nothing, and then walked away to a far corner to slowly sit, then lay on his side and curled up into a small ball.
Thoroughly panicked Guardians looked at their group seers for help, and within seconds the same reaction that had decimated the clerics began to run through the seers . .. then the tacticals felt it, and the stoneworkers cried out and moaned as they felt it through the stones, and Mike began rocking, covering his ears as he heard it, and finally Jose and Rider walked away, and vomited as the smell overcame them.
"Masada!" Rabbi Zeitloff yelled, crying hard. "Never again." He began reciting rabbinical prayers in Hebrew, and then the other clerics quickly began to pull themselves together and add theirs of their own faith. The tidal wave of white light sent Heavenward helped each Neteru begin their litany, which in turn helped Guardians to find their path back to sanity as they slowly began to join in, too. As their prayers reached fever pitch, they could all see with their naked eyes, one thousand moaning, wailing, an cient rebel spirits that had been trapped in the palace. Women grasped children to their breasts. Babies cried and older children hid against their mothers'
bodies. Husbands tried to drag children away from women's arms, their own flesh and blood, while they themselves screamed in a pain so feral that thunder and lightning flashed in the sky.
Demon sulfur wafted up from beyond the wall and the wailing ghosts shrieked as they drew blades and became skeletons. Guardians broke formation and ran to look over the wall. Clerics increased their prayer chants.
"Legions are on the move, yo!" Jose shouted.
"The ground's opening up, people," Rider said. Locking a Gatling gun onto the wall.
"Decision time, D." Shabazz looked around. "The phantoms in here or the demons outside?"
Mike grabbed a bazooka. "Lemme know what to do, C! Start the party, or what?"
"Fight with us this time!" Damali shouted. She looked at Carlos and sent pure silver thought into his mind like a razor. They're trapped. They think it's happening again. They don't know if we 're Romans that made it over the wall or what, because we 're foreign. Tell them you have the Ark and let them see it - you saw it in Ethiopia. Tell them we have some thing to fight eight demon Roman legions this time and win, baby! Together we call our families.
The moment the thought of calling their families blazed across Damali's mind, every ancestor who was ever con nected to the Guardian team stepped out of the folds of ether behind the disoriented ghosts of Masada. She could feel her team members' hearts breaking and taste their tears on the wind as the spirits of their loved ones appeared. The
vibra tions of love mat oozed from the living to the dead and back again coated the very air with a shimmering, protective haze. Gently, reverently, ancestral spirits calmed and hugged terror-stricken phantoms. Damali's father stepped forward with Father Lopez, flanked by the Brazilian team with a readiness for war in their eyes. Karnal slowly nodded to Shabazz and then Marlene and he closed his eyes briefly as they returned his nod, acknowledging him as one.
Damali and Carlos watched mute and transfixed as their parents, grandparents, Father Lopez, Christine, so many spirits, some of whom they didn't know, whispered into ears, took up hands, wiped tears, and brought peace.
Soon the gathering of spirits parted like a fine mist and Damali's mother walked forward, spreading her set of beautiful, luminous wings. "We all stand with you as we have al
ways, my daughter." She looked at Carlos and pure peace radiated from her expression.
"You contain more than you know - use it all, son. Open that which is within." Instantly the ghosts sent up a huge cry. Complete chaos surrounded Damali and Carlos, making them seek each other's gazes for a clue about what had just happened. The Ark, Damali's mind shot into his. This is the end of days. That's the only thing my mother could have meant, because surely she wouldn't want us to open a biblical seal! The angel hybrid huddled on the ground and slowly crawled her way over to Lorelei. Carlos closed his eyes for a moment, remembering what he'd seen when he was in Ethiopia. The old men in the boat, the blind monks had shown him the Ark of the Covenant, and it had turned his eyes silver. He sent the image into