Mike released the bazooka with Carlos's white light pulse on it. Ghosts of Masada were over the walls like teeming white foam. Every Guardian went to battle stations firing at anything that moved. Lilith covered her newborn and then had to send it in flight as a bluewhite pulse charge from Damali made the ground temporarily impenetrable. Damali was airborne, Carlos hurled discs of Heru one after the other like razor-edged, gold energy Frisbees at the thing that took flight with shaky wings and a wobbly pattern. Demons went to the air, body-shielding the creature that was no larger than a huge Harpie, giving themselves in to the blade, burning on contact with Heru discs, and fighting their way up the side of the mountain.
Flame throwers sent water over the edge to incinerate everything in their path, but the demons kept coming as though they were multiplying on the hill, heeding Lilith's battle cry to wipe out the team, clerics and all. Gun reports created a deafening echo, semiautomatic bursts lit the night with Mike's bazooka blasts. The stench of sulfur was every where, each hallowed earth shell hit, holy water scorch cre ated blinding plumes.
"Open the Ark," Rabbi Zeitloff shouted to Carlos, hurling blessed plastic liter bottles of holy water like Molotov cocktails.
"It's within you, son!" Father Patrick yelled, spraying holy water over the side of the wall from a bent pipe Bobby had commandeered.
"You could not see it, unless it was within," Monk Lin called out, training a water pipe on demon incursion.
"From Ethiopia - the time is now! Do not let them take Masada again!" Imam Asula urged, firing a hallowed earth mortar the moment his holy water supply ran out. Carlos ran to the side of the wall, not sure how to access this thing they said. He looked at Damali - nearly surrounded in the air - folded away, and did a midair grab to tumble with her toward another swarm that was amassing beneath them.
From the spiral he could see the top of the mountain in spinning flashes: the front line of Masada ghosts were ringing the mountain as a palace barrier; the entire perimeter was lit in blue-white light; the ground was white hot from prayers; an arch of opaque light created an opalescent prayer dome over the team and clerics. Bursts of golden-hued gunfire and brilliant explosions lit the mountainside. Seconds elongated. Pure Hell was beneath them. He remembered it so clearly. Damali's fist was against his chest in the exact position when she'd first branded him. She looked up at him as they plummeted like a boulder tossed from a high cliff. Demon claws reached out to rip at them, but burned away the moment they entered their combined white hot aura. Damali's mouth moved, and he read it in his mind. Do it.
He envisioned the Ark, but this time he saw it opened. Her mind latched onto the vision, too, and the moment Damali's mind touched his, a sonic boom and a blast hit them so powerfully that their downward spiral stopped in midair and they were thrust horizontally in a blue-white, slow-motion miasma. Suspended in midair, they watched from afar as the white lightning sent nova light upward and downward to incinerate whatever had been airborne.
Guardians and clerics had fallen behind the wall, but the numbers of furious ghost soldiers from Masada multiplied like a thick carpet of souls that popped up, stepped out from the forms already there bearing arms. They threw their heads back and released a cry. All the fallen martyrs, Carlos whispered in his mind, full of awe. Every warrior felled by injustice.
Both he and Damali jerked their attention skyward as the unforgettable Neteru war cry echoed above, the night parted, a splinter of golden-white light cut through the darkness, and winged steeds filled the air. Neteru Kings riding hard began the aerial assault, battleaxes and blades swinging. Phantoms on the ground outnumbered demons two to one. Neteru Queens came out of golden-caped folds right next to demons to stab out their hearts, incinerate them in a blink of an eye, and then fold away again to reappear as cloaked assassins. Guardians and clerics stood, weapons lowered, watching with tears in their eyes, and yells and cheers filling their lungs. A Valkyrie core flew into the distance,
blades at the ready, swiftly hunting the sky for Lilith's offspring. Damali and Carlos slowly dropped to the ground, her wings lowering them as the energy miasma around them