The Unification Chronicles

30: The Hunt Begins

“Assis­tant Direc­tor Gottlieb’s office,” Stacy said.

“Hi, Stacy, it’s Jack. Can you put me through to Lou?”

Lou’s sec­re­tary low­ered her voice. “You out of your frickin’ mind call­ing here? Lou’s really pissed, Jack.”

“I know, Stacy, but offi­cially, I still work for the guy. I’ve been back in coun­try for a week and I need to report in.”

“Your funeral,” she said, and put Jack on hold. Lou picked up just a cou­ple sec­onds later.

“Do you have any idea,” he said, “what the fuck you’ve done, Jack?”

Prob­a­bly bet­ter than you do, Jack thought. “Apart from uncov­er­ing an ancient conspiracy — “

“Spare me, Jack” Lou said. “No one gives a shit but you and the whack­a­dos you’ve fallen in with.”

“The media doesn’t seem to agree with you, Lou.”

“We’ll have the media under con­trol soon enough. They’re champ­ing at the bit now, but they’ll fade in time. Six months from now, every­one will have for­got­ten you and your lit­tle rev­e­la­tion. The only rea­son you and the rest were allowed back on US soil was that deny­ing you entry would have lent cred­i­bil­ity to Richardson’s story.

“You’ve always been an ide­al­ist, Jack. You have no idea how the world really works. It’s not like your bud­dies in the mil­i­tary. This is the real world. You have to be flexible.”

“And by flex­i­ble, you mean sell me out to demons?”

Lou laughed, an angry lit­tle sound. “Call ‘em what you like, Jack. They hold the power, and the rest of us do what we’re told. Sides don’t mat­ter, Jack. Get past the names and it’s all the same.”

Keep talk­ing, Jack said. He glanced over at Dante, who spun his fin­ger in the air. Keep going.

“I thought you were a patriot,” Jack said.

“Jack, I would think you of all peo­ple would under­stand. There are no patri­ots. There are sur­vivors, and there’s you. I’m a survivor.”

Dante gave Jack a thumbs up. Time to pull the plug.

“I can’t tell you how sorry I am to hear that,” Jack said. “And you may as well call off the agents you have con­verg­ing on my loca­tion in Sil­ver Springs. The one you’ve traced this call to? I’m not actu­ally there.”

Lou sput­tered.

“I called to ten­der my res­ig­na­tion,” Jack said. “Well, mine and Ana­lyst Hicks. We’re both going to be pur­su­ing other opportunities.”

“You bas­tard,” Lou said. “You can’t quit. You’re fired.”

“What­ever helps you sleep at night, Lou. And don’t bother clean­ing up after your­self. Agent Hicks pig­gy­backed off this call into the FBI net­work and down­loaded the secu­rity tapes of you allow­ing in those two demons, along with footage of what they tried to do in the lab. We’ll be releas­ing those to the media presently.”

Lou said noth­ing, but Jack enjoyed the shade of red he knew that his now for­mer boss’s face must be.

“So long, Lou. Pray to what­ever god you actu­ally believe in that you don’t see me again.”

#

Susan tabbed over to see look at the lat­est traf­fic stats again. New Amer­i­can Cen­tury, now under her con­trol, was blow­ing up. Dante had set up the new blog on a server that scaled to incom­ing traf­fic demands, and the hits just kept going up and up and up.

In a way, deny­ing her story was the best thing the gov­ern­ment could have done for her. For some rea­son, the pub­lic had been con­di­tioned to believe the oppo­site of what their elected rep­re­sen­ta­tives told them. So when they were told by Peo­ple In Author­ity that this was all a hoax, that demons weren’t real, then the pub­lic believed the Susan was indeed on to something.

She was still writ­ing fol­low up arti­cles, analy­sis and reply­ing to thou­sands of com­ments. Uriel had assured her that she was safe against any direct reprisals from the demons, and she had no rea­son to doubt his word. So she sat in her apart­ment and rode the wave for all it was worth.

She made sure to star all the requests for inter­views in her inbox. Now that she was safely back in the US, all the major net­works wanted to get her in stu­dio for on-​​camera inter­views. Susan felt it was a great oppor­tu­nity to test drive the net­works and see where she wanted to land when all this was over.

She jot­ted down a note to call Daniel later. She knew he was still griev­ing for his fam­ily, and she needed to cheer him up. She shouldn’t be the only one to ben­e­fit from what they’d gone through.

#

Daniel sat in his apart­ment and stared. He wasn’t star­ing at any­thing in par­tic­u­lar, just the way the end table butted up against the wall. He had a day’s growth of beard on his chin, and was wear­ing the same clothes he’d worn the day before, the clothes he put on after that shower in Frankfurt.

His boss had assured him his old job was wait­ing for him, but to take his time. He didn’t want Daniel to rush into things before he was ready. Daniel knew that his boss was hes­i­tant to take him back at all, and that the angels had leaned on him. He could hear it in his voice. The same tone peo­ple used when talk­ing to the men­tally unstable.

But wasn’t that what he was, now? What he’d been for quite some time, if he was hon­est with him­self? He knew how ridicu­lous it sounded. That he, who trained to be a healer, would be fol­lowed around by death? Not his death, but the death of any­one near him, any­one whose life he touched. It wasn’t what he wanted. But it was what he was.

He was the angel of death.

Daniel shook his head. I really am tip­ping over the edge, he thought as he got up and walked into the kitchen for another beer. It was only mid-​​morning, but he told him­self the sun was over the yardarm somewhere.

He heard a knock on the door as he was walk­ing back to his recliner. The sound star­tled him because it was unex­pected. He’d expected to be over­whelmed by paparazzi when he got home, but things had been oddly quiet. No one called to bother him. No one camped out in front of his apart­ment. He sup­posed he had the angels to thank for that, but he wasn’t in the mood to thank any­one for anything.

He walked over and opened the door. He saw Jack stand­ing in his door­way, once again dressed in his “G-​​man” black suit. He only needed a fedora to com­plete the look. Over Jack’s shoul­der he saw a black Crown Vic con­tain­ing Sandy and Dante, both sim­i­larly attired.

“Jack,” he said. He kept his voice neutral.

“Daniel, it’s good to see you,” Jack said. “Do you mind if I come in?”

“Be my guest.”

Daniel trudged back to his chair and sat down.

Jack walked in, shut the door. “Daniel, we need your help.”

“Again?”

“More like still,” Jack said, tak­ing a seat on the couch across from Daniel. “I’m not with the FBI anymore.”

“Wardrobe notwith­stand­ing.”

“I know you’re tired,” Jack said.

“That’s an understatement.”

“And I know you would rather go the rest of your days with­out see­ing another immor­tal, but we need you.”

“We, in this case, being you, Sandy and Dante out in the car?”

“Among oth­ers,” Jack said. “Geez, what I’m about to say still sounds ridicu­lous, even to me. But you’re one of the few peo­ple who would under­stand. We’re cre­at­ing a task force to take down the demons. We’re going to hunt them down and destroy them, every sin­gle one of them.”

Daniel raised an eye­brow. “You and what army?”

“We’re build­ing an army,” Jack said. “That’s why I’m here. I want you on my team.”

“You want me to fight even more demons, on purpose?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Go to hell, Jack.”

Jack’s head dropped. “Daniel, I know what you’ve been through. I was there.”

“Were you?” Daniel said. “Were you in my fam­ily home in San Fran­cisco when the demons burned it to the ground with my fam­ily still in it? Were you there when they raped my sis­ters? When they made my mother watch?”

“I begged you not to watch that video.”

“I’m an alba­tross, Jack. I’m the angel of fuck­ing death. I’m a doc­tor who not only man­ages to kill his patients, I man­age to get any­one killed who’s dumb enough to get close to me. You don’t want me on your team.”

“Yes, I do, Daniel. We’re plan­ning on four man units, small and nim­ble. Each man will fight, but we’ll also have other mis­sion sup­port spe­cial­ties. Sandy is ordi­nance and pro­cure­ment, I’m intel­li­gence, Dante’s triple C. We need a medic. And I hap­pen to know some­one who’s not just a tal­ented trauma sur­geon, but also is the only known human to kill one of these bas­tards. You flipped Batarel into the steel in Beth­le­hem, not me. You know how to fight the demons.”

“Pass,” Daniel said, and took a swig of his beer.

“Dammit, Daniel, we can’t take no for an answer!”

“That’s what you’re get­ting, Jack. I’m done with those fuckers.”

“What about your fam­ily? Don’t you want revenge?”

“Hell yes, I want revenge. But I’m also smart enough to know I won’t get it. Batarel was a fluke, Jack. You can’t kill these things. Not consistently.”

“I refuse to believe that.”

“You can refuse to believe a lot of things. They’ll still kill you.”

“Then at least I’ll die fight­ing for some­thing I do believe in. And I believe in free­dom. Until the demons are gone, the human race won’t be free.”

“We never were, Jack. You were okay with it when you didn’t know.”

“Dammit, I know now! I can’t let this go!”

Daniel smiled. “How does it feel? Now you know why I ran, why I didn’t just pipe down in that police sta­tion, admit to what they said I did.”

“Fuck you, Daniel. Maybe you aren’t who I thought you were. Enjoy being your angel of death.”

Jack stood up and walked to the door.

“Wait,” Daniel said.

Was that it? Was it that sim­ple? Was destroy­ing the demons why he was here? [insert some­thing ear­lier in the book with Daniel’s mom about God’s pur­pose]. Maybe his mother had been right. Maybe every­one did have a des­tiny. And maybe this was his.

“What,” Jack said. It wasn’t really a question.

Daniel stood up. “I’m in.”