Piercing the Darkness by Frank Peretti Read Free Book Online Page A

about the rumors I hear?”
    Destroyer puffed a derisive laugh through his flaring nostrils. “They are rumors spread in fear by cowering spirits! If our opponent be this Tal, so much more the thrill of the challenge.”
    “He is mighty.”
    Destroyer countered, “He is clever. His strength is not in his own sword, but in the saints of God. The ranks have made a legend of hisvictory over us in Ashton, but they pay him too much respect. It was the prayers of the saints that defeated us, not this wily Captain of the Host.” Destroyer waved his sword slowly through the air, admiring the burning after-image that trailed behind its razor-sharp edge. “And so it was in this recent, minor setback. But I now have an advantage, Ba-al: I have tasted the enemy’s wiles, I have tested his strength, and I know the source of his power.”
    The Strongman was dubious. “And just how do you expect to thwart him where once you could not?”
    “I will go to the saints first. Already there is plenty in Bacon’s Corner for them to be upset about, plenty to divide them. I will keep them busy censuring and smiting each other, and then their hearts will be far from praying.” He held the sword high; its red glow lit up the room and his yellow eyes reflected the glow in bloodshot crimson. “I will pull Tal’s strength right out from under him!”
    The Strongman was impressed, at least for the moment. “I will commission my best to accompany you. Broken Birch is clumsy at times, but totally devoted to us. Use them at your pleasure. Now go!”

     
    BEN SAT AT his small desk in the front office of the police station and tried to get some paperwork cleared up before going out on patrol. It was a nice little office, with two small desks, a copy machine, some colorful traffic safety posters, and a low wood railing partition. Right now the morning sun was streaming in through the big windows, warming the place up. Under different circumstances he’d always enjoyed working here.
    But Ben was far from cheery this morning, and his mind was far from his paperwork. He’d seen Mulligan’s final report on the so-called suicide, and found it unbelievable. He couldn’t be sure, but the photographs of the body and of the surrounding conditions simply did not match what he remembered seeing. Suddenly there was a rope around the woman’s neck—last night Ben saw no rope around her neck, and even Mrs. Potter said the woman had the rope in her hand. The spilled goat feed had mysteriously vanished, and the straw around the body seemed undisturbed, not at all in the trampled, kicked-around mess it was in last night.
    Ben didn’t like the thought of it, but it was obvious that the scene—and the photographs of it—had been sanitized, as if Mulligan and Leonard had done away with all the evidence before taking the photographs and writing up the report.
    As if that wasn’t enough to stew about, there was also Mulligan’s deriding and accusing of Tom Harris, and in front of reporters. And what in the world was the press doing in the station anyway? A lot of things were looking suspicious to Ben right now.
    The Hampton County Star was lying on the corner of his desk. He had to go all through the paper before he could find even the slightest mention—and that’s all it was—of the death at the Potter farm. The article was more a space filler than any real news, as if the reporter dropped all the facts on the floor somewhere and forgot about them . . . or purposely ditched them there. The whole thing felt wrong, so wrong it turned Ben’s stomach.
    I’ve got to get out of here, get out on patrol. I don’t want to talk to Mulligan, don’t even want to look at him.
    But Mulligan was hard to ignore—he liked it that way. He came up to the front, belched loudly, and sat behind the desk across the room like a load of grain landing on a wharf. He had the investigation report in his hand, and started flipping through it for one last look.
    “Well,” he