Jen­nifer Mat­tern on allindiepublishing.com has an inter­est­ing inter­view up today with indie phe­nom Zoe Win­ters. They dis­cuss some­thing I’ve been think­ing a lot about recently, the sus­tain­abil­ity of the 99 cent price point.

I think almost no one can make a solid liv­ing with 99 cent ebooks because you have to have huge vol­ume for that. When I sold 6,500 ebooks in June 2010, that was around $2,300. Well, most peo­ple can’t live on that, espe­cially after you take out Uncle Sam’s cut. — Zoe Win­ters

This is what both­ers me. The Between Heaven and Hell tril­ogy — which com­prises the first hal­fish of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Chron­i­cles, so this is already com­pli­cated — is some­what genre-​​bending. Here’s the ele­va­tor pitch for the first book, Rev­e­la­tion:

When Daniel Cho sees a dead man walk away from a car wreck, he becomes the cat­a­lyst for a final bat­tle between angels and demons.

What genre does that sound like? If you picked “sci­ence fic­tion,” you’d be right, only you didn’t pick that, did you? As the story devel­ops, it turns out the angels and demons are really humans with a purely tech­no­log­i­cal basis for immor­tal­ity, and over the mil­lenia they’ve inspired our myths of gods, angels and demons. In book five of the series, we’ll find out how and why they became immor­tal in the first place, and what that means about human­ity and our place in the galaxy. But to start out, this book seems like urban fan­tasy or hor­ror. We only find out it’s really sci­ence fic­tion later.

This genre ambi­gu­ity means the niche for peo­ple who want to read my books is on the smaller side. I will never pull down num­bers like Amanda Hock­ing because para­nor­mal romance just isn’t what I write. I have to accept that my niche is finite, even with the ebook mar­ket expan­sion accelerating.

And given that, 99 cents is trou­bling. A sale at 99 cents makes me only 1/​6, or 16.7%, of what I make at $2.99. Hock­ing, Locke and oth­ers like them can get away with that because their pool of poten­tial cus­tomers is so much larger. But if I want to make a liv­ing at this, 99 cents can only be an occa­sional pro­mo­tional price. $2.99 or even $3.99 has to be the default.

A year from now, when the entire Between Heaven and Hell tril­ogy is avail­able, plus two stand alone nov­els and my novella “Do Over!”, I’d have to sell about 500 copies of each book a month to sus­tain myself. Even that seems high to me, although I’m prob­a­bly under­es­ti­mat­ing the size of the over­all ebook mar­ket by sev­eral dec­i­mal points. Those will slide down the long tail over time, and be replaced by new books as I keep writ­ing. As long as I stay around 3,000 copies over­all a month, I can make my liv­ing as a writer. In the­ory, that’s sustainable.

At 99 cents each, on the other hand, I’d have to sell 13,000 copies a month to make the same amount of money. 13,000 new read­ers every month, 12 months a year. That’s more than the pop­u­la­tion of the whole town where I went to high school. Every month. In my niche, I just don’t see how that’s possible.

I’ve seen claims that stan­dard­iz­ing on $1 is inevitable for ebooks, and their math is com­pelling. And while I’m not one of those who frets that $1 is “devalu­ing” the book, I can’t deny that under the cur­rent roy­alty con­di­tions, $1 doesn’t work for me.

(If Ama­zon extends the 70% roy­alty to 99 cents and I’d only have to sell 6,000 copies a month, well, that’s a horse of a dif­fer­ent color.)

“It is the ques­tion that dri­ves you.” –Trin­ity, “The Matrix”

In my case, the ques­tion was the cen­tral ques­tion of Cru­sade. The ques­tion behind every­thing that hap­pens, that sets up the new world order in Jihad. A sim­ple ques­tion, really.

How do you over­throw gov­ern­ing struc­tures — from two prox­ies removed — while pre­serv­ing cor­po­rate wealth?

The angels have spent the last hun­dred years or so con­sol­i­dat­ing their power in cor­po­ra­tions. They, or their human agents, have con­trol­ling inter­ests in just about every­thing. They are multi­na­tional, direct­ing the flow of wealth around the globe with no restric­tions or bor­ders. And it gives them the con­trol over the humans they need. Want to weed out the weak? Own insur­ance com­pa­nies and direct them not to cover peo­ple with pre-​​existing conditions.

But even so, money is issued by gov­ern­ments, right? So how would they con­tinue to func­tion if the gov­ern­ments of the world crum­bled beneath them? They would need to keep those gov­ern­ments in place — under con­trol by lob­by­ists, but in place — to pro­vide the foun­da­tion on which their empire was built, right? I just couldn’t come up with a good rea­son for them to let the demons have the chaos they strove for. It seemed counterproductive.

I thought it was going to drive me nuts. Then I real­ized the prob­lem was that I wasn’t giv­ing myself the chance to think about it. There is a move­ment afoot to bring back bore­dom, to delib­er­ately insert down­time back into our lives. We’re learn­ing that men­tal stim­u­la­tion every moment of your con­scious life doesn’t allow you to process what you know, to syn­the­size infor­ma­tion into new ideas. As half the IT depart­ment for a medium size com­pany, my job is to solve prob­lems all day long. I don’t have time to think about my story at work. And when I’m not work­ing, I’m read­ing on my Kin­dle, lis­ten­ing to pod­casts, watch­ing TV — only socially, I assure you — or yeah, try­ing to write. I wasn’t giv­ing my mind time to think.

Then, dri­ving home with­out lis­ten­ing to a pod­cast or audio­book or the dig­i­tal voice of my Kin­dle, let­ting my mind mull it over — and over and over — it finally hit me. And as it does so often with me, the answer came in the form of math, an equation.

Money is power, they say. There­fore, power is money.

The wealth the angels pos­sess isn’t in the form of dol­lars or euros or yuen. Their wealth, the wealth of their cor­po­rate prox­ies, is in the resources they con­trol. And those resources will be cru­cial to staving off the dark age the demons are almost allowed to throw us into. Yes, gov­ern­ments will crum­ble. Civil order will fail, briefly. But then, before any per­ma­nent dam­age is done, Black­wa­ter will restore order. Hal­libur­ton will rebuild. Cit­i­group will pro­vide the means for com­merce to resume.

The new world will look much like the old one, but sleeker, more stream­lined. The cor­po­ra­tions will be in direct con­trol, rather than hav­ing to work through the inef­fi­cient prox­ies of “demo­c­ra­tic gov­ern­ments.” Multi­na­tional cor­po­ra­tions will have rid them­selves of what had become an annoy­ing par­a­site, and had the oppor­tu­nity to sweep away smaller com­peti­tors that still relied on that par­a­site to function.

And really, they’ll point out, what has really changed? The same peo­ple — or angels — are mak­ing the deci­sions now that made the deci­sions before. Now they just don’t have to go through the the­ater of “ask­ing permission.”

So now the only ques­tion remain­ing is the detail of how they man­age to play this intri­cate game of chess from two gen­er­a­tions removed. The angels aren’t caus­ing the down­fall of world gov­ern­ments directly. They’re manip­u­lat­ing the demons, who are in turn manip­u­lat­ing the power-​​hungry and eas­ily led. I already have a work­ing model of what that would look like in the mod­ern Amer­i­can Tea Party, a sup­pos­edly “grass roots” move­ment that is funded and sub­tly guided by billionaires.

The scary part is how plau­si­ble it is. How eas­ily multi­na­tional cor­po­ra­tions could sim­ply do with­out nation states. Good thing we don’t have to worry about that in real life, right?

First off, no, I’m not quit­ting writ­ing. But over the past week I’ve had some real­iza­tions that made me rethink what I’m doing.

I started off NaNo this year on a slow pace, and it never really got any faster. And with each pass­ing day, I felt more and more pres­sure to catch up. I was also putting in full, men­tally drain­ing days at work (I’m half the IT depart­ment for a regional HVAC dis­trib­u­tor) and was spend­ing all my off hours time at write ins. It was wear­ing me down, and it showed. In par­tic­u­lar, I started devel­op­ing small ill­nesses and injuries that in the past have been warn­ing signs that I’m push­ing myself too hard.

And then it hit me. I don’t need to do this. I’ve started NaNoW­riMo four times now, and “won” twice. I know I can do it. I also know I don’t have to.

A lot of pro­fes­sional authors like the idea of NaNoW­riMo but don’t par­tic­i­pate them­selves because writ­ing a novel is what they already do every day. And it finally dawned on me that this applies to me as well. When I’m done with Cru­sade, my edi­tor and I are going to tackle get­ting Rev­e­la­tion ready to post on the var­i­ous ebook­stores (Ama­zon, iTunes, B&N, etc.). Then I’m going to write Jihad, the third book in the Between Heaven and Hell tril­ogy. Then I’m going to edit Cru­sade. And so on. I’m going to be writ­ing every day, or nearly so, all year round. So why kill myself to meet an arbi­trary dead­line I’ve already proven I can beat?

So best of luck to all of you still try­ing to beat NaNoW­riMo this year, espe­cially those of you who have never won it. I’m going to plod along at my own speed.

5 Col­lat­eral Damage

Daniel hefted his weapon for th enext engage­ment and won­dered if he was going crazy. Con­structed of high-​​dnsisty plas­tic, the weapon looked liike a giant super soaker. It was black, matte fin­ish, and with­out its pay­load would f be far hlighter than the sub­ma­chine guns they’d nor­mally used. The reser­voir was filled with high mlar hydro­clhoric acid. It should be enough to dis­solve a demon faster than he could regen­er­ate. Aor so the sthe­ory went.

They were in a van this time, not a choop­per. Dante had been released from the hos­pi­tal wand was fol­low­ing their moviement s from base. He’d be in con­stant radio con­tact with thism, and was able to see from their help­ment mounted cam­eras and gps where they were and what they were doing. More impor­tantly, he’d be able to see what was behind them as well by tap­ping into secu­rity camers bfrom nearby ATMs and busi­nesses. Daniel wasn’t sure that was strictly legal, but Uriel assured them there would be no adverse con­se­quences, every­thing was taken care of.

Well, every­thing ecx­cept Rufariel. Their tar­get was still out there, and they were mak­ing a sec­ond try for him in as many weeks. This time the strike would be in day­light, and they should have the advan­tage. Rufariel had been pot­ted in (neigh­bor­hood) a largely aban­doned com­mer­cial dis­trict hit hard by the reces­sion. It was a com­mon place for San Francisco’s street gangs to do busi­ness„ and word was Rufariel was tak­ing a weapons ship­ment from overseas.

Jack was in the back of the van with im, and they were both wear­ing their stan­dard black com­bat fatiqgues, along with acid-​​resistant gloves just in case the giant qswirt guns started to leak. Jack didn’t seem any more san­guine about their choice of weapons dhan Daniel did, but was the best shot they had. Sandy was dri­ving, and would also be back­ing them up with a flamethor­wer in case they needed to make a quick retraeat.

Com­ing up on our tar­get, gen­tle­men, Dsandy sasid from the front of the­van. Get reeady to hit it.

Jack to his posi­tion next to the door and Daniel formed up behind him. They’d prac­ticed this part, and should be able to dis­perse cleanly. If Sandy did his job right, They’d have a clear shot at Rufariel right wasy and would be able to pin him down under streams of acid . The whole engage­ment should last a minute, maybe too.

Asus­ming every­thing went as planned. And Daniel was sure it wouldn’t No bat­tle plan ever sur­vived con­tact with the enemy.

Here we go!” Sandy said, Pop the door!

Jack flung the door open and They saw Rufariel oal­ready run­ning away from a crate next to the hare hosue they’d pulled up along­side. Thwo twen­tysome­thing in gan col­ors ran the toher way

Shit! HJack said. Go go go!

Daniel burst out of the van after Jack and they both chased the flee­ing demon. So much for catch­ing him by sur­prise­and get­ting him in a tidy cross­fire, Daniel thought. Rufariel was run­ning full tilt between build­ings, and was extend­ing the gap between them. He wasn’t car­ry­ing three gal­lons of hyu­drochlo­ric acid, and was fsater than an agver­age humand to begin with.

Daniel heard Dante’s void in his ear. Sandy, we’re blown, cir­cle the van north by three blocks and try to cut him off.

Roger that, Sandy said, cool as ever in bat­tle. He only seemed to get excided then they weren’t fighting.

As they ran, Jack tried a shot with the squ­uirt gun. The shot went wide and started chew­ing a hole in a Dump­ster. Shit! he said.

Hold your fire until you get closer, Dante said. You’re out of range any­way. Those things are only good for thirty feet. Think pis­tol ranges, not rifles.

Jack didn’t reply, but instead put on more speed. .

Rufariel came up to a cain­link fence and had to climb over He made it in three strides, but it allowed Jack to get a lot closer. He ffired at the fence reather than climb­ing it and ran through the gap where the acid sev­ered the links. Daniel saw smal siz­zles of drops of acid on Jack’s fatigues, but Jack didn’t seem to notice. Daniel ran through the fence and turned a corn­der to see Jack nail Rufariel with a shot of acid. The demon screame­dre­versed direc­tion, chrarg­ing right at Jack. Jack fired again, open­ing up a hole in RRufariel’s chestjust before the demon shoul­der checked him to the ground and vaulted over Daniel.

Get him! Jack said, and Daniel ran after the demon, heard in Sandy in the van pull up onbe­hind him, in the direcd­tion Rufariel had been going.

Well, shit, Sandy said.

Daniel kept up the pur­suit, hear­ing Jack get up and start run­ning behind him. Rufariel had opened up another lead, and Daniel was doing every­thing he could to make up ground when the demon jukes into a warehouse.

In there! Daniel said and ran to fol­low.. The ware­house was full of crates and con­tain­ers, so it wasn’t aban­doned, but it was wlcearly long term stor­age. The own­ers couldn’t have been there recently. He saw Rufariel turn between some crates, and fired his acid gun. The shot missed, and started burn­ing into the con­gtr­rete floor.

Where is he? Jack said.

Up there, Daniel pointed with the bar­rel of the gun. He ducked to the left.

I’ve got eyes on all the exits, Dante said. He can’t get out of the buidling with­out me seeing.

Jack motioned for Daniel to fol­low the way the demon ran while he looped around the crates. Daniel nod­ded, think­ing they might just get their cross­fire anyway.

Daniel crept along the crates, keep­ing his gun pin­nated in front of him. He heard shuf­fling, and what sounded like wheez­ing. Even in the height of pur­suit, he didn’t notice the demon even breath­ing hard. It didn’t make sense.

Daniel swung around the cor­ner and every­thing fell into place. Rufariel was there, hold­ing a home­less woman and her child in front of him. They’d clearly been squat­ting int he ware­house, and now they were human shields.

He heard Jack to his left, but couldn’t see him around the crates. “Let them go, Rufariel.”

“Or what?” the demon asked, a hint of Cock­ney in his accent. “You’ll squirt me to death? Seems to me these fine folk are all that stops you.”

The kid was about thir­teen, a boy. He looked more con­cerned for his mom than scared for him­self. The mother was ter­ri­fied. “It’s okay, ma’am,” Daniels said. “We’re goign to get you out of this.”

“Bul­locks. You’re the rea­son she’s in it. Take your toys and go home, or I’ll do the kid like I did your pal the other night.”

Daniel felt a renewed surge of anger, but didn’t raise to the bait. He kept his gun at the ready, but not pointed directly at the hostages.

In his periph­eral vision, he saw Jack drop his weapon, let­ting it sling at his side. He drew his pis­tol, a 10mm just like this old FBI issue.

“Ah, ah,” Rufariel said, adjust­ing the kid to be more in Jack’s line of fire. “You don’t want ot per­fo­rate the lad here, do you?”

“YOu’re not walk­ing out of this ware­house, Rufariel. Not now, not ever.”

The woman tried to inter­ject. “Please, we don’t have anythin – ”

“Shut up,” Rufariel said, tight­en­ing his grip. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s the sound oa of cat­tle crying.

Daniel slung his acid gun and pulled out his own sidearm, a nine mil­lime­ter berretta. He eased into a Weaver stance just like Jack had tought him and waited to see and open­ing. He and Jack were at right angles to Rufariel, and it was clearly dif­fi­cult for the demon to keep both squirm­ing hostages at opti­mum angles. He was so focused on his task that he didn’t notice Sandy sneak­ing up behind him.

Daniel did his level best to keep his eyes squarely on Rufariel, not give the demon any sign that there was any­thing at all to look at over his shoul­der. A quick glance at Jack told him that Jack was back to the acid gun.

“So,” Rufariel said. “it’s a bit fo a stand­off, is it then?”

“There’s nowhere for you to go, Rufariel.”

“Mate, I’ve lived a hun­dred of your life­times. I’m not stu­pid.” Shift­ing his grip on the boy to pin him between Rufariel and his mother, the demon freed a hand, drew a pis­tol and took a shot behind him at Sandy.

Sandy answered with a gout of flame from his flamethrower and then every­thing seemed to Daniel to hap­pen at once.

The fire caught both the demon and the mother. The boy ducked out of the way, and as soon as he did, Jack opened fire with acid. Most of it hit the demon, but a few drops landed on the boy’s face and neck, drop­ping him imme­di­ately scr­ream­ing. The mother had dropped as well, and Daniel dropped his weapon to snag a mov­ing blan­ket off one of the crates to drape over her. Another gout of flame singed the back of his hel­met as Sandy opened up again. Daniel rolled the mother in the blan­ket until he was sure the fire was out, then crawled to the boy.

The kid had seri­ous acid burns on his left cheek and the back of his neck, as well as minor burns through the filthy sweat­shirt he wore. The boy was wim­pring in pain. Daniel broke out a water bot­tle to wash off the acid as best he could, and tried to drow out the sounds of com­bat behind him as he dressed the boy’s wounds.

When Daniel turned and looked back to the bat­tle, it was over. Rufariel had been reduced by fire and acid to a bub­bling, smoak­ing heap.

Daniel keyed his mic. Dante, vec­tor in mede­vac. We’ve got two civil­ian casualties.

“Ambu­lance is already en route, Daniel,” Dante said over the radios. “Called them and the cops as soon as I saw the hostages.”

Sure enough, Daniel could hear dis­tant sirens get­ting closer. They won. He tried to triage the woman’s burns as best he could while the cops and EMTs swarmed into the build­ing. Jack gave them what­ever code phrase Uriel had set up to keep them from get­ting arrested, and Daniel helped load the woman and boy onto stretch­ers and wheel them to the ambulance.

One down, thou­sands to go.

• Team fights demon with acid-​​loaded squirt guns, injure bystanders. Daniel ques­tions his actions, place on the team.

---

“Is every­thing pre­pared?” Phillips asked.

“Of course, sir,” John said. “The press releases will go out the minute you start your speech, and the net­works have been advised to tie into the Sen­ate cham­ber. You will have full media coverage.”

Phillips straight­ened his tie in his office mir­ror. He’d only told the com­mit­tee heads that he’d be intro­duc­ing a new bill today, but hadn’t told them any specifics. He wanted their reac­tions on cam­era to be genuine.

“And they’re still dron­ing on about San Francisco?”

“Yes sir. A stroke of divine for­tune, that.”

Phillips smiled. “Well, for us, any­way.” He hadn’t planned for there to be an alter­ca­tion with a demon spilling over into civil­ian casu­al­ties, but he wished he had. Such a thing had hap­pened ear­lier in the day, and the net­works were doing their stan­dard trick of hov­er­ing around where some­thing sig­nif­i­cant begun and ended before they got there. Well, now they’d have even more to talk about.

This was why he’d been dodg­ing that girl Richard­son from Fox News. He didn’t want to even risk tip­ping her off to what he was plan­ning. He’d con­sid­ered it, as she was the one who’d bro­ken the demon story to begin with, but he wanted this moment to be his. No leaks. He’d be happy to talk to her tomoor­row, of course.

“It’s time, sir,” John said.

Phillips walked out of his office and down the long cor­ri­dor to the Sen­ate cham­ber of the Capi­tol build­ing. The other sen­a­tors and var­i­ous aides were fil­ing through the metal detec­tors. Phillips nod­ded to the build­ing secu­rity as he filed through and walked down the aisle to take his seat.

The first few orders of Sen­ate busi­ness had lit­tle inter­est for him, and he tried to hold his atten­tion and not fid­get. A big part, he knew, of pulling this off was main­tain­ing his com­po­sure and gravitas.

Finally, he heard what he’d been wait­ing for. “I will now yield the floor to my dis­tin­guished col­legue from Texas, Tim­o­thy Phillips.”

“Thank you,” Phillips said, his deep bari­tone echo­ing through the Sen­ate Chamber.

“In over two hun­dred years of his­tory, our nation has faced time and again tri­als and tribu­la­tions. We have faced war­ring nations, the threat of ter­ror­ism, even fought to main­tain the union itself. But we have never faced a threat like the one I pro­pose we address today.

“Many of you have heard, of course, about the demons. I use that word only with great delib­er­a­tion, because I know how trite it sounds to sophis­ti­cated, twenty first cen­tury ears. We have been told our whole lives that those that believe in such things are super­sti­tious. That demons are a metaphor for the evil in human­ity. That may be.

“But they are also a very real threat to every Amer­i­can alive today. They taint our entire recorded his­tory with inter­fer­ence at best, con­trol at worse. They are called demons because we have no other word for them. They are immor­tal, not human, and they walk among us today.”

It was a credit to the tra­di­tions of the Sen­ate that the other ninety eight sen­a­tors in the room didn’t start to boo him off the podium. He saw open dis­dain on many faces.

“I can see by your reac­tions that you don’t believe me. You have all heard of why Sen­a­tor Barn­aby resigned. Yet many of you have told me, in pri­vate, that you believe that to be a smoke screen, a way to cap­i­tal­ize on the para­noia de jeure and avoid hav­ing to use the ridicu­lous code phrase “spend more time with his fam­ily” that we’ve all heard so many times when some­one is forced to leave pub­lic office.

“My fel­low Sen­a­tors, I was there. I saw him for what he was, and he was not human. And yet he sat here among us, lit­er­ally mak­ing the laws of this great nation. How many times before has this hap­pened? How many times have nations gone to war because an immor­tal put the wrong idea in the right head? How many human lives have been lost in the ser­vice of their agenda?

“I know extra­or­di­nary claims require extra­or­di­nary proof, and I am pre­pared to pro­vide that in due time. But first, let me pro­pose what we can do to address this threat.

“You have all just received a draft of my pro­posed leg­is­la­tion. It is short, sim­ple and to the point, as must be all such weighty mat­ters. The Magna Carta, the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence, the orig­i­nal Amer­i­can Con­sti­tu­tion were all sin­gle sheets of paper, not hefty tomes of thou­sands of pages no one ever actu­ally reads. For some­thing this momen­tous, we require sim­ple, plain spo­ken plan­ning and swift action.

“I pro­pose the Con­gress tem­porar­ily sus­pends the first ten amend­ments to the Con­sti­tu­tion of the United States, com­monly known as the Bill of Rights. In par­tic­u­lar, we can­not now afford the first, fourth, fifth and eighth amend­ments. We must be able to track down these inhu­man mon­sters among us by any means nec­es­sary, lest we never be free.

“We talk a good game in this town about free­dom. We pre­tend that it is our most sacred value. But I put to you that we have never been free. We have never been able to gov­ern our­selves with­out inter­fer­ence. Every law we have passed, every treaty we have signed is sus­pect. Did we do it because it was the right thing to do, or because we were pawns on a chessboard?

“So I say to you now to stand with me and defend the free­dom we wax so poet­i­cally about. Stand with me and fight the demonic med­dling in human affairs.Take our coun­try, our world, back from these twisted, sadis­tic overlords!

“Many of you are think­ing, ‘Even if Phillips is right, we can’t just sus­pend the Bill of Rights. It’s uncon­sti­tu­tional.’ And yes, it is. But we can pass the law any­way, and Pres­i­dent Cruz can sign it into law. The ACLU or some other sim­i­larly mis­guided orga­ni­za­tion will sue to over­turn it, and those suits will be appealed by the los­ing side all the way up to the Supreme Court.

“And this, my fel­low Amer­i­cans, is where it gets inter­est­ing. I have spo­ken about this with Chief Jus­tice Robert­son. And he has assured me that the high court will defer hear­ings on the case until such time as the threat has been elim­i­nated. Even­tu­ally, yes, the law will be over­turned as uncon­sti­tu­tional, as it must be. But in the mean­time, we can do what has to be done.”

Phillips stepped out from behind the podium and approached the desks of the Sen­a­tors, not­ing that the CSPAN and major net­work cam­eras were track­ing with him. He con­tin­ued, his boom­ing voice car­ry­ing even with­out the microphone.

“And now, my fel­low Amer­i­cans, the proof I men­tioned ear­lier. I would like to direct everyone’s atten­tion to Sen­a­tor Cush­ing of West Virginia.”

Cush­ing, a forty-​​something man with aver­age fea­tures and an Appalaichan drawl, leaned back in his chair. “What do you need from me, Tim?”

With­out a word, with­out another sound, Phillips reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a slim hand­gun made of non-​​metallic com­pos­ites. He aimed at Cushing’s head and fired.

The back of Cushing’s skull sprayed out over the desk behind him as he dropped to the floor. Phillips dropped the gun and held his arms above his head.

“Keep the cam­eras on Cush­ing!” he shouted over the din. “Watch Cush­ing! Watch what happens!”

As Capi­tol police grabbed Phillips’s arms and cuffed his hands behind his back, Phillips kept his eyes locked on the man he’d shot. As he watched, the bone started reunit­ing itself together over a cra­nial cav­ity filled with inflat­ing brain matter.

“Oh my God!” some­one screamed. “Look!”

Phillips stood stock still as they watched the hair regrow out of Cushing’s rebuilt scalp. The corpse sud­denly drew in a loud gasp of breath, and started to rise.

“This is my proof!” Phillips shouted over the cries and screams. “They walk among us! They must be stopped!”

The cam­eras cut away before the for­mer Sen­a­tor of West Vir­ginia started fight­ing his way through the Capi­tol police.

• Phillips intro­duces new leg­is­la­tion that extends the PATRIOT act even fur­ther, effec­tively repeal­ing the Bill of Rights until the Demonic Threat can be erad­i­cated. Imme­di­ately after propos­ing the leg­is­la­tion, phillips pulls out a non-​​metal pis­tol and shoots another sen­a­tor. He shouts to keep the cam­eras on the vic­tim, who imme­di­ately starts to regenerate.

4 Faulty Intelligence

Daniel stood in front of one of the old­est homes in Los Ange­les, a vic­to­rian man­sion on a hill. It wasn’t sub­tle, but he was get­ing the impres­sion that wasn’t the angels style. He reached out and rang the bell.

“Can we help you?” came a voice from some­where inside.

“I’m here to see Uriel,” Daniel said.

“I’m afraid there’s no one here by that name,” the voice said.

Daniel checked the address again. This was def­i­nitely the place, and the gate had opened to admit his car. “I think there is,” he said. “Go get him.”

“One moment please,” the voice said.

Daniel waited, and was about to give up and walk back to his car when the door opened. The archangel Uriel stood in the door­way, dressed in an impec­ci­ble designer suit. The tie alone prob­a­bly cost more than Daniel’s car.

“Daniel, so sorry to make you wait. I’m afriad my staff doesn’t yet know to allow you entry. Most peo­ple, as I’m sure you under­stand, don’t ask for me by my tryue name.” The tall blond angel took a step back. “Please, come in.”

Daniel walked into a den of opu­lence. The paint­ings on the walls were as good as any museum pieces, and Daniel was sure they were orig­i­nals. The fur­ni­ture was all vic­to­rian era antique, and he was sure they were orig­i­nals too. Noth­ing but the best. Uriel directed him to a pair of wing­back arm chairs and directed him to sit.

Before Daniel could start talk­ing, a ser­vant dressed in a for­mal uni­form came out and laid a tra­di­tional sil­ver tea set­ting in front of them, then poured a cup for fDaniel and Uriel. The angel said noth­ing until the ser­vant retreated.

Pick­ing up his tea, Uriel said, “I’m afraid I have a weak­ness for the British Empire. It was a good time for us.” He sipped discretely.

Daniel didn’t touch his tea. “Uriel, we almost lost Dante last night.”

“Yes, I read Jack’s report. Dante was for­tu­nate to have a sur­geon of your skill near at hand.”

“He shouldn’t have needed me,” Daniel said. “Did you know that an elec­tro­mag­netic pulse wouldn’t dis­rupt the nanites that make you and the demons immortal?”

“Why, Daniel, I’m hurt that you would ask. Of course I didn’t. I wouldn’t have sup­plied it to you if I had. You well under­stand that such tech­nol­ogy didn’t even exist until recently, so we’ve never had any expo­sure to it. The idea was Dante’s, and it was sound.

“Under­stand, Daniel, that we don’t know much more about what makes us immor­tal than you do. We don’t remem­ber our ori­gins any ore than humans remem­ber being bordn. We’ve sim­ply always been. Only recently, with the help of you, Suaan and the rest, have we dis­cov­ered that there is a tech­no­log­i­cal, sicen­tific rea­son why we don’t die, don’t get sick, heal so quickly. We didn’t know before.”

“But,” Daniel said, “You’ve been at war with the demons for mil­len­nisa. You’ve fought them. Surely some­thing had to work? You’ve had so much time for trial and error, and nothing?”

“Noth­ing you’d be able to use,” Uriel said. “In all of his­tory, since before humans start­ing record­ing the years, only a hand­ful of us have ever died. And never in com­bat. The only thing I’ve ever seen inkill an immo­prtal is com­plete anni­hi­la­tion. Light­ing worked once, intense fire. There really isn’t any­thing else. If there were, believe I would have told you.”

ADaniel sait and looked around, at the price­less fun­r­ni­tionag, swork­ing of art. So much wealth, power, and to not have the one thing they needed.

“Waht about acid?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Uriel said. “It’s pos­si­ble, if the acid is strong enough to sidis­solve the demon faster than it can regen­rate. But it’s never been tried.”

“It’s some­thing to think about, ” Daniel said. “But some­thing else has been eat­ing at me. ”

“And what would that be, Daniel?”

“Fight­ing them one by one is doomed to fialure. You know that, right?”

“I’m not fol­loi­wng you, I’m afraid.”

“We will never know for sure we got them all, right? No mat­ter how long we hunt them.”

We can be rea­son­ably sure, Uriel said.

There has to be a bet­ter way. Do they aver gather in a sin­gle location.

If they ever did, I doubt they would any­more. WThey know they’re being uhunted now. Con­gret­gat­ing would just be invit­ing attack.

Look in to it, will you” Daniel said as she stood. We need every break we can get.

By all means, Deaniel.

---

Susan checked her email and pounded the desk in frus­tra­tion. Noth­ing. still. She’d been try­ing to get a response from Sen­a­tor Phillips’s office for a week, and wasn’t get­ting any­where. They weren’t even respond­ing to her emails. It was infuriating.

Phi9llips was mak­ing a name forhim him­self on the basis of her report­ing, but he woudln’t return ouh­her calls. She had one more ace up her sleave, though.

• Daniel pumps Uriel for ideas on how to kill a demon, doesn’t get much
• Susan tries to get an inter­view with Phillips, fails.

Tim­o­thy Phillips looked out on the crowd from the wing of the stage. In the large ball­room of a Dal­las lux­ury hotel, he’d man­aged to gather five hun­dred of the rich­est, most influ­en­tial busi­ness­men in Texas. Oil men, tele­com CEOs, heads of the grow­ing pri­vate secu­rity indus­try, all tak­ing time out of their sched­ules to see what their senior United States Sen­a­tor had to say. He straight­ened his tie.

“Quite a crowd, sir,” said John, his most trusted aide. Tougher than he looked, John always reminded Phillips of that British egghead from the talk­ing ape movies back in the sev­en­ties. He liked those.

“Indeed,” Phillips agreed with his rich bari­tone that sounded so good in cam­paign ads. Phillips was a bar­rel of a man with a ruddy com­plex­ion and round fea­tures that fit the macho Texas expec­ta­tion. He was big­ger than life, or so he made peo­ple believe. In his expe­ri­ence, the more peo­ple believed, rather than thought for them­selves, the bet­ter it was for him.

The event orga­nizer came over and nod­ded to him, to see if he was ready. To stand out in front of all that money? He was born ready.

“Ladies and gen­tle­men,” the orga­nizer said at the podium, ampli­fy­ing his reedy voice through the hall, “please wel­come Sen­a­tor Tim­o­thy Phillips!”

Phillips strode out on the stage to applause, nod­ding to promi­nent donors in the crowd. He took his place behind the podium and grabbed the sides with two strong hands. When the applause died down, he began.

“My friends, we’re here today to address the most dire threat this nation has ever seen. As many of you have seen in the media, we have been over­run. Human­ity is not, has never been, free. We have been mere pawns. I refer to the dme­onic meance. Many of you may not believe in the immor­tal threat. I didn’t either, at first.

“But friends, I have seen the evi­dence. Here in our own home state of Texas, I have seen fiends that can­not be killed. I have seen it with my own yees and seen the desc­truc­tion ytyah can cado.

“But friends, I have seen the proof with my own iees. Mayny o f you know that my esteemed , well for­merly esteemed col­legegue Sen­a­tor Barn­aby has resigned from cgov­ern­ment ser­vice. I cN tell you way,hwhy. I can tell you what I have seen with my own eyes.

“:Shortly after the story broke on the inter­net, Barn­aby started asct­ing strange. I hadn’t take a look at the ros­ters of alledged demons, of course, because I paid it no more mind that you have. I didn’t know that Barn­aby was listed on that ros­ter as Fariel, a demon last known by that name in Old tes­ta­ment times. One day men dressed in black com­bat fatiqgues showed up and asked Barn­aby to step aside. He refused. They tried to arrest him. At first, I ewent to his aide, eve3n tough he was a mam­ber of the other oparty, as I would for any sen­ate col­lege. I was pushed aside before I could intervene.

And then I awsw some­thing I will take to my grave. The men shot Barn­aby, right in the checst with auto­matic weapons. Instead of foalling and dieing, Barn­aby smiled at them. He charged at the men and by frmy frindends I swear this is true began tear­ing them apart with his bare hands. I aasaw him rip the hiead from the shoul­ders of one man before punch­ing his fist tyhrough the checdt of another. It was car­na­give I had never seen before and wish never to see again.

after he fin­ished destroy­ing the assout­lyt team, Barn­aby left, walk­ing out of the Capi­tol build­ing under his own con­sieder­able power. He never returned. and workd came out the next day that he had cho­sen to resign to “spend more time with his family.”

Friends, this crea­ture had no fam­ily. This was an immor­tal mon­ster, so thouroughly insin­u­ate­d­into into our midst that I’d worked with him for years and never sus­pected he was any­thing but a con­ge­nial man from Oregon.

Since thien, I have watched, and learned. There are thou­sands of these demons. Whether or not they are indeed the basis for Bib­li­cal demons is still open for spec­u­la­tion, but I can tell you with­out a doubt that they exist, that they can­not be killed, that they are not human and that they are manip­u­lat­ing us for their own nefar­i­ous ends.

They are among us even now. The fact that most don’t yet believe only serves them. They could be any­one. Your partnes, mem­bers of your boards. Your sup­pli­ers, your cus­tomers. They might be on munic­i­pal com­mit­tees with you, might play golf at your club. And the whole time, they’re watch­ing you. Learn­ing how to con­trol you.

I don’t need to reimdn you that this is Amer­ica. This is the land of the free, or so we thought. Our most cher­ished ideal has qal­ways been that we were free to decide our own des­tiny. Now I have learned that this was never true. HWe were never free.

Btut friends, we can be. I am com­mit­ted to hunt­ing dow­nand exxpos­ing the demons for that they are. i am com­mit­ted to return­ing human­ity to our own sovreignty. To will­ing back that most basic right, for which so many thought they died.

But I need your help. Barn­aby wasn’t the only immor­tal in Con­gress, and he was cer­tainly not the only immor­tal in Wash­ing­ton. So many of the them work on K street today, ply­ing their trade of influ­enc­ing our laws, our soci­ety. I need your help to bring tyhe ytruth to light.

You are each, of course, wiel­come to coall me directly and dis­cuss this mat­ter, but you can also donate to my web­site, listed on the fold­ers inf front of you. I’ve also included a portable drive for your com­put­ers that cony­tains the deataabase of demonic iden­ti­ties. Please believe me when I say this is the most impor­tant call to action you have ever received. It is time to take our coun­try back. To take our soci­ety back. Thank you.”

Phillips walked off the state to thun­drous applause.

---

Jack sat his his office, star­ing at reports on his computer.

Theyt were set up in a com­mer­cial office space Uriel had pro­du­cured for hem. It wasn’t much, but it was more than enough to store their geara and serve as a base of oper­a­tions for four men. On his screen, he read online dis­cus­sions from the Crus­dade. Reports from other autom­nomous teams like his of vic­to­ryes, and all too often, defeats.

Last night with Dante had been lucky, by the aver­ages. Most teams had lost at eleast one mem­ber already, some had been com­pletely wiped out. And Jack was start­ing to won­der if Daniel had a point. Why were they really doing this?

After Bagh­dad, Jack had been run­ning on autopi­lot. He saw the demons as just another threat. Just one more enemy to fight. The FBI was com­pro­mised, so he could do it him­self. It seemed easy, seemed right. He, Sandy, Dante and Daniel made a good team. Each had fought the demons already, each brought a nec­es­sary mis­sion spe­cialty to the team. It should have worked.

But last night was dif­fer­ent. And Jack thought he knew why. Because this time, they weren’t sim­ply fight­ing for their lives, fight­ing to escape. This time they had gone look­ing for toru­ble and found it.

Dante and Daniel weren’t pro­fes­sional sol­diers and the train­ing he and Sandy had put them three­ough hadn’t changed that much. Yes, they were more fit, yues they had expe­ri­ence with firearms, but they wern’t soli­diers. Not really.

Well, that wasn’t rure. They hadn’t been sol­diers ytwenty four hours before, but they damn sure were now. They’d seen com­bat, and in Dante’s case, padid the price. Jack blamed him­self for not keep­ing an eye ont he kid. He new bet­ter, new that both he and Daniel would need a steady hand in their first action. He should have been there. He should have planned the assu­alt bet­ter. He should have done a lot of things.

Dante was still in the hos­pi­tal, but had been upgraded to sta­ble con­di­tion. He would be able to keep the leg, but he wouldn’t be able to walk on it for a few months. Jack didn’t know if he would even come back to the team when he got out. His par­tic­u­lar mis­sion con­tri­ub­tion would be eas­i­est to do remotely, and he might actu­ally even be more use­ful if he wasn’t in the bat­tle itself, but rather inform­ing it from the out­side look­ing in. Some­thing else Jack should have thought of.

This wasn’t like Iraq. If any­thing, his team was the insur­gent force now. The demons were every­where, and Daniel had a point. Going aftr them one by would take decades. Was that really the best way to approach this? It had seemed like the only way when he got back from Iraq. But now, he didn’t know. It was all he knew how to do. In the army, and then in the FBI, he hunted bad guys. It was all he had ever done, ever wanted to do. And the demons were bad guys like no other.

So why wasn’t this clearer? Why did he feel so damn help­less? He’d lost men in com­bat before. It always tore him up, but this was dif­fer­ent, some­how. This time he wasn’t sure the mis­sion was even the right mis­sion. One up side to the Cru­sade being a lead­er­less move­ment only bankrolled by the angels was that there was no hier­ar­chi­cal com­mand and con­trol for hte demons to dis­rupt. But the down side was that there was no one call­ing the shots, either. They were on their own, left to their own devices. Their own judg­ment. And Jack wasn’t sure he trusted his.

He closed the lap­top and left the office. He had another mis­sion to plan, but today wasn’t the day to do it.

*Jack and Sandy dis­cuss the mission

Jack sat in their office, a non­de­script com­mer­cial space Uriel profied for them. He was going over reports from the field from other Cru­saders, news of vic­to­ries, and all too often, defeats. Last night’s inci­dent with Dante wasn’t atyp­i­cal. In fact, most teams had already lost at least one mem­ber. Some had been wiped out entirely.

Sandy walked in the office, hav­ing fin­ished going over their gear in the garage. “What’s the work, Jack?”

Jack leaned byak in his chair. It’s not good, Sandy. Dante’s lucky to be alive.

Sandy leaned against the end of Jack’s desk. “But is is alive, right?”

“Yeah, I jugt got off the phone with the host­pial, He’ll be okay, he’s been upgraded to spable con­tid­ion. They said he’ll be avail­able ? ready for dis­charge in about a week. He won’t be able to walk with­out cruchtes for months, prob­bly. Depends on how he does in phsy­i­cal therapy.”

“So, good news, then.”

Sandy, we were all lukcy to get out of there alive last night. Sandy and grrr. Dante and Daniel aren’t solid­ers. You and I swhould have paired up with them, kept a steay hand on them. They weren’t ready for combat.”

“Bull­shit, Jack. We trained them well. You know that.”

“Well, but you know it’s not the same. They were green.”

“There’ not any­more,” Sandy said.

“It’s dif­fer­ent for us, Sandy. We were offi­cers in the US army. We searved in Iraq. We knew going in what it wazs like to get shot at.”

“Cor­rect me if I’m wrong, Jack, but Daniel and Dante had fought demons before. Daniel killed one. With your help. I’ve seen the video.”

It wasn’t the same, fihgt­ing for our lives. Last night we went look­ing for toru­ble and it found us.”

Thi s is why you didn’t last in Iraq, you know.”

“Excuse me?”

“Jack, you have to let things go. Every time you lose some­one, you flog your­self about it. War, as you might have noticed, is hell. Casu­al­ties are part of the job. Could we have done bet­ter last night? Sure. We can always do bet­ter. But Dante sin’t dead, Jack. He sur­vived to fight anoyther day, and so did wel. We learned some good lessons liast ngith too. We know an EMP doesn’t do squat to dis­able the nian­ites and we learned that fire sure as hell dri­ves them off. We need to focus on that. MOve foreward.”

“It atake the safety of my men seriously.”

“Jack, Dante ain’t your man. We’re all wequeals here and we’re all here by our won choice. Dante knew what he was walk­ing into last night. He thought he was ready. We thought he was ready. Take the win and move on.”

“:last night wasn’t a win, Sandy. Rufariel is still out there.”

“He’s scre­cy­tra crispy now, though.”

“By now, no he’s not. He’s back to just being immo­prtal and pissed off. Daniel said some­thing intertested iat the hos­pi­tal last night.”

Daniel was more out of his head than you are.”

“Jack ignored the jab. “Daniel asked me what we were really doing, why were wer doing this. And you know what,? I dind’t haven an anderwr. Fight­ing these things one by one will take decades, gen­er­a­tions. We’ll lose thougsands , maybe mil­lions of peo­ple. And we’ll never really know for sure we got them all.”

I could say the same thing about ter­ror­ists, Jack. And we fought them. Is this really any dif­fer­ent than Iraq? Afghanistan?

There has to be a bet­ter way, Jack said. Three has to be a way to make a dif­fer­ence. Right now we’re not doing it.

We’re learn­ing, Jack. It’s early int he game.

dammit, Sandy, this isn’t a game. We’re doing a lot bet­ter than most teams, did you know that? We haven’t lost any­one yet.

We had to train up two scivil­ians. We started late.

Are you say­ing you expect to uselose someone?

Don’t you? ack, are you hear­ing a damn workd I say? This is war! We are going to lose peo­ple. You , me, daniel, none of us is immunte. But the fight is worth fight­ing. So we do it.

I don’t know if it’s worth fight­ing like this.

Like what?

One at a time. We’re flail­ing aorund in the dark here. We don’t even have a reli­able way to kill them yet.

Jack, it ain’t lik,e they’re all hud­dled to gether somwhere. We have to fight them one at time. That’s wehere they are. As for how to kill them, Dante’s emp idea was a good way­one. We all thought it made sense. It didn’t work. So we come up with anty­oher idea. And onoythere. Even­tu­ally, we’ll find some­thing that works. And wehen we do, we tell the oth­ers. Isn’t that the point of this?This whole network?

Maybe, Jack said. But we bet­ter come up with some­thing quick. We can’t afford to keep tak­ing it in the shorts.

Sandy clapped Jack on the shoul­der. “Chear up, Jack. We’ll get ‘em.” Sandy walkede out of the office, and jack just stared at his comptuer, at the logs of war they were already losing.

Ah, the dreaded week two. The inevitable slump after the fast and promis­ing start of week one.

I’ve learned a few things. Or learned them again, since after I learned them I real­ized these are things I already knew but had for­got­ten that I knew so that when I learned them again it was like learn­ing them for the first time only it wasn’t. (and know you know what the inside of my head is like when I’m drafting)

Feel free to revise the out­line as you go

Part of my prob­lem was that – as they always do – my char­ac­ters sur­prised me and started veer­ing away from the out­line as they came up with bet­ter, more inven­tive ways to accom­plish what I needed them to do. Daniel is much more thought­ful and proac­tive than I expected, Susan is more ambi­tious and dri­ven, Phillips is more… Phillips-​​y. As I got closer and closer to chap­ter 6 in the out­line, “Dis­rup­tions,” my sub­con­scious kept throw­ing on the breaks, usu­ally by way of enforced nar­colepsy as soon as I opened my world proces­sozzzzzzzz… Yeah, like that.

It finally sank in on me that the rea­son I was so hes­i­tant to write “Dis­rup­tions” was that because of the actions and atti­tudes already con­veyed in the book, that chap­ter was no longer nec­es­sary. The book actu­ally works bet­ter with it entirely cut out. I cut it, tin­kered with act 2 a bit, which is com­ing up even faster now, and I’m back on track. I can type with­out falling asleep.

But not with­out clos­ing my eyes, because…

Type blind for max­i­mum speed

The other trick I redis­cov­ered is that I can write roughly dou­ble the words in a given span of time if I don’t sweat read­abil­ity. On my PC, I engage the “flow mode” in Write­Mon­key, which dis­ables the back­space and delete keys, forc­ing me to keep typ­ing no mat­ter what. On my iPhone with my Blue­tooth key­board, I just turn the phone over so I can’t see the screen. In either case, I keep typ­ing and don’t worry about typos. If I know I screwed up a word, I just tap the space­bar and keep going.

This is part of the rea­son why I haven’t posted chap­ters 3 – 5 yet. They’re bor­der­line unread­able unless you’re me and know what I meant. But it’s close enough so that I’ll know what I’m doing when it comes time for revi­sion. Speak­ing of which…

No revis­ing (or wire hangers)

This one may be more ger­mane to me than most NaNo nov­el­lers since I’m dumb enough to post my first drafts for the world to see. But another drag on my pro­duc­tiv­ity was unease with my mess of a man­u­script and the need to fix it before I go on. Say it with me: Bad Jeff! No bis­cuit! It is what it is, and if it’s unread­able, it’s a first draft and it’s sup­posed to be unread­able. Keep writ­ing. At this point in the process, you not only have per­mis­sion to suck, but it’s prac­ti­cally expected.

That said I’ll be post­ing chap­ters 3 – 5 later. Some scenes are incom­plete, some need to be rewrit­ten from the ground up, some of them are pretty good if you ignore the typos. But they got me to 13,000, and that’s the impor­tant part.

2 Casu­al­ties Of War

Jack looked out the wind­screen of the Black­hawk as the build­ings of San Fran­cisco sped below them in dark­ness. He was glad Daniel was finally get­ting a chance to find some clo­sure over what hap­pened to his fam­ily, but he hoped the guy would be able to focus on the mis­sion. Rufariel was ruth­less, even for a demon. Jack had known the FBI team that had tried to take him out. Well, he knew them by rep­u­ta­tion. They were pros. None of them made it home.

For­tu­nately, his team had an ace in the hole. The machine was bolted to the floor of the Black­hawk between the cock­pit and where Daniel and Dante sat. It looked like a large indus­trial tur­bine and Jack had no idea how much it had cost. But if Dante’s the­ory about the nan­otech­nol­ogy that made the immor­tals immor­tal worked, it would even the odds considerably.

“30 sec­onds to LZ,” Sandy drawled over the inter­com sys­tem in their head­sets. Through the noise can­ce­la­tion that pro­tected their hear­ing from the rotors, he sounded like he was call­ing up from the bot­tom of a deep well. “Hang on to your butts.”

“Dante,” Jack called. “Be ready to flip the switch the sec­ond we land. We have to catch him while he’s still in range.”

“Yes sir,” Dante said. The hacker had tough­ened con­sid­er­ably since leav­ing his job as an FBI tech ana­lyst, but he was still in the habit of address­ing Jack as a supe­rior, even though every­one on the team were nom­i­nally equals.

“Gonna need you to step up, Jack,” Sandy said, still sound­ing like he was on a lazy fish­ing boat. Jack had been Bob “Sandy” Sandarski’s com­mand­ing offi­cer in Iraq, and he knew that the hairier the sit­u­a­tion, the more relaxed Sandy seemed to be. The oper­a­tive word was “seemed.” Men had dif­fer­ent ways of cop­ing with the stress of bat­tle, and Sandy’s extreme calm was not uncommon.

“Don’t wait for me,” Jack said. He pre­pared for an emer­gency shut­down of the chopper’s sys­tems. They’d have only a few sec­onds, and he didn’t want to ruin their ride.

“Five,” Sandy said. “Four, three, two, touch­down, the crowd goes wild.” The chop­per dropped hard on the roof of a ware­house, and Jack and Sandy were both madly flip­ping switches and shut­ting down every­thing they could as fast as they could.

“Do it, Dante!” Jack said.

From behind him, Jack heard a sharp elec­tric hum and then a WHUMP as the lights went out for blocks around.

Jack was already out of the chop­per. “Go! Go! Go!”

The men ran across the roof in a well-​​drilled line, their weapons ready. Jack fired a round into the door of the rooftop stair­well and kicked it open. They descended into dark­ness lit only by the Maglites strapped the the bar­rels of their H&K submachineguns.

Inside, they fanned out. The ware­house was filled with cargo con­tain­ers, some stacked four high. The tar­get could be between or even inside any one of them. They were on a nar­row metal cat­walk that ringed the ware­house floor below.

“You know the drill, peo­ple,” Jack said. “Look for move­ment, any sign that he — ”

Jack was cut off by the report of a rifle and a bul­let prang­ing off a pipe not six inches from his hel­met. “Down!” he shouted. The men dropped prone on the catwalk.

“Any­one see the muz­zle flash?” Jack asked.

“Neg­a­tive,” Sandy said. “Must have it sup­pressed.” He sounded like he was relay­ing a base­ball score for teams he didn’t par­tic­u­larly care about.

“Shit,” Jack said. They weren’t off to the best start, already pinned down by an as yet unseen enemy. Still, he’d had worse.

He reached into the front pocket of his fatigues and pulled out two flash-​​bang grenades. “Fire in the hole,” he said, his voice echo­ing off the con­tain­ers and ware­house walls. So much for sub­tlety, he thought.

He pulled the pins and flung the grenades in oppo­site direc­tions. They’d just about hit the floor of the ware­house when they went off, loud cracks of sound and blind­ing white phosphorous.

Sandy fol­lowed his lead and dropped flares, cast­ing the ware­house in a flick­er­ing yellow-​​green glow. Wasn’t as good as night vision, but it would do.

Jack started to get up when another shot pranged over his head, fol­lowed almost imme­di­ately by a rifle crack that echoed back and forth until it was impos­si­ble to deter­mine where it had come from. “Dammit!”

Rufariel was smart, far smarter than Asemiel, the demon they’d killed in the sum­mer. He had been, as it turned out, a rel­a­tively low-​​level func­tionary, and had been undone as much by his own over­con­fi­dence as any­thing Jack or Daniel had done. Now demons had the ben­e­fit of warn­ing, of know­ing that humans could actu­ally kill them if they got lucky. It had already hap­pened a few times, cru­saders in Italy, Africa and Korea. Rufariel hadn’t got­ten this far by being stupid.

“Spread out,” Jack said. “Try to sur­round him before we descend to ground level. And hold on tight.” The rest of the team nod­ded, intu­it­ing what he had in mind, and began belly-​​crawling along the catwalk.

Jack pulled another two grenades out of his fatigues. These weren’t flash-​​bangs, though. He pulled the pin on the first one and flung it straight out, let­ting it fall roughly in the mid­dle of the ware­house. It dis­ap­peared behind the cargo con­tain­ers and det­o­nated with a deaf­en­ing thun­der­clap. The con­tain­ers shook and a mix­ture of dust and smoke bil­lowed out the nar­row metal canyon.

Jack read­ied his rifle and squinted through the haze. He was look­ing for any sign of move­ment, any­thing that might be Rufariel try­ing to get away from the heat and con­cus­sion of the blast. He saw nothing.

Take two, then, he thought. He checked to see where the team was. Sandy, Daniel… and there was Dante. They all had set up near long metal lad­ders in the cor­ners of the build­ing that led from the cat­walk down to the floor. He made eye con­tact with each of them in turn, then held up the sec­ond grenade. They nodded.

He pulled the pin and flung it out a bit far­ther, try­ing to drop it down into the next row out from the one he’d hit. The grenade bounced and skid­ded across the top of the con­tainer and det­o­nated just as it veered out over the edge, maybe forty feet above the floor. The explo­sion wasn’t as buffered by the con­tain­ers this time and Jack was flat­tened down to the cat­walk by the overpressure.

He craned his head over the cat­walk and tried to see any sign of move­ment below. The flares were start­ing to sput­ter, and would have to be replaced. He was reach­ing for his last grenade, another flash-​​bang, when he saw just a hint of movement.

Directly below him.

Jack rolled to the side just as the auto­matic fire strafed the cat­walk where he’d been. He saw a glimpse of a fig­ure run­ning in the smoke under the cat­walk, hug­ging the wall of the warehouse.

“I’ve got him!” Jack shouted. “He’s here!” Granted, he couldn’t even hear him­self over the echoes of gun­fire and the ring­ing still in his ears. He pulled him­self up to a crouch, and duck­walked across the cat­walk in pur­suit. Ahead of him, he saw Sandy con­verg­ing on the same cor­ner. He glanced quickly over his shoul­der, just to ver­ify that Daniel and Dante were already on their way down to the floor to cut off the demon’s escape route. This was going bet­ter than expected.

Sandy fired a quick burst down the lad­der, then started to descend, care­fully and with his weapon trained and ready to return fire if nec­es­sary. Jack had him cov­ered, but could no longer see the demon. Some­thing fur­ther into the ware­house had caught fire, and the smoke was obscur­ing his vision.

Sandy reached the bot­tom of the lad­der, and swept around him in a Weaver stance mod­i­fied for the snub-​​nosed MP-​​5 they used, front hand hold­ing the ver­ti­cal grip of the weapon in front of his trig­ger hand. He did a com­plete 360, but didn’t fire. He looked up at Jack and shrugged.

Jack had just started down the lad­der him­self when he heard bursts of weapon­fire on the other side of the warehouse.

---

Daniel heard the shots, almost deaf­en­ingly close, but didn’t see the shooter. It sounded like one of their H&K’s, but he couldn’t be sure it was Dante. He crept slowly along a row of con­tain­ers, his vision flick­er­ing in an out with the dying flares. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a flare, struck it against his leg and tossed it high over­head, look­ing away from the green arc of light until it landed. Unfor­tu­nately, it didn’t do much more than illu­mi­nate the smoke.

He was just near­ing the cor­ner when he heard Dante shout, “I’ve got him!” and fire off a quick burst from his MP-​​5. Daniel ran for­ward and saw Dante crouched behind a wooden crate. The hacker popped up and fired again.

Daniel tracked to where Dante was fir­ing and saw the demon Rufariel, wear­ing sim­ple work clothes rather than the designer suits Asemiel had favored. The bul­lets from Dante’s gun raked up the body of the demon, and Daniel added his own pair of three-​​round bursts right to the demon’s cen­ter mass. Rufariel fell over back­ward from the kick.

Dante jumped out from behind the crate. “We got him!” he shouted. Daniel was about to tell him to get back behind cover when he heard the demon’s voice behind him.

“My turn.”

Daniel dove behind the cargo con­tainer as Rufariel sprayed auto­matic fire first at him, then back towards Dante. Daniel saw Dante duck back behind the crate.

The demon smiled. He aimed at the crate and opened fire. The bul­lets tore through the wood and Dante cried out before he fell scream­ing to the ground.

Daniel returned fire towards the demon, tried to cross to Dante, was who was wail­ing in pain. The demon held his ground and fired a burst at Daniel, who was forced to retreat to the cover of the steel cargo con­tainer, stur­dier cover than Dante’s wooden crate.

He heard a whoosh and saw a bright flash of orange light over the sickly green flares. He peaked out and saw that Sandy had hit Rufariel with the minia­tur­ized flamethrower he kept strapped to his back. The demon screamed and retreated, but didn’t fall.

“Tend to Dante, doc, I got this,” Sandy said, with a bit less than his usual drawl.

Daniel darted over to Dante. “It’s okay. I’m here, we’re going to get you patched up.” He started check­ing Dante for injuries, but it only took an instant to see where the biggest trou­ble was. A size­able pool of blood had already spread on the dirty con­crete floor under Dante’s left leg.

“Hurts…” Dante said between clenched teeth. Even in the yellow-​​green glow from the flares, he looked notice­ably pale. Already going into shock, Daniel thought. Not good.

He pushed Dante back as gen­tly as time allowed and straight­ened the leg, which set off another round of scream­ing. “Stay with me, Dante,” Daniel said, and reached in his pack. He pulled out a small nylon bag which he unzipped to reveal basic sur­gi­cal tools. He first grabbed a single-​​use injec­tor and pressed it to Dante’s neck.

Pfft. The mor­phine went into Dante’s carotid artery. It didn’t seem to make much dif­fer­ence, but that was what Daniel had to work with.

He grabbed some shears and sliced open the leg of Dante’s fatigues with a quick, well-​​practiced motion. The bul­let hole pierced cleanly through the upper thigh, through and through. So on the upside, no slug to dig out. But blood was spurt­ing out of both sides with every beat of Dante’s heart. Red, oxygen-​​rich arte­r­ial blood.

Shit, Daniel thought. Nicked the femoral artery. He didn’t have much time. Dante had a hole in one of the largest arter­ies in the body, and would bleed out in min­utes if Daniel couldn’t stop it.

Daniel reached for a retrac­tor, the steel teeth gleam­ing green. “This is gonna hurt, buddy,” he said to Dante. He got an inar­tic­u­late moan in return. Daniel jammed the retrac­tor into the wound and spread it, open­ing a chan­nel down to the artery. Dante screamed and pounded the con­crete with his fists.

Daniel peered into the wound, wish­ing he had some lig­a­tion to clear the blood out of the way. It looked worse than he thought. The artery wasn’t nicked at all, it was sev­ered and had retracted up the leg. There was no way to get to in the field. “Shit shit shit…” Daniel said as he reached for a tourniquet.

He wrapped the band around Dante’s upper thigh, hip to crotch. It didn’t fit, the dam­age was too far up the leg. He tight­ened it down any­way, which slowed, but didn’t stop the blood flow. Dante passed out, so at least he didn’t have to deal with a thrash­ing patient.

Mak­ing sure the retrac­tor was secure, he reached for (tong thingy) and reached into the wound. He heard Jack’s voice behind him, but couldn’t tell what he was say­ing, and both Jack and Sandy had seen enough bat­tle­field triage to know not to inter­rupt the medic with stu­pid ques­tions like, “Is he going to make it?” They knew ask­ing those ques­tions vastly increased the chance of a “no.”

Try­ing to fol­low the warmth of the blood, Daniel pushed the (thingy) fur­ther up Dante’s leg as he grabbed a clamp with his other hand. There it is, he thought, feel­ing the end of the gush­ing tube. Slip­pery bastard…

He got a grip on the end of the artery and pulled. Even uncon­scious, Dante moaned. The pain had to be unthink­able. He almost lost it, tight­ened his grip, and finally fished out the artery into the open. He clamped it shut, which both stopped the major bleed and kept the artery from retract­ing up the leg again. Hands drip­ping blood, Daniel grabbed his sutures and a nee­dle. Another minute, and he had the artery sewn shut, good enough to move him to a proper ER, anyway.

He quickly checked for other wounds, but mirac­u­lously, only the one bul­let man­aged to hit Dante through the crate. He’d been lucky, all things considered.

Still on his knees, Daniel said, “We’ve got to get him to a hos­pi­tal. Now.”

“Ambu­lance is already en route,” Jack said.

“And Rufariel?”

“He got away. The EMP didn’t work. He was still immor­tal when we hit him.”

“So all of this was for noth­ing,” Daniel said. He slumped, still kneal­ing in Dante’s blood as the sirens approached.

---

Half an hour later, Jack stood with Daniel and Sandy in the wait­ing room of the ER. Dante had been wheeled in for surgery, but they thought they’d be able to save the leg. So far, that was the only good news of the evening.

All three of them were quiet. The two war vets knew any­thing they said would be trite, and Daniel was lost in his own thoughts. Jack felt for the guy, but was also immensely proud of him. He’d saved Dante’s life back there. He knew Daniel had been a gifted trauma sur­geon until a mis­take cost a woman and her unborn child their lives and him his job. And Jack had seen first­hand on sev­eral occa­sions how Daniel car­ried him­self in a fight against immor­tals. He knew the kid would do great, but what he couldn’t pre­dict was how he’d take such an intense setback.

And they hadn’t even lost Dante. Bat­tle­field medics had to be pre­pared to lose patients. You couldn’t save them all. He’d seen this in some medics in Iraq. Gen­er­ally speak­ing, com­bat docs had one of two looks about them. Steely eyed con­fi­dence because they knew they were the best at their jobs and saved the lives of their com­rades, or a glassy, thou­sand yard stare because they’d seen too many of their own die under their hands. Daniel seemed to be tip­ping to the latter.

“Daniel,” Jack put his hand on Daniel’s shoulder.

“Not now, Jack!” Daniel shook it off and stormed out­side. Jack followed.

“Daniel, you saved him. Dante’s going to be okay.” Jack said, keep­ing his dis­tance, but mak­ing it clear he wasn’t going away, either.

Daniel spun to face him. “What if he didn’t? He almost bled out, Jack. They had to replace over half his blood vol­ume on the way here. Another few sec­onds, even, and — ”

“And noth­ing. You saved him. You did your job.”

“And what is that job, Jack? We’ve been play­ing G.I. Fuck­ing Joe for three months, while those things have been run­ning around free, and the first time we try to take one down, he almost kills one of us. What the hell are we doing, Jack?”

“The EMP didn’t work as we expected — ”

“That’s a fuck­ing understatement.”

“ — but that’s okay. We know not to waste any more time try­ing to attack the nanites them­selves. We’ve just learned one more way not to make a light bulb. Trial and error is part of this job.”

“Except that when we fall on the ‘error’ side some­one almost gets killed. We don’t have time to fuck around like this, Jack, and we def­i­nitely can’t afford to spare the bodies.”

“Dante’s still with us, Daniel. He can do most of his job out­side direct com­bat anyway — ”

“Were you even there, tonight, man? Rufariel could have slaugh­tered all four of us and then gone to get a burger. We didn’t even slow him down. He was toy­ing with Dante, Jack. I saw it. He was hav­ing fun. If the demon had really wanted us all dead, we’d be just like your bud­dies in the FBI.”

Jack said noth­ing. The com­ment stung, but Daniel was right. It could have been much, much worse. Instead Jack stood there in the cold night wind, and waited for Daniel to get the rant out of his system.

“This is fuck­ing stu­pid,” Daniel said. “Try­ing to kill the demons one by one, in direct com­bat, what the hell were we thinking?”

Jack didn’t respond.

“No, really, Jack, I’m ask­ing. What were we think­ing? We’d nar­rowly avoid­ing get­ting killed by Asemiel, sev­eral times over, and since then we’ve learned he was the fuck­ing Bar­ney Fife of demons. How in hell did we ever believe that we could take on demons play­ing their A game?”

“Because we don’t have a choice, Daniel. If you have a bet­ter idea, I’d love to hear it. But until you come up with one, fight­ing them one on one is all we can do. We try, we take our chances, be as smart about it as pos­si­ble, and learn from our mis­takes. No one has ever, in recorded his­tory, fought them directly before. We’re the first. So we have to learn as we go.”

“And get peo­ple killed.” Jack noticed that Daniel still had Dante’s blood all over him. We need to have changes of clothes handy, he thought.

“Yeah, Daniel. Some­times we will get peo­ple killed. Some­times inno­cents, some­times one of us. But that’s the price we pay.”

“There has got to be another way.”

Jack was reach­ing the edge of his patience, but hadn’t gone over yet. Every new­bie went through this. To Daniel’s credit, they usu­ally threw up too, after their first real action, but Jack fig­ured Daniel got past that part when he’d been an ER doc.

“Daniel, this is the only way we have. And I don’t need to tell you how vital our job is. You know why we’re here. What’s at stake. You know bet­ter than any­one. With­out the demons, your fam­ily would still be alive and you’d still be try­ing to be invis­i­ble in D. C.”

“Fuck you, Jack. They make you do a psych rota­tion, you know. I know what you’re doing bet­ter than you do. Want me to explain how that kind of manip­u­la­tion works on a neu­ro­log­i­cal level?”

“If it will get you past this and back on track, sure. Go right ahead.”

“So that’s it? You want to just go right back to work in the morn­ing like this didn’t hap­pen? Like Dante didn’t almost die?”

“No,” Jack said. “I want us to go back to work tomor­row morn­ing like Dante didn’t die. Because he didn’t. He’s still alive, and that’s thanks to you. But if you can’t get past this, if you can’t put a close call — and that’s all this was — aside and do the job, then maybe we can’t use you. You’re a gifted medic and a good fighter, and no one has more expe­ri­ence with immor­tals than you, but we need your head in the game.”

“I’ll see you in the morn­ing, Jack,” Daniel said, and stalked away into the night.

I’m mak­ing progress on Cru­sade, which cur­rently stands at 4223 words. I’m a bit off the NaNoW­riMo pace of 5,000 words before today, but I can catch up pretty eas­ily. That fact that some of my writ­ing bud­dies are already over 10,000 DOES NOT BOTHER ME AT ALL. REALLY.

Ahem.

The good news is that what I’m writ­ing is sur­pris­ing me with how good it is. I’ll let you be the judge as soon as I get chap­ter 2 fin­ished, of course, but this is com­ing out much bet­ter than what I had in my head. So if the really good stuff comes slower than the aver­age stuff, I’ll take that.

Any­whoosle, my friend Robin, who has always been uneasy with Susan Richardson’s char­ac­ter, sent me an inter­est­ing arti­cle yes­ter­day and said it reminded her of Susan. To sum­ma­rize, it pos­tu­lates that a big rea­son female Tea Party can­di­dates like Sharon Angle, Chris­tine O’Donnel and yes, even the orig­i­nal Mama Griz­zly her­self, Sarah Palin have lost is that there is an inher­ent con­tra­dic­tion between what they say and who they are.

The main prob­lem with Mama Griz­zly can­di­dates is that they present a con­tra­dic­tion, lay­ing claim to fem­i­nism while denounc­ing most fem­i­nist ideals. Sarah Palin, with her pecu­liar genius, cre­ated the term Mama Griz­zly to ratio­nal­ize this con­tra­dic­tion. The Mama Griz­zly could be ambi­tious with­out being fem­i­nist, could be fierce with­out being threat­en­ing, because her fem­i­nist means are in ser­vice of anti-​​feminist ends.

And that really does sum up the Susan that has always existed in my head. I’ve missed the mark sev­eral times now, off on either side, try­ing to pin down her mix of Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tivism and jour­nal­is­tic ambi­tion. But this dri­ves home that my mis­take with Susan was only look­ing at her char­ac­ter within each book rather than over the whole tril­ogy. From that larger per­spec­tive her char­ac­ter just pops. She ini­tially helps Daniel and escapes the FBI with him because she’s after the story. If need be, she can just claim later she was a hostage. After the motel room in Arling­ton, she’s scared, but more deter­mined than ever to get the story. Bal­anc­ing her ambi­tion against her fear works all the way through killing Asemiel.

But when she meets Uriel, we start to see her reli­gion reassert itself. Espe­cially if Uriel pulls her aside and asks her to doc­u­ment the trip to Iraq. The Joan of Arc bit starts here, slowly build­ing through the third act of Rev­e­la­tion and all of Cru­sade. She’s the cho­sen of God to bring the mes­sage of the angels to human­ity. By the time we start Jihad she’s totally bought into this, and it will take some­thing spec­tac­u­lar from Daniel to make her see the truth.

Basi­cally, I’ve finally rec­on­ciled, in my mind any­way, how she can be a sucker for the angels and still be a tough as nails reporter.

And speak­ing of the angels, some­thing occurred to me about them, as well. The angels have spent the last few cen­turies accu­mu­lat­ing absolutely mas­sive wealth and cor­po­rate power. I pointed out to Josh the other day that while it pre­tends to be a grass-​​roots move­ment, the mod­ern Tea Party is funded by a rel­a­tively small hand­ful of bil­lion­aires. And in the UC uni­verse, the angels own the billionaires.

So while the angels are fund­ing para­mil­i­tary squads of demon hunters like Team Jack, they’re also, way, way behind the scenes, dri­ving the “grass-​​roots” people’s revolt that Phillips taps into. One of the things I’ve always thought was a silly defense of the sec­ond amend­ment is that we need guns to pro­tect against a tyran­ni­cal fed­eral gov­ern­ment. It’s silly because even if you have fully auto­matic machine guns, they have tanks. And bombers. And nukes. They win.

But what if it wasn’t the fed­eral gov­ern­ment ver­sus mil­lions of “Joe the Plumber“s? What if it was really the fed­eral gov­ern­ment ver­sus the pri­vate sec­tor. The National Guard ver­sus Black­wa­ter. Then it starts to look like a real fight. And that’s what we have in Cru­sade. When the time comes for the demons’s ulti­mate vic­tory of chaos over order, they never stop to think where where the chaotic pawns got all that artillery.

Until it’s too late, that is. When the angels, in brand new and gleam­ing white pow­ered armor sim­i­lar to but not the same as the armor all the immor­tals had pos­sessed milen­nia ago, descend into Hell and start slaugh­ter­ing demons, Gabriel is going to point that out to Lucifer. Where did you think all this came from? And then, in mir­ror to John telling Phillips that his ser­vices were no longer required before snap­ping the senator’s neck, Gabriel will tell Lucifer that his ser­vices are no longer required, that the angels can take it from here.

The pol­i­tics and moti­va­tions in this book are com­plex, but if I can pull it off, it’ll be a bet­ter book than Rev­e­la­tion.

braaaaaaaaaaains…

That’s what I could have used yes­ter­day. For some rea­son, I just couldn’t focus. I slept through the “writ­ing hour” from six to seven AM, and never got time to set­tle in at the office. I dropped by Pan­era after work to write with my edi­tor and her min­ion, and man­aged to eke out a bit over 600 words, but the whole day felt like I was think­ing through jelly. And not in a good way.

I need 2,000 words today to stay on the NaNoW­riMo pace of 5,000 words total. 3k will get me back to my own planned pace of 2k per day. I got up ear­ly­ish this morn­ing (only one snooze) but spent most of the time fight­ing with my desk­top PC rather than writ­ing. So I have to squeeze out what I can at the office (while tak­ing care of my users) and really burn through the write in tonight.

Les­son: Write when you can, because you may not be able to write later.