ONSET: STAY OF EXECUTION

GLYNN STEWART

ONSET: Stay of Execution © 2018 Glynn Stewart

Illustration © 2018 Shen Fei

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to any persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Other Books by Glynn Stewart

1

THE ADVANTAGE of literally superhuman hearing was that Commander David White could hear his phone ringing even on a firing range with full safety gear. Given the degree of control the stocky cop-turned-supernatural-SWAT-commander had over his hearing, he probably didn’t even need the ear protection.

As a team commander, though, he had to set the example. His people’s supernatural powers allowed them to ignore a lot of standard precautions if they needed to, but getting into that habit was just stupid.

He fired his last two shots downrange, emptying the magazine of the heavy fifty-caliber pistol he was shooting. He quickly ejected the magazine, cleared the chamber and safed the weapon before returning it to the holster on his hip.

The firing range was underground in the center of the Campus, the fortified headquarters of the United States of America’s Office for the National Supernatural Enforcement Teams. He didn’t need to be carrying a loaded firearm, and again, it was a good example.

He left his team continuing their training and stepped out of the range. The heavy sound-sealing door closed behind him and he removed his ear protection—and his phone started ringing again.

That was probably not a good sign. It had been a bad few weeks for David. For ONSET. For the USA.

A lot of people had died when North America’s Vampire Familias had thrown a last-ditch assault at their own breeding creche to stop the US government from controlling their future. The vampires had failed, and the remainder of that grotesque parahuman subspecies had come to a compromise.

Thousands of people had died along the way, many of them at the hands of the vampires themselves. Many more at the hands of David White and his people.

He answered the phone.

“Commander White.”

“David, it’s Warner,” Major Traci Warner snapped at him. The Mage was ONSET’s second-in-command and the woman who ran the Campus. “Are you near a TV?”

He glanced around.

“I think there’s one in the range waiting room; why?”

“We got five fucking minutes’ warning that we were about to be fucked,” the Major told him. “Get to a TV and turn it on. CNN, BBC, doesn’t matter. The idiots are being carried live across the planet.”

David stepped out into the plain waiting room and found the remote for the TV. Flipping to CNN, he found himself staring at a relatively standard press conference in front of a seemingly familiar symbol of a stylized eye.

A dark-haired Indian woman was speaking, and the banner under her told him what the problem was.

Dr. Elizabeth Gupta was one of the monitoring seismologists for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization. The people who used seismic tracking to identify nukes.

“Dr. Gupta!” a reporter shouted. “Is it true that your team has been investigating the Crater Lake explosion?”

David shivered. On the phone, Warner dissolved into repeated cursing.

“We were,” she responded in softly accented English. “We have contacted the United States government for clarification, but given the number of questions and the lack of said clarification, we have called this press conference.”

“Do you have a statement?” another reporter demanded.

“If you will allow me to get to it,” Gupta said dryly.

The reporters slowly quieted.

“In the aftermath of the Crater Lake Incident, many questions have been asked over what kind of weapon was detonated by the terrorists there,” she told the reporters and David sighed. “Our American friends have told us that a conventional bunker-buster weapon was stolen and detonated when the plane carrying it was shot down by the US Air Force.”

David’s phone was silent now. He wasn’t sure if Warner had hung up on him or just stopped swearing, but he was fixated on the screen. The CTBTO received most of its funding and resources from the USA. They couldn’t possibly be…

“Our analysis suggests that if this was a conventional weapon, it was of a type and force that the US military had never confessed to existing,” Gupta noted. “Fallout and other scans suggest a conventional weapon, yes, agreeing with the official announcement.

“But the seismic data does not.”

“What do you mean?” one of the reporters demanded.

“The seismic data shows that the explosion at Crater Lake was equivalent to sixty thousand tons of conventional TNT,” Gupta said precisely. “In common parlance, a sixty-kiloton nuclear bomb. We are unaware of any conventional weapon capable of that magnitude of force that could be carried on a single plane.

“The CTBTO has no choice but to conclude that the United States has developed—and either deployed or had stolen—a new form of clean nuclear weapon. We have asked for clarification on this point but it has not been provided.”

The reporters exploded in questions and David turned off the TV.

“Major?” he asked.

“I’m here,” she said flatly.

“What happens now?”

They’d done everything in their power to conceal that a nuclear bomb had been detonated. They’d used magic to contain the radiation, focus the fireball. They hadn’t even thought about the seismic monitoring systems.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But three new Code Reds just flashed up on the map, and we’ve run out of active-duty teams.

“Get your people suited up, Commander. We may not know what’s coming, but I guarantee you that demons popping up in urban areas is a bigger immediate problem!”

DAVID PUT the ear protection on for long enough to enter the range and hit the buzzer that flashed a brilliant light and noise to declare “range safe.” His people laid down their weapons and turned toward him.

Theoretically, an ONSET strike team was made up of six supernaturals rated as “combat-capable” by ONSET’s analysts. In practice, the largest ONSET Thirteen had ever been under his command was four, and it was currently only three.

Including him.

His two subordinates doffed their hearing protectors and turned to face him. Shevon McCreery was a lanky woman with a shaven head, an Empowered with superhuman vision and kinesthetic sense. She was the team’s helicopter pilot. Chris “Stone” Johnston shared McCreery’s height—both towered six inches above their Commander—and David’s bulk, making the big man the largest member of the trio by far. He was also Empowered, stronger and tougher than a human normally and able to convert portions of his body to granite to absorb impacts or attacks. He was the team’s gunner.

Given that Stone also shaved his head, David was the odd man out on the team to still have hair at all.

“What’s up, boss?” Stone asked. His voice was oddly pitched, a strangely high sound coming from so massive a man: the legacy of a long-ago throat wound.

“Short-term, we’ve got more Code Reds popping up,” David told them. “We’re being called out to deal with one.”

A Code Red was a major supernatural incident, a demon-summoning portal or something big and nasty waking up. Before David had joined ONSET, a Code Red had been a once-a-month occurrence.

“With what’s up on the board now, we’re on seven in the last week,” he continued grimly. “The teams on active duty are swamped, so we’re being called back to the fray earlier than anyone would like.”

“Are we getting any kind of backup?” McCreery asked. “I mean, the three of us will take on the damn world if we need to, but…three Empowered against a Code Red?”

“My impression is that Kate is getting called up, same as us,” David replied. Kate Mason was the commander of ONSET Fifteen, the other team that had been sent on leave after Crater Lake.

The third team that had been at Crater Lake, well…they weren’t in a state to be deployed again yet.

“Once I’ve had the target confirmed, I’ll see what I can coordinate with local resources,” he concluded grimly. “We’ll need at least a Mage, if we can find one.”

Local resources were, if they were lucky, the already-deputized Elfin Warrior paramilitaries. If they were unlucky…he could end up drafting a local civilian Mage or, worse, vampire assistance.

“We’ll find out before we’re in the air,” he promised them. “But we need to get moving fast.

“If we’ve already got a Code Red on the board, people are likely to start dying—and it’s our job to make sure that doesn’t happen!”

2

“TALK TO ME, CYNTHIA,” David ordered as he strode across the concrete toward the helicopter. Clad in his full combat gear as he was, the sound-muffling on his helmet allowed him to speak despite the sound of the Pendragon gunship spinning up her engines.

“The good news is that the Red Zone is in a functionally abandoned chunk of Detroit’s old suburbs,” the ex-CIA analyst who worked as ONSET Thirteen’s mission control told him. “Officially, no one is living within a mile or so of the place.”

“I hear a but coming,” the Commander noted as he slotted his M4-Omicron carbine into a rack on the inside of the aircraft, nodding to Stone as the other Agent settled into his own seat. A quick thumbs-up from Stone told him his subordinate was also on the channel.

“You get into these regions of Detroit and the records aren’t reliable,” Cynthia Leitz warned him. “There’s no functioning city services. No power, no water, nothing. So, no one is keeping track of where anybody is—and the people that are here don’t want to be found.”

“Which means we don’t actually know the area is abandoned,” he said grimly. “And local authorities aren’t going to evac for us.”

“Local authorities don’t go here,” she agreed. “Worse, I think I have found something at the center of the Zone.”

David sighed, closing his eyes as the helicopter lifted off.

“How bad?” he asked.

“Interfaith charity clinic and safe injection site,” Leitz said quietly. “Whatever is going down is hitting some of the most vulnerable people in the United States.”

“Damn,” he replied. “Do we have a clue what’s going on yet?”

“Just an ugly spike on the thaumic scanners so far,” she told him. “We’ll have overhead about twenty minutes before you arrive.”

“Local support?”

The channel was silent.

“Anything?” he asked.

“Nothing I’ve been able to confirm,” she said quietly. “The Elfin chapter in the region doesn’t have a Warrior detachment, and we don’t have any solid links with the local supernaturals.”

“Understood. Keep your ear to the ground and keep me in the loop. We’re on our way.”

A PENDRAGON WAS FASTER than any helicopter had a right to be, but it was a long way from the mountains above Colorado Springs to Detroit. If there’d been anyone closer, they would have been sent.

More and more David worried for the future of both the organization he served and the country he was sworn to protect. If they were so desperate that a half-strength team had to be pulled from their leave and sent across the half the country…

He didn’t want to finish that thought. The overhead now coming in from the satellite over Detroit was creating more questions than answers.

The Red Zone was an unkempt street, pavement cracked with overgrown weeds and abandoned houses slowly slumping their way toward collapse. This wasn’t one of the parts of Detroit the city was trying to salvage.

This was part of Detroit that everybody had written off—except, apparently, for a few desperate holdouts and some very determined nurses and doctors who insisted that no one would go entirely without care.

The charity had taken over the largest, probably most intact house on the street, cleaned off its exterior, replaced the windows, and set up a clinic. Presumably, they were running a generator of some kind, as there was no power here at all, but the clinic looked clean and functional, a sharp contrast to the abandoned street around it.

But the building was still. The door hung half-open, shifting slightly in the breeze with no one coming to close it.

“We’re fifteen minutes out,” McCreery reported.

“It looks like a cemetery in a ghost town,” Stone replied. “It stinks.”

“Thaumic readings are off the damn scale in the clinic,” Leitz told them. “There’s a single point source overwhelming everything, but it’s rippling out across the entire neighborhood. Something is in there, and it’s big enough its signature could hide almost anything else.”

“Right. Any sign of civilians in the building?” David asked.

“Thermals are all over the place,” the analyst replied, and David tapped a command to bring up that data from the satellite.

By all over the place, Leitz apparently meant completely nonsensical. There were no signatures that suggested people. Just…blotches of heat that were too big to be individual humans. Entire rooms that looked to be warmer than body temperature.

“Have we run a self-check on the infrared imagers?” he asked.”

“Already done, yeah,” Leitz replied. “I suggest McCreery uses the Pendragon’s thermal cameras as well; from close up you’ll get a better view than the satellite can, but…”

“It doesn’t look good,” David concluded. He gripped the sword he wore at his waist. “If we can’t confirm a lack of civilians, I can’t justify blowing the house apart from the sky.

“McCreery, you’ll drop Stone and I off two hundred feet up the road as quietly as you can and go to overwatch. We’ll recon on the ground. If I give the word, I want you to turn that entire clinic into silver-laced ash, clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then let’s make this happen.”

THE PENDRAGON WAS JUST as much quieter than it should be as it was faster. It had begun life as a design for a supersonic tilt-rotor aircraft before being canceled as too expensive and impractical.

Picked up by the Omicron Branch of the US government, the design had been completed—and then parts wrapped with magic and enchantment before final assembly. No ordinary helicopter could do what a Pendragon could—but the Pendragon was no ordinary helicopter.

Even having just stepped off the helicopter, David’s enhanced senses had difficulty locating it as it lifted back into the sky. He and Stone could have been completely alone in the quiet street.

“Let’s move,” he ordered quietly.

Both men were wearing formfitting black bodysuits laced with armor plating and sleek fitted helmets. The combat gear wasn’t impenetrable, but most conventional weapons would have trouble with it—and it also protected the delicate electronics of their augmented reality systems.

“IR cameras are showing the same mess as the overhead,” McCreery reported. “Entire rooms are superheated. If there’s anyone alive in there…well, they’re going to be in need of medical attention.”

“Understood. Do we have any OSPI medical teams nearby?” he asked. The Office of Supernatural Policing and Investigation provided the local emergency and police services for abnormal situations. They’d call in ONSET teams for heavy lifting—and ONSET would call them in turn for medical help and dealing with civilians.

“You’re flagged for top priority as soon as one is free,” Leitz interjected into the conversation. “That…could be three or four hours after travel time.”

“Understood,” he repeated. “Any progress on that backup?”

“You’re not going to like it,” the analyst replied.

“Cynthia.”

“There is apparently a Dresden Familias team in Sarnia, Canada,” she told him. “My impression is we’re talking VIV and bodyguards, not a combat team, but they got the call.”

A Very Important Vampire was not what David wanted as backup, but…

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” he said grimly, looking up at the still-lit sky. “I’m guessing arrival after nightfall?”

“Bingo. Same timeline as the med team.” Leitz paused. “Boss, should you hold off until they get there?”

“If we do that, anyone who’s left dies,” he reminded her. “Let’s go, Stone.”

The smell hit him when they were still fifty feet from the building. Sulfur. Burnt pork. Blood. He knew those smells and he didn’t like them.

They had him distracted for a critical moment, and he found himself unexpectedly surrounded by large black men in rough clothes, all of them holding guns pointed at him and Stone. He wasn’t entirely sure where they’d come from—and managing to sneak up on him was damned impressive.

“I ain’t figuring you’re here to make friends,” one of them told him. “MIBs in the waste? Yeah, no. What’s your game, government man?”

David turned to look at the speaker, knowing that the faceless black mask of his helmet could be disconcerting.

“There’s trouble ahead,” he gestured to the clinic. “We’re here to find out what and fix it.”

“Only fixing MIB likely to do here is burn us out,” one of the other gunmen snarled.

“I don’t know who you are or why you’re here,” David told them calmly. “I do know something has gone very wrong at the clinic and we’re here to deal with it.”

“You got half that right,” the first speaker replied. “Call me Saw. I run this bunch and this waste, you get me?”

David had already marked him as “gang leader.”

“Now, I won’t pretend I ain’t what I am,” Saw continued, “but a bunch of crazy-ass cracker girls want to set up and keep my customers alive a bit longer? That’s to my advantage, see?

“So, my man Chase was watching the clinic. And my man Chase called for help—and then there was just screaming.” Saw paused. “Some of it was Chase. Chase was in Afghanistan and then spent ten years behind bars for murder two.

“Not much scares Chase, but brother was screaming like a little girl when the phone cut out.

“So, tell me, government man, whatcha gonna do?”

The guns were still levelled on David and his people.

“I’m going to go in there, rescue anyone who’s still alive, and kill whatever killed those who aren’t,” David said flatly. “If you want to help, you can make sure everybody clears out of here. There’s something unhealthy in the air.”

This close, he could feel the waves of black energy rippling out from whatever was in the clinic. Anyone who didn’t have the defenses woven into the ONSET Agents’ body armor was going to be in serious trouble.

Saw was silent, and then gestured to his men. Familiar gestures—the same US Special Forces sign language ONSET was trained in.

The leader and the three men with the most modern-looking guns remained as the rest scattered.

“My boys will clear the neighborhood,” Saw promised. “But we’re going in with you. Those folks are my customers, my brothers, my sisters.” He smirked. “And those cracker girls are owed something for the care they’ve taken of them, hear me?”

“You have no idea what we’re getting into,” David told him.

Saw shook his head, a darkness flashing over his eyes.

“I was in Afghanistan with Chase,” he said flatly. “Watched a raghead cut a girl’s throat and summon a sand monster that ate six men before we killed him and it stopped. Gonna be something like that, ain’t it?”

David grimaced.

“Yeah, pretty much exactly like that,” he admitted.

Saw racked the slide on the assault rifle he carried.

“Then I’m coming with you.”

3

BEGGARS CAN’T BE CHOOSERS. With two men, no matter how individually powerful or well-equipped, David didn’t stand much of a chance at getting anyone still in the building out alive.

“Fine,” he agreed. “But you focus on getting the people out. Whatever is in there is our problem, not yours. Clear?”

“Five by five,” the gang leader replied brightly.

With a sigh and a hand gesture, David set off for the clinic once again. He unslung his own assault rifle now, the modified M4 loaded with silver bullets.

He swept the building ahead with the full extent of his senses, absorbing the waves of nausea that swept over him as he did so. This was new. It felt like demons, but…not.

The front door was still open, a breeze flinging it back against the wall as David approached. The crash echoed through the silent neighborhood, the sound seeming to slow, like it was being carried through water.

Something was not right.

Stone led the way, his machine gun held almost lightly in his hands as he stepped up to the door and checked through it. The instant he moved toward the door, however, something in David’s mind screamed warning.

“Stop!” he barked over the radio channel. “If you go through that door, you die.”

His Agent stopped with admirable speed, pulling back.

“What now?” he asked.

David slowly stepped forward, running through possible futures. Hammering through the walls or windows would have the same effect. The entire building was wrapped in a tingling ward of life-sucking black energy.

More than enough to drain the life of any mortal human or parahuman. David poked the future where he stepped through the door and winced.

“Okay, this is going to suck,” he said aloud. “Cover me.”

If they’d had a Mage, they could have disrupted or taken down the ward. Since they didn’t, less-elegant measures were required.

He strapped the M4 to his back and drew his sword. Memoria was a leaf-bladed weapon, forged to the pattern of Bronze Age blades but made of souls more than of any metal. Seven brave soldiers had tried to kill a high-court demon, and instead the demon had enslaved their souls into the weapon.

In turn, they’d betrayed the demon and helped David kill it. Now they were remembered, and he carried the blade against humanity’s enemies.

Memoria was powerful but it couldn’t destroy the ward. He slashed through the wall of black energy anyway, scattering rivulets of it in every direction…and then stepped into it.

The sword disrupted the attack that followed, weakening it. Any of the men with him would have died…but David White was a class one regenerator, with a far more powerful life force than any merely mortal parahuman.

The ward drove him to his knees as he absorbed its power—and then three massively ugly toad demons charged at him as he wavered.

Stone’s M60 had been enchanted and modified in a dozen different ways…but no one had ever managed to make it silent. The heavy weapon thundered behind him, echoing in the enclosed space as the gunner fired past his boss, long bursts of silver-tipped bullets that hammered into the nine-foot-tall monstrosities like the fist of God.

Two went down, but the third made it past Stone’s hail of fire to reach David, fists the size of basketballs lashing toward his head to finish what the ward had started.

David’s prescience let him reach about half a second into the future in a fight. It wasn’t much, but it was more than enough to let him evade even those inhumanly fast blows. The ward shattered, he rose to his feet with Memoria in his hand.

The second time the demon charged him, both of its arms went flying with a single slash of the red-tinged blade. The limbs flashed to ichor in midair, splattering black demon-blood across the walls.

Before the demon could adapt—regrowing its arms was almost certainly within its abilities—Stone adjusted his aim and hammered another ten silver bullets into it.

The whole creature collapsed into ichor and David stared at the three rapidly dissipating monstrosities in disgust.

Toad demons weren’t high-court demons. They weren’t the heralds of the apocalypse that served the Masters Beyond, but…they were far stronger than could normally sneak through the Seal that kept magic and demonkind mostly out of the world.

SAW STEPPED through the door behind them, his rifle sweeping the room in a practiced manner that implied the black man had been far more than the grunt he’d implied when he’d served. He eyed the puddles of goop.

“I’d love to say I’d never seen that before,” he quipped. “But…sand monster.”

“Demons,” David replied. “There’s more in the house.”

He looked around. Once, the room had been a somewhat grand entrance foyer, the centerpiece of a solid middle-class home. More recently, it had been the reception area for a crude but clean charity clinic and safe injection site.

It looked like half a dozen of the people in the room had been using it for the latter purpose when something in the needles had killed them. Quietly. Peacefully.

The other eight people in the room had been ripped to shreds by the demons. Much less peacefully.

“That woulda been Chase,” Saw pointed grimly. About the only thing distinguishing the gang member from the other occupants of the room was that he’d had a gun in his hand when he’d died. It was a crude thing, handmade in a machine shop to a design dropped into France in the Second World War, but it was still a gun.

And it had clearly done Chase no good at all.

“Unless your guns are loaded with silver, you’re not going to do much more than Chase did,” David warned Saw. He looked around the main floor, reaching into his Sight to try and assess what was going on.

It wasn’t easy. The building was warped with energy in a way he’d never seen before. The source was…up. But there were demons on the main floor, too.

“I ain’t leaving, MIB,” Saw told him. “So, what do we do?”

The gang leader was completely unbothered by the slightly-glowing sword in David’s hand. He’d clearly passed his quota of caring about weird shit today.

The ONSET officer glanced at Stone, then sighed and unslung his M4.

“I’m assuming you trained on an M4 at some point?” he asked the man.

“Qualified Expert,” Saw grunted, passing his older rifle over to one of his men. “I’m guessing silver rounds?”

“Steel-jacket hollow-point, silver-cored,” David confirmed. “Muzzle velocity is higher, aim lower. Don’t miss. None of the big things are down here anymore, but the little ones will still kill you dead twice over before you know what hit you.

“Find any civilians left, get them to safety.”

“And what you doing, government man?” Saw asked, checking the safety and chamber on the rifle.

“There’s some kind of dark energy source upstairs, probably a summoning portal,” David told him. “Stone and I are going to go make it go away.”

WHATEVER WAS on the second floor of the house turned clinic was nasty. Every step David took up the central staircase felt like wading deeper and deeper into muck, his Sight screaming that he should turn back.

Stone looked unaffected, which suggested that it was only through his Sight that David was being impacted. The big Agent was looking concernedly at his boss, though.

“You okay, Commander?”

“Yeah,” David replied, adjusting his grip on Memoria and focusing on the feel of the weapon through his gloves. “Something nasty is waiting for us, though. Just getting closer to it sucks.”

The other man grinned and hefted his machine gun, checking the ammunition level in its drum magazine.

“The advantage of being roughly as sensitive as a rock, I suppose,” he said. “You point, I’ll shoot.”

David returned the smile and stepped off the staircase, using the sickening sense of unease to direct them both.

“That way,” he concluded. “Odds are there isn’t much left of the innocents, but let’s watch our fire. Who knows what’s going on up here.”

From the hand-lettered signage hanging at the top of the stairs, the source of the darkness was in a Dr. Sinclair’s office; what had once been the master bedroom. A pair of double doors was closed in front of the room, with an unfamiliar hulking form kneeling in front of them.

“Greetings,” it rumbled, rising to its feet and letting jet-black bat-like wings flicker out to either side of it. Other than the wings, the creature could almost have passed for a large black man.

Having met demons, however, David knew what to look for. The “black” of the creature’s skin was actually a dark crimson. Small protrusions of white bone, not quite large enough to be called horns, emerged from the demon’s skull above his ears, with larger protrusions forming a natural layer of armor across the creature’s shoulders above the wings.

“My mistress is busy,” the demon said politely. “If you’ll come back later, I’m certain we can make time for you.”

“Boss?” Stone asked carefully.

“Shoot it,” David ordered.

A shield of black flame flashed into existence around the demon’s left hand as Stone opened fire, flickering across the air with blinding speed to catch the bullets before they reached the creature. Silver and steel flashed to vapor, and the demon smiled.

“Now, that is just rude,” it murmured.

David was already charging as it spoke, however, Memoria’s red-tinged blade glittering in the hallway’s artificial light as he attacked. A blade of the same glittering black flame as its shield flickered into existence in the demon’s right hand.

The ensuing parry didn’t go nearly as well as the creature had been hoping. It was fast—but David was faster. He was inside its guard even as the sword came into existence, Memoria stabbing forward like an extension of his arm.

The demon’s eyes flared wide as the bloodsword hammered into its chest, both its shield and blade of fire vanishing in an instant.

“That’s…not right,” the creature stammered out—and then collapsed into ichor as Memoria severed the connection between the conjured body and the demon, a Pure creature formed entirely of magic.

“Seems perfect to me,” David quipped. “All right. Stone, cover me. I’ve got the door.”

THE ROOM on the other side of the door had been set up as a simple but complete doctor’s office and examination room, with a cheap IKEA desk separated from the bed by a hanging curtain.

The examination bed was occupied by a young black woman who was very clearly dead, her stomach torn open to allow something access to the baby she’d been carrying. A blonde white woman in dark blue scrubs, even younger than the pregnant victim, was crumpled against the bottom of the bed, her neck bent at a horribly impossible angle.

A second nurse in scrubs, her throat torn open, had been tossed against the wall. David wasn’t sure at what point the nurses had realized something was going wrong, but they’d clearly tried to save the pregnant girl on the examination table.

They’d failed.

The room was covered in spatters of blood from the women, and the scent of fresh death filled the air. David wasn’t sure how the smell hadn’t permeated the house even more than it had!

In the middle of the mess knelt a naked woman with long raven-black hair. Despite the blood everywhere, nothing marred her skin as she ignored the two men walking into the room, and something about her drew the eye.

David felt as much as saw Stone freeze, the Agent’s every muscle locked down as his gaze fixated on the naked woman. He felt the urge himself, but his Sight allowed him to see the magic radiating from the creature in the room.

It wore her flesh, but the thing sitting in the middle of the massacre was not Dr. Evelyn Sinclair.

“Come in, come in,” she half-whispered. Stone walked past David, dropping his gun as he did so. Even David couldn’t stop himself from approaching her.

She rose and turned to face them, and even the fresh blood dripping from her mouth failed to detract from the stunning attractiveness of her form.

Her grossly pregnant form.

“It is almost complete,” she murmured. “You destroyed my guardians, so you shall replace them until He comes.”

“Who?” David forced out.

“The Herald,” she told him, touching the naked skin of her belly. “Three months here, waiting for the right time of weakness and a mother at the right stage. Now the beginning.”

She smiled.

“Put the sword down, Commander White. Accept what has come, and know that surrender will buy you a place at the Herald’s right hand—and life when the Masters return!”

Her pregnant belly warped grotesquely as she removed her hand, sliding it to cup her breast as she ran her other hand over her lips. “And there are other rewards, too,” she murmured, tilting her head at him.

“Just…put the sword down.”

“She’s so beautiful,” Stone murmured beside David. “We can’t…”

“Your friend is right,” she told him. “Let me birth the Herald and serve Him, and I shall be yours, to obey your every whim.”

David took another step toward her, unwilling, unintentionally, his grip on the sword in his hand weakening…and then the slipping blade sliced through the armor plating on his leg like it wasn’t even there, the tip gouging gently through his flesh like fire.

Memoria impeded regeneration. Even he couldn’t heal from that injury instantly, and pain flashed through his body as blood welled up from his flesh…and the blade’s magic shattered her spell.

He didn’t say anything. He just struck, the blade flashing across the intervening space toward the demon wearing Sinclair’s skin.

Unlike the demon outside, she’d been expecting it—and was just as fast as he was. Fingernails grew into foot-long claws in a moment, parrying his strike as the succubus shifted into combat form.

The shift was incomplete. Her skin turned to dark-red scaly armor, claws flashed out from her hands to strike at him, and natural horn defenses emerged across her chest to protect her heart—but her stomach and womb remained entirely human.

David didn’t know what the Herald was, but he knew that it was bad news—and that the answer to the creature’s plan was obvious.

If unpleasant.

He grabbed her claws with his free hand as she lashed out at him, and thrust.

Memoria sliced cleanly through the arm she tried to protect her stomach with, and then went straight through the succubus, impaling her and whatever monster she’d been incubating alike and pinning them to the floor.

Stone slammed into David a moment later, granite fists smashing into the ONSET Commander’s back like hammers, but David held on, holding the enchanted blade in place and keeping the monster spiked to the floor.

Three times, Stone hit him. He felt his ribs crack and re-form as he withstood his subordinate’s blows. A flailing blow from the succubus’s claws tore through his armor, severing the connection between his computers and his helmet as they stabbed painfully into his flesh.

Then it was over, the demon collapsing into ichor around his blade…leaving behind a mostly formed shape identical to the bat-creature that had guarded the door, but one-tenth the size.

Not a Pure. Not a creature of magic…but a demon born in flesh.

And now dead on his blade. Stone had stopped hitting him, but as David lurched back from his sword, the full force of the dark energy in the clinic came rushing back into the tiny form in front of him. The corpse lit on fire, but much of the energy also hammered into David.

He fell to his knees, vomiting again and again as the power tore through his body.

Stone’s hand was on his shoulder before he collapsed completely, the big man yanking him back up to his feet.

“We’ve got to get you out of here!”

4

COMMANDER MICHAEL O’BRIEN sighed and leaned his massive body against the desk in front of him. Johnston’s summary report was bad enough. That defeating this “Herald” had apparently knocked David White clean out was a bad sign.

Someone knocked on his door, and the big werewolf slowly lifted himself away from the furniture.

“Come in,” he barked.

Major Traci Warner stepped into the room, looking as tired as he felt. Accompanying her was the strangest member of his own ONSET Team Nine: the red-skinned rebel demon who went by Ix.

Off-Campus, Ix would wear a hat of some kind to cover the row of small white horns that formed a circle around his gleaming, hairless scalp, and use makeup to conceal the red tinge to his skin. Even on Campus, he would often take measures to soften the sight of his true nature.

Perhaps especially here, a demon—even one on their side—was not a welcome sight.

“Ix wanted to speak to us both,” Warner told Michael, taking a seat. “You saw Thirteen’s report?”

“Yes. Any update?” he asked. “Is David conscious yet?”

“Not yet, though the medics at the New York upstate facility say he’s going to be fine.”

Once, the Office of Supernatural Policing and Investigation had been headquartered in New York City. Then a demon had used mind control to take control of the entire HQ and tried to break the Seal. That building was still empty, and OSPI operations were directed out of a dozen regional offices.

The “upstate facility” was the original base of the OSPI High Threat Response teams before they’d been absorbed into ONSET. It had gone mostly unused after that, until the shutdown of OSPI HQ had required a new facility in the area.

It was a pale shadow of the Campus, but it could support multiple aircraft and strike teams—and a fully equipped hospital with all the information Omicron had on magical diseases and healing.

“What do you need, Ix?” Michael asked.

The demon looked uncomfortable but shrugged.

“I probably shouldn’t have seen it, but I asked Charles to give me the recording from Thirteen’s op,” he admitted. “He clearly figured I had a good reason, so he gave them to me.”

Charles was the only dragon the United States was aware of being awake in the modern world. He also ran Omicron’s Internet security and much of their IT infrastructure.

Every so often, Michael was reminded that the dragon didn’t quite agree with Omicron’s priorities on a lot of things. Apparently, their regular conversation on that point was overdue.

“I am…afraid,” Ix admitted softly. “Five mid-court demons is bad enough. But I’m not even certain what this Herald is.”

Michael winced.

Ix—properly Ixiltanequestelanaerith—was a mid-court demon. ONSET wasn’t quite certain where he fell on that spectrum, only that the Pure was far more powerful than most mortal supernaturals. Toad demons were weaker than him, but from Stone’s report, the succubus and bat demon might have been his equal.

The succubus had certainly done a number on both Stone and White.

“If he’s as important as what Sinclair suggested, how are you not?” Warner asked.

“You are thinking of beyond the Seal of Solomon as a world,” Ix replied. “As a single space. It isn’t.”

The demon was still standing and he began to pace in front of the two mortals. Four steps one way, then four steps the other.

“Beyond the Seal is just…potential. The Mantles lose everything except potential from it; all that sneaks through is power,” he explained slowly. “The Awakened, like Charles, left their memories in their mortal flesh here. All that’s beyond the Seal is, again, potential. But when they Awaken, they have all their memories from before.

“The Pure lost everything,” he hissed. “The least of the Pure are most of what you have seen, and they have nothing left of what they were. The more powerful the Pure, the more self-awareness we kept…but it took truly mighty Pure to create anything resembling a place on the other side.”

He shook his head.

“It took the Masters centuries to work out how,” he pointed out. “The ‘places,’ the ‘courts,’ these are all illusions hosted in the minds of half-dead gods. And the lesser Pure are parasites upon their dreams.

“There were once a thousand types of Pure. Demons, angels, spirits, nephilim, kami…all of these names and more.

“But after centuries of nothingness, we remember nothing. The Masters remember only that they were gods, worshipped and adored…and now all they have are illusions formed of their own will, full of parasites with only a tiny existence away from the Masters.

“They want their godhood back,” Ix said quietly. “But they don’t even know what that means. Given the chance, they would crush the world to make it worship them. I…‘lived,’ I suppose, in the demesne of one Master.

“I knew his plans, his desires, but I am bound to obey any higher-court demon from the demesne of any Master…and I know nothing of a Herald.”

“So, it’s a creature of one of the Masters?” Michael asked.

“It has to be. But…a Pure reborn in mortal flesh?” Ix shivered. “I did not think such was possible…and such a child, such a demon, would be the key to undoing all that was done.

“And if the Seal is opened, Commander, Major…the world will see war such as it has never seen. Once, some of the Pure sought to rule or destroy, but they were opposed by others.

“Now…none of them remember who they were. They will all fight you.”

5

FOR A MAN who could regenerate from being blown up in under forty-eight hours, waking up hurting in a hospital bed was a disturbingly familiar experience. David recognized the antiseptic smell, the standardized hard mattress, the soft clinks and beeps of scanners and testing software.

He kept his eyes closed while he cataloged himself. An IV in his forearm, running a saline drip to counteract dehydration. No injuries he could detect, and he didn’t have the ravenous hunger of the energy and mass debt that came from major healing.

David slowly opened his eyes, glancing around the room to confirm that he wasn’t alone.

“You, Commander White,” a familiar woman’s voice said calmly, “need to be more careful.”

He twisted in the bed to find Commander Kate Mason watching him from the side of the room. The petite blonde Mage was the woman in charge of ONSET Fifteen—and her use of his rank warned him that they weren’t alone.

She was also his lover, but that was something they were keeping under wraps as the world seemed to be going to hell.

“What happened?” he asked.

“You tell me,” Mason said with a chuckle. “You killed that demon and collapsed. Stone got you back to the Pendragon—and then started throwing up himself.” She shook her head. “Local civilians were even worse off. The medical team had their hands full.”

“Damn. Are they…?”

“Folks are okay,” she promised him. “Well…that’s probably overstating things. Nobody else died, but a lot of people are badly shaken up, and everyone who was even near the building is on an IV as the medics try to control the vomiting.”

“Is anyone on site to control the mess?” David asked.

“My people,” Mason told him. “Tsimote and Dupond are playing backstop, and a helicopter full of Dresden commando vamps showed up.”

David winced.

“And Tsimote let them live?” he asked. Hiro Tsimote was a flame elementalist, one of Mason’s heavy hitters—and he’d been bitten by vampires in the past. The man was only so sold on the “new order” of the Arbiter’s Peace.

Mason shook her head, a shadow crossing her face.

“You saw that clinic,” she said quietly. “Even Hiro is prepared to admit when he’s facing a worse evil.”

The door swung open behind her and a white-coated doctor bustled in. The black woman’s face was drawn and haggard, and she pointed a clipboard at David like a weapon.

“You, Commander, aren’t supposed to give us heart attacks like this,” she snapped. “Your file says that any injury should be healed within twelve hours. We don’t expect you to be down like this with no physical wounds.”

“How long?” David asked sharply, looking over at Mason.

“Fifty-three hours,” she said quietly. “You’ve been out for over two days. Something hit you hard.”

“And I need to examine the Commander,” the doctor snapped. “He’s our best lead on how to deal with the lesser cases.”

“Lesser cases?” David demanded.

“Your people were supernatural. They were hammered, nauseous, sick, but are recovering. People outside the building are much the same.

“Mundanes inside the building…” She shook her head. “I’ve got eleven comatose patients, Commander White, and I’m hoping your recovery might give us and the Mages an idea how to get them awake.”

He levered himself up and extended his IV-pierced arm towards her.

“Whatever you need, doc,” he promised. “I can survive some jabbing.”

AFTER THE DOCTOR had finished taking samples of just about everything that could be extracted from a human body—including two small biopsies that healed almost instantly after they were taken—she stacked the samples up and shook her head.

“I hope we can find some kind of answer here, Commander,” she told him. “These people didn’t deserve this bullshit.”

“No,” he agreed. “I don’t know what you’re hoping to find, though, Doctor. I don’t produce antibodies or anything that could be used for someone else—and so far as I can tell, the effect is basically thaumic overload.”

“Likely,” she agreed with a nod. “Which, given that none of our impacted individuals are Mages, is strange enough in itself. We have the same set of samples from when you were unconscious, however, and studying how your regeneration changed you to wake you up should give us a clue.”

That made sense. David wasn’t a doctor, after all.

“Thank you, Doctor…”

“Freeman,” she replied. “Lily Freeman.” She shook his hand briskly. “I’ll do what I can to help these folks.

“You, however, from what I’ve read on regenerators, need to sit down, rest, and eat,” she told him. “There’s a couple of people waiting to see you, but I’ve got a bag of takeout on its way for you.

“You’ll move to that chair,” she pointed, “you’ll eat, and you’ll talk and you will not do anything more strenuous for at least ninety minutes. Understand?”

He smiled.

“Yes, Dr. Freeman,” he chirped brightly. He’d learned not to argue with doctors by now.

THE DOCTOR clearly had a better idea of what a regenerator would need in terms of food after a major injury than David would have expected. Three large bags of takeout were promptly delivered to the room, and he inhaled the smell deeply.

Of course, he hadn’t actually been physically injured, and the major source of a regenerator’s appetite was the mass deficit they owed the universe after rebuilding organs and tissue from nothing. He was surprised by how many of the thick burgers he did end up putting away, but two of the takeout bags were still untouched when someone knocked on the door.

He was still in a flimsy hospital gown, but he suspected that Dr. Freeman wasn’t going to let him get anywhere near a suit or body armor until her ninety minutes were up.

“Come in,” he instructed with a shrug.

Kate Mason was the first through the door, accompanied by a second woman clad in form-fitting black body armor and a masked hood with a heavily tinted faceplate.

If the stranger’s clothing hadn’t been enough to give away her nature, Mason quietly walked over the tiny window to the outside—the room was clearly in a basement or underground facility somewhere—and closed a shutter over it.

Once the only light in the room was artificial, the stranger removed her hood and facemask, revealing an ivory-skinned woman with shoulder-length black hair and dark green eyes.

“Commander White, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” she told him with a smile as she gestured, a chair sliding across the floor to her.

“You have the advantage of me, miss…?”

“Dresden,” she told him, a slight German accent catching the name. “Veronica Dresden. I am Caleb’s niece, an Elder and Mage of the Dresden Familias.”

“Ah.”

So, this was the Very Important Vampire who’d diverted her personal bodyguard to help out in Detroit. Not merely a member of the Dresden Familias but of Caleb Dresden’s family.

“How may I help you?” he asked politely. He may have been critical in forging the Arbiter’s Peace, the “new deal” for vampires in America, but he still wasn’t comfortable with vampires.

“I believe the question today is actually how may I help you, Commander,” she pointed out. “My commandos are securing the site in Detroit in cooperation with Commander Mason’s people. I, however, have spoken to my uncle and we have come to an…agreement.”

“What kind of agreement?” David asked carefully, glancing at Mason. The other Commander clearly knew what was going on.

Dresden smiled and offered a single printed sheet of paper.

“Consider this my résumé, Commander White,” she replied. “My uncle and the remaining leaders of the Familias wish for several of our Elders to more directly support ONSET’s operations. I—and several others—are submitting our applications to serve as ONSET Agents.

“My own preference would be to work for the man responsible for the peace,” she continued. “Not to mention the man who killed Tatiana Romanov.”

David was used to regarding vampire faces as inhuman, but the wave of grief and anger that flashed over Veronica Dresden’s face as she mentioned her now-dead Romanov equivalent was all too human.

“Why?” he asked.

“Tatiana killed my lover, a vampire about to swear the oaths of a Keeper,” Dresden said flatly. “He should have been sacrosanct, but she killed him to get at me and my family. You avenged him.”

“Fair,” he allowed. “You understand that no one in ONSET really trusts your people yet?”

“That is why we must serve,” she insisted. “The first to serve will bear the harshest burden, and I judge it right that that burden falls on the sons and daughters of the core families. We are the strongest—and we are the most responsible for the war that has been fought.”

So far as David understood, most of those actually responsible for the war were dead—along with, thankfully, everyone Omicron had actually been able to link known vampire atrocities to.

The moderates had survived. The rest…the rest had died in nuclear fire at Crater Lake.

He looked at the printout. It was identical to an Omicron Supernatural Assessment Report, the same document that detailed the powers of any of his subordinates.

Veronica Dresden was almost as fast and strong and tough as he was—and almost as powerful a Mage as Kate Mason was, to boot. The starkly printed sheet might overestimate her abilities, but it could just as easily underestimate them.

With how understrength their teams were, he didn’t see a choice. Plus, if he turned down a vampire team member, no one else would accept one.

“I’ll take to Major Warner,” he promised. “The call isn’t entirely mine…but as much as it is, you’re in.”

“Thank you, Commander White,” Dresden said with a bow of her head. “I understand how much of a trust deficit we must overcome to be relied upon to keep the Peace we have promised.”

She shook her head.

“Much of what we see today appears to have been set in motion by my grandfather as well,” she admitted grimly. “Marcus Dresden’s descendants especially bear a burden here. We will undo this, Commander. We will save our country.”

ONCE DRESDEN HAD REPLACED her mask and hood and left the room, Mason crossed over to David’s chair and leaned down to clear away the takeout bags, the camera blocked by her back as she gave him a quick kiss.

“How are you feeling, David?” she asked.

“Back to fighting trim,” he told her with one eye on the camera behind her. “Where am I, anyway?”

“The old HTR facility in upstate New York,” Mason replied. “Until we’re back up to strength, we needed a second deployment nexus, so they pulled the dust covers off and moved us in.”

“That bad?”

“That bad,” she confirmed. “You’ll want to check your work email ASAP, but the short version is that all leaves are canceled, and all teams are on max alert. ONSET Two, Four and Thirteen are stood down because all of you are in medical care.”

There were technically twenty-six ONSET teams. If there were twelve active right now, David would be surprised.

“This is nuts,” he admitted. “How’s the rest of the planet dealing?”

“That’s the strange part,” Mason told him. “We seem to be the only ones hit this hard. We’re up to nine Code Reds since Crater Lake, but the rest of the world is seeing normal incidence rates.”

“Which I’m guessing are bad enough that no one has any help to send us,” David said. “But…really, just us?”

“Just us,” she confirmed. “Charles is running an analysis on the whole mess, trying to identify an epicenter, but…this kind of weakening of the Seal is outside anyone’s experience.”

“Even Charles’s?” David asked. The dragon had lived before the Seal was created and had woken up three times since it was created. If anyone knew more about the Seal, Omicron didn’t know about them.

“He has no clue,” she replied. “Here.”

Mason passed him his phone and Memoria.

“We picked up everything at the site. Your clothes and gear are in the locker outside the hall,” she told him. “Get dressed and check your email, then meet me in the mess. Stone may be down, but with Dresden on your team, you’re back up to three actives, which means I’m going to hand some of my problems over to you.”

“And the truth of why you want me on my feet is out!” he laughed at her. “Wilco, Commander Mason.”

“HOWEVER BAD YE THINK IT IS,” Charles’s thick Irish brogue said over a webcam in the mess hall, “’tis worse.”

The dragon’s long lizardlike face was being projected onto a white screen pulled down the wall. Half of the screen showed the dragon and the other half was a map of the United States, a mirror of one of the probably seven or eight monitors the wyrm was running.

“The big red dots are Code Reds,” he continued. The expected nine dots appeared on the map, ranging across the continental United States. A tenth dot appeared in Canada, close to the Ontario–New York border.

“The smaller dots are overall supernatural situations,” the dragon noted. The map suddenly looked sick, with dots scattering across the entirety of the United States and the southern portions of eastern Canada.

“We are being run ragged, to the point where we’ve deployed unsupervised deputy strike teams on no less than three occasions.”

David winced, sharing a look with Mason. They were alone in the room at the moment, and there was no need to be politic about the use of vampire and Elfin strike forces. Deputized or drafted or whatever they were calling it today, the use of supernatural paramilitaries to fill in gaps was a bad sign.

“How did we miss this while we were fighting the vampires?” David asked.

“We didn’t,” Charles replied grimly. “The situation spiked after Ekhmez was summoned and killed, then began to quiet down. The rate of incidents started spiking again just before Crater Lake, and has been rising since.

“We are now seeing supernatural incidents at a rate unmatched in ONSET’s records. Or,” the dragon noted, “in my own experience.”

“Weren’t you around before the Seal?” David asked.

Charles shrugged.

“We didn’t have random Awakenings and demonic incursions then,” he pointed out. “All of the Awakened were awake. This kind of supernatural incident didn’t exist back then, as it requires a new ‘packet’ of magic to enter reality.”

“So, the Seal is weaker than it has ever been,” Kate concluded.

“But only in the United States,” the dragon replied. “There isn’t one neat epicenter to it, either, but we’re running analyses to try and pin down potential sources.”

“Are we looking at another high-court demon?” David said.

“Not…yet,” Charles told him. “My current best guess is a minimum of four different sources, and none of them are as powerful as Ekhmez or the breach that brought him into the world.

“The weakening we are seeing, however, could easily be a precursor to something making it through,” he continued. “This ‘Herald’ you encountered would have been a high-court demon if you hadn’t prevented its arrival.”

David shivered at the thought. Killing the pregnant succubus was going to go into the list of memories he didn’t want to have in his head. It was hardly the only such one in his head, though.

Regenerators, it turned out, also had very good memories.

“For now, we keep pissing on fires,” Mason told him. “We’ve having a few moments of quiet, but Thirteen and Fifteen are officially on standby for the next incidents in the northeastern USA.”

“Then I think I need to talk to Warner ASAP,” David concluded. “I can probably get away with taking Dresden with me if needed, but I’d rather get that okayed by her first.”

His phone buzzing interrupted further conversation, and he pulled it out. He thought he’d disabled his alarms for this meeting, but when he saw the name, he was somehow unsurprised.

The text was from Vanessa Loring, a former black hat hacker turned in-the-know cyber security specialist—and a friend.

It was four words long:

TURN ON THE NEWS.

6

“WE CONTINUE our live reporting as dozens of coordinated protests have exploded across America’s major cities under the banner of the ‘March for Truth,’” the perfectly turned-out reporter said, standing in front of a screen showing hundreds, possibly thousands of protestors marching down the streets of Washington, DC.

“Here in DC, the leaders of the protest are family members of soldiers killed in the incidents around Crater Lake,” she continued. “The organizers of the March for Truth claim that the official government story around the Crater Lake incident and the deaths of US Air Force and Army personnel at facilities surrounding the area rings hollow.

“CNN’s own research suggests that Air Force fighter craft from several bases were involved in the incident… Wait.”

The reporter paused, listening to her earbud, a momentary shocked expression sweeping over her face.

“Ladies and gentlemen, CNN has just received video footage provided by the organizers of the March for Truth from the airspace near Crater Lake park the night of the incident,” she said slowly. “I remind viewers that we have no independent validation of this footage, but March for Truth representative Velma MacLean claims that the video was taken by an amateur astronomer who was starwatching that night.”

The bottom dropped out of David’s stomach as the protest march disappeared, replaced by the scene of a night sky. He suspected he knew exactly what footage an amateur astronomer might have that would damn everyone.

Someone had played with the zoom carefully, highlighting the squadron of jet fighters as they flashed across the sky. Then, suddenly, the sky lit up with fire as the fighters opened fire on each other. The battle was only in the scope of the camera for a few seconds, but that was enough to watch over half of the USAF planes blow each other apart.

The reporter returned, her face now white.

“Viewers, I promise that we will be verifying this footage as quickly as possible, but I repeat: the March for Truth has provided the news media with footage showing US Air Force fighters firing on each other in the lead-up to the Crater Lake explosion.”

Behind her, the screen flipped to an image of Central Park, where someone had sent up a crude stage and was bellowing through a megaphone at the gathering crowd of people waving banners.

“The protests continue, and we don’t know what effect this new revelation will have on either the March for Truth protesters or on the claims and explanations offered by the government. Law enforcement officials have already stated they are concerned the march may turn violent and have moved to provide additional security for government off—”

“Turn it off,” David said sickly.

“They’re digging,” Mason said quietly. “There’s a lot for them to find. Hell, the fucking road leading up to Crater Lake is wrecked. Anyone with half a brain who looks at photos of that is going to guess why a tank battalion ended up dead.”

“I know. What do we do?”

“Our jobs,” his lover told him. “That mess isn’t our problem. That’s up to Congress—and no, David, I don’t know what happens if Congress orders the Committee to come clean.”

The Committee of Thirteen was the Special Committee for Supernatural Affairs, charged to wield the full power of Congress in affairs of the supernatural. But the rest of Congress didn’t know the Committee existed, so if they kept asking questions and subpoenaing people…

“It’s going to be a bad few weeks,” he said quietly. “I hope the Committee has a plan for this.”

“So do I.”

“WARNER HERE.”

The second-in-command of the Office of the National Supernatural Enforcement Teams sounded exhausted.

“It’s White,” David told her over the phone. He’d managed to get out of the hospital room now, though the only difference between the ward room and the spartan quarters he’d moved into was the lack of monitoring equipment.

His boss sighed.

“Glad to hear you came through okay,” she told him, “but I doubt you’ll be surprised if I tell you that you’re hardly popular in the upper circles right now.”

“No, not really,” David admitted. It was a somewhat bitter realization. It wasn’t like he’d done anything but his duty, but it was the nuke that was raising the largest concerns, and that had been his call.

“You ended a two-century-long war,” Warner told him. “That’s worth a lot of problems, but…”

“But right now, the entire fabric of secrecy over the supernatural is being strained,” David concluded. “We could always just tell everyone the truth.”

The Mage on the other of the call laughed bitterly.

“Who’d believe us?” she asked. “It’s a giant pain in the ass just to convince the people we need to work for us that all of this is real. The human brain doesn’t like this shit.”

“How much of that is the Seal?” David wondered aloud. “With the Seal weakening…are people more likely to believe?”

Warner was silent for a long few seconds.

“That, Commander White, is a potential headache I don’t think any of us considered,” she admitted. “And could help explain why our normal obfuscation is failing. We don’t usually have to try all that hard—incidents involving the supernatural just sort of slip people’s minds.”

“This is also an entirely different scale,” David replied. “It could just be that.”

“That too.” She sighed. “What do you need, Commander?”

“You saw Dresden’s request?”

“To put his niece on your team and half a dozen other Elders in ONSET uniform?” She snorted. “That’s going to be a hard sell and you know it.”

“I’ll take Veronica on Thirteen,” he replied. “She’s tough, she’s smart, and she’s a Mage. I need the numbers, too.

“Give her a few weeks with me before deciding on any of the others,” David suggested. “Ease everyone into the idea of vampire ONSET agents.”

“Gods. I can’t believe we’re even considering this. Vampires in ONSET? Half of our damn job until a few weeks ago was shooting the bastards on sight.”

“And they were responsible for most of our losses, too. Peace is worth the attempt,” he told her. “And with the situation getting as bad as it is…”

She sighed.

“You’re right. Fine. You have my okay to read Veronica Dresden in as an ONSET Agent. The rest of them can wait until we see how she works out.” She repeated her sigh. “Which I’m not betting against, knowing how much of a damned headache that family has managed to be as our enemy.”

PUTTING DOWN THE PHONE, David turned to leave the plain quarters, then paused as the wall seemed to flicker in front of his eyes. For a moment, he thought he’d seen the news video of New York Central Park again, but as he blinked and focused, there was nothing on the wall.

Even for him, seeing things was weird, but given the day—several days, really—he’d had, he was willing to chalk it up to exhaustion. A flicker of blackness hit him halfway to the mess hall, sending him reeling into the wall, but nothing clear came through.

“Are you okay, boss?” McCreery asked from behind him as he leaned against the wall, blinking and focusing on the plain white surface for several moments.

“Yeah, just woozy,” he told her. “I should eat.”

“Conveniently, the mess hall is about ten feet that way,” his Empowered pilot said dryly. “Need a shoulder?”

For a moment, he considered refusing. Then he realized that would be stupid and nodded.

Leaning on McCreery against further blackouts, he carefully walked into the mess hall. Nothing else hit him along the way and he felt fine. This was…weird.

“I’m fine,” he told her, letting go of her shoulder and making his way over to the buffet. With his plate rapidly occupied with what the label insisted was beef stroganoff—the smell bore at least some resemblance—he turned back toward the table where Pierre Dupond was pulling out a chair for McCreery.

On the wall behind them, the projector they’d used to conference with Charles earlier was playing the CNN news feed with the sound off. He blinked against the moment of déjà vu, then smiled at his own silliness.

Of course the news was playing here. This was now the impromptu ready room for two of the United States’ top-line supernatural combat teams.

He made it halfway to the table before he found himself staring at the news feed, the video of Central Park popping up onto the wall…and then his tray and plate toppled to the ground as the image slammed into him like a ton of bricks.

A LONG-HAIRED MAN in a plain business suit stood on the impromptu stage, bellowing through the megaphone as the crowd chanted in response. David could see police gathering behind them, letting the protest continue as it remained calm.

It was getting dark, evening clearly rushing in as the protestors bellowed. It seemed perfectly normal for about five seconds—and then the screaming starting.

Something flew across the crowd and smashed into the stage before David identified it as a news van. Moments later, the police joined the panicking crowd—but their panicking involved gunfire.

The vision seemed locked to the same angle as the CNN camera and David couldn’t see what was happening. The police were firing at something approaching from the other side of the crowd as debris and vehicles smashed into the crowd.

His view was constrained, and he was sufficiently confused as to what the hell was happening that he missed the SWAT officer producing the anti-tank missile launcher. The rocket flashed across David’s Sight and slammed into something.

Then the entire stage lifted up and flew at the police, smashing down on top of New York’s finest and silencing the gunfire in a crash of exploding electronics and shattering steel.

The crowd ran, but more thrown debris was crashing down on them and too many of the protesters weren’t moving at all. An inhuman roar tore across the vision, and then blackness cut away his Sight.

He blinked and was staring up at the blank ceiling of the mess hall, rapidly blocked by Dupond and McCreery’s head.

“Sir, sir! Are you okay?” his pilot demanded again.

“I’m fine,” he gasped. “Help me up.”

She did, and he turned his gaze on the news feed on the wall. None of the chaos he’d just seen was happening there, but the sky was still light. Late afternoon. His…vision had been of early evening. Maybe an hour away.

Possibly two.

He’d never had prescience more than a few seconds in the future, but it was theoretically possible. It was the same gift, the same Sight. His was just very short-term-focused.

“Get Mason and the others in here,” he ordered harshly. “We need to get to New York.”

7

“THERE AREN’T many places I’d say we can’t deploy on a vision, David,” Warner told him, “but Central Park is on the damn list.”

She shook her head over the videoconference he and Mason had dragged her into.

“I’m not even going to argue the veracity of the vision,” she continued. “You’re a goddamned Seer, I’m perfectly willing to accept that you might start longer-term visions, but I can’t—can’t, David—authorize a deployment to Central Park right now.

“The entire edifice that holds Omicron together is on the verge of breaking. ONSET teams in the middle of the public eye? Hell, ONSET teams in the middle of a protest?

“The President would shit himself sideways—and he’d be right.”

David winced.

“Can we at least evacuate the park?” he asked. “If I’m judging the light level right, we’ve got maybe an hour before it happens. I might be having hallucinations…but if I’m not, people are going to die.”

“David,” Warner said quietly, “that’s a March for Truth protest. These people are convinced that the government is lying to them about a major incident involving a nuclear weapon on American soil. They’re not going to believe us if we try to evacuate them, no matter what excuse we give.”

“And we are lying to them,” David replied. “Ma’am, what do we do?”

She was silent.

“Major?” Mason asked. “We have to do something.”

“The situation could not be more complicated,” Warner finally said. “I’ll put a bug in the ear of the right people at the NYPD; they’ll make sure there’s heavier gear in the protest watch team than normal. The NYPD has a lot of equipment another police department wouldn’t have.

“If mortal weapons can stop what you saw, they will stop it.”

David remembered the rocket launcher in his vision.

“And if they can’t?”

“Then we beg to higher authority for the OK to go in,” Warner said flatly. “But if we send ONSET agents into Central Park in front of the goddamn March for Truth, we may just break the United States of America.

“I can’t risk that, Commanders. Our orders from the Committee outright forbid anything close to public intervention. Stand your teams down.”

THE OFFICE WAS SILENT, David and Mason staring at each other while he tried to decide just what to do next. Before either of them could say anything, though, the door to the room opened and Veronica Dresden calmly walked in.

The rest of the two teams was right behind her, and the vampire smirked apologetically after removing her mask.

“I have exceptional hearing,” she reminded them, “and I presumed the teams would want to be able to follow the conversation.”

“We’ve been ordered to stand down,” Mason told them all. “Higher up is terrified of the consequences if we unleash ONSET teams in front of the March for Truth.”

“Yes…but are we actually going to stand down?” McCreery demanded. “All of us,” she gestured around herself, “know we can trust Commander White’s vision—at least enough to make sure we’re in position when this goes down!”

“I did not join your organization to watch a monster wreck New York,” Dresden added. “If people are in danger, it is our job to save them.”

“I dislike agreeing with the vampire,” Tsimote continued, “but she is correct. If nothing happens, we do not need to act. If something does happen, we must be there to intervene.”

David chuckled, then turned his gaze on the last agent in the room. “Pierre?”

“What’s the point?” the man asked dryly. “Either that lot have convinced you or you’re an idiot.”

“I’ll point out that I’m already in shit for pushing the limits of my orders,” he replied. “Outright disobeying a stand-down order? I might not have a job afterwards.”

Mason gave him a meaningful look and his chuckle turned to an outright laugh.

“Which, as Commander Mason is so eloquently pointing out, is not exactly known for stopping me,” he admitted. “Load up, people.”

MICHAEL O’BRIEN LOOKED at the email Warner had sent him for all of about ten seconds and then hit his phone.

“Major.”

“Commander.”

“Permission to roll ONSET Nine out,” he said flatly.

“The same damn rundown I gave White applies to you, O’Brien,” Warner snapped.

“And we both know damn well that ONSET Thirteen and Fifteen will be in the air in fifteen minutes,” the werewolf replied. “And we also both know that White and Mason are smart enough to keep a low profile unless they’re needed.

“Nothing in White’s vision suggests that the NYPD will be able to deal with whatever’s about to wake up,” he continued. “We’re talking heavy firepower or ONSET teams, and heavy firepower is just going to add to the body count.”

“You’re four hours away, Commander.”

“So, we’re all better off if I get moving, aren’t we?” he asked. “Either nothing’s going to happen, Major, in which case no will ever know any of us were there, or two under-strength ONSET teams aren’t going to be enough.”

“You realize the order to stay out of the public view comes from the President himself?” Warner snapped. “I don’t know if Ardent and I can shield you from the consequences if you do this.”

“Dump it on me,” Michael told her. “I’ve enough political capital to take it, and if I don’t…fuck it, I already gave this country five decades of my life. They can have my career if they want it.”

“It may not be your career that’s on the block if this goes sideways,” she pointed out.

Michael was silent, considering. If he defied orders and used his influence to cover for White and Mason defying orders, they could, he supposed, end up in jail. And a werewolf was a class one regenerator. They could jail him for an extraordinarily long time.

They’d have to catch him first.

“I’ll take that risk,” he told her. “Run interference for us?”

“You know what you’re asking,” Warner replied. She sighed. “Okay, Michael. But when this comes apart, I’m holding you to your promise to take the fall. This could hurt a lot more than just the teams in play.”

8

THERE WAS no way that David could be certain of the timeline of his vision. He might have been an occasional hunter, but he was still primarily a town boy. He couldn’t tell the time by the sun, not in an unfamiliar city.

So, as the two Pendragons swept toward New York City, he had the CNN feed running silently in the corner of his helmet visor. When everything went to hell, he got to watch it in real time with a sinking feeling of déjà vu.

Even the camera angle was familiar as the van smashed into the stage and the crowd scattered, screaming. The reporter, speaking a moment before about the man speaking on the stage—the brother of an Oregon National Guard company commander killed when the vampires had decided they needed tanks—was shocked to silence.

“We…we don’t know what’s going on,” the man admitted after several seconds of silence. “Something is attacking the March for Truth protest in Central Park. NYPD officers are in the area to supervise; they should be—oh, God.”

A familiar fusillade of gunfire blasted across the screen. The cops were shooting at something behind the crowd, and this time, David could see some of the gunfire going astray. Not every person lying wounded on the ground had been taken out by the flying debris.

The rocket launcher appeared just as in his vision, the missile streaking out of sight—and then the response of the entire stage flying into the police.

The surviving cops fell back in a panic, only a handful of the survivors continuing to hold their ground, continuing to fire at whatever was coming.

David realized with a sickening sensation that they clearly weren’t expecting to bring the attacker down. They were trying to make it focus on them instead of the civilians.

“Oh, my God,” the reporter whispered. “What the hell is that thing?”

As the creature kicked aside the last of the stage and roared, the camera finally settled on the beast charging towards the crowd. The twenty-plus-foot-tall human-like figure was paying almost no attention to the gunfire as it snatched up running civilians who hadn’t made it far enough, stuffing them into its mouth.

“That…is a troll,” David said flatly. “A greater troll.”

One of the Awakened. The only real relationship between a greater troll and “normal” trolls was that both required human flesh to survive. This one had probably been asleep in the rocks of Central Park for several thousand years…and had woken up to what it had to think was an all-you-can-eat buffet.

“McCreery?” he snapped.

“Sir. We’re still fifteen minutes out without becoming obvious.”

“Fuck subtle. Go supersonic. Now.”

MICHAEL O’BRIEN CHECKED HIS ETA. Three hours, eleven minutes. Whatever happened, there was no way that ONSET Nine was going to get to New York in time to directly interfere with affairs. If he was going to cover for White, it was going to take some epic gymnastics.

Fortunately, he’d been the Brigadier commanding the High Threat Response teams when they’d been based out of New York State, and he still had contacts with the New York Police Department and their SWAT teams. With those contacts and with him not being actively in the fight, he was the best positioned to coordinate.

“Warner’s on the line for you, boss,” his pilot, Akono, told him grimly. “She does not sound happy.”

“Pass it back,” the werewolf ordered. The soundproofing on the helicopter wasn’t enough to muffle the sound of the engines and the rotors on the inside, but locking his helmet down took care of that as he linked back to the Campus.

“Major, what can I do for you?” he asked.

“You can call this mess off and talk White and Mason down,” Warner snapped. “We just got direct orders from the President and the Committee: all Omicron assets in New York are to stand down and get out of the way. The President has ordered a conventional military solution.”

Michael winced.

“Other than air strikes, do they have anything in position to deploy today?” he asked.

“No.”

“They can’t drop an air strike in Central Park without massive collateral damage,” he warned.

“I know that,” the Major snapped. “You know that. Fuck, I’m pretty damned sure the President knows that. But our political masters have decided that they’ll take that collateral damage over exposing the existence of Omicron.”

Michael was silent for several seconds. Warner knew what he was planning. She knew, as well as he did, that ONSET Thirteen and Fifteen were minutes from the Park at most. Two of their most effective teams, led by the two supernaturals Michael would have sent after a greater troll if he had to choose from all of ONSET.

If she’d actually wanted an abort, she’d be on the radio with White and Mason. Not him. She was still running interference.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he told her. “But the President may be prepared to sacrifice civilian lives to keep our secrets but I am not.

“I am assuming operational command of our New York assets and coordinating with the NYPD,” he continued. “We will do our duty.”

Silence.

“If you knowingly defy a direct order from the President of the United States of America…” Warner finally said.

“The President. The Committee. Hell, let’s throw in you and the Colonel, Major Warner,” he said grimly. “When this is over and New York is still standing, you can sue me.”

He cut the channel.

“Get me Deputy Chief Giordano of the NYPD’s ESU,” he ordered Akono. Giordano was an old friend—and the man in charge of emergency response for New York.

“And while you’re doing that, I need to talk to White.”

DAVID WAS FOCUSING on the view from his aircraft’s cameras as they flashed over the outskirts of New York City. He’d locked his radio to a special command network of ONSET Thirteen and Fifteen, a logical tactical restriction as they went into combat that also, conveniently, removed any ability to order him to not go in.

The last thing he was expecting was for his cell phone to ring. He stared at the expensive block of electronics that he could have sworn he’d turned off for several seconds. Then he saw the name coming up and hit ACCEPT.

“White.”

“David, it’s Michael,” O’Brien barked. “You need to open up your helmet tactical link; I’m pinging you to bring you into a new operational network for New York.”

“…sir?” David asked slowly.

“You’re heading in and are going to be face down on the ground,” his old team leader told him, not even bothering to ask if David was actually still standing by in the upstate base. “You won’t have the time to spare to coordinate.

“I’ve got our in-the-know contacts at the NYPD on the channel and am linking them in as well. I’m taking over operational command and will coordinate with the locals to set up a perimeter to keep as many civilians out of what’s coming as possible.”

“I…of course,” David replied.

“All of this is under my authority,” O’Brien told him flatly. “Do you understand, Commander White?”

What David understood was that while he’d been prepared to throw his career away, he wasn’t alone among ONSET’s commanders—and that the former Brigadier of the Omicron HTR teams had more political “armor” than he did.

If O’Brien was going to cover for him, he wasn’t going to turn it down.

“I understand, sir. Do you have any specific instructions?” he asked.

“Save as many civilians as you can,” the werewolf instructed. “But kill that troll.”

9

THE CHAOS HADN’T EVEN BEGUN to abate by the time the two Pendragons dove down into Central Park. The sun was half-obscured behind the towering skyscrapers, but the red on the ground around where the March for Truth had gathered was blood, not light.

David wasn’t sure how many people had been gathered to watch the speaker, but he couldn’t count the unmoving or cringing forms scattered across the field. The troll seemed to regard the collection of dead and survivors as its supper and was messily eating, ignoring the running crowd beyond its reach.

“Drop us off, then get its attention,” he ordered McCreery.

“You ready to jump?” the pilot asked.

David glanced over at Dresden, both of whom nodded. Her face was still hidden behind her mask, but her determination was clear. If they were lucky, this wouldn’t last long enough for the vampire to be able to remove her shield against daylight.

“Let’s go.”

He kicked open the side door on the gunship and stepped off, plummeting fifty feet toward the ground beneath him. Even for him, this wasn’t the smartest thing to do. His odds of making it through uninjured were only about fifty percent.

Of course, the odds of him taking an injury he couldn’t heal in short order were more like two percent, and he managed to land perfectly, absorbing the impact through his knees. Proper landing or not, a normal human would have broken bones in the landing.

But David White had long ago accepted he was not a “normal human.”

Dresden simply floated down on a platform of her magic, her body language suggesting that the non-vampire should have asked for her help…without her saying a word.

When Kate Mason and Hiro Tsimote floated safely down beside her, the point was very much made, and David shook his head at the two women with a grin they couldn’t see through his helmet.

A roar from the troll destroyed any humor, however, and he looked up in time to watch the two Pendragons sweep in at the massive man-like beast, ripple-firing anti-tank rockets at near-point-blank range and following them up with bursts of silver-loaded shells from the chain guns.

Explosions flung the troll backward and away from the civilians—David could only hope the bodies closest to the troll were all already dead—hammering it flat into the ground of the hill behind the stage. For a moment, he hoped that was enough—if ONSET’s silver-laced munitions had taken the troll down, no one else would ever know the difference.

That hope was dashed as the troll rose again, bellowing in rage and flinging a stone at the helicopters.

Dupond’s helicopter was hit, the rock tearing the tilt-rotor aircraft’s starboard jet engine clear off the hull. The chopper spun in the air, striving for more altitude, and managed to clear the buildings in time to dodge a second rock.

“Right, so that isn’t working,” David said grimly as he drew Memoria. “Smile, everybody, you’re on camera.”

“Fuck,” Mason replied. “What do we do?”

“Tsimote, pound that thing with your gun and firebolts. Aim for the eyes, keep it distracted. Fire and silver, keep the bastard blind.”

“And us?” Dresden asked.

“Hit it with everything you’ve got,” David told his two Mages. “I’m going to go wrestle a troll.”

AS MEMORIA’S ruddy glow became clearer in the growing dim, David realized he could hear the rotors of multiple news helicopters and at least six drones. If the troll hadn’t been enough to get the eyes of the nation—of the world—on the evening news, the force he was about to unleash would certainly do so.

“I was told once I couldn’t wage outright supernatural war in New York,” O’Brien murmured in his ear. “I guess they were wrong.

“You’ve never faced an enemy like this. I’m not sure even Memoria can hurt it. The only one of these anyone’s killed that I know of took an entire tank company’s load of armor-piercing shells to bring down.” He paused. “If anyone can, it’s you lot. Good luck.”

“Now!” David barked, and Tsimote’s carbine opened up. Heavy 7.62mm rounds hammered into the troll’s head as it rose to its feet, following by flashes of fire as the elementalist unleashed his gift.

The creature roared again, its stone skin shattering the bullets as they struck home. Black and blue bolts of magical fire joined the barrage as Dresden and Mason opened up as well, glittering fire lighting up Central Park with impossible colors.

The creature dodged with impossible speed, clearing out of the path of the streams of fire and bellowing words in some language David didn’t understand.

“It can talk?!” he demanded.

Of course it could talk. The Awakened might be homicidal and sapiovorous, but it was still intelligent.

“Yeah…” O’Brien trailed off. “Best guess, it’s been underground for a couple thousand years. Whatever language it’s speaking was probably half-dead before the Europeans’ arrival wiped out the local tribes. It might be able to speak, but we don’t have anyone who can listen.

“And it’s killed enough people I don’t really care. Put it down, Commander.”

David had already made that decision. He charged across the shattered stage, dodging around the wounded, dying and dead as he closed the distance. More fire and bullets flashed overhead—and the troll responded with flying stone.

A rock crashed down inches away from David, barely missing him…and then, to his shock, sprouted arms and legs and charged at him. The headless creature was so unexpected, it managed to get inside his guard despite his prescience, a rocky fist slamming into him and knocking him to the ground in mid-charge.

The rocks around David were all rising now as the troll unleashed its powers, summoning a legion of reinforcements to guard it from the tiny humans. His cracked ribs healed in a rush of warmth and he clambered back to his feet, studying the wall of mobile rocks now barring his way from the troll.

They weren’t neatly matched, the size of each defender clearly decided by the rock the troll had animated more than anything else. They had no faces, no eyes that he could see. Just legs and arms and fists of solid rock.

“Dresden!” he snapped. “Clear a path. Mason, Tsimote, cover us!”

The vampire didn’t even seem to cover the intervening distance. One moment, she was pitching fire at the troll over the head of the rocky army; the next, she was at his side, blades of flickering black fire flashing into existence around her fists.

“I see he brought some igneous friends,” she said calmly. “Shall we, Commander?”

“Let’s go.”

The rock that had hit him was charging again, but Dresden intercepted it almost casually. Her left-hand blade slammed into the center of the animated boulder, and a flash of black fire blasted the creature to pieces. Behind the host of rocks, the troll screamed in rage again.

David was already moving. The troll itself was fast—far faster than a twenty-five-foot-tall stone monster had any right to be—but its minions were closer to human speed. Still fast. Still strong.

Still no match for an elder vampire or a warrior Seer.

The rock-men swarmed him and Dresden, first in twos and threes…then in dozens. Memoria sent them crumpling to the ground like puppets with their strings cut, and Dresden’s flame-blades exploded them in bursts of shrapnel that knocked down two or three at a time.

Tsimote ran out of ammunition before they ran out of enemies, the elementalist joining Mason in blasting apart the swarming boulders as David and Dresden pushed through the ever-growing ranks—the troll using its conjured minions to buy itself more time for its gory meal.

This was not in the briefing he’d had on greater trolls. This was new, and dangerous, and terrifying…and being broadcast on live national television.

Every step forward was over the wreckage of what had been decorative boulders, accents on water features, several statues…if it was stone and weighed more than about a hundred kilos, the troll threw it at the advancing ONSET teams.

Finally, David and Dresden broke through, and the vampire turned to hold the swarm back.

“Go!” she hissed.

She probably shouldn’t have been giving him orders, but that was an argument for another time. David charged across the dozen or so feet between him and the troll, dodging a terrifyingly fast sweep of a massive arm and leaping to strike at the creature’s head.

The fist that knocked him out of the air had to weigh at least half a ton. It smashed him to the ground like a wrecking ball, shattering half of the bones in his body. Pain and heat flashed through his body as his gifts tried to put him back together and the monster stepped toward him, clearly planning to finish the job by stepping on him.

He rolled out of the way of the descending foot, leaping back to his feet as enough of his bones healed for him to stand. He’d left Memoria behind and the sword was now under the troll’s foot.

The creature seemed quite aware of what it had managed, twisting its foot to grind the sword deeper into the dirt as it glared down at David. It shouted at him, words in that strangely delicate, terrifying language that no living human would understand.

Another massive fist slammed into the ground next to him when he didn’t respond.

“Bring it!” he bellowed, hoping to lure the beast off of his sword.

Instead, he earned himself another set of juggernaut blows. He dodged one, and the second slammed into his upper torso, flinging him backward into the wreckage of a hot dog cart with a very final-sounding CRACK.

For a terrifying moment, David knew he’d broken his neck and wasn’t certain he could heal that. Given that he’d regenerated from being burnt alive, it was an unfounded fear…but even paralysis had a way of cutting through logic.

By the time heat flared through his neck and his head popped back into position, the troll held him in its hand, raising him towards a mouth full of jagged rocks that clearly functioned as massive, terrifyingly sharp, teeth.

“Commander!” Dresden snapped. “Catch!”

It was a pointless gesture. There was no need for the vampire Mage to throw her sword of fire to David—except the warning told him what she was doing.

There was no way for him not to catch the flaming blade, because she hadn’t truly thrown it. A glittering pillar of black flame erupted from his hand as the troll opened wide to try and devour him.

He grabbed a tooth with his left hand, letting the jagged stone cut into his skin as he unfolded into the troll’s mouth, all five foot four inches and two hundred pounds of his stockily built strength driving the flaming blade into the top of the creature’s jaw.

Both Dresden and Mason were channeling their power into that blade now, and it ripped out the top of the troll’s head, glittering black-and-blue fire searing through the creature in a pillar of destructive power.

Then the monster’s head exploded, flinging David back through the air with a half-screamed curse.

THANKFULLY, the army of rock monsters the troll had summoned had collapsed when it had died, which meant David only suffered a few cracked ribs and a loss of breath from landing hard on the ground. The ribs healed with an uncomfortable pop, and he dragged himself back up to his feet and studied his people.

The ground around them was covered in shattered pieces of rock, boulders and statues and concrete alike having been animated by the troll and put down by ONSET.

“McCreery, get down here and pick us up,” he ordered as he kicked aside debris to retrieve Memoria. “Dupond, don’t risk trying to land in Central Park. Get back to the old HTR facility and land carefully.”

“Wilco, Commander,” the Agent replied gratefully. “See you there.”

One helicopter disappeared over the skyscrapers while the second swooped down to settle to the ground next to them.

“Those news choppers are getting closer,” Mason observed.

“Probably want interviews,” David said dryly. “I think it’s self-evident that we are not talking to the press.”

McCreery flung open the side of the helicopter, waving for them to get in while her helmeted face turned toward the news helicopters.

“We need to move,” she told them.

“Agreed. Go!” David told her as he entered the aircraft, the last of the four Agents on the ground.

His pilot shook her head at him but was already moving forward as he closed the helicopter up behind him.

“On our way,” she replied, the helicopter jerking as it lifted away from the ground.

David turned his attention to his coms.

“O’Brien?” he asked quietly.

“Still here,” his old boss replied. “Well done.”

“There were still people alive in there,” David told him. “They need medical help ASAP.”

“NYPD and local EMS are already on it,” O’Brien said. “Look out your window, White.”

David obeyed, seeing the lights as ambulances now swarmed past the police barricades.

“How bad is the news?” he asked.

“Depends on your perspective,” O’Brien answered. “Not much question in people’s minds that you saved a lot of lives, but…lots of questions around very clear magical powers deployed by folks jumping out of black helicopters.

“Couldn’t be more of a conspiracy theorist’s wet dream if we’d tried. It’s been picked up around the world. If there’s a human being who doesn’t know magic is real by morning, they’re living in a cave somewhere.”

David winced.

“We just killed the masquerade, is what you’re telling me,” he said levelly. “What…what happens from here?”

“I don’t know,” O’Brien admitted. “What I do know? The President and the Committee wanted to send in conventional troops, starting with an air strike from the nearby Air National Guard bases. Your Pendragons had AG-laced munitions and barely even irritated the thing.

“Proper air strikes would have killed every civilian still alive in the park and probably taken down some of the surrounding buildings and achieved nothing,” the older Commander replied. “It would have taken tanks to bring the troll down, David. And by the time they got tanks through NYC to wage war in Central Park…”

“A lot of people would have died,” David agreed.

“Yeah.” O’Brien was silent. “We did what we had to do. You followed my orders, you understand?”

“Not…entirely,” David admitted.

“The President and Committee issued a direct order that all Omicron assets in New York State were to stand down and leave this to the Air Force and the Army,” the werewolf said flatly. “You didn’t defy a direct Presidential order, Commander White.

“I did.”

He coughed.

“You’d better get back on the main com channel,” he noted. “We may have carried the day and saved a lot of lives, but unless I miss my guess, the order for my arrest is going to be going out pretty damn quickly now.”

10

“SIR, we’re being ordered to divert to a set of coordinates I’ve never seen before,” Akono reported. “They’re about a hundred miles north of Washington, but there’s no listed Omicron facility there.”

A chill ran down Michael O’Brien’s spine as half a dozen rumors he’d heard over his decades of service came screaming up from the back of his mind. A facility buried in the rural backcountry of Maryland, not listed as an Omicron facility but operated by people who knew all of Omicron’s secrets.

“Well, set your course,” he ordered. “It wouldn’t do for us to disobey more orders today, would it?”

“Yes, sir.” Malcolm Akono was an elf, capable of conjuring illusions with weight and strength from something he called “the Dreaming.”

Right now, he was controlling a duplicate of himself that sat down next to Michael as he changed the Pendragon’s course.

“And what, exactly, is a hundred miles north of Washington?” Ix asked calmly, the demon exchanging a look with the elf.

“Nothing I know with certainty,” Michael told them. “Just rumors, dating back to the seventies, around something called Project Seraphim—supposedly an attempt to artificially create soldiers who could go toe-to-toe with supernaturals.”

He grinned broadly.

“While I doubt they’ve come up with anything that can take me on one-on-one, I’m sure they’ve got enough of whatever they do have to take me down. They’re not going to rely on me to go quietly.”

“And are you?” Akono asked. The duplicate was creepy. Even for Michael, who’d known the elf could do it, having two of Akono in his sight was weird and uncomfortable.

“Oh, hell no,” Michael confirmed cheerfully. “I have no intention of being aboard once you reach that base, gentlemen.” He shrugged. “I apologize for the situation that leaves you in, but…”

“We appear to be covered by your orders,” Ix pointed out. “Plus, well”—the demon smiled lazily—“I serve your ONSET because I choose to, not because you have any means of forcing me. They do not want to test their methods of coercion on me.”

“Parachute is under your seat,” Akono reminded him. “You have a plan?”

“Yeah,” Michael replied. “Always had an exit plan. Ever since I gave the reins over to Ardent.”

“The Colonel would make an excellent demon,” Ix said. There was no judgment in his tone. That was perhaps damning enough.

“He’d make a shitty demon,” the werewolf replied. “He makes a shitty human, but he’s good at his job.

“But his job requires him to obey the Committee and the President, and that means he’s turning on me whether he likes it or not.”

Michael rose, towering over both of his soon-to-be-ex-subordinates as he stripped off his ONSET body armor and its included computers, augmented reality gear, and GPS trackers. In a few moments, he was nearly naked, only the thick hair on his skin keeping him from shivering in the helicopter’s chilled air.

“You’re gonna drop into the middle of nowhere in your skivvies?” Akono asked. The elf’s duplicate was happily eating the eye candy of Michael’s undressed form, the werewolf noted with a wry internal smile.

“I didn’t pack a change of clothes,” Michael replied. “Or a gun that isn’t ONSET’s.”

He shook his head.

“Trust me. I have a plan.”

Ix handed him a parachute and, to Michael’s surprise, a shoulder holster with a matte-black revolver the Commander had never seen before.

“I, on the other hand, have never fully trusted any of you humans,” the demon said cheerfully. “Six shots, solid silver rounds. Don’t waste them.”

“Thank you.”

“My debt to you has hardly begun to be repaid,” Ix told him. “Hide well. Fight hard.”

“I hope not to have to fight at all,” Michael admitted.

“Good luck with that,” Akono told him dryly. “Now get out of my damn helicopter, Commander.”

FIFTY MILES north of the capital, it had probably taken Akono some effort to find a suitably deserted spot to drop his mostly undressed Commander. There was no one around, however, in the farmer’s field where Michael finally hit the ground.

He quickly shed the parachute, considering his options as he looked around him. For the first time in decades, Michael O’Brien didn’t have a mission, didn’t have a command.

It was a strange feeling. Stranger still was the certainty that his own government was going to be sending people after him. If he’d thought for a moment he was going to get a fair hearing, he’d turn himself in, but the moment he’d learned he was being sent to the Seraphim, he’d known that wasn’t happening.

He had a safe house in Washington, a property owned through a nest of shell companies and run by a property management company with instructions to keep a particular apartment empty but maintained and furnished. It had been self-funding since, oh, nineteen-ninety or so, but he’d kept in touch and knew it was there.

He just had to cross fifty miles of farmland and suburb to get there, without being intercepted, starting with his underwear and a revolver.

Fortunately for his dignity, Michael didn’t need to try and cross those miles as a human. With a bit of focused concentration, he didn’t even have to turn into the massive wolf he normally took.

Hiding the parachute in a pile of mulch on the edge of the field, Michael O’Brien knelt in the dirt and channeled energy.

A few minutes later, a midsized golden retriever smiled doggishly and set out for Washington, DC.

11

MORNING CAME WITH A CHANGING WORLD. David sat in the mess hall in the underground New York facility with Mason and their people, and watched the news explode.

Stone was up and moving around now, the big Empowered looking more shattered than disappointed he’d missed the previous night’s activities. The rest of the teams were settled in as well, seven supernaturals watching what might as well have been the end of the world.

“So far, no one has been willing to come forward with any kind of identification for the rock creatures that swarmed Central Park last night,” the CNN reporter told her audience breathlessly. “Equally, no one has taken responsibility for the black helicopters and combatants that came to the rescue of the March for Truth.

“Despite our best efforts, we have not been able to find any evidence of special effects or trickery, leaving us at CNN with no choice but to admit that we have live recordings of what appears to be a supernatural battle in New York.

“With independent verification from three media agencies and a dozen independent YouTubers and bloggers who were present or had drones in the area, we find ourselves in a strange new world this morning: one where we have solid evidence that magic and monsters exist.”

The reporter ran out of breath and stopped for a moment, looking like she’d rushed through the report because she couldn’t quite believe what she was saying. On the screen behind her, David got to watch himself jump into the troll’s mouth with a flaming sword.

He’d been there, and he was looking for the CGI artifacts.

“An emergency meeting of Congress has been called this morning, with both the Senate and the House demanding answers from the US government about how much they knew—and if the strange black-clad people who saved New York are officers of the United States or vigilantes of some kind.

“Anticipating potential riots and panic, the Governor has called out the National Guard and the NYPD is patrolling the streets in strength. No such incidents have been reported yet.”

David flipped the channel, bringing up BBC’s coverage. Instead of New York, the British news network was showing a heaving sea of humanity marching on the UK Parliament with crudely assembled banners.

“Protests in the aftermath of the revelations of the New York Incident continue as the afternoon draws on here in London,” the reporter told them in clipped Received Pronunciation tones. “The British public is demanding to know how much Her Majesty’s Government knew prior to these revelations—and if Her Majesty’s Government was aware of the supernatural, just what were they doing with that knowledge?”

“Turn it off,” Mason said. David obeyed.

“You’ve all seen the news feeds online, too,” the blonde ONSET Commander told them all. “Across the world, people are waking knowing that the supernatural actually exists. That magic is real. That myths have truth to them.

“And most damaging of all, that people like us exist,” Mason concluded grimly. “Most of the Western nations have some kind of supernatural branch and police force that they never admitted to. That’s all going to get dragged out into the open now, kicking and screaming.”

“We’re going to be in the middle of it,” David reminded them. “The problem is that we’re also in the middle of the biggest spike in supernatural incidents we’ve ever seen, so guess what our part in all of this is?”

“Keep doing the job?” Stone told them in his oddly pitched voice, his hand touching the scar at his throat.

“Exactly. No matter what,” David said. “We swore an oath; we took a side. We knew everything was being kept secret for half a dozen reasons—now that secrecy is fragmenting, but we still have a job to do.

“Our country has to decide how they want to operate in a world with the supernatural as a known reality. We have to make sure the world is still here once they do.”

DAVID AND MASON retreated to the office he’d taken over after sending their teams to prep, taking seats behind the desk as she set up the link back to the Campus.

Warner appeared on the screen looking utterly exhausted, nodding calmly to them before the screen split in half to include Charles’s long, scaly face, then into thirds to include Colonel Ardent’s flat expression.

“In any world where things weren’t going insane, you would both be in an immense but survivable pile of trouble,” Ardent told them calmly. “There are arguments to cover for your disobedience to orders, and I’d be willing to field them, but our superiors are unwilling to hear them.

“Fortunately for you, Commander O’Brien took it upon himself to shield you and Major Warner, and I have enabled this,” he continued. “Unfortunately for us all, the result of that is far worse than we expected.

“Commander O’Brien appears to have anticipated the situation. He has disappeared. I am…reasonably certain I know where ONSET Nine is and have already begun pushing to have Agents Ix and Akono released back to my custody.

“Officially, all Omicron agents have been ordered to regard O’Brien as armed and dangerous and to report his presence without engaging. ONSET teams that encounter him are expected to take him into custody, but I am concerned that the clear intent is for us to pass his location on to a third party.”

“What third party can they expect to arrest O’Brien?” David asked carefully.

“I…do not know with certainty,” Ardent admitted. “What I suspect, however, is that we are expected to hand his location over to kill squads that are black even by Omicron standards.”

Kill squads. That…was not a phrase David had expected to hear in this context. The realization that the government might have had an even blacker organization whose job was to watch ONSET and the rest of Omicron made sense, but for them to immediately leap to kill orders was…nerve-wracking.

“What do we do, sir?” Mason asked.

“Your jobs, Commander,” the Colonel said flatly. “O’Brien made his choice and is now beyond our ability to protect or help. We must make sure to continue to operate as we always have and demonstrate that ONSET is just as trustworthy as it ever was.

“In pursuit of that…Charles?”

It was hard to read emotions or opinions on the dragon’s face. You could anthropomorphize enough to guess, but it was always a dangerous game. Today, though, David was quite sure that Charles was maintaining an unusual level of control.

“In the midst of everything, we have an old problem rearing its ugly head,” the dragon told them. “Ai’ve been studying the pattern of attacks, as Ai told ye. We’ve identified at least one central point.”

“Where?” David asked.

“The lodge where Ekhmez was summoned,” the dragon said. “We knew it was a weak point in the Seal now, and it has not recovered as it should.”

“Charles told us this, so we started reviewing the surveillance,” Warner said, taking over. “It’s been dead and frozen for a year, but…something triggered about an hour ago. We think there’s someone at the site right now.”

“We’re ready to deploy,” David told them. “Give the word.”

“That’s where we want ONSET Thirteen, yes,” Ardent told them. “Mason, we have a different role for ONSET Fifteen. We have another Code Red in North Carolina. It was ONSET Nine’s area of responsibility, but since someone has locked up the remaining members of that team, you’re the closest.”

“Coordinates will be relayed to both of you via your normal control and analysis teams,” Warner told them. “We’ve got headaches all around, people, and a giant distraction in the media circus. Let’s keep the ball rolling.”

THE TWO COMMANDERS found themselves alone in the office as the video conference ended, considering their options and each other. With the cameras off, David offered Kate his hand over the desk. She took it and squeezed gently.

“This tempo has to slow down,” she said quietly. “We’re burning our teams out.”

“Stone should still be on bed rest,” David agreed. “I’m going to take him into action anyway because I need the extra hands.”

He shook his head.

“You be careful,” he told her, gripping her hand fiercely. “I’m not prepared to lose you.”

She leaned over and kissed him.

“I’m not prepared to lose you, either,” she pointed out. “We both have jobs to do, but I do rather insist you come back to me. With notably fewer nukes this time, mind you.”

He chuckled, but the humor died.

“I can’t believe I set this all in motion,” he murmured. The nuke was what had done it. They’d needed the weapon to turn the tide at the Mountain, but…that had become impossible to ignore.

“I think you can probably blame the troll, actually,” Kate reminded him. “That would have shown up regardless of whether we nuked the vampires. And once we fought a troll on live TV…”

“This whole thing was fucked,” he said. “But…O’Brien on the run? ONSET Nine locked up? What’s going on?”

“Our government is panicking,” Kate said quietly. “They’re not thinking straight and they’re leaping to what they think might help them survive the next election.”

“If they keep this up, none of us might live that long,” David said. “This could get ugly—and that’s before we start counting the Code Reds.”

“I’ll deal with that,” Kate promised. “You go find out who’s poking around Ekhmez’s summoning circle. We do not want that asshole coming back.”

David snorted.

“I wish I could say he was dead, but I’m not entirely sure decapitating a higher-court demon, even with Memoria, is enough to make sure one of the Pure stays dead.”

Kate winced. “I’m…relatively sure it isn’t, sadly,” she admitted.

“Well…worst-case scenario, I kill him again,” David said firmly, with a confidence he didn’t quite feel.

Before he could get up, however, Mason slipped out of her chair and into his lap, wrapping her arms around him and resting her head against his.

“I’m afraid, David,” she said quietly. “The world is coming apart and I’m not sure we can trust our bosses. What do we do?”

He held her silently for a few moments.

“We serve and protect,” he finally replied. “We do the job. But…we watch our backs. And we watch our friends’ backs.”

They held each other in silence for a few more seconds. But the world didn’t allow them more time than that.

They both had jobs to do.

12

MICHAEL O’BRIEN MADE it to the small towns north of the Potomac before there was any sign he hadn’t made a clean getaway. He was trotting along a suburban street when he caught the sound of helicopters approaching.

That he could hear them at all told him he they weren’t ONSET or OSPI aircraft—both of the Omicron policing organizations used the Pendragon, which was enchanted to be utterly silent from the outside.

Pausing, he sat down on the side of the road and panted, looking behind him. He had far better distance vision than a regular dog would have, so he was able to see the helicopters moving forward. There were maybe six in his line of sight, moving in a rough formation that allowed them to sweep a massive amount of ground.

He wasn’t sure how they expected to find him, but it seemed like hiding might be a better idea than moving. A dog moving with clear purpose might stand out enough to attract their attention, but one sleeping under someone’s deck would probably pass without notice.

Michael had made his way into an empty backyard when a strange buzzing sensation swept over the back of his skin, the long yellow hair of his current form spiking out in a dozen directions in reaction to the strange energy wave.

He’d been detected. He wasn’t sure how or by what, but one of the helicopters had a bead on him and was turning towards the yard he’d picked to hide in.

Somehow, his pursuers could detect his transformed self. That was unexpected and problematic.

He ran.

He might be wearing the skin of a midsized golden retriever, but he had all of the strength and speed of the supernatural wolf he normally transformed into. He leapt the fence in a single bound and hit the ground running, blurring down the street and causing sudden shouts of surprise and fear as he leapt over a dog-walker with four terriers on leashes.

He was reasonably sure it didn’t matter if the helicopter was armed. They weren’t going to fire off missiles or machine guns at a dog in the street, however sure they were. What they were going to do…was have two more helicopters fly ahead and land, deploying teams of young men in neat-looking black suits.

Those men started spreading out, trying to cut off his escape as they clearly took a moment to locate the particular dog they were chasing. They didn’t move right. They were too fast for mortals, but not smooth enough to be supernaturals.

Their movements were jerky, rapidly stopping and starting in a way he’d never seen before. They weren’t as fast as he was…but there were a dozen of them closing with him now, and it was a safe assumption they were all armed.

The sight must have been very strange to anyone around them. A dozen men in suits trying to cut off and pin down a relatively ordinary-looking dog, though that dog was moving far faster than any normal canine.

Michael left the ground in a massive leap that should have taken him between the closest two suits, well outside their reach. Instead, he collided with one of them as the youth jerked impossibly into the way.

They rolled, Michael trying to break free without having to injure the other man. He didn’t know who these people were, but he wasn’t going to leap straight to killing them!

The stranger might have been far too fast for a mortal, but he wasn’t fast enough or strong enough to keep up with a thoroughly pissed-off werewolf, regardless of what form the werewolf happened to be wearing right now.

Michael’s entire canine weight slammed into an awkwardly placed leg, and the young man went down with a sickening crack as his shin snapped. One firm headbutt later and Michael was free, diving away from the injured agent and running.

“Stop!” a voice bellowed. “Commander O’Brien, we have the authority here! Stand down and surrender or we will fire!”

They were making interesting assumptions about a random dog, Michael noted. They certainly weren’t letting that slow them down. Gunfire echoed through the Washington suburb a moment later, even the silenced pistols his pursuers produced painfully loud in his ears.

None of the bullets hit him, but they were getting closer than he liked, and they were still actively chasing him. They had helicopters, numbers, and firepower.

He had…a river.

More gunfire followed him as he reached the edge of the Potomac and leapt, releasing his transformation as he did. He hit the rushing water with brutal force that took his breath away, losing the gun Ix had given him in moments as the cold water rushed over him.

He was hoping that they could only detect him when he was transformed, and focused on getting as deep as he could. He still needed to breathe…but he could go a lot longer without oxygen than even most supernaturals, and unless they could detect his untransformed self in the water, he’d be safe.

Keeping his eyes and ears open for pursuit, he let the current sweep him away.

“ARE YOU OKAY?”

It took Michael a moment to reorient himself and identify the jogger who’d spoken. She was an attractively chubby blonde woman, probably in her mid-forties, clad in the stereotypical “urban jogger” outfit.

She was also coming over to where he lay gasping on the stones next to the river. He struggled to his feet, suddenly aware that, soaked as he was, he might as well have been completely naked.

And the woman was definitely eating the eye candy, even as she was checking on him.

“I think I’m fine,” he told her, coughing some more. “My friends bet me I couldn’t swim across the river.”

Looking back at the Potomac, he forced a laugh.

“You need new friends,” the woman told him dryly. His responding laugh was much more honest.

“In their defense, they were high as balls,” he lied quickly. “But it’s amazing how sober you get when you hit freezing water!”

“Are you okay?” she repeated. “You look…cold.”

“I’ll be fine,” he said.

“Can I call you an Uber or a cab or something?” she asked quickly. “I’m guessing you don’t have a phone or any money on you!”

Michael looked down at his soaked boxers and chuckled.

“Not really,” he admitted, looking over to try and find a street sign. He was too far away from his apartment building to walk.

“If I could borrow a phone to call a cab, though, I’d appreciate it,” he said. “I have cash if I can get back to my apartment.”

The woman chuckled, glancing at the path she’d been jogging along, then back at his mostly unclothed form.

“Now, my dear, what kind of Christian would I be if I just called you a cab and left you to freeze out here?” she asked. “My car’s only a few minutes’ walk, and I’ve got a couple of towels in the trunk; you can dry off while we get you home.”

“You, miss, are an angel,” Michael told her fervently.

MICHAEL’S RESCUER delivered him to his apartment building, where a six-digit code let him in. The state of the apartment set aside for him, however, was not what he’d been expecting.

He’d paid for the apartment to be refurnished three years earlier, and renovated ten years earlier. From the motheaten dust covers and faded linoleum, not only had those refurbishments not happened, but the refurbishments before that hadn’t happened either.

Fortunately, the safe the lawyer he’d retained for this purpose kept stocked was still there and contained what it should. He handed his rescuer, who was eyeing the entire apartment askance, a stack of twenties.

“Thank you for the rescue,” he told her.

“It was my pleasure; I don’t need this,” she replied.

“Take it,” he insisted. “Consider it a bribe to forget how bad the apartment looks!”

“If you insist, mister.” She looked around, shaking her head. “Good luck with those friends of yours.”

He closed the door behind her, surveyed his safe house, and sighed.

Apparently, he should have told the lawyer to send him pictures of the place. All he’d told the woman to do, however, was make sure the safe and closet were stocked.

The clothes in the closet, like the safe, lived up to expectations. And well beyond—the neatly bagged and organized clothes were in the sizes he’d given the lawyer. They were also the latest fashions, high-quality fabric and designer labels.

At least one of the people taking care of this place hadn’t been screwing him over. Given that the money from the property management company went into trust with the law firm, that was probably a good thing.

He’d take the cash and go buy a prepaid cellphone once he’d recharged. Grotty as the furniture was, the heat was working, the water was running, and the lawyer had done her job. It could be worse.

He showered, dressed, and then carefully measured the wall away from the closet. Six steps. Seven. Back four inches.

He punched into the wall, tearing a hole in the old drywall and looking in at the safe he’d installed himself almost thirty years earlier. He’d patched up the wall himself, so none of the people he’d hired had even known it was there.

Michael ripped the safe out and spun the dials, plugging in the combination in seconds.

The safe the lawyer knew about had money. The closet had clothes. The property management company was supposed to keep non-perishable food on hand, but he didn’t trust that.

The safe in the wall held things no mundane was supposed to know about. An M1911-Silver, modified for the different ballistic properties of the old solid-silver rounds. One of the first mageblades, an enchanted knife that would cut through anything. An enchanted lightweight Kevlar vest and silver bullets filled the rest of the safe. It was a small arsenal, put aside for if everything went wrong at some point.

Michael O’Brien had given his life to the service of the United States of America.

That didn’t mean he’d ever fully trusted Omicron’s superiors.

13

THE HUNTING LODGE was high enough to still be covered in snow and ice. David reflected that he’d apparently never see this place without it being frozen—not that he had any great desire to see the hunting lodge where the Church of the Black Sun had summoned a demon again.

But duty called.

“What are we seeing on the surveillance?” he asked McCreery as the Pendragon swept over the snow line and continued along the mountain chain.

“Nothing definitive,” she warned him. “Something tripped the external motion sensors three hours and twenty-six minutes ago, but we have nothing to suggest they left afterwards. Overhead isn’t picking up anything, but the internal sensors are still occasionally pinging.

“There’s someone in there, but they’re being careful and moving around enough that I can’t be sure where they are.”

No one should be in the building at all—it had been seized by the government after the Black Sun had been taken down, and then laced with sensors just in case. Since someone was, he could only hope it was a lost skier.

And not, for example, a rogue faction of demon summoners.

“Set us down outside and then get back in the air to provide overwatch,” David ordered. “If anybody runs, they get one warning. Then shoot them down.”

His pilot winced but nodded.

“Weird thing, though, boss?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m not seeing any vehicles,” McCreery told him. “The road hasn’t had enough time to really degrade; they could have driven right up to the building…but there’s no vehicles there at all.”

“So, they probably walked in, trying to avoid detection,” David concluded. “Or we’re looking at some confused lost skiers.” He chuckled humorlessly. “If it’s the latter, they’re going to get even more confused shortly.”

STONE AND DRESDEN followed David out of the helicopter, all three of them wrapped in black armor and helmets. Dresden carried the same M4-Omicron carbine that David did, where Stone had slung his massive M60 machine gun over his shoulder.

The vampire seemed to waver for a moment as the Pendragon lifted off behind them. She shook herself, her even-more-faceless helmet turning to David afterward.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “If this goes bad, it’ll do so fast and hard.”

“I’m fine,” she replied. “Just remember that vampires are definitively nocturnal. I’m forcing my body to adapt to a more ‘normal’ cycle to work with your team, but…” She shrugged. “It takes time, but I am ready for action.”

David glanced at Stone, who was carefully not visibly reeling. The big Empowered was a lot harder to hurt than an ordinary human, but once taken down, he took just as long to recover—and the wave of energy that had wiped out everyone in Detroit had been hard on even his system.

He seemed up and capable, though, and it wasn’t like they had much choice. Neither of his team members were at a hundred percent, but they were the team he had.

“All right,” he said grimly. “Let’s stick together. This could easily just be some hikers or skiers who got lost and went looking for shelter as anything else. We don’t shoot first.”

Both of his subordinates nodded, and then followed him as he advanced on the sprawling lodge building. It was in rough shape—no one had bothered to fix any of the holes ONSET had blown in the building when they’d assaulted, and heavy snowfall had expanded the damage ruthlessly.

“Thermal is clear,” Dresden reported. “There’s no one alive on this side of the building.”

“The summoning chamber was deeper towards the mountain, buried in the middle of the structure,” David told them. “If we have trouble, that’s where it’ll be.”

He took a moment, standing at the edge of the hole where the Anti-Paranormal Marines had blown their way into the main floor, to remember as much as he could of the layout of the building.

“If I remember correctly, the inner sanctum–ish area is this way,” he continued. “With me.”

IT WAS A STRANGE FEELING, moving through the half-wrecked building. David had seen it in its original state, when even the more public areas had been well built and well maintained, and the inner sanctum had been outright luxurious.

Now it was far less luxurious. A quarter or so of the building was utterly wrecked, and snow was drifting into the rest from there. The team that had set up the surveillance had shut down the heating and lights, leaving the building to the elements.

Even knowing there was someone in there somewhere, the building felt empty. Cold. Abandoned.

Creepy.

The entire building registered flatly on their thermal goggles. The walls were frozen to the same temperature as the snow or outside, and blocked any line of sight to show anyone in the building.

“No footprints,” Stone noted as they moved through the building. “You’d think we’d see something in the snow.”

“It depends,” David replied. “If they came in from above and knew where they were going, we wouldn’t have passed their trail yet.”

“No aircraft,” Dresden said. “How would they have come in from above? Why, for that matter?”

“How would you come in from above?” the Commander asked dryly. “If they expected surveillance and motion sensors, they might have tried to come in over it and sneak past it to the summoning chamber.”

The vampire visibly shivered at the mention of the summoning chamber, and David waved his team to silence as they reached the portion of the structure intact enough that the snow wasn’t drifting into it.

They continued on their way, until Dresden held up her hand. She had the best hearing of the three of them and quickly let them know with hand signals there were people ahead of them.

At least six. Moving forward, David confirmed that count himself, listening carefully.

They were in the main chamber—and speaking very quietly. The ONSET team could tell there were people there, but even David couldn’t tell what they were saying.

He gestured for his two agents to approach the doors to the main chamber on either side. Well, the doorway—the doors themselves hadn’t survived Ekhmez’s summoning and ensuing clash with Michael O’Brien.

David held up three fingers, slowly counting down as he prepared to charge into the room himself.

HE FOLDED down the last finger and moved, blurring into the room at inhuman speed while his subordinates came through behind him. Between the three of them, they had the entire room covered, guns tracking across the half-dozen men in winter camouflage gear.

“Nobody move!” David barked. “Drop your weapons; this is a restricted area!”

All of the six men were carrying hunting rifles. Most of them were slung as they poked through the wreckage of the summoning ritual—what ONSET had left behind, anyway. The cleanup teams had taken away the bodies and anything related to the ritual they could find.

The six hunters clearly hadn’t found much in the room. Two of them had settled down behind the broken altar with their rifles in their hands. They hesitated at David’s command, and he trained his carbine on the closer of the two armed men.

“Drop. The. Guns,” he snapped. “I won’t repeat myself.”

They didn’t look like cultists, but they were a little too uniformly equipped, had gone a little too directly to the heart of the building and weren’t nearly concerned enough about the remaining paraphernalia of a demon summoning.

The hunters with slung weapons kept their hands where David and his companions could see them. The two holding the guns slowly laid them down on the altar and stood up.

Watching them, David realized there was an opening in the wall behind them. A chunk of the wooden paneling had slid aside to reveal a set of stairs leading down under the building—a secret passageway that Omicron had missed.

That Omicron should not have missed. Not unless it was concealed by magic.

“You’re all under arrest for trespassing and violating a restricted zone,” David told them calmly, hoping that the secret entrance was all he’d missed. He gestured Dresden forward with a jerk of his head, leaving Stone with his bigger weapon to continue covering the hunters.

“That’s a little extreme, dontcha think?” a calm Boston-accented voice said as three more men emerged from the secret passageway. All three were wrapped in the same winter gear as the rest, two of them with rifles slung and their arms occupied with large wooden boxes.

The speaker had removed his hood and snow goggles, letting shoulder-length black hair hang free as he stepped up into the summoning chamber. Where the others were carrying regular hunting rifles, he had an AR-15 held lazily in one hand.

David could easily fire the weapon the way the man was holding it, but most mortals would find it painful at best. Something about the way the all-too-familiar man held the gun suggested that he at least thought he could.

“Wait,” he said slowly as he registered the face and the accent. “Buckley? You’re supposed to be in jail.”

John Buckley had been David White’s mentor in the police force of the Maine town of Charlesville, his employment before joining ONSET. He’d also turned out to be a member of the Church of the Black Sun and had been interned with the rest of its members after they’d ambushed ONSET and wiped out hundreds of Federal agents.

“Ah,” Buckley said aloud. “So, you fine gentlemen would be ONSET. I guess that explains the extremism.”

He smiled coldly.

“From the voice, I’m guessing White, too. Long time no see, David.”

David leveled his gun on Buckley.

“Put down the gun, put down the boxes,” he ordered. “You’re all under arrest.”

“That, David, would be far too much of an interruption,” the older ex-cop told him. “How about you be a good boy and step aside? That way, no one needs to get hurt.”

David fired. The single bullet slammed into the AR-15 in Buckley’s grip, tearing the weapon from the other man’s hand and smashing its wreckage into the wall behind him.

“Stand down,” he snapped.

Buckley shook his hand, eyeing the several visibly broken fingers.

“Fine,” he hissed. “Your way.”

His uninjured hand made a sharp chopping gesture, palm up and facing toward David. The ONSET Commander’s prescience told him there was no danger…but the spell wasn’t intended to attack anyone.

A barrier of force, glittering white and cold in the winter air, flashed into existence between the hunters and ONSET Thirteen. David hadn’t realized Buckley was a Mage—he’d assumed his old mentor was a mundane, even after learning the man had been a member of an apocalyptic cult.

Now he bowed mockingly as he flipped the hood of his winter gear back up.

“I’d love to catch up, you with your government-sanctioned murders, me with my prison time and escape, but I’m on a timeline,” the cultist told them. “Alex, the eighth panel from the right has a tunnel leading outside,” he instructed his minions. “Get it open.”

David stepped up to the barrier, testing it with the barrel of his gun.

“The Black Sun is done,” he warned Buckley. “And we have aerial coverage. You’re not getting out of here.”

“The Church of the Black Sun achieved its purpose,” the other man said distractedly. He was doing…something. David wasn’t sure what, but his Sight was showing rippling patterns of purple and black magic rippling away from his hands.

“It was one tool. Ekhmez failed, but the Church served. And if the chaff was burnt away, it was only ever an incubator for greater things.”

The panel he’d sent his man to popped open, revealing a dark maw leading deeper into the mountain.

“We could fight,” Buckley noted as the magic wrapping around his hands became visible to normal sight. “Except you’d probably win. I know what that sword you carry does—it would break my barrier.

“But not quickly enough.”

He flung his hands out toward David and the magic flickered out, forming into a glistening circle of shadowstuff nine feet across.

“Goodbye, David,” the cult Mage said softly as the first immense toad demon lumbered out of the portal.

DAVID WOULD HAVE BEEN happy to never see one of the midlevel enforcers for the Masters Beyond ever again. The nine-foot-tall, broad-shouldered and squat-faced monstrosities were not only dangerous, they were ugly.

Six of them dropped out of the hole in reality into the ruined room, blocking the ONSET team from Buckley and his minions as the Mage threw them a mocking salute and stepped into the shadows blocking the stairs.

“McCreery, we have nine hostiles attempting evac,” David snapped. “They’re following a tunnel leading into the mountain—watch satellite overhead for them. They’re in winter camo gear, carrying chests of some kind taken from a hidden chamber in here.”

He paused.

“Shoot to kill, no warnings,” he concluded.

Then the glittering barrier Buckley had conjured collapsed and the demons charged. Stone’s M60 opened up, spraying the lead demon with a hail of silver that flung the creature back. It hit the ground in the middle of the pack, roaring in pain but still intact.

Dresden was more precise, firing a three-round burst into the second demon’s head. The exact central nexus of a demon wasn’t in a predictable spot, however, and the creature’s head exploded without seeming to slow the Pure’s advance at all.

David flipped his own rifle to automatic and emptied the entire magazine into the demon coming straight at him. The first round hit around what would have been the hip on a human, and then he walked his fire up and across, carving a sharply defined line of bullet holes through the creature.

It was quickly clear the demon had no internal organs whatsoever, but the ichor it was assembled from splattered away from the silver bullets to leave gaping holes. The monster took another step forward—and then fell into pieces, its form collapsing into black ooze as it fell.

The fourth demon reached David without interruption, however. Massive claws swept toward his face, and he dodged backward. The M4 carbine fell to the ground as he drew Memoria. The red-tinged blade flickered through the shadows scattering across the room, removing the demon’s arm as it came for him again.

Its other arm slammed into his torso, the claws scraping across his armor with a painful sound and force before he brought Memoria across into the Pure’s torso. The soul-blade severed the link between Pure and conjured body in a single strike, the entire creature collapsing back into ichor that covered David in black oil.

The remaining demons were around him now. The one Dresden had shot had managed to remove her gun from her grip despite lacking a head, and the vampire was now dueling two of them with blades of black fire extending from her fists.

Both of the demons that had gone for Stone were stumbling backward, still intact but unable to advance in the face of the big Empowered’s carefully aimed bursts of fire. As David assessed the situation, Stone managed to find the nexus of one of the demons, the burst of fire finishing the job and splattering the demon across the back of the summoning chamber wall.

“Go after him,” Stone barked. “We’ve got this!”

David glanced over at Dresden in time to watch her get flung backward by a blow to the chest—but she took the arm that hit her along with her, the demon that had struck her looking confusedly at its suddenly-leaking stump.

His team had this under control. He charged into the dark stairwell alone.

THE STEPS DESCENDED FARTHER than he’d expected, dropping easily fifty or sixty feet into the mountainside. The decorative paneling of the room the secret door had opened into lasted less than a dozen steps before giving way to bare rock.

That rock had been smoothed with power tools, and lights had been installed in carefully carved sconces. When the cleanup teams had shut down the lodge’s power, they’d shut down the power here, too. The staircase was pitch dark.

David White, however, could see in the dark these days. He took the steps two at a time, then three, accelerating as he charged down the stairs in pursuit of his former friend.

The hunters he was chasing didn’t have his inhuman senses. They were using bright flashlights to cut their way through the dark. The tunnel opened out at the bottom of the stairs, turning into a gentle ramp back toward the surface.

“Boss!” one of the men shouted as David came up behind him, turning to shine his flashlight backward, presumably at the sound of running feet.

“Damn,” Buckley said, turning back to spot David charging after them. “Do you know how gross you look, David?” he asked.

A second shield flickered into existence to bar David’s way, but this time, the ONSET Commander dodged past it. His sword out, he lunged down the tunnel toward the cultists.

Gunfire rang out, two of the hunters opening fire. David dodged both shots—only for a blast of force from Buckley to fling him backward.

“I already told you,” the Mage snapped. “I don’t have time for this.”

Black light flared out from Buckley’s palms, forming a second portal in the depths of the mountain. This time, however, instead of summoning creatures out of it, he gestured his minions to it.

“Go,” he snapped. “Unless you want to get cut in half by White here!”

David charged again. This time, his sword flashed out to intercept the bolt of force Buckley threw at him, flicking it aside easily.

Letting his minions go through the gateway he’d opened, Buckley stepped into David’s charge, an aura of dark electricity flickering around his arms as he met the Commander in mid-stride. He punched David’s sword aside, parrying the blade with a glowing arm.

Buckley’s own attacks went astray, however, as David sidestepped the other man’s fists and tried to close with the sword. He was faster than the Mage, stronger. Buckley clearly had an unexpectedly good idea of David’s own abilities—and he was also clearly just buying time.

The last of his minions dove through the portal after only a few seconds of the fight, and energy pulsed out of Buckley. The Mage stepped backward swiftly as he conjured a new barrier, blocking David from following him.

He exhaled and shook his head.

“I think we both know how this would end,” he said conversationally, “so I suggest we chalk this one up for you and never try it again. It’s been fun, David. I will, quite literally, see you in Hell.”

With that, he stepped backward into the circle of black light behind him, vanishing into the darkness as the portal took him away.

14

“A PORTAL?” Warner asked over the radio as David collapsed into the seat in the Pendragon. “A point-to-point portal?”

“That’s what I’m guessing, at least,” David replied, glancing around his team. Toad demons might be the Masters’ enforcers, but they didn’t seem to be that much bigger of a threat than the lesser demons ONSET fought more regularly. Both of his subordinates were uninjured, if exhausted.

“I’ve never seen anyone step into a portal, in any case,” he continued. “Buckley sent his minions through and then went through after them.”

“That’s not supposed to be possible with the Seal in place,” Warner told him. “We know the Seal is weak around there, but…he’d have to be going somewhere equally weak. And there shouldn’t be anywhere that weak!”

“There’s a reason I called in immediately,” he said. “Plus, isn’t Buckley supposed to be in jail? He was a senior member of the Church of the Black Sun.”

“I’ll have to check the records,” the Major said grimly. “Some of the junior members were let go with a warning, but everyone we know took up arms against the US government is in a cell. None of them should be wandering around free.”

“He was here for a secret library we didn’t find,” David noted. “They cleaned it out and took it with them. Whatever they were after, they found it.”

“Damn. I don’t suppose you have any good news?” she asked.

“No injuries to report, despite the bastard summoning half a dozen toad demons. I’m starting to think we’re overestimating their threat potential,” he told her.

She snorted humorlessly.

“You and Dresden are both Class One supernaturals; we just don’t trust her on her own,” Warner pointed out. “Right now, ONSET Thirteen is probably the biggest stick in my armory.”

“There’s not much else we can do here,” David admitted. “What do you need me to smack with that stick?”

The Major was silent.

“Ma’am?”

“It’s not my call anymore,” she said quietly. “I need your team to return to Campus, David. I’ll see what I can find out about Buckley…but the clock is now ticking.”

“Ma’am?” David repeated, confused.

“I can’t tell you over the radio. Ardent will be speaking to the assembled teams this afternoon. Better for him to explain it, I think.”

A chill ran down his spine.

“I see, ma’am,” he said formally. “ONSET Thirteen will RTB.”

And if he made some calls during the multi-hour flight, well, who would blame him?

LORING CALLED HIM FIRST. That was a surprise: Vanessa Loring was very much a child of the Internet generation, and her preference for text-based communication was almost pathological. Ninety percent of the front desk staff’s job at her consulting company was making sure no one actually made her speak on the phone.

“White,” he answered, wondering just what she was after.

“David,” she replied. “How in-the-loop are you?”

He paused to think for a second.

“That you’re asking that question tells me I’m not as in-the-loop as I thought,” he finally said. “What’s going on?”

“What’s going on, my dear government flunky, is that two very polite young men in cheap suits just came by my office and told me that if I ever admitted to anyone that I’d known of a supernatural government program prior to the New York Incident, I’d be arrested or ‘terminated’ before anyone had a chance to fact-check me,” Loring told him.

“This wasn’t ‘please sign an NDA, Ms. Loring,’ or ‘play nice with everyone or we reopen your record, Ms. Loring,’” she continued. “This was classic man-in-black, conspiracy-theory ‘shut up or be buried’ bullshit.

“What the hell is happening?”

“I don’t know yet,” he admitted. “All of the ONSET teams have been recalled to the Campus for a mass briefing. That’s…not a good sign. With the supernatural suddenly public news, I assumed we’d just come clean about the Omicron program, but…”

“David, I will admit, against my will, that most of the people you work for actually do have people’s best interests at heart. Most of the time,” she said slowly. “But they prevaricate and deceive by habit now. What on Earth makes you think they’re going to happily step out into the light?”

“Fuck.”

The curse hung in the magically silenced helicopter compartment, his two subordinates lost in their own worlds. Dresden was asleep, the vampire out cold as her new non-nocturnal schedule caught up with her. Stone was listening to an audiobook or something, entirely out of the present moment.

“There has to be a plan,” he said quietly.

“There is,” Loring told him. “David, you know I had ONSET’s systems opened from one end to the other. I swore I’d never tell anyone anything, but…” She hesitated. “I suspect I may know some things about ONSET’s long-term plans that even Charles doesn’t.”

He waited.

“It’s called the Exodus Protocol.”

The name was ominous enough.

“Go on,” he asked.

“They dissolve Omicron. Completely. Everything from OSPI to ONSET shuts down, everyone is paid off, the various black sites suddenly have always belonged to the NSA or the FBI or one of the other three-letter agencies.

“You’re all forcibly retired and bound to secrecy under pain of death. They’ll then intentionally court supernatural incidents to justify the public forming of replacement agencies, probably with a core of loyal, informed personnel from before.”

David could see the logic. It just sucked. People would die.

“If we have one job, it’s to keep people safe,” he murmured.

“Exodus calls for ‘acceptable levels of collateral damage’ to justify the re-creation of the services under a new banner with new personnel,” Loring said bitterly. “With ‘selected loyal personnel’ used to secure government facilities during the changeover.”

“What about the people who can’t go quiet?” David asked as a horrible thought struck him. Charles. Ix. A few others. ONSET and Omicron had recruited a number of supernaturals who couldn’t pretend to be human for long. Who had needed the protection of Omicron to stay hidden.

“Those they trust will probably be used in the transition period,” she replied. “The rest… There’s a secondary protocol codenamed Beowulf.”

Beowulf.

“Beowulf was a dragon slayer,” David said.

“I know.”

“You have to tell Charles,” he told her.

“He’s gone dark on every channel I have,” Loring admitted. “Messengers, email, everything. It’s like his Internet’s been cut off…or it’s already too late.”

“He’s under the Campus,” David said grimly. “They can’t do anything until they’ve evacuated the Campus personnel and ONSET teams; Charles has too many friends. They can cut him off, and that might make him suspicious, but…”

“You have to warn him,” Loring told him. “Charles is the only reason I got a second chance, even after everything I did for you guys. I owe him.”

“So do I.” He wasn’t sure what he was going to do, but he’d have to do something.

“So do I,” he repeated.

CONNECTION NOT AVAILABLE. CHARLES ST PATRICK NOT FOUND.

David had never seen that message in any communication attempt through Omicron’s systems before—and certainly not in any attempt to get in touch with Charles, the dragon administering the system.

He’d used a Commander’s override code, one that should have put him through even if the recipient was asleep or on another call. The system had just…rejected him. Like the dragon wasn’t even there.

That was bad. Really bad.

“McCreery,” he said quietly to the pilot. “Can you speed us up at all? I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

“Not without going supersonic and attracting a lot of attention,” she admitted. “We may be flying down the Rockies, but if I fire up the jets, we’re still going to break hearts and windows.”

“Let’s not draw attention to ourselves today,” David agreed. Even suspecting that the Exodus Protocol was being enacted, he wasn’t going to try and defy orders that badly. “But if you can creep us a bit closer to the sound barrier?”

“I’ll eke out those last few miles an hour, boss,” she confirmed.

Turning his attention back to his attempts at communication, he saw that he had a new email—from an address he’d never seen before. A Hotmail address, of all things.

BigShaggyDog1941, however, was either spam or one very specific person.

Watch for Seraphim. Gone to ground, but chased by suited agents. Juiced on drugs to let them go up against supernaturals.

Old project. Really old. Didn’t know they’d made it work, but that would be the point. Was always supposed to counterweight us.

I’m safe. You stay safe.

Woof.

Being on the run, David noted, had apparently helped Michael O’Brien discover a new sense of humor. That was the only part of the email that wasn’t terrifying.

Drugged-up mundane soldiers used as a counterweight to supernaturals? That, firstly, required a need to restrain them—and if the supernaturals in question were ONSET teams, that was a horrifying thought on its own—and, secondly, was going to be very, very bloody.

15

AFTER THE CONVERSATIONS he’d had and the email from O’Brien, David was unsurprised to find that the usual unarmed base security personnel, all mundane employees of ONSET, were nowhere to be seen as the Pendragon set down.

Instead, men and women in US Army fatigues, completely lacking in insignia in a way that stereotype, at least, associated with Special Forces, had taken over their positions. They carried the same modified 7.62mm M4-Omicron, but something in their bearing and movement warned David that these were not friends.

“Please exit the helicopter,” a tall black woman told them after they’d landed. “You’re to report to the main administration center immediately.”

“Under whose authority?” David asked politely. This was the ONSET Campus. People weren’t supposed to be ordering him around.

“Colonel Ardent’s,” she replied instantly. “Don’t worry about shutdown and the checklist, Agent McCreery,” the woman told David’s pilot. “My men will take care of the bird. You’re the last team to arrive.”

The last team to arrive. They really had recalled all of the ONSET teams. And with unmarked Special Forces operators taking over the landing pad…

“Of course,” David allowed. “Everyone, with me.”

“Sixty-Six, take the Commander and his people to the Colonel’s briefing,” the leader ordered.

Sixty-Six turned out to be a darkly tanned man of roughly David’s own five-foot-four height, but much more wiry than the ONSET Commander.

“With me, sir,” he said politely.

“We know the way,” David told him dryly.

“I know,” the Special Forces trooper agreed. “But we have our orders.”

“From who?” David repeated, but he was following the young man across the Campus.

“Major General Purcell,” the soldier said instantly. “More than that, I’m not authorized to brief you on.”

What a mess this was all turning out to be. As they moved across what was supposed to be Omicron’s home ground, David realized that he didn’t see any ONSET personnel. Mundane and supernatural alike were gone, replaced by the insignia-less fatigues of the strange troopers.

The main administration center had several large briefing rooms, and Sixty-Six led them into the biggest, where David saw that the woman outside had been correct. Thirteen was the last ONSET Team on site—even Ix and Akono from ONSET Nine were in the room, which was better than they’d been afraid of.

Everyone was in the room. Every combat-trained and -ready supernatural in the employ of the United States government. Warner stood near the front, the Major looking awkward as hell as she surveyed her people.

David wondered how long they’d been waiting for his people—and how bad a sign it was that they clearly hadn’t been allowed to leave.

THERE WERE plenty of seats in the room but almost no one was using them. David and his team joined the standing crowd, several hundred people waiting to see what was going on. He spotted Kate Mason and made his way over to her, cutting a path through the crowd to her side.

He was a Seer. He could feel and See the fatalism and depression wafting around the room. Enough people had heard rumors and enough others had guessed that the ONSET teams knew what was coming.

It didn’t help that the doors had sealed behind David, with two of the SOCOM soldiers taking position to bar the exit. No one was going to be allowed to leave on their own terms. Whatever was happening from here was going to be done under Colonel Ardent’s terms.

Or this Major General Purcell’s, whoever he was.

David had just made it to Mason and shared an uncomfortable glance around the room with her when the door behind the stage opened up and two men walked out.

He knew Colonel James Ardent, the tall and gaunt leader of ONSET. The man next to him could have passed for his brother. Older and wearing the stars of an Army Major General, but the same tall and gaunt form and silvered hair.

The same near-complete lack of human aura to David’s Sight.

“Agents, Commanders,” Ardent greeted them. He wasn’t using the microphone, just projecting his voice to cut over the hubbub of the crowd.

The conversations had been quiet enough, and they died now. The room was silent.

“You know who I am,” Ardent said. “This is Major General Arthur Purcell of the US Special Operations Command. He is now the transitional commander of this facility and I expect you to obey any orders given by his personnel promptly and efficiently.

“As of today, this base is a SOCOM black site…and officially always has been,” he noted. “I can detail the logic and reasoning for you, but you’re all smart people. You know we face a reality where the secret of the supernatural has been exposed.

“The United States government has decided that we cannot admit that we knew of the supernatural prior to the New York Incident,” he told them. “The Omicron Branch: judiciaries, OSPI, administration, and ONSET, are being disbanded.

“We always knew we didn’t exist as far as the greater world was concerned,” Ardent continued. “Now we never existed.”

Ardent held up his hands as the room exploded in shouts and demands for information. David waited in silence but stepped closer to Mason. They needed to feel each other’s presence right now.

“You will all be paid out,” he told them. “One year’s salary as severance, so long as you sign the NDAs General Purcell’s people will be handing out. You will have the chance to go through your apartments for anything you need immediately, and the rest of your things will either be shipped to your personal address or placed in storage at our expense.”

He smiled thinly at the continued subdued hubbub.

“If it makes you feel any better, Major Warner and I are getting the same deal. As of midnight tonight, ONSET does not exist.” He sighed. “As of midnight tonight, ONSET never existed.

“Some of you have already received offers from Task Force White,” he continued. “I don’t know who; I am not involved in the transition program being run through SOCOM.

“I do know that the claim will be that the New York Incident involved a unilateral intervention by supernatural vigilantes who happened to be US military.

“Any breach of that story by any of us will constitute treason, regardless of whether or not you sign the NDA and take the payout,” he admitted. “Omicron is dead, people. We can never admit it existed. Those of you who will be required to do more in the short term will be contacted by TFW agents in short order.

“The Exodus Protocol requires nothing else from the rest of you. We will provide transport to Colorado Springs and accommodations there while you all work out where you go from here.”

Ardent waited for a moment, listening to the questions. He clearly picked up the most common.

“SOCOM has two groups, Task Force White and Sigma Force, tasked with handling the transitional control of supernatural incidents. Our expectation is that a new public supernatural policing organization will be established within the year. Recruiting calls for that program will be very open, and you are all more than welcome to apply.

“I won’t be involved in the new program, so I can’t officially say that former Omicron personnel will be automatically shooed in, but I imagine there will be enough cleared people involved to make sure that happens.”

He raised his hands again.

“This all sucks,” he admitted. “But it’s the decision of our President and the Congress of the United States of America, and we will comply. You will each be escorted back to your apartments by Sigma Force troopers to collect your immediate needs, and then drivers will be provided to deliver you to assorted hotels in Colorado Springs.

“ONSET is over.”

THEY WERE all locked in the auditorium, each ONSET team being called in one bunch and following a squad of troopers out. Purcell, or whoever was actually in charge, was taking no chance with anyone trying to do anything out of the allowed.

With Mason in tow, David went in search of Ix. To his relief, the demon was still there, waiting calmly alongside Akono, with an unconcerned expression on his face.

“Are you guys okay?” he asked.

“I’ve had better weeks,” Akono said in his dreamily distracted voice. “Two days in a cell so ugly, even the Dreaming could barely make it tolerable.”

“I believed we’d earned your government’s trust,” Ix added. “But O’Brien’s actions appear to have tainted us.”

“It’s not just that,” David said as quietly as he could, relying on the demon’s inhuman hearing to pick up what he was saying. “The Exodus Protocol calls for the termination of any obvious supernatural they don’t feel they can trust.”

He jerked his chin at Ix’s dark red skin and the line of horns across his forehead. The demon could pass as human with some effort, but with the events of the last few days, he wasn’t sure he’d trust whoever was making these decisions to believe that.

“I wish I knew who was making the damn decisions,” he continued his thought out loud. “It doesn’t seem to be Ardent—he knows we can trust you and most of the guys in the basement.”

Mason shivered next to him.

“They can’t possibly be planning what you’re implying,” she said sharply. Charles wasn’t the only Awakened in the tunnels under the Campus, creatures of stone and dirt given life by a magical spirit that were utterly inhuman.

“It’s called the Beowulf Protocol,” David said quietly. “And I can’t get ahold of Charles at all. What conclusions do you draw from that?”

His lover was silent.

“What are you thinking?” she asked.

“Can you reach out to him somehow?”

“I don’t know the layout of the tunnels well enough,” Mason admitted. “I could project my voice, but only a specific distance.”

“I could find him down there, but I can’t project my voice,” David replied. “I need you to watch Ix. Keep Nine and Fifteen together; don’t let the Sigma troopers take Ix away. I don’t trust them. O’Brien warned me about a program, Seraphim he called it, of troops equipped with drugs to allow them to fight supernaturals.

“I doubt Sigma Force shares the same initial by accident.”

“What do we do?” Stone asked. “We can’t let them kill Charles.”

Stone’s blunt statement of what they were trying to prevent laid a new chill on the conversation as David surveyed the room. The main doors were guarded by Sigma Force troopers. The access to the stage was closed, with Major Warner standing guard next to it. For the first time since he’d met her, he realized she didn’t have her ever-present suited bodyguards.

Like the rest of them, she was about to be unemployed.

She met his gaze levelly, holding his eyes for a moment, then jerking her head toward the door next to her, and he sighed.

Warner wouldn’t stick her neck out too far for Charles…but she clearly recognized that David knew what was going on and was willing to enable him to screw himself over.

Or she was going to give him enough rope to hang himself. He didn’t care which. The only people on the Campus who could actually stop him reaching Charles were in this room.

“Chris,” he turned back to Stone. “I need a distraction…and we can’t risk Ix or Akono at this point.”

“And lady vampire is about as vulnerable as Ix,” the big Empowered agreed genially. “How long do you want before I throw a fit?”

David chuckled, nodding his thanks to his always-eager subordinate.

“Let me get to the stage.”

16

“THIS IS RIDICULOUS! You can’t keep us penned up in here like cattle! Even if you’re firing us all, we have goddamned rights!”

Stone’s bellow was just as oddly pitched as his speaking voice, if more hoarse and pained-sounding than his normal somewhat squeaky tones. The four Sigma Force troops guarding the door seemed taken aback by both the sudden emergence of the massive man and the strange sound of his voice.

“We are processing everyone in seq—”

From harsh experience, David could tell that Stone had pulled his punch. If nothing else, the Sigma Force trooper was still alive when he hit the wall. A solid hit after the Empowered had converted his fist to granite was easily lethal to a regular human.

The other three soldiers, in a gesture too synchronous to have been practiced as such, pressed a spot on their left arm and moved. Their motions were jerkier than a true supernatural…but far faster than a regular human.

Stone wasn’t much faster than a mundane, but he was a lot tougher, and even if he was pulling his punches, he wasn’t fighting fair. Fists slammed into stone, and he smashed the Taser one of the troopers produced into pieces before they could use it.

That was all David could watch of the fight. He was sneaking through the distracted crowd to the door off the stage, where Major Warner was very specifically not looking at it or him.

“I’ll make sure he doesn’t get penalized for this,” she hissed out of the side of her mouth as he stepped up to the unlocked door. “I’ll cover your ass if you get caught, too.

“Try not to get caught.”

With a wordless grunt, he slipped out the door into the hallways, letting his superhuman senses and prescience check the corridors ahead of him as he made his way away from the auditorium.

The entire Campus was deserted. ONSET had manned it with a thousand support personnel and several hundred supernaturals. If General Purcell had more than three hundred Special Forces troopers in the base, David would be stunned, and they’d apparently moved the support personnel out before they’d called the ONSET teams themselves back.

Teams of three were moving through the corridors on a patrol pattern, but his senses let him slip past them until he found an access to the underground tunnels.

It was locked. His Commander’s codes, however, were apparently still in the system as the nine-digit sequence unlocked the door. There might be an alert, if SOCOM was playing smart…but he didn’t have much choice.

With a final glance around, he entered the underground portions of Omicron’s Campus.

NORMALLY, the tunnels were well lit, with maps and similar directions all over the place. At least a third of the rooms and most of the workshops on the Campus were underground, after all. General Purcell’s people had apparently removed their occupants and shut them down, however, as all of the lights were down.

Without his AR gear, David was relying on his memory of the tunnels’ layout, but even with his ability to see in the dark, they looked different without lights. It took him at least five minutes just to find an intersection he recognized.

Fortunately, Charles’s lair was close to the main administration building. Once he’d worked out where he was, it only took him a few minutes to reach the vault-like space.

Vault was a good description. He’d seen the heavy security doors around the space before, but he’d never seen them fully closed and sealed.

His prescience warned him that even touching the keypad would trigger an alert—and more importantly, even his override codes wouldn’t open the doors. Charles was well and truly sealed in, and David couldn’t help but wonder what they’d told the dragon.

Containing a thirty-foot-long magical flying lizard with effectively unknown capabilities was not, after all, a reliable or quiet process. They had him cooperating so far.

David scanned the futures and cursed under his breath. Whoever was responsible for the Beowulf Protocol was too smart for any easy solutions. Everything to do with the security doors was alarmed. He couldn’t hotwire it, override it, or even cut through it without triggering an alarm that would have Sigma Force troops swarming the area within minutes.

There were enough cameras around that so long as someone had a reason to look he was already screwed. The time for subtle was past.

Well past.

He drew his sword.

THE DOOR WAS several inches of solid steel, but Memoria had been forged by a demon and was made as much from enslaved souls as it was from iron. The blade stabbed clean through the door and David started to cut himself an accessway.

The sword was able to cut steel, but it wasn’t a fast process and he’d only finish cutting one side of the square he’d need when dragon claws stabbed out through the door. Between Charles’s claws and Memoria, they had the door hacked to shreds in under a minute.

Which was good, because the alarm had gone off somewhere in the first thirty seconds.

“David,” the dragon brogued at him. “Ai was hoping someone would keep faith. Somehow, Ai’m not surprised it’s ye.”

“You have to get out of here,” David told him quickly. “They’re shutting down ONSET and you and the other Awakened are in danger.”

“Beowulf Protocol,” Charles replied. “Damn. Ai was hoping.”

“You knew about it?”

“Ai ran systems security for ye lot,” the dragon pointed out. “They didn’t hide it nearly as well as they thought. They told me there was a system glitch today. Ai suspected, but…”

“You need to go,” David urged him, but as he looked past the dragon at the comfortable space ONSET had provided Charles, he realized he wasn’t sure there was an exit. “…Can you even?”

“There are tunnels Ai can fit through,” the dragon confirmed. “They’ll have activated the mines by now, though. Ai disabled the charges in my quarters a long time ago, but they can prevent me leaving.

“By the paths they know, at least,” the dragon added.

“They’re coming,” David told him. “I can hear them.”

“Ai’m not afeared of the Seraphim,” Charles replied. “Ai want them to have look me in the eye and tell me why,” he hissed.

“They’re just following orders. The Army troops don’t know what’s going on any more than we do,” the ONSET Commander told him. “Please, Charles, if you can run…run.”

The dragon rose up, unfolding his wings to fill the entire space he’d lived in for the last David-didn’t-know-how-many-years.

“Ai swore an oath,” he told David. “But yer right. What about ye?”

“I made my choice, Charles. I’ll deal with it. Go.”

The dragon’s face was suddenly on his shoulder, a soft leathery pressure as Charles gave him the closest equivalent he could to a hug.

“Someday, my friend, ye will learn to bend,” the dragon murmured. “But today Ai owe ye. And tomorrow. Call, and Ai will answer. Look to yer own safety now, Commander.

“Ai have never told your masters everything.”

With a wide feline grin, the dragon disappeared.

SIX OF THE Sigma Force troopers rounded the corner moments later. David started to raise his hands to surrender—and then his prescience flared, warning him that they were going to shoot him regardless.

He dodged behind the remnants of the vault door as a fusillade of gunfire echoed in the contained space. They were through the wrecked entrance a moment later, all of them moving with the jerky speed he was learning to associate with the Seraphim.

David had already sheathed Memoria as he came to meet them. He wasn’t trying to kill them. Hell, he wasn’t even trying to hurt them. If they were going to let him surrender, he’d have surrendered.

Now he just wanted to leave.

He tried to run past them, but whatever enhancing serum they were taking was enough to block that. Two of the soldiers got in his way with a series of blows that sent him dodging away. More gunfire echoed in the tunnel, but the Seraphim’s enhanced speed wasn’t enough to let them hit David.

There was no demand to surrender. No claim of authority or orders. They gave up on the guns and came at him with knives, the stereotypical blackened KA-BAR knives of US Marines and Special Forces. They made sure to keep at least two of them between him and the tunnel at all times, and the rest charged in.

Their movements might have been jerky and slow compared to him, but they knew how to work as a team, and he quickly realized they were better fighters than he was. He’d been trained by Sages who magically implanted muscle memory.

These men had learned their craft in the deserts of the Middle East and the jungles of Africa in deathly seriousness. He was holding back because he didn’t want to kill them.

They had no such hesitation.

Steel scored across his arm as he failed to dodge fast enough, and he grabbed the arm of the trooper who’d cut him. He broke the other man’s limb with a snap and flung him across the room, leaving him facing only five soldiers.

While he’d been neutralizing one trooper, however, three more had been surrounding him. Knives stabbed into his flesh and iron-hard hands slammed onto his shoulders, combining to hold him in position for a few deadly moments.

One of the two guarding the door raised a weapon—not the guns they’d shot at him earlier—and fired.

David had just enough time to recognize an Omicron-issue injector rifle, usually loaded with an aqueous silver and tranquilizer solution, before the darts hammered into his unarmored chest. He managed to fling the men holding him free and try to grab at the tranquilizers.

Then darkness overcame him.

17

DAVID WOKE up uncomfortable and headachy, an unfamiliar sensation now that his body tended to regenerate all injuries in a matter of minutes to hours. He was familiar with severe injury still—but this felt like a hangover.

“Hey, take it easy,” an unfamiliar voice told him. “I’m told that tranq hits you lot hard.”

David blinked, slowly rising in an uncomfortable bed and looked around what appeared to be a cheap motel room. A skinny black man in a white shirt and dark gray slacks sat in a chair next to the door, with an injector rifle and an M4-Omicron carbine leaning against the chair he’d slung his suit jacket over.

The sleeves of the shirt were rolled back, revealing an object David had assumed existed but hadn’t actually seen before: a metallic armband with a series of gold-looking capsules. Presumably, the device was the injector for the Seraphim’s drugs.

“Who are you and where am I?” David demanded.

“Motel, Reno,” the Seraphim told him. “You can call me Kay Seventeen, or just Kay.”

“That a serial number or a nickname?” David asked.

“Somewhere in between,” Kay admitted. “I’m from Task Force White, your transition officer.” He grinned, exposing bright white teeth. “In your case, that’s a bit more like parole officer than for most people.”

“Wonderful.”

“You’re in less trouble than you would’ve been if it was up to Purcell,” Kay continued. “Your old bosses still had enough swing to cover your ass for your stunt.” The big man shrugged. “Plus, well, outside the heat of ‘holy shit, someone just broke the dragon out,’ the guys who brought you in had to admit you were trying to surrender.

“Left us with a pile of egg on our face, which Ardent used as a hammer.” He shrugged again. “From what little they told me about you, we owe you enough to let you walk anyway.”

Kay rose and pulled a briefcase from under his chair, dropping it on the dresser.

“My orders were to give you the sword,” he noted. “All the rest of your gear was property of the US government and has vanished into SOCOM’s storage warehouses. Your clothes and furniture are in storage; details are in an envelope in the case.

“So’s the sword and your contract for this motel. It’s booked up for a week.”

Kay smirked.

“Officially, you never worked for the US government, so there’s a limit to how much we can really demand you keep in touch,” he said dryly. “Your severance payment is deposited. I suggest you go buy a phone.”

David sighed.

“What happened with Charles?” he asked.

“The dragon?” Kay Seventeen laughed. “I don’t know what you said to him before he teleported out of that cave, but, speaking as someone who was in the Campus, thank you.”

David waited.

“Apparently, you guys were crazy and had nuke-tipped antiaircraft missiles for dragons,” Kay said. “Purcell ordered them fired before he knew they had nukes, and nobody on the site was arguing with him at that moment.”

“How bad?” David asked, horrified.

“Your scaly friend grabbed them out of the air, disarmed the nukes in mid-flight, and basically hand-fucking-delivered them to the Major General after carving LEAVE ME ALONE on the side of the chassis,” the Seraphim said with a chuckle. “I know almost nothing about the lizard, but I suspect I could like him.”

Kay rolled his sleeve down over the vambrace of drugs and put his jacket back on.

“Anyways, that’s my part in your day done,” he concluded, shuffling the two guns into a duffel bag. “I was asked to warn you that it’ll take a few days for the silver to work its way out of your system still. Be careful.”

“How long was I out?” David asked.

“Three days.” Kay shook his head. “Check the news before you do much of anything. It’s a whole new bloody world out there.”

THE BRIEFCASE the Seraphim left David contained exactly what Kay had said: Memoria in its pocket-dimension scabbard, and several envelopes with details of assorted services that had been prepaid on his behalf.

The room was paid for a week. Storage for his stuff was paid for six months, with a voucher for transporting it anywhere in the United States from the Denver facility they’d stuck it in. Two garment bags were hung up against the motel-room bathroom door, containing most of his immediate clothing needs.

There was also a neatly typed memo at the bottom of the briefcase from Warner:

You owe me, White. SOCOM screwed up pretty badly, but they wanted to pin the blame for the mess with Charles on you. We got that covered and got you out, but where the rest of us are under NDAs, you’re basically on parole.

Any infraction, any excuse, they’ll send Task Force White or Sigma Force to bring you in. Keep your head down.

Even I don’t know where they’re going to dump you. Probably wiser if we don’t keep in touch. You are officially persona non grata with the transition team.

Good luck.

Warner.

It could definitely be worse, he concluded. On the other hand, he had no idea where Kate had ended up, and if there was one silver lining to this mess, it was that they no longer needed to keep things quiet.

From the sounds of it, he wasn’t going to get a job with the new agency post-transition, so it was time to consider other career options. His stomach was also reminding him that he’d been unconscious for multiple days while his regeneration fought the most direct attack a supernatural’s body could suffer.

He felt better than he would have expected after seeing how Michael O’Brien had reacted to the same weapon, but he still felt like crap. He needed to eat.

Changing into clean clothes from the garment bag, he mentally listed out what he needed: food, a phone, a computer, and a car.

In roughly that order of priority, too. The motel wasn’t going to be able to help him with any of those, which meant it was time for him to get moving.

SEVERAL HOURS LATER, with a rental truck parked outside the motel room and three bags of takeout piled up on the table next to him, David dove into the process of setting up the new laptop and phone and linking them to his emails.

He’d barely used his personal email since joining ONSET, but at least a few key people had it. Including, thankfully, Kate Mason. There were several increasingly worried-sounding emails from her over the last few days.

Clearly, no one had told her that he was being dragged out to Nevada and dumped in Reno. While that probably meant that no one had worked out they had a relationship, which was a good thing, it also meant she was obviously worried sick.

He dashed off a quick email to her, summarizing what Kay had told him and letting her know his new number and where he was staying.

Reno wasn’t high on his list of tourist destinations, but given his lack of anywhere he actually wanted to be, it worked as well as anywhere else. It said everything about his lack of life outside the Omicron branch that Kate’s emails were the only ones of any importance.

There was one email from Ix, which was just two words: “I’m okay.”

That was reassuring in itself, though the demon hadn’t included more information. David would reach out once he had a better idea of just what he was going to be doing. Right now…well, right now, he was half-expecting that be more dependent on Kate than himself.

He wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself.

Sighing and running out of excuses, he turned to the news sites to see just what Kay had been warning him about.

It was…ugly.

The British and European secret paranormal agencies had been dragged kicking and screaming into the light, powerful political factions using transparency as levers to bring down governments across that continent.

At least Omicron’s European counterparts were surviving. The governments they served were having rougher months, but the supernatural affairs in Europe were in steady hands.

Canada’s Ministry of the Paranormal had delicately stuck their head into the House of Commons, announced that they existed, had Canada’s situation well under control, and were perfectly prepared to answer any questions Parliament had…but could they please just get back to work?

Most of the world, though, was still trying to keep various degrees of secrecy—aided by the fact that only Eastern Canada and the United States were seeing major spikes in supernatural activity.

The news was currently playing live footage of a Joint Task Force Hercules team arresting a werewolf in downtown Toronto. Canada being Canada, the Ministry spokesperson was carefully noting that the werewolf was likely freshly turned and had been more confused than aggressive—still dangerous, but not really culpable for her actions.

The reports from David’s own country were less…calm. A swarm of demons had erupted in a Philadelphia suburb, the first major test of the use of the Special Operations Command as a counter-supernatural force.

Watching the footage on CNN’s site, David could pick out which SOCOM troopers were Seraphim, but the handful of augmented troops weren’t enough to keep it from turning into a bloody massacre. The news was estimating two hundred civilian and at least half again that in military casualties before the situation had been resolved.

Reading between the lines, SOCOM had managed to contain the situation, and someone else—either the Familias or the Elfin who’d been working with ONSET—had snuck in and sealed the portal sourcing it.

People were dying. David needed to do something…but he no longer worked for the US government, and it had been made clear his services were no longer needed or desired.

He didn’t have it in him to stand aside. Fortunately, he knew where to find others of the same mindset.

18

LIKE LAS VEGAS, Reno’s populace made much of their money from gambling, and casinos lined the main street. David wandered down the street for about half an hour before he finally saw what he was looking for: a specific combination of symbols in the signage of one of the casinos.

Entering the gaudily lit and decorated building, he scanned the space until he spotted one of the waitresses wearing a silver oak leaf at her throat.

“Excuse me, miss,” he murmured to her. “Would you be able to direct me to the Rivendell room?”

The waitress—a dark-haired woman slightly taller than him—jumped at his words, then turned an assessing gaze on him. Or, perhaps more accurately, an assessing Sight. His own Sight didn’t show her as a Mage or even a particularly strongly Empowered.

But, like him, she was a Seer. He wondered what visions she’d seen of the months to come as the world went to hell.

“Of course, sir,” she replied after a moment’s study. “This way, please.”

She led him to a section of the casino with a gorgeous mural of a forest scene painted along the wall. Stepping up to where a path cut through the forest scene, she rapped smartly on the mural, and a concealed door popped open.

“I need to circulate the floor,” she told him, “but Morgan will be waiting for you.”

He hadn’t even seen her send a message, but she’d obviously done so. He was impressed, and he gave her a grateful nod as he stepped through the door into the private portion of the casino reserved for members of the Elfin.

A somewhat older version of the girl outside, clad in a simple white dress and presumably a sister from the resemblance, approached him immediately.

“Commander White, welcome to Rivendell, Reno,” she greeted him. “I am Morgan Andrews. How may I help you?”

“Not Commander anymore, Ms. Andrews,” David told her. “Surely, the Elfin know of the fate of ONSET by now?”

Andrews shrugged, one of the shoulder straps of her dress sliding off in a fashion he suspected was supposed to be distracting.

“We know,” she admitted. “We have received our warnings from the ‘transition team.’ But you, Commander White, are owed the respect of your rank and accomplishments, regardless of the vagaries of our government.

“Given that knowledge, how may I assist you?” she repeated.

“The only contact information I had for Lord Riley was on my work phone,” David told her. “I need to speak with him if possible.”

“Of course,” Andrews agreed instantly.

Lord Jamie Riley had been instrumental in the agreement that had seen the Elfin Warriors deputized by ONSET—not least because Lord Riley commanded the Elfin’s supernatural paramilitaries.

As much as anyone did, anyway.

“I don’t have direct contact information for him,” she noted apologetically. “I will need to go through channels. It may take some time, so may I invite you to enjoy the amenities? You still have a tab open with the Rivendells under Lord Riley.”

“I’ll take you up on that,” David told her. To his surprise, he was almost fully recovered from the silver-laced tranquilizer he’d been hit with, but he was astonishingly hungry, even for him.

“And I’d appreciate it if you could put me in contact with local resources,” he continued. “All of my weapons were the property of the US government, and, well, at this point, I feel naked without a silver-loaded gun.”

Andrews chuckled and gestured toward the back of the lounge.

“Speak to Karls over there,” she told him. “He’ll be able to hook you up. I’ll find you as soon as I’ve made contact with Riley.”

MILOS KARLS WAS EVEN MORE helpful than David had hoped, revealing a semi-concealed closet in the back of the Rivendell, Reno lounge containing a small but effective stockpile of firearms and the steel-jacketed silver-tip rounds the Elfin manufactured for their own use.

“What do you mean, ‘no charge’?” David found himself demanding after Karls had pulled out a case with an M1911 and a box of two hundred silver-tips. “The bullets alone have got to be five to ten bucks a pop, at least.”

“And we both know you’re good for it,” Karls agreed cheerfully. “But we also both know Riley is good for it for you—and I had friends in Central Park last week.”

The Elfin gunsmith shook his head.

“The news can say what it wants about the guys they’ve made the public face of Task Force White being the ones on the ground, but we know better,” he concluded. “A gun and a box of bullets is nothing. Take them in good health.”

“Thanks,” David said, realizing he wasn’t going to win the argument. Another waitress appeared with a plate of food and a beer, setting a place for him to eat. The lounge clearly knew what a regenerator’s appetite looked like, the plate containing one of the largest burgers he’d ever seen, and the fries taking up entire second plate.

Karls gave him a nod and turned back to his book as David dug into his food.

He’d polished off most of it when Andrews joined him at the table, carrying a laptop. He pushed the plate out of the way as she set the computer up and handed him a set of noise-canceling headphones.

Waiting on the screen were the familiar sharp features of Elfin Lord Jamie Riley, looking exhausted.

“White,” he greeted David. “With this whole mess, I have to admit I’m damned glad to see you’re okay. Even if your former employers are giving me a giant headache.”

“I got hit with a silver-laced tranquilizer,” David replied dryly. “I’ll trade you headaches.”

Riley barked a short laugh.

“Fair enough. What’s your situation? How did you end up in Reno, of all places?”

“I suspect someone threw a dart at the map. SOCOM was kind of pissed at me.”

He didn’t clarify why. Riley was a friend, but if he didn’t know about the Beowulf Protocol mess, it wasn’t David’s place to brief him.

“No one has told me why, but I got that impression, yeah,” Riley agreed. “Burying Omicron makes no damned sense.”

“It makes political sense,” David admitted unwillingly. “The British government did just collapse over the revelation of MI-Nought.”

“I can see what they’re thinking,” the Elfin Lord admitted himself. “It’s not what I would do, but it’s not like anyone asked my opinion before they decided that poor half-briefed Army kids were the best solution to demon crises.”

“I’m guessing you’re playing underground backstop?” David asked.

“In cooperation with the Familias, of all people,” Riley confirmed instantly. “So far, I think we’ve managed to keep things from boiling over, but I’m not getting briefings and intelligence updates from Omicron anymore.

“I don’t know what we’re missing.”

He sighed.

“How can I help you, David?” he asked.

“I was wondering if you could use one slightly-used supernatural team leader, to be honest,” David told him. “I could use a job and, well, a purpose in life. Long-term, I need to sit down with Kate and sort things out, but… I can’t stand by while the whole country goes to hell.”

“I’ll admit I was hoping you’d say that,” Riley admitted. “I’m putting together an…Omega team. A last-chance strike force with the power and numbers to go toe-to-toe with the worst and the political weight to make the government let it happen.

“I want you for it. But you’ll forgive me if I want the people I know you can get ahold of for it, too.”

David chuckled and nodded.

“Who are you thinking? O’Brien and Kate, I’m assuming?”

“Kate made my finding ‘what the hell Sigma Force had done with you’ a condition of coming aboard,” Riley told him with a smile. “If you’ve got some way of getting in touch with the Brigadier, though, I’d owe you.

“Bigger, though…” he sighed. “Charles St. Patrick was a freaking dragon?”

David paused.

“I thought you knew,” he finally said. “You were Omicron once.”

“I was an OSPI Inspector,” Riley pointed out. “And working with Charles of late, I just thought he was an Empowered hacker. Not a dragon.”

“He’s a dragon,” David confirmed. “You want me to talk to him?”

“If you can. Pretty sure I can find him, but the last thing I want is to go talk to a twitchy dragon without someone he calls friend.”

“I’m not sure I can find him,” the ex-ONSET man pointed out.

“Oh, you know how,” Riley said dryly. “You’re what, forty minutes from Lake Tahoe there?”

David laughed.

“Last time I talked to her, she wanted a lot of money,” he pointed out. The spirit of Lake Tahoe had somehow remained on Earth despite the Seal and had found various ways to gather and sell information in the twenty-first century.

“She” was terrifyingly smart and powerful but was also trying to peacefully buy out most of the shore and land around the lake and make it a giant private reserve. Her prices for information were high.

“She likes you,” the Elfin Lord pointed out. “And she’ll know I’m good for it. I’m tied up near Washington right now or I’d go myself—and besides, you’re the man we need to send to talk to Charles himself.”

“I’ll do it,” David replied. “Consider me on the team, Lord Riley. So long as we’re on the right side.”

“I’ve a pretty good idea of what happens when you think you’re on the wrong side, David,” Riley confirmed. “We’re going to hold this country together. One way or another.”

19

DAVID PARKED his rental car on the edge of the beach, ten miles or so away from the nearest town and at the end of a long gravel road leading off one of the scenic routes around Lake Tahoe. Ignoring the signs declaring PRIVATE CONSERVATION AREA–KEEP OUT, he walked over the gravelly beach to the side of the mountain lake, shivering in the chill air.

This had once been a millionaire’s private retreat, and he could still see the gap in the trees where a luxury cottage had been carefully removed after the property had been bought by one of the innumerable numbered companies that traced their ownership back to the Tahoe Oracle’s identities.

The road hadn’t been maintained in years, and the drive down had made him glad he’d sprung for full insurance on the rental. He was certain he’d added at least a dozen new chips and scratches getting there.

It was amazingly quiet. Birds chirped softly in the trees, water lapped at the gravel, and he took a cross-legged seat by the edge of the water. There hadn’t been much calm in his life of late, and if there was one thing this place was, it was calm.

He waited. There was no point shouting or demanding or saying anything at all. She knew he was here and she knew who he was. Either she would come to him, or she wouldn’t.

And he would wait until she did. It was good to just relax.

David wasn’t surprised, however, that he didn’t have to wait very long. After about fifteen minutes, a current formed in the lake, independent of any wind. It approached the shore and lifted up to take a human form.

As the shape approached, she took on more detail and became less transparent, until the wave deposited a naked curvy brunette on the shore, looking softly down at him.

This form wasn’t an exact duplicate of the two constructs he’d dealt with before, but there was a solid familial resemblance to both of the women he’d met before.

“Commander David White,” the naked woman greeted him. “There are protocols for reaching me, you know.”

“Not a Commander anymore,” he pointed out. He knew she knew, but it was important nonetheless. “And the situation seemed…urgent.”

She chuckled.

“Your government is far from the first to be foolish,” she replied. “They will see their need for you before this is over.”

“I’d almost rather they didn’t,” he admitted. “That would mean we were safe.”

“You’re not safe, David White,” the Oracle told him flatly. “Your country is not safe. Your world is not safe.”

“From wha…” David trailed off. “I don’t think I can afford the answers to the questions I want to ask.”

“The Seal is weakening. The Masters have a plan,” she explained. “You are hours, days at most, from the culmination of the plan they set into motion with Ekhmez. Not everything has proceeded as they desired…but the Herald will be born.”

Free answers from the Oracle were terrifying. The last time he’d asked a question, the answer had cost millions.

“I miss my siblings,” she continued when he waited in silence. “But they are not who they were. The Pure as I knew them are dead, David White. I am the last.”

He hadn’t thought about it that way. He wasn’t sure how the spirit of Lake Tahoe had remained on this side of the Seal, but she was unique in doing so. The other Pure like her had been trapped beyond the Seal with the angry gods they now called the Masters Beyond.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured.

The naked woman cocked her head quizzically at him, then smiled.

“You are, aren’t you?” she said softly. “You are a fascinating man, David White. I know what answers you seek. Can you pay for them?”

“I speak as the agent of Elfin Lord Jamie Riley,” David explained. “He said you would know he was good for it.”

“I did not ask if Riley could pay for my answers,” the Oracle told him. “I do not work on account or on credit, David White. My price is of you, not of him.”

He shivered.

“I have nothing,” he admitted. “Not as you price answers, anyway.”

She laughed.

“You can afford my price, David White. If you’ll take the risk.”

“What would you have of me?” he asked.

“Silver still runs in your veins,” she warned him. “You are weakened. What you are will fail at the turning point.

“You must become more.” She held out a hand. “That is my price, David White. That you trust me beyond all reason, beyond all hope of men.

“Do so, and I will tell you where to find the dragon Charles. I will tell you what the Herald is and how to defeat it.

“But to defeat the Herald, you must become what you were meant to be.”

“And what is that?” he asked.

“I cannot explain. I can only show.”

Her hand hung in the air. It didn’t tremble, a small reminder that the woman in front of him was not human.

“And if I ‘fail at the turning point’?” he asked.

“Humanity will die. They will not be mourned. They will not be remembered. The Pure will take this world and remake it in the shape of their broken memories, until they destroy themselves.

“All will pass into ash and dust.”

“Unless I trust you?”

“There are other paths,” she admitted. “But mine is the one before you, David White.”

He didn’t allow himself to hesitate. He stepped forward and took her hand.

He wasn’t expecting her to pull him back with her, yanking him into the water. He was a strong swimmer, but the water itself defied him, the Lake turning on him to drag him deeper and deeper.

Even a regenerator needed to breathe.

He met the gaze of the eyes he could see underwater with him and tried to ask why. It was too late. Water rushed into his lungs as he opened his mouth, and he choked in pain, trying desperately to channel enough power, enough strength, to escape the trap he’d walked into…

And then David White died.

20

AND THEN HE WOKE UP.

He was still underwater. His lungs were full of water and his body was rebelling against its failure to breathe, and yet…the warmth he’d long associated with his regeneration filled him, saturating his entire form and sustaining him even as his lungs failed to find any oxygen.

He stood on the bottom of Lake Tahoe, the sunlight barely filtering down to him, and felt the presence of the spirit of the lake all around him. He had died. He was, arguably, dying…and yet he stood and marveled at the impossible scene around him.

The body of a true regenerator rebuilds itself. The spirit’s voice sounded in his head, not his ears. He was inside her, in a sense. She could speak to him here.

You have died before but not known. Dying and regenerating cleansed your body of the silver…and knowing what has happened has fully awoken those powers within you.

Mantles are funny things. You humans never did understand them, and they do so much without you realizing it. Yours is a powerful one, an ancient one. Oh, the stories it could tell if the spirit you bear could speak.

He tried to respond, but his ability to survive down there didn’t stretch that far. He felt Tahoe’s laughter around him.

You came to me for answers. I have some. Others, though…others require a Seer. Will you lend me your Sight, that we both may See what will be?

At this point, he was already as deep in as he was going to get. He held out his hand once more and felt the Lake wrap around it, the waters that contained the Pure known as the Tahoe Oracle swarming over his body, into his mouth and ears and eyes…

Suddenly, the lake was gone, replaced by the jaw-dropping vista of the Rocky Mountains. Snow-covered peaks towered over icy lakes and twisting roadways, and his viewpoint moved, flashing away from roads and down to peaks and valleys far from any human eyes.

There, Charles floated in the sky, catching an updraft with a deliriously content expression on his face. His wings fully extended, his wingspan had to be a hundred yards or more, and the shadow on the snow beneath him sent small creatures scurrying for cover as the dragon enjoyed his freedom for the first time in decades.

To David’s surprise, the dragon flipped over in the air, leveling his warm eyes on David’s viewpoint, somehow meeting the Seer’s gaze through the link.

“David.”

It wasn’t a question.

“You are learning, then,” he continued approvingly. “And you live, despite the fools who lead your people.”

The brogue was almost gone. Hints of it remained, but Charles spoke levelly and clearly.

“Is it time, then?” the dragon asked. “I will come when you call, I swore that, and I meant it.”

David tried to speak, to tell the dragon Riley’s plan and where to meet them. None of it came out past the water…but Charles clearly heard it anyway.

“I have no loyalty to Riley, but I will always be your friend,” the dragon told him. “I will meet you, David White, and we will stand guard over this world together.”

Before David could respond at all, even to acknowledge Charles’s words, his viewpoint changed…but the centerpiece was the same. It took him a few moments to realize it was a different dragon, and a chill ran down his spine as the creature extracted itself from a series of hills.

Where Charles was red, this one was a dark green, shedding dirt and mud and stone as she tore herself out of the ground. She was shorter and narrower than Charles, her face leaner, her wings and limbs longer and sharper.

The dragon was bellowing in pain as she struggled against the hill containing her, but another voice was answering it. Magic flared across the forested hills David was now looking down at, someone working spells to help the dragon escape and soothe its injuries.

His viewpoint swooped, making him dizzy, to focus on the Mage. She was a stranger to him, a tall, willowy blonde clad in a pink pantsuit—but the four “men” around her were familiar. Red skin so dark as to almost be black and patterns of white horns instead of hair marked them as mid-court demons.

Ix’s contemporaries.

There weren’t supposed to be four of them on the planet.

The demons’ presence distracted him, drawing his attention away from the dragon as she finished Awakening. She half-hopped, half-crawled over to the Mage. At some point, someone had dug into the hill that contained her bones, snapping one of her wings.

She had rebuilt her limbs and body, soil transforming into new leather flesh and immense wings…but she couldn’t fix the broken one.

The creature was pathetic, plaintive as she dragged her crippled wing behind it. The Mage, however, bowed deeply to the dragon while the demons went to one knee.

“I can heal you,” she told the dragon. “But there is a price.”

“There is always a price,” the dragon replied.

It took David that long to realize that they were both speaking Latin. He didn’t speak Latin…but he understood them today.

“One year of service. Then you are free. It is a safety for you, as well,” the Mage noted. “The world has changed since the days of Rome, Lady Serena”

“Rome is a long way away,” the dragon replied.

“And that is part of how the world has changed. My offer is fair.”

“It is,” the dragon agreed, then bowed its own head. “I accept.”

As she raised her head from the bow, however, she focused on David’s view. Before the dragon could speak or react to his presence, however, he was gone, his viewpoint sweeping away once again.

Dizzied by the motion, he found himself in a sumptuously appointed private clinic. The luxury of the surroundings, however, was a stark contrast to the scene inside. Two men in camo fatigues were blocking the only door to the room, carefully watching a clearly terrified doctor examine a pregnant woman.

The mother-to-be looked normal-enough human…except that tattoos inked in glowing black ink swirled over her stomach and torso, pulsing with energy across her skin.

Two more of the dark-red-skinned mid-court demons stood beside the bed, watching the doctor’s every move. Behind them, watching the whole affair with a proprietary air about him, was a familiar figure clad in a dull-white version of a priest’s black cassock.

John Buckley wasn’t visibly armed, but given the arsenal scattered across his companions, the Mage didn’t need to be armed to clearly be in charge.

“How is she, Doctor?” he asked calmly.

“What do you expect me to say?” the doctor snapped. “I don’t know what sick mag—”

Buckley didn’t move. Didn’t twitch. But in mid-word, the doctor suddenly found herself lifted off the ground, hanging over the bed and gasping for air. She hung there for several moments, but then the Mage released her.

“How is she, Doctor?” he asked again, as if he hadn’t just half-choked the woman.

“She’s fine. So’s the baby,” the doctor wheezed out. “She’s a few weeks away from birth.”

Buckley smiled.

“Now, was that so hard?” he asked. “Tanstalestra, help her dress. Doctor, your money is on the side table.”

One of the camouflaged men tossed an envelope onto the table in question as Buckley spoke.

“It’s ten times your usual fee or so,” he continued with a smile, watching the demon help the pregnant woman dress. There was something wrong with her, beyond the tattoos. Her movements were mechanical, stiff.

“Obviously, if you try and tell anyone about the girl, we’ll kill you.”

The scene faded into the shadows of the depths of Lake Tahoe.

This is what is. The Lake’s voice echoed in his head. I can guide you, but the Sight is yours. I have the power, but your connections allow me to See what I might have missed.

What about the future? David asked, managing to keep his words inside his head and avoid any further choking. He might be alive, but he so far as his body could tell, he was still drowning. The less discomfort he could add to the situation, the better.

That gift is not mine. The words crashed into his brain like falling rock. I can guide you again…but it will hurt. I cannot guarantee we will see anything of value.

Can it kill me?

The spirit’s chuckle echoed around his skull.

No.

Then let’s see what we can find out.

THE SHIMMERING DARKNESS of the bottom of Lake Tahoe faded again, more slowly this time. True darkness overwhelmed David and lasted this time. He couldn’t see anything. Feel anything. Hear anything.

It seemed to last an eternity…and mere moments at the same time. Suddenly, he was hanging over a city, one on the coast. It looked vaguely familiar, but it was hard to be certain through the smoke and flames.

It was definitely an American coastal city and it was definitely on fire. Entire suburbs were engulfed in flames, and tanks were rolling down the main thoroughfares. Jet fighters appeared in the air, slowing from supersonic as they came in for precise firing passes on…something.

Then his brain, experienced with service in ONSET, finally caught up to what he was seeing. Fifteen-foot-tall stone golems, animated by demonic ichor, brushed aside tank shells like children’s snowballs. Machine-gun fire didn’t even seem to register as the creatures advanced on the tank squadrons.

The lead M1 Abrams became weapons, wielded as awkwardly shaped clubs to smash their compatriots into pieces. Armored personnel carriers turned, trying to run or disgorge their passengers to some semblance of safety, but familiar-looking shadow demons swarmed out of the ground and the side buildings.

Inch-thick steel plating failed like tissue paper against granite fists and demonic claws. As David watched, an entire battalion of tanks and mechanized infantry disintegrated under the demons’ assault.

Then the jets came back around, clearly intending to avenge their ground-pounding brethren—but the demons had already learned.

David wasn’t quite sure what the creatures that emerged out of the buildings were. Like the golems, they were probably technically Awakened, creatures of stone and earth—or concrete and metal, in this case—given life by the borrowed ichor of the Pure.

They were four-legged things that lacked heads or faces, just a single massive tail lined with metal spikes that had probably once been the rebar in concrete. As the jet fighters dove to release their precision munitions, the tails flicked into the air, releasing the metal spikes in massive swarms that crashed into the sky with a hundred sonic booms.

The fighters never stood a chance. A dozen supersonic spikes slammed into each plane. Most simply disintegrated, and even the intact ones crashed down, scattering flaming debris across the fallen city.

Pain tore through David’s body now, as if the spikes were hitting him directly, but he tried to focus, to see more of what was going on. His view shifted to a sports stadium. People were being funneled into it, a massive crowd under guard by black-coated men and women with blank faces.

Behind the black-coats were lines of toad demons, the big monstrosities looming over their minions and prisoners alike. Scattered through them were the red skins and white horns of mid-court demons, a final backup against any escape or assault that made it that far.

Inside the stadium, the prisoners were being divided into groups. Children and their mothers were shuffled off in one direction, out of the stadium. The old and the infirm were dragged in another direction…and David couldn’t bring himself to follow that line to see what happened.

The third group, the able-bodied adults who weren’t mothers, were dragged into the center of the stadium, where a grotesque mockery of an old court had been assembled. A strange-looking young man, with perfectly white skin and a small “circlet” of black horns around his hairless scalp, sat on a throne, studying the people brought before him.

At his left stood John Buckley, clad in an identical white cassock to the one he’d worn in the prior vision. At his right stood the woman from the vision with the dragon—and the dragon herself was curled up behind the throne, watching the scene with lidded eyes.

A group of a hundred able-bodied men and women were brought forward and forced to their knees in front of the strange youth. He rose and spoke to them. His words…didn’t process. David wasn’t sure if it was the language he was speaking or a side effect of the vision of the future, but the youth’s voice didn’t come through intelligibly.

The youth—this had to be the Herald—waited for a moment, then spoke again, his sharp tones coming across the gulf of time.

When no one responded, he raised his hands and black light flashed out, striking the foreheads of the assembled prisoners. Their screams echoed through the vision link. Some fell, never to rise again. The rest…

The rest rose as one, their movements mechanical now, and shuffled off to one side, unguarded. There, David spotted racks upon racks of the same black coats worn by the guards outside…and the newly controlled people put them on, hiding whatever clothes they had been wearing under the shield of the standard garment.

He couldn’t fight the pain anymore. It crashed through him in waves, his Sight wavering. There had to be something he could identify. Something he could use to prevent this from happening.

A cathedral spire. A lighthouse. The ocean… He lost it, falling into darkness.

21

DAVID WOKE UP AGAIN. This time, at least, he wasn’t still drowning. He was in fact, he realized after a moment, tucked inside a sleeping bag next to a fire as night fell on the gravelly beaches of Lake Tahoe.

“You’re awake,” a familiar voice said warmly. Before he could try to rise, Kate Mason had left her folding beach chair and knelt down by his head. “How are you feeling?”

He considered as he slowly stretched his limbs one by one. Despite drowning repeatedly and, apparently, dying, he felt fine. Better than he ever had, in fact.

“Good,” he admitted. “That seems…weird.”

Kate chuckled.

“Given that I found you tossed up on the beach like driftwood, that’s something of a surprise,” she told him.

“Please,” another familiar voice interjected. “I was far gentler than that.”

David looked over by the fire to see the figure of Lake Tahoe’s main avatar occupying a second beach chair. She was wearing a tight-fitted dark blue dress this time, which barely left more to the imagination than her complete nakedness before.

“You drowned him,” Kate pointed out. “I’m still pissed over that, to be clear. You killed my boyfriend.”

Tahoe laughed.

“Insomuch as the caterpillar kills itself when it crawls into its cocoon,” she replied. “He is complete now, as he had yet to become. You can feel it, can’t you, Battle Seer?”

Two words that ran down David’s spine. He’d never thought of himself that way before, no one had ever described him that way before…but it fit.

“Battle Seer, huh?” Kate said. “I like the sound of that.”

“It feels right,” he admitted. “What did you do to me, Tahoe?”

“Nothing,” the Pure spirit replied. “Well, I killed you. Everything else was you. You are complete now. What you always were, but now you understand.”

David shook his head as he took Kate’s hand and rose to his feet. She embraced him and they kissed.

“No more secrets, huh?” she said. “No more hiding.”

“There are still secrets,” Tahoe pointed out. “Your government conceals that you ever existed.”

“It won’t last,” Kate replied. “With the Canadians, the British and the Europeans in the open…none of the secrets are going to last.”

“It could last three, four years—long enough for this Congress and President to win the next election,” David said. “And politicians don’t think past the next election.”

He shook his head.

“But what I’ve Seen…they’re not going to stop it with a Special Forces company and conventional troops,” he continued. “You saw all that I did, didn’t you?” he asked the spirit.

“I did,” she confirmed. “You may be out of time to prevent the Herald arising.”

“What is the Herald?” David demanded. “I Saw him, but I don’t understand. Is he a demon?”

“No more than you are,” Tahoe explained. “He is a Mantle, an Awakened, a Pure. All of these things. A human body, shaped in the womb by either magic or ichor. Grown to adult size by absorbing anything he can consume—dirt, metal…people.

“Ensouled with a custom-built mantle forged from the souls of the Masters Beyond. He is a Pure. But he is also a Mantle, claiming a body built like an Awakened.”

“So, he’s more powerful than anything they could bring through a portal,” Kate concluded.

“More than that,” David whispered. “He is a portal. Linked to the other side of the Seal, accessing a portion of the power of the Masters themselves. Every moment he walks this Earth, the Seal weakens. His soul is the gateway that will allow their invasion to begin.”

“Exactly,” the Pure told him. “The Seal has weakened enough that humanity will accept magic again, but it cannot be permitted to break.”

She looked sad at that. Tired.

“My people are gone. Their energies consumed to produce the legions the Masters will invade this world with. Even the Masters are not what they were.”

“What do we do?” David asked.

“Why are you asking me?” Tahoe replied. “I cannot act far beyond my lake. I am a spirit of the water and the mountains. I can send my constructs out into the world, but once they pass beyond these shores, they may as well be mortal.

“The fate of man will be decided by man. Your people forged the Seal, transformed your gods of light and darkness into monsters all.”

“We reap what we sow, huh?” David said grimly.

“You reap what Solomon sowed,” Tahoe corrected. “This fight is yours, David White, Kate Mason. I have done all I can for you.

“Look to the dragon you summoned and the allies you have called to you. The war is coming.

“Be ready.”

22

ONE OF THE advantages of being a regenerator—and especially of being a shapeshifter—was that it was easy to do things like grow a beard to make yourself less identifiable. A week into hiding, Michael O’Brien was the proud owner of shoulder-length hair and a neatly trimmed but large beard, a look he hadn’t sported since about 1977.

Despite his drastic change in appearance, he was somehow unsurprised when his pub lunch was interrupted by someone sitting down across from him.

The big werewolf leveled his best death glare at the stranger and took a pointed bite of his sandwich. The stranger chuckled.

“You’re a hard man to find, Brigadier,” he pointed out. “I’m not going anywhere until we talk.”

Michael swallowed, met the stranger’s eyes, and then took another bite.

The other man was a stout white-haired man, with the leathery skin of someone who’d spent a lot of time outside and the wrinkles of someone who spent most of that time smiling. Despite the difference in their appearances, he was almost certainly younger than Michael.

He also, it seemed, wasn’t going anywhere. The werewolf finished his bite, glared some more, then gestured the waitress over.

“I’ll get another sandwich,” he told her, then gestured at the stranger. “On his tab.”

The white-haired man gave the girl a nod to confirm. She swerved away, and the two men went back to glaring at each other.

“You’re not Seraphim,” Michael concluded. “Or this would have already become messier than I’d like.”

“No,” the man agreed. “I would be dishonest if I didn’t warn you that the building is surrounded by them, however. Their orders are to let you leave, but if something happens to me…”

“I don’t know who you are,” Michael replied, “or who you think I am, but I’m not in the habit of randomly killing people.”

“No, you’re not, Brigadier O’Brien.”

Michael sighed.

“You’d think fifteen years would be enough for people to forget that title,” he said acidly. “You have my attention. Now tell me who you are and speak your piece.”

“I’m Dr. James Savida,” the man told him. “We met when you were Brigadier, during the early tests of what became the Seraphim Program.” He smiled. “I had different hair then.”

The werewolf leaned back and studied the man. Replace the white hair with jet-black greasy strands hanging down to the shoulder and held back with goggles. Swap out the plain suit for a protective lab coat. Widen the smile and take away the wrinkles. Take three decades off of the man…

“Yeah, okay, I remember Dr. Savida,” Michael allowed. He even would mentally allow that this was Savida—it had been long enough since they’d met. “I also remember that his project was a complete failure and we nearly lost the first human volunteers.”

Savida nodded calmly.

“You remember correctly,” he agreed. “We didn’t lose anyone that time, thank God. Some of the volunteers died from complications later on, though,” he admitted. “I…regret that.”

“I thought the project was canned.”

“Sidelined,” Savida corrected. “The Committee chose to focus on thaumaturgically enhanced mechanical augmentations instead. The hope was that a suit of, well, enchanted power armor would be more easily transferred between personnel than a drug or transformation process.

“We continued our work. Very carefully; I refused to have more losses. It was fifteen years, O’Brien, before we even tested on monkeys, let alone people. But…ten years ago, we perfected the Seraphim Serum and the Wing delivery device.”

“And never said a word to Omicron,” Michael said.

“The purpose was always to have a counterweight to Omicron,” Savida pointed out. “Besides, mass-producing the Seraphim Serum and Seraphim Wings took years.” He shook his head. “Purcell’s people blew through six months of production taking over that black site of yours.”

“This history lesson is all fine and dandy, but what the fuck do you want?” Michael growled. His second sandwich arrived as he finished, delaying Savida’s response.

He bit into the food with more force than necessary as the doctor shook his head.

“When I created the Wing and the serum it contains, I envisaged Omicron spawning dark lords or demon princes and turning upon us,” he admitted. “The first New York Incident, the one the public doesn’t know about, was close to what we created the Seraphim to counteract.

“But ONSET dealt with it. And the backup was a nuke, not Sigma Force.

“Now…Major General Purcell is using his people to suppress Omicron on the orders of the President.” Savida shook his head. “I should note, Michael, that the Seraphim outside are not Sigma Force or Task Force White. They are my personal bodyguards.

“We’re back at what do you want, Savida?” Michael repeated.

“I did not make it as far as I did as a mundane chemist studying the supernatural without contacts in the world behind the Masquerade,” the doctor told him. “The supernatural citizens of the United States are terrified. Something is coming. You’ve felt it, I’m sure.”

A vague sense of foreboding, yes, but Michael would have blamed that on the government going crazy.

“I am here on behalf of two people,” he concluded. “The first, and the one who told me where to find you, is Major General Purcell, the commanding officer of Sigma Force. Officially, Sigma Force isn’t part of Task Force White, but his people are on standby to back them up and what he isn’t saying is that he’s also the commander of Task Force White.

“He wanted to pass on his regards and inform you that Sigma Force has no intention of pursuing you further. Officially, they’re the cleanup team, tying up the loose ends of Omicron.

“In practice, they’ve already seen far too many of the messes that ONSET was dealing with to focus on anything else,” Savida said grimly. “The Major General warns you that there is a warrant for your arrest but he, and I quote, ‘is not chasing a hero who chose his consequences when he has real monsters to fight.’”

“That’s reassuring,” Michael said dryly. “You’ll excuse me if I don’t pop back up and start using my main bank account anytime soon.”

The doctor chuckled humorlessly.

“I imagine it won’t take long for those charges to disappear along with everything else about ONSET,” he pointed out. “But for now, I doubt the General expects anything different. He also doesn’t know who else sent me.”

“And who was that?”

“A mellon,” Savida said calmly. “A mellon ah tas a nifred.”

Michael blinked, taking a moment to translate the Sindarin.

A friend. A friend with a task and fears.

“And what do the Elfin want?” he asked.

“Lord Riley fears for our country,” the doctor told him. He slid an envelope across the table. “He is assembling a…last-chance option for if everything fails.

“There is an access card in the envelope. It will get you into a secure part of the commercial airport. There is a plane leaving this evening with a special cargo.

“Part of that cargo has been rigged for air drop. It could use an escort—and is going to Lord Riley.”

Michael studied the envelope.

“And what’s the cargo you want me to see safely to the Elfin?”

Savida shrugged.

“One hundred Wings and two thousand doses of Seraphim Serum,” he admitted. “Ones that were never on the books. Just…in case, you understand.”

“And what happens you, Dr. Savida, if that gets found out?” Michael asked.

“I go to jail for a very long time,” the old man said levelly. “Probably more time than I have left…but I can feel the storm gathering, Brigadier. I am afraid, and this is all I can do.”

“You trust Riley, then,” the werewolf said.

“No,” Savida admitted. “But I trust you.”

Michael O’Brien chuckled.

“Well, if you put it that way…”

23

KATE MASON, it turned out, owned a sporty red convertible. David had never actually seen her personal vehicle, since ONSET had provided most of the cars and aircraft they’d used to do their jobs.

Now, of course, those immense resources were gone. Some of them locked away in warehouses, some of them taken over by Task Force White and SOCOM, some just…gone.

It was a weird feeling, not being part of something larger. It had its advantages—as Kate had enthusiastically reminded him during the two nights they’d spent in motels on this road trip—but it was a strange feeling.

Now his girlfriend pulled the car into the parking lot of a huge hotel overlooking Lake Michigan. Despite the scale of the parking lot, the CLOSED sign at the front gate resulted in it being mostly empty. The road from that gate to the final lot was winding, keeping the parking lot out of sight of the highway.

The squadron of Bradley IFVs parked at one side of the lot, being checked over by a trio of young women in denim coveralls, were a hint as to why the hotel was closed and why hidden was important. Part of the pavement had been blocked off with heavy concrete barriers to create a temporary helipad.

There were four relatively standard civilian helicopters, two heavy-lift aircraft and two lighter vehicles, but pride of place went to the pair of Pendragons sitting in the middle of the temporary canvas hangar set up over them.

The men and women guarding the hangar might have been dressed in a random mix of wet-weather clothing—the forecast was for rain and it was clouding over above them—but they moved and carried their weapons with military precision.

All of them were also supernaturals. If they weren’t Elfin Warriors, well, David was a monkey.

Kate pulled the convertible into the section of the parking lot still being used for its original purpose, slotting it in amidst a chaotic mix of vehicles from black government sedans to dark green 1990s near-junkers.

He had a sudden very strong sense of being watched and twisted in his seat, detecting the point of view. Suddenly, he understood exactly how Charles had known he was Seeing the dragon.

“Tell Riley we’re here,” he told the unseen observer. “He’s expecting us.”

He felt the surprise from the other end of the link, and then the “sensor” disappeared. Kate arched a neat blond eyebrow at him and he grinned.

“Apparently, I can now pick up when someone is using the Sight to watch me,” he told her. “Intriguing, if nothing else.

“Shall we?”

His lover laughed and leapt over the side of the car. Like the Warriors, she was dressed for the rain in a long black coat that flickered around her in the wind, and she smiled widely as he carefully opened the door and exited normally.

“Let’s get the cover up first,” she told him. “Give Riley’s Seer a chance to recover from the shock you just gave her—and protect Jessica from the rain.”

At some point, David reflected, he’d understand people who named their cars. For now, however, he helped Kate pull the cover of her convertible up.

BRIANNA YOUNG MET them in the main lobby of the hotel. The luxurious space showed no sign of the renovations supposedly being carried out at the moment, beyond the complete lack of staff.

The Elfin Lord’s Second was a tall woman with a dark-red pixie cut and a gloomy expression. There, behind multiple layers of security, she dispensed with the pretense of being anything but what she was: a trained warrior, tasked with the personal security of one of the most powerful of the Elfin Lords.

Her sword, an enchanted elf-blade forged by Riley himself, was slung across her back, and she had an bullpup battle carbine hanging from her left shoulder.

“Welcome to the Ambrose Overlook,” she told them. “As you can see, we’re in the middle of some renovations and we don’t have all of our usual amenities.”

“But as a bonus, you have tanks, armories and attack helicopters?” David asked.

“If there’s any tanks outside, nobody told me about them,” Young replied. “And they’d better have told me about them.”

“The Bradleys?” he said dryly.

“Glorified APCs and we both know it,” she snapped. “Tanks aren’t really the forte of the kind of deal we’re trying to put together here. Pendragons are more to my taste, but I’m not even sure how Jamie got his hands on those.”

“I’ll admit to being curious,” David replied. “But also…what kind of deal are we putting together here?”

“That’s for Jamie to brief you on,” the Elfin Second replied. “But there’s one thing I want clear before I take you upstairs, Commanders.”

“We’re not Commanders anymore,” Kate pointed out.

Young shook her head.

“No one here gives a fuck what Omicron says,” she noted. “You’re still Commanders as far as we’re concerned.”

“I suspect we’d need a command for that,” David said.

“You’ll have that,” Young told them. “But that brings me back to my point: this isn’t an Elfin affair. Several members of the Conclave are aware of what’s going on, but this isn’t an Elfin operation. It’s not a vampire operation either, though you’ll see both Familias and Keeper vampires in the Overlook.”

“Wait, the Keepers left the Mountain?” David asked, surprised. The Keepers were the stereotyped-into-cliché “vegetarian vampires,” whose task was to deal with freshly converted vampires for the year or so it took them to become sane again.

The Mountain was the crèche they did so at, a facility that was still very firmly under the control of the US government. The Keepers’ leader, the Arbiter, had made sure that a supply of magically-sustained nonhuman blood was available to every vampire in North America at least, but David didn’t trust the vampires to behave without that knife at their racial throat.

“Some of them,” Young concluded. “Apparently, they’re allowed to fight demons? Just not humans or other vampires. Their pacifism only applies to parahumanity.”

“If this isn’t Elfin or Familias—and it sure as hell isn’t US government—what is this place?” Kate asked.

“This is Riley’s personal insurance policy,” she told them. “He’s begged, borrowed, stolen and bribed the Elfin, the Familias, the voodoun, and what’s left of his contacts at the government to pull it together.

“If something comes apart before the government is able to deal with it again, we’re his solution. But remember that all of this is on Riley. He’s committed every resource he has to this. Every drop of political capital.

“If this force is needed, he stands to lose everything…and to have saved everyone.”

“If this force is needed, we all stand to lose everything,” David said quietly, shivering as he remembered his visions beneath Lake Tahoe. “And I’m afraid this force will be needed. I have…Seen what is coming.”

“Fuck.” Young sighed. “Then I guess we should go see the boss ASAP.”

ELFIN LORD JAMIE RILEY stood on the balcony of the penthouse suite Young led them to. The Lord General of the Elfin Warriors was an older man, slimly muscular with black hair starting to edge to silver. He was looking out over the lake to the east.

While he was alone on the balcony, he wasn’t alone in the suite. David exchanged familiar nods with the two vampires standing just outside the light. Knowing the Keepers were here, he wasn’t surprised to see Gabriel standing in the room.

The gracefully athletic vampire woman with the black ponytail was the Guardian, the vampire Mage charged with defending the crèche against all threats. If the Arbiter had sent any of his Keepers to battle, the Guardian would lead them.

The second vampire was something of a surprise. Joseph Reginald had been one of the founding Justices of the Omicron Circuit, the traveling judges that had pre-dated the various offices David had served.

An unfortunate encounter had resulted in the tall, fair man becoming one of America’s oldest remaining vampires, and the only one, to David’s knowledge at least, to have actually met the Founding Fathers of the United States.

When they’d last met, Reginald and David had dueled to the edge of death over whether or not the Familias Reginald would surrender and accept the Arbiter’s peace. A long scar marked the vampire’s face where Memoria’s demon-forged magics had forced an injury to heal almost normally.

The vampire patriarch didn’t seem displeased to see David, though, gesturing for the two ex-ONSET Commanders to come in when he saw them.

“Your other guests are here, Lord Riley,” he said politely.

“I know,” Riley replied. “Leila told me.”

As they walked out, David realized that Riley wasn’t actually alone on the balcony. The other occupant, however, was sitting in a wheelchair off to one side, looking out over the lake with milky white eyes.

“Bring the Battle Seer to me,” she ordered, and David could hear her age in her voice. Wispy white hair seemed to float around her frail form in the wind, but he went to her regardless.

“Ma’am,” he greeted her. “I don’t believe we know each other.”

“You do not know me,” she agreed with a quavering laugh. “But my boy here has told me much about you, and I have Seen more. I know the change that has come upon you, child, and I must admit: I envy you.”

“It is more than I ever sought or thought I was,” David agreed quietly.

“Indeed.” The blind woman smiled. “But my manners. I am Leila Walker, the first Seer of our time. Not a Battle Seer, I lack that side of your gifts, Commander White, but a Seer nonetheless.”

“She does herself little credit,” Riley said. “I’ve seen Leila fight. Don’t let her age fool you—I would not fight her today.”

David had seen Lord Riley fight. David had seen Lord Riley go spell for spell with some of the most powerful vampiric Mages of their time. He’d say the most powerful vampire Mages alive, but, well, the ones that had faced Riley weren’t anymore.

“It is not a title, Lord Riley, like your Lord General,” Walker told the Elfin Lord. “It is simply what he is and what I am not. I can See the future, but I am a mortal woman otherwise. Our friend here has completed his apotheosis.

“You stand, my Lord Riley, with the first Immortal of our time. The Battle Seers stood at the right hands of Gods.”

“And how many of them actually got to live forever?” David asked dryly, though the word Immortal twisted his soul in ways Battle Seer didn’t.

She laughed, coughing after a moment.

“It is not given to me to peer into the distant past, child,” she told him. “But believe me when I say I would know if any of them still walked this world. So, I would guess…none.”

“If you have Ms. Walker here, part of my warning is unnecessary, I think,” David said. “I had…visions of what is to come.”

“You may be more useful than you think,” the old Seer told him sharply. “Did you know, child, that we cannot see the future past the moment of our death?”

“But our fates are not fixed,” David objected. “We can avoid death we foresee. How can our future death limit our Sight?”

“Because most of us are mortal, boy,” she replied. Walker nodded to Riley, who came over and wrapped a blanket over her before rolling her wheelchair into the hotel. “I am dying. It is not a question of illness or injury or magic or any such thing that could be avoided or healed. My body is failing, and I am not a regenerator.

“I have about three days,” she continued calmly. “I can feel the storm coming, Commander White, but I cannot See what is coming upon us.”

“Leila is why I have gathered this army,” Riley told them. “We don’t know how long we have, but we are running out of time. You have Seen what is coming?”

“I have Seen the end of the fucking world,” David admitted. “What can we do about that?”

“Spit in the eye of apocalypse and demand a stay of execution,” the Lord General said with a smile. “I, for one, will not go calmly into the night.”

He gestured around the hotel.

“Neither, I’m sure, will anyone else here.”

Riley drew the curtains to protect the vampires and took a seat. With a gesture, he conjured a vaguely translucent humanoid form to bring everyone drinks.

“Now, David, please. Sit—and tell me what you have foreseen.”

WHEN DAVID WAS FINISHED, everyone in the penthouse suite was silent for a long time. Riley eventually stood and crossed back to the patio doors, holding out his glass for the construct to refill with scotch as he pulled the curtains partly open to look out over Lake Michigan.

“That’s worse than I feared,” he admitted. “Worse than I’d ever imagined.”

“There has to be some way we can stop it before it starts,” Reginald pointed out. “If we find the host for this Herald, the girl this Buckley is protecting…”

“He is shielding himself and her,” Walker said firmly. “It was the first thing I tried while our friend was speaking. If David, with Lake Tahoe’s power behind him, could only see him and not where he was…”

The Seer shook her head.

“We may get lucky again,” she concluded, “but I fear that this time, we cannot stop this before it comes to pass.”

“I’ll pass word for our contacts to keep their ears to the ground,” Riley noted. “But much as I’d hope to keep Black Echelon an omega plan, it appears we must now plan for a certain apocalypse.”

“Black Echelon?” David asked.

“This.” The Elfin Lord gestured around. “We’re not Elfin. We’re not vampires. The Conclave and the Familias have both contributed people and…sympathetic members of both continue to funnel us funds, but most of this is being underwritten by myself and Reginald.

“Black Echelon is something new. A final line of defense. If we cannot prevent the apocalypse, then Black Echelon will be the shield that allows parahumanity to survive it.”

“And that’s what you wanted to recruit us for,” Kate concluded, her hand sneaking into David’s. He squeezed her fingers as Riley nodded.

“I am assembling strike teams, similar to the ONSET teams the government has disbanded, to intervene in critical situations,” the Elfin Lord replied. “I want you each to lead one.”

“So, what, we’re rebuilding ONSET in secret?” David asked.

Riley laughed.

“Hardly. At its weakest, ONSET had over a dozen teams. We will have…five. Reginald here will command one.” He gestured to the vampire patriarch. “I will command another. You two will each lead one.”

“Who gets the fifth?” David said.

“Who do you think?” Riley asked. “I hope to see Michael O’Brien arrive tonight, along with some of the more…esoteric supplies promised to me. We expect to be receiving a number of the Wings the Seraphim use as a delivery device for their drugs.

“Hopefully, we’ll have time to train our volunteers in their use.”

“Surely, we should have some time,” Reginald said. “From what David said, we should still have some weeks before the Herald is born, and his vision of the future showed the Herald as a man grown.”

“Neither of those will run on any mortal timeline,” Walker objected. “The girl may give birth tomorrow. The child is only a core, an anchor around which the Herald will assemble his earthly Awakened form before he links through.”

“Both Mantle and Awakened, of Earth and of the Pure,” David agreed. “About the only good thing to any of this is that by binding himself to the body Buckley is creating for him, the Herald is making himself vulnerable.”

Gabriel shook her head, the vampire Guardian speaking up for the first time since he arrived.

“Vulnerable is relative,” she said crisply. “You and Mason have fought Awakened. So have I. No one else here has.”

“Awakened can die,” David replied. “Pure can’t. I destroyed Ekhmez’s earthly form, but if they open a new portal on the scale of the Montana Incursion or worse…he could easily show up again. He was banished, not killed.

“By binding himself as Mantle and Awakened, the Herald can be destroyed.”

“And since the Herald is forged of the essence of the Masters, such destruction would weaken them,” Walker told them. “They will use him as a bridge, but in doing so, they make themselves vulnerable.”

“Well, that’s a plan, then, isn’t it?” Reginald said dryly. “Wait for the Masters Beyond to create an avatar on Earth, fight it, kill it. It’s only a demigod, right?”

“With a dragon,” Gabriel added. “I do not know of anything that can kill a dragon except another dragon.”

“Fortunately, we’re going to have one of those,” David told her.

24

WATCHING the news was a surreal experience these days. The supernatural underground of the world was slowly shuffling into the light, testing to see if they would be believed, poking to see if they would be accepted.

Every day was a new revelation for a world coming to terms with the wonders and horrors that had lurked in its shadow. Not all of the reactions were good.

David sat in the hotel’s lounge, currently converted to a self-serve wet bar, and watched a BBC commentator stumble through trying to report on a riot in Italy that had seen a dozen men and women lynched and their bodies burned.

One of them had been a Mage who’d offered to provide their services to the local hospital. The others had simply had the misfortune of being his friends and acquaintances. One good-faith offer of help…and a dozen people had been killed for it.

The previous piece had been a “feel-good” story about a trio of older Native men in Peru who had, with the help of several local Catholic priests, used their inherited gifts of stone control to protect a surprisingly huge area from avalanches and mudslides.

As was typical of that kind of man in David’s experience, two of them had spent the entire interview utterly silent, and the third had spent most of it apologizing, through the priest translating for him, for the mudslides and avalanches they’d been too far away to prevent.

“Watching for the press conference?” Young suddenly asked. He looked up at the Second as she slid into the table next to him. “Isn’t Mason around somewhere?”

“Press conference?” he asked. “Kate’s in the armory, helping carve magic into gear. Echelon doesn’t have ONSET’s vast supplies of enchanted shit.”

“We’re lucky to have her,” Young replied. “You two, huh?”

“Yeah,” he confirmed. “Not that we were being open about while we were in ONSET, but now…”

“Black Echelon isn’t that formal, no,” the pixie-haired Mage agreed. “Plus, from what you said earlier, we’re staring a full-blown apocalypse in the face sometime in the next few months. Take what you can get.”

He saluted her with his rum-and-Coke. Getting drunk had been hard for him since his powers had first awoken. Now that Tahoe had completed that process in memorable fashion, it was proving to be impossible.

“Agreed,” he said. “What news conference would I be watching for?”

He realized that more people were drifting into the lounge now, pouring drinks and taking seats to watch the big screen normally used for sports. Given the nature of what the Echelon was up to and the people Riley had recruited, it wasn’t much of a surprise that it was playing the news, but it was still a surprise to see the room fill up.

Especially as he realized everyone in the room except him was Elfin.

“We go now live to Las Vegas, where an unknown group of individuals calling themselves the Elfin Conclave have called a press conference to speak to the people of the United States.”

“That press conference,” Young said with a chuckle. “The Elfin have been preparing for this moment for twenty years. Now to see how the game plays out.”

The big screen switched to an auditorium decked in the glitzy style that could only be justified in Las Vegas. The events of the last few weeks meant that a potential major supernatural coming-out had a standing-room-only crowd of reporters, and the BBC camera crew made a point of sweeping their camera along the row of other cameras recording the event.

Three men and four women stood on the stage, all dressed in plain gray suits with gold oak leaves at their throats. David didn’t know them all…but the ones he did know were all Lords and Ladies of the Conclave, the leaders of the Elfin.

As the cameras turned on, one of the women stepped up to the microphone.

“Welcome, everyone,” she said loudly. “I’m…reasonably sure the only people in this room who know who I am are behind me, so let’s being with introductions, shall we?

“I am Lady Ekaterina Bogdanova, and I am the seventh-ranking member of an organization known as the Elfin Conclave.” She smiled. “I am also, like all members of the Conclave, a Mage of some power.

“We of the Conclave represent the leadership body of an organization called the Elfin, a social club of sorts that has grown across the United States over the last forty years based on mutual interest in the works of JRR Tolkien and access to unusual gifts and powers.

“I amar prestar aen; Han mathon ne nen, Han mathon ne chae. A han noston ned gwilith. Im’ve tul-na nesta cin,” she said in soft Sindarin.

“The world is changed; I can feel it in the water, I can feel it in the earth, I can smell it in the air. I am here to help you,” she repeated in English. “We of the Elfin are the largest supernatural organization in North America.

“We have branches in every city, safe gathering places for the supernaturals of the world. And we have a message for you all:

“If you find yourself in possession of strange gifts and do not know where to turn or what you are becoming, come to us. If we cannot help you, we will find someone you can.

“And if you seek magical aid or supernatural healing, well, come to us,” she continued with a smile. “We have doctors and healers of a dozen different traditions of magic or gifts, and you will find their prices far more reasonable than you fear.

“Of course, this is the United States, and you must wonder if your health insurance will cover it. I’m sure they will…in time. But if you need our services now, look to our website for a list of agencies that have agreed to cover our services as part of their packages.

“Other services, well.” Her smile broadened. “We of the Elfin can put you in touch with almost any power you need. For a small fee, of course. We are available to help everyone, but we are not truly a charity.

“Our first mission is to show America that your supernatural siblings and neighbors are your friends. That we are also Americans.”

She raised a warning finger, delaying the onslaught of questions.

“But we must also, as we always have, protect the people who come to us,” she noted. “We are willing and able to serve as an interface between mundane and supernatural, to the benefit of both.”

She reeled off a website and a phone number, both of which the news agency flashed on the screen in text.

“Now I will, of course, take questions.”

THE LOUNGE DETERIORATED in loud conversations and arguments almost the moment Bogdanova had finished speaking. With a meaningful glance at Young, David stood and walked out onto the patio carrying his drink.

The wind was coming in off the lake with a bitter chill to it tonight, and he looked out over the water with a strange sense of sadness.

“White?” Young asked, stepping outside to join him.

“I’m fine,” he told him. “Just…realizing the world is never going to be the same.”

“Maiar, no,” she agreed. “On the other hand, we both know the best treatments for a lot of injuries and illnesses are a combination of high tech and high magic. Now those treatments will be available to everyone.”

“And so will everything else that comes with magic,” he agreed. “It’s not a bad thing, Brianna. I was never comfortable with the secrecy, it’s just… The world is never going to be the same.”

“Says the man who carried a magic sword in the service of the United States,” she said. “It had been changing for a while, just behind closed doors and hidden from the people. For at least ten years, the kind of people whose names end up in the newspaper have known where to find the real magicians behind a bunch of the quackery.

“The top Hollywood fixers have been sending old actors to us to keep them going a few more years for decades.” She shrugged. “We can’t change the fact that the clock runs out, but it’s in our power to turn it back…and isn’t it better to be able to do that for everyone than just a super-elite few?”

“If they can pay,” David replied.

“We’re Americans,” Young said dryly. “We work in the system we have. Yes, all of the insurance agencies currently listed on the website are fully or partially owned by the Conclave—but because some insurance companies already cover magical treatment, the rest have to.

“The Elfin are going to make money hand over fist for a while, but in doing so, we’re going to drag the world’s medical establishment kicking and screaming into the new paradigm—and if you don’t think that a good chunk of that money is going to be directed straight into charity programs to make sure everyone gets access to magical healing, you don’t know the Conclave!”

David chuckled. That, at least, was true. The Conclave had its scrooges and its assholes, but most of the Elfin Lords and Ladies were good people. They’d make sure the benefits of magic were seen all around.

“A good reputation is the best way to protect us all,” he concluded, voicing the other major reason behind the Conclave’s plans.

“Exactly. We’re big enough and strong enough that nobody is lynching the doctors we send out,” Young said grimly. “And that lets the Elfin be the trailblazer who decides how the world works with the supernatural. How we normalize magic, werewolves, Empowered…even vampires now.

“Even the Familias are going to have to come out of the woodwork eventually, and if the Conclave is known and trusted, people will believe us when we back the Arbiter’s Peace,” she continued. “Without that moral authority, everything you did to end that bloody war will have been wasted.”

David snorted.

“And given that nuke is part of why we ended up here, I’d hate to see that,” he admitted. “I understand. Like I said, I even agree. But it’s a weird world to think of where I can actively put Battle Seer on my business cards…and know that people are going to understand at least half of it.”

Young laughed.

“David, I work for an Elfin Lord and the Conclave now has a website. Yeah, I hear you there.”

25

“HEY, CARGO!”

Michael O’Brien appreciated the necessity of secrecy and the convenience of the military transport plane carrying him. He was still about ready to kill the copilot, whose name he had quite determinedly not learned after the man’s insistence on calling him cargo.

“Yes?” he growled.

“Coming up on the drop point. You better check the canisters on those pontoons!”

Michael sighed. If Savida had warned him that he was being dropped over water with compressed-air-fired self-inflating pontoons to keep him and the cargo afloat, he might have told the doctor where to stuff it.

As it was, by the time he’d realized that part of the plan, the big military transport had been in the air. Now he was committed to riding an air-dropped pallet of thaumaturgically-enhanced drugs and fragile auto-injectors down onto the Great Lakes.

In the dark.

Riley’s people had better be there.

He checked the canisters on the pontoons and the release valves on the parachute as well. This was a terrible plan.

“Drop in ten!” the Air Force man barked, hitting a lever to open the back of the plane. “Thanks for flying USAF, cargo. Have a nice drop!”

The big grunt kicked the pallet, a solid impact that sent the cargo—and one Michael O’Brien—sliding down the deck of the suddenly angled aircraft and out into the open air.

If Michael spent most of the slide and the ensuing free-fall drop cursing the airman’s parentage and family history, well, no one would ever hear him.

His harness held. He checked the air canisters again as cold air whipped around him and he counted out the seconds in the back of his mind. He reached out for the rip cord that would manually activate the parachute…but this wasn’t a setup that was designed to have a human onboard.

The parachutes fired with a bang that hurt his ears even over the howling wind of the drop, massive white mushrooms blasting past him to fill the air above him as he sighed in relief. As the hurtling descent jerked to a slower pace, he carefully positioned himself to see the shore and the water beneath him.

There were no visible boats on the water. Or was that a boat? He wasn’t sure…

How high up was he?!

The truth was somewhere between his expectations and his fears, and the cargo slammed into the water with a surprisingly gentle landing, the self-inflating pontoons hissing to life to keep the crates of expensive equipment dry. They were now bouncing on the mostly calm surface of Lake Michigan as Michael looked around for the lights that would mean someone was coming to get him.

Hopefully, the Air Force crew hadn’t screwed up their timing and someone was coming to get him. It was going to be a cold night if he had to spend it out on the lake.

BY THE TIME the boat arrived an hour later, Michael had given up on being picked up before morning and was seriously considering getting into the water and pushing the pallet to shore.

Boat wasn’t giving the ship that arrived enough credit. Michael’s night vision was even better than the wolf he could become, and he could pick out the details of the hundred-and-fifty-foot-long cutter swimming out of the night.

Searchlights flickered out in a careful pattern as the ship tried to be somewhat clandestine despite her size. Most of her running lights had been doused as she cut a search pattern through the chilly Great Lake waters.

“There!” someone shouted, clearly audible to Michael’s hearing, as a searchlight swept over the floating pallet. The cutter changed her course, slowing even further as she swung about to close with Michael’s raft.

He unclipped the harness he’d worn for the ride down and stood up to wave.

“Ahoy there!” he shouted back—to find himself the sudden focus of several machine guns he was quite certain were supposed to have been removed when the ex-Coast Guard vessel had been decommissioned.

A pregnant pause filled the night, and then a different voice echoed out from the boat.

“Commander O’Brien?”

“I’m not sure who else would be dumb enough to be sitting on a floating raft of supplies in the middle of Lake Michigan,” he replied. “So, yeah, it’s me. Can I get a ride?”

He heard the answering chuckle.

“Stand down, ladies,” the boat’s captain ordered the gun crews. “The boss would be thoroughly grumpy if we shot up Mr. O’Brien here.”

He turned back to Michael.

“We need to be careful getting in close,” he told the werewolf. “This is the only boat we’ve got with a crane, but we’re also big enough to risk swamping you. You going to be okay to hang out for a few more minutes?”

Michael sighed.

“I haven’t died of exposure yet,” he admitted. “Let’s not test whether dumping me in the water will fix that!”

MICHAEL O’BRIEN HAD COMMANDED the Office of Supernatural Policing and Investigation’s High Threat Response Teams. He’d help design the ONSET Campus when the HTR teams had been transformed into their own organization. He’d been a Marine, a cop, a general, and had seen more military and paramilitary bases than he could count.

This was not the first time he’d seen a luxury hotel used as one, but he’d never seen quite so comfortable an arrangement for the personnel. As the cutter swung into a dock that had clearly been built for entertainment craft, it was clear that most of the amenities of the hotel were still functioning. It was late, but the bar was open, and the big TVs were running.

People were wandering the beaches in twos and threes, chatting amicably. If he hadn’t known he was being brought to Riley’s base, he would have wondered if the hotel was still open.

And then you looked more closely.

Some of the twos were couples, yes. But even the couples were keeping a wary eye on the water and the sky. Some of the pairs and trios were outright patrols, still chatting as friends and tourists but armed and hyper-aware.

There were no real heavy weapons, but several concealed machine gun nests covered the marina, carefully tracking the ex-Coast Guard ship. He couldn’t see much of the parking lot, but the density of the vehicles he could see suggested that much of the parking he couldn’t see had been coopted for other purposes.

“I radioed ahead,” Captain Neumann said from behind him, the swarthy and gray-haired ex-Coast Guard officer a reassuringly solid presence. “Lord Riley should be waiting for you.

“Ah, there’s your welcoming party.”

Michael followed Neumann’s gesture and picked out the familiarly short stocky and slim shapes of White and Mason. Both had made it, it seemed.

“Thank you, Captain,” he told Neumann. “I was expecting to spend the night on the lake when you showed up.”

“Now, that, Commander O’Brien, would have been rude.”

“I’m not a Commander anymore,” Michael pointed out.

Neumann smiled.

“Talk to Lord Riley before you sound that certain, Mr. O’Brien.”

MICHAEL WAS MORE than a little surprised when Kate Mason wrapped him in a tight bear hug. He hesitated for a moment, then returned the hug from the much younger woman before stepping back to study her for a moment.

White offered him a firm handshake, a wry smile on the other man’s face. There was something different to the squat ex-cop today. A new grace to his movements. A smoother hue to his skin.

“It’s good to see you both,” he told them. “I never expected this to go quite so sideways quite so fast.”

“It could be worse,” White rumbled. “We’re all still breathing. Task Force Sigma was being spectacularly trigger-happy for a bit.”

“I’ve been informally advised that they’ve been told to rein that in,” Michael replied. “General Purcell seems to have ended up handling everything ONSET used to.”

White winced.

“I’d sympathize with the bastard, but he did try to nuke Charles,” he said. “That’ll take some digging upwards for him to get much from me.”

“That…I hadn’t heard,” Michael admitted. “I’ve been out of the loop since New York. Other than the news, of course.”

“Which has been bad enough,” Mason said as she tucked herself into White’s arm. The pair apparently didn’t feel the need to hide their relationship anymore, which was a small silver living to this whole mess.

Michael didn’t think they’d needed to hide it before, but who was he to tell kids what to be paranoid about? He’d grown up in the fifties, after all!

“The Elfin have a bloody website now,” White added. “It’s been an interesting few weeks. You ready for what comes next, boss?”

“I’m not your boss anymore, David,” Michael replied. “Right now, I’m technically an unemployed, wanted bum. I don’t know what I can count as ready for.”

“Pretty sure Ardent will get that wanted fixed,” the younger man said. “And Riley has plans for the unemployed, because we know you, boss.

“And we need you,” he continued. “Come on, Riley is waiting.”

“You work for him now, do you?” Michael asked.

“Welcome to Black Echelon, boss,” White said quietly. “The last line of defense at the end of world.”

MICHAEL O’BRIEN HAD KNOWN Jamie Riley since a fresh-faced twenty-two-year-old graduate from the FBI training program had been co-opted by OSPI, over thirty years ago now. Michael had been middle-aged then. Riley was working on middle-aged now, which made Michael feel old.

Anyone looking at the two of them would have guessed the twenty-odd-year age gap went the other way. With the long hair and beard Michael had grown out to conceal his identity, he didn’t look much past his mid-twenties, where Riley was showing every one of his fifty-plus years today.

The Elfin Lord looked tired and worn, but he greeted Michael with a smile and a warm handclasp.

“You have no idea how glad I am to see you,” the Mage told him. “I can make this work—I think—but having you at my side makes me a lot more confident.”

“I haven’t signed on yet,” Michael warned Riley, pulling up a seat and glancing around the room. Mason and White had followed him up and taken seats of their own. The other two people in the room were strangers to him, though the man looked vaguely familiar…

“Reginald?” he asked suddenly. “Joseph Reginald?”

“The one and only,” the vampire confirmed with a bow. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet the man on the other side of the chess table.”

Michael swallowed most of a growl. He understood the need for peace. He agreed with it. He’d supported it…but the Familias had killed a lot of agents under his command over the decades, and the patriarchs like Joseph Reginald had orchestrated that war.

“Peace, Michael,” the second stranger, a white-haired woman in a wheelchair, cut him off before he could say more. “You and Joseph have both killed more of each other’s protégés than you can count. It was war.

“Now we face a common enemy, one who will eat both of your damned souls if you decide to fight each other rather than what’s coming. Sit. Breathe. Accept what’s in front of you.”

Whoever she was, she knew what to say to take the wind out of Michael’s sails, and he nodded shakily to Reginald.

“I apologize,” he said quietly. “Memories die hard.”

“For all of us,” Reginald agreed. “You neither did nor said anything requiring apologies, regardless of what Walker may have foreseen.”

“Michael O’Brien, meet Leila Walker,” Riley interjected, gesturing to the blind woman in a wheelchair. “One of the most powerful Seers I have ever met and the true mastermind behind Black Echelon.”

“I’ll accept instigator, boy, but this is all your work,” Walker replied. “I’ve neither the wealth nor the contacts to assemble this.”

“Okay, so I caught the name,” Michael told them. “I’m not necessarily on board yet, but you have my attention, Lord Riley. Brief me.”

The Elfin Lord smiled and gestured for a construct to provide Michael with a drink.

“Black Echelon was supposed to be an insurance policy,” he began. “After the New York Incident, I anticipated the Committee’s decision to dissolve Omicron, so I called on every contact and resource I could think of, including the Arbiter, to pull together the gear and personnel to take on whatever supernatural incidents occurred before our government got their act back together.

“We have a small force of APCs and two Pendragon helicopters, plus some civilian aircraft,” he concluded. “I think I’ve got a line on a couple more Pendragons, but even if that falls through, I’ve got half a dozen Ospreys lined up to arrive shortly.”

“Aren’t those still restricted?” Michael asked.

“So?” Riley replied bluntly. “The Conclave has its resources.”

“But this isn’t an Elfin operation, I take it?” Michael noted, gesturing to Reginald.

“No. It’s mine,” the Mage admitted. “Just me. Conclave and Familias have put up money and connections, but I’m the fall guy. If this goes to hell, I’m the one who the government is going to come after. I’m the cut-out.”

That was familiar to Michael. He’d intentionally put himself in the same position during the New York Incident, covering for David White.

“So, we’ve built a private supernatural army. An insurance policy, huh?”

“Except that young David has Seen what is coming and we have no way to stop it,” Walker said flatly, her eyes seeming to look into Michael’s soul, for all that she was clearly blind. “The Herald will be born. A gateway unlike any we have seen before will be opened. A new Incursion, but in a major city, not a desolate wasteland.”

Michael sighed and looked at White.

“I don’t suppose she’s exaggerating?”

“No,” the younger Seer confirmed. “We’re going to see an invasion in a major city that the government will throw conventional troops at…and those troops will fail.

“Which means that Black Echelon isn’t an insurance policy,” he said levelly. “It’s a necessity. And we need you.”

Seers, Michael reflected, were far too damned good at knowing what buttons to push.

“What do we have?” he asked quietly.

“Two hundred supernaturals, about the same in mundane volunteers,” Riley said instantly. “Only about sixty of the supernaturals are what ONSET would regard as ‘combat-grade,’ but that’s enough for five well-staffed assault teams.

“With the Seraphim Wings you brought you with you, we’ll be able to bring a hundred of our mundane volunteers up to the same standard as our other supernaturals. They’ll form a base of fire and support to enable our main strike teams to hit the heavy concentrations.

“I hope to be able to coordinate with SOCOM’s new supernatural and Seraphim forces—and the regular military, if push comes to shove—but I also have to plan for the possibility that Black Echelon may be the only thing left by the time we go after the Herald.”

“And you want me to lead one of your teams?” Michael asked.

“Yes. I’ll lead one and hold overall command. White, Mason and Reginald will each lead one. With you on board, that gives us five teams I’d put up against the worst Hell can throw at us.”

Michael shook his head.

“The Masters Beyond aren’t Hell,” he noted. “We can beat them. I’m certain of it.”

“We, huh?” Riley picked out.

The werewolf laughed.

“Fair enough, Lord Riley. I’m in.”

26

“DAVID! WAKE UP!”

Kate’s urgent voice woke David up with a start. He blinked away sleep and rose from the bed, following Kate’s voice to find his lover standing next to the balcony window of the penthouse suite Riley had given them.

Her nakedness distracted him rather thoroughly for several moments, but she gestured urgently for him to come join her at the window.

With waiting for O’Brien to arrive and then briefing him, the previous night had run very late. He wasn’t entirely sure what time it was beyond “too early to be awake after last night,” but he wasn’t going to argue with Kate if she thought it was important.

He reached the windows just as a massive shadow swept over it, an immense winged shape blocking out the sun as a dragon circled above the hotel, clearly studying them.

“Please tell me that’s Charles,” he said quietly, Kate’s nudity forgotten as he studied the creature above them. “He’s…grown.”

“I think it’s him,” she said cautiously. “Can’t you tell?”

Seer. Right.

David sighed and focused, summoning his Sight as he focused on the dragon flying overhead. It was more than just “zoom,” though he was suddenly seeing Charles—and it was Charles, thankfully—from very close up.

The dragon wasn’t just bigger. He was much bigger.

“Did I miss a memo about summer pounds for dragons?” David asked, projecting his voice through his Sight so the dragon would hear him.

“Do you know how much effort it took to stay a size that fit in that damn cave?” Charles asked. “I miss that cave. I miss the Internet…but it’s nice to actually be able to fully be myself.”

“You found us, I take it.”

“I worked out where Riley was assembling his little emergency army about two days after he started,” the dragon replied dryly. “Once you told me what was going on, I knew where to go. It just took a while to fly here.”

A very toothy grin spread across Charles’s immense face.

“I may have posed for a photo or two along the way,” he noted. “Or…two thousand. Maybe more. I wasn’t counting. My arms aren’t big enough for selfies.”

“I’d say that’s going to be a headache, but I’ve been watching the news this week,” David told him. “Get your scaly behind down on the ground. We need a plan.”

The dragon shrugged, a massive gesture on a creature now nearly fifty feet long with a two-hundred-foot wingspan.

“I’ll contribute, but I know where my place in this is,” he told David brightly. “If you think you are going into battle in a helicopter this time, I have news for you, Mr. Battle Seer!”

David sighed.

“Did everyone know what I was except me?” he asked.

“Nah, just those of us who predate the Seal,” the dragon told him. “That’s a pretty damn short list.”

BY THE TIME Charles finished showing off and actually landed, David and Kate had found clothes and made it out to the parking lot—along with just about everyone else who’d joined Black Echelon. Several hundred people were gathered around the back of the hotel, watching Charles land.

It was a sizeable crowd, but it also drove home just how small the Echelon was compared to ONSET and Omicron. They only about half-filled one midsize hotel, but this was the force that they hoped would stand off the end of the world.

At least they had a dragon. David had only seen Charles outside of his “hacker cave” in visions and using his Sight. The sight of his friend settling down next to cars and helicopters was stunning. His scales were an iridescent dark red and green in the sun, his wings each a hundred feet long before he folded them in against his sides, his eyes glittering, liquid gold as he looked over the crowd of admirers.

“Ah, yes,” he said cheerfully. “I’ve forgotten what it was like to be adored.” There was a crinkle to his eyes and a feline smile on his face. “This has been such an excellent trip.”

He paused.

“I don’t suppose you have a dragon-sized keyboard and monitor anywhere?”

Riley seemed to materialize from nowhere, the Elfin Lord demonstrating the gift for melodrama that seemed a requirement for his rank. David wasn’t sure where he’d acquired the long cape that swirled around him as he crossed the hotel grounds to meet Charles.

“I may have had a chat with the original supplier, yes,” he told the dragon cheerfully. “Greetings, Charles. It’s a pleasure to meet you at last.”

The dragon lowered his head to sniff at the Elfin, then laughed.

“We have never spoken, my lord, and yet I suspect you know me as well as I know you,” he concluded. “Where’s David? I come to honor a debt.”

Kate shoved David gently, but he was already walking forward. He was sure his jeans and white dress shirt paled into casual insignificance next to Lord Riley’s suit and billowing cape, but they both wore swords.

It was all so very medieval.

“I’m here, Charles,” he told the dragon. “You know what’s coming.”

It wasn’t a question. The dragon had his own gifts of foresight.

“Some,” he admitted. “A storm, the likes of which I have never seen.”

“A Herald,” David said quietly. “A child of the Masters, to spawn Armageddon.”

Until the crowd around him hissed in shock, it hadn’t occurred to him that that knowledge hadn’t been spread around yet. He cast an apologetic gaze at Riley but turned back to Charles.

“You said you owe me a debt,” he reminded the dragon. “I am not fool enough to make demands of one of the Great Awakened. How would you see it paid?”

Charles chuckled, the ground seeming to vibrate with the sound.

“You are a smart one, aren’t you?” he said. “As a servant bound by boon, I would fight for you, Commander David White. As a friend, asked to stand by your side?”

He leaned his head forward again, snuffling against David in a very catlike way.

“As a friend, I would be honored to carry the first of the new Battle Seers to war.” The dragon grinned again. “Now, it seems we owe these people an explanation of just what we’ve all signed up for. Lord Riley?”

RILEY TOOK a few minutes to walk the gathered crowd through the visions David and Walker had been having, explaining what they knew, what they didn’t know, and what they suspected.

“It appears,” he concluded, “that it is no longer a possibility that we will be called to action: it is a certainty.” He looked around at everyone. “Now, we all accepted this as a possibility, but I understand if the near-certain knowledge that it will fall to us to face the apocalypse has a chilling effect on your enthusiasm.

“Anyone who wants out, speak to your superiors or to myself later. There will be no repercussion, no threats or argument,” he promised. “We’ll pay you out and let you leave.”

No one was stepping forward to bow out, but that was why Riley was offering the quiet out. Like the Elfin Lord, David knew that very few would chicken out in front of everyone. Some would have real fears or real reasons to back out, however, and making sure they knew they could was the responsibility of their leaders.

“Most of you have received your assignments, but we’ve discussed how this is going to work,” he continued. “Like ONSET before us, Black Echelon will exist to support the spearpoint: the five Echelon Teams who will take the fight to the Herald and his Incursion.

“If you’re part of those teams, you know,” Riley said with a chuckle. “But with the exception of Echelon One and Echelon Two, you don’t know who your team leaders are.

“Echelon One is my team, our reserve and command element,” he noted. “Believe me, we’re probably going to be just as much in the thick of things as anyone else. We’re not sure just what can kill the Herald, but an elf-blade is high on the list of possibilities—and between us, Echelon One has three.

“Echelon Two is our night-strike team under Joseph Reginald of the Familias Reginald,” he continued. “Our vampire Mages and Elders make up Reginald’s team, and some of his people have tested ways for them to operate in daylight. If we need them to back up the other four teams, they’ll be able to, but they’ll be most efficient at night.

“Echelon Three will be commanded by one of our living legends,” Riley commented, gesturing for Michael O’Brien to come forward. “You all know of Commander O’Brien, at least. Once Brigadier of the HRT and commander of the counter-forces at the Montana Incursion. He’s the only one of us who’s seen the kind of fight that’s coming firsthand. We’re lucky to have him.”

Michael joined David and Riley, gesturing for Mason to follow him as he did. The blonde Mage strode out as well and David took her hand, squeezing her fingers gently both in reassurance and to draw reassurance from her ever-unflappable self-confidence.

“Echelon Four will be our magical support squad under Mage Kate Mason, formerly of ONSET,” the Elfin Lord pointed out. “Most of our high-power Mages will work with Commander Mason, making sure we all live long enough to do our jobs.”

David inhaled steadily, looking out over the crowd and wondering just who was going to be assigned to him.

“Echelon Five will be our direct strike team,” Riley concluded. “Once we locate the Herald, Echelon Five will be sent after him with maximum prejudice. My own Second, Brianna Young, will be second-in-command of this team—under another man we are all familiar with. A Seer. A demonslayer. A troll-slayer, seen on national television!”

David managed not to visibly cringe at that as Riley gestured to him.

“Commander David White will lead the attack on the Herald,” he concluded. “We may not be able to stop the bastard arriving, but we will make damn sure his stay on Earth is a short one!”

27

YOUNG LED David into a meeting room on the second floor of the hotel a few hours later to actually get introduced to his team. The eleven other members beyond him and the Elfin Mage were roughly evenly split between men and women—including Young and excluding him, it was an exactly even split.

If you counted Ix as a male, anyway. The demon was lazily sprawled in the biggest chair, grinning at the fellow members of the team who were mostly managing to not give him too obvious of a berth.

Thankfully, Ix was clearly more amused than offended. He’d wormed his way into ONSET’s good graces once. He clearly expected to have to do the same with Black Echelon.

“All right, folks,” Young said loudly as she took a seat, gesturing David to the head of the table. “We all know who the boss is, but the boss only knows me and Ixiltanequestelanaerith.”

She actually pronounced it right. Even David hadn’t managed that the first dozen times he’d tried.

“So, the floor is yours, Commander White,” she told him with a grin.

He shoved the chair at the head of the table aside with his foot and leaned on the table itself, surveying his team without giving up the slight height advantage he had over their sitting forms.

“You all know who I am,” he echoed Young. “Some of you have even heard the term Battle Seer.”

That got a few confused looks—and a complete cessation of lazy amusement from Ix. The demon was suddenly bolt upright and paying attention.

“So far as we know, I am the only Battle Seer currently on the planet,” he told them. “I can see the future, both in terms of longer-term visions and in terms of short-term combat prescience. I am faster than most of you and as strong as most of you.

“And if you’re wondering why I’m in charge, it’s because I’ve led tactical teams, both supernatural and mundane, for years now. And it’s because of this.”

He drew Memoria and laid it on the table in front of him.

“Memoria was forged from the souls of seven brave supernaturals by the demon lord Ekhmez before I banished him,” he told them quietly. “Those souls demanded that I wield them in the defense of humanity. If Black Echelon has a weapon we know can kill the Herald, it is Memoria. And if there is a set of hands Riley and others have faith can wield it to kill the Herald, it is apparently mine.”

He let that sink in. It sounded egotistical to him, but it was also true.

Which was terrifying to him.

“Now, if this were an ONSET team, I’d have detailed files on all of you,” he continued. “I’d know your names, your backgrounds, your powers. Black Echelon is…not so formalized. All I know about most of you is that Riley and Young thought you belonged on a handpicked team intended to go up against the most powerful entity to walk the Earth in living memory.

“So. Fill me in, people.” He gestured to his left at a tiny red-headed woman who barely came up to his already-low shoulder.

“Teena Kendall,” she introduced herself, her voice soft but clearly pitched. “Empowered. Speed, strength, durability, I’ve got the full set. I don’t heal like you, but I’m stronger and just as fast—and even silver bullets tend to bounce off. If they hit me,” she concluded with a wicked grin.

The next woman was a dark-haired older Indian, with a golden shawl wrapped over her hair and a faded bindi tattooed on the center of her forehead. She bowed her head silently for a moment before speaking.

“I am Deepika Joshi,” she said quietly. “I am a banshee. My voice is a tool and a weapon I have spent years mastering. I can strike down foes and sustain allies alike.” She nodded firmly and leaned back, having said her piece.

The man sitting next to her was a lanky blond youth, who might have been all of twenty-two years old. He smiled brightly.

“I’m Landon Tatton,” he said in a broad Texas drawl. “They call me a quicksilver sharpshooter. Move like lightning, kill like it too.” He tapped a silver oak leaf on his color. “Don’t need silver, either. Anything I touch is deadly to anyone it hits.”

The next man was a familiar-looking dark-eyed Asian youth. It took David a moment to place the family resemblance, though the Elfin oak leaf he shared with Tatton helped.

“Ezra Klein,” the youth introduced himself. “Elfin Battle Mage. You met my older brother. He taught me.”

“Your brother was a brave man,” David told him. “He helped end a war.”

“I know. I miss him.”

David nodded at the young man, hopefully reassuringly. Jun Klein had died in the battle on the Mountain, trying to hold back the vampires determined to prevent Omicron holding their crèche. He’d died a hero…but dead heroes made for poor family members.

Sitting with Klein, a little closer than would be acceptable in a more formal organization, was a pale redheaded man of roughly the same age, also wearing the Elfin oak leaf. The pair of young men weren’t visibly holding hands, but their body language was such that David wouldn’t have been surprised to realize they were doing so under the table.

“Clem Knight,” he introduced himself. “Also an Elfin Battle Mage. Also trained by Jun Klein,” he noted.

Across the table from the Battle Mage couple were three nearly identical women with alabaster skin and raven hair. They shared glances as the introductions made it around to them, and then the center one shrugged and smiled.

“I am Amelia Belmont. These are my sisters, Lisette and Caroline,” she noted, gesturing at the other two women. “We are…” She paused to consider.

“Many things,” Lisette Belmont continued for her after a moment. “We are individuals, but we share our thoughts and senses.”

“And those senses are far greater than regular humans,” Caroline Belmont concluded. “We do not see into the future as a Seer would, but our senses in the moment are superior to even yours.”

“We are also not entirely here,” Amelia explained. “We can, at will, phase into and out of reality, taking anything we are holding with us.”

“Walls. Security. Armor. These are nothing to us,” Caroline said with a grin. “It is a more powerful gift than you might presume.”

“We are also faster and stronger than mortals,” Lisette noted. “And we have spent years learning to protect ourselves from danger. We will watch everyone’s backs.”

Sharing each other’s eyes would make that easier, he supposed as he nodded to them. Sitting next to the triplets, looming in a somewhat protective manner over them, was one of the largest black men David had ever met. The sheer size of the shaven-headed man put everyone David had ever met, including Michael O’Brien, to shame.

“I am Joe Carver,” he introduced himself. “I am…” He paused. Searching for words, apparently. “A werelion, I think, is the simplest description? That is all.”

“All,” the man said, after stating he was one of the most powerful types of animal shapeshifters, most likely only weaker than Michael O’Brien due to age.

The much more diminutive, distinctly Inuit man sitting next to Carver chuckled.

“I am Nukilik,” he said briskly. “I am polar bear skin-changer.”

“So I know which pair to hide anyone who’s looking fragile behind,” David murmured as he studied the two shifters. They were an interesting contrast, the big black man and the tiny Inuit, though both transformed into large, powerful creatures.

The last member of the team was probably a good candidate for “looking fragile,” and smiled at David’s comment as the team’s attention turned to him.

He was a gaunt man of about six feet tall, almost frail with how skinny he was, with a shaved head and mixed ethnic features that made his ancestry hard to pin down.

“Dr. Karl Wong,” he introduced himself in a cheerful voice. “Healer. Surgeon. Sorcerer.” He gestured at the two Elfin Battle Mages. “I can’t match those two for sheer magical power, but I have a medical background and they don’t. While some members of the team can patch themselves up, I’m the best chance the rest of you have of being put back together.”

He smiled wryly.

“Which you can all regard as an incentive to keep me in one piece, right?”

WITH THE INTRODUCTIONS COMPLETE, David took a moment to study his team. They seemed like good people and they definitely had the quotient of physical and magical power to serve the purpose, but he only knew two of them at all—and he didn’t know Young well.

“Our last team member doesn’t fit in this room,” he finally told them. “Charles will be joining us as transport and close air support.”

“The dragon?” Knight asked carefully. “That’s… Damn.”

“Charles and I go back a long way,” David said. “He’s currently sorting out his quarters, but once we start doing training exercises, he’ll join us.”

“What quarters do you give a fifty-foot dragon?” Ix asked, the demon’s voice curious. “I mean, it’s Charles, he’s happy with an Internet connection…but where do you put him?”

“One of the shipping docks is the plan, as I understand it,” David replied. “The bed Riley acquired isn’t big enough now, so I suspect we’re scrabbling together mattresses for him as I speak, but the computer and monitors should work just fine.”

“What kind of training do you have in mind?” Carver asked. “I did not see an obstacle course here anywhere.”

“We don’t have any of the facilities I’m used to,” David admitted, “but we don’t know each other. Two of us were ONSET and half of us are Elfin, but we need to be a team.

“I have Seen what is coming, and I have no intention of meeting it without being ready,” he assured them. “This is going to be Hell. Literally Hell on Earth. No matter how powerful we are, how good we are…some of us won’t come back when Black Echelon goes into action.”

He let that sink in.

“We are the direct-action team,” he continued. “It will fall to us to find and assault the Herald himself. We can expect that he will have all of the known powers of higher-court demons—except more powerful.

“We know he will be guarded by human Mages, mind-wiped soldiers, and a dragon. The Mages and the cultists around him will have chosen to be there. The people whose minds he’s destroyed…” David shivered. “We don’t know if they can be healed, but we do know they’ll be shooting at us.

“Our choices in that circumstance suck. We will do what is necessary to survive.”

“What about the dragon?” Knight asked, the battle Mage looking…uncomfortable at the thought.

“Her name is Serena,” David told them. “And she will mostly fall to Charles, I hope. Certainly, none of us want to try and fight her head on. Combined, we almost certainly can take her—but I would rather not fight both a dragon and the Herald.”

“How do we even know this much about the Herald?” Klein said quietly. “For a being that doesn’t exist yet, we seem quite certain about its nature.”

“We encountered one attempt to bring him into this world already,” David replied. “ONSET put a stop to that without even knowing what we were facing. As for the rest…” He shrugged. “It is possible that the visions that I had were inaccurate. We are looking for the Mage we know is involved in the summoning. We might find him and short-stop this whole mess.

“But.” David held up a hand. “We cannot plan to get lucky. Our enemies are intending to unleash the apocalypse. We can hope we stop it before it happens, but we must be able to contain it and fight it if it does.

“After all, if we train for the end of the world and the world doesn’t end, well…I can live with Black Echelon having been an insurance policy after all.”

28

LATE THAT NIGHT, David was woken up by a sharp rapping on the hotel room door. He waited for a moment, still entangled with Kate, checking to see if the alert app they’d installed on his phone was going off.

His phone remained determinedly silent, meaning this wasn’t a major emergency, but whoever was at the door knocked again. An authoritative rapping, from someone who was determined not to be ignored. He couldn’t quite See who was there…but he knew they were after him.

Sighing, he unwrapped himself from Kate and traded looks with his lover.

“It’s for me,” he told her quietly.

“Advantages of dating a Seer,” she mumbled with a sleepy smile. “Enjoy. I’m going back to sleep.”

He gave her a quick kiss and got up, throwing a robe over himself as he padded to the door and opened it a crack.

“It’s White,” he said resignedly to the young man outside. He wore the uniform of one of the hotel staff, but with the silver oak leaf of a member of the Elfin.

“Ms. Walker sent me,” the man told him instantly. “She said to come get you, that it was urgent.”

David nodded crisply, coming a bit more awake.

“Did she say why?” he asked.

“Nothing I could understand,” the messenger admitted. “She said you’d know.”

Which he did, suddenly. It was time. Walker had warned him that her sense of her impending death would grow more accurate as the hour approached.

“Of course,” he told the youth. “Give me a minute to dress.”

THE MESSENGER LED David up onto the roof of the hotel. There was apparently a rooftop lounge and bar reserved for the VIP guests of the hotel, though no one had been using it and it was unstaffed.

Leila Walker had apparently opened the liquor cabinet and helped herself. It was quite possible it had been locked, but David was starting to become aware of how little most locks would slow him down now.

She’d rolled her wheelchair up to the edge of the roof, looking out over the lake with a glass that appeared to contain just whisky. A black-suited attendant-cum-bodyguard hovered nearby, a concerned expression on the Mage’s face.

“Please, Lyle,” Walker said as David approached. “I’m not going to fall. I’m not going to slip. I’m not going to give myself alcohol poisoning. Please stop hovering like a mother hen.”

“Ms. Walker…”

“Lyle, I have about an hour left to live,” she said pointedly. “For whatever reason, there is nothing you or I can do to change that.” She took a gulp of the amber liquid.

“Grab yourself a drink, David, and a seat. Lyle, you may as well do the same.”

“Ms. Walker, I shouldn’t…”

“Lyle, I know how I’m going to die,” Walker said with grim certainty. “No bodyguard or hovering nurse is going to save me now. So, my young friend, sit with me now. At the end. Please.”

The Elfin Mage sighed but poured himself and David glasses of wine and helped David set up seats next to Walker’s wheelchair.

“How are you feeling?” David asked.

Walker snorted.

“Depressed,” she told him. “A little drunk. About as well physically as I have in years. Not that it’ll matter.”

The blind woman smiled.

“Look over the water, David, and feel the world. You can sense it, I know you can, but you’re too busy to have noticed.”

It wasn’t a criticism, just a statement. David followed her instructions, looking out over Lake Michigan with all of his senses.

He inhaled sharply as he picked up what she meant. There was a thrumming tension to the night, like nothing he remembered feeling before. The world felt…tight. Stretched thin.

“The boundary is weak,” Walker said softly. “I don’t know why. It’s not a solstice or an alignment or any of the dates that we associate with magic and power. But the world is fragile tonight. And something is going to take advantage of it.”

“The Herald is coming,” he agreed. “Is that why it’s weak?”

“No,” the old Seer replied. “He is coming because it is weak. A moment of fragility, an hour of tension, and the Masters Beyond will strike. Are you ready for what’s coming, David White?”

“I will protect people,” he told her. “Ready is irrelevant.”

She laughed bitterly.

“I wish that was the case. The Elfin have been ‘ready’ for the masquerade to fall for years, but we never imagined it falling like this. What will the world look like a year, David White? Five? A decade?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “My Sight doesn’t stretch that far.”

“It will, in time,” she told him. “It’s the irony of our Gift that it grows more powerful as you age—but is always limited by your own lifespan. I See more clearly tonight than I ever have…but I can only See so far ahead now.”

She sighed. “If only I could have Seen even a day ago what I see now.”

“Ms. Walker?”

Walker stared out over the water, looking east with a lost expression.

“The clinic is in Portland, Maine,” she said quietly. “The child’s name was Michelle Ambrose. She was homeless, and a kind man offered her a meal and a place to stay. Instead, he raped her, body, mind and soul. All that Buckley left of her was a mindless husk to act as host for his Masters.”

David hadn’t thought it was possible for him to be angrier at the man who’d once been his mentor. He’d been wrong.

“Nine months of pregnancy in four,” Walker continued. “No one would willingly make that sacrifice, so they forced it upon someone they thought no one would miss.”

The Seer was crying now, tears streaking down her face.

“They were wrong. Ambrose’s parents have been looking for her. She’d been on the street for barely a week—without the enemy’s interference, they’d have found her and made amends.”

The tension in the world ratcheted up a level.

“Make no mistake, Michelle Ambrose has been dead for months,” Walker said harshly. “Her body has stumbled on, sustained more by the magic they forced upon her than by anything natural, but her mind and soul were destroyed. Sarah Ambrose’s little girl died under the knives and power of a man she thought would help her.”

She stared blindly over the water.

“Buckley is a broken man,” she noted. “Even I cannot See what twisted him inside, but he may be more evil than the Masters Beyond. They are what the Seal made them. He chose to become a monster, to pledge the blood and flesh of others to servitude.”

“We can go,” David told her urgently. “We have helicopters, Charles—Portland isn’t that far from here!”

The world pulsed. His vision went black and the wineglass fell from his hand to shatter on the concrete roof. Shaking himself, he stared at Walker, realizing that both she and the Mage Lyle had dropped their glasses as well.

The youth was trembling, meeting his gaze.

“I felt that…but what is it?”

“Contractions,” Walker told them simply, before another pulse crashed through reality.

David was driven from the chair to his knees, his entire body rebelling against the twist in the fabric of all that the world should be. Lyle was clearly hit but not as hard, wavering in his chair but still seated, as David’s vision returned.

“It’s too late,” Walker told David. The strain in her voice was audible now and she was breathing heavily. Too heavily for someone of her age, almost unable to speak through the gasps.

“I Saw.” Blind eyes somehow met and held his gaze, and she reached out to him with frail hands. “I Saw this coming. I didn’t expect it to hurt quite so—”

Pulse.

David dragged himself toward Walker. Regardless of his supposed immortality, he was younger and healthier than the old woman. He could survive. There had to be some way he could help—

Pulse.

This time, it hammered him to the floor and Walker fell from her wheelchair, mewling incoherently as he tried to reach her.

Pulse.

They were growing more frequent now, the world itself protesting at the birth taking place.

Pulse.

He reached Walker, desperately pulling her into the recovery position to clear her airways as the old woman vomited up the liquor she’d been drinking. She could still breathe, she still had a—

Pulse. Pulse. Pulse.

Walker’s eyes snapped open as David regained his sight, bright lights splattering across his vision. She was blind, but her hands grabbed his in an iron grip and she stared deep into him.

“It is done.”

Then she slumped against him, her blindly staring eyes closing for the last time.

DAVID SENT the kid for Riley as soon as he was able to stand. Carefully, he cleaned Walker up as best he could and covered her with the blanket from her wheelchair. There wasn’t much more he could do for the woman.

He wished he’d had a chance to know her better. There was so much she could have taught him—he hadn’t known there were any other Seers alive, or he would have sought her out long before.

When Riley arrived, it was with Young and Mason in tow. All three Mages had bloodshot eyes, looking like they’d just finished the mother of all benders.

“Damn,” Riley said softly when he saw Walker. He crossed over to where David was kneeling next to her body and joined the younger man on the concrete, taking the old Seer’s cold hand in his as he blinked away tears.

“She warned me. It still doesn’t make it easier.”

“It’s never easier,” David whispered.

“No,” Riley agreed. “What the hell happened?”

“You felt the world shake,” David said. It wasn’t a question. The Elfin Lord’s bloodshot eyes were the answer. “Every bloody Mage on the planet just did. That was your Sight, Lord Riley…now imagine how it hit the goddamn Seers.”

From the way Riley’s face tightened, he was doing just that.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Shaken. Battered. But I’ll live.” David shook his head. “Walker was too old. Too sensitive.”

“What happened?” Riley repeated.

“The Herald has come. The Seal was weak, and the true host is born.” The words weren’t entirely David’s; he wasn’t even sure where they came from. “He grows as we speak. The sun shall fall and rise only once before he comes to his full strength, and then he will open the passage.”

Shaking himself, David rose, staring out over the ocean.

“God, that’s weird,” he half-whispered. “Those…”

“Weren’t your words. Well, they were,” Riley chuckled. “That’s your gift filtering through what your mind expects a prophecy to sound like.” He shook his head.

“So, we’re fucked. A day? One fucking day? We don’t even know where he is!”

“We do now,” David replied, rising. “Portland. Near my old hometown, of course. Buckley went back to familiar stomping grounds.

“Walker saw more clearly at the end. She had the answers to anything that would happen before she died,” he noted bitterly. “It’s not that big a city, and there are only so many clinics they could have taken over like we Saw.”

“We don’t have the resources to search even a small city,” Riley objected.

“No,” David agreed, the irony bringing a sad smile. “But we know who does, don’t we?”

29

MAJOR GENERAL ARTHUR PURCELL studied the report on his screen for a long time, rubbing his temples against the incipient headache.

Age had brought the headaches with it. His new job had multiplied them tenfold.

The report on his screen was straightforward enough. Los Angeles police had tracked down a serial killer. They’d deployed a SWAT team…and the killer had massacred eight of the LAPD’s finest. It had flagged up on SOCOM’s radar, and a platoon of Special Forces with silver-loaded firearms had gone in to deal with the potential supernatural threat.

The SF team had managed to hold long enough to extract half of their numbers and get enough information for Task Force White’s analysts—who were definitely not former employees of a secret organization with access to its information archives—to identify the creature in question.

A “lesser troll” or “wendigo,” apparently. A sapiovore—it had to eat the flesh of thinking creatures. So long as it did, however, it was near-unkillable: super-fast and super-strong.

Also, smart enough to relocate after the Special Forces team had gone in. Their silver bullets hadn’t killed it, but they’d hurt.

But his Mages said they could track the beast…and now six Sigma Force Seraphim troopers and two Task Force White Mages were dead.

So was the troll. The survivors of the strike team had burned the body to be sure.

“Major Hanson seems to have said the right things to the media,” the other man in his office said quietly. “Transparency is not the habit of any of your people, but he told them enough of the truth to settle fears.”

“I’m sure watching US Special Forces pull bodies of their own out of the wreckage of a suburban bungalow helped too,” Purcell said dryly. “Not to mention burning the damn troll.”

He shook his head.

“Ardent can have this damn job back,” he noted.

“Ardent has disappeared,” the paunchy man sitting across from the General replied. Arthur Purcell did his best to keep in the shape expected of a man who’d started in the Army and spent most of his career in Delta Force.

Senator Albert Day was actually a year or two younger than him, but his balding white hair and expanding middle were solid warning signs of what Arthur was avoiding.

“Like most of ONSET’s leadership cadre, he has followed O’Brien into hiding,” Day growled. “We’re going to need to action that. What’s your progress on finding the werewolf?”

Arthur studied the report on his screen for a long moment.

“Zero,” he said flatly. “Task Force White and Task Force Orange”—Sigma Force’s other official name—“have been swamped dealing with shit like this.” He gestured at the report on the screen. “We’ve been responsible for supernatural affairs in the United States for two weeks. Two weeks, Senator.”

He held up a hand before Day continued.

“In that time, I have lost fifty-six Seraphim troopers, nine supernatural volunteers from Task Force White, and four hundred and eighteen regular Special Forces and Army troops,” he said flatly. “Thankfully, only about half of those casualties were fatal, but half of those that lived are permanently crippled. The rest will be weeks to months before returning to duty.

“I do not have the resources to spare to continue hunting down men and women who have committed no crime except knowing things you want to keep quiet,” he told the Senator. “They have rights, Senator.”

“We gave you an order, General,” Day reminded him dangerously. “O’Brien especially is actively responsible for this all becoming public. We need to bring him in at least.”

Arthur chuckled at the incongruency of the fat little Senator threatening him and grabbed a tablet from his desk—the one that had belonged to Major Warner before she’d been unceremoniously cashiered along with the rest of her organization.

He passed the device to Day, who looked at it in confusion.

“Read that,” he told the other man.

Day looked at the text on the screen then back up at Arthur.

“I wrote this,” he pointed out. “It’s the official dissolution of the Special Committee and Supernatural Secret Authority Act.”

“Yes, it is,” Arthur agreed. “And it was signed by the President yesterday. Which means, Senator Day, that you are no longer in my chain of command and no longer have any grounds to issue unconstitutional orders to me.”

He smiled.

“If you want O’Brien arrested, find yourself a judge willing to write a warrant,” he told Day. “I and my people are going to be spending our time trying to keep the citizens of the United States safe.”

Day paused, swallowing whatever he’d been going to say as he looked over Arthur’s shoulder. The Major General’s smile sharpened as he realized what the Senator was studying.

The other wall of the office held a large metal plate that had once been the exterior chassis of a Patriot air defense missile. Carved into it in surprisingly neat claw-writing were the words LEAVE ME ALONE.

He’d had the chassis checked for radioactivity before he’d put it there, but it made an important point—and one that Arthur Purcell himself needed to remember.

Not all of the supernaturals out there were evil—and his job was to protect the citizens of the United States.

Regardless of their size, skin color, or supernatural powers.

FINALLY GETTING Day out of his office, Arthur continued reviewing the less-critical reports. Many of them were almost as ugly in their own way, though thankfully with far fewer deaths. There were worrying undercurrents as well.

Officially, Arthur didn’t know anything about the agreements with the Elfin and the Familias to allow their paramilitaries to reinforce ONSET. What he did know left him furious with his own superiors—they’d been so determined to keep Sigma Force as a counterweight to Omicron that they’d kept his people under wraps when they were needed.

His Seraphim should have been in the field months before, backstopping ONSET and Omicron in the chaos after the Church of the Black Sun. He understood the logic that had held them back. He was a good soldier and he’d followed orders.

But he didn’t agree with the logic, and he wished he’d had then all of the information he had now. He could at least have made the argument.

But the decision probably wouldn’t have been changed, and Arthur Purcell was a good soldier. He’d taken a bit more pleasure than he should have in flinging Day’s new lack of authority into the Senator’s face, but he also had a job to do.

The last thing he was expecting was for the phone on his desk to ring. In the entire time since he’d moved into this office, the desk phone hadn’t rung. He didn’t know the number to it himself—and he doubted Major Warner had, either. She’d used videoconferencing and a secretary, not her desk phone.

He hadn’t even known the old black box was connected, and stared at it for several rings before he made up his mind and grabbed it.

“Purcell,” he said flatly.

“General Purcell, this is Michael O’Brien,” a deep voice told him. “Can we talk, or are you going to insist on trying to trace this call?”

Arthur laughed.

“I’m going to guess Charles is involved, which means my merely mortal technicians would be screwed,” he noted. “Plus, we have now progressed to the point where a secret Committee warrant is no longer valid. If anyone wants to arrest you, they’re going to have to convince a regular judge to sign off on their warrant.”

The phone was silent.

“I didn’t expect that to go away quite so easily,” the other man admitted.

“It wouldn’t have if you’d actually done something,” Arthur told him grimly. “But you did your damn job, Mr. O’Brien, and I’m not wasting resources chasing you, given the state of the country.” He paused. “Speaking of which, your job sucks.”

O’Brien laughed.

“Why do you think I gave it to Ardent?” he asked. “I’m sorry, but I’m about to make it worse for you.”

The General sighed.

“I didn’t think this was a social call,” he noted, turning in his chair to study the chassis behind him. The chassis of the nuclear-tipped missile he’d ordered launched because he didn’t have all the information.

There was more than one reason why he had had the thing mounted on his wall.

“How many of your Mages were in the infirmary this morning?” O’Brien asked.

Turning back to his computer, he tapped a series of commands, opening a report he hadn’t reached yet.

“The fuck?” he hissed. “Over half.”

He only had twenty-two Mages after their losses in Los Angeles—and thirteen of them had reported for medical exams of some kind in the last six hours.

“I’m not entirely sure I understand the process, but everyone with the Sight—which includes every Mage—got hit with the psychic equivalent of a tsunami last night,” O’Brien told him. “I had two Seers with me. One of them is now dead,” he concluded grimly.

“A tsunami is triggered by something,” Arthur noted. “I’m guessing you know what.”

“You’ve been briefed on the Seal and the Masters Beyond, right?”

“Enough,” he admitted. “It sounds like a pile of grade-A bullshit to me, but I command a battalion of men who gain superpowers by injecting themselves with a glowing gold liquid.”

“It’s true,” the werewolf told him. “And the Masters have apparently finally executed on a plan they’ve been working on for a long damned time. A creature called the Herald came into the world last night, General Purcell, and its sole purpose is to open the gateway for an invasion of Earth.”

Arthur swallowed his urge to call bullshit. It sounded insane. And yet…he’d just sent an attack team of Mages to kill a troll.

“And what do you expect me to do about it?” he asked levelly.

“You’re the man in charge of the United States’ supernatural defenses. We know the Herald was ‘born,’ for lack of a truer term, in a OB/GYN clinic in Portland, Maine. We don’t know where he is beyond that…but my Seer is telling me it will take at most forty-eight hours for him to open the way.

“You have the resources to sweep Portland for the cult that created him. If we don’t find him…we’ll have a true Incursion on our hands. An army of the Pure in a major American city.”

“You do remember a little thing called the Constitution, right?” Arthur asked. “I can’t roll the Army into Portland and search house to house for a demon, not without a declaration of martial law.”

“I know,” O’Brien admitted. “Which means you need to get that declaration, Major General. You’ll get an email shortly with everything we know.”

“And how do you even know any of this?” the General demanded.

“I told you,” the other man admitted. “We had two of the most powerful Seers alive with us until yesterday. Getting this information cost one of their lives, General. Give it the value it deserves.”

30

ARTHUR PURCELL MANAGED to not let his frustration show on his face as the videoconference ground on. It had only taken him two hours to get the Joint Chiefs of Staff on a line, which said a lot about the importance they gave his new command.

Unfortunately, they didn’t seem prepared to accept all of the consequences of just what that command entailed.

“You can’t expect us to take this to the President and request a declaration of martial law,” the Chief of Staff of the Army noted. “Visions and ‘psychic tsunamis’? I can accept that they have more value than I’m inclined to ascribe them, but to declare martial law and send Special Forces into a US city based on them?”

“That’s a response entirely out of scale with that level of evidence,” the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff added.

“Or we could refrain from dancing around the bush and tell the Major General the truth,” the Chairman cut off his companions. “Regardless of whether we are prepared to act on your ‘evidence’—and I’m not going to pretend I’m convinced by it, regardless of what new world we live in!—the President will not.

“He will not sign off on that kind of operation. It won’t happen. For us to even present this to him would undermine our authority and expend our capital with the President…for nothing.”

“And if these visions are correct, and we are about to face an invasion by an enemy we know almost nothing about?” Arthur asked levelly.

“Then we are the armed forces of the United States of America,” the Commandant of the Marine Corps told him. “A direct attack on US soil by an enemy that is prepared to fight an up-front battle? They have no idea what they’re walking into.”

“While we can’t declare martial law or search the region house to house, we do have options,” the Chairman noted. “While the costs of moving troops and vehicles are not insignificant, the potential risks are great.”

The collection of Generals seemed willing to at least consider that.

“There isn’t much that can make it to Maine in thirty-six hours,” Arthur objected. “It takes a day for an armor unit to even begin to consider moving.”

“Then if we issue the orders for them to prepare to move now, they’ll be ready to deploy if this scenario comes to pass,” the Chairman noted. “You, especially, are authorized to begin moving forces under your command to the area.

“If we are to be invaded, we will have an army to meet them with,” he concluded. “But this information isn’t solid enough for us to go before the President and demand extraordinary action. We will make what preparations we can under our own authority, Major General Purcell, but that is all we can do.”

Or at least, that was all they were willing to do.

He’d have to work with that.

IT WAS midafternoon by the time Arthur Purcell reached Maine himself, arriving at a military airport run by the Air National Guard in Portland itself. One of his subordinates was waiting for him, saluting briskly as he stepped off the plane.

“General,” the Colonel greeted him. “We’ve got two companies of Sigma Force moved into facilities ten miles south of the city, backed up by Special Forces. Coordinating with the locals is…being difficult. They don’t quite buy the story.”

“I don’t blame them,” Arthur admitted. “I’m supposed to be meeting with the Governor in an hour or so.” He shook his head. “I’m trying to convince people to mobilize for an invasion on the basis of visions and headaches,” he said grouchily. “I can’t blame them for being argumentative.”

“After New York, you’d think they’d listen,” his subordinate noted. “Major Cardell is on his way north with the Sigma Force company and Task Force White detachment from Florida.” He shook his head.

“We’re stripping the country bare,” he noted.

“Unfortunate but true, Bantam,” Arthur admitted. “But I spoke to Michael O’Brien, and if there is one thing I am confident that man is not, it’s Chicken Little.

“If he tells me that the sky is falling, I’m investing in bunkers.”

Colonel Bantam chuckled dutifully.

“Should we be moving people into the city?” he asked.

Arthur considered for a moment. They knew the Herald was somewhere in Portland, and finding him before he “opened the gateway,” as O’Brien had put it, could short-circuit a lot of trouble.

On the other hand…

“No,” he said, hating the word even as he said it. “In fact, if we have anyone in the city right now, I want them pulled out. With the resources we have on hand…” He sighed, letting the silence stretch for a moment.

“Without the authority to sweep the city, we have no choice. Either we’re wrong and we don’t want to start a panic…or the Seers are right and we’re going to be too late.

“In that case, we need to start thinking containment.”

“That sounds like…we’re going to write off Portland,” Bantam said quietly.

“If we can’t find this Herald before he opens a doorway to Hell, I don’t know what else we can do,” Arthur admitted, “and I’ve been told I’m not getting what we need to find the Herald.

“So, we plan for containment and hope we can secure the city before it gets that bad.”

TO ARTHUR’S SURPRISE, it took him less time to get into the Blaine House to meet with the Governor than it had taken to pull the Joint Chiefs of Staff into a videoconference. Neatly dressed bodyguards ushered him into a parlor where the Governor waited, offering his hand as the Major General came in.

“Please, come in, sit down,” the man instructed. “What brings the man in charge of dealing with these latest strange events to my office?”

“More of these ‘strange events’,” Arthur told him with a wry smile. “Governor, we have reason to believe that the city of Portland is in grave danger.”

“And why, pray tell, am I being informed of this by the commander of our supernatural security forces?” the Governor asked.

“Because it’s a supernatural threat,” Sigma Force’s commander said. “And the evidence we have of its approach is supernatural in and of itself. We are dealing with Seers and prophecy, Governor, and even with the New York Incident forcing us all to confront a new world, it’s hard to accept that as hard proof.”

“I see.” The Governor gestured for the butler to bring glasses of water. “I find this ‘new world’, as you call it, nerve-wracking in the extreme,” he admitted. “To think some major aspect may harm my people… What do you need, General?”

Arthur laughed humorlessly.

“I don’t suppose I could talk you into evacuating the city?”

The Governor, Arthur noted, was a lot stronger than he looked. Either that or the water glass he’d just crushed was significantly more fragile than expected.

“Damn.” The mild curse wasn’t much, but it was enough to bring the butler running with a cloth to wrap around the Governor’s bleeding hand.

“I would need to justify such an action on national television,” he finally said after roughly bandaging himself. “I would need…ironclad justification. I’m not sure that ‘Seers and prophecy’ would be enough, General.”

“I know,” Arthur admitted. “But we’re looking at, basically, a portal to Hell being opened in the middle of the city. I’d rather be embarrassed for being wrong than lose half your city, Governor.”

“This isn’t a question of being embarrassed, Major General. It’s a question of an order I don’t think I could convince people to obey,” the Governor said quietly. “What can I do?”

The General sighed.

“Activate your disaster readiness plans, quietly,” he said. “Call out whatever National Guard units you can. Have the Guard check the readiness of their vehicles and aircraft.” He paused, considering.

“Prepare for war on your soil, Governor. And get any key members of your government and family the hell out of that city.”

31

NEWS HELICOPTERS, as it turned out, were a surprisingly inconspicuous way of hanging a camera over a city. As David and the other Echelon Team leaders watched the sun go down over Portland through it, however, David found himself almost wishing they didn’t have quite so clear a view.

“Nothing,” he said quietly as Kate squeezed his hand reassuringly. “I wasn’t expecting a full sweep, but nothing?”

“Purcell sounded like he bought it,” O’Brien said. “But…he’s bound by law and regulation now. Everything with regards to the supernatural is under a microscope, and they’re still trying to sneak Omicron databases and personnel in.

“So, he can only do so much. Only push for so much.” The werewolf shook his head. “Damn it, we should have gone to someone else.”

“Who?” Reginald asked bluntly. “The President? He wouldn’t speak to any of us. Congress? Only the Committee would even think of believing us—and they can’t risk admitting they knew anything.”

“I’ve had some quiet conversations with various Army officers in the area,” Riley said quietly. “They all believed me enough to at least call readiness drills for today and tomorrow. It won’t buy much, but…”

“And what about Portland itself?” David asked. “Seventy thousand people who have no idea what’s going on?”

“Even if we went and took control of the radio and TV and told people to get out, no one would believe us,” the Elfin Lord told him. “We’ve done everything we can do, but the sad truth of the matter is that the world has only really been aware of the supernatural for two weeks.

“It hasn’t sunk in for most people. Asking them to evacuate or search an entire city based on visions and prophecy…” Riley shook his head. “We know the power of a Seer. But the average American? They’re still waking up to the fact that this isn’t just fantasy novels and D&D.

“There’s probably more people claiming the New York Incident was faked than the March for Truth mustered to try and get the government to spill the truth over the Crater Lake Incident—which you’ll note, nobody has actually done.

“It’s just been forgotten in the chaos since New York.”

“Those people’s families deserved better,” David said quietly.

“Everyone always deserves better,” O’Brien told him. “I’ll be happy if that mess is the last time I have to lie to people about how their sons and daughters died. But…” He shook his head.

“I don’t know what to do about Portland,” he admitted as the sun set over the city. “How long do we have, David?”

“Dawn,” the Seer reminded them. “I don’t know for certain, but dawn feels…right. Or wrong, as the case may be.”

“Dawn,” Riley echoed. “There’s nothing we can do in the night, people. I suggest we leave Lord Reginald here to the watch and rest. We may not get another chance.”

“My people and I will keep watch,” the vampire promised. “If we see an opportunity, we will take it. This is our country as well, our people.”

“Tomorrow we see how much truth there is to your visions, David,” Riley said. “I trust you. I believe you. But you’ll forgive me if I wish that you are wrong.”

David snorted.

“You can’t wish that any more than I already do, my lord,” he told the Elfin. “I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to be wrong so much in my life.”

Unfortunately, he was a Seer…and he was learning to tell which of his visions were possibilities versus which ones were certainties.

Dawn would bring certainty.

RED LIGHT SUFFUSED THE CITY. Was it on fire or just the light of dawn? It was hard to tell. David wasn’t familiar with the city.

Except…yes. This was Portland. One of the waterfront parks—in the bleeding red light that covered everything, he could make out the lighthouse to the south, the landmark he hadn’t identified in his first vision.

It was just dawn. Just. Acres of green space spread out around him and a recreational marina filled the water in front of him. How was he here?

Wait. No. David knew the answer to that question. Then…the question was why was he here?

Why was his Sight showing him this place, this time?

Someone was moving along the promenade. Several someones, heading for the highest point overlooking the two bays on either side of the peninsula.

Most of them were wearing regular clothes, trying not to draw attention to themselves in the predawn light, but David saw Buckley leading the way, once again in the dull white cassock but with a black trench coat thrown over it.

It was too warm for the coat, though, and the Mage had opened it up, revealing his ritual outfit to anyone who was there to see.

There was no one there to see.

Buckley led a dozen cultists out of the shadows and up onto the hill, past David’s point of view. In the middle of the group was a smaller figure, wrapped in a long raincoat and a hooded sweatshirt.

“Are you ready?” Buckley asked the figure.

“Why do you even bother to ask, Servant Buckley?” a voice responded. The voice didn’t fit the small, clearly young form of the speaker. It was a deep, gravelly sound, as if carved from granite and fire.

“Is this the place?” the Herald continued, striding up the hill and tossing back the hood of his sweater.

As in David’s earlier vision, his skin was inhumanly white, and a circle of ebony horns marked his head, directly above his ears. He was smaller than he had been in the first vision, but he still radiated terror.

“It is, my lord,” another speaker told him. This was a woman—the Mage David had Seen making the deal with the dragon. “Are you…”

She trailed off before repeating Buckley’s question. Then she cocked her head, as if listening to someone no one else could hear.

“Serena says we are being watched,” she pointed out.

“I know,” the Herald replied, glancing up to meet David’s point of view with dark, blood-red eyes. Fire burned in those eyes—fire and awareness of the world at odds with an apparent age of about fourteen.

“Let him watch,” he continued. “There is nothing the Seer can do now.”

Turning his attention away from David, he shrugged off the raincoat, letting it fall to the ground to reveal that he wore oversized baggy pants, and the hooded sweater was at least three sizes too large. He knelt at the top of the hill and touched the monument there—specifically the old cannon at its heart.

“Iron,” he murmured. “Old iron. Yes. This is what I need.”

As David watched, the cannon crumbled at the Herald’s touch, turning to dust that ran up the youth’s hands and into his clothing. The Herald bulked up as the cannon disintegrated, filling out his baggy clothes as he gained years in a matter of moments.

When the Herald rose again, there was no question. This was the being he’d seen in his earlier visions. Still young, still gaunt, but grown to his full height and strength now. Both physical and magical power rippled from him now as he smiled down at the cultists around him.

“Stand witness, John Buckley, Arianna Wong,” he said harshly. “You have earned your place at my side. And your companions have earned an even greater honor.”

Four of the “cultists” turned out to be mid-court demons, shedding hats and coats to reveal the dark-red skin of their kind…as they stabbed the other four cultists with ugly black-bladed knives David guessed the mortals hadn’t known they were carrying.

They tore the knives out of their victims’ flesh, spilling blood on the soil as the cultists sank to the ground. Buckley and Wong didn’t seem at all surprised—unlike their compatriots, they’d clearly understood what the other cultists had been there for.

The Herald gestured, and the fallen sacrifices began to bleed faster. The blood seemed to fly out of their bodies and off the ground, draining them dry in moments and filling the air with a swirling vortex of fresh blood.

The blood rose higher, glistening brightly in the light of the dawning sun as it twisted in the air, melding together into a single sphere that began to glow with its own light.

“So I call to thee, my fathers,” the Herald’s voice intoned. “By the power you made me from, I demand that this passage open.

“So I call to thee, my mothers,” he continued. “By the flesh you formed me from, I demand that this passage open.

“So I command of thee, my servants. By the blood you gave to me, I demand that this passage open.”

The sphere was expanding down, a translucent bubble of blood visibly boiling from the power the Herald poured through it.

“My brothers of the courts, my sisters beyond the Seal, I summon thee,” he snapped, his voice growing even louder. “By my will, I demand that this passage OPEN!”

The last word tore out like the cracking of thunder, and the bubble of blood burst—splattering out to form a dark-red perfect circle suspended above the hill, glittering in the dawn light.

And then the first demons came through.

Laughing, the Herald turned his attention back to David’s presence and smiled.

“That’s enough from you, our peeping tom,” he said brightly. “You have seen what I wanted you to see. Now…begone.”

DAVID AWOKE WITH A START, fumbling clear of Kate and the blankets alike to land on the floor in a combat position, scrabbling for where Memoria lay in its dimensional scabbard next to the bed.

Holding the sword in his hand, he left it sheathed, breathing heavily as he forced himself to calm.

“David?” Kate asked, the Mage entirely out of the bed behind him. Blue light glittered around her, magic summoned to defend them both. “What is it?”

“I had another vision,” he told her. “I know where they’re going to open the portal. I know how and when and…”

He reached the balcony, tearing the curtains open to look at the slowly rising light rushing across the landscape toward them.

“And we don’t have enough time,” he whispered. If he judged the sun correctly, the events he’d Seen were beginning…now.

“David?” Kate was there, her hands on his bare shoulders.

“It’s happening,” he told her, certainty running through his spine. “The Herald is walking up a hill in one of Portland’s parks right now. He’s about to sacrifice the cultists with him and open the gateway. Even if we were there, even if we had all the resources we had before, even if we had everything, we couldn’t stop him.”

“We knew we weren’t going to be able to stop him,” she said her hands tight on his skin. “None of us liked it, but we knew. We had to plan for containment and countermeasures, not prevention.”

“I know,” he whispered. He couldn’t See it, but he knew exactly what was going on. The Herald had just absorbed the cannon, completing the process of fully coming into his power and birthright.

“But I Saw it coming. I should have been able to do something.”

“We tried, David,” she reminded him. “But we couldn’t do it alone. We need an army…and we needed people to believe us. The world wasn’t ready for that yet.”

“There are seventy thousand people in Portland,” he said.

“And they’re not dead yet,” she snapped. “The military will act. Sigma Force and Task Force White will act. We will act. We can turn this back, David. Just because we couldn’t stop the Herald opening the portal doesn’t mean he’s going to…”

She trailed off. She could feel it too now. He could feel it as well. A rippling wave crossing the world, similar to the crashing pulses when the Herald had been born but weaker. Longer. Not contractions.

A heartbeat. The heartbeat of the portal itself, forged of blood and power.

“It is done,” Kate whispered. “I can feel it.”

“Every Mage can feel it, I suspect,” David replied. He put his hands over hers and rose to his feet, staring east. “The bastard isn’t even trying to hide it. He wants us to come. He wants a fight.”

“Then he’ll get one,” his lover said firmly. “And he will realize that he never should have fucked with humanity.”

32

A MODERN MILITARY commander was used to a nearly godlike view of the battlefield. Satellite overhead. High-altitude spy planes. Social media streams providing live reactions from civilians on the ground. Traffic webcams.

A million eyes that allowed Major General Arthur Purcell to watch an American state capital fall in real time. What seemed like a hundred demons flowed out of the portal on the waterfront every second, shadowy humanlike figures with no discipline, no order.

Nothing that looked like an army. More like a wave of death. The morning commute collided with the demons and ground to a halt. The smart people cowered in their cars and homes, watching as the world ended around them.

Most resisted. Portland wasn’t one of the heavily armed cities, but it was still a US city. Guns were everywhere—and faced with an invasion, people used them.

Cars, too, turned to deadly weapons even in civilian hands, smashing into demons and scattering them like tenpins.

None of it even seemed to slow the swarm down. Gunfire passed through the demons without injuring them. Cars scattered the demons, but they came right back. Those who resisted were swarmed under, bound in manacles of power, and dragged off through the streets.

“Do we deploy?” Colonel Bantam asked from behind him. The command center they’d assembled on the outskirts of the Portland metropolitan area had dozens of screens, showing those thousands of different views of the city.

“What do we have on hand?” Arthur asked.

“Two Sigma Force companies. Three Task Force White teams. A battalion of regular Special Forces with silver ammunition.”

Two hundred Seraphim. Thirty-odd supernaturals, picked for their reliability, not their power. Six hundred or so of America’s best conventional troops, armed with weapons that could actually hurt this enemy.

Hundreds of demons every minute. The “outer shell” of black shadow demons was thousands strong already, and a black fog was beginning to rise over the portal itself. The Herald was hiding the next wave of his troops from sight.

“We couldn’t kill them fast enough to make a difference,” Arthur whispered. “We need the Army. We need mass drops of silver ammunition, to rearm entire divisions. We need AG-shrapnel shells for tanks and APCs and aircraft.”

He shook his head.

“We can’t fight this with a thousand soldiers, no matter how good,” he said quietly. “Bantam—I need you to get on the horn with Colonel Nguyen. There’s enough damn ammunition in that Campus of ONSET’s to fight a war. I need it here.”

“That’ll take time.”

On one of the screens behind Arthur, the Portland police department had thrown together a barricade. Squad cruisers and armored vans blocked the largest street off the harbor front, with easily a hundred officers armed with assault rifles manning the barricade.

From the way the demons died as they swarmed the line, someone in the Portland PD had been paying attention the last two weeks and acquired a rush order of silver bullets for those rifles.

Portland’s finest destroyed perhaps a thousand demons…and bought the civilians behind them all of forty-five seconds before they died.

“Then we better get started,” Arthur ground out. “I need to talk to the Joint Chiefs again.”

“YOU WERE RIGHT.”

Arthur hadn’t said a word before the Chairman spoke.

“You were right,” the general repeated, “and now we need a plan. We’re coordinating forces across the continent, and it seems that many of the units near to Maine were already carrying out mobilization drills.”

He shook his head, the video carrying both the fact that he found that suspicious as hell—and that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“We’re calling up all the northeastern National Guards and deploying all active-duty Army units forward,” the Chairman continued. “They’re being assembled under the auspices of the Fifth Army and General Pierce.

“Pierce and his command staff will be joining you in Maine ASAP,” he continued. “You are not being placed under his command, but you are expected to cooperate with him and deploy SOCOM units in support of his operations.”

“And Portland?” Arthur asked. He knew the answer. There was only one answer.

“Portland is lost.”

“Marine units from the Fleet Forces Command will be landing to reinforce the National Guard in the metropolitan area,” the Marine Commandant said grimly.

“The carriers from Naval Station Norfolk are getting under way as we speak,” the Chief of Naval Operations added. “They’ll provide additional air support.”

“The Air Force and Air National Guard expect to begin strikes by nightfall,” the Air Force Chief of Staff continued. “If you’re in a position to provide forward observers, that could make for a critical advantage.”

“We can do that,” Arthur confirmed. Even his non-Seraphim could probably infiltrate the city. “We’re not sure what sort of structure or organization the enemy has yet. Right now, the only target is the portal itself.”

“Then we will attempt to pound the portal back into Hell,” the Air Force General said flatly. “The Air Force can react now while Fifth Army is assembling. We will keep these bastards distracted and pinned down while General Pierce prepares his counteroffensive.”

“We’re not sure of exact numbers yet, but it looks like Fifth Army will have twelve combined arms divisions of Army and National Guard in a few days,” the Army Chief of Staff replied. “If the Air Force and Marines can buy us three days, we will have a quarter of a million men and fifteen hundred light and medium tanks ready to go.

“I don’t care what they’ve brought in, we will kick them back to wherever they came from.”

“If your men and tanks don’t have silver ammunition, you may as well shoot them yourself,” Arthur told them quietly. “Explosives will have some effect, but regular ammunition is worthless. This is not a mortal enemy, gentlemen. These beings aren’t made of flesh and blood.

“If it bleeds, we can kill it—but they do not bleed.”

He let that hang. To his surprise, they even appeared to accept that.

“To reequip entire divisions with silver bullets…I don’t know if there’s enough silver ammunition in the world,” the Chairman pointed out.

“SOCOM came into possession of…certain stockpiles that I can’t speak to the source of,” Arthur said quietly. “I don’t know the exact inventory yet, but we’ve already arranged to begin transporting it to the Northeast.

“If we have determined staging areas for Fifth Army, I can make sure that stockpiles of at least 7.62 rounds and various grenades and shells are delivered,” he concluded.

He’d rather command this himself. Give him the blank check he needed to recruit back the old ONSET teams and their allies, and he was quite sure he could win this…but no one was going to buy that. He could tell.

So, it fell to Arthur Purcell to soldier on and make sure that the people who were going to do the job had the tools they needed.

33

“SIR, request permission to take a team and reinforce the National Guard,” Bantam asked when Arthur reentered the main command center. “The demons are moving on the ANG air base in the city. We need those planes, sir.”

“Show me,” the General ordered. “And update me on the ammo stocks from the Campus.”

“I spoke with Nguyen,” Bantam confirmed. “Most of it’s already palletized and ready to go. More varieties than I expected, too. It’s set up in full ammunition loads for armored or mechanized infantry brigade combat teams.”

“Someone planned for this,” Arthur concluded. Somehow, he wasn’t surprised that ONSET had set up a system to be able to reequip entire brigades with silver small-arms ammunition and silver-laced explosive shells.

“How many brigades’ worth?” he asked.

“Five ABCT, ten MIBCTs.”

Arthur winced. That was, give or take, about three divisions.

“We have twelve divisions heading our way,” he pointed out. “Poke everyone you can track down from Omicron’s leftovers. We need to find the damn factories that built those rounds and start them up again. We need as many bullets as we can get.”

The satellite overhead of the Portland Air National Guard base filled the main screen now. Bantam had been bringing it up while they spoke. The Governor had apparently listened to Arthur more than the General had expected. There were too many troops dug in around the base to be the regular complement.

Sandbags and concrete barriers had gone up—and by now, the troops were clearly aware that regular bullets weren’t going to cut it. It looked like every rocket launcher, grenade launcher, heavy machine gun and shell-firing weapon that had been in a National Guard armory in the city had been passed out to the troops guarding the air base.

There were only about two battalions to hold that line, but none of them were carrying rifles. Mortars, mobile artillery guns and half a dozen tanks backed up the rapidly assembled defenses—and behind them, crews swarmed over the buildings, stripping them for materials to add to the barricade.

There were no actual planes at the Air National Guard station. If there was going to be any air support—any support of any kind, really—for those National Guardsmen, it was going to have to come from outside the city.

They were brave men and women. And they didn’t have the gear, the training or the numbers to change what happening to their city.

“Permission denied, Colonel,” Arthur finally said quietly as he watched the cameras.

“But, sir…”

“If you add a hundred Seraphim to the defenders, you’ll buy them five minutes. Maybe ten. If we took the entire Sigma Force over there, we might be able to hold until Fifth Army arrived…and we’d be able to do nothing else—”

“What was that?” one of the other officers in the room suddenly snapped. “Sir? I’ve got some kind of airborne bogey inbound on the Guard base… Holy shit!”

Arthur Purcell had forgot about the dragon. He’d been warned. He’d even accepted, intellectually, that his enemy had a dragon.

But he’d forgotten anyway. Because dragon didn’t fit into his mental categories for hostile TOE.

Neither did demons. He should have known better.

Now the orbiting surveillance plane that had been providing much of their intelligence transmitted a handful of seconds of footage of a massive winged dark green lizard closing with them—before a blast of super-heated flame obliterated the aircraft.

Satellite overhead couldn’t give them the details of what happened next. That was probably for the best. Watching as the dragon swept over the Air National Guard base was bad enough from a distance.

Fireballs hammered the defenses while magic flung by the dragon’s rider ripped apart the tanks. Concrete and sandbags alike slagged under the heat and pressure unleashed.

By the time the demon swarm reached the base, there was nothing left for them to fight.

“THIS IS STRIKE LEADER, inbound on target coordinates.”

As the hours passed, more and more of Portland was being covered by the strange thick black fog. Infrared cameras and satellite imaging were allowing Arthur Purcell and the rest of the people watching the battle develop to keep track of some details, but they were losing detail by the minute.

Now forty F-16s swept up from air bases scattered along the northeast coast. “Strike Leader” led thirty aircraft carrying maximum load-outs of precision air-to-ground missiles.

“This is Overwatch Leader; eyes are peeled, radar is live,” another voice reported over the radio. “We have no visual confirmation on the dragon.”

The speaker paused.

“Anybody know if it’ll even show up on radar?”

Arthur tapped his mike.

“This is Major General Purcell,” he told the two Air Force officers. “It’ll be faint and it won’t look anything like an aircraft, but it will show up on radar.”

“How do you… No, nope, I don’t think I want to know,” Overwatch Leader concluded, cutting of his own question. “Skies are still clear, Strike Leader. We have the high ground.”

Overwatch Flight’s ten aircraft lifted high and moved forward, sweeping the airspace above Portland as Strike Flight went in low and fast.

The low-flying F-16s were relaying video feed back, and Arthur shivered as he saw it. The city had gone dark. There was still power, but most of the populace was clearly choosing to keep the minimum amount of lights up as night fell.

No one left wanted to attract attention to themselves. No one was quite sure what was going on—but demons and men in strange black coats patrolled the streets.

Those patrols looked up as the jets shot over, watching but not acting. There wasn’t much they could do, Arthur knew, but he’d wondered if they would try something.

“Approaching target zone,” Strike Leader announced. “Damn…this is weird.”

“Strike Leader, what’s weird?” another voice interjected. Arthur sighed. It wasn’t good for anyone to have the Air Force Chief of Staff on this channel.

“Target isn’t showing up on radar at all but is just glowing on IR, and I can see the damn thing.” Pause. “More hostiles emerging from it, too. More organized than the footage from earlier.”

Arthur studied the camera feed, trying to identify what he was seeing. He knew he wasn’t as fully versed in demonology as the people he’d replaced, and he wished he had managed to keep Warner around somehow.

Most of the demons they were seeing now were still the weaker shadow demons, but these were a different variety of those from this morning. They were taller, more distinctly humanoid, and moved in neat ranks. Organized units, gathered around small numbers of red-skinned humanoids—mid-court demons.

Larger, uglier beasts moved around the perimeters. The toad demons ONSET’s files mentioned, but other physically large demons that didn’t match anything in the Omicron files. Several of them were a perfect match for the stereotypical bat-winged demons of legend…and those were starting to take off.

“Strike Leader, you have air-capable enemies lifting off in your direction,” Arthur interjected.

“They’re using wings,” Strike Leader replied dismissively. “They can’t be that danger—”

Wings or not, the flying demons rose from the ground faster than most planes could, and bolts of black fire flickered out from their hands as they closed with the fighters. F-16s started to come apart as the demons tore into them.

“Overwatch, back us up!” Strike Leader snapped. “This is Strike Leader, Rifle, Rifle, Rifle.”

Air-to-surface missiles flashed onto the screen, screaming in at the portal like homesick meteors as the demons tore through Strike Flight.

Overwatch Flight dropped through the fog a moment later. Unlike Strike Leader’s planes, they carried air-to-air munitions—but Arthur could already tell they were going to have a hard time locking on.

They didn’t even bother.

“This is Overwatch Leader. Guns. Guns. Guns.” The chant was taken up by the other nine pilots and ten F-16s swept into the melee, cannons blazing as they closed with the demons.

For a few seconds, it looked like it would be enough…and then a new shadow erupted from the fog. The dragon smashed half of the Overwatch fighters out of the sky before they could react.

“This is Strike Leader! Break off! Go supersonic and get out of here.”

The fighters spun away, diving for the sky and shattering windows as they crashed past the sound barrier.

That much, it seemed, the demons and dragon couldn’t match—but only fourteen of forty planes lived long enough to run.

“Status on the portal?” Arthur demanded. “Do we have eyes? Tell me we did something?”

“We have no eyes on the ground,” Bantam reported grimly. “We’ve got Predator drones coming in from offshore for a sweep. Navy is sending in eight of them.”

“Are we expecting any back?” the General asked.

“They’re transmitting live. Does that answer your question?” his subordinate replied.

Five of the drones were down before they even reached the shore, the flying demons now spreading out to provide aerial security. Two of the eight managed to get close enough to get visual on the portal.

The area around the circular thing was scorched and burnt. Concrete was shattered, grass was dead, and dirt and walls were cratered. Nothing was intact where the Air Force had dumped literally dozens of three-hundred-pound warheads.

But the demons were still marching through the portal.

34

“THE MILITARY REMAINS DISTURBINGLY silent on just what has happened in Portland, Maine, as we reach the fourteenth hour of this incident,” the reporter reeled off.

“We have confirmed that some kind of ‘gateway’ was opened on the Portland waterfront and that an unknown hostile force has emerged. While we have no confirmation from the military or the government as to what is going on, martial law has been declared across the northeast United States and massive sections of the interstate highway network have been shut down for troop movements.

“Citizens on the ground report a complete failure on the part of the National Guard or police to contain this attack and suggest that the government has abandoned Portland to the enemy. Casualties, civilian and otherwise, are unknown—but we do have reports of air strikes launched by the US Air Force.”

The blonde woman on the screen looked terrified by what she was saying. David couldn’t blame her, especially as the images cycled across behind her. Most of them were taken on people’s phones, shaky video and photos made no less terrifying by their poor quality.

“Turn it off,” Riley ordered, the Elfin Lord sighing.

Young obeyed, and he turned to face the leadership of Black Echelon.

“We have a few more resources than the news media right now,” he told them. “But…not nearly as many as I’d like. The government has gone into full-on information lockdown—my sources say that directive comes from the White House and is being struggled against by the officers involved in managing the largest, fastest deployment of troops in the continental United States…ever.”

Riley shook his head.

“That’s why we’ve stayed put so far,” he admitted. “I don’t trust the government not to lash out if they see someone else moving troops around right now.”

“It’s worse than that,” O’Brien told them. “Once everything started coming apart, the Governor tried to give a press conference, warning people to evacuate the metro area. He’s been detained by the Secret Service.”

“That can’t hold in the long run,” David objected. “Congress is going to go over this whole mess with a magnifying glass now.”

“But it’ll keep order right now, and that’s all that the President cares about,” Riley said grimly. “He’s more focused on keeping order than he is on protecting people, unfortunately.”

“We have the resources ready to go,” David said. “Do we go in?”

The room was silent for a long moment.

“We can’t,” O’Brien finally said. “They have a goddamn army of demons. We have a few strike teams. I…I don’t want to wait, but we need a distraction. We need to see what the Army does and make sure we’re ready to go in and support them.”

David closed his eyes, reaching out toward the pulsing sore in reality that he could feel only a few hundred miles away. Poking it with his mind, studying it. He winced as it lashed out at him, but stayed focused, trying to force it to divulge its secrets.

It finally hit him hard enough that he gasped aloud, his eyes popping open as Kate laid her hand on his.

“David?”

“Testing our enemy,” he said softly. “I think…they overcharged the gateway initially, and the Air Force did more than they thought. Their first wave is through, but their reinforcements will slow for the next three, four days.

“Based off my earlier visions, though…” He shook his head, remembering what he’d seen. “I’m guessing the Herald has a plan for that. If they forge hybrid Awakened out of local materials and bound Pure, they can force-multiply their initial weak demons dramatically.”

“We need to get that information into the hands of the military,” Kate said.

“It’s in Purcell’s hands,” O’Brien admitted. “I gave him everything, and from what I can tell, he bought it all. For the moment, we have to put our faith in him.”

“But we also have to be ready ourselves,” Riley concluded. “The Army will make their move. I’d love it if they’d tell me in advance, but that’s not going to happen—so we need to be ready to move when they do. When the Herald has to send most of his troops away to make sure the US Army doesn’t knock down his new house, we are going to kick in his damn door.

“And then we’re going to send the bastard back to the Hell he came from.”

CHARLES’S new lair lacked most of the amenities of the plushly appointed cavern underneath the ONSET Campus. It had been one of three covered loading docks for trucks for the Ambrose Overlook hotel before its conversion, and it retained a very industrial feel to it.

A massive keyboard and trackball were set up on the end of the dock, and the wall behind them was covered with screens. The lowered portion of the space, where trucks would have backed in, was now filled with a collection of mattresses and pillows at least two feet deep.

The dragon was sprawled lazily in that nest, his head resting on a queen-size mattress he’d tucked against the concrete as a pillow as he typed. He heard David and Kate coming, however, and lifted his head to look at them.

“I’m afraid I don’t have anything in terms of seats,” he admitted. Once again, David was struck by the sudden complete lack of brogue in the dragon’s voice. He wondered when it had become an affectation—probably long before he’d met Charles.

“The edge of the dock is fine,” Kate replied, dropping down onto that ledge as she spoke. David joined her, their legs hanging over the pit of cushions as his lover took his hand.

“How are you making out?” David asked the dragon.

“I miss my books,” Charles admitted. “It would be even harder to read them now, I suppose, but I’d spent a while collecting them. I was trying to reconcile your history of my time in Ireland with my own memories and synthesize something useful.”

He shrugged.

“Perhaps once this is all over, I will be able to convince your government to give me my library back. Not to mention my back pay.” He smiled. “I may not be as bad as legend makes my people, but I am a dragon and they do owe me money.”

David chuckled.

“I don’t envy the poor bastard you have that conversation with.”

“I will be most polite. I was most polite to General Purcell, after all.”

“You did hand him a pair of nukes,” Kate pointed out.

“And he fired them at me,” Charles replied. “Anything short of detonating them in his face counts as polite, in my opinion.”

“That’s fair,” David admitted. “It seems to have made an impression. The General appears to be mostly on our side at this point.”

“David, at this point, Hitler would count as on your side,” the dragon warned dangerously. “The Masters Beyond will reforge your entire world in their half-remembered image of how things were. Humanity as we know it won’t survive that process.”

“I know.” David shook his head. “So, we fight. And we make what alliances we have to.”

“Exactly.” Charles rested his head back on the mattress, gesturing toward the screen. “You told me there was another dragon. I…didn’t honestly believe you. I didn’t think any of my kindred would let themselves be bound to this kind of monstrosity.”

The screen he pointed to was showing a shaky cellphone video of a dragon tearing through a collection of jet fighters.

“From the vision I saw, her name is Serena. She traded service for desperately needed healing,” David allowed. “I don’t like to give credit to my enemies, but…I doubt she knew what that service was going to be.”

“She should have,” Charles rumbled. “The first of my kind to wake up other than me, and she swears even temporary service to the Masters Beyond?” He growled.

“What do we do about her?” Kate asked. “We demonstrably don’t have any weapons that can actually hurt one of you.”

“Oh, you’ve a few,” the dragon replied. “If I hadn’t known about the Dragonslayer Patriots, they would have been quite effective. Regular cruise missiles will hurt, if nothing else.

“But you’re correct. My kin will be my problem.”

It was easy to anthropomorphize Charles’s face. In many ways, it was quite human. As he spoke, however, a very alien cast shadowed his eyes. David could tell that the dragon was angry, but the anger was so far beyond anything a mere human could comprehend…

He shivered.

“Step carefully with what you See of me, David,” the dragon warned, realizing what was happening. “Mine is not a mortal soul.”

“Neither, I’m warned, is mine,” David replied quietly, squeezing Kate’s hand. “I’m not sure what to make of that.”

Charles chuckled.

“You’re not the first Battle Seer I’ve met, David White,” he pointed out. “You won’t even be the first Battle Seer I’ve carried to war. Do you want the advice of a very old friend?”

David laughed.

“I didn’t even know Battle Seers were a thing,” he replied. “Lake Tahoe was the first to call me that. Walker was the first call me an Immortal.”

“I knew,” the dragon admitted. “I knew from the moment I saw you in the tunnels under the Campus for your test. I knew what you could become. You were…a larva then. And when you awoke fighting Marcus Dresden and Ekhmez, then…well, then you were a caterpillar.”

“And now I’m a gorgeous, beautiful butterfly?”

Kate elbowed David gently, and he chuckled.

“Now you have completed your apotheosis and become what you always could have been. The first of a new era of Battle Seers.

“But my advice to you, young David? Do not worry overmuch about the future. Battle Seers do not die of old age…but I have never met a Battle Seer for whom that was a likelihood anyway. What are you about to do, after all?”

“He’s about to go into a city occupied by demons, find the most powerful demon, and challenge it to a fistfight,” Kate snapped. “I don’t suppose you could discourage that?”

“If I could fight this entire battle myself, I would,” Charles said seriously. “I have too few friends among the mortals of this time. Fewer still who have proven themselves to the level that you have, young David.

“But powerful as I am, I am but one creature. Powerful as you are, you are but one man. Mage Mason will be critical to what is to come, as will the friends and armies that are gathering for the moment.”

“I fear…that the Herald is planning for this. Expecting this,” David admitted.

“He has thrown down a gauntlet that he expects your world to pick up,” Charles agreed. “I am not sure why. I have never seen such a portal as he has conjured before—in my time, such a thing would have been useless, for even the Pure walked the world.”

“And now the world is broken,” Kate murmured

“And can never be fixed,” the dragon reminded him. “If we were to remove the Seal entirely and unleash the Pure on the world once more, the Masters would destroy everything.”

“Wouldn’t you rather have other dragons?” Kate asked. “This new one…it’s a she?”

Charles laughed.

“Please leave the matchmaking until after the war, my dear Kate,” he told her.

35

NONE of the senior officers in the impromptu command center had slept since the portal had opened. Arthur had made sure the actual technicians and staff were cycling on proper shifts, but he wasn’t enough of a hypocrite to order his Colonels to sleep.

Not when he wasn’t going to.

The night had brought a measure of apparent peace. The slow advance of the demonic attack had stopped with nightfall. The newer, more organized demon units were moving up to secure territory.

“Sir!” one of the technicians snapped. “The local TV just came back on.”

“Someone has overridden the emergency broadcast protocols,” Colonel Bantam added, leaning over another technician’s shoulder. “The radio is live as well.”

“Play it,” Arthur ordered.

One of the several screens flipped over to a plain TV studio. None of the usual backing screens were live, just a plain podium with an utterly terrified-looking newscaster.

“That’s James Hotel,” someone said. “He’s the local evening news anchor. And he looks like someone has a gun to his head.”

“From the nature of this enemy, I suspect he wishes someone had a gun to his head,” Bantam said grimly.

“Shush, we need to hear what they have to say,” Arthur snapped.

“Citizens of Portland, greetings,” Hotel said slowly, reading from a prepared script in front of him. “This is an emergency broadcast to update you on the new state of affairs in our city.

“You have seen the strangers moving through the streets. They are here to help us, but to make sure of their own safety, they have been forced to take control of our policing and military duties. That their first greeting was to be shot at and, in some cases, driven over by concerned citizens should explain why this is necessary.”

Arthur had never seen a man so obviously convinced every word he was reading was utter tripe before in his life—and he’d watched some of the Iraqi speeches during the US invasion of their country.

“It is now my pleasure to introduce you to the new interim Governor of our fine city, John Buckley.”

The camera slowly panned over to a second podium. This one had the seal of the city on it. It had also, Arthur guessed, once had both the US flag and the state seal on it. Those were now missing, but the wood was obviously damaged where they’d been removed.

The gaunt man in the white cassock smiled at the camera.

“As Mr. Hotel has told you, I am John Buckley, and I now lead this city,” he said calmly. “I speak for our new friends, the servants of the Herald. As you may have guessed, the Herald and his servants are not of this world. They are creatures of another place and another time, come to help us get through a dark time of suffering and hatred.

“Bringing peace to a land as divided and torn as ours takes time and effort. It also takes understanding, understanding that you must extend to our new friends as they try to help.”

Buckley smiled.

“We have all known that our great country is broken, flailing sadly through the years as we fail again and again to address her flaws. The Herald has come to show us the path.

“I speak for the Herald, as his governor, as his priest, as his voice. He has shown me the light, and it is my task to share that light with the world.

“We are your friends and we are here to help. For now, the attacks on the Herald’s servants have forced us to declare a full twenty-four-hour curfew. All roads and businesses are closed. Remain in your homes and you will be safe.”

He smiled thinly.

“Others will fear the Herald’s wisdom and strike at our great city with force and violence. If you remain in your homes, we will protect you, but we cannot guarantee your safety if you challenge the curfew.

“You will hear from me again soon as we begin to establish our new order, our new plans to make America great!”

The screen cut to blackness.

“Every radio and TV station just went to black or dead air,” the technician reported. “If I’m reading the encoding right, though, that was a recording that’s going to keep repeating.

“Sir, request permission to put a bullet through that smarmy asshole’s face before this is over,” Bantam asked, staring at the screen.

“I suspect you’re going to need to get in line, Colonel.”

GENERAL PIERCE ARRIVED in the SOCOM command center with all of the grace and subtlety of a raging stampede. He was a big man in his mid-fifties, with jet-black hair and the muscles of someone who spent as much time in the gym in the office—and his entire staff swept in with him.

“We’ll be taking over,” he told Arthur’s team. “No offense, but my people know what I need. Turn over the systems and move outside—this is now a Fifth Army secured facility.”

Arthur still hadn’t slept, which was probably why he was slow off the mark. He rose to his feet, glaring at the other General.

“Excuse me?” he asked.

“That would be excuse me, sir,” Pierce noted, “unless SOCOM has gone even further downhill than I thought since being tasked to deal with this nonsense.”

“Excuse me, sir, then,” Arthur hissed. “This is all SOCOM gear. You can’t simply walk in and take over our systems.”

“We’re fighting the same enemy, aren’t we?” the Army General said bluntly. “I have four divisions arriving every day—with lead elements arriving in about an hour. My men don’t have the time to set up a new command center, especially not when there’s already one in place.

“The United States has been invaded, General Purcell. I don’t have time for SOCOM’s hurt feelings. Do you understand me?”

Pierce wasn’t wrong. He wasn’t right, either, but he wasn’t wrong.

“All right, people,” Arthur barked. “Secure your systems, wipe SOCOM-specific data, and set up guest profiles for the Army geeks.” He turned a level look on Pierce. “Your people aren’t cleared for our data,” he said. “We’ll play nice, General, but I’m not handing over SOCOM’s files.”

Not least because some of the Sigma Force files would make it very clear very quickly that the US had known about the supernatural prior to the New York Incident—and Arthur had plenty of evidence that Army cyber-geeks would sell that to the media.

“Fair enough,” Pierce allowed. “Your office, General Purcell? I need you to brief me.”

Arthur nodded, glancing around to be sure his people were obeying his orders, and then led the other General into the soundproofed room he was using as a confidential communication center. He wasn’t spending enough time out of the main center to call it an office.

“If you countermand my orders in front of my people again, I will see you busted all the way down to private; do I make myself clear?” Pierce snapped as soon as the door closed.

Arthur deliberately turned his back on Pierce and counted to ten before responding, turning back to the Army General with a forced smile on his face.

“I don’t report to you, Pierce,” he noted. “I report to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. You have no authority to commandeer my equipment or my personnel. I am allowing this because you’re right: we are facing the same enemy.

“But if you try to run roughshod over my men, you will very rapidly discover the limits of my willingness to cooperate,” he concluded.

“We have a job to do, Purcell,” Pierce replied. “Get in my way again, and you will discover how little that ‘separate chain of command’ protects you.”

Arthur forced the smile to remain on his face.

“We do have a job to do,” he agreed. “I suggest we look at doing it. What’s the plan, General Pierce?”

The Army General clearly considered keeping Arthur out of the loop for several seconds before growling and nodding.

“Like I said, we have roughly four divisions arriving a day for the next three days,” he explained. “Air Force has promised continual overhead: they’re starting sweeps today to keep the air clear over Portland. They’re going to try and take down that dragon.”

Pierce shook his head.

“I can’t believe we’re factoring a dragon into our calculations,” he said flatly.

“It gets worse,” Arthur told him. “Our enemy’s main forces are, for all intents and purpose, immune to regular bullets. Explosives still have some effect, but regular small arms and squad-level support weaponry will be completely useless.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Pierce noted. “I don’t care what a bullet’s made of; it’s the impact that hurts.”

“Accept it,” Arthur told him. “Even a fifty-cal round will simply bounce off even the grunt-level demons. And the guys leading their units are even tougher—and so are their support units.

“They don’t have much in terms of vehicles or heavy weapons. Just bigger or more powerful demons,” he continued. “These bastards already demonstrated to the Air Force that we can’t underestimate what that means.”

“Demons,” Pierce echoed. “I do not believe, General, in an enemy that can defeat the United States Army in a head-on engagement.”

“Believe in it,” Arthur snapped. “There is no human enemy that could do so, but this isn’t a human enemy we’re facing. It takes silver or high explosives to hurt these bastards, and once you get into the higher-tier demons, even explosives aren’t going to cut it for long.”

“So, what, we just give up?” the Army man demanded. “If this is defeatism, General, I will see you broken.”

“If you take your divisions into Portland right now, with their current equipment load-outs, you will be leading a quarter-million men to their deaths,” Arthur reminded him. “Do you really want to go into history as that man, General Pierce?”

The room was silent.

“So, do you have a solution?” Pierce finally asked.

“We have fifteen brigade combat loads on their way here,” the SOCOM officer told him. “Five armored brigades, ten mechanized infantry. Full load-outs of silver-tipped ammunition and silver-laced explosives.

“They’ll be at our staging points by noon. If we can have logistics teams waiting for them, we can reequip the first fifteen brigades in twenty-four hours.”

“How, exactly, do we have fifteen brigades’s worth of anti-supernatural ammunition?” Pierce asked.

“That’s classified need-to-know,” Arthur told him with satisfaction. “And you don’t. You just need to know it’s on its way.”

Pierce looked like he was about to explode but swallowed it in the end with a firm nod.

“Noon, you said?” he finally growled.

“Some is here already; most of the rest is embarked on transport planes,” Arthur explained. “We’ll have all of the gear here by noon.”

“Have your people fill in my G-4 team on the details,” the Army officer ordered. “We’ll get the first brigades reequipped ASAP.” He paused.

“Fifteen brigades. Any ETA on more supplies?”

Arthur shook his head.

“Nothing good,” he admitted. “There may be some additional stockpiles we can access—I’ve got people trying to make contact with the Elfin, for example—but they won’t necessarily be compatible with our gear, and they definitely won’t be organized in brigade load-outs.”

“And we can’t manufacture new ammunition that quickly,” Pierce concluded. The Army General stepped over to the window of the office—Arthur had commandeered a currently empty small office building for his operations.

“No,” Arthur agreed. “We might be able to scrape together small-arms ammunition for another brigade or two, given a few days, but that’s all we’ll have in any practical time frame.”

“Why the hell wasn’t this factored into our planning?” the other General demanded. “If I’m only going to have fifteen brigades capable of fighting the enemy, why am I being sent four times that many men?”

“Optics,” the SOCOM man said bluntly. “The President and the military need to be seen to be acting, even while they’re trying to cover up what’s happening.”

The two men shared the eternal silent curse of soldiers—politicians!

“We’ll see how the Air Force fares,” Pierce said carefully. “But I do have some small faith in our flyboys. They’ll clear the skies.

“In which case I see no reason not to advance on Portland as soon as I have those fifteen brigades reequipped,” he concluded grimly. “I need to talk to the people on the ground, too. It’s going to fall to the Marines and Guard in the metro area to contain this until we have our strike force. They need to know their limitations.”

“They’ve been briefed,” Arthur admitted. “We made sure of that.”

“Can they even contain the bastards?” the other man asked.

“I don’t know.”

36

“THE NATIONAL GUARD NEEDS BETTER CYBERSECURITY,” Charles sniffed over his link to the conference room. “It took me all of three minutes to break through their firewalls and pull all of the tactical feeds for the units surrounding Portland.”

David leaned back in his chair, eyeing the screen with the dragon on it.

“Don’t you have the backdoors for the Echelon surveillance programs?” he asked the dragon.

The ex-ONSET officers in the room currently holding the Black Echelon team leaders and their second-in-commands chuckled. Everyone else looked suddenly uncomfortable.

“Yes,” the dragon confirmed. “Your point?”

“Why did it take you three whole minutes?” O’Brien asked. “Those backdoors are supposed to be instant-access; there weren’t intended to be human ears involved unless the keywords got flagged.”

Charles coughed.

“I had to backdoor into the Echelon program,” he admitted. “Those accesses aren’t actually directly usable; the sequencing isn’t set up for keyboard input. I had to re-access the Echelon servers and go in through there.”

“Is Echelon even still online?” David asked.

“No, but the servers are still active,” the dragon told them. “They’re sitting in a basement somewhere, adding uselessly to the FBI’s power bill.”

Echelon had been linked into every official communication channel in the country. It had no access to civilian transmission beyond public radio and TV, but if you called 911 or were on a police radio, the Echelon program had been listening for keywords that suggested supernatural activity.

“What are we getting out of the Guard?” Riley asked.

The main screen in the room lit up with a map of the Portland metropolitan area.

“There’s about a division of the Maine National Guard officially in existence in the area,” Charles noted. “Listening in on their coms, most of those units are about double or triple their official strength. About half of the extras are National Guardsmen who were never officially called up, and the rest are civilian volunteers with guns.”

“That’s never a good sign,” O’Brien said quietly. “If the Guard is taking anyone who shows up with a weapon…”

“They’re desperate,” Riley concluded. “And they know damned well regular guns aren’t going to do more than slow the demons down.”

“And they’re trying anyway,” Gabriel said quietly, the Keeper Guardian sounding sad. “Brave men and women. Is it even worth it?”

“We managed to confirm that the munitions load-outs at the Campus have been moved north,” O’Brien told everyone. “The entire damn country knows the Army, Navy and Air Force are moving now. Once the anti-supernatural munitions and the troops to use them are in the same place, the military actually has a chance at seriously hammering these guys.

“Until then, though, there’s nothing in place that can stop them.” The werewolf shivered. “The Guard and the Marines coming in from the ships know damn well they can’t stop these guys. They’re evaccing civilians and buying time.”

“With their lives,” Gabriel noted. “Like I said. Brave men and women.”

“I don’t know how long the Army will take to be ready,” Riley admitted. “My contacts say the Air Force is starting sweeps for aerial superiority and bringing up ground attack aircraft. An A-10 doesn’t need silver ammunition to rip demons to shreds—their miniguns have enough force to take down even a toad demon and depleted uranium is almost as effective as silver.

“But they’re trying to achieve aerial superiority against an enemy that doesn’t need airbases or fuel supplies,” the Elfin Lord continued grimly. “The Herald and his people seem to know our abilities far too well.

“I suspect the Air Force isn’t going to find anyone to shoot down.”

“What about the Herald?” David asked. “Do we have any intel on his location?” He paused, considering his visions. “What about Fitzpatrick Stadium?”

“I’m dropping the bug in receptive ears,” Riley replied. “From what I’ve heard, they’re bringing in AWACS planes for high-level surveillance, and the plan is to hit select targets this evening with F-22 ground attacks.

“If my comments reach the right ears, Fitzpatrick is going to be at the top of the list. The owners aren’t going to like it, but if the place is being used as the Herald’s personal court, the Air Force is going to level the place.”

“It won’t kill him,” O’Brien noted. “But I suspect that having that much fire drop around his ears should be at least a little disconcerting.”

“THIS IS SCYTHE LEADER. We’re just dragging our coats up here and ain’t nobody paying attention to us.”

The Air Force officer—no one in Black Echelon even knew his name—echoed through the room they were using as a command post.

“We’re circling like buzzards,” he continued to drawl, “but we haven’t seen anything in the air.”

“Understood, Scythe Leader,” another voice replied. “One more sweep and come back to the barn. We’re collating your camera information, and if our shadowy friends want to let us hang around in their skies, they’re going to regret it.”

“Wilco, base.”

Icons swirled across the big screen. There were fewer blue icons for Guard and Marine positions than there had been this morning, and David couldn’t help but feel sick knowing what that meant…and yet.

On the one hand, those missing icons meant somewhere six and ten thousand Guardsmen and volunteers were dead or captured.

On the other, the last count put it at over three hundred thousand civilians had been evacuated behind that slowly disintegrating barricade of brave men. Over sixty percent of the metropolitan area’s population had been evacuated, leaving the urban area clear for the battle that was almost certainly going to take place in the coming days.

The evacuation had also opened other options for the military forces moving up. Charles and the rest of Black Echelon’s cyber-information team had added new green icons across the south of the screen, marked with unit numbers labeling them as artillery batteries.

The red icons marking the demons’ forward formations were easily twenty kilometers farther out from the portal than they’d started the day, but they’d ground to a halt now. The Guard formations were now in contact with the Army artillery behind them, and the last few assaults had ground to a halt in a hail of high explosive.

Most demons could survive being blown into itty bitty pieces, but reassembling themselves was a time-consuming process. Inevitably, the Herald would bring up mid-court demons and toad demons and similar monstrosities, creatures that could shrug off even artillery fire.

But he hadn’t yet, and the swarms of shadow demons they were using as a first wave were not that tough.

“Oh, my,” Charles’s voice cut into the room. “I see what they’re using Scythe’s camera information for.”

“Would you care to share, Charles?” Riley asked.

“Does the 509th Operations Group ring bells for anybody?” the dragon asked.

It didn’t for David, but the sharp inhalations from several people in the room suggested it did.

“Stealth bombers,” O’Brien said quietly. “Nuke-carriers.”

“Well, it doesn’t look like they’re carrying nukes this time, but eighteen B-2 bombers just took off from Whiteman. They are fully loaded; radio chatter is suggesting eighty bombs apiece.”

“Are we hitting destroy-the-city-to-save-it territory here?” David asked. “That’s…a lot of firepower.”

“Targets have not been announced over the air and the Air Force’s cybersecurity is actually half-decent,” Charles told them. “Scythe has definitely picked up a few locations being used to marshal forces for deployment.”

The initial disorganized swarms had been effective enough, but after thirty hours, the demons were now acting like a real army. The fog they’d covered Portland with made it hard to be sure, but the shadow demons were all shuffling into formations led by mid-court demons now.

Shock companies of toad demons and other bruisers had been spotted as well. The absence of the flying demons that had shredded the first air attack was a warning sign, though. There were enemies out there that the high-altitude AWACS and low-altitude F-22 flybys hadn’t seen.

“B-2s are going in at high altitude,” Charles reported. “Hold on a moment…I think I’ve got…yes!”

A new voice crackled over the speakers.

“This is 509 Actual,” the bomber commander declared. “We are on approach to Portland at subsonic speed and fifty-five thousand feet.” Pause. “Command, how certain are we on this targeting data?”

“Target coordinates are locked. Confirmed by AWACS and Scythe flybys. Is there a problem with your orders?”

509-Actual exhaled.

“Apologies, Command. I’m just hesitant to drop sixteen hundred bombs on an American city.”

“Your orders are cosigned by the President and the Joints Chiefs, son.” Pause. “It’s too late to relieve you; the strike must go ahead on schedule.”

“I understand. I make our time to target seventeen minutes.”

“Clear skies, 509.”

The radio went silent. Icons appeared on the big screen in Black Echelon headquarters as the team leaders turned their attention to it. Estimated time to the bombers’ arrival flashed up.

“We’re guessing their targets are here, here, here and here,” Charles reeled off, highlighting five different locations on the map. “Both the portal and Fitzpatrick Stadium have heavy concentrations of demons. Doesn’t matter what they’re dropping, the portal will be fine and so will the Herald, but enough fire is going to break up their organization.”

“At fifty-five thousand feet, does the Herald even have anything that can intercept them?” Riley asked.

“It depends on whether or not they see them coming,” the dragon admitted. “My kin could intercept them. I’m not sure about those bat demons.”

“So, the definite threat is the Herald’s dragon,” Riley concluded. “I don’t suppose the bombers are a threat to her?”

“My research suggests they could be armed with nuke-tipped cruise missiles,” Charles replied. “If they are, they can ruin her day. If they’re not…nothing else in their arsenal will even scratch her.”

“I was happier with your species being invulnerable flying gods when the only one I knew was on my side,” David muttered.

“They’re staying high,” O’Brien noted, watching the bombers. “Someone’s being damn careful.”

David nodded, feeling Kate sneak her hand into his and squeeze his fingers reassuringly as they continued to watch. He had a sick certainty how this was going to end, and he hated being a Seer right now.

“We are in the zone,” the bomber commander suddenly declared. “I repeat, 509 is in the zone; we are closing on Target One. Target One ETA forty seconds; clearing the bomb bays for first attack run.”

“Target One is Fitzpatrick Stadium,” David told the others as he watched the screens and knew what was going to happen. “It’s going to be all they hit.”

“David?” O’Brien demanded. “What do you… Oh.”

The bomber icons flashed.

“Bombs away, Pickles inbound.” A pause. “All planes confirm first load deployed.”

“AWACS reports explosions on the ground; we have confirmed impact,” the Air Force ground commander said a few moments later. “Assessing target damage…but Fitzpatrick Stadium appears to be gone. Target is destroyed.”

“Any…any confirmation on enemy casualties?” the bomber commander asked.

“Negative. We don’t have anyone low enough, and the demons barely show up on infrared. Recon will follow up, continue to Target Two.”

“May God forgive us,” the 509th’s commander whispered.

“There,” David whispered, pointing at a new icon on the screen before anyone else noticed it. A single red icon rising out of the ruins of Fitzpatrick Stadium. Moments later, dozens of other icons rose from other locations across the city.

“509, you have incoming,” the Air Force commander barked. “Dragon is rising from Target One. Multiple enemy airborne rising from secondary bases across the city.”

“Please tell me I can kill them,” the 509th’s commander said.

“You may fire at will, 509. Sickle Force is inbound to intercept.”

That was not actually the question the bomber commander had asked, David noted. The thought was overtaken in his mind, however, once Sickle Force made it onto the map.

Apparently, everything the Air Force had done today, from high-altitude recon flights, to aerial sweeps, to massive heavy bomber strikes, had been bait.

Sickle Force covered an entire edge of the map screen. Over two hundred air superiority jet fighters came screaming in from over the ocean at well over the speed of sound, sweeping in on targets barely a tenth of their size picked out for them by the AWACS planes orbiting above Portland.

It was an awe-inspiring demonstration of both the might and the tactical acumen of the US Air Force. They recognized that they couldn’t locate ground bases, and kept pushing buttons until they found something that would bring their enemy into the air.

And then they’d thrown two hundred of the most advanced planes and best pilots in the world at an enemy from outside it. It was smart, savvy, and it should have worked.

David already knew how it was going to end and closed his eyes, even as his fellow leaders held their breath.

First, the dragon slammed into the bombers. They managed to hit her on the way up with a dozen or more five-hundred-pound bombs.

She didn’t even notice. Claws and fire tore through the billion-dollar planes like they were made of tissue paper. Hyper-advanced stealth was useless against senses their designers had never even heard of. It took the dragon less than eighty seconds to reduce the 509th Operations Group to debris and bodies.

David’s Sight gave him a front-row seat.

Even while Serena was destroying the bomber force, the bat demons were meeting Sickle Force. A hundred of them had launched to take on the bombers—hundreds more rose as the air superiority fighters closed in.

Missiles flashed across the air, carefully reprogrammed by the best the Air Force had to target enemies both smaller and less metallic than they’d ever expected to shoot at. The bat demons ignored the first salvo…only to discover that not only had the Air Force techs reprogrammed the missiles to be able to hit the demons, they’d also cleaned several jewelry and industrial supply warehouses out of silver chain and wire.

Soldering every piece of silver they could find to the warheads was a crude stopgap—but it was a crude stopgap that worked.

The entire first wave of bat demons died as silver shrapnel tore through them, disintegrating bodies forged of ichor and power instead of flesh, bodies that would have laughed off mere explosives or steel fragments.

“Tally-ho!” someone bellowed. “Tell Tiffany’s they get to be the heroes of this war!”

David was watching, his viewpoint hanging just above the jet fighters as they charged toward the remaining bat demons. They’d killed hundreds…but hundreds more were coming, and these ones now knew the planes were an actual threat.

The second salvo of missiles only killed a handful of demons, and then the planes were in amongst the bat creatures. Machine guns blazed. Claws flashed. Fireballs flickered in the dusk.

And then the broken remnants of Sickle Force broke free of the demonic swarm. Three quarters of them had died, but almost fifty planes remained. They were running now, not trying to catch anything.

The dragon was waiting for them.

THE CONFERENCE ROOM was silent as David opened his eyes. The sterile screen showing the red icons of the bat demons—fading now as the accuracy of the data grew less reliable—was a stark contrast to the fire and violence his Sight had shown him.

“509 is gone,” Charles reported. “None of them escaped her attack. It’s hard to say with Sickle Force. Somewhere between six and thirteen planes made it out.”

Over two hundred pilots and crew had just died. The cream of the US Air Force had just been blown out of the air, including the only heavy stealth bombers in existence.

“They did everything right,” David said quietly. “They had silver on the missiles. They had everything programmed to be able to hit small targets. They baited the demons into the air, and then they went after them with weapons that could kill them.”

“They underestimated how many of the bastards there were,” Reginald noted. “It’s easy for a competent force to win when you have an overwhelming technological advantage against an enemy you have solid information on.

“But they don’t know this enemy. They can only do so much.”

“We thought we knew this enemy,” Riley said grimly. “But even I didn’t expect to see that many bat demons. They…”

“They knew what we’d throw at them,” David finished after the Elfin Lord trailed off. “There’s enough like John Buckley who survived the Church of the Black Sun or similar deals and have thrown their lot in with the Masters Beyond. They know how the US military ticks, how it’ll move. They even know ONSET and Omicron.”

“Then the Seraphim are going to be an ugly shock for them,” O’Brien said. “If they only know about what someone like Buckley knew about before the Incident…or, hell, even at the moment they created the portal, Sigma Force was being very low-key still.”

“They probably know Task Force White exists and are assuming it’s the equivalent of several ONSET teams,” Kate pointed out. “White has been at the center of a lot of news coverage; people are pretty aware of its existence and that it’s made up of supernaturals.”

“So, they most likely don’t know about the Seraphim,” Riley agreed. “And perhaps most importantly, they definitely don’t know about us.”

“We need to do something,” O’Brien hissed. “I am done sitting here, watching other people die.”

“There’s nothing we can do,” the Elfin Lord told him. “If we took all of Black Echelon in right now, we’d collide head on with an army and we’d die. For nothing.”

“We can’t launch an assault,” Reginald agreed. “But O’Brien is right. We have to do something—for the morale of our people if nothing else.

“Demons can see in the dark. They’re dangerous at night—but there’s a reason they’re settling in place in the dark, too. They need to rest. They’re not nocturnal creatures, either.

“My people are more dangerous in the night than they are,” the vampire patriarch noted. “We need eyes on the ground, a sense of their real dispositions. And we need to strike, to make them nervous, to make sure everything doesn’t go their way.”

Reginald looked at Gabriel, then turned his gaze on the rest of the team leaders.

“Let me take Echelon Two in. We can find where the dragon and the Herald are basing themselves. We can slit some throats in the night.” He smiled grimly. “If we can find this Buckley, or the Mage the dragon dealt with, that throat-slitting might even be useful for more than self-gratification.”

Riley looked at David.

“White?” he finally asked.

“What?” David replied.

“Do you See anything if they go?” the Elfin Lord asked.

Right. Seer.

David focused on the possibility, trying to stretch out, to see what would happen—perhaps most importantly, if they would come back.

“I…don’t think it’ll change anything,” he finally said. “For the good or the bad.”

“Then go,” Riley decided. “It may not help, but I agree—we need to do something.”

37

DAWN ROSE over the impromptu vehicle park, sending rays of light glittering over the neat rows of tanks and APCs. Past the vehicles filling the office building’s parking lots and street, rows of tents lined the park across the street. Behind where Arthur Purcell stood, he could hear the chaos and bustle as an Army Combat Support Hospital unit took over the first floor of the evacuated building next to the one he’d taken as his command center.

Most of the vehicles were full and most of the tents were empty, but a steady stream of soldiers was still passing through the logistics depot set up in the nearby intersection. New ammunition, grenades and rockets were being passed out to every soldier, while the tank crews were busily emptying and reloading their vehicles’ magazines with silver-laced rounds.

From where the Special Forces General stood, he could easily see several thousand men and women getting to work, preparing for the assault—and this was just one Armored Brigade Combat Team. The promised four divisions had arrived the previous day, totalling seventeen brigades, including five ABCTs.

The last two mechanized infantry brigades were less reliably reequipped than the rest. Pierce had fifteen brigades fully equipped to go to war with a supernatural enemy. They’d managed to scrape up enough silver ammunition that the last two brigades at least had some bullets, but they didn’t have heavy-weapon rounds at all.

They’d been ordered to dig in around the massive artillery parks assembled at the edge of the Portland metro area. The guns could range over the entire city from there but, so far, had only deployed conventional munitions.

ONSET’s stockpiles had provided those artillery guns with a lot of options for taking down supernaturals, but the bombardments so far had been preliminary. Distractions and covering fire, more than anything else.

They had enough firepower in place now to level Portland…but the Herald effectively had the entire population of the city hostage. Artillery-fire missions were being carefully plotted out and double-checked by AWACS planes before being launched. Collateral damage was unavoidable, but Arthur was content that Pierce was doing everything in his power to avoid it.

“Major General.”

Speak of the Devil, of course.

Arthur turned to find General Pierce behind him, clad in urban combat fatigues and with a tanker’s helmet under his arm.

“General Pierce,” he greeted the Army man carefully. “Dressed up for a party?”

Pierce chuckled.

“I should have brought my spurs and whip,” he said. “No, I’m going in with the armor. I need to be on the ground, have a feel for the engagement.”

“Is that…wise?” Arthur asked carefully.

“If it gives me the edge I need to save Portland, yes,” Pierce said bluntly. “My reserve brigades. Their commanders will look to you if anything goes wrong. Plus your Special Forces people. You are my fallback position.

“We’ve preset fire missions with the artillery for if we have to fall back,” he continued. “But I’m going to be in the thick of things—it’s the best place to run a battle, since I’ll have full information systems, but artillery is better run by a man a step back from things.”

“I’m no artillery commander,” Arthur pointed out.

“No, but you know this enemy better than most. I don’t expect to have to fall back—not with fifteen brigades of the United States Army and National Guard—but I refuse to go into battle without planning for the possibility.”

“Nobody knows this enemy well enough to be certain of what’s going to happen,” the SOCOM General replied.

“I know.” Pierce shook his head. “Fifteen brigades, General. Hundreds of tanks, APCs, Bradleys, close air support planes, helicopters… There’s no enemy on Earth that could stop the force under my command.”

“And we can’t be certain.”

“And we can’t be certain,” the Army General confirmed. “That’s not what I tell the men. We’ll stick it home as hard as we can; there’s over seventy thousand Americans at stake. But, General Purcell…”

“Sir?”

“If this all goes to pieces, get my men out.”

Arthur Purcell didn’t like Pierce very much, and he suspected the feeling was mutual. That order, however, he couldn’t deny.

“I will.”

WATCHING an entire armored brigade get into motion was an awe-inspiring sight. Platoon after platoon of tanks and armored vehicles fired up their engines and moved out in a carefully organized sequence. Infantry squads rode inside or on top of the bigger vehicles, keeping the mark one eyeball peeled for hostiles even as more esoteric sensors swept for the enemy.

The roads weren’t going to survive this process. The streets south of the impromptu vehicle park were already ruined, the untracked vehicles carefully maneuvering around the lines of crushed pavement left by the tanks.

Artillery thundered in the near distance, and Arthur checked the reports as he reentered the command center. An assault force of the big toad-like demons, several hundred strong, was moving on the largest remaining Marine and National Guard position in the ruined metro area.

There were probably five thousand men and women dug into what had been a midsized suburban mall. The mall’s doors had been barricaded and its concrete walls had already seen off an attack by the smaller demons.

From the overhead, a larger force of the shadowy things was following the toads. Once the demons had crushed this particular force, they would control the entirety of the Portland metropolitan area, an urban conglomeration that had been home to half a million people.

Seventy-five percent of that population had been evacuated and was now streaming south toward safer climes. The cities and towns north of Portland were bracing for the next wave of attacks, evacuating the population north toward Canada and assembling barricades and weapons for if the Army failed.

So far as Arthur knew, no one had asked the Canadians to do more than take in the evacuees. They’d set to that task with their usual determined hospitality, but he couldn’t help but wonder what resources their Ministry of the Paranormal could have provided for this fight.

No one had asked. The Canadians hadn’t, so far as he knew, offered. Everyone was watching to see what happened when the US Army went in.

The demonic assault force closing with the Guard position was slowing, heavy artillery shells wrecking empty houses and abandoned streets alike as they hammered down. From the video Arthur was seeing, however, the big demons weren’t being hurt.

“Even the HE shells are just bouncing off these guys,” Bantam hissed. “I’m watching it and I can barely believe it.”

“Who’s running our artillery?” Arthur asked.

“Major General Dougal McGill,” Bantam replied. “We’ve got a dedicated channel.”

Arthur grabbed the radio his colonel passed him.

“McGill, this is Purcell,” he told the artilleryman. “Are you seeing the same video I’m seeing?”

“The one where six-inch shells are hitting these shits head-on and they keep walking?” the General asked dryly. “I’m seeing it. I’m not sure I’m believing, but I’m seeing.”

“The little guys we can splat with standard artillery, but the big buggers are just going to bounce conventional ammo. Do you have those surprises we sent over?”

“Every gun has at least a few standing by,” McGill confirmed.

“I suggest we switch over to a full salvo of the AG-shrapnel, then move the regular shells onto their follow-up force,” Arthur said. He wasn’t sure whether the other Major General was senior or not, but working together was the better plan.

“I was hoping to hold them for later, but yeah. I am not watching those Guardsmen die, not at this point.”

“The bastards have taken an entire American city, General McGill,” Arthur said quietly. “Not one foot more.”

McGill chuckled.

“Let ’em tread on this.”

The guns were silent. Ten seconds. Twenty. Thirty. A full minute passed as the gunners reloaded their weapons with munitions for the new fire plan.

And then they spoke again. McGill had taken Arthur’s “suggestion” and applied his own twist to it. He had enough guns that hitting the lead assault force with all of them loaded with silver would be overkill.

Instead, two hundred massive shells dropped onto the toad demons, airburst shells that detonated ten feet above the ground to spray the region with fire and molten silver.

At the same time, two hundred more shells, mostly from smaller weapons but backed with rockets and a dozen other weapons systems, slammed into the follow-on force of shadow demons.

The assault didn’t waver. It didn’t come apart. It just…ceased to exist.

Arthur couldn’t hear the Guardsmen from here, but he could see them in the video, cheering for the artillery fire that had probably just saved their lives.

“All units standing by for next fire mission,” McGill announced. “Let them come.”

THE FOG over Portland concealed a lot of things from overhead, but AWACS planes with infrared scanners and ground-penetrating radar helped reveal many of them. Arthur wasn’t sure why neither the dragon nor the bat demons had decided that the spy planes needed to be taken down and it made him nervous, but he wasn’t objecting.

Pierce’s army moved north, passing the fortified mall the artillery had saved an hour before. As tanks rolled past, the exhausted soldiers who’d covered the civilian evacuation began to stream back in the other direction.

“Make sure we have hot food and ready beds for those people,” Arthur told the officers around him. His own staff had reclaimed the command center now, but he’d kept most of Pierce’s logistics and resource management teams.

He’d use everyone to hand to make sure that the soldiers who’d allowed over three hundred thousand people to be evacuated got the thanks and rest they deserved.

“No resistance so far,” Bantam noted. “Pierce is well inside the last perimeter they established. Where did they go?”

“Some moved up for the attack on the Guard,” Arthur noted. “The rest… Is overhead seeing anything ahead of Pierce?”

“Nothing so far.”

“That’s not right,” the SOCOM General muttered. “They have to know we’re coming. Even if the demons didn’t realize we’d move heaven and earth to take an American city back, they seem to have enough humans sitting at the Herald’s ear.”

“Wait.” Bantam looked over one of the techs’ shoulder. “What’s that?”

Arthur looked at the camera and shivered. People were starting to file out into the streets ahead of the lead tank elements.

He couldn’t tell if they were armed from the overhead, but hundreds of people were now milling about the street. No organization. No structure. Just…filling the street.

“That’s a human shield,” Arthur said grimly. “Which means it’s a trap.”

Pierce had served in the Middle East as well. Arthur was quite sure the Army General could see what was being done. There was no point in harassing him with the obvious.

“Lead elements are slowing. Troops are dismounting and moving forward, with the Bradleys and Abrams for cover.”

Arthur found himself wishing for proper visuals. He had gun-camera footage from the vehicles and overhead infrared and radar from the AWACS, but the still-shifting fog made it almost impossible for him to tell what was going on.

He almost missed the start of the shooting. One moment, Army troops were moving into the crowd, checking on people to see if they were okay, starting to shuffle the civilians off the street and out of the way of the oncoming tanks.

The next, most of those considerate soldiers were dead or wounded as the crowd of “civilians” produced concealed weapons and opened fire. Shotguns, hunting rifles, pistols, a handful of police automatic weapons…it was a terrifyingly deadly assortment that opened fire at point blank range.

“My God, they’re all armed,” someone half-screamed. “What do we do?”

“Defend yourselves!”

Gunfire echoed both ways. More soldiers fell, but they had body armor and military-grade weapons—and the machine guns of the tanks and other vehicles closing up behind them.

It was a massacre.

“Mind control,” Arthur whispered. “It had to be.”

“Sir?” Bantam asked. The Colonel had clearly heard him. He sounded sick.

“Part of the warning I got was that the Herald would be using mind control to turn locals into foot soldiers,” Arthur told his subordinate, controlling his rising nausea with the will of years of practice. “He’s using our own damn people against us.”

Bantam swallowed.

“What do we do?” he asked, unconsciously echoing the squad leader from earlier.

“We don’t tell Pierce’s people,” the SOCOM General ordered. “It won’t help them to know. They have to protect themselves first.”

38

THE ARMY HAD FINALLY MOVED.

That meant Black Echelon was moving as well. People were swarming across the Overlook Hotel’s parking lot, strapping themselves into the various helicopters and aircraft available.

The ground vehicles were being left behind. They could have been sent ahead, but no one had expected to have enough time. The Echelon’s Seraphim loaded themselves aboard the heavy-lift helicopters by squad, while the Black Echelon teams themselves boarded the handful of Pendragons.

Echelon Two was already on the scene, infiltrated in the night to find the ground. The three Pendragons Riley had managed to acquire in the end were enough for every team but Echelon Five.

David’s team was taking a very different form of transportation. One that was significantly snarkier than the helicopters.

“Watch those straps,” Charles snapped. “That spot tickles.”

The aircraft maintenance crew using shipping straps, buckles and climbing harnesses to set up thirteen spots on the dragon’s back just laughed at him. One redheaded woman specifically leant in and pressed a kiss against the spot he was complaining about.

“Well, that helps,” he concluded with a chuckle. “Commander White! Are you ready?”

David shook his head as he gestured for his people to join the air crew and strap themselves in.

“Ready?” he asked. “To ride on the back of a dragon into battle against the nearest approximation to the Antichrist I ever expect to see? With all of humanity’s future in the balance?

“How can I be ready for that?”

The dragon chuckled again.

“You can’t,” he said readily. “Well, I mean, you can be ready for the Antichrist part, that’s easy, that’s just what you do. But riding a dragon?” Charles shook his head. “No mortal’s ever ready for that. Far more intimidating.”

David laughed.

“Fair enough,” he told the dragon. “I have one last thing to take care of,” he continued, spotting Kate heading toward him across the airfield.

He met her halfway, wrapping her in his arms and holding her tightly for a long moment.

“You take care of yourself, you hear?” he told her.

“You first,” she replied. “We’ll be right behind Charles, using our chaff and jammers to help get him through safely. But…” Kate shrugged. “All of this is to get you or one of the Elfin Lords in blade’s reach of the Herald. We’ll cover you all the way in, but you, Sir Battle Seer, better be coming back to me.”

“If I die today, I don’t know about it yet,” David replied, then kissed her fiercely.

They came up for air a moment later to a chorus of applause around them, and he grinned like a schoolboy.

“No, my dear, I am coming back,” he told her. “You are coming back. We are all coming back,” he said loudly enough for everyone to hear him, “right after we send that pale son of a monster and the assholes who brought him to the Masters they serve!”

Kate smiled at him, but her eyes were still worried—for everyone, he knew.

“Good luck,” she said softly. “My love.”

Two simple words took his breath away and he was suddenly holding her again, leaning his forehead into hers and drawing strength from the incredible woman he did not deserve.

“My love,” he whispered back. “That’s…one hell of a motivator, isn’t it?”

“You manage to get your nearly-unkillable ass killed and I will make you regret it for all eternity,” she promised. “Now go!”

CHARLES LEAPT INTO THE AIR, a rush of wind slamming David and the rest of Echelon Five into their harnesses. Helicopters lifted off around them, Pendragons and heavy-lift choppers like taking to the air as Black Echelon finally moved into action.

David didn’t have any of the augmented-reality wargear he was used to going into combat with. Echelon had radio headsets and enchanted body armor, but they didn’t have the hyper-modern systems ONSET had equipped their teams with.

“Fifth Army is continuing to move in,” O’Brien announced over the radio. David could make out the sound. He wasn’t sure how many of his team could. You could only hear so well from the back of a dragon flying at full speed. It would take them nearly ninety minutes to reach the edge of Portland—ninety minutes in which everything could change.

“No notable resistance so far,” the werewolf continued. “They’ve collided with a few detachments of armed militia. Probably mind-controlled.”

“It’s something more than that,” David noted. “From what I Saw…I’m not sure there’s anything left of the original people in there anymore.”

“I hope not,” O’Brien said. “Though…gods, I really want to kill this bastard.”

“We’ll kill him,” Riley said firmly. “Keep your ears open, people. The situation on the ground is fluid.”

“Do we have a final strike location?” Kate asked.

“You do now,” Joseph Reginald’s voice cut in. “The Herald has abandoned the wreckage of the Stadium and moved back to the harbor front. The Air Force left most of the Eastern Promenade a burnt-out hellhole; I’m guessing it feels homey to him.”

“The Eastern Promenade is pretty large,” Riley pointed out.

“Well, the portal is sitting at Fort Allen Park, or what’s left of it, and he’s at the other end. Looks like a sports complex. Baseball diamond, tennis courts? Guy likes his sports facilities, it seems.

“He’s holding court on the baseball field, and they’re using the condos and houses around him for his human staff. Plus, well, human shields,” the vampire concluded. “The Army will have to go through the entire city, cross bridges that I would have rigged to collapse, and fight his entire little demonic swarm to get to him.”

“We’ll deal with him,” Lord Riley said harshly. “Pilots, Charles—you’ve got that location? Then, let’s move. Wherever the Herald’s troops have gone, they’ve got to be focusing on the fact that there are four freaking divisions heading their way.

“Even demons aren’t arrogant enough to ignore that.”

“We hope,” David heard someone mutter.

THE AIRBORNE CONVOY arranged themselves around the dragon and headed east. David tried to keep track of everything around him for a few minutes but was forced to give up. Even his senses really weren’t up to the task of trying to track helicopters and planes while clinging to the back of a fifty-foot-long flying lizard.

Accepting that, he tried to reach out and See what was ahead of them. His first few attempts to do so simply left him feeling foolish as he managed to achieve absolutely nothing.

He wished that he’d taken the time to ask Walker for lessons before her death, but he’d been focused on making sure Echelon Five learned at least some teamwork and cohesion. His own newly expanded powers had seemed less important then.

You’re trying too hard, a familiar voice said inside his head.

David jerked in surprise, only to receive the perfect impression of Ix winking at him.

Are you in my head? he demanded.

Nah. Seers are just pretty obvious when they’re trying and failing, the demon told him. Breathe, boss.

Somehow, having the demon in his team telling him to breathe wasn’t very relaxing. Though that brought up another thought…

Are you safe to have with us? he asked bluntly. You couldn’t go up against Ekhmez for fear he could command you.

That was then, Ix replied genially. This is now. I went looking for knowledge and power—and found both. The impression of a toothy grin came over the link. Let the Herald try to control me. I am bound to this world now, not to the Masters.

I have made my choice. It is irrevocable, and so I am doomed with the rest of you if the Masters succeed—but it denies them power over me.

David shook his head. About half of what Ix said still went right over his head—and he’d been drowned for knowledge at the bottom of a lake by a helpful minor goddess.

I trust you, he told the demon. If you say you can fight with us, I’m not turning down the help.

He felt the demon chuckle back at him, then turned his attention back to his original effort. It would help everything immensely if he could See what was coming.

And then, of course, half-distracted by Ix’s teasing, he Saw.

IT WASN’T the same armor formation he’d seen in his first vision of Portland under demon control. This group hadn’t come under fire yet. Tanks and Humvees formed a forward perimeter, and in the distance David could see more tanks and APCs ahead of the formation his vision was focusing on.

A central group of vehicles, several marked with more antennae and dishes than the rest, moved slowly at the heart of a clearly protective cocoon. David was no soldier, but even he could guess he was watching a mobile command post make its way into the outskirts of Portland.

They hadn’t reached the bridges into downtown yet, but the Army was definitely moving into the city itself from the surrounding suburbs. There had to have been some resistance, but David could almost feel the paranoia radiating off the troops surrounding the command vehicles.

Nothing significant had interrupted their advance yet. There were more troops advancing on Portland than people living in the city, and the demons that had occupied the city hadn’t reacted yet. Something wasn’t right, but they didn’t know what.

Neither did David. He simply knew that something was wrong with even greater certainty than the Army soldiers…and had about ten seconds’ warning before everything went to hell.

Even if he’d been on their radio channels or had some idea of what was coming, he wouldn’t have had enough time to warn them. All he knew was that the mobile command post he was looking at was about to die.

There was no visible sign that anything was going wrong…until the moment the half-shattered road between the Army vehicles moved.

The golems unfolded out of the street in the middle of the formation. Bones of concrete and steel were wrapped in black tarmac as the Pure animated the ground itself against their enemies.

The central command vehicle was caught between two of the creatures. They crushed it in moments, massive fists punching through armor like tissue paper. Tanks twisted to track the enemy, turrets spinning far faster than they were designed for as their crews tried to save their escortees.

Cannons and machine guns opened up, filling the street with fire—but it was already too late. A dozen golems had risen out of the ground and the entire command group was just…gone. The creatures ignored the machine guns as they closed with the tanks.

The heavy cannon on the armored vehicles themselves were more effective. Golems hit by depleted-uranium penetrators, the descriptively named “silver arrows” of the US Army tank corps, went down in pieces and didn’t get up.

But the humanoid creatures were far faster than they had any right to be. A quarter of them went down, but then the massive stone creatures were on top of the tanks, ripping the armored vehicles to pieces.

As the infantry around them reacted as well, the surrounding buildings exploded. Preset massive claymore-style mines detonated in sequence, spraying the Army troops with entire buildings’ worth of debris.

And the demons came behind that wave of destruction. Shadowy foot soldiers swarmed forward, with their bigger, fire-slinging brethren scattered through the ranks. Teams of toad demons hammered the front and back of the Army formation—and anti-tank rockets flared out of the rear of the demon formation into the vehicles the golems had missed.

Half a dozen mid-court demons were leading the entire assault, and they were carrying modern weapons. Any resistance that seemed to be holding up the swarm was greeted with rockets and grenades as the demon command squad moved forward into the chaos.

Someone on the ground had seen the inevitable before they were overrun. The sound of oncoming aircraft suddenly overwhelmed everything, even to David’s Sight, as the planes that had been hanging back charged forward.

The first wave were low-flying turbofan planes, A-10 ground support planes. Over a hundred of the deadly aircraft led the massive formation filling the skies, missiles and cannon strafing down over the demons now overrunning the Army’s forward formation.

For a few moments, the massacre turned around. Depleted uranium was just as effective as silver, and the Air Force had improvised enough silver-cased warheads to equip the attack force. Demons and golems alike withered under the hail of fire.

But David remembered his first vision and knew what was coming next. He tried to close his “eyes,” to avoid Seeing, but the Sight was not so cooperative a tool.

The first wave of planes simply…came apart. There was nothing visible from the ground. No counterfire. Nothing. Then the manticores started appearing out of the shattered buildings, sonic booms echoing across the city as their tails flung steel spikes at the closing aircraft.

Bat demons rose from the ground behind them and the manticores smashed any planes that flew too close. The Army’s advance had gone from inexorable and seeming unstoppable to shattered in under five minutes.

The Air Force’s contribution had been annihilated. David had barely had a chance to assess how many planes and bombers were in the second and third waves before the demons and their counterfire took them down. Hundreds of planes, at least.

It was a massacre. The Army assault wasn’t breaking. Wasn’t routing.

The forward elements were simply…gone.

39

ARTHUR PURCELL LOOKED at the status reports around him in horror. Over the course of a bare handful of minutes, a nerve-wrackingly easy advance had turned into a viciously effective trap.

They’d been expecting a trap after how easy the advance had been. But they’d once again misestimated their enemy. The Army had planned for massed infantry only silver could hurt. The Air Force had planned for vast numbers of tiny and deadly targets.

Instead, the Army had run into monsters made of stone that only their heaviest armor-penetrating weapons could threaten, and the Air Force had run into flak units superior to anything even modern armies had.

Proper antiaircraft missiles would probably have been more dangerous, but the strange creatures the demons had fielded were deadly enough—and from what Arthur had seen, the Herald was fielding hundreds of them.

“Sir, you need to see this,” one of the techs told him. “Three of our UAVs on the southern perimeter were just taken down by one of those spike-tail things.”

“The southern perimeter?” Arthur asked, a new chill running down his spine. Those unmanned aerial vehicles were supposed to be covering Pierce’s retreat. If there were hostile AA units there…

Three red dots flashed up on the map on the wall as the tech dropped it in. They weren’t even clustered together, with two of them over a mile apart.

“Where are the rest of our UAVs?” Arthur demanded. “I want eyes on that zone! Get me satellite and aerial…”

“Shit!” Another analyst snapped. “We just lost all four AWACS. Hypersonic projectiles from the ground.” He shook his head. “They had us dialed in the whole time. These guys are fucking with us.”

“I’ve got satellite,” the first tech reported. “Sweeping UAVs around, but…”

New images filled another screen. Spike-tails, as the tech had called them, were digging themselves nests across Fifth Army’s line of retreat. Demons of all stripes and the strange black-coated militia were assembling positions around them.

“Where the hell did they come from?” Arthur demanded.

“They were hiding when Fifth Army passed by,” Bantam said softly from behind him. “Underground, in buildings… I don’t know how, since the Army swept those buildings, but they must have been there.”

“And now they’ve cut off Fifth Army’s retreat,” Arthur concluded. “Get me a channel to Pierce! We need to coordinate a plan.”

A shaky-looking Army Colonel named Daniel Stone, the head of Fifth Army’s communications group, met his gaze and shook his head.

“General Pierce is gone, sir,” Stone said slowly. “His command unit went down first. All of the forward brigade command elements are gone. I’m trying to raise any of the brigadiers, but it looks like we might be down to battalion-level commands.”

“Damn.” Arthur hesitated for a moment. Hesitation was deadly—every second he waited was costing lives—but they needed a plan.

“Split your people up,” he ordered. “Get every battalion commander on the horn. Hell, every company commander. I need to know what we’ve got left and where.

“Then get me the artillery,” he continued. “If they want to be obvious and dig in, we are going to blow the fuckers to hell.”

“I’M GETTING the feed from the satellite and the UAVs,” McGill confirmed. “They’re being damned obvious; it’s like the bastards forgot we were here.”

Arthur could hear the grim smile in the artillery officer’s voice. “We’ll blow a hole for Fifth Army. Do we have a plan for after that?”

“No,” Arthur admitted. “Right now, I’m not thinking past saving the fifty thousand soldiers these assholes are trying to cut off and wipe out.”

McGill’s answering snort was utterly without humor.

“I hear ya,” he agreed. “First fire mission in sixty seconds; I’ll keep at least three batteries on call for if any of the battalion commanders need fire support. We are going to get them home, Purcell. You have my word on—”

Shouting cut off McGill’s voice, followed by the General cursing.

“Air-raid positions!” he barked. “Those guns have antiaircraft weapons. Use them!”

“McGill?” Arthur demanded.

“We have incoming,” the other man said grimly. “If you’ve got any antiaircraft systems to spare, we could really use them. Unless I’m misreading my radar, that dragon is in the lead.”

Arthur turned to look at his own screens and felt the bottom drop out of his stomach again. Despite all of their losses to date, the demons had still managed to field another four or five hundred of the flying bat demons.

The Air Force had to have killed at least that many already, but there they were—and McGill was right. The dragon was leading the way as they descended on the artillery park.

“Good luck,” he half-whispered to the artillery commander.

Machine-gun fire and explosions cut across the radio channel. On the display marking the status feeds from McGill’s guns in the command center, unit after unit flashed red as creatures from beyond the Seal dropped onto them and ripped chunks out of them.

The bat demons demonstrably could conjure fire that burnt through armor—and they freely unleashed it on the artillery. The dragon swept across the park, her fire incinerating the handful of manned antiaircraft units—not before they took a bloody toll of the incoming demons, but before they could stop the assault.

Once the air defenses were gone, the dragon retreated. It was almost contemptuous: the only real threat to the demons was gone, so the dragon didn’t need to be there.

Some of the guns fired. Many of them, in fact. Shells exploded across the positions the demons had blocked Fifth Army’s retreat with…but what had been supposed to be a solid wall of fire to clear a path became more of a light drizzle.

And then the radio went silent, and Arthur had only the overhead to judge from. The organic artillery from five divisions had been concentrated into one massive battery, capable of shredding any enemy.

Any enemy except the one that had come to them. There were almost certainly survivors. He could see vehicles fleeing from the wreckage and people on foot…but the artillery guns themselves were gone.

His plan to rescue what was left of Fifth Army had died with them.

“WHAT DO WE DO, SIR?”

Arthur swallowed hard. With McGill presumably dead, there was no question of who was in command now. It was down to him. What was left of Fifth Army was his responsibility. SOCOM and the two brigades Pierce had left with him because they didn’t have silver ammunition for them were his responsibility.

“How much of Sigma Force and TF White do we have?” he asked, his voice steadier than he felt.

“We’ve got four TF White strike teams and four out of five Sigma companies,” Bantam told him.

The Task Force White strike teams were Seraphim squads thickened with Mages, mostly. That gave him about a thousand soldiers and Mages he’d risk taking against demons. The remaining brigades could provide a base of fire, but they only had silver small-arms munitions.

Arthur stepped over to the big screen.

“Show me Fifth Army’s positions, as best as we know them,” he ordered. The green icons flickered on the map, the ones for the remaining units of Pierce’s force now highlighted white.

“And the demons?”

New red icons flickered onto the screen, accompanied by as much information as they had. With the AWACS planes down and the demons demonstrating an entirely new level of accuracy at shooting down drones, he didn’t have much beyond satellite overhead.

He shook his head.

“How solid are these numbers?” he asked.

“Eighty, eighty-five percent.”

It was ugly. His people were estimating that the blocking force was over ten thousand strong, with at least two hundred golems and manticores. Plus at least a thousand mind-wiped human militia armed with heavy weapons. Plus toad demons, mid-court demons, and God alone knew what else.

At least the bastards seemed to have finally run out of bat demons. They’d wiped out his artillery, but they didn’t have much aerial left after that. The manticores meant he wouldn’t have much luck getting the Air Force to send in whatever planes they could still get into the area, but at least he didn’t need to worry about his own airspace.

There were another twenty to thirty thousand demons, with about the same proportion of golems, manticores and human militia, swarming Fifth Army. The Americans probably had the demons outnumbered five to four or so still, but most of Fifth Army’s heavy weapons were now wreckage.

Looking at the map, the solution was clear. The blocking force was stretched out, positioned to block five different lines of retreat. His Seraphim could punch out any one of those five groups, but…

“We can open a line of retreat,” Bantam said quietly. “We’ve got the Seraphim, the Mages…enough silver-armed Army and Special Forces grunts to back us up. We can extract Fifth Army.”

“We can,” Arthur agreed, but his focus was on the city on the map. “We’d wedge Sigma Force between the demons and Fifth Army. Hold the corridor open. Extract maybe eighty percent of what’s left, maybe sixty percent of what Pierce took into the city.

“How much of Sigma Force and Task Force White would survive, Colonel?”

Bantam winced. He didn’t answer.

“I’d guess forty percent,” Arthur said flatly. “It could be as low as ten. We’d extract forty thousand men and women…at the price of the only supernatural force available to the United States of America.”

He didn’t want to have to be the man to make this call.

“We can save Fifth Army, Colonel…but in doing so, we will lose Maine.”

40

MAJOR GENERAL ARTHUR PURCELL stared at the map on the screen, hoping for some idea, some clue, some inspiration as to how he could save the Army he’d helped lead into this trap without sacrificing the only force with a chance of stealing victory from the jaws of defeat.

And then one of the sets of red icons flickered.

“What was that?” he demanded.

“I’ve got explosions on that zone,” one of the techs announced. “What the…”

“Show me the overhead,” Arthur snapped.

A new window opened on the screen, zooming in from the image from the satellite. The scene was one of several of the dug-in positions blocking Fifth Army’s retreat. Dozens of golems and manticores blockaded the only street for a mile in either direction large enough for tanks.

Or…had.

Now there was debris scattered across the road that had been animated demonic war golems. The manticores were simply…stopped in place, turned back to stone and metal once again.

In the center of the manticore formation stood a single figure in a bodysuit that covered her from head to toe, magic visibly glittering around her as a swarm of shadow demons tried to rush her—and were instantly vaporized.

Three more figures in similar bodysuits were clashing with the mid-court demons who’d led the force. Arthur’s understanding was that mid-court demons were far more powerful than most foes they’d faced so far, and the fact that the Herald had enough of them to use them as company commanders was terrifying.

Five mid-court demons faced three attackers…and while they were clearly matches for two of the three, the third… the third tore through them like paper. Arthur had watched supernaturals fight now, and he’d never seen anything like the third figure.

He was wrapped from head to toe like the rest but carried a heavy pistol of some kind in his left hand and a glittering green sword in the other. What that sword touched died—whether it was a demon, human militia or a fifteen-foot-high golem.

Another half-dozen fully covered figures were opening fire on the demonic grunts. They had no heavy weapons, just assault rifles and knives—and six of them were slaughtering an entire company of demons.

“Sir, someone is on the battalion-level channel,” Colonel Stone reported quickly.

“Fifth Army, this is Echelon Deuce,” a firmly calm voice informed them. “We have secured 295 for the moment. Concentrate your force and move back on this position. We’ll hold the door as long as we can.”

Arthur grabbed the radio.

“Echelon Deuce? Who the hell is this?”

“The people holding the door open for Fifth Army,” the speaker said reasonably. “Do you need to know more?”

Arthur laughed.

“No,” he admitted. “Fifth Army, you heard the man: fall back along 295.”

Putting the radio down, he turned to Bantam.

“Colonel?”

“Yes, sir?”

“I don’t know who Echelon Deuce is, but he’s got a dozen people trying to hold back an army. Take two companies of Seraphim and all of Task Force White. If this Echelon wants to kick the door down, we can damn well help keep it open!”

“GENERAL PURCELL,” that strangely calm voice cut in on Arthur’s main channel.

“How the hell is this guy getting all of our radio frequencies?” the SOCOM man demanded.

“I don’t know!” Stone replied. “These are freaking encrypted and he’s in our channels like they’re entirely unprotected!”

“I’m glad he seems to be on our side,” Arthur muttered, then grabbed the radio again.

“This is Purcell.”

“Oh, good, you are talking to people,” the voice noted dryly.

“We’re a little busy, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“That’s fair.” The stranger paused. “May I suggest you at least talk to the Canadians?” he asked.

“The Canadians?”

“They’ve been trying to get in touch with, oh, anyone for about eight hours,” the stranger told him. “But since your government seems to be having an extended panic attack, no one is returning their calls.

“I suggest you talk to them and then check out this frequency.” He reeled off a series of numbers.

“You got that?” Arthur demanded of the Colonel.

“Yes, sir.”

“All right, whoever you are, you appear to have bought several divisions a chance,” Arthur said. “I’ll play for now.”

“Of course you will, General,” the voice told him. “You’re an asshole. You’re not stupid. Now, if you’ll excuse me, these silly shadow things are about to make another attempt to overrun my position.”

Arthur took a moment to breathe.

“I don’t even know who this man is and I already kind of hate him,” he observed aloud. No one in the command center said anything in response.

“Do we have any idea who we might want to talk to with the Canucks?” he continued. “Suggestions, people?”

“There’s no combined ground command,” Stone told him. “Channels run through the Joint Chiefs. Someone should have passed on any attempt by the Canadian Forces to be in touch, shouldn’t they?”

“Sweep the shared tactical channels we used in the Middle East,” Arthur ordered. He was suddenly realizing that he’d had no communication from the Joint Chiefs or anyone since Fifth Army had been trapped.

“And someone see if we can talk to the Joint Chiefs,” he continued grimly. “Or…anyone.”

The techs got to work, and from the sinking expression on Colonel Stone’s face, he could guess the answer to the second question.

“Landline connections are down,” he announced. “Something seriously weird is going on with cellphone and radio transmissions, too—we can talk to the satellites directly above us, so we’re still getting overhead, but no long-range transmissions are going more than a hundred miles south.”

“I am very, very sick of finding out the demons can do things we didn’t anticipate,” Arthur replied. “Start moving vehicles we can spare to try and see if we can relay out. Is it a range limitation or a hard barrier? We need to know, Colonel Stone.”

“Yes, sir.” The Colonel turned back to his men, one of whom handed him a headset.

“Sir, listen to this,” Stone said, passing the set over to Arthur.

“…Maritimes Provisional Command, calling all US military stations. Repeat, this is Canadian Forces Maritimes Provisional Command, calling any and all US military stations.”

It was a recording, but…

“Provisional Command, this is Major General Arthur Purcell, acting commanding officer US Fifth Army.”

The recording got halfway through another repeat, then cut off.

“General Purcell, this is Major O’Conner, Canadian Forces. Can you hold for the General?”

“I have a hell of a headache on my hands, so be quick.”

“I’m on,” a different voice replied. “Is that quick enough, General? What’s your status? We were in discussions with the Joint Chiefs to cross the border and reinforce you when communications went down.”

“How wide is the outage?” Arthur asked grimly.

“From what I can get, total,” the other man replied. “All North American land communications are down. Radio and cellphone are being heavily degraded. If you’re waiting on help, Major General, you may be screwed.”

“Then we’re screwed,” Arthur replied. “Our status is that Fifth Army has been encircled by enemy forces including unexpected heavy armor and antiaircraft units. We may have a breakout, but we still stand to take significant casualties.”

“Damn.” The Canadian paused for several moments. “Well, this is Brigadier-General Ian Cole. Technically, all I command is a single regiment’s worth of tanks, but I’ve been able to rustle up a few things and acquired some friends who call themselves Joint Tank Force Hercules.”

Cole paused.

“So, I’ve got about sixty trained Special Forces supernaturals and five or six thousand angry Newfies with tanks. May I have permission to cross the border and reinforce you?”

“Yes,” Arthur said instantly. “If you can move on Portland from the north and stop them from advancing on the other cities…”

“We’re a few hours away still. I wasn’t prepared to take tanks across the US border without permission,” Cole said dryly. “But I think I can put those tanks between the evacuation and the demons before things go critical.”

“We’ll owe you if you do, Brigadier.”

“Won’t be the first time, Major General. We’re on our way!”

41

“ECHELON TWO, I don’t recall authorizing you to intervene?”

Riley’s voice was sardonic. Michael O’Brien was quite certain that no one in Black Echelon would have expected Reginald to do anything different.

“It seemed…appropriate,” the vampire replied. “Hold one.”

Gunfire echoed over the radio channel, followed by a gurgling, hissing sound Michael recognized as a demon disintegrating.

“Now, my understanding is that our own favorite asshole is deploying the best drug addicts in the country to assist me, but I could use a little more support,” Reginald continued. “Unless I miss my guess, if we start pulling Fifth Army out through this hole, the Herald is going to throw everything at us.”

“That’s exactly the kind of distraction we need,” Michael pointed out. “If we use some of our people to hit the north end of the city, make them watch over their shoulder for the Canadians, that should clear a hole to hit the Herald himself.”

“Are you volunteering, Echelon Three?” Riley asked.

“I’ll backstop the fangs, but I suspect hitting them from the north could use more Mages,” Michael said calmly. “If Echelon Support drops with Echelon One, that’ll be enough to make them think there’s an army coming.”

Echelon Support had more numbers than magical power, but they were at least all armed with silver-loaded weaponry, and half of them had Seraphim Wings. Backed up by the three Elfin Lords in Echelon One, they might as well be an army.

“Then we send Four and Five straight at the Herald,” he concluded. “We know it’s going to come down to Charles against Serena and David against the Herald,” Michael noted grimly. “Let’s pull everything else away from the core thrust of the mission and clear the damn path.”

The channel was silent.

“White?” Riley finally asked. “You’re the one who can See the future and the one we’re counting on to chop the lily-white bastard in half.”

“The fewer hostiles there are between Memoria and the Herald, the sooner I’ll get to him,” the younger Commander replied. “With Echelon Four backing us and Charles to keep the dragon off of us…I think we can do it.”

The fact that it was White’s girlfriend leading Echelon Four probably wasn’t a factor. If for no other reason, Michael reflected, than because leading the “core thrust” was probably the most dangerous place for any of them to be.

“Then let’s make it happen,” Riley barked. “Echelon Support, Echelon One, redirect to the north. Head for I-95; let’s make them think we’re holding a road for the Canucks.

“The rest of you… you know what you need to do.”

“Who the hell is on this channel?” a new voice demanded. “Wait, I know that voice. Riley?”

“Who gave you this channel, Purcell?” the Elfin Lord replied. “You can consider us volunteers. We’re here to save the day since you dismantled the only real hope the US had here.”

There was a silent pause.

“Yeah, fair enough. All of you can consider yourself officially drafted to the United States Special Operations Command.” Purcell paused, then chuckled.

“Continue on with whatever the hell you were doing, though if someone could spare a moment to brief me, I’d appreciate it!”

BLACK ECHELON THREE’S Pendragon helicopter swept along the river, sensors and eyes peeled as they charged toward where Echelon Two had managed to make themselves a target.

“Echelon forces, this is Fifth Army Command,” a new voice inserted himself onto their channel. “We’ve lost communications to most of the country—everything within a certain distance of the portal appears to be cut off from the rest of the world—but we have limited satellite overhead.

“There appears to be a new force specifically deploying against the holding position,” he continued. “Unless our videos are way off, they have gone into Long Creek.”

“Demons don’t need to breathe,” Michael replied. “Do you have coordinates for their entry point?”

The Army officer on the other end reeled them off, and Michael pulled up a digital map on a tablet. He missed his ONSET augmented-reality wargear fiercely for a moment—but the main value of that gear had been that it could show him what Charles had worked out.

And Charles was currently carrying the tip of the spear into the heart of enemy territory.

“If they entered there and they’re trying to flank Echelon Two, they’re going to come up…here,” he muttered. “Senegal,” he barked to the pilot. “Flipping you a waypoint. Drop us halfway between that point and Two, then prep for an airstrike.

“We’re going to have some very wet friends crawling out of the river, and I think we owe them a very warm welcome!”

“What are you going to do?” the officer on the radio asked.

“I’m going to stick myself and a dozen friends between the demons and your Army and cover the ground with demon guts,” Michael told him. “Any support you can provide would be appreciated, but right now, we need to extract Fifth Army.”

“I’m Colonel Stone; I’m running General Purcell’s communications,” the officer introduced himself. “We’re trying to get in touch with anyone we can, but there seems to be a hard barrier we can’t transmit across. Air Force units inside that area have…already been committed.”

Which meant destroyed.

“Our only real hope at this point is that there’s supposed to be three carrier groups steaming north,” Stone continued. “That’s at least three carriers and half a dozen missile destroyers. If they realize there’s a hard barrier and cross it, we’ll have at least some support.”

“I’m not turning down carriers,” Michael agreed. “What about artillery?”

The radio was silent.

“You wouldn’t know, of course,” Stone said quietly. “The demons hit the artillery position we’d set up just over an hour ago. Our entire artillery force has been wiped out.”

Michael winced.

“That’s one more debt we need to take out of the Herald’s skin,” he promised. “We’ll see it done.”

AT ANOTHER TIME, the natural park and mud flats between the highway and the creek might have been eye-catching. High tide and recent rain had filled the area with water, however, and it was a muddy, swampy mess that sucked at Michael O’Brien’s boots as he and his people dropped out of the helicopter.

“Sweeping for our hostiles, but it looks like they’re being clever,” Senegal reported. “Keep your own eyes open.”

“Always,” Michael replied dryly. “Watch your own back. They may have lost most of their flying demons taking down the Air Force, but that doesn’t mean they have nothing to come after you with.”

“Wilco.”

The Pendragon lifted away, sweeping back over the creek as Michael led his people back into the trees. He had a grab-bag mix of shapeshifters and Empowered, all perfectly capable of fighting demons hand to hand but none with the power to wipe out entire companies.

They’d brought heavy machine guns for that, and they set them up at the edge of the trees. Michael kept his own rifle to hand as he watched for the enemy he knew had to be coming. They could hide only so well in the creek, though magic could make up many shortfalls, given almost anything to work with.

“There!” Senegal suddenly barked, and the Pendragon visibly jinked in the air, twisting to point its nose towards a specific section of river.

The mud and water seemed to ripple—and then the illusion broke as the first air-to-ground missiles slammed home in the middle of it. Mud, silver and ichor exploded in a dozen directions as Senegal walked his missile pods across the emergence point for the demon assault.

There were a lot fewer demons than Michael had been expecting. None of the swarms of disciplined but weak shadow demons he’d expected. No golems or manticores. Just…toad demons emerging from the mud like they were born there, and a swarm of the taller, more powerful, large shadow demons with their fireballs.

And a group of what looked like humans at a distance but had just walked out of a hail of silver and high explosives. A full dozen mid-court demons led the charge across the mud.

No wonder they hadn’t brought more minions. A dozen demons of that strength could take on an entire battalion of regular troops—even with silver ammo.

“Take them down!” Michael snapped. He suited actions to words, lifting his M4 and opening fire.

The first of the dark-skinned monsters went down in a hail of silver, collapsing into ichor from injuries he had been unprepared for.

Behind him, the Pendragon swept back around, the last of the missiles and the machine guns ripping through the shadow and toad demons. The dozen major demons were the only real remaining threat…but they were enough.

The second demon Michael fired at flashed into black mist as the bullets reached him, shifting around the silver rounds before they could hurt him. Suddenly, instead of a dozen “people” charging up the hill, there was a shifting, roiling fog of black shadow.

Silver bullets slashed through the fog, but the demons knew what was coming now, and they boiled up the hill toward the Echelon team.

And then the second set of weapons that Michael’s people carried opened fire. Three of his Empowered produced heavy double-barrelled shotguns, pointing them down at the swarm and pulling the triggers.

The shells loaded into those guns were one-shot rounds—literally. The modified Dragon’s Breath rounds utterly destroyed the weapons they were fired from, but they covered the hill in silver-laced magnesium flame.

The ichor-laden fog burnt away, taking many of the demons with it. The remnants collapsed back into five figures. Four mid-court demons, with their red-black skin and white horns, conjured shields of their own fire to cover their advance up the hill.

The fifth figure was different. Despite having just walked through a hail of fire and silver, he looked like an utterly ordinary businessman who’d just stepped out of a board meeting.

Except for the eyes.

Where he should have had eyes, he had spheres of green flame that riveted themselves to Michael as the overwhelming sense of power warned him that he was, once again, in the presence of a greater demon.

One he knew.

“Ah, Commander O’Brien,” Ekhmez greeted him. “I had so hoped to meet again.”

PREVIOUS PAINFUL EXPERIENCE told Michael that his rifle was useless against Ekhmez. He tossed the weapon aside as he stepped down the hill, intentionally placing himself between the greater demon and his people.

“You lot just don’t stay dead, do you?” he asked conversationally, mentally cataloging what he had that could hurt the demon. The enchanted mage-bladed knife at his belt could do it. It was also possible that his own claws and teeth in werewolf form could, though their last encounter had demonstrated Ekhmez was stronger and faster than he was.

“Oh, sometimes we do,” the demon said cheerfully. A wall of black fire had now formed behind him, keeping his lessers safe from Michael’s people. “I mean, I, personally, want to skin your David White alive and wear him as a coat, but you are so very unloved among my people.

“We didn’t realize that nukes could kill us until you trapped Ahlosa at the bottom of that test shaft,” he noted. “Ahlosa is the only Servant of the High Court to ever die a true final death. No one was expecting it, and, well, my Masters will be very pleased to see you die for it.”

A spark of green fire flashed down from Ekhmez’s eyes to stretch out and form a looping stream he wrapped around his hands.

“They’d prefer painfully, but I hope they’ll settle for ripping you into tiny pieces. Shall we, Commander?”

Michael drew his mageblade and leapt across the intervening distance. The knife flashed toward the demon—only to be wrapped in green flame and yanked aside. His leap suddenly twisted sideways, Michael had no chance to dodge the inhumanly fast fist that closed through the space.

Ribs cracked and he flew to the side, hissing in pain as he focused healing warmth through his bones.

“Really, Commander? That’s all you’ve got? No wonder it took an army to kill Ahlosa, though I must wonder how you survived.”

“Luck and teamwork,” Michael gasped, making a gesture to his people. Heavy machine guns opened fire again, massive silver-tipped bullets smashing into the demon and the mud around him.

They…bounced. Fifty-caliber full-metal-jacket bullets, tipped and cored with silver to punch through supernatural defenses, hit the demon’s stylish business suit and bounced.

Ekhmez laughed.

“Silver, Commander? Did you really think it would take that little to stop me?”

“No,” Michael admitted. “I was hoping, though. Senegal! Blue on Blue!”

He sprang at the demon, changing shape as he did so. Several hundred kilos of enraged wolf slammed into Ekhmez, rolling with the demon to present him, held in place, as an easy target as the Pendragon came sweeping back around.

Like any smart pilot with an ongoing battle, Senegal had held back one missile to cover an extraction if needed. That missile flashed out now, heading directly toward the temporarily pinned demon. Holding on with all of his limbs, Michael couldn’t even close his eyes.

He just hoped it would be quick.

There was an impact and he was slammed back into the mud. He was still alive!

So was Ekhmez. Hundred-plus-pound silver-laced warhead or not, the demon was still alive, tearing himself out of Michael’s grip and stumbling away. His torso was now cratered and burnt, the ichor that had made up his stylish suit reforming to try and cover the damage…and failing as the silver ground into his artificial body restrained him.

“That. Hurt,” he hissed. The green loop of flame sputtered and flickered, but it extended now as Ekhmez advanced again. He was still fast. Still strong…but was he slower than he had been? He’d taken almost the entire blast, shielding Michael from the weapon the werewolf had expected to kill them both.

Even a greater demon couldn’t take that and keep fighting.

Snarling, the wolf charged again—and the demon came to meet him. Both of them shifted forms, flickering through claws and shields and moving entire limbs to avoid hits.

Ekhmez still had the edge. The loop of green fire ended up wrapped around Michael’s throat, and they were suddenly amidst Echelon Three. His people scattered backward, dropping weapons that they couldn’t bring with them.

“Now watch your hero die!” the greater demon hissed, and Michael shifted back into human form to try and escape.

A forearm like an iron bar smashed him back to the ground, and the fire looped back around his throat as his head hit something metal. One of the weapons his people had abandoned…far too close to him to be by accident.

There was one more Dragon’s Breath-loaded shotgun and it was right by his hands. His fingers locked around it as Ekhmez’s flame pulled him up.

“Any last words?” the demon taunted him.

“Yeah,” Michael coughed. One arm slammed against Ekhmez’s torso, pushing the demon back enough for him to bring the shotgun between them. “Dodge this.”

The fire seared through his own arm and shoulder, utterly destroying his right hand and lower arm. He’d regret the months it was going to take to regenerate that…but he wouldn’t regret what it had bought.

Three quarters of Ekhmez’s form disintegrated in the blast of silver flame. The loop of flame and the hands holding it vaporized. The demon’s head and torso disappeared. For a moment, Michael thought even that hadn’t been enough, half-expecting ichor to wrap itself around the surviving pieces…

And then the remnants of Ekhmez’s body, no longer animated by the Pure’s will, disintegrated into black goo.

42

“THE GAP IS HOLDING.”

It was hard to cheer on dragonback, but David’s people managed it. They weren’t getting a lot of information on the status of the battle so far, but so long as Echelon Two and Three were holding the path of retreat open for Fifth Army, something good was coming of this entire mess.

“Echelon One is on the ground and poking the bear,” Riley reported. “We’ve got their attention.”

“Echelon Central Force, be advised, there are airborne units heading in your direction,” the Army officer playing coordinator told them. “It looks like everything they’ve got left—about forty of the bat demons and that dragon.”

“The dragon is mine,” Charles said grimly. “But I need to get the monkeys off my back.”

“Thanks, Charles,” David told him. “Your care for our survival is appreciated.”

“How about a distraction?” Stone asked. “Linking a friend onto this channel.”

“Echelon strike, this is USS Harry Truman Actual,” a gruff voice told them. “Rest of the fleet is still trying to figure just what the hell is going on with your communications, but the President ordered us into the coast.

“I’ve got two guided missile destroyers and twenty-five Super Hornets already in the air. I won’t have more planes for a bit, but if you need firepower, I can put cruise missiles or jet fighters on any target of your call inside ninety seconds.”

“Can you hit a dragon?” David asked instantly.

The carrier admiral coughed.

“That is not a question I ever expected my destroyer captains to have to answer, but they gave me their best estimate this morning,” he admitted. “We’re not sure. We can get SAM missiles into her area, but…the Hornets might be the best chance you’ve got.”

“I need you to take down flying demons,” David replied. “Can you hit them?”

“We have the Air Force’s software package for that,” the admiral confirmed. “And silver packaging for our special friends—but I understand we have a flak problem now?”

“Fly high, clear the demons, and see if you can scare off the smaller dragon with missiles,” David instructed, burying the crazy voice in his gut that was trying to point out he was giving orders to a US Navy admiral.

“My boys can do that,” the admiral agreed. “Stone will pass targets to my destroyers, we’ll pound any of those flak units we can locate as well, but I understand everything we’re doing is to get you to the target.”

“Best guess is killing the Herald will close the portal, and that’s going to take one of a very few magic swords,” the ex-ONSET Commander replied.

“The thought of building a strategy around delivering magic swords to target makes my head hurt.” The admiral paused. “But by god, we’ll make it happen. The Navy will cover you all the way in, Echelon Strike.

“Give ’em hell!”

“CHARLES, FALL BACK A BIT,” Kate ordered over the radio. “We’ll cover you while you offload Echelon Five, but we can’t stop these guys.

“We’ll distract the dragon, let you get David to the target.”

The dragon grunted, but he drifted back for a moment, allowing the attack helicopter to pass him as all of them headed toward the oceanfront.

David’s eyes were good enough that he picked out the oncoming enemy from several miles away. The dragon Serena led the way, the Mage she’d dealt with, Arianna Wong, strapped onto her shoulders.

They’d underestimated the number of demons, too. It was more like sixty of them following the dragon across Portland’s airspace. As David quickly mentally counted them, he was suddenly slammed against his harness as Charles dodged sideways.

A blast of metal spikes flashed past them into the air, and the dragon rumbled in displeasure.

“Do they think I’m that slow?” he muttered. “They can’t even see the helicopters, but the demons at least know those manticores can’t hit me.”

“They have to try, Charles,” David pointed out. “It’s not like there’s any other targets available right now.”

“I hope there are some soon,” his dragon friend replied. “Serena is getting damn close. We were promised friends, right?”

“We were,” David confirmed, eyeing the closing dragon. Maybe a mile and a half away, with Charles perhaps five miles from their destination. They were about to be in serious—

A hundred glowing lights descended from the skies, cutting through the fog the Herald had wrapped the city in as the Navy jet fighters dropped from above the demons. Each of the twenty-five launched four missiles that hammered into the bat demons from above.

Then the guns opened fire—and a second salvo of fifty smaller missiles blazed down at the survivors. In thirty seconds, they’d gone from facing dozens of bat demons to clear skies.

“And that was for the Air Force,” David murmured. The bat demons had taken a horrendous toll of the aircraft the USAF had sent in to relieve Portland—and their Navy cousins had not forgotten.

More brilliant lights appeared, accompanied by sonic booms as the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers accompanying Truman emptied their surface-to-air missiles at Serena. The Super Hornets had focused their fire on the demons and left the dragon for their surface-bound siblings.

This wave of a hundred lights was faster, more maneuverable, and focused on a single target. Maneuverable, prescient, and powerful as a dragon was, there was no way Serena could dodge them all. The Mage on her back flung up defensive screens to protect herself, and the dragon swung north, flying as quickly as she could to buy herself time.

Which gave Black Echelon the time they needed.

“Tell the Navy ‘thank you’ for us, Colonel Stone,” David told the army officer. “The path is clear; we’re going in!”

CHARLES DOVE in low and fast as the manticores around the Portland Eastern Promenade tried to drive him off. One of the bursts of spikes cut too close, and for a moment, David thought Lisette Belmont had been hit—only for the metal spikes to pass through the suddenly-partly-ethereal woman as she and her sisters laughed.

“Get ready,” the dragon barked as he careened down to the ground, slamming into the concrete of the street west of the Promenade park with enough force to leave a foot-deep crater around each of his limbs.

“And go!” Charles snapped.

The harnesses had been designed with a focus on making sure no one fell off rather than quick release. David struggled with his for a moment and then, cursing, simply tore the fabric in half.

That option wasn’t available to most of his people, and it took far longer than he’d have liked for his team to get clear. His two big shifters, Nukilik and Carver, were clear as quickly as he was, though, and their animal forms bounded toward the closest demons.

The trio of manticores behind those demons were also heading their way, and all three of David’s Elfin Mages were still struggling… and then three shots rang out, so close together as to be almost a single noise, and the demonic Awakened simply stopped.

Tatton jumped down from Charles’s back, the massive single-action revolver he’d just fanned the hammer on in his hand.

“Thanks,” David told him.

“Anytime.” The sharpshooter emptied the revolver’s cylinder into a pocket and slammed a speed-loader into it. “I wasn’t kidding about what I shot staying dead. On the other hand”—he grinned, stunningly white teeth flashing in the light—“these are custom-built seventy-cal bullets with depleted uranium APDS rounds. I’ve learned I’ve got to actually hurt things for them to stay dead.”

He gestured at the slumped manticores.

“Those take some hurting.”

“Everyone is down,” Amelia Belmont whispered in David’s ear, the ethereal sister suddenly right at his side. The way they moved was terrifying, even to him. “We’re ready to go.”

“Charles?” David asked.

“She’s on her way back,” the dragon replied. “You can find the Herald from here. I’m just air cover. Go!”

As the dragon lifted himself back into the air, a spray of fire from Echelon Four’s helicopter cleared away a group of demons that had managed to get closer than David preferred, and the Mages of Kate’s team started to jump out of the aircraft.

“Here we go,” his girlfriend told him. “Where do we go from here?”

David was about to reach into his Sight when he looked north and chuckled.

“Well, there’s an army or so heading at us from over there,” he said, pointing, “so I’m guessing that way!”

43

ARMY WAS THE RIGHT WORD, too. The Herald had apparently kept most of his mind-wiped black-coats and actual human cultists around himself, a final literally-human shield against any last-ditch effort that made it this far.

That didn’t mean there weren’t demons and golems and manticores in the force moving to meet them. Just that there were enough humans to make what had to come next painful.

“Is there any chance of recovering the mind-wiped people?” he asked Ix, the demon eyeing his oncoming brethren with disdain.

“I…do not know,” Ix admitted. “Not quickly. Not in a battle. Perhaps once the Herald is dead…”

“I can knock them all out,” Joshi offered, the Indian woman standing nearby with a black shawl wrapped over her headgear. “I do not believe I can hurt the demons or the Awakened, but I can disable their human thralls.”

David was taken aback, but it made sense. What little he knew about banshees like Joshi confirmed that, when fully trained, their voices were among the most flexible weapons known.

“Do it,” he ordered. “Everyone else, cover Joshi. Take down the golems first.”

The Echelon teams waited. There was nothing anyone other than Joshi could do that wouldn’t have collateral damage when a mostly human army was rushing toward them. They needed to clear a path through the demons and golems, but they left it to just one of their number to deal with the thralls.

It started as a song, a keening dirge in Hindi that David didn’t understand a word of. It rose in pitch, shifting in volume as Joshi threw her voice away from her compatriots, toward the enemy.

Words faded as the song continued, fading into simply a shriek that rose and rose in pitch. Even shielded from most of its power, David felt himself shiver as Joshi’s power awake, modulating the sound that emerged from her lips and hammered across the park.

The advancing army slowed first. Then stopped. And then the human members started collapsing. First one. Then two. Then in tens and dozens until there were none still standing and Joshi slowly releasing her song.

She was breathing heavily but gave him a firm nod.

“There you go, Commander,” she told him.

“Kendall, Carver, Nukilik,” David snapped. “Go!”

The three strongest direct combatants in Echelon Five after him led the charge, with Mages and the sharpshooters providing fire support. Tatton’s terrifying bullets hammered the Awakened down as they tried to move up to cover the demons.

Between Echelon Four’s ten Mages and the three in his own team, fire and lightning lit up the sky as well. The attacking force disintegrated. Demons didn’t run—killing the current forms only banished them back beyond the Seal. Half-sentient Awakened definitely didn’t run.

“We’re clear for now,” Young said.

“Agreed. That won’t last,” David replied. “Let’s move.”

THE SKY above them was split with the roars of dragons fighting as they moved toward the baseball diamond the Herald was supposedly holding court in. David’s gift told him they were heading the right way. That knowledge came with a horrible sense of foreboding that something was going to go horribly wrong, but he wasn’t really surprised by that.

They picked their way over the unconscious forms of the Herald’s thralls and around the ichor and shattered rock that had been the defensive contingent held back to protect the Master’s avatar in this world.

Even without the foreboding, David wouldn’t have believed that this had been everything. No mid-court demons. No greater demons. Not even toad demons. Just thralls, shadow demons and Awakened.

The battle above them only seemed to grow fiercer as they moved north. Now that the two were circling around each other and attacking, it was clear that Charles was significantly larger than Serena. The smaller dragon was faster, though, and she had a Mage on her back.

So far, the fight was disturbingly even, and David couldn’t wait to see how it settled down.

“There are more coming up behind us,” one of the Belmont sisters—he didn’t see which one—said from behind him. “A lot more. They are commanded by a powerful presence…”

David touched his own senses and sighed. He could feel it too.

“A greater demon,” he said softly. “Ix? What do we do?”

The other demon sighed and rolled his shoulders, cracking his knuckles as he stopped.

“A Servant of the High Courts,” Ix said. “Such once commanded me. One of the strongest of the Pure. They have lost their way and who they were, but they are powerful nonetheless.”

“The Herald is stronger,” David noted. Now he’d reached out, he could feel that malevolent presence to the north of them.

“Yes. I can’t fight the Herald for you.” The demon paused thoughtfully, then smiled. “But I have grown since we met Ekhmez. I can’t fight an army alone…but I can hold off the Servant.”

David glanced around his team.

“Kendall, Carver, Nukilik, Wong, Joshi,” he reeled off quickly, marking off half of his people. “Go with Ix. Hold them back. Caroline, go with them and keep your sisters updated.”

Kate quickly dispatched two of her Mages as well, reducing their force by almost half. They needed that line to hold, however. This was going to be a rough-enough fight.

David touched Memoria for reassurance and then traded firm nods with Young and Kate. Leaving Ix and his companions behind, they set off north again.

THE BASEBALL DIAMOND had been heavily modified since the Herald had taken up residence. There had once been grass and a giant metal fence around one corner. Now there were earthen walls, raised from the ground by magic and hardened with the same.

There was a single clear entrance, however, with a double row of the largest demons David had ever seen. They were roughly humanoid, with golden skin, four arms, and the head of an animal. None of them were quite the same, even ignoring the animal heads, with arms and legs positioned strangely and the heights varying from eighteen to thirty feet.

David drew his sword, but before his team could attack, the formation split. The demons retreated, falling back to line a path leading into the diamond. They were silent and impassive, but the invitation was clear.

“I don’t like this,” Kate muttered.

“Neither do I, but if the Herald wants to invite us into his den, I’m not turning down the chance to avoid at least one fight.”

They watched the demons all the way in, David expecting the golden giants to attack at any moment. He was mildly surprised, however, to realize that there were no greater demons in the earthen stockade the Herald had assembled.

There was the Herald himself, and a company of two dozen or so mid-court demons, and a scattering of humans…but that was it. The stockade encompassed the old diamond and seemed almost empty.

The mid-court demons present had more in common with the golden giants guarding the entrance than the usual dark-red-skinned creatures. These were silver-skinned and naked, their bodies a continually shifting form of glittering liquid.

A raised dais stood in the middle of the circular stockade, and David recognized both occupants of it. The luxurious chair held the same ivory-white-skinned demon he’d seen in his vision. Standing to his right and directly behind him was John Buckley, still dressed as a priest.

“You see, John?” the Herald said in a surprisingly melodious voice. “The child can be reasonable.”

“You have an interesting definition of reasonable,” David pointed out cautiously. His hand was still on his sword as he advanced, his team spreading out behind him.

The other humans in the area were all Mages, cultists like Buckley. Half a dozen of them, including David’s old mentor. Two dozen silver-skinned mid-court demons. Thirty or so of the golden giants outside.

And the Herald himself.

It was a fight he was quite certain his people could win, now they were here. So, why had the Herald invited them in?

“You’re here to fight me, Battle Seer,” the Herald noted. “And that is…inevitable, I suspect. I find that unfortunate, but I was born for a reason. I know no human who can say that with such certainty.”

“You are a weapon,” David said. “Sent to destroy the world.”

“Sent to remake the world,” the white-skinned youth replied. “To make it as it was, as my fathers and mothers remember it. The Pure do not deny there were crimes committed! Wars fought. Innocents harmed.

“But only a few were guilty of such—and all of my parents’ kind were barred from the world. Exiled into the darkness beyond That Which Is.

“Is it wrong, then, to see to undo that injustice?” the Herald asked, his voice smooth as silk. “To release the magic back into the world? You are a child of what was stolen.”

David drew Memoria.

“I am a child of this world,” he said quietly. “But more than that: I am a guardian of this world. A cop. If you came in peace, perhaps there would be a point to this conversation.

“But you came with an army through a gateway forged of blood,” David reminded the demon. “And so long as you prey upon the weak, you will find me and mine to bar your way.”

“Such fire.” The Herald laughed. “Such courage. And your sword, too! Can you feel them, Battle Seer? The souls at your hand? They hear your words, even if they cannot speak, and they burn with righteous anger at those who slew and imprisoned them.

“An injustice, I think we can both agree. You would wield them against me, and they are willing…but I think that instead, they should be free.”

It was a quiet thing, the unmaking of Memoria. No grand flash of power. No strikes of lightning or volcanic eruptions.

One moment, the sword was in David’s hand, glowing its usual dim red light.

The next, the light was gone, the sword suddenly cold and still in a way it had never been.

And then it turned to dust in his fingers.

44

DAVID WHITE STARED at the dust covering his hand.

His Sight told him that the Herald had actually been honest, too. The souls of the men and women Ekhmez had trapped in the blade had been freed, not destroyed. Despite the circumstances, he couldn’t begrudge the release of those brave people from their imprisonment.

He smiled, brushing the dust from his hand as he faced the Herald once more.

“Thank you,” he said quietly. “You are right. They deserved to be free.”

The golden giant demons had closed ranks across the entrance again, blocking the only exit from the Herald’s court for the Black Echelon teams. The resemblance of the space to a colosseum made sense to David now.

The Herald had built this place to be a battleground. He’d been waiting for David, or someone like him, to bear humanity’s hope against him so he could smash it to pieces.

The youth smiled, rising from his “throne”—an expensive leather recliner presumably stolen from a nearby furniture store— and stepping down from the dais to face David.

“Courage. Honor. You really are everything John warned me you’d be,” he noted. “You have the Sight, Commander. You know what awaits the world now. Take a knee,” he offered. “You will find I am not a demanding master. Stand at my side and you will have the power to protect your lover and friends from the Masters. I will not permit my chosen servants to be brushed aside.

“Kneel, David White, and I will make you a King in the world to come.”

David realized he’d stepped backward as the Herald approached. He was now flanked by Mages, with Brianna Young on his left with her elf-blade in her hands, and Kate Mason on his right. He could feel their grim determination.

And, to his amusement, their complete faith that there was no chance of his taking the Herald’s offer.

“If Buckley told you anything about me,” he replied to the Herald, “then the phrase ‘giant stick up his ass’ almost certainly came up. I don’t have it in me to kneel. I don’t have it in me to sacrifice others for my own safety.”

He smiled, drawing support from his comrades.

“I would rather fight you for every soul and lose than knowingly sacrifice one innocent and win,” he told the demon. “This is our world, and for all its flaws and fractures, it is what we made it—and I will not see it remade by a bunch of ancient immortals with fragmented memories!”

The Herald snarled, raising his hands to summon power.

“Tatton! Now!”

There’d been no plan beyond “David kills the Herald with Memoria”. No backup ideas. But David doubted the “quicksilver sharpshooter” didn’t have his insane custom hand cannon out by this point. He dodged sideways as Landon Tatton stepped up to the line with the two Mages and fired before the demon could react.

No regular human could even fire the seventy-caliber revolver without breaking their wrists. Even many Empowered would fail at fanning the hammer to empty the six-round cylinder—and David doubted that anyone could manage to empty the cylinder and actually hit something.

Tatton did.

Six bullets slammed home in the Herald’s torso, each depleted-uranium penetrator tearing a fist-sized hole through the youth’s clothes and flesh. The demon staggered backward, kept standing for a moment only by John Buckley’s magic.

The cultist’s attempt to protect his master was pointless. The wounds sealed over as David watched, the simple black suit seeming to heal along with the flesh as the Herald stood.

“Now, that was rude. We were still talking.”

There was no gesture. No visible strike. One moment, Tatton was standing with them. The next, he was sixty feet back, slamming into the hardened earth walls with bone-crushing force.

“I am not going to die to petty little bullets,” the demon told them, advancing once more on David’s people. “I think this conversation is…OVER!”

The final bellowed word echoed through the court, and the Herald moved. Power flared out from him in a seemingly unstoppable wave of force. The same focused strike that had crushed Tatton flicked out at the Black Echelon team…and failed.

David glanced over at Kate, who was looking strained.

“We’ve got him held,” she snapped. “We’re containing most of his power, but…”

But every Mage with him was now tied up protecting themselves and him from the Herald’s power. It was down to him.

David White nodded to his lover—and charged.

THE HERALD MET HIM HALFWAY, both men becoming blurs of motion as they struck. With Memoria gone and the demon’s power suppressed, neither was armed for the first exchange.

David was stronger and faster than he’d ever been, the apotheosis under Lake Tahoe having increased his Empowered abilities to an entirely new level, but the Herald had a clear physical edge. A double-fisted blow hammered into David’s chest as he reached out, knocking him backward before he could even land a blow.

Reaching into the future to see what the Herald was going to do next, he sidestepped a snap-kick—and then dropped to the ground to dodge a blast of fire from Buckley. Clearly, the cultists weren’t planning on letting this be a fair fight.

Neither was David. Judging his moment perfectly, he grabbed the Herald’s next strike in an iron grip, using the demon’s momentum to turn them both around and pull the Herald into the path of his own minions’ attack.

Black fire and lightning rippled over the demon, earning a hiss of pain as the Herald ripped himself out of David’s grip and leapt back to buy himself space.

“Stop the Mages!” he barked at his cultists. “This one is mine.”

David realized suddenly that there were noticeably fewer cultists now than there had been—and that he couldn’t see the two Belmont sisters he’d brought into the court with him.

Somehow, he suspected those two facts were related. As the Herald came back at him, however, he realized that the demon was far more linked to Buckley than he’d thought.

The rest of the cultists were obeying his verbal orders, trying to draw Kate Mason and the other Mages into a spell duel. Buckley, however, was using his power to make up for the fact that the Echelon team had suppressed the Herald’s power.

New, glittering armor of white fire appeared around the Herald’s torso, and a sword of the same burning power flashed into the demon’s hand.

“Better,” the young-seeming creature snapped. “Come, White. Let us dance.”

David would have given anything for a sword—or even for Young to wade into this fight with her elf-blade. Unfortunately, the Elfin Second was using her sword as a focus for her power as she single-handedly held off a dozen demon-worshipper Mages—allowing the rest of the Echelon to bring the Herald down to a level David could fight.

The next few seconds were a desperate quest for survival. The burning white blade was everywhere, and it took every ounce of foresight and speed the Battle Seer could muster to not be where it was.

He wasn’t even trying to fight back. He was just evading, dodging around the sword as the Herald advanced, pushing David farther and farther back…but growing more and more frustrated.

“Why won’t you die?” he snarled.

A wild slash that could probably have cleaved a tank missed David’s head by less than an inch, allowing him to charge inside the Herald’s guard. His first blow slammed into the shield of fire wrapped around the demon’s torso. He’d hoped to take the burn and punch through, but the fire was solid and stopped his blow while incinerating his flesh.

The fiery armor was focused around the Herald’s chest, however, forming a breastplate of Buckley’s power and will. David’s booted foot found the demon’s knee with a bone-crunching snap.

The body the Herald wore might have been mostly artificial, but the joints worked the same way as human joints. They might have been forged of steel cables and rock and Pure ichor instead of ligaments and bone, but with David’s strength, that was irrelevant.

The Herald crumpled, a momentary weakness.

It was enough. David grabbed the demon’s wrist, breaking the artificial bones that made it up in the process, and forced the sword of flaming white fire into the monster’s own face.

The flame burnt through the false skin. It burnt through earth and stone and ichor and flesh, and seared away the Herald’s face with terrifying power.

And the creature just laughed. He stood there with a sword of white fire impaling his head and he laughed.

Then the sword and armor disappeared as an incoherent and unexpected scream sounded across the court—and then cut out.

David and the Herald both stopped, looking back to the dais where John Buckley had been supporting the creature he’d brought into the world.

Buckley’s white cassock was stained red now as he crumpled forward, and Amelia Belmont stood above him. As the Herald stared at her, she smiled and tossed him a bloody lump of flesh.

It rolled across the dirt, rapidly covering itself in bloody mud, but David still realized what it was.

“Funny,” Belmont said softly. “After what he’d done, I didn’t expect him to have a heart.”

FOR THE FIRST moment since the fight began, the Herald seemed to take a moment to survey his court. The massive golden demons still barred the way out, turning the court into a modern colosseum. The silver-skinned demons were still keeping watch, making sure no one tried to escape.

The Mages, however, the humans who were far less willing to unquestionably obey orders and had involved themselves in the fight…were dead. All of them. Young and the two Belmont sisters had massacred them while David and the Herald had been trying to break each other’s limbs.

The Herald…shrugged, his face and skin rippling as he rebuilt his head around the gaping hole David had burnt through it with his own sword. The dirt and blood around him seemed to flow toward him, his “flesh” bulking up as he grew again.

His appearance didn’t change. He was still a white-skinned, black-horned, gaunt young man in a plain business suit—but now that young man was twelve feet tall instead of six.

“Servants, attend me,” he snapped. The melodious voice was gone now, replaced with a harsh growl as he ordered the silver demons to him.

Young was by David’s side now, her elf-blade glowing blue in shadows cast by the Herald’s black fog. The Belmont sisters were falling back. Their place in this fight was to protect the Mages now.

“You can’t win,” the Herald told them. “The portal is open. For every Servant and shadow you fell, I can bring through a thousand—and none of the Pure can truly die. I will bring them back across the Seal—an unending, unkillable host that you cannot stop.

“We will master your technologies and magics alongside our own, and we will undo what has been done. My mothers and fathers will walk this world again, will rule what is rightfully theirs again.”

“The portal is bound to you,” Young said. “I can feel that binding flowing between it and you. We kill you, the portal closes.”

He laughed, the sound booming across the court and echoing again and again.

“You haven’t realized yet?” he demanded. “I cannot die. I am human and Pure and Awakened. I am all these things, and no power of this world or the next can truly harm me. You can contain me. Limit me. You have stolen my power—but the effort is already straining your friends.

“How long, Miss Young, Commander White, until they start to die?” he asked softly. “How many will you sacrifice to buy yourself the chance to do that which is impossible?

“Yield. There is still a place for you at my side.”

“If you’re so confident we can’t kill you, why are you so afraid?” David replied. “Trust me, Herald, I still have a few theories I need to test before we’re done!”

The now-giant demon laughed and spread his arms, fingernails extended into vicious-looking ten-inch talons.

“Very well, then. As you humans so love to say: bring it.”

45

MAGIC FLARED around Young as she summoned the speed and power of the Flame of Andúril, the magic-based martial art any high-ranking Elfin had to master. Glittering blue light encased her and her sword alike as she joined David on the assault.

The screaming of the overhead dragon fight distracted David for a crucial moment, but the Elfin Second didn’t hesitate. The tall woman unfolded into a blur of blue lightning, her sword nearly reaching the Herald’s new immense form before a massive forearm knocked it aside.

David was there before the Herald could follow up on his block. A pure-white fist slammed down at the Elfin, but the Seer Saw it coming and intercepted it. He slammed into the Herald’s arm with his entire body, deflecting the strike into the dirt and buying Young a precious few moments to regain her balance.

That meant the Herald was now focusing on him. Doubling his size didn’t seem to have reduced the demon’s speed or strength at all, and the Seer found himself dodging an inhumanly fast series of blows, any one of which would put even him out of the fight for at least a few minutes.

He dodged almost all of them, then turned to convert the last strike into a glancing blow that sent him flying rather than crushing his entire torso.

The distraction was enough for Young to close. For a moment, David thought they’d pulled it off—the elf-blade the Mage carried was one of the few weapons they thought could kill the Herald.

But the Herald clearly registered the threat. Young managed to hit him, the blade stabbing into his flesh—and then one of those massive white fists smashed down, shattering the blade into a thousand pieces as the Herald’s other hand threw the Mage away from him.

From the way the Herald breathed heavily and paused to tear the fragment of blade out of himself, the elf-blade had hurt him.

Unfortunately, it was now destroyed, and David was well and truly out of ideas as the Herald straightened, looming over them all.

He roared, a wordless shout of anger that hurt the ears and made the earthen walls around them shiver. David and Young fell back toward the Mages, and David desperately tried to search his Sight for something.

The Belmont sisters had kept the demons off the Mages limiting the Herald, somehow. The pair were nearly invulnerable, but both now bore scratches and bruises that shouldn’t have been able to mark their phased forms.

Several of the Mages were down now. Their slumps had a disturbing finality to them, and David knew that the Mages were failing. They were dying to buy him and Young time…and he was out of ideas.

Then there was an answer to the Herald’s roar as two massive creatures collapsed out of the sky. The demon barely managed to sidestep the impact of the falling dragons, and Charles and Serena rolled over the remaining silver demons.

Powerful and dangerous as those creatures might have been in normal circumstances, the two dragons destroyed them instantly, their mass and claws more than enough to end creatures that could have withstood tank shells.

Serena emerged on top for a moment, the Mage on her back glittering with power as she augmented the female dragon’s strength and speed to allow her to match the much larger Charles.

And then a single gunshot rang out across the court. Everyone turned in surprise to see Landon Tatton, barely half-sitting on broken limbs…but holding an M4 Omicron rifle someone had dropped. He only had one working hand and had barely propped up the rifle…but Landon Tatton didn’t miss.

The dragon-riding Mage froze in mid-gesture, her hand slipping to her chest and coming away bloody as she coughed, suddenly the center of all attention.

And then she slumped, the magic she’d sustained around Serena failing—and Charles turned the entire situation around in moments, pinning the other dragon to the ground as he looked around at the mess of the battle.

It was clear, to David at least, that Charles’s advantage was temporary. The female dragon would quickly escape and return to the sky, where she had a mobility advantage. But for those few seconds, the dragon could spare the attention to see how the fight was progressing—and then he did something David would never have expected.

One of his long, scimitar-like claws suddenly extended out to its full length and the dragon bit down on it. With a hiss of pain that drove half of the humans on the battlefield to their knees, he pulled the claw out—and tossed it to Kate Mason with a flick of his head.

“You know what to do!” he barked—and then was gone, chasing into the sky after the other dragon as she escaped him.

David had no idea what Charles was expecting Kate to do—and neither, it seemed, did the Herald. Everyone stopped, staring at the Mage with the dragon claw embedded in the ground in front of her.

The power-containing field the Mages were conjuring was being funneled through Kate. Even with their losses, she wielded the power of eight of the most powerful Mages Black Echelon had been able to find. For a single intense moment, she found a new use for it.

Dragon claws and dragon scales couldn’t be forged by mortal means. They weren’t metal or bone or stone; they were a creation of the Awakened itself, flesh and keratin forged of magic, not organic cells.

The power of eight Mages was not “mortal means”. The claw leapt into the air, flying toward David with blinding speed, and then embedded itself in the ground in front of him.

Except it was no longer a claw.

Now it was a sword.

DAVID PULLED the blade from the ground as time seemed to slow around him. Forged by magic of dragon claw, it fit his hand perfectly. Like it was made for his hand. Because it had been made for his hand.

To forge it, though, they’d released the hold on the Herald’s power, and now the demon demigod unleashed his full power. Instead of restraining him, it was suddenly taking all of the Mages’ strength to protect themselves.

He was on his own, struggling to maintain his feet as waves of power rolled off the Herald.

The sword bought him time. It cut through the demon’s power in a way that even Memoria hadn’t, but he’d only get one shot now. If he failed, the Herald would turn all of his power on the man who might be able to kill him.

There had to be a key, something they’d missed. The flaming blade of Buckley’s power should have at least hurt the Herald—Young’s elf-blade had hurt it. Tatton’s depleted-uranium rounds had hurt it. What had he done wrong?

…Human, Awakened and Pure. Human.

At the heart of everything the Herald was, there was the poor damned child they’d used as a host for his essence. Everything else was ichor and stone given shape by the Pure who used the child as an anchor. Everything they could see of the Herald was glorified armor.

And his Sight could show him the truth. He pushed forward through the hurricane of power the Herald was unleashing, cutting and struggling his way, one step after another. Specific attacks were hurled at him, but he sidestepped them with ease. What strike could hit a man who could See the future?

He reached the Herald and ignored the shell, focusing his Sight on the true being within. It was a gnarled thing, as ugly as the exterior had been shining and beautiful, twisted and warped by the speed of its growth and the nature of the essence bound to it.

David White met the Herald’s true eyes, and for one seemingly eternal moment, the demon realized his vulnerability.

And the dragon-blade stabbed through the Herald’s true heart.

Everything froze. The world froze. The miserable creature at the heart of the glorious ivory giant writhed for a moment while everything was still…and then was still itself.

Dirt and stone sloughed away from it. The magic failed, and the body the Herald had forged for himself disintegrated into the common materials it was made from.

The stadium around them remained…but David felt the portal collapse. A moment later, he heard it, a stunning thunderclap as the air rushed into the void its failure created.

And then everything was silent.

46

DAVID WHITE TURNED to face the only remaining enemies, the dragon-blade still in his hands as he looked at the double row of golden demons still barring the way out of the court the Herald had built to be his final colosseum.

The animal heads focused on him. There were still a dozen Mages and other supernaturals there, but there was no question who the focus for the immense creatures was. Their eyes burnt into him as he walked toward them, passing between the exhausted Mages as he put himself between his people and the last of the enemy.

He raised the sword and pointed it at them, a wordless challenge to see if they would come to him.

Instead, they moved, splitting once again into a double file—and then knelt as one.

“The hell?” he asked aloud, eyeing the motionless creatures.

WE SERVE.

The pounding words in his head hurt, and he stared at the golden warriors.

“Who are you?”

WE DO NOT REMEMBER. WE SERVE THE VICTOR.

“Can you stop the rest of the demons from overrunning this city?” he asked.

WE SERVE. BUT WE ARE FEW.

“What can you do?”

WE HEAL.

Heal? That didn’t fit with what he was expecting from massive golden demons. Just what had the Herald brought into the world as his personal bodyguards?

“Can you heal the people whose minds the Herald took?”

WE CAN.

A near-deafening silence.

WE HEAL. WE REBUILD. WE WILL REMEMBER.

“Remember what?”

WHO WE WERE. IF THE VICTOR ALLOWS.

“If you heal those the Herald broke, I will allow,” David said carefully. “So long as you do not threaten anyone else.”

WE SERVE.

He shook his head as the gold giants broke their ranks, turning to march out into the city. He checked his radio headset.

To his complete lack of surprise, it was wrecked, and he turned back to his Mages, who were staring at him.

“Anyone got a radio?” he asked helplessly—and then suddenly found Kate wrapped around him.

“You did it,” she whispered. “I…Charles dumped the knowledge of what to do with his claw into my head, but I wasn’t sure if it could do it.”

“I don’t know if he was, either,” David admitted. “Radio? I think the big gold guys are on our side now, so I’d rather they not get shot.”

She passed him her headset and he put it on.

“All forces on this channel,” he began. “The Herald is dead. The big gold guys appear to be on our side, and they’ve promised to heal the folks the Herald mind-wiped… The portal should be closed, but I suspect we still have a fight on our hands.”

There was a delicate cough.

“Not as much as you might think,” Ix told them. “It appears I have inherited the authority of the Servant of the High Court I defeated. With the Herald dead, I now command the demons in this city.” He paused. “The golems and manticores are less tractable,” he admitted. “We will still need to destroy them, but the demons have now surrendered to me.”

David considered that.

“What did you do, Ix?” he asked.

“The closest approximation I can manage in your language is that I ate him,” the demon admitted. “I will move the host out of the city. Their final fate will need to be decided—but may I request that it be a political decision rather than an immediate one? I think I can convince them to be helpful.”

“What about the dragon?” Purcell’s voice added.

“Dealt with,” Charles suddenly interjected. “With the Mage she made her pact with dead, she is no longer bound to the service of the Herald. She…would like to make amends, if we will let her.”

“Wait…is that it?” Riley suddenly asked. “The Herald is dead. The portal closed. The demons surrendered. The dragon freed… Did we win?”

David exhaled suddenly, reaching out to test the future. There was no violence in it. The half-Awakened would fail on their own or be destroyed. The gold giants would heal, and help rebuild the city. It was…

“It’s over,” he agreed. “I think we won.”

47

NONE of them gathered on the lawn in front of the White House were the type to be comfortable with public acclaim. Most had worked in secrecy for years.

Certainly, for Michael O’Brien and David White to be publicly there as supernaturals was strange for them—but not nearly as strange as the presence of the two dragons curled up on the north end of the lawn had to be for everyone else.

David carried the dragon-blade on his left hip. He wouldn’t be able to reach it easily, mostly because Kate Mason had his right hand trapped in her left—while she gleefully allowed the diamond on her ring finger to glitter light in all directions.

Lord Riley waited with them as well—as did Lady Brianna Young, the Mage having finally forged her own sword to replace the elf-blade the Herald had shattered.

Many of the key members of the Echelon had survived. Others hadn’t. Landon Tatton hadn’t survived the battle in the Herald’s Court. Half of Echelon Four’s Mages had fallen with him, while Nukilik and Kendall had died in the desperate battle to hold back the demonic host before Ix had…absorbed its leader.

Lieutenant General Purcell stood with them as well, the Special Forces general stiff-backed and uncomfortable, surrounded by the people who’d saved his people’s lives—despite his earlier attempts to kill them.

Other officers surrounded them. A wheelchair-bound General McGill represented the survivors of Fifth Army itself, and several naval officers from Harry Truman and her battle group were present as well.

A thousand cameras were focused on them. The world watched the rescuers of Portland walk up the lawn to meet the President of the United States of America.

“He’s sticking a medal on you,” Purcell muttered. “But we all know this isn’t over.”

“What’s your point?” David asked, squeezing Kate’s hand gently. Black Echelon had served its purpose and dissolved. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do with his life yet, but he at least knew who he’d be doing it with!

“We’re going to rebuild ONSET,” the General told him. “I’m being pulled out of SOCOM to take over the project. I could use some good people—the best people.”

David shared a glance with his fiancée.

“You’re not exactly in our best books, you know.”

“I know,” Purcell agreed. “But I need you, David White. The people you swore to protect need you.”

Kate chuckled.

“That’s a dirty blow, General,” she pointed out.

“I know,” he said again. “But it’s true. I need you. I need all of you.” He gestured around the former Echelon leaders and ONSET officers.

“Because all we bought was a stay of execution. The Masters are still coming.”

David looked across the lawn at Charles. He suspected the dragon could hear the entire conversation—he was still learning how badly they’d misestimated their wyrm friend.

“This was their Sunday punch,” he noted. “It will be years before they can pull anything equivalent. We’ll be waiting for them. We’ll be ready.”

“We can be,” Purcell agreed. “If you’re with me.”

David glanced back at Kate. She was smiling at him.

“To serve and protect,” she quoted at him, and he laughed.

“All right, General. We’re in.”

OTHER BOOKS BY GLYNN STEWART

For release announcements join the mailing list or visit GlynnStewart.com

ONSET

ONSET: To Serve and Protect

ONSET: My Enemy’s Enemy

ONSET: Blood of the Innocent

ONSET: Stay of Execution

Changeling Blood

Changeling’s Fealty

Hunter’s Oath (upcoming)

Starship’s Mage

Starship’s Mage: Omnibus

Hand of Mars

Voice of Mars

Alien Arcana

Judgment of Mars

Starship’s Mage: UnArcana Wars

UnArcana Stars (upcoming)

Starship’s Mage: Red Falcon

Interstellar Mage

Mage Provocateur (upcoming)

Agent of Mars (upcoming)

Castle Federation

Space Carrier Avalon

Stellar Fox

Battle Group Avalon

Q-Ship Chameleon

Rimward Stars

Operation Medusa

Duchy of Terra

The Terran Privateer

Duchess of Terra

Terra and Imperium

Vigilante (With Terry Mixon)

Heart of Vengeance

Oath of Vengeance

Science Fiction Stand Alone Novels

Exile (upcoming)

Fantasy Stand Alone Novels

Children of Prophecy

City in the Sky

Table of Contents

Copyright

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Other Books by Glynn Stewart