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Flashlight beams and moonlight revealed blood and broken bone. Alison choked back bile and turned in circles, wondering what to do. Broken glass cut her bare feet.

It wasn’t fun or exciting anymore.

Then the ground jolted again, harder than before, and in the distance something sounded like it was crashing and falling. She sucked in a sharp breath, her heart pounding. More students stampeded down the rickety stairwell, shouting each others’ names, pulling out cell phones, yelling for campus security, and trying to move the injured students out of the way. Cries from the other side of the dorm indicated that students were leaving from other doors and windows, too.

“Ally!” Peter found her, grabbing her shoulder. She jumped, her heart pounding. “Have you seen any of the RAs?”

“No. Omigod, you scared me.” She shuddered, rubbing her arms. She’d been wearing a T-shirt and pajama bottoms in her dorm room, and now the cold December air was cutting through the lightweight cotton as if she were naked. “Maybe they’re on the other side of the hall?”

“Let’s go.” Peter took her hand and started off.

“Wait!” Alison yanked her hand back, flinching. “I cut my foot.”

“Damn.” Peter turned and dropped to a knee, looking at it. Alison winced as his thumb ran over the cut. “Yeah, it’s still bleeding. There’s too much broken glass here—you can’t walk around barefoot.” He hesitated. “All I’m wearing is socks, but you can have them if you want.”

Alison bit her lip, then nodded gratefully.

“Thanks.”

He pulled off his gym socks and Alison slid them on, wincing as they rubbed against her cut.

They turned the corner and saw a group of students holding flashlights and cell phones. Alison started to run forward; then the giant snake burst from the ground, right beneath the knot of people.

“Holy shit!” Peter swore, freezing. Alison stumbled, transfixed by the sight.

The monstrous creature’s pale, scaly flanks were streaked with dark stains. It arched like a sea serpent while the students who hadn’t been crushed immediately screamed and scattered. Then it plunged back into the earth, ripping through a concrete patio as if the stone weren’t there. The impact shook the earth and shattered brick planters. Carefully tended trees and bushes smashed to the ground as the snake’s long, massive body slid up from the first hole and vanished down the second.

Alison found herself on all fours. The ground quivered beneath her hands and knees as she watched the slaughter like a movie—like some kind of late-night monster film on television, the kind she’d always watched with a combination of fear and pleasure. For a moment she could believe this was just another
Tremors
sequel.

But this serpent was pale and sleek, not brown and rubbery, and it was covered in small, writhing, scalelike cilia that looked like nothing she’d ever seen on a movie monster. The creature moved gracefully through the ground, as though dirt and rock were no more substantial than sea foam.

Worse, the screams that followed its destructive passage didn’t stop, the way they did in movies when the scene changed. They just went on and on.

That was when Alison realized she might die. Tonight, in college, at nineteen.

She crawled over to the lawn and vomited.

Something touched her shoulder. She spat, looking up.  Peter’s face was a pale circle in the moonlight.

“What was that?” he asked, his voice shaking.

“I don’t know.” She spat again and wiped her mouth, then cleaned her hand on the grass. She blinked away tears. “A monster?”

He nodded because they’d both seen it with their own eyes, and neither of them was stupid enough to say that monsters didn’t exist.

The screams and groans and shattered bodies around them proved that they did.

“I want to go to the chapel,” she said, before she realized she was going to say it. “Please. Let’s go to the chapel.”

Yes—the chapel. The only safe place when monsters came. Her mind flew through the last fourteen weeks of Dr. Todd’s class. Of course. God had inspired her to take that class so she’d know when it was the end of the world; so she’d have time to prepare her soul before the apocalypse.

Giant snakes in the earth. What else could it be but the apocalypse?

“Okay,” Peter replied shakily, even though he’d always teased her about her beliefs before this. “Let’s go.”

Clutching hands, they pulled themselves back to their feet and began to cut across campus as it shook and shuddered beneath them.

XIII

“All right, here’s something,” Jack said at last, squinting at the black type. Another jolt had caused the police car outside to tip, and now the headlight beams hit the ceiling, making reading more difficult.

Andy lowered the book he’d been flipping through, and Todd lifted his head.

“‘When Thorvald and Gale Gudrun died, their only nephew—Karl—traveled from Brainerd, Minnesota to examine the ranch here. He decided to sell the 130-acre site to Dr. Garth Andersen, who represented the California District of the Unified Lutheran Church.’ A couple of quotes. Hmm. ‘Karl Gudrun himself stated that he made his gift “to sanctify the memory of my aunt and uncle and to provide youth the benefits of Christian education in a day when spiritual values can well decide the course of history.” ’ One hundred and thirty acres? The campus isn't that big.”

“It sold off some of the land to raise money for construction, back when it was still a college.” Andy held out a hand, and Jack handed him the book.

“Is there any indication of how the owners died?” Todd asked.

“Nope. Old age?”

“It wasn’t old age,” Andy said, reading. “They were only in their forties, according to the birthdates given here.”

“Amon!” Todd called out. The demon slinked out from the shadows, scraps of charred flesh trailing behind it like dark streamers. “I need a favor.”

Amon scuttled across the floor and crawled into Todd’s lap, pressing its knobby head against the theologian’s sweater.

“What can I do for you, beloved?” it asked, its dark tongue flickering out to wipe its beak.

“Hey!” Andy frowned, looking up. “Get that thing out of here. We don’t need a devil’s assistance.”

“Do you plan to read books while Rome burns?” Todd asked. His large hand touched Amon’s skull with apparent affection. “Amon’s specialty is telling the past and future. Now that we know what we’re looking for, he can search hell for an answer and bring it to us.”

“And if they’re in heaven?”

“Then your friend Jack can conjure us an angel.”

“I generally avoid conjurations,” Jack said. Conjurations of any kind were dangerously close to black magick, and conjurations intended to compel another being into service were especially risky.

Todd ignored him, lowering his head. “Amon, beloved, can you tell us how the Gudruns, who once lived in this house, died? Does it have anything to do with the field of bones?”

Amon placed three legs on Todd’s chest, their claws snagging in his sweater, and thrust its beak into Todd’s mouth like a baby bird seeking a meal. Then it withdrew, its muzzle shiny and dark. It twisted, stepping from the theologian’s lap into nothingness.

Todd lifted a hand and wiped his mouth with his wrist. Blood streaked his dark skin.

Jack looked away, revolted. At least with the devil gone, his protective wards settled back down into watchful passivity.

“I’m concerned about the wisdom of working with you, Edward,” Andy said.

“Amon says the same thing about you,” Todd replied, his voice thick as blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. He swallowed and dabbed at his lips with a handkerchief, then wiped off his wrist. “Sorry. Tongue.”

“Andy,” Jack said uneasily, “here’s something for you to think over.”

“What’s that?”

“Todd doesn’t set off my wards, and neither do those giant worm-things.” Jack jammed his hands into his jacket pockets. “Why not?”

“I don’t know why your spells wouldn’t register Edward’s magick. The...worms...could be some kind of natural phenomena...although I doubt it.”

“You don’t suppose they’re working together, then?”

Todd laughed softly, behind them. “Why would I work with a worm?” he asked.

Andy and Jack exchanged looks.  The professor jerked his head slightly to one side, and Jack lifted a shoulder.

“If Edward is really what he claims to be—someone who stands between God and Satan—then perhaps his power doesn’t set off your wards because it’s neutral,” Andy suggested, after a moment.

“Power
has
to come from somewhere. God or Satan—there ain’t any third choice.”

Andy sighed.  “I don’t know. Maybe what he does is as unmagickal as an internal combustion engine, but we just don’t understand it.”

Jack thought about those infernal crematoriums spewing the ashes of the damned over burnt-branch catwalks and couldn’t bring himself to agree.

The earth jolted and something crashed somewhere in the house. Sirens began wailing again in the distance.

“Did the university keep any of the Gudrun family’s belongings?” Todd asked, standing. He spoke as clearly as ever, as though whatever injury Amon had inflicted on him a minute ago had already healed.

“There’s a collection up in the attic,” Jack said.

“Let’s take a look. I’d like to know the family a little better.”

“I’ll lead,” Andy said, pulling Jack’s lighter out of his pocket again. The three men picked their way through the rooms to the stairwell. Hands braced on the intermittently trembling walls, they headed upstairs.

XIV

Pastor Luther Lindgren had been working late when the first jolts had hit. By the time he’d inspected the chapel, tilting the freestanding cross back upright and picking up the candles that had been thrown off their stands, he was certain that this was no small quake. It had to be at least as strong as the Northridge jolt back in 1994.

He walked back to his office and dug his flashlight out of the emergency equipment cabinet. Part of him wanted to leap into his car and drive home to check on his dogs, but he wasn’t sure it was safe to drive yet.

The flashlight’s steady beam was reassuring. He headed outside.

CHU’s chapel was tucked in the southwest corner of campus, behind the library and student union. Both buildings appeared intact, as far as he could tell, but he could hear distant shouts and screams that suggested that, elsewhere, students were panicking.

The blue light over the emergency phone at the end of the parking lot was still glowing, powered by stored solar energy. Lindgren walked to it, stumbling when the earth shook, and lifted the receiver.

The line was dead.

“Dear Lord,” he prayed aloud, replacing it in its cradle, “please watch over us and protect us from danger.”

He stood, shivering in the cold. Should he make his way across campus to see what comfort he could offer the frightened students? Or should he wait here, tending the chapel, until they came to him?

Lindgren had been the campus pastor for fifteen years, and he knew that many students would come to the chapel pews seeking comfort and reassurance. Despite the increasing secularization of the outside world and the liberal policies of the university itself, the majority of CHU’s students still turned to their childhood faith when they were troubled. He did his best to be present for them when they did.