"What the hell is this thing, Stroud? And why's it calling you Esruad?" Nathan wanted to know.
"This is a manifestation of the creature, not the actual creature. It's taunting us."
"Taunting us, or you?"
"It's toying with us," said Stroud firmly. "Damned thing is toying with us. It could simply let the zombies kill us now--"
"Then why doesn't it?"
"Because it wants something from me."
"What? What does it want?"
"I don't know, dammit! Not yet, anyway." Stroud sensed that the creature wanted him to return to it, to face it alone, that the creature somehow knew of his special gifts in combating evil, and that, in a sense, the evil thing had thrown down the gauntlet. But how was Nathan or even Kendra to believe or even understand such a concept?
One of the elevator doors opened and the zombies parted to show them that the car was empty. Stroud instantly understood the maneuver and shouted, "Both of you, get into the elevator car now! Now!"
The other two didn't hesitate and Stroud cautiously backed in last. The doors closed on the now fading form of the monster that'd been too hideous to gaze upon for longer than a second.
"Will this elevator take us to the roof?" asked Stroud.
"To a floor below. You'll have to take the stairs from there." Nathan's voice then became agitated, his gun still gripped in his hand, as he asked, "Why, Stroud? Why you? Why'd it spare you and me and Dr. Cline just now?"
"If I could answer that--"
"And why does it call you Esruad?" asked Kendra, her voice shaking with irritation, her breath coming short.
The elevator door opened on an empty corridor and an observation tower. Stroud saw the sign for the roof and he ushered them along the clear path to safety.
"Come on, we're getting out of here," he told Kendra.
She stopped, however, and demanded an answer.
"There's no time now."
"Make time. I want to know what it means: Esruad."
"Back at the museum. It'll all come clear, I promise."
Nathan, too, wanted answers. He swung Stroud around as if he meant to strike out at him and Stroud instinctively pushed his hand away, gun or no gun.
"Answer me, Stroud, why? What makes you immune to this damnable horror? And tell me why I shouldn't blow a hole through you, suspecting you as I do of somehow collaborating with this bloody supernatural beast."
This made Stroud stop and grab Nathan by the lapels, pushing him hard into the wall, Kendra tugging at Stroud to come away. Stroud caught himself up and let go of the other man, who had held firm to his .38 Police Special.
Stroud rushed on, pushing through a glass door and out into the wind that played over the top of the high rise, sending his hair into a wild gyration. He'd taken Kendra by the hand, bringing her along. He shouted back over his shoulder to Nathan, "Goddammit, Commissioner, I don't know all the answers! That's why I need help. I need Wisnewski and Leonard and more time."
"Why did it let us live?" pressed Nathan, running to catch up. He had seen a lot of good men die today, and he wondered why he was not among the dead.
"It wants me to come to it, to freely sacrifice myself, I believe. And when I do, it wants to play."
"To play?"
"Yeah, that's what it's doing with us all, Nathan, toying with us ... playing with our lives ... determining just how much of our civilized veneer it can strip away before we all turn on one another."
"It wants you. Has it wanted you all along? And would that end this nightmare?"
"You don't really believe you can bargain with the Devil, do you?"
Nathan thought for a moment. "No, I suppose not ... but--"
"No buts about it. When I do sacrifice myself, I'll do so armed with a great deal more than I now have, I pray," said Stroud as he strapped himself into the Gordon helicopter he had commandeered. Some police technicians worked atop the roof and had refueled it. All other police choppers were in service.
Kendra was helped into the seat beside Stroud by Nathan, who waved them off.
"Come with us," shouted Kendra.
"No, no, I'll be needed here. But I'll stay in contact."
"Be careful," Stroud called out to him.
"You, too, Stroud, and good luck. I'm sorry about the ... the..."
"Good luck is sufficient!" shouted Stroud, who sent the rotor blades into whirring battle with the wind. As the chopper lifted off, the image of the monster with snakes feeding out of its eyes filled Stroud's vision ahead. He tilted the chopper into the sky streaked with the wretched sight, slicing through it.
Kendra Cline stared down at Nathan, who was fast disappearing behind them. She felt herself still inwardly trembling at the touch of the gun at her temple, and yet she'd have preferred the quick death of the bullet to what the zombies might have done to her. She, like Nathan, now felt strange toward Stroud, that he was somehow different, because he had been singled out by the evil emanating from the pit, the evil with such power to reach out to take what it wanted from them.
Stroud felt her eyes on him now. He realized that she hadn't seen the apparition of the creature in the night sky, that it was meant only for him. He understood why Nathan might feel threatened by him, but now he was getting the same feeling from Kendra, and this he didn't quite know how to deal with.
"You have no reason to fear me, Kendra," he told her.
She breathed deeply, filling her lungs, holding on to her inner emotional turmoil. Her voice broke when she said, "I ... I know that."
He put a hand on hers, but she pulled it slowly away. "Keep it uppermost in your mind, no matter what happens, Kendra, that what I do is for us all. I will not bargain with this thing, not for my life, not for yours, not for any individual."
"I think I understand," she said, then turned to stare out into the surrounding darkness.
Stroud brought the chopper around, searching for the rooftop of the Museum of Antiquities, which he soon found.
As the helicopter lowered over the mammoth rooftop, Stroud steering by streetlamps and intuition, Kendra played out the events of the past few days in her head, but events and actions and words seemed all as confusing a haze as the night's quickly descending fog over the city. The ominous fog swirled and eddied, and it felt like her thoughts. Was Stroud so very different from other men that this evil being in the pit sought him out to play games with? What kind of man was Stroud, she wondered as she stared at the maw of the blacktopped roof. It appeared from where she sat that Stroud was taking her straight down into Dante's Inferno with him, there to abide somewhere between the sixth and seventh rings, she supposed, and she wondered at the dubious honor he had imposed on her, making her his companion in this occult contest. But she was now so tired and weary of thought that she almost welcomed his telling her when and where to move.
The helicopter's whir set her mind to droning with its even, calming sounds, so different from the horror of its mad gyrations before. Stroud, too, was like the machine: one moment loud and rancorous and the next quiet, gentle and caring. Yet, he was all a mystery; a man who seemed to have more than one past, a man filled with the life of the race itself, like some Greek dancing perpetually in the sand of the ages, or a mad cossack doing daredevil feats on the back of a charging horse.