The Unification Chronicles

24: Briefed by an Angel

Daniel and Jeff were shoved into the back of one squad car, and Susan and Jack were in another. Daniel slumped back in his seat as they pulled away from the steel mill. He had no idea where things would go from here, or there would be any demonic reprisals for Batarel’s death — surely los­ing one of their mem­bers per­ma­nently wasn’t a com­mon occur­rence — but for now, he was actu­ally glad things were out of his hands. The next step wasn’t his to make, and that was a wel­come change. The last week — had it only been a week? — had been enough stress to last him years.

He watched the build­ings of Beth­le­hem slide past out the win­dow. For­tu­nately, the cops in the front seat weren’t the talk­a­tive types. They got one call on their radios, some­thing Daniel only barely heard. The rest of the trip went by in silence.

Then the cops pulled to a stop not at a police sta­tion or munic­i­pal cour­t­house, but rather an upscale office complex.

“That doesn’t look like a jail to me,” Jeff said.

“Yeah, I noticed.”

“No talk­ing!” said the cop rid­ing shot­gun. He and his part­ner got out, and opened the back doors. “Come on, get out.”

Jeff and Daniel got out of the car and saw the sec­ond squad car pull up behind them. In a few moments, Jack and Susan, both still hand­cuffed, were next to them again.”

“Let’s go,” said the cop, and ush­ered them inside.

The build­ing looked and smelled new, Daniel thought. They were hus­tled over to the ele­va­tors, and taken up to the top floor. The cops led them down a hall­way and into an unmarked office. They stood in front of a receptionist’s desk with no receptionist.

A tall blond man in a suit came out to meet them. “Thank you, offi­cers,” he said. “Please remove their hand­cuffs.” All four of them were uncuffed.

“And I believe there was a cam­era?” the man said, and one of the cops handed over Susan’s video camera.

“Excel­lent,” the man said. “Thank you, again, offi­cers. That will be all.”

The four uni­formed cops exchanged looks and left with­out a word.

Daniel turned to Jack. “Your doing?” he asked.

“No,” Jack said. He looked just as puz­zled as Daniel.

“Please,” the blond man said. “All will be explained. If you will come with me?”

With a shrug, Jack fol­lowed, and the rest of them fol­lowed Jack. As they walked down the hall, Daniel noticed that the offices were nice, but bland. There didn’t seem to be any­thing to indi­cate cor­po­rate iden­tity, nor did any­one seem to be there other than their blond benefactor.

The man led them into a well appointed con­fer­ence room. “Please, have a seat,” he said. “Can I get any­one any­thing? Water, soda?”

“No thanks,” Jack said. “I think we’d really like to know what’s going on.” They all took seats around the con­fer­ence table, the blond man sit­ting at the head of the table.

“Of course,” he said.

“Don’t get us wrong,” Daniel said. “We’re glad not to be in jail, but…”

“Yes, I under­stand. This must be very jar­ring. Per­haps we should start with intro­duc­tions. I know who you are, obvi­ously. I’ve been fol­low­ing your exploits for some time now.”

“And you are?” Daniel said.

The man nod­ded. “I am the Archangel Uriel.”

#

Susan couldn’t help it, but her mouth dropped open. “Uriel?” she said. “The angel who stood at the gates of Eden with a flam­ing sword? That Uriel?”

“Archangel,” Uriel cor­rected. “And I don’t recall a flam­ing sword. Some­thing prob­a­bly got lost in translation.”

Susan gulped. Was this really the same being she’d read about in Sun­day School?

Uriel started play­ing back the video from the cam­era. They could all hear Daniel and Batarel on the cat­walk, even the things Batarel didn’t intend to be over­heard. “Excel­lent work, Miss Richard­son,” the archangel said.

“Thank you,” she said. She felt her cheeks warm, and was sure she was blush­ing. “Please call me Susan.”

“Very well, Susan.” He stopped the play­back as Batarel started scream­ing, and put the cam­era down on the table.

“We are very impressed with your work, all of you,” he said. “I can’t remem­ber the last time any­one killed a demon, and I can remem­ber a very, very long time. I’m rel­a­tively sure it has never been done by human hands. You all achieved an accom­plish­ment today unique in the his­tory of your race. You should be proud.”

“Thanks?” Jeff said.

“I’ve been mon­i­tor­ing your progress,” Uriel said. “Even before today, you had already achieved much. No one who has stum­bled upon the secret has ever lasted as long as you did. Part of that, I attribute to demonic over­con­fi­dence, assum­ing Batarel could han­dle this on his own with­out fur­ther assis­tance. But equal mea­sure must go to you. Such tenac­ity is to be rec­og­nized, and rewarded.”

“Rewarded?” said Jeff. “What are we talk­ing about, here? I got an RV to get out of impound.”

“How long have you been mon­i­tor­ing our progress?” Jack asked before Uriel had to deal with the embar­rass­ing question.

“Oh, since the begin­ning,” Uriel said. “I knew about Mis­ter Cho’s dis­cov­ery as soon as the demons did. Our strug­gle is very old, and there are really no more secrets among us.”

“Wait,” Daniel said. “You knew what I was going through the whole week and you’re just step­ping in now? What kind of angels are you?”

“Daniel,” Susan said, but Uriel was will­ing to fend for him­self. Susan still couldn’t believe she was in a room with such a being. It was imper­ti­nent to ques­tion him or his motives.

“We’re the same angels that have guided your race from the begin­ning. But the key word there is guided. We don’t gen­er­ally inter­vene in human affairs directly. If we did, your achieve­ments wouldn’t be your own. We just help you stay on the path.”

“That’s all fine and good, but he was try­ing to kill us!” Daniel shouted.

“Daniel!” Susan said. “Don’t raise your voice to — “

“It’s all right, Miss Richard­son. I com­pletely under­stand Mis­ter Cho being upset.”

Daniel rose out of his seat. “Upset?”

“Please, Mis­ter Cho, be seated.” When Daniel didn’t sit imme­di­ately, Uriel added, “Please.”

Daniel sat down, and said nothing.

“Yes, Batarel was try­ing to kill you. As he has killed thou­sands of humans. As the demons do, suc­cess­fully, every other time in human his­tory their secret has been dis­cov­ered. Don’t you see? That is pre­cisely why I inter­vened. Because this time, he didn’t kill you. You killed him. You have proven your­self worthy.”

Daniel slumped back in his seat, and Jack ges­tured for him to set­tle down.

“Worth of what, sir?” Jack said. At least he, Susan thought, was show­ing the proper deference.

“Our assis­tance. Cur­rently, you have only Miss Richardson’s pho­to­graphic evi­dence. This is exem­plary, but every­one at this table knows that mere video is no longer proof of any­thing in a dig­i­tal age. If you’re going to prove the exis­tence of the demons beyond a doubt, you need more. I can pro­vide you with some, and direct you to the rest.”

“Why are you doing this?” Daniel said. Susan was tempted to haul off and smack him, if she didn’t think that would be dis­re­spect­ful to the archangel.

“Mis­ter Cho, I believe we cov­ered that.”

“We cov­ered why you’re step­ping in now, rather than when we really needed you,” Daniel said, glanc­ing at Susan, prob­a­bly to see if she was going to inter­rupt him again. She only glared at him.

“But I still don’t under­stand why you’re help­ing us in the first place. Don’t you have as much to lose as the demons if we prove that immor­tals exist?”

“No, Mis­ter Cho. We are not demons. We are not cor­rupt­ing the human race. We are your shep­herds, as we have been since the dawn of time.”

“Then why haven’t you revealed your­selves before now?”

“It is only now that you have proven your­selves worthy — “

“No,” Daniel said, inter­rupt­ing an archangel, “I get why now is the right time to reveal the demons. I want to know why you have kept your­selves a secret, all this time. Why not reveal your­selves and leave the demons out of it?”

“Danny, maybe we shouldn’t look this par­tic­u­lar gift horse — “

“It’s a fair ques­tion, Mis­ter Frankel,” Uriel said. “The answer, Mis­ter Cho, is sim­ple. Times have changed.

“When humans were still largely agrar­ian, as they have been for most of recorded his­tory and before, reli­gion formed the basis for com­mu­ni­ties, com­mu­ni­ties the basis for nations, and nations the basis for soci­ety. In such an envi­ron­ment, it was more effec­tive for us to work behind the scenes, allow humans to try new things, with only our hand guid­ing the priests, who in turn guided communities.

“In the past few hun­dred years, the fab­ric of soci­ety has begun to unravel. Peo­ple no longer believe as they once did. Even the ones who say they do often act in com­plete oppo­si­tion to their sup­posed sacred beliefs. And some among the angels have come to real­ize that the time for belief as a form of — “

“Con­trol,” Daniel said.

“ — guid­ance, Mis­ter Cho, may be pass­ing. The trend has been build­ing ever since Galileo, and it is clear. The belief of the twenty first Chris­t­ian cen­tury is in fact, in sci­ence. Skep­ti­cism is the new reli­gion. And so if human­ity requires proof to accept our guid­ance, we will, at last, pro­vide such proof. But we will do so on our terms, in such a way as to con­trast our good inten­tions against the cor­rup­tion of the demons.”

“You know what they say about good inten­tions,” Daniel said.

“Daniel!” Susan said. “I’ve had it with you! Why can’t you just accept what Uriel’s telling us? Why do you always have to be such a pain in the ass?”

“Please, Miss Richard­son, it’s all right. Mis­ter Cho’s skep­ti­cism, his sus­pi­cion, is exactly why we’re hav­ing this con­ver­sa­tion at all. Mis­ter Cho is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the human race as a whole, I’m afraid. If I can’t con­vince him, then our cause is lost.

“So here is what I am offer­ing. I will offer what pro­tec­tion I can, but sadly that is prob­a­bly less than you think. Our orga­ni­za­tion left fight­ing behind mil­len­nia ago, unlike the demons. Your true pro­tec­tion is knowl­edge, and shar­ing that knowl­edge with the world.”

He pulled a small USB thumb drive out of his coat pocket and slid it across the table to Susan. “Con­tained on that device is a data­base. This data­base con­tains the name of every angel and demon, along with the var­i­ous human iden­ti­ties every one of us has assumed through­out recorded his­tory. A com­plete record of our doings in your world, and of the demons as well. I encour­age you to pass it along to your col­leagues in the press, Miss Richard­son, so that they may begin check­ing it against your own his­tor­i­cal record.”

From another pocket, he pulled out four envelopes, and passed them out to each per­son at the table. “In these envelopes are papers estab­lish­ing new, tem­po­rary, iden­ti­ties for you all, which should allow you to travel and evade the demons for a while. They also include air­line tick­ets from this city’s air­port to New York, and from there to Baghdad.”

“Bagh­dad?” Jack said. “What’s in Iraq?”

“Buried under an ancient mosque, likely for­got­ten, is a scroll. This is the Lost Gospel Of The Angels, a work that doc­u­ments our his­tory in far more detail than any of your sur­viv­ing holy books. It tells the story of my peo­ple, how the demons actu­ally fell from Grace, and the war between us. Authen­ti­cate not only its con­tents but the antiq­uity of the doc­u­ment itself, and ver­ify the infor­ma­tion con­tained in the data­base, and you will have all the proof the mod­ern world requires.”

Uriel stood up. “A map to the mosque is included in your paper­work. Now, if you’ll excuse me, we all have work to do. There is a car wait­ing for you down­stairs. The dri­ver will take you some­where to pro­cure you all a change of cloth­ing, and then escort you to the air­port. I wish you good luck.”

The archangel held the door open for them as they exited, and then saw them to the ele­va­tor. He was smil­ing as the ele­va­tor doors closed.

#

Three hours later, Jack sat with the other three in JFK Inter­na­tional Air­port, wait­ing for their flight to Bagh­dad. The ter­mi­nal wait­ing area was at least half filled with sol­diers clad in BDUs. I guess they’re still going with com­mer­cial trans­port for a lot of the deploy­ments, Jack thought.

Susan was tak­ing advan­tage of the air­port wifi to upload the last video. “Are you sure that’s wise?” Jack said.

“What do you mean? I’m still using onion rout­ing. No one will know where we are.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Jack said. “I’m wor­ried that the demons will see this as an escalation.”

“You mean,” Jeff said, “as opposed to killing one of their own, which they almost cer­tainly already know about?”

“It makes me uncom­fort­able,” Jack said. “I saw war­ring tribes do this sort of thing in Iraq. It always invited reprisals.”

“Jack,” Susan said, “we’re under the pro­tec­tion of the angels now. Noth­ing can touch us.”

23: The Fires of Hell

About an hour later, Jeff pulled into a ser­vice sta­tion near Eas­ton, Penn­syl­va­nia. They’d gone west on US 78, hop­ing to break the pat­tern of going north on I-​​95. About ten min­utes out from the hotel, the car had started miss­ing, the engine surg­ing in an odd way. Fig­ur­ing some­thing in there took a bul­let, they decided to get as far as they could, and it looked like the Lehigh Val­ley of Penn­syl­va­nia was it. They’d lost all of Jack’s weapons and armor, but they still had the sup­plies Jeff had packed in the trunk and of course, Susan still had her lap­top, the cam­era, and a video to post.

Jeff parked the car and popped the hood. Jack and Daniel peered into the engine com­part­ment. There was smoke just start­ing to bil­low up from some­where, now that they’d stopped.

“Oh, that doesn’t look good,” Jack said.

“Nope, not good at all,” Daniel said.

“What do you think?” Jack said. “Engine block?”

“Could be,” Daniel said. “Maybe one of the headers.”

Jeff walked along­side them and looked into the engine com­part­ment. “Do either one of you chuck­le­heads know a damn thing about cars?”

Jack and Daniel looked at each other, shrugged.

“Then step away from the vehi­cle, please!” He stuck his head deeper into the engine com­part­ment. Yep, there it was. Shit.

“Bul­let pierced the radi­a­tor, bounced around a bit, and hit one of the intakes. I can patch it up enough to get us a lit­tle fur­ther, but we ain’t get­ting out of the state unless we replace the engine or swap cars.” The doc­tor and the FBI agent nod­ded sagely, as if they’d been expect­ing that.

“Boys?” Susan said. “Let’s find a diner or some­thing with wifi. I need to get to work.”

Jeff shut the hood and they all fol­lowed Susan down the street. They hadn’t said much in the car, other than Jack’s sug­ges­tion to take 78, and they remained quiet as they walked through the muggy Penn­syl­va­nia night towards a neon sign promis­ing “EATS” and “INTERNET”. Man, truck stops have changed over the years, Jeff thought.

They got them­selves a table next to a power out­let and sat down. Susan had her lap­top plugged in and ready to go before the wait­ress even came by for their drink orders. Every­one ordered cof­fee. It was get­ting close to mid­night, and none of them had slept very well the night before.

Once they were all set­tled in, Daniel started. “Okay, so that sucked.”

Jack gave a sharp lit­tle laugh. “You could say that.”

“How’d he find us so fast?” Jeff asked.

“That was prob­a­bly my fault,” Jack said. “Paid for the piz­zas with my debit card. If their net­work is as far reach­ing as it appears, they prob­a­bly had some­body look­ing for me.”

“I’d put money on it,” Susan said. “They prob­a­bly have bots out on all of us by now.”

“Bots?” Daniel said. “Like robots?”

“Vir­tual robots, but yeah. Once you have access to the VeriSign or some other iden­tity clear­ing house for credit card trans­ac­tions, it doesn’t take much to set up a few auto­mated processes to watch for some­thing spe­cific, one of us using a credit card, say, and set­ting off an alert. I thought about men­tion­ing it at the time, but fig­ured they had no idea to be watch­ing Jack.”

“They’re clearly smarter and bet­ter orga­nized than any of us thought,” Jack said. “And now we’ve learned that the hard way. What do we still have?”

“Just what I have in the trunk of a dying car,” Jeff said. “My lap­top, a hunt­ing rifle, cou­ple of pis­tols, ammo, some blan­kets. Oh and a tire iron should we sink to that.”

“Great,” Daniel said. “Noth­ing like going after an ancient demon with a frig­gin’ club.”

“Espe­cially given that we know bash­ing his head in barely slows him down,” Jack said. “That was a good plan back there, Daniel, way to think on your feet.”

“It bought us one more day, if that. It’s only a mat­ter of time before he finds us again.” The wait­ress brought their food, var­i­ous omelets, and refilled their coffee.

“Still, it was good think­ing. I really expected blow­ing him up to work. I guess we’ve got to kick it up a notch.”

Jeff bit into his omelet. “Good luck with that, Emeril.”

“Besides,” Jack con­tin­ued, “we only had one more day any­way. Espe­cially after Susan posts again. By the way, how much did you get? On camera?”

“Upload­ing it now,” Susan said. “I watched it on the way here. It’s pretty choppy towards the end as we were try­ing to get to the car with­out get­ting shot, but I got a peach of a shot of Batarel stand­ing in the door frame. And I’m sure my edi­tor Stan will be flog­ging this for every cent he can milk out of it. It’ll get around.”

“Good,” Jack said. “We’re going to need that.”

“Why?” Jeff asked.

“Because tomor­row, or later today, depend­ing on how you look at it, is our last shot. After that, our best bet is to turn our­selves in to the FBI. I think I can get you put into pro­tec­tive custody.”

Jeff snorted. “You just saw how deep their net­work of infor­mants goes, their so-​​called ‘min­ions.’ Don’t even try to tell me the feds aren’t compromised.”

“At this point,” Jack said, “I’m inclined to agree with you. Which is why turn­ing our­selves in is such a good idea. It’s the per­fect lure. I have a few peo­ple I can trust implic­itly, help me lay the trap.”

“With us as bait,” Daniel said.

“What bet­ter bait do we have?” Jack asked. “We know Batarel won’t give up. How bet­ter to ensure he attacks on our terms?”

“There’s some­thing I don’t get,” Susan said. “If he’s intent on killing us because he’s try­ing to get us out of the way, make us dis­ap­pear, isn’t it already too late? I mean, every video I post proves their existence.”

“Only to folks like Jeff, Susan,” Jack said. “Peo­ple who already believe. No offense.”

“None taken,” Jeff said.

“To peo­ple who are inclined to believe these things can’t hap­pen, like I was, and Daniel was, until last week, your videos still look like a stunt. Spe­cial effects magic. Most of the net­works are spin­ning them that way. The amaz­ing inter­net prank that has Hol­ly­wood jeal­ous. If we all dis­ap­pear, the whole thing fades away, even now.”

“So how do we prove it?” Daniel asked.

“We don’t dis­ap­pear, for starters,” Jack said. “And we have a bet­ter chance of that in pro­tec­tive cus­tody than we do run­ning around on our own. Even if they have some­one on the inside, they’[ll have to fight their way through a bunch of FBI agents. Safety in numbers.”

“And how do we know you’re not going to just turn us over to your bud­dies in Home­land Secu­rity and ship us off to Gitmo?” Jeff asked, point­ing his fork for emphasis.

“Jeff, are you seri­ous? What about the last twelve hours, man? I’m as far off the reser­va­tion as you are by now. But this is our best shot.”

“I say we do it,” Susan said. “Let’s just get it over with. I’m tired of running.”

“Do it,” Daniel said. “But be care­ful. Make sure you turn us over to the right people.”

“I’ll call my boss first thing in the morn­ing, have him come out here to meet us per­son­ally. And I won’t tell him exactly where to meet us until he gets here. Safe enough?”

“Yeah,” Jeff said. “That should work. I’m still not thrilled to be at the ten­der mer­cies of the FBI, but it beats the alternative.”

“Okay,” Daniel said. “All that’s left now is to find a place to sleep, and then an emer­gency fall back just in case Batarel finds us first.”

“Hey, Susie?” Jeff said. “Can you bring up where we are in Google Maps?”

“Sure, hang on.” After a moment, she turned the lap­top to Jeff.

He moused around for a minute, then said, “I’ve got just the place.”

#

The next morn­ing Jack got up at six, even with­out his phone to wake him up. Habit, the thought. He and Daniel had slept on the floor, ced­ing the beds in their room to Susan and Jeff. They were in a motel across Route 22 from Lehigh Inter­na­tional Air­port, and just down the road from Beth­le­hem Steel, where Jeff thought they could make a stand against Batarel if need be. The nan­otech­nol­ogy in his blood might be able to over­come a grenade, but Jack didn’t see how it was pos­si­ble Batarel could sur­vive being burned/​melted in molten steel. Noth­ing liv­ing could with­stand that.

Jack took a shower and then put on the same clothes he’d been wear­ing for two days. They’d need to get a change of clothes for every­one later, maybe they could dart over to the mall and do that while he was wait­ing for Lou to get here. He snuck out the door, the other three still sleep­ing off the adren­a­line of the night before.

He walked a cou­ple miles down the road, happy for the quiet morn­ing exer­cise. Besides, he wanted to con­serve what few miles the car had left. He finally stopped at a con­ve­nience store, bought him­self some junk food for break­fast and eyed the ancient pay phone mounted outside.

It was an old model, strictly coin oper­ated, no card slot. Hell, he fig­ured he was lucky to find a pay phone at all any­more. Thank God for small towns, he thought. Beth­le­hem was prob­a­bly just big enough to be called a city, but not by much. A lot in this town prob­a­bly hadn’t changed for twenty years or more. Good, that was exactly what they needed. Big enough to hide in, old fash­ioned enough to stay mostly off the grid.

He picked up the receiver and dialed the oper­a­tor. He said he’d like to make a col­lect call, and gave the oper­a­tor — well, the com­puter act­ing as the oper­a­tor — Lou’s direct office line. His boss was sure to be in the office just a bit after seven.

“You have a col­lect call from,” the recorded voice said, then “Jack Har­ris” in his own voice. “Do you accept the ch — “

“Yes!” Lou shouted.

“I’m sorry,” the robot con­tin­ued, “I didn’t get that. You have a col­lect call from…” Jack sup­pressed a laugh for a minute as Lou tried to get the robot to under­stand what he was say­ing. Finally, it sank in and the robot dropped off the call.

“Jack, where the fuck are you?” What was pretty abrupt for Lou, he must be under a lot of pres­sure. Poor guy. Jack won­dered who had tried to kill him recently. Prob­a­bly not an immor­tal demon. Those were rare.

“Good to talk to you too, Lou.”

“Cut the shit, Agent Harris.”

“I have Cho and his asso­ciates. I also have a damn inter­est­ing story about what they’re run­ning from. If you’ve read Hick’s lab reports, you know what I’m talk­ing about. I want all four of us put in pro­tec­tive cus­tody, and I want it done today.”

“What you’re going to do, Agent Har­ris, is arrest the sus­pects and trans­port them back to DC for trial.”

“I don’t think you’re lis­ten­ing, Lou. We’re doing this my way. I’ll explain myself to the direc­tor after the fact if need be. But I want you to fly into Lehigh Inter­na­tional Air­port today and come get us. I’ll tell you where specif­i­cally when you get here. We’re play­ing this safe and by the book, Lou.”

“By the book is you get­ting your ass back to DC as you have been ordered!”

“Not in a pro­tec­tive cus­tody case, and you know this. Don’t fight me on this Lou.”

“I am your supe­rior offi­cer!” Lou was pissed. Jack thought Lou must be in deeper with his neb­u­lous con­tacts on the Hill than Jack thought.

“And I’m doing this by the book, sir. I require the assis­tance of my direct supe­rior to estab­lish pro­tec­tive cus­tody for mate­r­ial witnesses — “

“Sus­pects!”

“ — in a ter­ror­ism inves­ti­ga­tion. Now you don’t want your reluc­tance to pro­vide such assis­tance to become a mat­ter of pub­lic record, do you?”

“Are you black­mail­ing me, Agent Harris?”

“No sir, merely request­ing that you do your job, and by the book. Sir.”

The line went silent, and Jack knew Lou was just stew­ing in being put over a bar­rel. He’d buy the guy a few beers later and smooth it over. After this was all taken care of. Lou would real­ize Jack was just play­ing hard­ball. Hap­pened all the time in DC.

“I’ll be on the first plane out,” Lou said. “Don’t fuck with me on this, Jack.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, sir. I’ll call your cell this after­noon to vec­tor you in. See you when you get here.” Jack hung up the phone.

Hadn’t gone as smoothly as he’d hoped, but the plan was in motion. He started walk­ing back to the motel.

#

“Let’s get a move on, kids,” Jeff said.

They’d packed every­thing into the trunk of the Crown Vic, and Jack took one more look around the motel room. With any luck, this would be the last one they’d see, and their nor­mal lives, plus fed­eral pro­tec­tion, could begin tomorrow.

They walked out to the car, and all breathed a sigh of relief as it started. Daniel was in the back seat with Susan, who was film­ing the whole jour­ney. Jeff handed a cell phone to Jack, rid­ing shot­gun. “Hang on to this, it’s the last dis­pos­able cell I have.”

Jeff put the car in gear and they drove south a cou­ple miles, turn­ing into the park­ing lot of Beth­le­hem Steel. Jeff pulled around to the load­ing docks and parked the car out of the way, but with a clear view of both the entry to the park­ing lot and the open doors of the steel mill. They all hoped they wouldn’t have to force their way in there, but that was all a mat­ter of who showed up first, Batarel or Lou Gottlieb.

“Okay,” Jeff said. “We’re here. You think he’s in town yet?”

“Only one way to find out,” Jack said. He dialed the phone.

Lou picked it up halfway through the first ring. “Hello?”

“Good to hear your voice, Lou,” Jack said. “Flight was okay?”

“Let’s not drag this out, Agent Har­ris. I’m here. Where the fuck are you?”

Wow, still mad, Jack thought. “We’re at Beth­le­hem Steel, around back by the load­ing dock. Do you need directions?”

Lou hung up.

“Huh,” Jack said. “He’s still really angry.”

“Should we be wor­ried?” Susan said.

“I doubt it,” Jack said. “I’m wor­ried, but more because after this I still have to work for the guy. You guys should be okay.”

They sat there and watched the work­ers on the load­ing docks for a few min­utes, as they offloaded steel I-​​beams onto flatbed eigh­teen wheel­ers. “How much do you think one of those weighs?” Jeff said.

“I don’t know,” Jack said. “It’s got to be tons, because they need that crane to move them.”

Finally, they saw a sedan pull around the side of the build­ing and head towards them. It looked like a bland rental, but there was some­thing off about it—

“Get out of the car,” Jack said. “Now. Jeff, pop the trunk.”

They scram­bled out and Jack ran to the back, where he started pass­ing out firearms.

“What’s going on?” Daniel asked. “Is that your boss?”

“Yes, but he’s not alone.”

They peeked around the car and watched as Lou parked the car directly in their way, block­ing any attempt they made to drive out with the whole width of his vehi­cle. The dri­ver side was closer to them, and they saw Lou get out. Jack noticed that his boss was also hold­ing a sidearm, his FBI-​​standard 10 mm automatic.

The pas­sen­ger opened his door, got out, and stood up to face them. It was Batarel. His face was still burned from the explo­sion the night before, but a lot of his hair had already grown back. His suit, as always, was spotless.

“I’m going to need you to turn over the sus­pects, Jack,” Lou said. He was prob­a­bly a good fifty meters away, giv­ing him reac­tion time to get back in the car and ram them if they tried to make a break for it. Also too far away for any kind of accu­racy with a pis­tol shot.

Jack watched as Batarel stepped around the car to stand next to Lou. “What’s going on, Lou?”

“Jack, just do as you’re told for once.”

Jack aimed his pis­tol at Batarel, then hissed to Jeff, Daniel and Susan, “When I dis­tract them, run like hell for that load­ing dock. Got it?”

None of them said any­thing, and Jack wasn’t about to take his eyes off the demons, but he saw move­ment in his periph­eral vision he decided to inter­pret as nodding.

“Jack, this is your last chance,” Lou said. “This doesn’t have to get messy.”

“Look at your pal, there, Lou. It’s way past messy.”

Jack heard sirens. Of course, Lou would have called in the locals. That set­tled it. He took care­ful aim, and fired twice at Batarel. A puff of red mist as the demon was knocked back over the hood of the rental car told him he’d hit at least once.

“Run!” Jack screamed, and they all hauled ass for the load­ing dock. Jack peaked over his shoul­der just once to see Lou already back in the car, prob­a­bly call­ing for more backup, the demon run­ning straight for them, and the first of the local police cruis­ers pulling into the park­ing lots, sirens and lights going.

Why did I even think this was going to be easy? Jack wondered.

Daniel and Susan helped Jeff up on to the load­ing dock, and Jack hur­ried them past the con­fused work­men into the steel mill. One of them, a fore­man by the looks of him, made a half hearted attempt to stop them.

“You can’t go in there!” he said.

Jack flashed his ID. “FBI! Need to bor­row this!”

He grabbed the con­trols of the crane and swung the arm out wide, work­ers duck­ing for cover. The three ton I-​​beam jolted out and hit Batarel square, knock­ing the demon through the air.

“You just killed that man!” the fore­man shouted.

“Don’t worry,” Jack said as he ran into the build­ing, “he’ll get up.”

#

Daniel ran, half guid­ing, half drag­ging Jeff along with him. Susan was still film­ing, aim­ing behind them at the chase as much as she looked where she was going. All Daniel saw around them was gray. Indus­trial con­crete, steel pipes, every­thing gray. But he didn’t need to see what he was look­ing for. As they had dis­cussed the night before, he was fol­low­ing the heat.

They rounded a cor­ner and Daniel heard a gun­shot behind them, and then another in answer. They bet­ter find it soon, because—

There! He saw an orange glow ahead, and the heat increased. They raced into the fur­nace room, and Daniel saw a huge basin in the mid­dle of the room, the source of the glow and the heat. Molten steel. He dragged Susan and Jeff for­ward and shoved them towards a metal stair­case that led to scaf­fold­ing above.

“Get them!” shouted Jack’s boss, what­ever his name was. Jack ran into the room just in front of the cops and scram­bled up the stairs after them.

“Keep going!” Jack said. “He’s right behind me!”

Daniel kept the oth­ers mov­ing. The stair­case opened out onto a cat­walk that went across the room above the steel. Daniel could feel intense heat up here, and saw the steel­work­ers below clear­ing out as more cops entered the room.

Then, across the cat­walk, he saw four uni­formed offi­cers block­ing their way. Jack came right up behind them, more cops and his boss right on his ass.

They were trapped.

“Okay, this could have gone bet­ter,” Jack said.

“That’s not encour­ag­ing,” Daniel said.

“We’re not sunk yet.”

“Could have fooled me.” Daniel saw the cops clos­ing in on them from both sides.

“Let me through!” Daniel saw Batarel push his way between the uni­formed offi­cers behind Jack’s boss, who turned to try to pla­cate him.

“It’s okay, sir, we’ve got them,” he said. “They won’t bother you anymore.”

“I know they won’t,” Batarel said, and pushed past him. “Because you’re going to shoot them.”

“You can’t shoot us!” Susan said, still film­ing, bless her. “Not with all these cops here!”

“All the bet­ter fir­ing squad, Miss Richard­son. “And then we can just dump the bod­ies in the steel. You’ve actu­ally solved my prob­lem for me.”

“Let me take this,” Daniel whis­pered to Jack, and stepped between the rest of them and Batarel.

“Ah, Mis­ter Cho. I think you’ll go last. I want you to suffer.”

“Do these cops know what you really are, Batarel?” Daniel said. “Do they know who they’re work­ing for?”

Batarel walked to within a few inches of Daniel, and Daniel could smell a faint odor of cooked meat. Up close, he could see the burn scar­ring in more detail, and if he con­cen­trated, could actu­ally see it heal­ing before his eyes.

“Of course they don’t, Cho,” Batarel whis­pered. “And they won’t believe you no mat­ter what you tell them. But Assis­tant Direc­tor Got­tlieb knows who I work for. He couldn’t wait to hand you over to me.

“And now,” Batarel said loud enough for the police to hear him, “you will be shot as the ter­ror­ist trai­tors you are.”

“There’s just one prob­lem, Batarel,” Daniel said.

“And what’s that?”

“This!” Daniel said, as he dropped to a crouch and made as if to sweep Batarel’s knees. When the demon lunged to the side to avoid the attack — tak­ing him right up against the cat­walk rail­ing — Daniel came up under the demon, grab­bing him by his suit, and pitched him over the railing.

The demon screamed on the way down before pitch­ing into what looked to Daniel like the fires of Hell. The scream­ing changed into a high keen­ing sound as the clothes flash ignited and Daniel could see the flesh lit­er­ally falling from Batarel’s bones. In sec­onds, it was over. There was noth­ing left.

“I wasn’t sure that would work,” Daniel whispered.

Jack put his gun down on the cat­walk, and motioned for the rest of them to do the same. He turned to his boss.

“You sure you want to shoot us, Lou?”

Jack’s boss was still star­ing into the steel, like he couldn’t believe what had just hap­pened. He appar­ently accepted immor­tal demons run­ning Wash­ing­ton DC, but actu­ally killing one, that gave him pause.

“Lou?” Jack said.

Jack’s boss cleared his throat. “Ar — Arrest them,” he said. “They’ll be remanded over to fed­eral custody.”

The police moved in, and Daniel didn’t resist being handcuffed.

22: New Jer­sey Is The Bomb

Batarel stood on the bal­cony of a demon “com­mon house” in Man­hat­tan, lis­ten­ing to the sounds of the city. It was a upper west side pent­house that had been in the hands of their orga­ni­za­tion since the build­ing com­mis­sioned. In fact, they owned the block, and sev­eral oth­ers nearby. Over the cen­turies, they’d man­aged to insin­u­ate them­selves into every aspect of human gov­ern­ment and com­merce. They exerted influ­ence in thou­sands of sub­tle way every day, all to fur­ther the Mis­sion. They helped facil­i­tate gun run­ning all over the world, but espe­cially in Africa, south­west Asia and Cen­tral and South Amer­ica. They were instru­men­tal in devel­op­ment projects that siphoned water away from vil­lages. They had the ear of nearly every nation in the UN build­ing across town, and told them things about each other that made wars and inva­sions all but irre­sistible. Every­where they went, dis­cord, strife, war and death followed.

All accord­ing to plan.

It was for the humans own good, in the long run. It went back to the old­est human civ­i­liza­tions, agrar­ian pop­u­la­tions just learn­ing the arts of ani­mal hus­bandry. In any pop­u­la­tion, you occa­sion­ally had to thin the herd, weed out the unfit. Omelets, eggs and all that.

And that was why Cho was not allowed to upset the plan. The Mis­sion only worked because the humans thought it was their idea. They thought they were in con­trol. This was an illu­sion that must never be dis­pelled. Of course, there had been thou­sands of such inci­dents through­out his­tory. The secret was too big to think it would never get out. But every such inci­dent was con­tained. In most cases, the unlucky humans sim­ply dis­ap­peared. In a few cases, they’d been dis­cred­ited first or dri­ven mad. But in the end, no one seri­ously believed in demons. Even the Catholic priests were just going through the motions with their exor­cisms, motions his peo­ple had taught them, to keep the humans scared.

This was drag­ging on too long, now. He had to end it. Twice he’d been dis­tracted away from his prey by the more dri­ving need to pro­tect the secret. It wouldn’t do to kill Cho only to reveal him­self to dozens more humans in the process. But now, with that woman Richard­son and her post­ing video of their fights on the inter­net, the world was watch­ing him. A world becom­ing increas­ingly inured to the fan­tas­tic, a world ready to believe. If the secret got out now, online, there would be no stop­ping it. No going back. Batarel had no idea what would become of the Mis­sion then. The sacred trust his peo­ple had held for over ten millennia.

And where were the Oth­ers in all this? Where were the so-​​called angels, the trai­tors to the Mis­sion? He’d been keep­ing an eye out for them as he’d fol­lowed the humans. He would rec­og­nize any of them instantly, just by their walk, or the shape of their heads. No mat­ter how they tried to dis­guise them­selves, a famil­iar­ity borne of thou­sands of years was immutable. He would have known. But he hadn’t seen any of them. He thought, given the high-​​profile media cov­er­age, he would have seen at least a glimpse of one of their lead­ers: Gabriel, Uriel, Azriel, maybe even Michael. But noth­ing. Didn’t they have as much to lose as his peo­ple if the secret got out? Didn’t they need to con­ceal their true nature?

That wor­ried Batarel more than the humans. If the Oth­ers weren’t try­ing on their own to pro­tect the secret, why weren’t they? What was their game? Here in Amer­ica, they could prob­a­bly find ample gullible humans to step in line for them, eager to bend to their unques­tioned author­ity. But surely they didn’t think that sort of thing would work glob­ally? They didn’t think they’d find eager ini­ti­ates in the mid­dle of an African geno­cide, did they? Humans were weak, eas­ily led, to be sure, but there were lim­its. Weren’t there?

“My mas­ter,” one of the slaves had stepped out onto the bal­cony with him. It was a tes­ta­ment to Batarel’s con­cern that he hadn’t heard the human open the door.

“You may speak,” Batarel said.

“We still have no evi­dence of the ones you seek, my mas­ter, but we do have some­thing you might be able to use. If I may be so bold.”

Batarel turned to face him. He was blond, in rea­son­able health. He might sur­vive the night. “And that would be?”

“We found a credit card charge for the FBI agent, Har­ris. He just ordered a pizza in Newark.”

#

“Oh my God this is so good,” Susan said as she bit into the pizza. Jack had ordered it on his credit card, fig­ur­ing no one was watch­ing that yet. It allowed them to con­serve their dwin­dling cash and after eat­ing noth­ing but hotel peanuts since the diner yes­ter­day morn­ing, she was eager to eat some real food.

“Okay, back to work,” Jack said. “We need to fig­ure out how to lure Batarel into a trap. Susan, what have you found out?”

“We still don’t have much. Daniel was right about the address in DC. It was just a stor­age dump, basi­cally. His real address was in Hern­don. The only employ­ment records I could find for him were as a con­sul­tant for a law firm in DC. Looks like they do mostly lob­by­ing work, a lot of con­nec­tions to K street.”

“Well, that fits,” Jeff said. “We know these guys are all about con­trol­ling human events. Makes sense they’d be frig­gin’ lobbyists.”

“Even though he was listed as a con­sul­tant there, he didn’t do much else that left a paper trail. I have no idea where his money came from. His birth cer­tifi­cate lists him as born in Syra­cuse, New York forty four years ago, and then he showed up in DC eleven years ago. No school tran­scripts, both par­ents listed on the birth cer­tifi­cate are dead — “

“How’d they die?” Jack asked.

Susan con­sulted her notes. “Car wreck, twenty two years ago.”

“Inter­est­ing. Any indi­ca­tion that they had kids?”

Susan dug deeper. “Here. An obit from forty two years ago. Their only son, Richard, died sud­denly. Doesn’t say why.”

“I’m sure it was com­pletely inno­cent,” Jack said. “But it does explain how the demons got a birth cer­tifi­cate with no per­son attached to it.”

“This is all fine and good,” Jeff said, “but it doesn’t tell us what we need to know. We know he was using a fake iden­tity, draw­ing off the cof­fers of the demons, who prob­a­bly have more money than the Pope at this point, and work­ing as a lob­by­ist. But none of that tells us how to lure him into a trap.”

The hotel room door exploded into the room with a loud bang, nearly miss­ing Jack. Susan looked to the door­way and saw Batarel stand­ing there, wear­ing another Armani suit.

“I sup­pose,” Batarel said, “you could just invite me.”

#

Shit! Daniel thought. We’re not ready! He scram­bled to pick up as much of the ordi­nance off the bed as he could.

“I don’t think so, Mis­ter Cho,” the demon said, and flipped the bed with one hand. “No cheating.”

“Cheat­ing?” Jeff said. Daniel had to hand it to the guy. He had more defi­ance than sense. “That’s all you demons do, right?”

The demon sighed. “You don’t expect this to be one of those tedious movie fights, do you? With all the snappy pat­ter? I’m really just here to kill you, so if we could get on with that…”

Jack pulled out his sidearm and took aim, but the demon closed the dis­tance between them. In the blink of an eye, he had his hand wrapped around the bar­rel of Jack’s gun.

“I don’t think you’ll be need­ing that,” Batarel said, and ripped the gun out of Jack’s hand before fling­ing Jack at Daniel.

Both men tum­bled to the other side of the bed, and Daniel noticed Jeff was edg­ing for the door. Susan had her cam­era out and was film­ing, her lap­top stowed and slung over her shoul­der. They were ready to run.

Now the Batarel was alone on the other side of the room, he turned to face them. “You might be tempted to run. You’ve run before. You’ve made things very dif­fi­cult for me. So this time I came pre­pared. The moment any of you step through that door­way, my min­ions will cut you down with machine guns. Go ahead, look.”

Daniel pulled the drapes aside and scanned the park­ing lot. Sure enough, the lot was inter­spersed with black-​​clad fig­ures hold­ing rifles, all of them watch­ing the door to the room.

“Why not just shoot us, then?” Jack asked, get­ting back to his feet.

Batarel smiled. “Because, Agent Har­ris, then I wouldn’t have any fun. You’ve all made life damnably frus­trat­ing for me, and I need to work that out. It’s unhealthy to keep that bot­tled up, you know.”

Susan began back­ing past the bed over to where Daniel and Jack stood. “Miss Richard­son, I’ll thank you to stop there. You get to go first. Mostly so the men can watch me tor­ture you, but you do get to leave early.”

“Fuck you,” Susan said.

“From a reporter I might have expected that,” Batarel said, “but I was under the assump­tion you were a good Chris­t­ian woman. Such language!”

Daniel glanced back out the win­dow, then down at his feet. There was a grenade right in front of him, where it had tum­bled off the bed. How do you get a demon to sit on a bomb? He nudged Jack, eyed the grenade, and whis­pered, “Dis­tract him.”

“Hey!” Jack said. “You don’t think I’m actu­ally going to let you do that, do you?”

As Batarel waved the pis­tol, Daniel slumped, appar­ently in defeat. When he stood up, he had the grenade palmed and shifted it behind his back. “Be ready to break for the car,” he whis­pered to Jeff.

“Susan, get back here, now,” Daniel said.

“You’re just drag­ging this out,” Batarel said. “Now we can do this the hard way, or, no come to think of it, there’s just the hard way. Time to die.”

In one slick move, Jack pulled a smaller revolver out of an ankle hol­ster and fired, hit­ting Batarel in the chest. As the demon swung the auto­matic at Jack, Daniel rushed him, and tack­led him to the floor. “Get next to the door!” Daniel said.

Batarel pushed Daniel off of him. “What are you up to now?” he asked.

Daniel held up the pin from the grenade he’d shoved into Batarel’s waist­band, watched the demon’s eyes widen, then leapt for the door.

#

Jack grabbed Daniel with one hand, Jeff and Susan in the other arm and flung all of them out the door and to the ground as the grenade went off, fire and smoke bil­low­ing from the door and now shat­tered win­dow. As he and Daniel expected, the gun­men in the park­ing lot ducked for cover from the fly­ing glass.

“Move!” he shouted. He got them all into a run­ning crouch to the Crown Vic, and then opened the door for Jeff to get in as he fired off a shot at the near­est gun­man. The man went down. Demons must not sup­ply their min­ions with body armor, he thought.

He fired off two more shots from the cover of the vehi­cle, hit­ting one more gun­man and mak­ing the rest duck for cover. In the fire-​​lit park­ing lot, they couldn’t see clearly which of them he was shoot­ing at. The back pas­sen­ger win­dow shat­tered as the side of the car was raked with bul­lets, and then he fired his final shot from the five cham­ber revolver just as Jeff gunned the engine. He jumped into the car and slammed the door.

“Hit it!” he shouted. Jeff floored it and they peeled out of the park­ing space. As Jeff whipped the car around to the exit, Jack looked back to the hotel room and saw a charred fig­ure stand­ing in sil­hou­ette in the door­way. “Shit, even that didn’t kill him?” he said.

The other three looked back as Jeff accel­er­ated, so no one saw the far gun­man step out into the road and level his rifle at them. The man was too slow on the trig­ger, because he only got out one or two shots before Jeff slammed into him, bounc­ing him up and over the car.

“Oh my God!” Susan said, div­ing for the floorboards.

“Hang on, this is gonna be tight!” Jeff said as he whipped the car around the final turn and sped away from the hotel.

21: Reunion

Jack slowed down once I-​​95 became the New Jer­sey Turn­pike. The track­ing device he’d slipped under the fender of the Crown Vic had a rel­a­tively short range, and he didn’t want to over­shoot it. He was halfway across Newark before the receiver began to blink softly on the seat next to him.

Got ya, he thought, and pulled off the high­way. A few min­utes later he was parked in the lot of a dingy motel. They were smart. The place was far enough off the high­way that a nor­mal search never would have come out this far to find it.

He was across and two cars over from the Crown Vic. The motel room doors faced the park­ing lot, so he’d see which room they came from if they came out to the car to get any­thing, or if they tried to leave. They weren’t slip­ping past him again.

A lit­tle more than half an hour after he arrived, one of the doors opened and he saw Richard­son step out of it. She was fol­lowed closely by Frankel, and they seemed to be argu­ing about some­thing. Richard­son kept try­ing to leave, and Frankel kept drag­ging her back, and ulti­mately ush­ered her back into the room. There was no sign of Cho.

Well, we have to start some­where, Jack thought. If he had his phone, he’d call the front desk and have them patch him through to the room num­ber. But if he had his phone, he’d be back in DC by now. He just hoped the place didn’t have a back door.

He got out of the car and made sure his weapon was tucked away securely in his shoul­der hol­ster. He didn’t want to spook them, espe­cially not now. He walked down the park­ing lot away from their room, and then crossed over to approach hug­ging the front wall. He stopped just out of range of the peep­hole and knocked on the door.

“Man­age­ment!” he said.

Richard­son answered the door, which wasn’t chained. He flashed his badge and held the door open with his foot. “FBI, Miss Richard­son. We really need to talk.”

#

Daniel stag­gered back to the hotel. Sure enough, he’d found a bar that was open this time of day, and as it turned out, Mis­ter Jack Daniels hadn’t cared what time it was. He was sure, now, that he could talk Susan and Jeff into run­ning. There was just no point in try­ing any­thing else. Bet­ter to take their chances on the road, then run into…

He had some dif­fi­culty work­ing the lock on the motel door. Stu­pid things were so hard to—

The door opened by itself. That was spooky. Jeff and Susan were sit­ting next to each other on the edge of the bed. Just sit­ting qui­etly. Good, Daniel thought. It’ll make it eas­ier to talk to them. Only, if they’re both sit­ting there…

He stepped into the room, and the door shut behind him. The FBI guy stood there, by the door, and said, “Wel­come back, Mis­ter Cho.”

#

Susan couldn’t believe how bad they’d screwed this up. She never should have let Daniel walk out like that, no mat­ter how much Jeff said that “he just needed his space.” Now giv­ing Daniel his space had got­ten them all arrested. And this wasn’t going to jail to pro­tect a source, an hon­ored jour­nal­is­tic tra­di­tion. This was get­ting dumped into Gitmo and for­got­ten. Her eyes started to well up, but she steeled her­self. She would not let this bas­tard see her cry.

She wasn’t sure if that last part was directed at Agent Har­ris or Daniel.

“Now that you’re all here,” Har­ris said, “I’d like to talk with you about what’s been going on. Just a talk. That’s all. I’m not here to arrest anyone.”

“No,” Jeff said, “you’re just going to shoot us and dump us in a cement mixer. This is New Jersey.”

It looked like Agent Har­ris sighed. “With all due respect, Mis­ter Frankel, I’m not going to shoot you. If I were going to shoot you, I would have done it last night when you left me with that… thing. Not to men­tion a lovely after­noon with two Rottweilers.”

“Yeah,” Jeff said. “The Rot­tweil­ers were my idea.”

“Believe it or not, Mis­ter Frankel, we’re on the same side.”

“I’m gonna have to call bull­shit on that one, Agent.”

“Bull­shit!” Daniel chimed in from the other bed, where he’d been lying face down since he came in. To drive the point home, he raised his hand in solidarity.

Now Agent Har­ris def­i­nitely sighed. “I was ordered to return to Wash­ing­ton this morn­ing, yanked off this case. My boss wants to put together an anti-​​terrorist man­hunt and scour the East­ern Seaboard look­ing for the three of you. And if that hap­pens, they’re likely to shoot first and ask ques­tions later.”

“Then why are you here?” Susan asked.

“Because I’ve seen things I can’t explain, Miss Richard­son. I know by now that none of you are ter­ror­ists. You have been guilty of some extremely poor judg­ment, espe­cially Mis­ter Cho, here, but in the grand scheme of things you’ve done noth­ing wrong.”

“And yet, folks want to shoot us,” Jeff said. “That’s comforting.”

Agent Har­ris cleared his throat. “Miss Richardson’s arti­cles and videos have been very, very effec­tive,” he said. “I expect she’ll have job offers from all the major net­works wait­ing on her home answer­ing machine if she sur­vives this.”

Job offers? Susan thought. Wait, if I sur­vive this?

The agent con­tin­ued. “The videos she has posted online have been picked up by all the major net­works, run ²⁴⁄₇. The arti­cles have been reprinted by the major press syndicates.”

“I’m sure Stan charged a hefty fee for that,” Susan said.

“The point is you guys are major news now. But how you’re per­ceived isn’t uni­ver­sally pos­i­tive. Some of the net­works are spin­ning this as a mod­ern day Bon­nie and Clyde, say­ing you killed those Bal­ti­more police offi­cers. They’ve got pub­lic opin­ion riled up, and I think you all know what this coun­try thinks of ter­ror­ists. Give the media another few days to whip this, and you won’t be able to go any­where in Amer­ica with­out being rec­og­nized and turned over to law enforce­ment, assum­ing you’re not shot on sight.”

How did I not know about this? Susan won­dered. Then it hit her. Stan. She was get­ting most of her infor­ma­tion from him, and he damn sure wasn’t going to tell her any­thing that might slow down or stop the reports com­ing in. Was every­one she knew a bastard?

“So you’re here to bring us in? Safely?” Jeff said.

“Actu­ally,” Har­ris said, “no.”

“Then I think I need to repeat Susie’s ques­tion. Why in the blazes are you here?”

“I’m… off the reser­va­tion, so to speak. I know what’s chas­ing you. You’ve made sure of that. I’ve emp­tied two clips into that thing, not count­ing rak­ing it with machine gun fire in Bal­ti­more, and I can’t drop it. It’s not human.”

“Yeah,” Jeff said. “We know this. Wel­come to the party.”

“Do you know what it is?” Har­ris asked.

“You wouldn’t believe us if we told you,” Jeff said.

“It’s a demon,” Susan said.

“It’s a what?”

“A demon,” Daniel said into the com­forter. It sounded like “ah eee mmm.”

“You mean,” Har­ris said, “like with horns, and a pitchfork?”

“You really don’t know any­thing, do you?” Jeff asked.

Har­ris grabbed a chair from next to the dresser and sat down. “Explain it to me.”

Susan lis­tened while Jeff gave the agent a cap­sule sum­mary of the immor­tal con­spir­acy. To his credit, Har­ris didn’t inter­rupt or make any dis­parag­ing remarks while Jeff went on and on about stuff nor­mal, think­ing peo­ple had been told were just crack­pot the­o­ries. He just sat and listened.

Finally, when Jeff wound down, Har­ris said, “Interesting.”

“That’s it? Inter­est­ing?” Jeff said. “I just laid out the biggest secret con­spir­acy run­ning the world, explained it was in the hands of unkil­l­able immor­tals, and all you have to say is ‘interesting’?”

“Well, yes, it is inter­est­ing. Espe­cially if you know what I know, that you appar­ently don’t.”

Jeff lost the smug expres­sion on his face. If Susan had learned one thing about the old man by now, it was that he couldn’t bear for some­one else to know more about his pet sub­jects than he did. “And what’s that?”

Har­ris leaned back in the chair, mak­ing him­self com­fort­able. “We ran some tests on the blood we col­lected from this ‘Batarel’ back in DC, in the park­ing lot where Daniel beheaded him. We found the blood infused with tiny par­ti­cles we couldn’t quite make out. So we had a sam­ple exam­ined under an elec­tron micro­scope, and do you know what we found?”

“Please don’t say pixie dust,” Daniel said, rolling over on his side so he could see the con­ver­sa­tion. He looked like he was start­ing to sober up.

“May as well be,” Agent Har­ris said. “The par­ti­cles are called nanites. They’re tiny machines, built from the atoms up. They seem to con­stantly mon­i­tor every cell in an immortal’s body, and repair dam­age as quickly as it hap­pens. This seems to work just as well for injuries, like being shot or beheaded, as it does repair­ing the cel­lu­lar dam­age of aging. The nanites make sure the immor­tals never age, never get sick, never stay injured for very long.”

“I’ll be damned,” Jeff said. “Nan­otech­nol­ogy. I never even con­sid­ered that.”

“No rea­son to,” Har­ris said. “Since we can’t do it yet. The nanites in Batarel’s blood are gen­er­a­tions more advanced than the best stuff we can make today.”

“So how’d they get it? Aliens? Wait, are the immor­tals from the future?”

“As long as they’re not from planet Zeist, I don’t care,” Daniel said, crawl­ing off the bed. “I just want to know if we can kill this one.”

“I think we can,” Har­ris said.

“We?” Jeff said.

“Yes, Mis­ter Frankel. We. That’s why I’m here, why I’m telling you all this. I want to help. I need to… to see this through. I’m stak­ing my rep­u­ta­tion the line here as well, clear­ing my own name along with yours. We need to prove what Batarel is, that he and oth­ers like him exist, and bring the whole damn thing out into the light. And frankly, Mis­ter Cho was right back in Bal­ti­more. We’re all safer with it dead than chas­ing us.”

Daniel stood up. “If you’re going to help us, you’re going to have to start call­ing me Daniel.”

“And you’ll call me Jack.” They shook hands.

#

They spent the bulk of the after­noon com­par­ing notes, and Jeff made sure Daniel had a never end­ing sup­ply of cof­fee. The more he talked to Jack, the more his fatal­ism from the morn­ing began to fade. He still wasn’t sure they’d sur­vive the attack, but he was start­ing to believe that while run­ning would only delay the inevitable, at least if they took a stand it would be over, one way or another.

“So then,” Daniel said, “the key is to hit him with more dam­age than the nanites can heal.”

“Exactly. Unfor­tu­nately, we don’t know what that thresh­old is, and there’s no way a blood sam­ple is going to tell us that, even if I still had access to my resources back in DC. I hope it’s some­thing short of being vapor­ized at a nuclear ground zero, but we just don’t know.”

“Hey,” Jeff said, bring­ing Daniel another cup of cof­fee, “I just thought of some­thing. When Danny chopped off Batarel’s head, how’d he got get it and put it back on? The brain shouldn’t have been able to con­trol the body if we’re just talk­ing about lit­tle machines.”

“Unless those machines can talk to each other, coör­di­nate their actions,” Daniel said. “It would have to be wire­less, obvi­ously, so I don’t see why such com­mu­ni­ca­tion would be lim­ited to just inside the skin.”

“So,” Susan said, “it’s not enough even to chop him up. The pieces would just reassemble.”

“No, we’d need to inflict full body, cat­a­strophic dam­age,” Jack said.

Jeff tapped on his steel leg. “How about a land mine? Or a grenade? Some­thing to dis­mem­ber him and burn the pieces.”

Jack nod­ded. “That might work. But it would have to be close. He’d prac­ti­cally have to be hold­ing the damn thing. I saw a lot of explo­sive muni­tions dam­age in Iraq — “

“Just like I did in ‘Nam,” Jeff said.

“ — and any­thing short of direct con­tact would leave too much of him intact. How do we get him to basi­cally sit on a bomb?”

They were all quiet for a moment. No one had any ideas. In fact, some­thing else was nag­ging at Daniel. “For­get the bomb, how do we meet him on our terms at all? I’ve kind of con­sid­ered it inevitable that he’ll find us even­tu­ally, but if he ambushes us, we’re screwed. The only way we’re going to fight him and live is if we lure him into our trap. And so far, we’ve been pretty bad at that.”

Jack nod­ded. “Drown­ing him in Bal­ti­more and elec­tro­cut­ing him in Philly were good ideas, just poorly executed.”

“Hey!” Jeff said.

“No,” Daniel said, “he’s right. We fucked up both times and were lucky to survive.”

“In order to lead Batarel to us, on our terms, we need to con­trol how he finds out where we are. And to do that, we need to know more about him,” Jack said. “Susan, can you get online here?”

She opened up her lap­top. “Sure can. Wifi is just about the only perk this place has.”

“Good. We need to start build­ing a file on Richard Hen­driks. I know you’ve done the basics, but I might be able to help open a cou­ple doors you don’t have access to, like his social secu­rity records. Let’s find out how Batarel was mak­ing his living.

“Jeff, Daniel, while we’re doing that, I want you guys to go out to my car and bring in every­thing I have in the trunk. Be care­ful, it’s live ordi­nance.” He tossed Daniel the keys. “Let’s get mov­ing. I’d like to at least have a lead on him and a trap ready to lay before dark.”