now you come here. To my house.” A guttural laugh. “And the daughter of El! She has found some new tricks to turn.” The demon looked down into the carriage and said something about a “Mr. Emmanuel” or something.
I looked into the carriage as it rocked under the weight of the monstrous demon. The wings of the beast drooped down far below the bottom of the car, and against the backdrop of the wheelhouse perched on the edge of the mountain, with its massive arched mouth waiting to receive its travelers, the sight was medieval. Dragons and castles filled my mind.
But then two and two clicked together to make four: I recognized the hostage.
No. It can’t be him. “Oh, no! Kreios! They have my dad!”
“Yes!” Nwaba cried. “Yes, I do! And I am unafraid to snuff his pathetic life!” He bared his teeth and hissed at us.
“Be careful, Nwaba. You are not in a position to make threats,” Kreios shouted at him.
“Am I not?” the demon said.
With that, the goon in the car, who I guessed was Mr. Emmanuel, then shoved my dad almost entirely out the window, holding him back at the last moment.
“DAD!” I shouted, and then noticed that something wasn’t right. My dad was standing, true. But he looked like a puppet on a string, asleep, yet he still stood.
“Shall I drop him?” the goon Mr. Emmanuel said. “Or shoot you in the head?” He then aimed a pistol at me with his free hand.
“Keep moving; don’t hover,” Kreios said, and I took his advice, making little dodging movements in the air that would complicate, if nothing else, a pistol shot at that range; about one hundred feet, which I knew thanks to my new precision eyeballs.
The demon spoke up with a deep guttural voice that made me shiver. “I want only one thing, Kreios. And you know what that is.”
“I do not,” he answered.
“Yes, you do!” the demon prince shouted. He was enraged. “How could you fail to see the most important piece of the puzzle, angel of El? Of course you know!”
Again, Kreios answered him, “I don’t know what you want. Whatever it is, demon, I will not give you anything.”
Nwaba screamed a vicious tantrum into the clear morning air. “Bring me The Alexander!”
Michael? Why would they want Michael?
“Bring me The Alexander, or I will kill her father!”
Panic started tearing at the edges of my mind.
Then I heard distant shouting, I turned to look. There on the service catwalk of the upper wheelhouse, perched on the precipitous cliff, was Michael. He looked like he was ready for a fight.
“Nwaba!” he shouted down at us. “I am right here! Come and get me!”
Wait. What? How did he get there? And where is Ellie?
CHAPTER XII
THE DEMON PRINCE WASTED not a single passing thread in the web of time; he launched from the wires, flinging himself at Michael Alexander with a single mighty stroke of his great wings.
The cable car was thrust into severe bouncing motions as Nwaba pushed off, bobbing on the wires like a weight on a bungee. It fell, then launched upward and then back down again violently.
The passengers inside were all thrown in different directions.
Mr. Emmanuel fell back, his grip on the bait man John broken by the forces at work. He crashed into the opposite wall of the car. The impact knocked the breath from him.
Kim, the host of the Bloodstone, slid into his feet. Either dead or unconscious, he didn’t know and he did not care.
No, what Mr. Emmanuel cared about was the bait man John. He had lost control of him in the swinging motion of the car, being forced to watch in horror as his bargaining chip toppled over the rail and disappeared.
I saw my dad falling and dove after him; there was nothing else to be done. It was horrifying. I managed to catch him, pulling up seconds before we hit the rocks below. He was unconscious, but he was breathing. What is it with the men in my life needing me to rescue them all the time?!
I had to find somewhere safe for him. I needed to get Kim. I had to help Michael. The more I thought about it, the more the impossibility of the whole thing became clear to me.
“I can’t do everything.” I had to do what I could do and trust El to do the rest. “Please, God. Keep them safe. Michael, Kreios and Kim.”
I scanned the landscape and spotted a boulder-strewn clearing in