Nightworld

! ! ! ! ! ! LIGHT ! ! ! ! ! !

Light such as she had never seen or imagined, light like the hearts of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Bikinis and all the Yucca Flats bombs rolled into one, light like the Big Bang itself exploded from the hilt, engulfing Glaeken and searing the room. Hot light, cold light, new light, ancient light, it blasted through the room in a wave.

In that initial flash Carol saw Glaeken's bones silhouetted through his flesh and clothes, saw the springs and inner supports of the sofa before her, then the light was upon her and her retinae screamed and her irises spasmed and her lids clamped down tight to shut out the light but it was no use because the light would not be denied and it poured through her, suffusing each cell of each tissue in a perceptible wave of warmth as it passed.

She heard cries of wonder and astonishment from the others in the room and was startled by a deafening crash as the glass in the picture windows blew out. Gusts of night air stormed through the room as Carol fought to open her eyes against the glare.

The light was still there, more diffuse now, and splotched with purple from the afterburns on her retinae. It had stopped expanding and had begun to contract, rushing back from the edges of the room to concentrate again at the center, coalescing into a column with Glaeken at its heart. Carol had to raise a protecting arm across her face and half turn away as it consolidated and amplified its power into a narrower beam, shooting upward, burning through the ceiling, through the roof, into the blackness above. And faintly through the brilliance she could still make out the figure of a man standing in the heart of the light.

She turned to Bill. "The roof! We've got to go up on the roof!"

He blinked at her, half-dazed. "Why?"

She didn't know why exactly. A deep part of her was responding to the light, almost as if she recognized it. Whatever the reason, she felt compelled to be up there on the roof to watch this beam of light challenge the darkness.

"Never mind why." She grabbed his hand. "Let's go!" She turned to the others in the room. "Everybody—the roof! The roof!"