The Devil's Heart

TUESDAY MORNING

They had slept unusually late. Sam awakened the young ladies roughly, no gentleness to his touch. He spoke the same message to each young woman: "Get up. Get dressed. Boots, jeans, heavy shirt. Keep a jacket close by. It's only a matter of hours before we have to run for our lives."

"What's happened, Sam?" Nydia asked, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

"I … think we're about to witness the most awesome event to ever occur on the face of this earth.'' He smiled. "Other than that fellow who was born in Bethlehem, that is." He sobered again. "Remember what the voice told us: the calling out of the forces of darkness? It's going to happen tonight."

"He came to you? He told you?"

"No. I just know." Sam shook his head. "I don't know, Nydia—maybe he did come to me in my sleep. I have no recall of any conversation between us. I just woke up and knew it was going to happen."

"I am scared half out of my mind," Linda said.

"That makes it a club of three," Sam replied.

In the lush timber behind the great house, a shadowy figure drifted in and out of the tall trees. While movements seemed vague and uncertain, the tall warrior was actually deep in thought, his musings troubled and sometimes dark with fury. Of all things that held sway outside of the firmament, the warrior hated Satan with a passion that borderlined on disobedience to the teachings of God the Father. Indeed, the warrior had come close to admonition from Him on more than one occasion for his passionate hatred of Satan. The warrior had pleaded with Him for millennia to destroy the Beast once and for all. Have done with the Filthy One. End it. Call His people home.

But the Master of All Things would merely shake His head and say, "Not yet."

And the warrior knew that "not yet" would apply to this blinking in the span of all things, as well. He was not afraid of the od forces; he knew no fear of the demons and the other grotesque creatures that would soon be called to appear. He had destroyed their kind many times in the past, and would this time. No … what troubled the old warrior was the mystery in the great house of the Evil One, and should he alert the young Christian offspring of Balon to that mystery?

No, he finally decided. No, I can do only so much without overstepping the boundaries. Really, he concluded, I have probably interfered too much as it is.

He stopped by the filthy, sin-encrusted circle of dark stones and looked toward the mansion. No, young warrior, you must cope with that mystery by yourself. I will help in other matters, but in this, your strength must be all powerful; your faith all-believing and never wavering; and your cunning at its zenith.

God be with you.