The Seal of Solomon

Beside me, Op Nine murmured, “ ‘Behold the Ninth Spirit, Paimon, the Great King, second only to Lucifer, in the form of a Man sitting upon a Dromedary.’ ”

I didn’t know what he was talking about, and I sure didn’t know what a dromedary was, but whatever it was, it didn’t sound good. Op Nine stood up and then everybody stood up and we waited for the bellowing thing to come.

It was huge, standing over ten feet from its hooves to the top of its slightly flattened head. Bulging red eyes, a neck thick and gnarled as a tree trunk, globules of slobber hanging from its open mouth.

“That’s not a dromedary,” I said. “That’s a camel.”

It stopped a dozen yards from our circle. It stopped, but the bellowing didn’t. This perverted memory of an animal was in some serious pain.

A man-shape balanced on the forward hump, with a shining face like those of the demon-lords who circled high above us, lean and almost girl-like with its large eyes, delicate nose, and full, sensuous lips. A crown glittered on its head, spewing radiant light, red and gold and aqua and green, that shot out from its brow like laser beams.

A dark shape fell away from the rear hump of the monster camel and dropped to the sand. It walked slowly toward us, and beside me Op Nine whispered, “Hold, hold.” He had pulled off his helmet, so the rest of us followed suit.

He was ordinary size, the man who now walked toward us, and he didn’t carry a flaming sword or burning staff or anything like that. His head was bare. He wore a white robe that had come open, so beneath it I could see his khakis and white Lacoste polo.

And, of course, he was smacking gum.

“Hey, guys, how’s it goin’?” Mike Arnold asked.

“Michael,” Abigail said.

“Abby Smith—hey, it’s pleasing as pickles to see you! I don’t care what they said in headquarters, you’re still a heck of a field agent in my book, and by the way you look just fantastic in that jumper.”

He looked at Op Nine. “Figured you’d be here, Padre. Sort of the culmination of your whole career, huh. No thanks necessary.”

Then he saw me. “Al Kropp! My God, is that you? Jeez, kid, you’re like the Forrest Gump of supernatural disasters— you’re always everywhere!”

He clapped his hands together. “So! This it? This all you brought for the greatest intrusion event in the past three millennia? I feel a little disappointed, to tell you the truth.”

“You’re not the only one who is disappointed, Michael,” Abby Smith said.

“Well, like the old saying goes, you gotta crack a few eggs to make an omelet.” He spread his arms wide, palms facing toward us.

I saw the ring then, the Great Seal of Solomon, shining on his right hand. Twice as thick as the average wedding ring, it shone with a reddish, coppery color.

“Tell us what you want, Michael,” Abigail said.

“Oh, it’s not what I want, Abby,” Mike said. “Or what anybody wants, really. It’s more of what we need.”

Abby and Op Nine exchanged a puzzled look.

“Look, I’m not going to bust your chops,” Mike went on. “It’s a damned shame, but sometimes damned shames are necessary. Kind of like the demons here. That’s my new best friend Paimon on the camel with the thyroid condition. I’ve freed all of ’em, down to the last demon, and they’re all angry as hell, if you’ll excuse the expression. They’ve been cooped up in a cell the size of a birdcage for the past three thousand years. Things got a little testy in there, as you can imagine.”

“Enough,” Op Nine said sharply. His tone was like a father who had run out of patience with a lippy kid. “What do you want, Arnold?”

“Oh, it’s a little bigger than that, Padre. I’m just an insignificant blip on history’s radar.”

“Michael, we’re willing to negotiate,” Abby said. “But you are making that extremely difficult.”

“This isn’t a negotiation, Abby. It’s a wake-up call. You know, like the Russians putting up Sputnik. Whether it likes it or not, the world’s going to beat its swords into plowshares. Or else.”

He walked back to the monster camel with the mouthful of slobbery six-inch fangs. He turned to King Paimon, and then jerked his head back toward us.

“Kill them, Paimon,” he said. “Kill them all.”

One of the agents—I think it was Bert—raised his 3XD. Paimon’s right arm came up, the fingers spread wide in Bert’s direction. I expected some kind of death ray or lightning bolt or maybe a stream of hellfire to shoot from its open hand.

Instead, the hand snapped closed into a fist, and Bert blew apart. I mean, his body twisted and bulged like he was made of Play-Doh and then just exploded.

The team’s 3XDs opened up, and now this Paimon thing twisted and bulged as the rounds tore through its body, tearing it to pieces, but in seconds it was whole again.

I felt a blast of heat on the top of my head. The entire contingent of demons was descending on us.

I looked down and saw Mike hop onto the back of the camel and take off toward the mirage or oasis or whatever it was. I didn’t even think about it, just jumped on the nearest sand-foil and took off after him.

Despite its massive size, that camel could move. I yanked back on the throttle and soon the sand-foil was clocking 140 and shaking like it was going to break—I figured maybe the foils themselves would snap off and send me straight over the handlebars.

The front edges caught on something hard and suddenly I was airborne, two feet off the ground, now smooth and shiny, not sand anymore, but more like ice.

I landed hard on my stomach and slid four or five feet before coming to a stop. I scrambled to my feet, my boots slipping on this strange surface, and looked around.

Mike was standing on a makeshift platform or altar, with about a dozen robed men gathered around him, probably part of the Bedouin tribe Op Nine talked about. The damned camel was gone.

In front of the altar, sitting on another wooden platform, was a lidless copper jar. It could only be the Holy Vessel, where the demons had been imprisoned for three thousand years.

I walked toward him, cradling the 3XD, still slipping and sliding a little on the glassy ground. Mike laughed when he saw me coming.

“You know what that is?” he shouted at me. “Glass! Heat from the demons’ release fried the sand. Can you believe it?”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t have anything left to say to Mike Arnold, who had literally dragged me into this whole thing and who was responsible for so many deaths.