Reign of Evil - 03 (16 page)

His mind sought to flee where his body was unable. What was this? Was it a nightmare? If so, he desperately wanted to wake—

They lunged in pairs, grabbing his legs, ripping, tearing, raking teeth along the edges of his femurs. Another beast grabbed his head. He felt a tremendous pressure. His eyes bulged from his face. Somehow, his gaze locked in on a young woman across the street, red hair, white dress, taking picture after picture with an old Polaroid camera.

Then came a pop.

He didn’t know how he knew, but he knew that he was dead. For one second he saw everything, knew everything, and understood exactly why he’d been murdered. But then it was sucked away from him and, as if he lived on the end of a whip, he snapped back into an existence he knew all too well.

He ran with the others.

He bayed.

And then came the King.

CHAPTER 24

CHICKSANDS RAF, ENGLAND. MORNING.

Everyone from Section 9 including Sassy Moore stood inside the hangar watching the gargantuan plane pull forward. Although the Royal Air Force had C-17s in their inventory, there weren’t many of them. The Globemaster was the sort of plane that looked like it ate smaller ones. Preeti, Trev, and Sassy, on the one hand, stared at it in wonder. Ian, on the other hand, projected the same bored confidence he’d had when fighting the homunculi.

The hangar was a new addition to Section 9 office space. Thanks to a phone call from Lord Robinson, space which hadn’t been available to the diminishing equities of England’s premier supernatural defense force suddenly appeared. A hangar that had been used for storage was quickly emptied. RAF airmen had then moved Section 9’s paltry belongings out of the basement and into the twenty-five-by-twenty-five-meter space. With two offices situated at the rear of the hangar, one was cleared for Sassy and Preeti to stay in for the duration of the emergency and the other was reinforced to hold a prisoner SEAL Team 666 had said they were bringing. The rest of them, SEAL Team 666 included, would sleep on cots in a common area created on the hangar’s left side. The right side had been set up with their communications suite, computer systems, a projector that blasted a map on a white screen, and several tables and chairs.

Walker stood at the front of the group waiting outside the hangar. For all the welcome he’d had from Section 9, SEAL Team 666 was his unit and the team members were closer to him than anyone else. Where he’d once set his life against the image of his dead brother, now he had living, breathing replacements against which to measure himself. He remembered the grudge he’d held against Holmes, who’d been in charge of the SEAL team when his brother had died in a roadside bombing. Then after Holmes had relayed the classified details of his brother’s death, his feelings had all but evaporated.

Holmes could have no more influenced the way Walker’s brother lived and died than he could Walker. Although Walker and his brother were SEALs through and through, their inner cores had been forged long before. Their ideas of right and wrong, their need to be heroic, their desire to make the world a better place, had been engineered within them on a genetic level.

The bottom line was that his brother had died saving children. Some called his actions stupid. Some called his death a waste. But Walker knew that his brother would have done it again given the chance.

Laws had explained it well. “Sometimes the death doesn’t mean anything except in context for the living. I think your brother’s death can help you understand the man. I didn’t know him, but I know people who did and they all say he was a great SEAL and a terrific guy. He was a shepherd without a flock. I think he punished himself for not being able to take care of you and sought out avenues where he could take care of others.”

Walker almost laughed. He could absolutely relate. He flashed to Jen, realizing that he’d been feeling his own guilt, wondering if things would have been different had he been there. He struggled to shake the idea free. It was drama. She was gone. The only thing he could do now was stop the thing that killed her and find a way to release her soul, if what the witch said was true. That was his single focus. Blame could wait, if it was ever levied at all.

The Globemaster came to a halt. Aircrew from the RAF ran up and chocked the wheels. Then the rear ramp descended. First out was a pearl-white Cadillac Escalade with smoked-out windows. An unfamiliar man sat behind the wheel. He pulled the car down the ramp.

Behind him came the SEALs, each carrying several go bags.

Holmes, Laws, YaYa, and Yank.

Walker felt elation shoot through him. These were his boys.

When they got closer, he started toward them. He grinned but kept his head down. The closer he got to them, the more full the feeling was in his chest. They dropped their bags and, as one, embraced him. He felt the dam burst and he began to sob. They surrounded him, protecting him, keeping the world at bay, so he could mourn in the comfort of his company of friends.

Ten minutes later, after introductions, Holmes had Genie bring out Van Dyke. The man’s wrists and ankles had been zip-tied, but as Van Dyke stood him on the tarmac Genie cut the zip ties on his ankles.

Van Dyke stretched his legs, limping slightly from a bandaged gunshot wound. As disheveled as he was, he carried himself with a certain elegance. With his chin up and his eyes staring straight, he let Genie march him into the hangar. He sat in a chair that had been set up in front of the others. Genie zip-tied his feet to the chair’s front legs, then stood and backed away. YaYa handed him an HK416. He took it and held it ready.

Holmes and Ian had the floor. They bade everyone have a seat.

Sassy refused. Instead, she pointed at Van Dyke. “Do you even know what you have here?”

Walker watched as Holmes appraised her. The SEAL team leader knew she was a witch. Walker had relayed every aspect of their interactions. That said, he was curious how Holmes would deal with her.

“We’re hoping you can help with that, Ms. Sassy.”

Walker grinned, knowing it was an intentional error. Holmes, however, stood straight-faced.

“Sassy is my first name.”

“Of course it is. What was your question, ma’am?”

She dropped her arm and gave Holmes a look. Then she turned and approached Van Dyke, her high heels clipping against the concrete floor. She began to circle him, her arms crossed, her face with an air of appraisal. She leaned in and sniffed, then made a face. She backed away and moved her fingers and hands over her face and chest, as if she were casting a spell. When she was done, she looked at Holmes.

“You say he was in America?”

Holmes nodded.

“Was he being kept prisoner by any chance?”

“How’d you know?” Laws stepped forward carrying a box, which he sat on one of the tables at the front of the room.

“Not that I’ve ever seen one before, but they’d be able to escape given a chance.” She concentrated on Van Dyke, who’d been watching her the entire time, his face shifting back and forth between interest and fear. “You have a tattoo?”

Van Dyke nodded and looked pointedly to his left breast.

She waved a hand at the area. “Can someone please remove his shirt?”

Laws came over and ripped the buttons free of the shirt, revealing three interconnected crescent moons.

The witch hissed. She held her hand out toward the tattoo and it glowed gold. Then she spun. “How in the seven bloody hells did someone get a Tuatha Dé Dannan inside this man?”

Laws walked over to Yank, who pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and passed it over.

“I told you she’d know,” Laws said.

Yank looked anything but pleased.

Sassy suddenly looked concerned. “You knew what it was and you brought it here?”

“Here’s our thinking.” Holmes moved to the front of the room and opened the box. He was the only one in position to see inside it. He glanced in, then turned to Sassy Moore. “Hubert Van Dyke is on the board of the Red Grove. A money trail can be traced from the group of druids who usually perform the Winter Solstice ceremony at Stonehenge to the Red Grove. Mr. Van Dyke also sits on the board of the Bohemian Grove, which has long been rumored to be a place where rich men go to get even richer. When we went to see him, we found in his employ a golem, which was not only acting as his housekeeper but was also guarding him.”

Holmes tipped the box so the golem’s head rolled out.

Preeti screamed as the face of the woman blinked and snarled.

“Hubert, who seems to be possessed by a Tuatha Dé Dannan, and the undead head of the golem seem to be our only clues. We felt it was important to bring them along so that experts might be able to examine them.” He turned to look around the room. “You, Ms. Moore, seem to be our only expert.”

Her eyes were fixed on the head. “You can call me Sassy.”

Holmes raised an eyebrow. “Indeed.”

She stepped over to the table and picked up a pen. Then she poked the head. It blinked and looked at her. “You going to tell me who made you?”

“Fuck off,” said the head.

Sassy grinned. “This is going to be fun.” She pointed at Van Dyke. “That, on the other hand, is going to get us in a load of trouble. I wished you had told me you were bringing one of the Sidhe here. I would have warded the place even more. Everything supernatural, including the Wild Hunt, knows that a Sidhe is out in the open. She will draw them to us.” She poked the head in the eye with the pen and sighed. “So now I’m going to have to spend the day warding the entire hangar.” She put her hands on her hips and glanced around. “And it’s a bloody big hangar.”

CHAPTER 25

CHICKSANDS RAF, ENGLAND. AFTERNOON.

As it turned out, she didn’t need to ward the entire hangar. Just the room they were using as Van Dyke’s cell and a pentacle she placed in a cleared space at the front of the room, beside the worktables that had been set up for her use. The golem head sat in a smaller pentacle surrounded by salt. It looked none too happy but couldn’t do anything about it.

The SEALs integrated themselves into Section 9 and were data mining. One set was to determine all the known mounds in England, trying to create an overlay they could use to predict the Wild Hunt’s next move. They were also still searching for CCTV disturbances. Finally, Laws was conducting an Internet search for any and all artifacts linked to the Tuatha Dé Dannan.

Walker had just come from the bathroom when YaYa approached him.

“Walk, can I speak with you?”

“You don’t have to ask, YaYa.”

The Arab-American smiled weakly. “Let’s get some air.”

Walker glanced at the others who were hard at work, then at YaYa. Something was bothering the man. Even if they didn’t have the time, Walker didn’t think they could afford not to have the time. The last thing they needed was for one of them to lose concentration in the middle of the action.

He and YaYa exited the hangar together. They left the flight line and found a path that led through a manicured lawn to a five-story chain-link fence. Like military men the world around, they soon found themselves in step with each other.

Finally it was YaYa who spoke. “Do you ever get used to it?”

Walker smiled easily. “Not sure I know what you mean?”

“That supernatural, early-warning radar you have.”

Walker flashed back to when he was a child, locked in a closet and possessed by the Malaysian grave demon. “It comes with a price.”

“Don’t I know it!”

Walker stopped and turned to YaYa. “Are you kidding?”

“I wish.” He related to Walker what happened when they went to get Van Dyke. “It froze me. It was as if the thing inside of Van Dyke reached inside me and turned off a switch.”

Walker shook his head. “It’s not like that. I know what you think you felt, but that isn’t it.”

“Are you sure?”

They resumed walking. “Absolutely. This is just new to you, man. For a long time it was new to me because I refused to deal with it. But you have the opportunity to hone it. To refine it and use it as a tool.”

“You don’t get it, Walker. I don’t want any part of it. Every time it happens I remember who I was and how that demon got into me and wouldn’t come out.” He held up his left arm. “I cut off my own arm just to try and kill it. To have even a shadow of a memory come back is … I just don’t want it.”

“I’m with you. But there’s no going back. It happened. You can either deal with it or crawl under your covers, suck your thumb, and never come out.” He put a hand on YaYa’s shoulder. “But then you knew that, didn’t you?”

He sighed. “I guess I just needed to talk about it.”

The path ended at the chain-link fence. On the other side was an antenna farm—hundreds of different antennae, all shapes and sizes, as if they’d grown from the loamy earth. The two men stared for a moment; then Walker turned to YaYa.

“I have an idea.” He grinned as he took off running back to the hangar. When YaYa caught up with Walker, he added, “If it works, we might be able to get to the Red Grove faster than we thought.”

They ran the rest of the way back. When Walker entered the hangar he was ready to tell Laws and Holmes his idea, but he never got the chance. Everyone’s eyes were focused on the multiple flatscreens they’d affixed to one wall. Each screen showed a different variation of the same story.

A refugee encampment in Blackpool was overrun by monsters. The CCTV cameras failed to capture any of them, but someone uploaded some camera shots containing some stunning, unforgettable images.

YaYa pointed to an image. “What are those?”

“Hounds from the Wild Hunt. Created from the souls of those who have been culled, molded into something unstoppable, something that makes the bogeyman look like the Easter bunny.”

A Frankenstein combination of man and beast, the beasts had human arms for their front legs, and the back legs of a wolf. Their faces were an amalgam, but the eyes that were set in a simian face were unmistakably human.

One screen displayed shots of a man being torn apart, a great hound chewing through his head as it stared into the camera.