My mind started to cloud with terror, that same paralyzing fear that I felt in the desert, beneath the tarp with Ashley, only this time there was no hand to grasp. I could barely move my legs by this point and every breath hurt.
“Saint Michael protect me,” I blubbered around my broken teeth. My voice sounded muffled in my own ears. “Saint Michael protect . . .”
One of the glowing shapes standing before the pit moved forward, its crown shooting dazzling beams of blue and red and green light. I stopped as it approached, mostly because I didn’t have another step in me.
On thy knees, carcass.
I went down with a whimpering sob at the feet of King Paimon. My chin fell to my chest. It was over. What was I thinking? I couldn’t win against these things. Samuel was right. It was madness. Paimon would never believe the lie I was about to tell. That was the really weird thing about evil. Lying to God was better than lying to the devil: God will forgive you.
Where is the Seal?
“I don’t have it.”
I felt pressure like a massive fist closing around me, squeezing, and the image of Agent Bert blowing apart in the desert flashed through my mind.
“But I know where it is!” I choked out, and the pressure eased. “I—I’ll take you to it, O Mighty King.”
Nothing happened for a few seconds. Then something lifted me up until my feet dangled a few inches above the ground, and I hung there like a slab of meat on a hook.
A massive gray shape filled my field of vision, dominated by a slathering mouth and sharp teeth the size of the CCR parked in the fog-tunnel behind me. Its body was segmented like a worm’s and it had no feet, but it did have huge, leathery wings folded against its twenty-five-foot body.
“I was going to trick you, but now I know I can’t trick you. I’ll take you to it,” I sobbed. “I left it in Knoxville, and I’ll take you to it . . .”
All I wanted to do at that moment was to please him, to give him what he wanted.
Then, quicker than I could take my next breath, I was on the monster’s back, behind the towering form of Paimon, and we were rocketing skyward.
The concentric rings of sixteen million fiery riders broke apart as we approached, and then I couldn’t see anything because we were passing through the clouds. Wind roared in my ears and red flashed behind my eyelids as the lightning snapped and danced all around us. Then my eardrums started to pop and a stabbing pain shot through my chest as the air grew thinner.
After a few seconds, I forced myself to open my eyes and, looking down, saw we had passed through the clouds. Above us were a billion stars and a bright moon that illuminated the ridges and little valleys of the clouds below, an unbroken sheet of fluffy gray carpet that stretched for as far as the eye could see.
And still the demon climbed, until black spots swam before my eyes. Breathing became almost impossible and my clothes froze against my skin. I didn’t know if we were high enough yet, but I willed myself to hold on for a few seconds more—it would have to level off soon or risk killing me before we could reach the Seal. Everything rested on that—the assumption that it cared if I lived or died.
We leveled off. I closed my eyes again and saw the little kids playing soccer on the frozen field. I could hear them laughing and calling to one another as the ball slid and skittered over the ice. I needed to let go. And they needed me to let go.
“Let go, Kropp,” I whispered. “Let go. ”
And that’s exactly what I did.