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tridge's deaths look like happy hour.
"Take Grace OUT! NOW!" Gabriel screamed at
Mosely.
Mosely was more than ready. He began backing away from Tetelo, pushing Grace
toward one of the hallways.
"Gabriel, you have nothing to protect you!"
Grace protested.
"Yes I do! GO ON!"
The two disappeared into the hallway's mouth.
Tetelo remained facing that direction for a moment, head tilted like a child
listening. The posture in her stance changed, relaxed. Gabriel could almost
feel her smiling. When she turned, he saw that he was not mistaken. It was a
horrible,
wicked smile.
"I will get it back, you know. You will be dead, and they have no idea how to
protect it. You've wasted many lives for nothing."
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He pushed her words from his mind. They might end up to be true, but there was
no time to worry about that now.
"Malia, I want you to listen to me. MALIA! I
know you're in there. Fight her!"
Tetelo's eyes widened in mock alarm.
"Oh, how brave you are! Calling on your 'love' for help! Malia cannot help
you! Will not help you!"
"You've caged her, like you've done all your daughters. She doesn't want you
any-
more, and without her you're nothing! Malia, push her out!"
Tetelo advanced on him. She reached out an endlessly long arm and clenched a
fistful of his hair with a grip like iron. She began to walk toward the stone
table, dragging him behind her like a misbehaving puppy. Her physical power
was enormous. He couldn't escape her without ripping out half his scalp.
"Malia, hear me! I know you can fight her!" he said, struggling to keep his
feet under him.
"SHUT UP," Tetelo snapped. She dragged him to the table, but the lid was
raised. This seemed to annoy her it was too high for a proper altar now, and
the blood of Dr. John made it slick. She shoved him up against the table's
side, obviously determined to kill him beside the table rather than mess with
it.
"MALIA!" he screamed, trying to reach her.
Tetelo took the ku-bha-sah knife from her belt and raised it in the hand that
was not ensnaring his hair. He was going to die.
Then he saw that the arm that held the knife was shaking, fighting with
gravity like a ball hov-
ering by itself in midair. Tetelo's face changed. He looked up into Malia's
eyes.
"I'm not strong enough," she said sadly, her eyes desperate. "I can't hold
her!"
"You can! Help me!" he urged.
But she was losing it. Tetelo flickered across
Malia's expression like candlelight. Malia man-
aged two more words: "The idol."
They were no more out of the mouth than the same lips twisted with rage, spat
curses.
"GODDAMN YOU TO HELL SHUT UP!"
The arm flew downward in a stab, but the other hand, the one holding his hair,
had loosened
when Malia surfaced and Tetelo hadn't had time or thought enough to reclench
it. Gabriel pulled away to his left, hard. For the second time that night,
Malia's arm took the jolt of knife striking marble full force.
Then Gabriel glanced over the edge of the open table and saw it the raised lid
revealed a small platform. On the platform was the figure he'd seen on the
stone table at Benin a squat, ancient stone figure, ten inches tall, with
huge, staring eyes and a jutting barbed penis. He grabbed it.
"NO!" Tetelo screamed.
And then he was lifting the idol over his head;
still sprawled on the floor, lifting it and bringing it down with all his
might against the lip of the table. The figurine shattered into a million
pieces in his hands, like shrapnel exploding.
The response was instantaneous. From deep in the bowels of the earth a voice
called in a bel-
lowing rumble. The room began to shake in a massive earthquake, the lights
flickered once, twice, then went out. He clutched at the floor in terror,
found himself sliding across its surface like a pebble skipping across the top
of a pounding drum head.
There was a horrible crack! and the stone table split in two. The floor
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beneath it split as well, the edges of the earth pushing upward. A chasm was
opening up and out from the center of the hounfour.
Someone screamed in terror.
He could find nothing to hold on to. The tilting angle of the floor sent him
rolling into the wall.
He tried to protect his head as pieces of plaster and rock cascaded down all
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