Evil Star

fat, black bodies and beat-ing wings. They flew out of the cracks in an endless swarm —
    thousands of them, then millions, then thou-sands of millions, a plague of flies thicker than the air, filling the entire sky. Then, as Matt watched in horror, they began to re-form themselves. They flew together, forming the shapes of men, armed soldiers. Each man was made up of perhaps ten thousand flies and in an instant there was a whole army of them, standing at attention in long lines that stretched all the way back to the mountains.
    They were the advance guard. But there were still more creatures climbing out of the bowels of the Earth, finally breaking free from the world where they had been held captive for so many centuries.
    The ones that came now were like no recognizable life-forms. They were just strange, freakish shapes with the beginnings of arms and legs stretching out of them. Some had horns, some teeth, some gleeful, bulging eyes. Some were part animal and part human, an alligator on legs, a pig the size of a horse, a huge toad with the head of a bird. Each one was more deformed, more horrible than the one Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star before, and they continued to pour out of the ground until the entire desert floor was covered by them. Some were black. Some were gray. Occasionally there were bursts of color: green feathers, glistening white teeth, the dirty yellow of pus dripping from an open wound. They stood there, breathing the air of the world they had come to destroy with the fly soldiers stretching out behind them, waiting for their first command.
    But their true commander was still to come.
    A fork of lighting splintered through the night sky and the rumbling deepened. One after the other, thirteen more figures in the form of men appeared on horseback, dressed in rusting armor and rags. Each one of them was a giant, ten feet tall. There was a flash of lightning
    — the entire sky blazed — and in that instant their shapes changed.
    Now they were skeletons, on skeleton animals. Another flash and they were ghosts, creatures made up of smoke and air. They made no sound and moved like shadows, rippling across the desert surface. Once again they seemed to shim-mer and become solid and stood in a semicircle, waiting. It was colder than ever. Their breath was turning white, curl-ing around their lips.
    At last the King of the Old Ones rose out of the desert floor.
    Matt trembled. The king was larger than any of the creatures that had appeared so far. If he had wanted to, he could surely have stretched up and touched the clouds. Each one of his fingernails would have been larger than Matt himself. It was difficult to see very much of him. Dark-ness clung to the terrible creature like a cloak, hiding him. The King of the Old Ones was too gigantic to be seen, too horrible to be understood.
    Very slowly, he became aware of Matt, sensing him in the same way that a poisonous snake might sense its prey. Matt felt the creature Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star turn its eyes on him. He began to search for any of the power that might still be inside him even though he knew he would never have enough. There had to be five of them.
    Matt got to his feet.
    "Go back!" he shouted. His voice was tiny. He was noth-ing more than an insect. “You have no place here."
    The King of the Old Ones laughed. It was a hideous sound, deep and deathly, like thunder, echoing all around.
    A quarter of a mile away, lying beside the helicopter, Pedro heard the sound and turned to where he knew Matt must be standing.
    "Matt. . ." he whispered.
    Matt heard him. The prophecy had been wrong. He wasn't quite alone after all. Pedro was nearby, and if there were two them, that doubled his power. With renewed strength, he got to his feet and lashed out, sending all the energy that he had left toward the huge creature that was standing in front of him. The whole desert rippled.
    The King of the Old Ones screamed and fell back a step. All the other creatures, feeling his pain, screamed, too. Later it would be said that the sound had been heard all over Peru, though nobody had been able to say what it was or from where it had come. It seemed to Matt that he was win-ning. The Old Ones were withering in front of him, shriveling like scraps of paper in a bonfire. Pedro was with him and if the two of them could just continue a few sec-onds more ...
    But Matt had taken his power to its limit, and it was burning him