Alex Kava Bundle - Alex Kava [331]
Neither looked like Satan. They had introduced themselves as Tully and Cunningham. Eric had been able to hear that much through the fog. Both men looked clean-cut—close-cropped hair, no dirt beneath their fingernails. The older one even wore nerdy wire-rimmed glasses. No, they looked nothing like Eric had expected Satan to look. And just like the others now crawling around the cabin floor and combing the woods outside, these guys wore the navy-blue windbreakers with the yellow letters, FBI.
The younger one had on a blue tie, pulled loose, his shirt collar unbuttoned. The other wore a red tie, cinched tight at the buttoned collar of a brilliant white shirt. Red, white and blue, with those government letters emblazoned across their backs. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? Of course Satan would come disguised, wrapped in symbolic colors. Father was right. Yes, of course, he was always right. Why had he doubted Father? He should have obeyed, not doubted, not taken his chances with the enemy. What a fool he had been.
Eric scratched at the lice still digging into his scalp, digging deeper and deeper. Could Satan’s soldiers hear the scratching sounds? Or perhaps they were the ones making the imaginary lice dig into his skull. Satan had powers, after all. Incredible powers he could transmit through his soldiers. Powers that Eric knew could easily inflict pain without so much as a touch.
The one called Tully was saying something to him, lips moving, eyes burrowing into Eric’s, but Eric had turned down the volume hours ago. Or was it days ago? He couldn’t remember how much time had passed. He couldn’t remember how long he had been in this cabin, how long he had sat in this straight-backed chair with his wrists handcuffed and his feet in shackles, waiting for the inevitable torture to begin. He had no sense of time, but he did know the exact moment his system had begun to shut down. The exact second his mind had gone numb. It was the instant that David dropped to the floor, the thud of his body forcing Eric to risk opening his eyes. That was when he found himself staring directly into David’s eyes, their faces only inches apart.
Eric had seen his friend’s mouth open. Thought he heard a faint whisper, three words, no more. Maybe it had been Eric’s imagination, because David’s eyes were already empty when the words “He tricked us” left his lips. He must have heard his friend wrong. Satan hadn’t tricked them at all. They had tricked him, instead. Hadn’t they?
Suddenly, the men were scrambling to their feet. Eric braced himself as best he could, closed fists, shoulders hunched, head down. Only there were no blows, no bullets, no wounds inflicted of any kind. And their voices melted together, the hysteria in them breaking through Eric’s self-imposed barrier.
“We need to get out of the cabin. Now.”
Eric twisted around in the chair, just as one of the men pulled him to his feet and started to shove him toward the door. He saw another man, with some weird contraption mounted on top of his head, come up out of the floorboards. Of course, they had found the hidden arsenal. Father would be disappointed. They had needed that stockpile of weapons to fight Satan. Their mission had failed before they could deliver them back to their home camp. Yes, Father would be very disappointed. They had let everyone down. Maybe more lives would be lost, because all the weapons that had taken months to amass would now be confiscated and put under Satan’s control. Precious lives might be lost because they had failed their mission. How could Father protect any of them without these weapons?
The men shoved and pulled at him, hurrying out the cabin door and down into the woods. Eric didn’t understand. What were they running from? He tried to listen, tried to hear. He wanted to know what could possibly frighten Satan’s soldiers.
They gathered around the man with the strange headgear, who brought out a metal box with blinking lights and odd wires. Eric had no idea