The Seal of Solomon (Alfred Kropp #2)(69)

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.

29,035 FEET

I slid off Paimon’s back, and fell faceup, my back to the clouds below, so I saw the demon rider swoop around in a wide arc, receding as I dropped. I pulled the black sword from my belt, brought the blade against my chest, wrapped my left hand around the icy metal, squeezing tight, the tip of the sword just below my chin, and waited for the demon to descend upon me.

Saint Michael. Protect.

The screaming wind rocked me from side to side, threatening to flip me into a helpless, tumbling spin. It was like trying to stay afloat in the ocean during a hurricane. If I went into a spin, I wouldn’t see the beast coming, and I had to see it coming. And it had to reach me before I hit the clouds. Once inside the thunderheads, I wouldn’t be able to see well enough to pull my next move.

The monster’s bulk was as black as the space between the stars, and it blotted them out as it rocketed toward me.

I waited until I could see Paimon’s eyes shining with malevolent light as it stretched out its hand toward me, and then I yanked the blade downward. The sharp edge sliced into the palm of my left hand, as if my fist were a scabbard; and the howling wind tugged at the bloody sword when it came free of my hand.

I felt a blast of heat, and the demon was on me, leaning over the back of the flying worm, the light from its crown scorching my eyes. I jabbed my left arm into the air, like an offering. It grabbed me by the wrist and stopped my fall.

I could see it shining on its index finger about a foot above my uplifted face: the Great Seal of Solomon.

Our eyes met, mine and the demon king’s, and everything I held inside poured out of me, like the light being sucked into the nothingness of the devil’s door, and it knew my mind; it knew what I planned to do.

Saint Michael.

Protect.

I swung the sword over my head and smashed the bloody blade against its wrist.

There was an explosion of white light, the hand wearing the Seal broke free of the body, and I was falling again.

18,987 FEET

I hit the clouds at five hundred miles per hour, curling my body around the demon’s hand, clutching it against my stomach as the sharp nails clawed into my wrist, trying to tear open my veins because, like Op Nine had said, that which has never lived cannot be killed.

I let go of the sword. I needed both hands now to get the ring. Wind buffeted me from all sides, slowing my rate of descent, and every hair left on my body stood on end as lightning crackled and popped around me. The sound was deafening, wind and thunder and the blood roaring in my ears.