Play with Fire

chapter Sixty-Two

INSIDE THE TIRE store, Ware had watched incredulously as the three dupes who had served him so well were gunned down by an unseen sniper. He’d heard no shots, which meant the shooter was either a considerable distance away or had used a silencer. From the angle the bodies had fallen, it was clear that the gunman was stationed behind the store and somewhere up high, probably on a rooftop. Ware had no intention of putting himself into the line of fire – but then, he didn’t have to. He would go outside and, using the building for protection, lob fireballs toward the white smoke until its creator was destroyed. Then he could continue with the final sacrifice. Once that was completed, the sniper, along with all humanity, would have bigger things to worry about.

Ware stepped out onto the sidewalk. He breathed in, gathering his power, and prepared to send the first ball of fire hurtling toward his enemy. Then a voice to his right said, “I wouldn’t do that, if I were you.”

Ware immediately pivoted toward the voice and saw that its source was a woman – a beautiful blonde in a long, expensive-looking overcoat, unbuttoned down the front, standing fifty feet away. She carried no weapon that he could see and yet seemed utterly without fear, or even tension. This was puzzling, but Ware had no time for distractions. He would incinerate this bitch and get back to his main task.

The fireball he’d been about to fling across the street went flying toward the interloper instead, who calmly lifted one hand, palm outward. She said a word of power that Ware recognized and the fireball was suddenly flying right back at him. He pointed a finger at it, said two words, and the fireball disappeared.

Ware made a slashing motion with one hand, and said a different word of power. At once a hundred knives, each razor-sharp, were hurtling toward the blonde with blinding speed.

The woman extended a fist, said something that Ware couldn’t hear, and the knives dropped harmlessly to the pavement. Then she pointed two fingers at his feet, said another word, louder this time, and the ground began to open right where he was standing. Ware pointed downward, clenched his hand into a fist, and said a word that caused the fissure to disappear.

Ware shunted aside the surprise and panic that threatened to grip him. He extended his left palm toward the woman, uttered a phrase in ancient Chaldean, and a bright bolt of energy, that would turn the woman to dust, shot forth from his hand. She lifted her own hand, palm outward, and another bolt of energy met his halfway. The two forces stopped, pushing against each other like evenly-matched football linemen, neither advancing.

Without dropping his hand, Ware focused his concentration for maximum power as he asked the interfering bitch, “What are you?”

Continuing to push against his attack with equal force, she said, her voice showing some strain now, “Ashur Badaktu, one of the fallen, demon of the fourth rank.”

Ware had a thousand questions about how one of his own kind had arrived here, and why she was opposing him, but all he said was, “Belial Frandola, demon of the fourth rank, at your service. Well, not really.”

“So...” she said musingly. “We appear to be equals.”

“That’s right, you fool, so stop this stupid game of yours. You can’t possibly harm me.”

“No, but I can,” said a voice behind him, and Ware had only begun to turn toward this new threat when Quincey Morris squeezed the Desert Eagle’s trigger, blowing the top of Theron Ware’s head into a hundred tiny pieces and sending his enraged spirit straight back to Hell.

The one hundred and seventy-nine people inside the First Presbyterian Church did not hear the shot, for the church organ was pumping and they were all busy singing, with gusto, “O God Our Help in Ages Past.”

They would never know the unlikely forms that such help could sometimes take.