The Unification Chronicles

16: No Harbor

Jack was stand­ing in the Bal­ti­more Police Chief’s office when his phone rang. He excused him­self and stepped out into the squad room.

“Go.”

“I’ve got good news,” Dante said.

“And bad news?”

“Nope, just good news this time. I know we can’t track Frankel’s spend­ing now that they’re using cash, but we can track other things. And one of those other things is boat rentals. Even if you’re pay­ing cash, you have to use an ID for those, and guess who just popped up.”

“Why in the hell would they rent a boat?”

“No idea, but they just pulled out of [what­ever the hell name of that cove was] a few min­utes ago.”

“I’m on it. Call the har­bor mas­ter and but out a BOLO on the RV from the video.”

“Yes sir.”

Jack hung up the phone and stepped back into the Chief’s office. There was no way they were get­ting past him this time.

#

Batarel stood on the pier and looked out over the water. The sun had almost set to the west, and the har­bor was black and still. He knew Cho was out there, and he could think of only one rea­son why they would have gone out for a plea­sure cruise, at night, in eel infested waters. They were try­ing to lure him out to them. Try­ing to make him chase them. Why else, after so care­fully mask­ing their move­ments, would Frankel sud­denly rent a boat in his own name? It was a trap.

Batarel smiled. This was actu­ally turn­ing into an enter­tain­ing hunt.

He stepped onto the boat the Arch­bishop had pro­cured for him, a small speed­boat, black and nearly invis­i­ble against the dark water. He didn’t know what they had planned for him, and he was sure it would be sim­i­larly inef­fec­tive to that stu­pid stunt with the sword, but that didn’t mean he had to lead with his face. He would play their game, but he would play it his way.

And he would win.

#

Daniel sat at the gun­wale the small deck of the skiff, scan­ning the water with the night vision gog­gles Jeff had come back with. So far, he’d seen noth­ing. They were drift­ing in the mid­dle of Bal­ti­more har­bor with their lights on, clear of the ship­ping lanes but still a good dis­tance off shore. They expected Batarel to find them, but they didn’t know how long that would take, or how he would approach. All they knew for sure was that he wouldn’t be able to shoot through the sand­bags lin­ing the gun­wales of the boat, and would have to board them if he wanted to kill them. And as soon as he did that, they’d have him.

“How’s it look, Danny?” Jeff said. He was sit­ting down on the deck, and couldn’t see over the gun­wales to the water. Susan sat next to him. They were straight­en­ing out a large cargo net, and rig­ging the cor­ners to long fiber­glass poles. The plan was sim­ple. Wait for him to board, cover him with the net, fill him full of lead, and then while he was heal­ing tie him up, attach the anchor and heave him over­board. But it only worked if Batarel made him­self vul­ner­a­ble by board­ing their boat.

“Noth­ing so far, Jeff” Daniel said with­out tak­ing his eyes off the water. “Are you sure he knows how to find us?”

“Danny, the immor­tals have agents every­where. They have their fin­gers dug into every aspect of human life, and noth­ing hap­pens with­out their notice. If they wanted to, they could have found out what you had for break­fast the morn­ing before the accident.”

Daniel looked back at Jeff and Susan, and caught Susan’s gaze. He knew about her doubts regard­ing Jeff, and to some extent, shared them. So far, every­thing Jeff at told them about the demons was true. But the guy ram­bled on with sim­i­lar con­vic­tion about Big­foot, gov­ern­ment con­spir­a­cies, alien abduc­tions and every­thing else Daniel remem­bered from The X-​​Files. And appar­ently there was a whole net­work of “seek­ers” out there. It couldn’t all be true. So where was the line? Was Jeff crazy or not? So far, they hadn’t fallen vic­tim to one of his delu­sions, but it was prob­a­bly only a mat­ter of time.

He con­tin­ued his scan of the water. The water was a dark green in the gog­gles, grainy and more choppy because of the dig­i­tal image than the water actu­ally was. It was hard to fil­ter out the dig­i­tal arti­facts from actual waves that might be the wake of Batarel’s boat. He didn’t hear any­thing, no tell­tale buzz of a motor, but he wasn’t sure he knew what to lis­ten for in the first place. And every so often, they were passed by a com­mer­cial freighter that churned up the water and drowned out every other sound.

Right on cue, Daniel saw another freighter com­ing their way, this one mak­ing it’s way in from the Atlantic towards one of the myr­iad piers of Bal­ti­more Har­bor. It was a big con­tainer ship, not nearly the size of an oil tanker, but stacked five high with ship­ping con­tain­ers stem to stern. It would miss them eas­ily, but the wake would rock them a bit. “Here comes another one,” he said.

Jeff and Susan put down the poles and braced them­selves. With their engine off, they were at the mercy of the cur­rents, and the wake of a big ship was an inter­est­ing ride. The ship passed them, and Daniel said, “Hang on.”

The first wave hit them just as they heard the growl of a motor. Daniel tried to raise his night vision gog­gles to see, but the boat was rock­ing too hard. Then they felt a sharp crack across the bow that left them all sprawl­ing on the deck. Some­thing had actu­ally hit them.

Daniel looked up to see Batarel stand­ing on the bow of their boat as the waves from the ship’s wake started to sub­side. “He’s — ” he shouted, then Batarel leaped over the wind­screen and landed admidst them, step­ping solidly on one of the fiber­glass poles.

“Did you really think this was going to work?” the demon said. “You humans are even more pathetic than I thought.”

“We’ve beaten you once already,” Susan said, lev­el­ing one of the hand­guns at Batarel.

“You what?” Batarel laughed. “You igno­rant cow. I’m here, aren’t I? About to end your igno­rant life?”

Susan fired.

The bul­let grazed the demon, but he reached out, grabbed the gun out of her hand any­way and tossed it over­board. “That was your one insult I’ll allow,” he said. “Now it’s time to end this and get on with my busi­ness. You’ve dis­tracted me enough.”

“I don’t think so!” Jeff said as he, hav­ing edged back behind Batarel, chucked one of the sand­bags into the small of the demon’s back. The demon went down to one knee, and Daniel leapt on top of him.

They wres­tled for a bit on the deck. Holy shit, this guy is strong, Daniel thought, as Batarel strug­gled to kick, punch or throw Daniel off of him. It was every­thing Daniel could do just to keep him—

“Arrggghhh!” the demon growled, and Daniel saw one of the K-​​Bar knives stick­ing through his tem­ple, Susan’s hand still on the haft.

“Why won’t you die?” Susan screamed at the demon.

Just then, they were bathed in white light. “What the — ” Jeff said, wheez­ing by the gunwale.

“This is the Bal­ti­more Police Depart­ment!” some­one bel­lowed over a bull­horn. “We have you sur­rounded. Every­one get to your knees with your hands behind your heads.”

“No,” Batarel growled. “I won’t have this. I will. Not. Have. This!” He abruptly stood up, and Daniel was too star­tled by the appear­ance of the police to stop him.

#

Jack was stand­ing in the wheel­house of one of the two Bal­ti­more PD patrol boats, one on either side of the skiff Frankel had rented, and what was left of a small black speed­boat that had appar­ently crashed into the skiff. The skiff was tak­ing on water from a ragged hole in the bow, and there looked like a strug­gle going on down on the deck. They didn’t seem to notice they were sinking.

“What the devil’s going on down there?” asked the police pilot.

“I don’t know,” Jack said. “They were all sup­posed to be together.” Was Frankel an unwill­ing hostage? That’s not how it looked on the video.

Sud­denly one of the sus­pects on the skiff stood up, and, what the hell? He had a K-​​Bar knife stick­ing out of his head. Jack didn’t rec­og­nize the ma—

No, he did rec­og­nize him. It was Hen­driks. The dead guy. Well, that explained the knife. If impale­ment and behead­ing didn’t kill him, what was a hunt­ing knife to the brain going to do?

Appar­ently, make him really angry. Hen­driks started to run and vaulted off of the skiff, bounced off the float­ing wreck­age of the speed­boat and on to the other patrol boat. One of the offi­cers opened fire on him, and—

And Hen­driks punched his fist through the officer’s chest, spray­ing the wheel­house with blood.

“For­get the skiff!” Jack shouted. “Take him out!” Offi­cers on his patrol boat brought their guns to bear and unloaded.

It didn’t even slow him down. Jack watched, futilely unload­ing his pis­tol at the man as he snapped the neck of another offi­cer, scaled the lad­der to the wheel­house in two strides and lit­er­ally ripped the head off the pilot. Then he jumped over the wind­screen onto the bow.

Where the machine gun was mounted.

Jack tried to match him, but landed badly, sprain­ing an ankle at the very least. Hendiks opened fire on his boat in long straf­ing slides, and it was all Jack could do to tilt his machine gun at the engines of the other patrol boat and fire off a quick burst before he was forced to dive off the deck into the chilly har­bor water.

#

Jeff swung the skiff around, painfully aware of its increas­ing list to star­board. They’d be lucky to make it all the way to shore, and he wasn’t sure how far could swim with one leg. He kind of blew his wad on that sand­bag, and was going to be hat­ing life in the morning.

Assum­ing, you know, he was still alive.

They had their lights off, mak­ing them harder to see, and they were run­ning the engine as light as they could. Jeff thought it took a stray bul­let some­where back there, and it was limp­ing along as it was. But Daniel wouldn’t let them make a bee line for shore.

“Almost there,” Daniel said.

The kid was reach­ing out into the water with one of the poles, the net still attached to its tip. He was try­ing to reach the FBI agent, who was float­ing in the cur­rent in a life jacket.

“Grab the net!” Daniel hissed into the dark. “We’ll pull you aboard.” They were nearly a hun­dred meters from Batarel, who seemed to be adrift on the one patrol boat that wasn’t sink­ing. Still within range of his machine gun, but he was still shoot­ing the sink­ing ship and hadn’t found them yet. Jeff had to squint, and sure and hell looked like the demon still had the knife in his head. Note to self, he thought. Stick­ing a knife in an immortal’s tem­ple just makes them really mad. Have to tweet about that.

Daniel started pulling on the pole, and Jeff cut the engine. He grabbed some of the rope and waited. Daniel kept pulling, with Susan steady­ing the pole behind him, until the kid reached over the gun­wale and grabbed the guy. He strug­gled to haul him over the gun­wale, and then they both fell down to the deck, the FBI guy cough­ing and sputtering.

Before the FBI guy could get up, Jeff leaned in and tied his hands behind his back. The fed tried to strug­gle, but he was clearly exhausted from keep­ing his head above water. Jeff had been depend­ing on that.

“Search him,” Jeff said. “I’m going to try to get us to shore before we sink.”

#

Susan watched as Daniel pat­ted down the FBI agent. He pulled out a think leather wal­let and tossed it to her. She caught it with one hand, film­ing with the other. She opened the wal­let and read the ID inside. “Spe­cial agent Jack Har­ris,” she said.

The FBI coughed again. “Yes, that’s me, and you peo­ple are com­mit­ing yet another felony by kid­nap­ping a fed­eral agent.”

“Oh, we’re not going to keep you long, Agent Har­ris,” Daniel said, now check­ing the man for injuries. “But my Hipo­cratic Oath kind of demanded we pull you aboard, didn’t it?”

“Why are you doing this, Cho?” the agent asked. “Why not just turn your­self in?”

Daniel laughed. “Are you seri­ous, Agent Har­ris? Did you see what Batarel did back there?”

“Who?”

“The man you know as Hen­driks. The man you now know isn’t really a man.”

“I know no such thing.”

“Please, Agent Har­ris. You’re an intel­li­gent guy. You have to be, in your job. And you just watch I guy you know should be dead three times over rip some cops apart with his bare hands and sink your boat. What part of that do you need me to explain to you?”

“Hen­driks isn’t my prob­lem,” Har­ris said. “You are.”

“Well, we should all have such prob­lems, Agent Har­ris,” Jeff said. “Right now, our prob­lem is try­ing to get to shore with­out sink­ing, and then try­ing to get out of here before Batarel remem­bers who he was really there to attack.”

“We impounded your camper, you know.”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “I fig­ured as much. That’s why I moved every­thing of impor­tance to our alter­nate trans­porta­tion before we set out on the water.”

“You were busy today!” Susan said.

“I’m an old hand at this, Susie. I’ve had to stay one step ahead of these gov­ern­ment jack­booted thugs for a long time. I have con­tin­gen­cies on top of contingencies.”

“So what are you going to do with me?” Har­ris asked.

“We’re going to leave you safe and sound on the dock,” Daniel said, check­ing the ropes to make sure Har­ris wasn’t try­ing to keep them dis­tracted while he escaped, then start­ing to tie up Harris’s legs. “Really, Agent Har­ris, we’re not the bad guys.”

“That’s for the courts to decide,” Jack said. “Right now you’re fugi­tives and per­sons of inter­est in a ter­ror­ism inves­ti­ga­tion. You’ve already done enough that I could drop all three of you in Gitmo and for­get about you forever.”

“You’re not exactly help­ing your cause, Agent,” Jeff said.

“We’re not mur­der­ers and we’re not ter­ror­ists,” Daniel said. Susan was get­ting it all recorded, and just kept think­ing about how amaz­ing this was going to look online tomor­row. “I’m just a reg­u­lar guy try­ing to get back to my reg­u­lar life, and Susan and Jeff were both kind enough to throw their lives out of whack to help me. I already owe them a debt I can never repay. But we can’t turn our­selves in. You saw what we’re up against, what’s hunt­ing us. We’re safer left to our own devices, try­ing to kill it, than we would be with you. We know this, and if you think about it, you will too.”

Susan could see the pier. “We’re almost there,” she said.

“In more ways than one,” Jeff said.

Susan panned the cam­era to look out over the gun­wale, and was shocked to see that the water was only inches away from over­flow­ing into the pas­sen­ger compartment.

“Susie, put down the cam­era, hon, and start pad­dling,” Jeff said. “This is going to be close.”

“You could untie me and let me help,” Har­ris said.

“I don’t think so, Agent Har­ris,” Daniel said. “We’ll take our chances.” He grabbed the other fiber­glass pad­dle strapped to the gun­wale and they both pad­dled as hard as they could while Jeff coaxed every­thing he could out of the motor, which had begun to sput­ter badly.

Susan felt the boat bump up against the dock just as water started spilling over the sides.

“Every­body out!” Jeff said. He scram­bled onto the dock and helpded Daniel man­han­dle the agent onto the dock. Then Daniel turned, took her hand and guided her up just as the water went from a spill to a pour.

Susan pulled up her cam­era and cap­tured the boat’s last moments as it sank into the black water. “Good­bye, Mary Anne,” she said. “Thanks.”

“All right, let’s not get maudlin,” Jeff said. “Danny, check the ropes one last time.”

Daniel knealt down. “They’re tight, but I think he’ll keep the hands,” he said.

“Is that your pro­fes­sional opin­ion, Doc­tor Cho?” Har­ris said.

Daniel smiled, some­thing Susan didn’t see very often. “As a mat­ter of fact, it is,” he said. “Keep in mind what I said, Agent Har­ris. We’re just try­ing to sur­vive. You’re bark­ing up not only the wrong tree, but you’re not even in the right forest.”

“We’ll see about that,” Har­ris said.

“Good­bye Agent,” Daniel said. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope I never see you again.”

And with that, Susan ran with Daniel and Jeff into the night.

For the past cou­ple days I’ve been stalled in my story. Now a cou­ple days of not writ­ing — well, writ­ing very lit­tle, aver­ag­ing 1,156 a day over the past five days, only 207 words yes­ter­day — may not seem like the end of the world to most peo­ple, but when you’re try­ing to main­tain momen­tum in a 600,000 word project, it’s a con­cern. I’m still moti­vated about my story over­all, but the out­line beats for the last two chap­ters of Rev­e­la­tion fill me with the over­whelm­ing desire to pol­ish my andirons—and I don’t own a fire­place.

In the past, I would have thrown my hands up in despair, cursed my muse back a hun­dred gen­er­a­tions and set­tled in to watch some TV. And as it hap­pens, I did watch two episodes of NCIS and one of Crim­i­nal Minds last night, but this morn­ing, it’s time to get back to work. Because I know why writer’s block hits me.

In the immor­tal words of Richard Drey­fus, this means something.

For me, at least, writer’s block means there’s some­thing wrong with what I’m about to write, and my sub­con­scious is throw­ing on the brakes before I tum­ble off a lit­er­ary cliff. So let’s take a look at those story beats for the last two chapters.

29: Rev­e­la­tion

• Susan and Daniel find out what hap­pened to Daniel’s fam­ily and Stan
• Susan pub­lishes her proof
• The media runs with it, and pub­lic opin­ion wakes up to the immor­tal threat

30: The Hunt Begins

• Gov­ern­ment refuses to acknowl­edge the exis­tence of immortals
• Jack leaves the FBI to join a UN anti-​​demon task force
• Jack recruits Daniel

On the sur­face, they look per­fectly nor­mal, the dénoue­ment of the novel. But that’s the prob­lem. The big bat­tle in chap­ters 27 and 28 was unsat­is­fy­ing to me — a big focus point of things to fix in rewrites — and after that, these two chap­ters lookzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz… Huh? Exactly.

But why are these chap­ters bor­ing? Every­thing that hap­pens in them has to hap­pen, and noth­ing jumps out as hav­ing to hap­pen than isn’t there. So what’s the problem?

Plot-​​wise, these chap­ters are the equiv­a­lent of pas­sive voice. Our char­ac­ters don’t really do much. Stuff just hap­pens around them. They’re react­ing, not acting.

So how do I fix that? By mak­ing the char­ac­ters take a more direct hand in their fate. What really needs to hap­pen in these chapters?

• Daniel and Susan need to learn the increas­ing price — in addi­tion to los­ing Jeff — of bring­ing the truth to light
• Susan has to pub­lish her proof anyway
• While the pub­lic and the media go crazy with the news, the US gov­ern­ment has to dis­count it, set­ting the stage for Cru­sade
• Jack has to leave the FBI — quit or fired? — and join the UN, then recruit Daniel. They’ll get jus­tice for Jeff, Stan, Daniel’s fam­ily and every­one else by tak­ing down the demons. This is where a call­back to Jeff’s tale of post­war vengeance I’ve yet to trans­plant from the orig­i­nal into this ver­sion will add some resonance.

Okay, so how to we make all that hap­pen in two chap­ters and make it char­ac­ter dri­ven, rather than the char­ac­ters just pup­pets act­ing out the plot?

29: Rev­e­la­tion

• Uriel meets the team at Frank­furt with Dante, breaks the news about Daniel’s fam­ily and Stan
• Dante and Susan pub­lish Susan’s proof from Frank­furt, Ger­many (Dante has to help because the demons have take down New Amer­i­can Century)
• Daniel, Jack, Dante and Susan return to the US under Uriel’s protection

30: The Hunt Begins

• Jack calls Lou from a secure loca­tion, Lou reveals that the only rea­son they were allowed in the US at all was that bar­ring them would lend weight to Susan’s story and fires Jack
• Susan deals with the gov­ern­ment pub­li­cally refut­ing her story and the wild suc­cess of her new blog
• Jack recruits Daniel, promises jus­tice for the vic­tims of the demons

See how much bet­ter that is? Now every scene is focused through the eyes of our char­ac­ters, and they’re act­ing, not just hav­ing the story fall on them. It’s stronger, more directed, more inter­est­ing. I also like how Susan’s scene in chap­ter 30 rein­forces the theme in the chap­ter title, given how her hunt is going to shape up in Cru­sade. It’s a nice bit of sym­me­try I wasn’t expect­ing, the kind of thing your story will tell you again and again if you listen.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some writ­ing to do.

15: Req­ui­si­tions

Jeff was almost done with his shop­ping. He liked Bal­ti­more, and wished he’d spent more time here over the years. They had the best crabs on the East­ern Seaboard, and he’d had a great lunch before he started shop­ping. He had most of the essen­tials for the plan he and Daniel had come up with while Susan wrote her arti­cle. He had blan­kets, net­ting, rope and a small anchor. He had all of these loaded into a col­lapsi­ble cart he used for shop­ping, and pulled it behind him as he headed to the last shop on his list.

He opened the door to the mil­i­tary sur­plus store and felt like he was home. Olive green and camo as far as the eye could see, along with the smell of beaten, often repol­ished leather.

“After­noon,” said the man behind the counter, fortysome­thing with a beer gut, but still a hint of mil­i­tary bear­ing. Prob­a­bly served dur­ing the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion. Jeff sup­pressed a shud­der. “Help you find anything?”

Jeff pulled his cart up to the counter. “Look­ing for a few things to round out a hunt,” he said. “Pre­fer to stick to what I know.” He didn’t want to be redi­rected to a WalMart.

“Sure thing, old timer. You in ‘Nam?”

“I was. ’67-’70.”

“I’m hon­ored to help, sir,” the clerk said. Jeff had seen these guys and reassessed his assump­tions. The clerk prob­a­bly never served, but not for lack of try­ing, and idol­ized peo­ple who did. He could use this.

“What’s your name, son?”

“Rus­sell, sir.”

“Rus­sell, I need two of the best K-​​bar knives you have.”

The clerk reached under the counter and pulled out two large knives, slightly curved blade on the bot­tom and ser­rated on top. The metal hafts were hol­low, and should con­tain a col­lec­tion of util­ity tools: matches, a wire saw, etc. The hilt was a small ball com­pass. Jeff picked up each blade and exam­ined them in turn. The edges were sharp, and well-​​maintained.

“These will do nicely,” Jeff said. “What do you have in rifles?”

“Over here,” Rus­sell said, and led Jeff over to a rack of “hunt­ing rifles” that were more com­monly used by snipers. Jeff picked through a few of them before find­ing a [viet nam era sniper rifle] that looked to be in good condition.

“I can pick this up today?”

“Yes sir. When’s your hunt­ing trip?”

“We’re leav­ing tonight, so this is kinda last minute,” Jeff said.

“I’m happy to help out, then,” Rus­sell said.

“What about hand­guns? As a last resort.”

Rus­sell looked like some­one just pantsed him. “Well, I have a few, of course, but you couldn’t just buy one. There’s a cool down period.”

Jeff tried to look as con­spir­a­to­r­ial as he could. “I won’t tell any­one if you won’t, Russell.”

“It’s not like that, sir,” Rus­sell said. “I really wish I could help you.”

Jeff looked down, feigned sur­prise and knelt down to tighten his shoelaces, mak­ing sure Rus­sell got a good long look at the steel he had instead of a shin­bone. “Sorry,” he said. “For­got to check the laces on this thing before I strapped it on.”

He stood back up, and saw that Rus­sel had gone pale. “Rus­sell, please. Help a vet out here. We’re hunt­ing black bear. You ever been on a bear hunt?”

“No sir.”

No sur­prise there, he’d prob­a­bly never been more than five miles out of city lim­its. “They can move fast, espe­cially when they’re hurt. I’m an old man, and well…” he knocked his knu­cles against his calf, and the metal­lic clang was uncom­fort­ably loud in the oth­er­wise empty store. “I need backup. In case that rifle doesn’t do the job.”

“Is there any way, maybe,” Rus­sell said, look­ing for a way out, “you could delay your trip for a few days?”

“Rus­sell, my buddy and I have been plan­ning this for a year, and already had to move it up. The chemo’s kick­ing his ass, son, damn that Agent Orange.” Jeff won­dered if he was lay­ing it on too thick, but Rus­sell was eat­ing it up.

“Oh my God.”

“I know. Sam’ll be with the Lord soon enough. Be we wanted to go on one last bear hunt, some­thing to bring back the broth­er­hood we felt in ‘Nam, you know?”

Rus­sell looked over at the shop win­dows as though inspect­ing an ATF inspec­tor to walk in the door any minute. When he looked back at Jeff, Jeff knew he’d won.

“What do you need?”

#

“Make me happy, Dante,” Jack said.

He was in his car, parked in one of the outer lots of Bal­ti­more Wash­ing­ton Inter­na­tional Air­port. Given that they were in Sil­ver Springs when they bolted, he bet Frankel drove them north of the Dis­trict, rather than loop­ing around and going down into Vir­ginia. He’d been watch­ing the YouTube video again on his phone when Dante called.

“I have good news and bad news,” Dante said.

“Dante, you know I don’t need any more bad news.”

“The bad news is that I still can’t find Richardson’s PC, and the bank records I could find for Frankel were yes­ter­day, when he cashed out his account here in DC. Over fifty grand.”

“That’s impos­si­ble,” Jack said. “The PATRIOT act makes it ille­gal to carry more than ten thou­sand dol­lars in cash.”

“He must have sweet talked some­one. He got it all in one lump. They’re cash in hand, and if they live lean, they could stay off the radar for quite a while.”

“That’s not mak­ing me happy, Dante.”

“I do have some good news, though.”

“And what’s that?”

“The lab emailed me their ini­tial find­ings on that blood from the crime scene. It’s weird.”

“Weird how?”

“The blood cells them­selves seem nor­mal. But there are tiny par­ti­cles in the plasma,” Dante said.

“Par­ti­cles? What the hell does that mean?”

“No one knows. They’re try­ing to get time with a SEM to get a closer look.”

Jack ran a hand through his hair. Why did this kid make him feel so stu­pid? “Great. What’s an SEM?”

“Scan­ning Elec­tron Micro­scope. Should give them a look at it at a higher mag­ni­fi­ca­tion than the optics can get to.”

“And how long will that take?”

“They don’t know.”

“So your good news is that there’s some­thing weird in blood that may or not have come from Hen­driks, and we have no idea what it is, why it’s there, if it’s a con­t­a­m­i­nant from the scene, or what it means?”

“I’m a glass is half full kind of guy.”

Jack pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it for a sec­ond. Then he heard Dante talk­ing again.

“ — you going to be doing?” Dante asked.

“Fol­low­ing a hunch. We know they didn’t fly out of BWI, right?”

“No one match­ing their descrip­tions in the last twenty four hours, no.”

“Then I’m head­ing up to Bal­ti­more. You said if they were in a rural area, they’d be track­able, right?”

“Not nec­es­sar­ily track­able,” Dante said, “but it would be eas­ier to nar­row things down. If we were rea­son­ably sure they were in rural area, we could look at data upload pat­terns and fil­ter out the peo­ple likely to be upload­ing video. With a small enough group to fil­ter through, we might be able to zero in on them before they fin­ish the upload. In a big city, there are sim­ply too many peo­ple upload­ing large files at any given time to rule enough of them out before they drop off the radar again.”

“And would Richard­son know this?”

“Any­one with access to Wikipedia could fig­ure it out pretty quick. If she knows to use the Tor net­work, she’s prob­a­bly bright enough to know about traf­fic pat­tern filtering.”

“So they’re going to stick to big metro areas,” Jack said. “She won’t get online in some Podunk town along the way. She needs the traf­fic of a big city to hide in, right?”

“That makes sense, sir.”

“I’m going to ren­dezvous with Bal­ti­more PD, then. Send them pic­tures of Cho, Richard­son and Frankel, what­ever you have, and ask them to put out a BOLO. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“Because that’s worked so well for us so far?”

“You’re catch­ing on, Dante.”

#

Batarel walked into the Bal­ti­more Basil­ica, inhaled deeply to smell the wood and mar­ble, and strode past red vel­vet pews down the cen­tral aisle. He needed answers, and he knew they could be found here. Mar­ble pil­lars tow­ered to the domed ceil­ing, a paint­ing of Jesus ascend­ing to heaven painted on the dome. He smirked at that. The humans needed their heroes so dearly.

He stood before the wide gray mar­ble of the Altar of Sac­ri­fice, and bowed his head. He didn’t remem­ber where he and his kind had come from. It seemed they had always been here, would always be here. He didn’t believe in any of the human gods. He sup­posed it was pos­si­ble that they had been cre­ated by some supreme being, but hav­ing no mem­ory of it him­self, he didn’t put much stock in it. Instead, his peo­ple had tra­di­tion, car­ried down through thou­sands of years, and they had the mis­sion. The mis­sion was why he was here. It was not their mis­sion alone.

He stepped off to the side, paus­ing briefly to look at the statue depict­ing the Archangel Michael. In truth, the statue looked noth­ing like him. The chin, in par­tic­u­lar, was all wrong. He also found it oddly grat­i­fy­ing that while the Archangel stood over a slain demon — which, of course, looked noth­ing like a demon, either — the statue’s sword had bro­ken off and dis­ap­peared some time ago, and no one knew where it went. Batarel enjoyed the sym­bol­ism, con­sid­er­ing how impo­tent the angels were in the twen­ti­eth and now twenty first cen­turies. Their influ­ence had waned just as his own organization’s had risen, with more and more of the pawns fol­low­ing their way. The true way. The right way. The only way to sur­vive in a hos­tile world.

He con­tin­ued on down­stairs, past the mas­sive red brick inverted arches that sup­ported the tow­ers upstairs, and into the much more pri­vate, much more dis­crete, chapel in the under­church. The walls were mortared red brick, dat­ing back to the found­ing of this human nation. Here he would meet with his contact.

A priest scur­ried up to him. “How may I help you, my child?”

Batarel pulled a card out of his suit pocket. “Take this to the Arch­bishop,” he said. “He’s expect­ing me.”

The priest looked at the card, con­fused. “This isn’t in English.”

Batarel lev­eled a gaze at the inso­lent human, and the priest drew him­self up to his full height. “I will do as you ask.”

The priest hur­ried off, and Batarel ran his fin­gers over the brick arch­ways. They’d held up rather nicely over the cen­turies, he thought.

The Archibishop of Bal­ti­more approached him. “Silim-​​ma he-​​me-​​en,” he said.

“Silim,” Batarel replied. “I require your assistance.”

“You have but ask, my Lord,” the Arch­bishop said.

Batarel stepped into a shel­tered alcove in the chapel, near the orig­i­nal tombs. “Crea­tures of the defiler have entered your city,” he said. “I need you to find them for me.”

“Our resources are yours, as always.”

Batarel handed the Arch­bishop pho­tos of Cho, Richard­son and Frankel. “They are trav­el­ing in a camper, and are almost cer­tainly here some­where. I need only know their loca­tion. Do not allow your scouts to be noticed. If I am to remove this scourge, I must take the beasts by surprise.”

“Of course, my Lord. Is there any­thing else?”

“Yes,” Batarel said, smil­ing. “My usual diver­sion, while I wait.”

“At once, my Lord.”

#

Daniel looked up as the door banged open and Jeff poked his head inside. “Danny!” he said. “Get out here.”

Daniel stepped out­side into the late after­noon sun. Jeff looked exhausted, yet oddly happy, given their sit­u­a­tion. Behind him was his metal col­lapsi­ble cart, filled with what Daniel pre­sumed were all of their sup­plies. The entire stack was cov­ered with blankets.

“Come on, we got to get set up and on the water before dusk.”

“You know how to do this?” Daniel asked.

“Danny, I was sail­ing the [viet namese] river before you were born. Just do what I tell you and we’ll be fine. Get Susie, too. Make sure she brings her lap­top and the camera.”

Daniel turned to relay the sum­mons, but Susan was already step­ping out of the RV, lap­top bag over her shoul­der and cam­era in hand. “Way ahead of you, Jeff. Daniel told me what you have in mind.”

“And?”

“And I think you’re both cer­ti­fi­able, but I don’t have any bet­ter ideas. May as well film it for posterity.”

Daniel grabbed the cart as Jeff led the way to the pier. “How are the bat­ter­ies on that thing?”

“It’s all dig­i­tal, no mov­ing parts. I can record for hours,” she said, point­ing the cam­era at him as he pulled the cart. “Why don’t you tell the folks watch­ing this at home about our plan?”

“Well, it’s pretty sim­ple,” Daniel said. “We’re going to go out on the water, now that Jeff’s been out all after­noon both get­ting sup­plies and leav­ing clues to our where­abouts. If we’re lucky, the clues will tip off Batarel, and he’ll come out to get us. When he does, we shoot him, tie him up while he’s regen­er­at­ing, tie an anchor to him, and pitch him overboard.”

“And if we’re not lucky?”

“Then the FBI gets to us first, and we get to try to explain what’s going on and hope they put us in pro­tec­tive cus­tody. Per­son­ally, I’m not hold­ing out much hope on that score. I’m not going to feel safe until the demon is dead.”

“Okay,” Jeff said as they stepped on to the pier. “You guys wait here. I’ll be right back.” He walked over to talk to the harbormaster.

“Hon­estly,” Daniel said, “if we’re lucky it will be over one way or another tonight. I want to get back to my life.”

“Yeah, I know the feel­ing,” Susan said. “It’s like the last two days I haven’t really been me.

“Do you really think drown­ing him is going to work?”

Daniel leaned against the cart. “We know phys­i­cal dam­age doesn’t do much more than slow him down, so injur­ing him is only a delay­ing tac­tic. If we’re going really take him out, we have to stop the regen­er­a­tion process. And the best way I can think of to do that is to deprive him of oxy­gen. That’s what drown­ing really is. Suf­fo­ca­tion because you can’t process the oxy­gen in the water like you would with air.”

“I keep for­get­ting you’re a doctor.”

“Yeah, well, I’m try­ing to for­get it too.”

Susan turned the cam­era off, and Daniel breathed a sigh of relief. “Daniel, you know lots of doc­tors make mis­takes. You don’t have to — “

“Yes,” he said, grab­bing the cart again. “I do.”

Jeff walked back over to them. “Okay, troops, let’s do this. I got us a boat, the Mary Anne. Lit­tle har­bor scooter, really, just a fif­teen footer, but it should be enough for our needs.”

“Is it a fast ship?” Daniel asked, fol­low­ing Jeff to the slip.

Before Jeff had a chance to answer, Susan replied, “A fast ship? You’ve never heard of the Mary Anne? This is the ship that made the Kessel Run in 3.6 parsecs!”

Daniel broke out laugh­ing, and Susan joined in. Jeff looked at them both like they were crazy, and maybe they were. They were being chased by an unkil­l­able demon, and they’d decided to kill it. It didn’t get a lot cra­zier than that.

14: Pro­cess­ing

Jack Har­ris woke up not to the sound of his alarm clock, but the insis­tent ring­ing of his cell phone. He took prob­a­bly too much pride in that his cell phone sounded like a real phone, and at first, in his sleep addled state, he’d been look­ing for an old Ma Bell hand­set. Who­ever was call­ing him was doing so repeat­edly, hang­ing up when they got the voice­mail prompt and call­ing right back.

He grabbed the cell and checked the caller ID. Who­ever it was, they were call­ing from the Hoover Build­ing, but it wasn’t Lou’s exten­sion. He pushed the Send but­ton and said, “Har­ris.” He sounded like he’d been gar­gling razor blades.

“Agent Har­ris,” said the voice of Dante Hicks, “I’m sorry to bug you at this hour, but you’re going to want to see something.”

Jack shook it off. Time to go to work. Just a lit­tle ear­lier than usual. “No trou­ble at all, Dante, what do you have for me?”

“I’m send­ing a link to your cell phone’s email address. It’s to a video on YouTube.”

“This bet­ter not be of your cat,” Jack said.

“No sir! It’s from Richard­son. She posted it about an hour ago.”

Richard­son! “Did you get a trace started?” Jack started look­ing for his suit pants and a clean shirt.

“No, I mean, yes, sir, I tried. But — “

“Dante, don’t tell me she’s still got you stymied. You’re sup­posed to be a hacker god, remem­ber?” Shoes, he needed shoes.

“I know, sir. She’s using the TOR net­work, and I can’t get a han­dle on where the trans­mis­sion is orig­i­nat­ing. And since it’s not live — “

“Tor? Like the pub­lisher?” Jack liked to read sci­ence fic­tion in his off time, so the name rung a bell.

“No sir, TOR stands for The Onion Router. It’s a mul­ti­lay­ered encryp­tion pro — “

“Dante, just see what you can do, okay, son? I’ll be in to the office in twenty minutes.”

“Be sure to watch that video, sir, because — “

Jack hit the End but­ton and pulled on his shoes. This shouldn’t be this hard, he thought. For Christ’s sake, was it this impos­si­ble to track every fugi­tive online? He might have to bring the NSA into this, even though Lou would throw a shit fit at involv­ing another agency. Out­wardly, the mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions of the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity were sup­posed to be one big happy fam­ily, but the real­ity was any­thing but.

His phone beeped at him. He picked it up and saw he had a new mes­sage. Must be that video Dante was so worked up about, he thought. He pressed the play link and the video started.

Two min­utes later he was out the door of his apart­ment in a run.

#

An hour later Jack was stand­ing in the mid­dle of a strip mall park­ing lot in Sil­ver Spring, Mary­land. The place was a hive of activ­ity, which Mary­land state troop­ers, local police and the usual gawk­ers. The cops ahad strung up police tape, but there really wasn’t much to see.

He stood back as the local police pho­tog­ra­pher took more pic­tures of the scene. Said scene con­sisted of a few nasty spots of blood spat­ter and some large tire tracks, like one might find from an RV. Foren­sics was crawl­ing over the scene like ants at a pic­nic, label­ing every spot of blood on the asphalt.

He’d be curi­ous to read their report, but Jack already had a pretty good idea of what hap­pened. He’d had Dante go over the YouTube video with all the dig­i­tal tools at his dis­posal, and the video hadn’t been edited or tam­pered with. If what he saw was dig­i­tal spe­cial effects mojo, they were damn good, Hol­ly­wood qual­ity, and left behind no arti­facts Dante could find.

Which made the video all the more disturbing.

He’d seen Cho chop first the hand, then the head of Hen­driks off his body, seen the body fall, seen Cho look directly into the cam­era and tell Richard­son to call the police, that he was turn­ing him­self in. And then Jack had seen the body get up, put its head back on, and rush at them. He’d also seen an old man in the video, pre­sum­ably Jeff Frankel, dri­ving an RV. So he knew how they were get­ting around.

But what was he sup­posed to charge them with? Assault­ing a zombie?

Unfor­tu­nately, the video had already “gone viral,” accord­ing to Dante. It was being copied and reposted all over the inter­net, and there was no way they could pos­si­bly take down every copy now, even if they wanted to. Richardson’s new blog post detail­ing the attack was being reposted and “retweeted” all over the place too, and Dante let Jack know in no uncer­tain terms that they couldn’t make this go away. He was com­par­ing the two posts to see what com­mon­al­i­ties he could find, and see if that gave them any leads on track­ing them back to the source, but as long as these were posted record­ings, rather than stream­ing some­thing over the inter­net live so they could track it while it was still trans­mit­ting, Dante wasn’t hopeful.

Jack squat­ted and took a closer look at the blood. It cer­tainly looked like blood to him, but he’d never seen any­thing that bled do what he’d seen on that video. Jack had done a tour in Iraq in the Army in 2003 before join­ing the FBI, and he’d seen a lot of blood. He couldn’t square the phys­i­cal evi­dence he saw here with what Dante assured him was an authen­tic video record­ing. Bod­ies didn’t do that. They just didn’t.

“Agent Har­ris?”

Jack stood up and shook hands with a Mary­land state trooper. “Bob Sum­mers, Mary­land State Police,” he said. “I under­stand you have some inter­est in this case?”

“It may be part of an ongo­ing ter­ror­ist inves­ti­ga­tion we’ve got going on. I’d like to rule that out if I can.”

“Have you seen the video online?”

Oh God. “I have,” Jack said, “but I’m try­ing to keep an open mind. What does the evi­dence at the scene tell us?”

Sum­mers led him around the blood spat­ter. “It matches up per­fectly with the video, to be hon­est. We’re test­ing the blood and the video to rule out a hoax. But I have to say, if this is some online PR stunt, it’s the most con­vinc­ing hoax I’ve ever seen.”

“I’d very much like to see the results of those blood tests,” Jack said.

“I’ll do you one bet­ter,” Sum­mers said. “We’ll send you our results and a sam­ple you can test yourselves.”

“Thank you, Offi­cer Summers.”

“It’s Bob.”

Sum­mers ges­tured to the blood. “Splat­ter pat­terns are con­sis­tent with the shooter’s hand being chopped off, and then the shooter step­ping back a cou­ple of feet and being beheaded. Blood trails show the head rolled over there,” he pointed, “before com­ing to a stop in that park­ing space where you see that small puddle.”

“Is there any other explanation?”

“You mean are we cherry pick­ing the evi­dence to fit the video?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way,” Jack said.

“I sure would,” Sum­mers said. “But no, we’ve got a guy who spe­cial­izes in spat­ter pat­terns, and Dex says this is pretty much how it went down. He’s pretty gifted, so I take him at his word.”

“And the tire tracks?”

Sum­mers lead him over to the dual streaks of black rub­ber. “Heavy rear wheel drive vehi­cle, stut­ters here as it starts, accel­er­ates quickly for a vehi­cle of its size based on the wheel­base, and then skids into traf­fic over there in the street.

“Some­one pow­er­slid an RV?”

Sum­mers laughed. “Yeah, the old guy accord­ing to the video. He must be some dri­ver. Damn lucky he didn’t roll the damn thing.”

This was get­ting weirder by the minute. Jack had hoped a visit to the scene would prove the video wrong, not back it up. Because if it really was real, then… Well, he didn’t know what that meant, exactly.

“Thank you, Bob,” Jack said, and shook the man’s hand again. He walked back to his car, pulled out his phone and dialed.

“Dante Hicks.”

“Dante, this is Agent Har­ris. Let the lab know they’ve got a blood sam­ple headed their way, and I want to know every­thing there is to know about it. While they’re doing that, I want you to find me a lead on where they’re going.” Richardson’s post men­tioned they were on the road, but it obvi­ously didn’t say where to.

“Yes sir. And sir?”

“Yes, Dante?”

“I ran another analy­sis of the video. I can ver­ify that the lack of arti­facts isn’t due to the con­ver­sion to a Flash ani­ma­tion. The video was never edited. It recorded exactly what she pointed the cam­era at, sir.”

“Find me some answers, Dante,” Jack said, and disconnected.

#

Susan sat at the lit­tle table in the RV, alter­nately look­ing out the win­dow and look­ing at the bul­let hole in the win­dow. They were parked near a marina in Winan’s Cove, Bal­ti­more. She could smell the moist air from the har­bor, and heard the honks of boats pass­ing out on the water. It was quiet, as Daniel was nap­ping up front in the cab and Jeff had gone to get some sup­plies he fig­ured they’d need, given last night: first aid kits, blan­kets, garbage bags.

Susan was still rat­tled, and had no idea how Daniel could sleep. He hadn’t closed her eyes once since the motel in Arling­ton, and had no desire to go to sleep any time soon. She knew all too well what she’d see.

Susan wasn’t overtly reli­gious, but she was a Chris­t­ian. She believed fully in God and his son. She didn’t go to church as often as she should, but she prob­a­bly made it twenty or thirty times a year. She’d gone to Sun­day School for years grow­ing up, and she knew all about angels and demons.

Only, did she?

That… thing called itself a god, and answered to the name Batarel. She’d looked it up, while the video was upload­ing. Batarel was a demon’s name all right. Jeff hadn’t been mak­ing that up. But then, Jeff also believed in Big­foot and aliens at Roswell. Those were myths too, right?

Susan didn’t know what to think any­more, and the more she thought about it the more con­fused she got. There was just no way that could have been a demon. There was no smell of sulpher, no horns, no great leath­ery wings, it was noth­ing at all like what she’d been taught all her life. He looked like a car sales­man. But then there was that thing with the head.

She’d got­ten an email from Stan that morn­ing, telling her the num­bers were through the roof for this series, and to keep it up. Like she had a choice. What­ever she’d walked into, it wasn’t ter­ror­ism, and it wasn’t just a vic­tim of a gov­ern­ment agency run amok.

That thing had tried to kill her. Twice.

Susan started to get nau­seous, and took a few deep breaths to calm down. She heard Daniel stretch up front, and saw him get up and head back to where she was.

“Sleep well?” she said. She sounded sac­cha­rin sweet even to herself.

Daniel stretched again, work­ing espe­cially on his right shoul­der. “Cast is throw­ing off my shoul­der,” he said. “Not used to the weight.” He sat down. “So, what’s up?”

“Jeff’s still out get­ting sup­plies,” she said. “He called with one of his dis­pos­able phones a lit­tle while ago to let me know he was okay. He’ll be back soon.”

“Good. How was the reac­tion to the video you posted?”

“Stan’s going to wet him­self, he’s so happy,” she said. “I’m glad one of us is.”

“What’s wrong?”

She laughed. “What’s wrong? We’re fugi­tives on the run from the FBI and some unkil­l­able thing that’s try­ing like hell to kill us. What could pos­si­bly be wrong?”

She saw a shadow pass over Daniel’s face. The easy­go­ing mask he’d been wear­ing dis­ap­peared and he looked grim, almost despon­dent. “I know,” he said. “I’ve been think­ing about that myself. That’s why I asked Jeff to stop here.”

“What?”

“It was last night, while you were work­ing on your story and the video. I’ve been think­ing a lot about what we’ve seen Batarel do, and I think I have a way to kill him, really kill him. And I think we both know that no mat­ter where we go, it’s only a mat­ter of time before he finds us again. May as well be on our terms.”

“You’re lay­ing a trap for a…”

“You can say it, Susan. A demon. He may not be what the Bible described, but I think it’s a safe bet Jeff’s right on this par­tic­u­lar case. I think Batarel and his kind are where our leg­ends of angels and demons come from.”

“The Bible is not a legend.”

“Susan, come on. We’re both edu­cated pro­fes­sion­als here. Plus, you’re a jour­nal­ist, a trained observer. What did the evi­dence tell you?”

“I’m just a blog­ger,” Susan said.

“No, you’re not. You’re a reporter who works for a blog. You’ve got a jour­nal­ism degree, you’ve got instincts, and you’ve got skills. I’ve seen them myself. And Batarel, whether he fits your pre­con­ceived notion of a demon or not, sure as hell isn’t human. So what is he? If he calls him­self a demon, and goes by a demon’s name, who are we to say he’s wrong? Because he’s not like you or me, we know that.”

“So if he really is a demon,” Susan said, “how do you kill a demon?”

“I’m going to drown him.”

13: Don’t Lose Your Head

Jack heard a knock on the frame of his office door, even though the door was open. With­out look­ing up from his research into the lives of Daniel Cho and Susan Richard­son, he said, “Yes, Dante?”

“Sir, you prob­a­bly want to see this. Richard­son just posted to New Amer­i­can Century.”

“What? I thought we were mon­i­tor­ing for her to show up!”

“We are, sir. She never appeared. I don’t know where this arti­cle came from.”

Jack brought up the blog and stared at the head­line. “ON THE RUN WITH AN FBI FUGITIVE”. He scanned the begin­ning of the arti­cle, and it was just what it appeared. A play by play of her meet­ing Cho and their escape in Dupont Cir­cle. Shit.

“Dante, get the edi­tor of this thing on the phone, demand a take­down. Then get in there and fig­ure out where she posted this from and why we didn’t see it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jack looked out his win­dow. It was get­ting dark out already. He got up and stretched, try­ing to work the kinks out of his back. He had no idea he’d been sit­ting at his desk for so long. The foren­sics from the motel came back much as he’d expected, with most of the blood prov­ing a match for Cho, just a lit­tle bit uniden­ti­fied. Cho and Richard­son had reg­is­tered under fake names, paid cash, and never checked out. The man in the room next door to them never checked out either, an older guy reg­is­tered as Jeff Frankel. He’d left a few per­sonal effects behind, mostly dirty clothes, and Jack sus­pected he might have some­thing to do with their dis­ap­pear­ance. Was it his blood in the room? Jack had seen Cho on the police secu­rity tapes, and he was in decent shape. Unlikely that a senior cit­i­zen could wipe the floor with him.

He sat back down and read the arti­cle more thor­oughly. Richard­son never men­tioned Frankel. He also noticed that she never actu­ally said how they were get­ting around. She recapped the ini­tial car crash where Cho had been arrested and men­tioned a miss­ing body. She told the story of Cho in the police sta­tion much as Jack had seen it unfold on video, and then how she met Cho and how they escaped from the big, bad FBI.

Then the story got weird. She recounted an attack by the man Cho had seen leav­ing the orig­i­nal acci­dent, and made it sound like they barely got away with their lives. She was a decent writer, and Jack had to admit she told a com­pelling story.

What both­ered him was that he couldn’t tell how much of it was bull­shit. The evi­dence that Cho was a dan­ger­ous ter­ror­ist was cir­cum­stan­tial, and some­body had beaten the crap out of him in that room, accord­ing to Richard­son, even break­ing his arm. All he really had on the guy was a miss­ing body and resist­ing arrest, when you got down to it.

And the miss­ing body was weird unto itself. He’d looked into this Richard Hen­driks and found less than noth­ing. On paper, the guy was born, and then dis­ap­peared entirely until his thir­ties. There was no col­lege or even high school tran­script that showed he went to school any­where, no proof of employ­ment, no taxes paid in his name for decades. His town­house had been emp­tied, cleaned and put on the mar­ket, and no one seemed to know pre­cisely who the seller was.

Jack had seen this sort of thing before, of course. He’d worked a while with Wit­ness Pro­tec­tion, and all of these tricks looked famil­iar. Hen­driks was a man­u­fac­tured iden­tity, and was dis­as­sem­bled as quickly as it had been cre­ated. So the ques­tion was, who was Richard Hen­driks, really? Who was he before he was Hen­driks? And what did this have to do with Cho?

Another knock. “Yes, Dante?” Jack said again, look­ing up to the door­way, expect­ing to see the har­ried hacker. Instead, he saw his boss, Assis­tant Direc­tor Lou Gottlieb.

“Lou,” Jack said. “What’s up?”

Lou came in and took a seat across from Jack. “You’ve seen this web­site?” Lou asked. He didn’t spec­ify the address.

“Yes, Lou, I’ve seen it.”

“We don’t look very good, Jack.” Lou was much more con­cerned with how the agency looked, espe­cially to the folks on the Hill, than he was about actu­ally catch­ing bad guys. Or even, Jack thought, deter­min­ing if they really were bad guys.

“I read the arti­cle, Lou. I’ve got Hicks over in cyber­analy­sis work­ing on track­ing her down.”

“I got calls from the Hill, Jack.”

Oh, Christ, Jack thought. Here we go. “Lou, I’ve got this under con­trol. We should have a lead on them shortly, and once we can track them online, we can make arrests and all this goes away. You don’t have to worry about the hill.”

Lou rubbed his fore­head, then care­fully straight­ened out his comb over. Good lord, man, Jack thought. Just embrace being bald. It worked for Connery.

“I just want to be sure you appre­ci­ate the scrutiny we’re under,” Lou said.

This was the real issue. The fed­eral gov­ern­ment was try­ing to turn the mas­sive multi-​​headed beast that was Home­land Secu­rity into some­thing that was actu­ally work­able. That meant fed­eral bureau­crats were feel­ing the pinch usu­ally reserved for mid­dle man­agers in cor­po­rate merg­ers. Lou wasn’t wor­ried about the case, he was wor­ried about his job. It was a dif­fer­ent agency than when Jack started.

“Lou, trust me. Now that they’ve resur­faced online, we’ll have an arrest in twenty four hours, forty eight on the out­side. Plus I have some other leads I’m run­ning down. We’ll get them.”

Lou stood up, his suit rum­pled and uneven. “Good, Jack. That’s very good. Because we can’t let this drag on much longer. Folks on the Hill — “

Jack stood up and helped escort his boss out of the small office. “We’ll get them, Lou. Not a doubt in my mind.”

As Jack watched his boss head back to his own office, prob­a­bly to down a few more of the antacids the man popped like candy, he won­dered about what he promised. Why hadn’t Dante reported back yet? And for that mat­ter, what was Cho really up to?

#

“Danny, you know mar­tial arts, right?”

Daniel was sit­ting in the RV, pok­ing at a microwave entrée Jeff had nuked for din­ner. Susan looked about as enthused about the menu as he did, but they had to make do with what they had. Jeff had drained his bank account for cash, but they still only had so much they could spend with­out call­ing atten­tion to themselves.

“I’m a black belt in Tae Kwon Do.”

“That’s what I thought,” Jeff said, rum­mag­ing around in another junk pile in the back of the RV. “I have some­thing here for you. Thought you might find it use­ful after see­ing the way Batarel cleaned your clock at the motel. No offense.”

Daniel sighed. “None taken. If he is what you say he is, I’m lucky to have sur­vived at all, right?”

“Yup! Still, evening the odds a bit can’t hurt, and… there it is!”

He pulled out a bun­dle wrapped in old news­pa­per, about a yard long and a few inches in diam­e­ter. “Here you go,” he said. “I hope you know how to use it.”

Daniel pushed aside his reheated what­ever it was and pulled on the ancient twine hold­ing the bun­dle of news­pa­pers together. One of them popped with a puff of dust, and the whole bun­dle fell apart. And inside, there was a sword.

It was a beau­ti­ful Japan­ese katana, wrapped ivory han­dle and a lac­quered wood sheath. Daniel pulled the blade par­tially out of the sheath, and the blade looked authen­ti­cally sharp.

“Picked that up in a mar­ket in Saigon,” Jeff said. “Shop­keep said was authen­tic Japan­ese, but it prob­a­bly ain’t. But I do know the blade is good qual­ity steel and sharp as a razor.”

“Jeff, I stud­ied Tae Kwon Do. There isn’t a sword form in Tae Kwon Do. It’s hand to hand only.”

“Yeah,” Jeff said, eas­ing down next to Susan. “But all them mar­tial arts are basi­cally the same, right? Karate, Tae Kwon Do, Kung Fu?”

“Not really,” Daniel said. “The clos­est I’ve ever been to a sword before now was my col­lege roommate’s lightsaber.”

“Huh,” Jeff said. “Well, hang on to it any­way. Bet­ter to have it than not, and every once in a while even a blind squir­rel gets a nut.”

Daniel looked at Susan, who was try­ing to sti­fle a grin.

“So,” Daniel said, putting the sword aside, “what’s our next move?”

#

Batarel sat in his car, still parked a mere hun­dred yards away from the camper in the strip mall park­ing lot, as night finally fell. It was time. He’d seen the woman’s arti­cle online ear­lier, and it hadn’t men­tioned the old man or his camper. There was a good chance the police didn’t know any­thing about him or his involve­ment. So if Batarel killed all three of them and then crash the camper so that it looks like just another dod­der­ing old fool who should have been taken off the roads years ago, his mis­sion would be com­plete. He was eager to get back to his “life”, or what­ever new life he was assigned, and be done with this fool­ish­ness. The lengths his kind went to con­ceal their exis­tence were extreme, but it was all part of the ancient game they played with the angels. The human pawns were never to know how their bet­ters moved them around the board.

He got out of the car and checked his weapon. He pulled the slide back on the Glock nine mil­lime­ter and felt it slide back into place with a sat­is­fy­ing click of metal on oiled metal. The weapon was a far cry from the bows and swords he peo­ple had used in ancient times, but the humans did have their uses, after all. They were inge­nious when it came to devel­op­ing new, more effi­cient ways to kill each other. Far be it from him to turn down such an advan­tage. He’d never actu­ally had cause to use one before, but there was a first time for every­thing. He gave the silencer a solid twist to make sure it was attached firmly, then strode over to the camper.

#

“The way I see it,” Jeff said, “We should — “

The door to the RV banged open. Daniel looked up to see Batarel step in, hold­ing a pis­tol. This time, there was no ban­ter, no fisticuffs. The demon lev­eled the pis­tol at Daniel’s head and fired.

Daniel dove for the floor as he heard the “thwup” of the silenced pis­tol accom­pa­nied by the groan of the wooden seat where he’d just been as the bul­let dug into the grain. “Shit!” he said.

He could see Batarel wave the pis­tol over at Susan, who was sit­ting stock still, ter­ri­fied. He sprung at the demon and knocked his arm back just as he fired, shoot­ing a hole through the win­dow inches above Susan’s head.

“Get out­side!” Daniel said. “Go!” He saw Susan and Jeff pile out of the seat just as Batarel brought the gun around again and bru­tally pis­tol whipped him across the tem­ple. Daniel saw stars.

Blindly, he shoved at Batarel again, found the demon’s arm and grabbed it. Before the demon could adjust, Daniel flipped him down the down the cen­tral aisle of the RV, and then dove out the door.

Susan and Jeff were stand­ing out­side the trailer, not run­ning. Susan was hold­ing some­thing out in front of her. Jeff threw some­thing long and black at him, which Daniel caught with­out think­ing. It was the sword.

“What the fuck am I sup­posed to do with this? He’s got a gun!”

“Gun!” Susan shouted, and Daniel turned to see Batarel framed by the light of the door­way. Daniel pulled the sword from the scab­bard and tossed the scab­bard to the side. [make a note of how he’s han­dling this with a cast on his arm]

“A sword, Cho?” Batarel said as he stepped down from the RV. “Did you learn noth­ing last night? I can’t be killed. Your tenac­ity is admirable, but please, meet your end with dignity.”

Daniel spoke over his shoul­der to Susan and Jeff. “Why aren’t you running?”

“They’re not run­ning, Cho,” Batarel said, “because they under­stand the inevitable. You’re going to die tonight, all three of you. I can make it quick and pain­less, or we can do this, as you say, the hard way. But as I said last night, there is a price to pay for med­dling with the affairs of gods.”

“You’re not God!” Susan shouted. Daniel glanced back at her and saw she was hold the video cam­era, film­ing this. Oh, for fuck’s sake…

He turned back and saw Batarel was much, much closer to him, still hold­ing the pis­tol. Well, Daniel thought, if you’re dumb enough to bring a sword to a gun­fight… He took an awk­ward swipe with the weapon and Batarel eas­ily dodged.

The demon sighed. “I really don’t have time for this.” He raised the pis­tol, and Daniel reflex­ively reached out with the sword, and upward strike with both hands.

And the demon’s hand fell to the asphalt, still hold­ing the gun.

Blood shot from the sev­ered limb on to Daniel. The demon shouted some­thing in a lan­guage Daniel had never heard.

“Uh oh, now he looks pissed,” Jeff said behind Daniel.

“Start the RV!” Daniel said, and kicked the gun — and hand — away across the park­ing lot.

Jeff ran past the demon, who made an attempt to reach out for him while attempt­ing to stem the bleed­ing, which was already taper­ing off. Susan ran by just behind Jeff on the other side of the demon, who tried to change direc­tion and missed her as well.

“I can’t believe this,” Batarel said. “You are sheep!” he shouted. “Mere chat­tel! You would be noth­ing with­out us, and you have no idea what you’re — “

Daniel swung the sword again like an axe, and cleanly sev­ered the demon’s head from its shoulders.

“Whoa,” Susan said, stand­ing in the door­way to the RV, still film­ing. Daniel dropped to his knees, the adren­a­line wear­ing off sud­denly and leav­ing him exhausted.

“Call 911,” Daniel said. “It’s over.”

“What’s over?” Susan said.

Daniel looked at her. “For what­ever it’s worth, this proves I wasn’t crazy or try­ing to start some­thing on M street. I’ve got two wit­nesses tes­tify that attack­ing him was self defense, there’s a bul­let in the RV from his gun, and only his prints on it. I’ll take my chances with the courts now.” He stood up and stepped over Batarel’s body, picked up the scab­bard and started walk­ing to the RV. “I’m just glad it’s ov — “

Susan’s eyes went wide. “Daniel, it’s not over.”

“Just make the call, Susan.”

“Look,” she said.

He turned around, and saw that Batarel’s body had got­ten up on its feet, and walked over to the head. The remain­ing hand grabbed the head by the hair, and steady­ing it with the now blood­less stump of a right arm, put the head back on the neck where it belonged. They heard a sick­en­ing squish­ing noise that was drowned out by Jeff gun­ning the RV engine.

“No way,” Daniel said. “He can’t — “

Expres­sion came back into Batarel’s face, a gri­mace of rage. He started to run for the RV.

“Jeff, hit it!” Daniel said as he jumped into the RV, push­ing Susan back into it as he went. The RV picked up speed, and as Daniel slammed the door behind him, he heard Batarel slam into the side of the vehicle.

“Go! Go! Go!” Daniel said.

Jeff floored it and was soon on a heav­ily traf­ficked but fast mov­ing artery to the belt­way. “Where to?” he said.

Daniel strug­gled to catch his breath. “Any­where but here,” he said.

#

Batarel watched the reced­ing tail­lights of the camper until they were lost to view. At least this time he’d seen them. Last night they’d got­ten away dur­ing one of those “blank spots” where his body was regen­er­at­ing, a gap in his consciousness.

He walked over to his hand, picked it up and held it to the stump on his right arm. He felt the fibers and tis­sues inter­weav­ing, rebuild­ing the con­nec­tions of bone, blood and skin. In sec­onds, he could move his right hand again. He tucked the gun into a pocket and walked back to his car.

He wouldn’t be report­ing this to Zagiel. The first time he let them escape him was an embar­rass­ment. Twice in two nights was inex­cus­able. But his peo­ple had oper­a­tives every­where. He would find them again, and the next time, he wouldn’t be mag­nan­i­mous about giv­ing them a quick, grace­ful end to their piti­ful lit­tle lives.

Next time, he’d be sure they paid their debt in full.