Armageddon's Children - Terry Brooks [51]
Michael is not looking at him. He is looking at the demon children, at the monsters huddled before him. There is such blackness in that look that it seems those upon which it is cast must succumb to its intensity and weight. Yet they continue to arch their backs and hiss and mewl and crouch in the shadows, little nightmares.
Michael points his weapon at them. “Go outside now, boy. Wait for me there.”
He does as he is told, moving on wooden legs, wanting desperately to turn back, to stop what is about to happen, but unable to do so. He reaches the door and looks out into the night. The fires of the camp burn all about him, their flames a hellish crimson against the smoky black.
Dark forms rush here and there, faceless wraiths in flight. He hesitates for a moment, realizing with new insight what has become of his world.
Madness.
There is a burst of automatic weapons fire from behind him and then silence.
* * *
HE SET FIRE to the cabins when he was finished, working quickly and efficiently, shutting off his emotions as he moved from building to building, taking refuge in the mechanics of his work. The feeders went with him, frenzied shadows in the red glare of the flames, mirrors of his soul. He tried to ignore them and couldn’t. He wished them dead, but that was pointless. Feeders were a force of nature. Only when he was done and walking away did they abandon him, content to frolic in the carnage. He glanced back once to be certain that the cabins were burning, that what lay lifeless inside would be consumed, then quickened his pace until he was through the collapsed fence and moving back toward the AV. Neither the prisoners he had freed nor the once-men that had held them captive were in sight. It was as if both had disappeared in the smoke and flames.
He climbed into the AV and sat staring at nothing. The rage that had earlier consumed him was gone. His wildness had dissipated and his emotions had cooled. He felt detached from his dreams and purged of his madness. He could barely remember having come here. The events that had transpired were a hazy swirl of unconnected images that lacked an identifiable center. His staff was a quiet presence at his side, emptied of magic, cleansed of killing fire.
But as he shifted in his seat, metal fastenings scraped against the door and suddenly he could hear anew the hissing and mewling of the demon children.
He started up the AV’s engine and wheeled away into the darkness, accelerating back across the flats toward the westbound highway. The roar of the Lightning’s big engine drowned out the sounds that had surfaced in his mind, but the damage was done. Tears filled his eyes as he drove, and the momentary peace he had found was gone.
How had Michael endured this for as long as he had? No wonder it had consumed him. It would consume anyone sooner or later even a Knight of the Word.
One day it would consume him. He wondered if that was what happened to all Knights of the Word whom the demons had failed to destroy. He wondered if it would happen to him, and then he wondered if it mattered.
He had asked it of Two Bears, and now he asked it again of himself.
Was he the last of his kind?
He could provide no answer. Dispirited and weary, he drove on through the night and the silence.
Chapter NINE
CONTRARY TO HIS fears, Logan Tom was not the last of the Knights of the Word. Another remained.
Her name was Angel Perez.
She stood deep in the shadows of a building alcove and looked past the blackened storefronts lining both sides of the street toward the fighting. The Anaheim compound was under attack by demons and once-men, an army of such size and ferocity that it seemed a miracle the defenders had not succumbed months ago when first placed under siege. She had warned them then that they should make their escape and flee north, that they couldn’t win if they insisted on holing up behind their compound walls. They couldn’t win if they didn’t engage in guerrilla warfare. She had told them this over and over,