I had stumbled to a stop, and I swear I would have broken the circle right then so that I could run back and fall at his feet, had he not raised his gorgeous arms and called in a voice that was deep and rich and full of power, "Arise with me, children!"

Raven Mockers burst from the hole in the ground and filled the sky, and it was the fear that filled me at the sight of their terribly familiar misshapen bodies that broke the spell Kalona's beauty had cast on me. They shrieked and circled their father, who laughed and held his arms up higher so that their wings could caress him.

"We have to get out of here!" Aphrodite hissed.

"Yes, now! Hurry," I said, totally myself again. The ground was no longer shaking, so we were able to increase our pace. I was still moving backwards, so I watched in fascinated horror as Neferet approached the newly freed angel. She stopped before him and swept a low, graceful curtsey.

He inclined his head regally, his eyes already glinting with lust as he looked at her. "My Queen," he said.

"My Consort," she said. Then she turned to face the crowd that had stopped milling around in panic and was instead staring in fascination at Kalona.

"This is Erebus, come to earth finally!" Neferet proclaimed. "Bow to Nyx's consort, and our new Lord on earth."

Many of the watching crowd, especially the fledglings, instantly dropped to their knees. I looked for Stark, but didn't see him. I did see Shekinah begin to stride forward, picking her way around worshipful fledglings, her wise face guarded, her expression fixed in a deep frown. As she walked, many of the Sons of Erebus joined her, looking alert, but I couldn't tell if they were questioning Kalona, as Shekinah obviously was, or if they thought to protect him from the High Priestess. Before Shekinah could break through the crowd and confront the risen angel, Neferet lifted her hand and made a slight flicking motion with her wrist. It was a gesture so small and insignificant that had I not been watching for it, I would not have seen it.

Shekinah's eyes went wide, she gasped, grabbed her neck, and then crumpled to the ground. The Sons of Erebus rushed to her body. It was at that moment that I took the cell phone out of my pocket and keyed up Sister Mary Angela's number.

"Zoey?" she answered on the first ring.

"Get out. Get out now," I said.

"I understand." She sounded utterly calm.

"Take Grandma! You have to take Grandma with you!"

"Of course I will. Look after yourself and your people. I shall look after her."

"I'll call you when I can." I flipped the phone shut.

When I looked up from the phone I saw that Neferet had turned her attention to us.

"We're there!" Aphrodite said. "Get that damn door open now!"

"It is already open," said a familiar voice. I glanced behind me at the wall to see Darius standing beside a cracked trapdoor that seemed to appear magically in the bricks and rock. And, with a huge rush of relief, I saw that Jack was standing beside the warrior, bawling his eyes out, but in one piece with Duchess close to his side.

"If you're with us, you have to be against them," I told Darius, jerking my chin back toward the House of Night and the Sons of Erebus who filled the school grounds and who were not making one move against Kalona.

"I've made my choice," said the warrior.

"Can we please get out of here? She's looking at us!" Jack said.

"Zoey! You've got to buy us some time," Aphrodite said. "Use the elements--all of them. Shield us."

I nodded and closed my eyes, centering myself. Vaguely in the back of my mind I knew Aphrodite was ordering around the red fledglings and telling them to stay close, stay inside our circle, even if it was mushed and not really circle-shaped anymore as we crammed ourselves through the trapdoor. But I was only partly there. The rest of me was commanding wind, fire, water, earth, and spirit to cover us, protect us, to blot us from Neferet's view. As they hurried to obey me, I felt a drain on my strength like I'd never known before. Of course I'd never tried to command all five of the elements at once to do such powerful work for me--it felt as if my mind, my will, was trying to sprint a marathon.

I gritted my teeth and held on. The elements swarmed above and around us. I could hear the wind and smell the salt of ocean as a strong breeze swirled a thick mist around us. Then thunder rolled in the suddenly cloudy sky and with a crack! a shard of lightning sizzled down, hitting a tree a few yards in front of us. The tree seemed to expand as earth magnified it, so that I opened my eyes as one of the red fledglings was guiding me backwards and through the trapdoor to see our little group completely shielded by the fury of the elements. In the midst of that chaos, I heard the wonderful sound of "mee-uf-ow!" and I looked through the trapdoor to see Nala sitting on the ground outside the school at the head of a bevy of cats, including the horrible and very disheveled-looking Maleficent, who was staying close to the Twins' hateful Beelzebub.