“Be not afraid,” he told them, “for I mean you no harm.”
Their chatter grew more intense, and then an older woman in a flowered nightgown stepped from the crowd.
“What are you?” she asked, her voice raised in fear. “Where. . where is Elijah?. . Where is Pastor Zachariah?”
The crowd murmured, not yet convinced that they were in the proximity of greatness.
“I am your lord and god,” he told them. “The one you have prayed to for so many years.” He paused for a moment, smiling as he raised a perfect hand to the sky.
“I am Dagon.”
The crowd buzzed, and he basked in their fear, surprise, and adulation.
“Where is the pastor?” the woman asked again.
“He no longer exists,” Dagon explained. “He and I were one, but now only I am here.”
The woman stepped back into the protection of the crowd.
“You look like the Devil,” she said, and the gathering agreed.
Dagon laughed at the superstitious lot, his laugh a booming sound that cleaved the silent night like a thunderclap.
“Certainly you can’t be serious,” he said, his patience waning. “I have come for you—I have come to save you all.”
“Everything I’d expect a devil to say,” the woman cried.
Dagon was tempted to silence her, but knew that any act directed toward her would be seen as proof of her accusation.
No, he had to show them the truth.
He closed his eyes, feeling the power that coursed through his every muscle burn like the sun. They had to be shown the glory of what stood before them; the glory of what he was.
A messenger was needed to proclaim his coming.
The god growled as he reached out with his mind, taking hold of the one who would best serve his purpose, and calling him forth.
The little girl gasped, her own eyes closing as he exerted his strength. The power within her crackled about her head, joining with his own.
She looked up at him with large, vague eyes.
“I will show them,” he told her.
The crowd was growing anxious, and he could sense their fear and confusion increasing. He hoped what he had to show them would belay their concerns.
The sound of a door opening behind him made Dagon smile.
He listened to the creak of the porch beneath the weight of a footfall as a figure emerged from the house.
Dagon stepped to the side, pulling the child along, and they both watched the figure sway on the top of the porch, preparing to descend.
“It’s Elijah,” the woman proclaimed, and the crowd murmured enthusiastically.
The young man looked out over the gathering. His clothing was stained nearly black with blood, but the crowd seemed not to notice. Nor did they see the jagged hole in his throat—until he began to awkwardly descend the porch steps.
“Look at him!” somebody yelled.
“Is that blood?” cried another.
The crowd began to back away, but Elijah continued to stand before them, watching, his head tilted loosely to one side.
It was suddenly eerily quiet in the compound.
Dagon closed his eyes, reaching out to his puppet, manipulating brain functions and vocal cords for this, his most special moment.
“I. .,” Elijah began, his voice horribly rough and gravelly. “I was. . I was dead.” The young man raised his bloody hands for all to see, and then showed them the mortal wound torn in his neck.
Dagon could feel the fear slowly turning to awe, and he knew he had them.
He had them all.
“But now. .,” Elijah croaked, “now I am alive.” He spread his arms. “Praise him. . Praise Dagon.”
Dagon smiled.
“Praise him!” somebody screamed.
“Praise Dagon!” bellowed another.
And soon they were all singing his praises, and he allowed his influence to slowly creep within each of them.
They were his, body, mind, and soul.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Remy sat in the back of the black SUV as it sped down the dark West Virginia road.
“We’re close,” Deryn said from the front seat, between Mathias, who was driving, and Delilah. “We’re really, really close.”
Delilah placed a comforting arm around the mother, pulling her close. “And soon you’ll be holding your little girl in your arms again,” she said, leaning her head against Deryn’s. “And I will be holding mine.”
Remy’s ears perked up, and he was about to ask what she had meant by that, when the first of the attackers spilled from the woods down onto the road. They came from both sides, many of them wearing dark clothing, their screaming faces seeming to float in the stygian darkness as they jumped into the path of the speeding vehicle.
Mathias barely slowed as he plowed into the first of the fleshy obstacles.
Tires screeched, and the windshield turned to a frosted red, ice tinged with crimson, before the air bag erupted from the steering column. The sound of impact was horrible; the screams of those hit even worse.
Deryn was screaming too as the car spun and came to a neck-snapping stop.
“Deal with this,” Delilah ordered her driver, before turning in her seat to look at Remy and at those beside him.
Without question, they all left the car.
Remy was torn as he heard the sounds of fighting from outside.
“Go, angel,” she told him, her arms still around his crying client. “They need you out there. She’ll be perfectly safe with me.”
Remy hesitated until the first blast of gunfire.
“Go,” Delilah hissed, her eyes glistening in the darkness of the car.
He pushed open the car door. It was chaos outside, Samson’s children and Delilah’s soulless warriors fighting together against a common foe.
A woman wearing a hooded sweatshirt and torn sweatpants came at him with a kitchen knife. She screamed something unintelligible, thrusting the blade toward him. Remy moved aside, grabbing hold of her arm and twisting it enough so that she dropped the blade.
“Fucking bastard!” she got out between screams of pain.
But that didn’t stop her; she continued to fight, clawing at his face in her frenzy.
He hated to do it, but he punched her, and blood sprayed from her nose as she at last dropped to her knees and fell sideways to the ground.
“Nice one,” he heard a voice say, and he glanced over to see Marko grinning, just before Remy delivered a roundhouse kick to an attacker wielding a baseball bat. “Did you imagine maybe it was your wife or girlfriend when you did that?”
The man’s words were meant as a joke, but they, like the current situation, just pissed him off.
The Seraphim was eager to be free, as it always seemed to be these days, and Remy cut it some slack, letting it emerge enough to fill him with a warrior’s fury.
And the hunger for battle.
The ground was littered with bodies; he did not take the time to identify each and every one, but he knew that some of Samson’s children, as well as Delilah’s minions, had fallen.
But so had their enemy.
He snatched up the baseball bat dropped by Marko’s fallen enemy, hefting it in his hand, and waded into combat.
As he swung, blocked, and struck out with the weapon, his mind flashed back to an earlier time—a time when he fought on the side of the Almighty against those who had attempted to usurp His holy rule. Remy remembered the anger, and disgust, he’d felt for his enemy—those who had once been his brothers—and immersed himself in battle.
The Seraphim was elated, attempting more and more to exert its influence, trying with all its might to persuade Remy to let it be completely free.
It whined pathetically in Remy’s ear, telling him that the battle in which he now fought would be over in a matter of seconds if only he would let go.
The temptation was great, as it always was, but Remy remained in control, letting his fragile human nature hold sway over the power of Heaven.
The Seraphim was not in the least bit happy with this as it moved about the road, smiting its enemies with savage precision, but it knew that it must take what it was offered. Always holding out hope that someday it would be free, and that not a trace of the false humanity that held back its full essence would exist to suppress its holy might.
At least he could give it that.
As the newest to face his angelic wrath dropped to the road in a twitching pile, Remy saw that others were running, abandoning the fight.
Still at the ready, he stopped, examining the situation.
Samson was in the process of picking up a squirming man and smashing him down onto the ground. Samson’s spawn and Delilah’s faithful watched as their enemies suddenly stopped their fighting, turning tail to disappear into the shadows of the woods around them.
“Looks like they had enough,” one of Samson’s daughters, a young lady in her mid-twenties with a lime green Mohawk, proclaimed as she pumped her fist in the air victoriously.
The Seraphim wanted more. It always wanted more; more fighting, more blood, more violence, but Remy forced it back, putting the genie in the bottle yet again.
“What do you think, Samson?” Remy asked, still holding his baseball bat, glinting oily black in the light of the half-moon.
“Not sure,” the big man said, sniffing the air. “Could’ve just been a test.”
“A test?”
“Yeah, to try us on for size. . see how much of a threat we might be.”
It sounded logical enough to him. “Obviously they saw enough.”
