He grins, relishing the attention he receives from his former community. It is truly flattering. He raises his hands into the frozen skies, ignoring the vehicles around him, and welcomes the power that courses through his veins and fills his body.
The first of the three helicopters, having just dropped off its human payload, suddenly banks to the side, hammered by a strong wind that rocks the cars lined up and down I-81 and snaps a few trees somewhere out in the surrounding darkness. The pilot struggles for control, fighting in vain the current of air that carries it like a child’s toy into oblivion. A few seconds later, and a couple miles away, a flash of light is followed by a mushroom cloud of fire. The sound of the explosion is wiped away by the blizzard, and only a few motorists even see the flash, mistaking it for an exploding transformer or lightning. Anything but a Special Forces helicopter.
Knowing the Saab is just up ahead, Jonathan quickens his pace, ignoring the soldiers. They pose no threat to him.
He stops just as it comes into sight. The wind is rocking it back and forth on its wheels, the interior dark, the engine off. The former occupants are moving south on foot, but they will not get far.
Suddenly, a group of soldiers dressed in black with sound suppressers fitted to the barrels of their automatic weapons converge on the Saab. Surrounding it, they seem completely indifferent to the cars around them, as if they truly believe their mission to be a matter of national security. The area is cramped, and a few of the men are practically standing on other cars. Jonathan watches as a passenger door from the adjacent car opens and a man climbs out into the night, hugging himself against the frigid air and blinding snow. He doesn’t see the elite soldiers standing mere feet away from him or their weapons concentrating on the empty Saab in the next lane. The man walks around the front of his Pontiac, passing before the glowing headlights, and stumbles awkwardly to the median. Struggling to unzip his pants with fingers already numb, he relieves himself, sure that the elements will keep his exposure hidden from any curious eyes. When he’s done, he bows his head against the wind and makes his way back between the kissing cars. He slips on the ice and falls, banging his head against the Volkswagen parked in front of his brother’s Bonneville. He lies motionless on the ground as his brother gets out to check on him.
Jonathan continues to watch, amused as the soldiers hesitate. He knows that the man now standing by the Pontiac is the brother of the concussed the same way he knows the girls in the Volkswagen ahead of it are college roommates. The passenger door of the Volkswagen opens, slamming into the Cadillac beside it, and sure enough, a college-aged girl gets out, her eyes locked on the man lying behind her car. Then her eyes detect movement over by the Saab—which is a car behind her in the other lane. She stands staring at a soldier, her eyes wide with fear as she considers the gun, the mask, and the guy lying on the ground nearby. Just as she lets out a scream that is, for the most part, swallowed by the blizzard, the person in the Cadillac gets out, screaming at her carelessness and demanding compensation for the new dent in the side of his car. When she screams, however, his attention is immediately turned to the man on the ground and the mysterious man standing nearby, all in black, silenced submachine gun in hand. He swears and quickly disappears into his car.
By now, two of the soldiers are searching the Saab, the remaining group scanning their surroundings as if wary of some hidden threat. The threat that comes, however, is from the driver of the Cadillac two cars ahead of them. He has a pistol in his grasp, and he’s shouting something at them that no one can understand. When the soldiers respond with a burst of soft
pops
and the man is thrown backward beneath a fountain of freezing blood, the woman from the Volkswagen turns to run, slips, and splits her skull open on the ground. The roommate driving the wagon and the brother in the Pontiac both stand peering through the snow, trying to locate where their passengers have gone.
Jonathan walks beside the median, passes the Saab’s position on the right, and approaches the man calling out for his vanished brother. Reaching forward without the man ever knowing he’s there, Jonathan slides his long knife into the man’s head, straight through the ear. The man crumples to the ground beside the Bonneville, its engine still running. Jonathan bends over and reaches into the car. He puts it in drive. Then he picks up the punctured body and, with little effort, throws it head first onto the gas pedal, wedging the corpse beneath the steering wheel and dashboard, its feet sticking up in the air, dress socks and Doc Martens looking ridiculous behind the wheel. The big car takes off and smashes into the Volkswagen while running over the unconscious brother in the process. With only a couple feet separating the two vehicles, the impact isn’t catastrophic, but it is enough to elicit the attention of the soldiers, already on edge from the armed citizen they just gunned down.
The Pontiac’s front wheels are still spinning, pushing the wagon into the car ahead. The college girl standing beside her car is wondering why her lime-green vehicle just moved without her when Jonathan appears from behind her. She turns and sees him, a static-filled image from some horror movie she thinks she’s seen before, and she screams again. Her voice, though mute to the rest of the interstate, annoys Jonathan. He separates her head from her body with one sweeping arc of his knife. As the head falls, he reaches out and grabs it by the hair, halting its descent with a jerk. He stands there, surveying, the dripping head of the star basketball player swaying in the wind and knocking against his thigh. Her headless corpse falls over. The soldiers still haven’t spotted him, and that is most unfortunate for the nearest of them. Jonathan whips the head around by the hair, spinning it until it’s a fan in his hand, blood spraying a line across the snow at his feet. He lets go, and it strikes the nearest soldier right in the face, shattering his headgear and sending pieces of it into his eyes and face. But it’s the impact that kills him, the skull hitting its mark with all the force of a bowling ball shattering glass pins. When the soldier drops and the girl’s smashed head rolls beneath the Saab, his comrades raise their weapons in search of the cause. But there’s nothing to see but snow and headlights painted green behind their masks, the Pontiac’s wheels still spinning pointlessly on the ice.
The team of trained killers abandons the focus of their mission, which is something that Jonathan doesn’t quite understand—their mission. He assumed
he
was their objective, but how, then, do they know about the Saab? It is an interesting development. Apparently, the Society believes that with whatever information they have, they no longer require the Crest of Dragons to get the ring back for them. So does that mean they are going to let him go? Would they go after the ring and forget about him? They no longer have the ability to track him, so he could fade into the night and never be heard from again. It is almost tempting, if not for the score that needs settling and the scheduled damning of a world. Whatever the Brotherhood’s new plan is, Jonathan sure isn’t going to sit back and watch it unfold. The ring is his.
As the soldiers break away from the Saab, failing to find the ring within, and approach the Pontiac, Jonathan can sense two helicopters sweeping toward them. He steps onto the centerline and stares down at the men that are now pointing their weapons into the Bonneville. They can’t see him, the powers within camouflaging him with snow and keeping him from detection. Stretching out his hands, Jonathan gives himself fully over to the force at work. He never considers whether or not the source of the power is worthy of trusting, for the power that becomes available to him in surrender is too great to be burdened by such petty concerns.
The long rows of cars that sit facing him, their headlights shining bright in his face, begin to rock. The soldiers sense it and know that the uniform movement isn’t the labor of the wind. They aim their weapons back and forth, still not seeing Jonathan in their midst. They start to backpedal, a feeling of something otherworldly seeping through the strictness of their tactical training. The headlights on the cars around them blink on and off, car alarms composing a soundtrack of inevitable doom. But there is nowhere for the military team to go. The helicopters are too far away, still on their way back from surveying the site of their downed comrades.
Jonathan closes his outstretched arms, slapping his hands together, and the lanes of cars suddenly converge on the center line, smashing into each other with exploding glass and crunching metal. The soldiers are sandwiched between them, their screams cut off by swift death. It will take rescue teams hours to extract their mangled bodies from the twisted metal.
Jonathan turns away from the wreck, ignoring the well-meaning passengers that are suddenly scrambling through the storm and trying to help those now trapped within their vehicles.
The helicopters are hovering overhead now, shining spotlights down onto the wrecked cars. The snow makes it hard to get a clear picture, but a clear picture is not needed to reveal the futility of trying to salvage the bodies of their fallen brothers.
And then a most interesting thing begins to unfold. The helicopters, silently navigating the strong, icy winds above, begin to open fire on the cars below.
Beelzeboul.
Jonathan recognizes the demon’s work. Beelzeboul, the prince of demons, the sole remaining angel left of those that came down from heaven, the controller of all those in Tartarus, the father of the one who haunts the Red Sea. When asked by Solomon of his employment, he had answered that he destroys kings and sets his demons on men, inspiring them with envy, murder, wars, sodomy. “And I will destroy the world,” he had told King David’s son…
Or perhaps this is the handiwork of Klothod, the demon named for battle who causes the well-behaved to scatter and fall foul on each other. He really can’t be sure of which entity is now moving the men in the helicopters to destroy the innocent lives below, but he knows that it is one of his former acquaintances. He longs to be reunited with them and is encouraged by their presence. They have come to witness their master’s induction, to pave the way for his glory. He is the Crest of Dragons, and with the ring on his finger, he will destroy the world. The demons are here to ensure it.
He walks south, the cars around him exploding, men, women, and children screaming. They have no idea where the attack is coming from, that two US helicopters are hiding behind the blizzard and raining the deadly terror down upon them. All they can know is that there is fire, blood, and death in the midst of an incoherent chaos.
****
Ian stopped and turned when the sound of the explosion reached through the wind and struck his head.
“What was that?” Heather screamed.
The brief orange glow that could be seen in the distance, though distorted by the blizzard, was answer enough.
Another explosion flashed closer, and they could feel its heat and had to duck beneath a spinning door that went through the back windshield of the car behind them.
“Run!” Ian grabbed Heather’s hand and pulled so hard that he almost dislocated her shoulder. He slipped and fell, got back to his feet, and kept going. Occupants from cars on either side of them began stepping out onto the road, their eyes glued to the nearby fire.
Ian knew what was happening, knew these new forces were seeking the ring. But understanding this didn’t offer a reason as to why they should want it. That much has been withheld from him. But he doesn’t care about that, only what it implied.
The ring is here
.
He broke right, cutting between a pickup carting a yacht with a giant Christmas bow and a red eighteen-wheeler. He pulled Heather off the ice and into the snow. They jumped over the guardrail and took off across the open terrain ahead of them. It was too dark to see where they were heading, but as more explosions lit the air behind them, Ian just wanted to get as far away from I-81 as possible.
After what seemed like an eternity of running, and not forgetting the premonition he’d had of Heather being dragged down the highway, he dove to the ground, taking Heather down with him.
They rolled onto their stomachs so that they were facing the highway, concealed by darkness and snow. One by one, vehicles kept exploding. They were too far away to hear the screams and to see the carnage, but Ian and Heather had little trouble imagining the horror of those on the highway being bombed by the invisible force lurking above them. It was a nightmare they could never hope to comprehend, even if they lived to try.
Ian was oblivious to the cold, but he could tell that Heather most certainly was not. She was shaking violently, her teeth bouncing off each other. Whether or not he could hear it over the wind or if it was due to his sudden extrasensory ability, Ian wasn’t sure. He put an arm around her and pulled her close.
“What ab-b-b-bout…Ashley?” she asked. “And M-m-m-marcus?”
Ian didn’t answer her. There was nothing he could say, nothing he could do. He pressed his lips against her ear. “Do you have the ring?”
“W-w-what?”
“The ring! Do you have it?”
“N-n-no. I threw it out th-th-the wind-d-d-ow.”
“It’s here,” he said, his eyes focusing on the lightshow in the distance.
“Wh-wh-what d-d-d-do you m-m-mean?”
Her stuttering was beginning to annoy him, and he felt that other presence begin to slide its way into his head again. He tried to keep it out, to convince himself that the woman beside him was all he cared about in life, that he loved her more than he loved his own life. But whatever was alive in him wasn’t going for it, and the dark hand tightened its grip over his heart.
“What is it?”
Thankfully, she refrained from stammering that time. Perhaps he wouldn’t need to break her neck just yet. He shook his head, hoping that thought would fall out of it even as the answer spilled forth from his lips. “It’s a key.”