CHAPTER THREE
Surreal calm overtook her as she listened to Carlos. Rather than the sensation entering her, it oddly emanated from within her. She'd promised him that she would eat. Damali moved her hands by rote to appease him . . . stalling for time by picking up the paper bag, slowly opening it, taking out the plastic container, opening that with care, and then allowing her meal to sit before her untouched as she listened intently to what her husband was saying. Something about the smell of the food now turned her stomach.
It was only when she saw him blink that she became aware that time had actually slowed down all around her. His lids slid closed as though a heavy curtain of onyx lashes had been dropped to thud one against the other. His voice was now like distant thunder-a rumble of unintelligible words, they were being spoken so slowly.
Background sounds thrust their way to the forefront of her senses. Her breaths and heartbeat, his breaths and heartbeat, were each so slow and so loud they created a collision inside her head. Even though she couldn't quite make out what he was saying, she gathered what she could from his private, urgent tone and then watched how he slowly leaned in close to her to speak.
Carlos's physical warmth suddenly felt as though she'd been wrapped in a blanket and then soon became a searing barrier like one would expect if one stood before an open oven that had been left on broil for hours. She settled back from the uncomfortable body heat radiating off him, and as she did, the sound of her clothes rustling against the chair was jarring.
He swallowed hard, pausing midsentence, and she almost cringed from the change in decibel that had transitioned the low rumble of his voice to the mucous-thick sound of saliva coating his throat. Yet through all of it, she oddly knew what he was saying, not from the words, but the impressions that began to form behind her wide-open eyes.
Never taking her gaze from his, she saw it.The poisonous vapor.The way it slid out of technology orifices and opened dark portals within houses, buildings, and within human minds. The airwaves were polluted. Devious propaganda had living entities entwined within it, and the embedded messages spewed thick black emissions into the human realm. The gray-zone, the earth plane, was becoming denser, darker, more twisted and violent.
Shadow entities spilled over the very edges of Hell and into the psyches and spirits of the unaware, diving into the pools of light that are normally within each human being.
Damali sat transfixed as she watched how the demonic forces entered a living body and then swallowed up all the clean light within it, slowly corroding it until there was simply no living aura left. At the point of total eclipse, the person was no more. Gone was their will, along with every shred of humanity that had once defined them.
"Tell me your names," she whispered, horrified. This was so much worse than the plague of the Damned. It was such a quick transition, no incubation period. No abstinence of touch could keep a person safe. The airwaves were being infected exponentially, and even people in the most remote villages had radios and televisions in small general stores!
Carlos had cocked his head to the side and had asked her a question. She could tell by his worried expression that he was asking something important of her. But the reply that should have been hers was instead a shadow turning to her before it entered the body of a man on the streets. It smiled a sinister smile, baring mangled, yellow teeth in a hollow black pit devoid of a face.
Her husband's voice drifted farther and farther away until she was spinning in a panicked daze within a crowded market, then she was on a crowded street. All around her people were being taken over. All around her chaos was simmering beneath the surface of human potential. An army was being raised right on the streets and right before her eyes. Vertigo claimed her as her vision jettisoned her from New York to Copenhagen, to Kenya to Milan. Remote islands, metropolises, it didn't matter, the invasions were unrelenting.
Arms outstretched, she ran toward a school yard and then skidded to a halt as high school students fell into darkness. She couldn't breathe.Not the children . Her gaze fell upon a middle school and she watched as dark entities swarmed the windows like locusts.
Damali covered her face and turned away.Tell me this plague's name so we can send it back into the pit! Within seconds she was in a hospital, her hands pressed flat against a nursery's glass window and she saw the shadows slide eerily into the nurses' bodies, but none touched the babies. Yet that provided no relief. One nurse simply smiled and turned off an incubator's oxygen.
"No!" Damali's voice escalated with her panic. She had to know what this entity was in order to fight it. Not vampire, not succubus, the team had never seen a manifestation like this. "Tell me its name!"
Suddenly every person on the streets everywhere she looked had a sinister companion and they all smiled at her simultaneously and whispered back, "My name is legions."
"Damali.Damali!"
A tight grasp held her upper arms and she was mildly aware of being shaken. Time snapped back. She caught Carlos by his elbows, panting and covered with sweat.
"You all right?Damali, talk to me!"
"I saw it," she gasped. "It's already starting."
As soon as she'd made the statement, she shrugged out of Carlos's hold and covered her mouth and nose.
"Get that out of the house!" she demanded, jumping down from the stool and backing away from the counter, pointing at her untouched food.
"Oh, shit!" Carlos toppled his stool as he backed up quickly and stared at the larvae teeming over the edge of the container.
The moment his silvery line of vision hit it, the entire platter exploded, sending disgusting, maggoty gore everywhere. Instantly shielded by a golden disc, the couple took refuge as they watched the wriggling mass rain down on the translucent surface and sizzle and disappear with a sulfuric stench. Everything the larvae plopped down on made them fry and evaporate. Marlene's kitchen was well anointed, and Inez had undoubtedly backtracked through it and given it a second blessing.
No less than they'd expected, they immediately heard heavy footfalls and knew the team was headed into the kitchen in a call to arms. Carlos and Damali shared a glance.
"Inez is gonna have a cow," Damali said, dry-heaving from the residual sulfur smell.
"After Marlene has a heart attack," Carlos muttered, checking twice before lowering the shield to be sure it had stopped raining maggots. "This happened in her kitchen." He looked at Damali. "You okay?"
"Yeah," she said, swallowing down the feeling of nausea and then stepping around his shield to assess the damage.
"I don't understand. I prayed over it." He looked at the scorched counter where the platter had been. "Lopez even prayed over it from the other side."
"That's why it never made it to my mouth," Damali said in a tight voice. "But it came from the outside . . . they were laying for you, baby. They've been laying for any of us to leave the compound for weeks, so I guess now it's officially on. Vacation is over."