consume us.
“Okay,” I said. “Okay. But I’m not sure where—”
And then the gnome disappeared, vanishing with a loud pop! and I was alone on the highway.
Well, not completely alone. I took a deep breath and hopped back into the car. Op Nine hadn’t moved, but his jaw muscles were working overtime and his eyes were rolling behind his charcoal-colored eyelids. Maybe he was dreaming. I had hoped I was dreaming back in the Arnold house, and that’s what will get you in trouble. Not the hoping. The dreaming.