Over the next eight hours, all three forces prepared at a frantic pace.
The guild mobilized every available demon hunter except those guarding Hell and the balance zones, dividing them into seven teams. Each team was equipped with borax weapons and specially made explosives. Crowley deployed three hundred mid-ranking demons from Hell; they were unafraid of infection by Leviathan fragments.
The nature of demons countered that of Leviathans, so the infection spread much more slowly.
Using his remaining angelic power, Castiel drew up a precise map of energy nodes. The seven marked secondary nodes were located at Grants Pass Waterworks, the basement of Sulfur Falls Hospital, the food processing centers of three large supermarkets, and two underground reservoirs.
The main node was on the top floor of Dick Roman's corporate headquarters.
A ritual was underway there.
The night of the operation, at one in the morning.
Thick clouds blanketed the sky over Grants Pass. There was no moon, and not a single star could be seen. Only the city lights glowed a murky yellow beneath the clouds.
The air was heavy with humidity and the stifling heat that preceded a downpour, making pedestrians irritable and hurried. No one lingered or shopped.
The corporate headquarters was a forty-eight-story glass curtain-wall tower, its top floor brightly lit at this moment.
Through high-powered binoculars, they could see that the top floor had been converted into an open-air ritual site. A massive pale-yellow magic circle had been carved into the ground. At its center stood a satellite signal transmitter, surrounded by twelve black-robed humanoid figures. Their skin was transparent, revealing the yellow substance writhing within them.
Dick Roman stood beside the transmitter, holding a stone tablet fragment. It was a replica of the Word of God Tablet, engraved with the command code for enhancing