Ten Plagues

from killing her!”

“Keren, don’t! You know he was ready for us last time. You could be running straight into a trap!”

Paul pulled the door to the brownstone open and began sprinting up the stairs. Keren felt the demonic presence the instant she stepped inside. The call from O’Shea dropped in the concrete stairwell, but she couldn’t talk and run anyway. Jamming the phone in her pocket, she picked up her speed to stay with Paul. Four flights. Every second they were closing in on him, but he had another stairway to use to get away, besides the fire escapes. Caldwell might evade them, but he’d have a hard time doing it with Rosita tossed over his shoulder.

They charged on until they reached the top. Paul began kicking in doors. Keren said, “Don’t waste your time. He’s in that one.” She ran straight for the door at the far end of the hall. The evil was so thick she had trouble inhaling. The door practically vibrated with the contained demonic power.

Keren pulled her weapon and kicked the door in. Rosita lay in her white death shroud, her arms spread out at her sides, blood and locusts everywhere. “Paul, she’s here!”

Paul ran past Keren. He was already on the phone, calling an ambulance. Keren entered the room with her gun held in two hands, extended straight in front of her. A locust landed on her face. She ignored it.

She turned quickly in a circle. He was here, but she couldn’t pinpoint the evil. It was everywhere. She turned again, gun ready. There was a door ajar that led to the kitchen. There were four other doors in the apartment, all closed. Closets, bedrooms, bathrooms, Keren studied them, still turning, still trying to cover them all. Her heart pounded until she thought it might explode out of her chest. The evil was choking her. She prayed for strength as she waited, trying to keep Rosita safe until help could get here or they could get out. Releasing one hand from the gun, she pulled out her phone to tell Higgins exactly where they were.

Paul finished shouting directions into his phone. He tugged a knife out of his boot. Keren had known he’d arm himself somehow.

Rosita had been cut, but it didn’t look life threatening. Locusts swarmed everywhere and flew thick in the air. Keren hit the speed dial for O’Shea’s number then swiped her upper arm across her face to knock the locust away, all without letting go of her gun or stopping her rigid watch on the doors that hid Caldwell.

Paul slit the tape on Rosita’s arms and ankles. She flailed as if she were fighting Paul’s help. He got to her mouth last and very carefully pulled at the corner of the tape. Rosita grabbed at the tape and ripped it away with a scream of pain.

“Get out,” she screamed. “He’s here!”

The lights went out.

Keren realized in a split second that the windows in the room were boarded over. The hall door had swung shut whether by accident or design. She’d bet on design.

Suddenly the evil had a direction. Keren heard the slight squeak of a door opening. She whirled around to face one of the closed doors.

Rosita shouted, “Pastor P, the killer is…” A crushing blow to Keren’s hands knocked her gun to the floor. Her phone went flying. “Paul!”

The dull thud on her head cut off her cry for help.

“Stretch out your hand toward the sky so that darkness will spread over Egypt— darkness that can be felt. “

EXODUS 10:21

Pravus felt it, and he made sure Kerenhappuch felt it, too. At least she’d be able to feel it when she woke. He pulled the rough wool over her head and tossed her over his shoulder. He felt the strain of it. Yes, he’d honed his muscles, but he’d also drained his own blood when he needed to create. It was telling on his strength.

But he managed. He did what he had to do.

He vanished out of the apartment through the passage he’d spent so much time creating. It was the work of seconds to secure her with tape. He dumped her limp body in his trunk, was out of the garage and driving toward the expressway before he heard the first police sirens.

Paul heard it all.

Over Rosita’s shouts, he heard the squeak of a door opening. A quick rush of footsteps on a loose floorboard…

Keren yelling his name…

The whoosh of something solid swinging through the air… The clatter of a gun hitting the floor… The sickening thud that cut off Keren’s words…

Then silence.

Darkness. The plague of darkness.

“He’s here, Pastor P. He’s doing all of this. He killed Juanita.” Rosita broke into sobs. “He hurt LaToya.”

Paul ran toward the sound Keren made, but there was only darkness. “Keren,” he roared. “Keren, answer me.”

But she didn’t, and he knew that could only mean one thing. She couldn’t. Fighting down panic, he groped wildly, trying to latch onto something, anything. Rosita crashed into him, sobbing and crying out the identity of the man who’d taken her.

I’ve nurtured a viper.

And now he’d taken Keren. A woman he thought he could love. A woman he already did love.

Paul held Rosita to support her as he went toward the sound of the door he’d heard squeak. He was so disoriented in the stygian darkness that he wasn’t even sure how to get out of the apartment.

When he began to despair of ever escaping the pit created by a demon, a door crashed open and men came running into the room. O’Shea was one of them. There were seconds of confusion and the lights came on, blinding Paul. Then he saw Rosita, wearing the ghastly painted dress, shaking violently as he held her upright.

“Where’s Keren?” O’Shea roared. “What happened in here?”

One of the policemen slid an arm around Rosita and said, “Let’s get you out of here, miss.”

Sobbing, Rosita walked out, well supported by the patrolman.

Two other cops came in, then five more. They fanned out into the apartment, covering the whole thing in seconds.

“Where is she, Paul?” O’Shea grabbed him by the front of his shirt as if he’d beat the answer out of him if Paul didn’t start talking.

“Gone,” Paul said helplessly, now studying every corner of the room. Locusts flew and crawled everywhere. Paul heard the crunching under the feet of the searching officers. “She’s gone.”

“Gone where? Did she go after Caldwell alone?” O’Shea shook him again.

“He took her.” Paul wrenched away from O’Shea and began slamming open doors, seeking, finding nothing. “The lights went out. I heard Keren yell. And then she was just gone.”

“Think! You must have seen something!”

Paul checked every closet feverishly, even though the police were already doing it. “It was dark. Pitch dark. With that door closed, there wasn’t a shred of light in this room.”

“Then you heard something. You know something. Quit whining and try to think like a cop! Give me a report!” O’Shea’s voice cracked like a whip, and Paul felt the sting.

“I never saw Caldwell. I have no idea how he got out of here.” Paul gave up. She wasn’t here.

O’Shea grabbed Paul with surprising strength and spun him around so they were face-to-face. O’Shea’s face burned dark red with fury. His teeth gritted and his fists clenched. Paul thought O’Shea might attack him, and if he did, Paul would take whatever beating was handed out. He deserved it, every second of it.

Wishing O’Shea would hit him so he could be punished for leading Keren into this nightmare, he said, “All I know is what Caldwell said on the phone. We were just off the phone with him when Higgins called us with his address. He was making Rosita scream. We had to come.”

“You should have waited for backup,” O’Shea roared.

Paul shouted back, “We couldn’t wait for backup while he was killing her.”

“So you disregarded procedure,” O’Shea growled.

Paul shoved O’Shea hard. “And saved Rosita’s life.” He knew he was asking for a fist right in the face. He