“You’ll die!” he shouted.
“Probably.” She started to push past, but Ian suddenly threw his weight against her. “Wait! Ian, no!” The next thing she knew he had used his weight advantage to shove her to the window, then he hoisted her up and through. Faye rolled outside and landed on her shoulder on the shingles. Ian was visible for one last moment in the blue light above, a look of determination on his face, and then he was gone. “No!”
“Faye!” Whisper called. Faye looked down to see Whisper standing in the yard. It wasn’t too far to jump. The entire house shook violently and more timbers burst. Sparks swam past her as Faye kicked her legs over the edge and let herself drop. Whisper tried to catch her but they both ended up hitting the dirt hard. “Come on. Hurry.” Whisper grabbed her by the hand and pulled her along.
They made it out into the road. Crow’s demonic wail could be heard even over the wind. Behind them the house rumbled as half of it collapsed. Faye screamed in frustration. George and Ian were going to die and there was nothing she could do.
“What is that?” Whisper pointed at something gigantic moving through the fire. At first Faye thought that it was Crow, but unless he had changed even more drastically than before, this was something entirely different. The thing glowed with a calm pale light, but then it disappeared behind the flaming timbers. “It cannot be.”
“What?”
Whisper grabbed her hand and held it tight.
The pale light reappeared, this time coming through the front door. It had the red eyes of a Summoned, and was just as fearsome as Crow or the Bull King, only different, and Faye knew that this was what they spoke of when they said that a Summoned could appear as an angel.
It was eight feet tall and broad. Except for four small eyes, its features were formless and soft. Its hands were simple and far too large. Its torso was disproportionately bigger than its stubby legs. It was carrying a burden in each hand. One of them coughed.
Ian and George! Faye squealed with delight.
The mighty Summoned dropped the knights at the edge of the yard, then turned back toward the flames just as the house fell down with a awful crash. A cyclone of fiery debris was sucked up into the sky. Faye ran up, grabbed the first body and started dragging him away. She couldn’t even tell who it was because he was so filthy with soot.
The roof of the boardinghouse hit the ground last, coming to rest almost perfectly level as if the house had merely sunk evenly into the ground below. Faye felt a twinge of hope. Surely, Crow couldn’t have survived that. No matter how great of a demon he was, that had to have-
A bubble formed in the roof. One claw ruptured through the shingles. Crow shoved his way through and clambered into the open. He was twisted and broken, but somehow still alive. “I’m not done with you yet, little girl.” Crow freed himself and leapt through the debris to land in the yard.
Ian’s pale Summoned stood, blocking its way. The two huge things faced each other for a moment. Crow cocked his horned head to the side. He was obviously weakened, parts of his body withering and deflating as the unnatural smoke that served as Summoned’s blood was spilled. The pale Summoned was an unknown quantity. It did not move.
Flashlights and lanterns bobbed around the street. People had been drawn toward the commotion. Faye could only imagine what they were thinking as they saw the two titanic Summoned facing each other through the storm.
Crow ran toward Ian’s Summoned. They collided. The pale thing’s elephantlike feet slid back through the dirt as Crow struck furiously. Then the pale fists began to fall, striking with monotonous thunder, each one hitting like a piece of construction equipment.
The two monsters were entirely obscured as smoke poured from their wounds, but the blows could still be heard. THUD. THUD. THUD.
Faye realized the person she’d been dragging was Ian. His eyes were squeezed tight and he was grinding his teeth as he tried to control his Summoned. Suddenly, Ian screamed and every muscle in his body clenched tight.
The smoke cleared. The pale Summoned stumbled back as Crow drove his fist deep into its body. Crow ripped his hand free in a shower of flaming ink. The creature sank to the ground and began to melt into smoke. Banished.
“You idiots. You don’t know what you’re dealing with. I’m the greatest Summoner that’s ever lived. Demons don’t possess people! I possess them! You kill this body and I’ll be back tomorrow. I can’t die. I can’t be beaten!” The surviving demon was falling apart, its body withering and blowing away on the wind. It was not long for this world, but it would be enough.
Faye could barely breathe. There was no way she could Travel. Crow’s four red eyes locked onto her as he approached. The smoke solidified into massive wings, stretching from Crow’s shoulders across the entire road. He was coming to take her away. She had nothing left to fight him with. Faye found the knife Lance had made for her, drew it, and held it out in front of her. She was not going without a fight. Whisper appeared at her side. The fire in her hands was weak and sputtering. Ian seemed to be unconscious, overwhelmed by the destruction of his Summoned.
Crow stopped twenty feet away and pointed at her. His red eyes were filled with madness. Crow’s voice boomed across the town. “Sally Faye McCullum, alias Faye Vierra, poor white trash from a pigsty shack in Ada, Oklahoma, member of the illicit Grimnoir terrorist organization, by the authority granted to me by the Office of the Coordinator of Information, you are under arrest for illegal magic.” The demon cackled as he turned toward the witnesses that had gathered by the commotion. “You see this? You all see this! Let this be a lesson to anybody that crosses us!” Crow shouted at the witnesses. Faye knew that somehow being inside that Greater Summoned had driven him crazy.
A single shape tottered through the dust on the opposite side of the demon. George was battered, burned, and bleeding, but he still managed to raise his voice nearly as loud as Crow had. “Demon! I’m George Bolander, knight of the Grimnoir.” He raised his fists high into the air. “And I’m sending you back to hell!”
The air felt wrong.
Lightning flashed through the swirling dust above. The entire sky turned blue. It was almost like a smaller version of the Geo-Tel.
“What’s he doing?” Faye shouted.
“He’s using up all his Power at once, drawing on the energy of the storm.” Whisper cried. “He will surely die!”
Crow swiveled his horns and studied the sky, then looked back at George and roared, “Show me what you got, boy!”
George roared as the storm ripped the life right out of him. Blinding lightning consumed the entire sky, a hundred strikes in a second, dragged to Earth by one man’s Power. Thunder shook the whole world. A wall of white electricity descended and everyone in town screamed as it surged down to engulf them.
A hundred feet above the ground all the lightning stopped, rolling and twisting, as if held fast by the hand of God. Then it all flashed inward at once into one brilliant point directly over the demon. The arc burned their eyes for a moment, a pillar of blindness, then it struck with a concussion that took the whole town off its feet and shattered every window on the block.
It took Faye a moment to collect herself. When she came to, the wind had stopped blowing, leaving the night eerily calm. All she could see was a white streak. Gradually it turned purple and she could sort of see around it. The dust was falling from the sky and settling over them like peaceful snow. Ears ringing, she got to her feet and stumbled toward where George had been standing.
There was a deep hole scorched through the road where Crow had been. The road had been melted into tar and the sand was cooling into glass, but outside of a pinpoint circle, there was no damage. The demon was completely gone, blown into smoking ash and scattered.
George was flat on his back, arms spread wide. His eyes were open and collecting the falling dust. She landed on her knees next to him and took his head in her hands. He almost looked like he was smiling. “George?”
But her friend was dead.
The Power had torn the life right out of his body.
