1: New Beginning

[Dante Hicks is now Patrick Russell.]Daniel Cho stood in the frigid bay wind and stared at the graves of his parents and his sisters. It was September, three months after their deaths at the hands of the demons. Their estate handling had been done remotely because he’d spent the last three months preparing to avenge them. Today was the first day he’d actually been free to visit their graves.

He hardly recognized the man he’d been when they died. In the last three months, Jack and Sandy had run him and Patrick through a brutal “boot camp” to prepare non-combatant civilians for the battle ahead. They’d been whipped into the best physical shape of their lives, taught how to survive in wildernesses from the Appalachian mountains to SouthEast Washington DC.  They’d been taught how kill with guns, knives and their bare hands. Daniel was the equal now of the best US Army Rangers, and had also refreshed his skills as a trauma surgeon. Those were skills his team was likely to need, considering what they’d be fighting.

Demons. Not the horned and pitchfork variety, but real, flesh and blood people who, as the result of nanotechnology no one had figured out yet, healed almost instantly, never got sick, never aged. They’d been living among humans for centuries–millennia–and interfering in the development of society, corrupting and poisoning things for their own ends. Wherever there was blood, strife, humans killing each others, there were demons behind the scenes.

Daniel had stumbled upon their existence and they’d tried to kill him for it. When that didn’t work, they’d killed his family. But in the end, Daniel and his friends had been able to get the truth out. The demons weren’t a secret anymore.

But neither were they acknowledged fact. The demons had caught the collective imagination of the public, but the United States government, along with most of the United Nations, still declared them a hoax. Daniel knew that this was because the demons had influence deep within the governments of the world. Even Jack’s former boss at the FBI had been working for them. Officially, an ancient conspiracy of immortals meddling with human history was every bit the wacko conspiracy theory it sounded like.

Only it was real. Jeff had died to bring the story to light, one of many wacko conspiracy theories he had favored. Only this one was real. The demons existed, whether they were acknowledged officially or not.

And they would be hunted. Jack’s team but just one of many the angels had started up in the last few months. The angels still hadn’t, for the most part, shown themselves. Only Uriel had been seen in public. But they’d thrown their considerable resources behind the human effort to seek out and destroy the demons, once and for all.

Daniel knew the mission was important. He believed, as Jack did, that humanity needed to be free. But really, he just wanted to destroy the creatures that had taken his family away from him. He wanted justice. If he couldn’t get it from his government, he’d take it himself.

“Are you ready?” Jack said behind him.

Jack turned and saw his new boss, both of them wearing jeans and leather jackets against the fall chill. They didn’t look much like soldiers. But Jack had fought in Iraq, alongside Sandy, before he joined the FBI. And while Patrick hadn’t been tested under fire yet, Daniel had fought the demon Batarel five times before finally killing the bastard, the last time just hand to hand, flipping the demon off a catwalk in a steel plant into a vat of molten metal. So far, he was the only human to kill an immortal in all of recorded history. That had to count for something.

Daniel didn’t look back at his family’s graves. “Yeah, boss. I’m ready.”

“Let’s saddle up, then.” Jack turned and led Daniel to the UH-60 Blackhawk they used to move around. They hadn’t come to San Francisco just so Daniel could say goodbye to his family. They were hunting. After Susan released the database given to her by Uriel with all the names and aliases of every demon, including their current identities, most of them had gone to ground, assumed emergency backup identities. It had taken a lot of legwork and Patrick’s computer skills, but they found one, living in the bay area. It was time to take him down.

*

Jack sat in the cockpit of the Blackhawk, going over the mission details one more time. Sandy was piloting, and Daniel was in the back with Patrick, trying to get Patrick’s little surprise ready. While he and Sandy had been teaching the young analyst to fight, they’d also been picking his brain about how to kill demons more effectively. They couldn’t very well carry around a vat of molten steel everywhere they went, so they needed another way to kill something that could heal almost any injury in seconds. Patrick had come up with a lot of ideas, including the one they were going to field test today. Just as soon as they found the demon.

According to their sources, the demon, true name of Oznael, was holed up in warehouse down in Hunter’s Point. Seemed as good a place as any to test out their tactics.

Sandy signaled him. They were almost at the LZ. Out the port side he saw the blue of San Francisco Bay, gray industrial buildings below and to starboard. They were coming in fast.

Jack turned and signaled to Daniel and Patrick. They moved to turn off all their electronics. Jack started shutting down everything he could in the cockpit without interfering with Sandy keeping the bird in the air. They’d have to be quick.

Sandy pointed at a building, started a countdown with his hand. Five, four, three…

The instant the Blackhawk hit the roof, Jack and Sandy scrambled to shut down the remaining electronics. They had three seconds. Two, one…

Dante hit the EMP and Jack heard a loud pop from the back of the Blackhawk. All the control screens were black. He glanced at Sandy. “Did we make it?”

“Won’t know until we try to start it again.”

Jack shrugged. They had other concerns at the moment. “Let’s move, everybody!”

The men jumped out of the Blackhawk, rotors still swinging above their heads from sheer momentum. They ran for the roof access door, Jack spraying the doorknob with bullets from his MP5. He kicked the door down and they rode it like a surfboard down the first flight of steps before jumping off in the landing and continuing down. The staircase opened out into a catwalk above a warehouse floor. The lights were off, a side effect of the eletromagnetic pulse they’d set off. If they were lucky, the nanites in the demon’s blood would be disabled as well.

They fanned out across the catwalks along the north and west sides of the building. Each man was dressed in black coveralls, combat boots and bulletproof vests. They wore kevlar helmets and could have passed for SWAT officers but for the lack of the word POLICE in bright white letters on their vests. Each carried an MP-5 submachine gun, plenty of ammo, grenades, and a light backpack containing the tools of their specialty. Sandy carried handheld napalm bombs and other ordinance. Daniel had their medical kit, Patrick a computer that could connect to just about anything anytime someone hadn’t just set off an EMP. Jack’s backpack held surveillance gear, and he reached into that pack to pull out a lightweight set of night vision goggles. He put them on.

The warehouse flared into a monochrome gray, brighter and better detailed than what he’d been able to make out by eye. He was the spotter in this scenario, directing the other men towards the target. If they could find the target. The warehouse was full of eighty foot shipping containers, some stacked five high. A single demon could hide in here for a long time without being spotted, especially if he could get into one or more of the containers.

Jack saw something dart off to the side on the warehouse floor. He whistled to the men, and pointed. “Southeast corner!” he said.

Carefully, they all started down the metal stairways towards the floor. Patrick had formed up with Jack, Daniel was covering Sandy. With any luck, they’d catch the bastard in a crossfire.

Jack turned and glanced at Patrick. “You sure this is going to work?”

The former FBI analyst shrugged. “In theory, it should work,” Patrick said. “The nanites are too small to have any appreciable EM shielding. The EMP should have turned Oznael into just another human being, at least for a while. If we shoot him, he should stay dead.”

“That’s an awful lot of “shoulds”, Patrick.”

“I know, sir.”

They crept down the floor. As soon as Jack stepped down to the concrete, he heard the distinctive chatter of an AK-47. He grabbed Patrick by the scruff of the neck and threw them both to the floor. Bullets ricocheted off the metal staircase behind them.

“I think he’s on to us, sir,” Patrick said.

“Figured that out, did you?” Jack said as heard answering MP-5 fire coming from the left. Good, Sandy was already trying to pin him down.

He slapped Patrick on the shoulder. “Come on, Patrick. We have a job to do.”

Patrick covered Jack as Jack carefully sidestepped around the shipping container where he thought the AK shots had come from. Sandy and Daniel were no longer firing, so they must have lost Oznael too, assuming they ever saw him and weren’t just shooting at the sound to drive him back.

“Oznael!” Jack shouted, echoing in the vast warehouse. “We know who and what you are. There’s no way out of here except through us!”

“Sir is that wise?” Patrick whispered. “Taunting him?”

“If he hides,” Jack whispered, “and we have to search crate by crate, it’s much more dangerous and we have a higher risk of losing him. He thinks he’s invulnerable still, and is only avoiding us because it’s easier to pick us off one by one. If we can make him angry enough to charge us…”

“He’ll run right into the bullets, thinking they won’t harm him.”

“That’s the plan,” Jack said. “Now we just need to flush him out.”

Jack turned on the comlink hooked over his right ear. “Sandy, report,” he said as quietly as he could.

“Nothing here, boss,” Sandy said. We converged on where it sounded like the AK fire came from, but there’s no sign of him.”

“Roger that,” Jack said. He waved for Patrick to follow and moved down the aisle between the massive containers. Bastard had to be here somewhere.

“Oznael!” he said. “You’re not getting out of this.”

Jack heard the demon speak behind them, a rough Aussie accent. “I beg to differ.”

Oznael opened fire, and Jack felt a couple of the rounds hit the plate on the back of his vest. Patrick cried out and went down immediately.

“Shit,” Jack said and returned fire. He hit the demon square in the chest with at least five rounds. The demon fell down under the hail of gunfire.

“Medic!” Jack screamed. “Daniel, get over here!” Jack saw a pool of blood spreading under Patrick, and it was getting way too big.

As he heard Sandy and Daniel doubletime over to him, he saw the demon getting back up.

*

Daniel saw Patrick slumped against the side of a container as Jack leaped over him and opened fire on the demon again. “Sandy, I need some help here!” Jack said.

As Sandy and Jack drove the demon back, Daniel whipped off his pack and tended to Patrick. “Stay with me, buddy,” he said. “We’re gonna get through this.”

“F–First time out,” Patrick said. “And I get tagged.”

“Could have happened to any of us,” Daniel said. He saw that most of the bleeding was coming from Patrick’s left leg. Daniel took a knife and sliced open the leg of Patrick’s pants. The bullet had gone deep into his thigh, and the blood coming out was bright red, arterial. Probably nicked the femoral, Daniel thought.

“Okay, Patrick, this is going to sting a bit,” Daniel said. He grabbed a clamp out of his pack, and a retractor. “Got to do a little spelunking.”

“In my leg?”

“Just lie back and think of England,” Daniel said. “Don’t pass out if you can help it.”

“I’m getting dizzy, Daniel.”

Daniel reached in with the retractor and pulled the wound open. Patrick screamed and thrashed.

“Patrick! Keep still!”

“Fuck!” Patrick said through clenched teeth.

There was blood everywhere, pumping hot over Daniel’s hands. But he could see where it coming from. He reached in with the clamp, and closed it over the artery.

“Shit!” Patrick said. “Fucking Christ, that hurts!”

Daniel broke an ice pack and put it over the wound. “Hold that there as long as you can. I’ve stopped the life threatening bleeding, but we need to get you to an OR as soon as possible.” He wrapped some bandages over the ice pack. “I’ll be right back.”

Daniel grabbed his weapon, jumped up and ran towards the gunfire.

*

Jack emptied his clip, ejected it, and slammed another one home. Oznael was off balance from the continued gunfire, but he was healing visibly. They had him backed up and pinned down, but Jack didn’t see how they were going to keep this going. As soon as they ran out of ammo, the demon would counterattack and it would be over. They needed a lot more practice before trying to take one of these things down.

Jack heard another SMG open up behind him, and saw Daniel adding his firepower. He was firing in three-round bursts, focusing on the demon’s knees.

“Good thinking!” Jack shouted. “Sandy, we need some heat!”

Sandy pulled back and reached behind him. He pulled out what was essentially a small flare attached to a plastic container of jellied gasoline. It was a slightly more sophisticated version of a Molotov Cocktail, in that it used napalm instead of gas or kerosene, but it would do the job. Sandy lit it and tossed it just above the demon. The flare ignited the napalm, which melted the plastic and rained down on the demon, In an instant, the demon was covered in fire. Oznael turned and ran, faster than Jack thought possible, for one of the warehouse exits.

“Won’t kill him,” Sandy said, “but it will take him out of commission long enough for us to evac.”

“Let’s do it, then,” Jack said. Daniel already had a collapsible stretcher unpacked and unfolded. They set about moving Patrick to the stretcher as gently as possible, and then carried him to the nearest staircase.

The first battle in the war against the demons hadn’t exactly been a rousing success.

28: The Burden of Proof

“How the hell are we supposed to get out of here?” Jeff said. Daniel didn’t know, and the helmet wasn’t showing him any other secret doors, assuming it could do that. He couldn’t even read the ancient text on the display.

“Maybe we’re not supposed to get out,” Susan said.

“Look, missy, I know the sounds of combat when I hear it. And Mohammad’s little pea shooter and gonna do diddley against military firepower.”

“I think we’re safer where we are.”

“Because an angel sent us here?” Jeff asked. Susan didn’t have to answer; they could see it in her face.

“Great day in the morning,” Jeff said.

“Let’s not panic,” Daniel said, noticing how both Susan and Jeff jumped a bit at his amplified voice. “Jack and Sandy are upstairs, I’m sure they have this under control.”

#

This is out of control, Jack thought.

They were at the end of a long stone corridor, just above an ancient stairwell. Every time they tried to enter the stairwell, someone below shot at them. And it had to have been a demon, because it didn’t seem to care about the grenades they dropped past it. Two of Sandy’s men were also engaged in a rear holding action against a band of—Jack wasn’t sure what they were, really. They were assisting the demons, but they were human. Sandy’s men had shot enough of them to verify that. But they still had Jack pinned down with no way forward and no way back until reinforcements arrived to take care of the demonic sympathizers. What a world.

“Well, Captain Sandarski—“

“Sure,” Sandy said, “throw that back in my face now.”

“—what do you, in your infinite tactical wisdom suggest?”

“Well, we could pour napalm down the stairwell,” Sandy suggested.

“A. You don’t have any napalm,” Jack said. “And B. Even it worked, it would either kill my friends down there or trap them behind a wall of fire we couldn’t get through.”

Sandy nodded. “Yeah, it’s not what you’d call a perfect plan.”

“Anything useful?”

“Well, if you’re gonna tie my hands like that…”

“Right,” Jack said. “We need a decoy, something for them to shoot at while we descend.”

Sandy looked back behind them. “Like, say, a dead body?”

Jack looked where his friend was looking, back towards the sympathizers. “Yeah, that might work. Damn, son, all this time in the desert’s made you a cold-blooded son of a bitch.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Sandy said. On his orders, his men forced the issue with the sympathizers, pushing them back as though the soldiers were retreating. The enemy resisted, but not much. Jack figured they thought they were winning, that the soldiers were going to leave their demon masters alone. Once they got as far as the first body, Jack darted in and dragged it back to the stairwell. The soldiers fell back, covering him.

“Okay,” Jack said. “We only get one shot at this.”

“You don’t think they’re dumb enough to fall for it twice?” Sandy asked.

“Would you be?”

“Hey, I was dumb enough to join the Army, so I’m probably not a good test case.”

“Exactly,” Jack said. “Okay, as soon as Habib here moves, we chase him. Let them shoot the body, and then we overwhelm the shooters. You guys have zip ties, we can use those to disable them. Got it?”

“Have I told you,” Sandy said, “just how much I missed working with you?”

“No, you didn’t.”

Sandy nodded. “There might just be a reason for that.”

“Go!” Jack shouted, and pushed the cadaver down the stairs, starting it off as vertically as he could.

Jack and the soldiers followed the body, screaming at the top of their lungs. As expected, the body was pinned to the wall by gunfire, and as the lone demon guarding the stairwell stepped forward, Jack hit him with a flying tackle that would have made his high school football coach beam with pride. He smashed the demon into the stone wall, and in seconds they had it face-down on the floor and hog-tied with zip ties. They also ripped a rag off the increasingly bloody cadaver and shoved in the demon’s mouth as a gag. Jack had to admit, Sandy’s men were well trained.

“Okay,” Jack said, absurdly quietly considering the cacophony of the gunfire and struggle. “Anybody dead?”

All the soldiers checked themselves, and they confirmed that they were not dead.

“Good,” Jack said. “Let’s keep it that way, shall we?” He grabbed the assault rifle from the floor, and reversed the taped together banana clips to ensure he had fresh rounds. He’d count them later, if they lived.

“Let’s move.”

#

Daniel was starting to worry about his air supply. He didn’t know how long the battery in the helmet was going to hold out. But no matter how hard he pulled on the sides of the thing, it wouldn’t budge.

“Here, let me take a look at that,” Susan said. “Jeff, hold the camera.”

“While we’re at it,” Jeff said, “why don’t we just put on a puppet show?”

Daniel saw Susan reach up and take hold of the helmet. She yanked upwards. “Whoa whoa whoa whoa!” Daniel said. “You’re gonna take my head off!”

“No I’m not, you big baby. Pipe down.” She felt around on the helmet, on top, around the back, down the front. When she ran her fingers just under the jawline, Daniel heard a faint pop, then felt the padding recede. The display panels retracted and his hearing returned to normal.

Susan lifted the helmet off his head, then held it in one hand while she straightened his hair. “There. Not so bad.”

He took the helmet from her and looked into her eyes. “Thank you,” he said.

She was just inches away. “Any time,” she said.

“Ahem!” Jeff said. They both jumped, backing away from each other. “I’d suggest you kids get a room, but the problem is, see, we have one. And we can’t get out of it.”

“Right,” Daniel said. “Well, let’s look around again. Maybe there’s another way out of here.”

Jeff handed the camera back to Susan. “I think I got some great footage of the stones in the ceiling, just now,” he said. “Just sayin’.”

#

Jack crept through the dark corridors underneath the mosque. The place was a labyrinth, and he had no idea where this Mullah Mohammad had taken Daniel, Jeff and Susan. He knew they were down here, and he knew demons were down here. It would be bad enough if he was playing hide and seek with enemy troops, trying to find Daniel before they did. But given that if he found the demons first he couldn’t kill them while they could pretty easily kill him…

“You hear something, LT?” Sandy whispered behind him.

“No. Why?”

“You’re slowing down.”

“Sorry.” Jack picked up the pace again, creeping towards the next intersection in the stone corridors. It was just about pitch black down here, and they’d avoiding using the soldiers’ lights so as not to give away their position. They were literally blind. He ran his hand along the wall, trying to move as quietly as possible and filter out the miniscule sounds of the soldiers closing ranks behind him from what could be demons in front of him. He was also on the lookout for any light sources that—

His hand reached the end of the wall and touched warm flesh.

Jack snapped his hand back and whipped his rifle around, hitting the light he held alongside it.

“Turn that off, you fool!” a robed cleric hissed in thickly accented English. Jack killed the light. The man seemed to have come from a side tunnel that branched back the way they had come. Given the half a second Jack had been able to see it, anyway.

“Who are you?” the man whispered.

“Jack Harris,” Jack said. “I’m looking for—“

“Daniel Cho, yes, I know. I’m actually looking for you. The archangel said you’d be with them. Quickly, follow me.”

“Sir, I can’t see you.”

Jack felt the cleric’s hand grab his, and guide it to flowing fabric. “Grab my robe. Quickly, now!”

“Yes,” another voice said. “Quickly. We’re all very eager to meet your guests.”

Lights snapped on and Jack was momentarily blinded. As his vision cleared, he saw three demons in Bedouin robes, all holding AK-47s on them. Before he could say anything, Sandy opened fire on all three, strafing them with him M-16. The demons returned fire, and Jack dove for the mullah, hearing the man cry out as Jack drove him to the floor.

“Go, Jack!” Sandy said, and continued firing on the demons. He couldn’t kill them, but the barrage of lead kept them from advancing.

Jack scooped up the mullah and ran the way the man had come. The mullah’s voice was ragged, and Jack was pretty sure the guy had been hit, but they had no time to stop and check. He could hear Sandy and his men covering their retreat, falling back behind them. As the mullah directed him first one way, then another, Jack quickly lost track of where he was, the sound of Sandy and his men buying them time grew more indistinct. This better be worth it, Jack thought.

Finally the man stopped Jack by a door, and fumbled for a key. Jack took the key, slick with the mullah’s blood, and fitted into the door. It swung open on a dimly lit room containing his friends.

“Get inside,” the mullah said. “Now!”

Jack heard footsteps closing on their position and swing his light and rifle up, but it was only Sandy. He was bloody and limping from what looked like a hit to the thigh.

“They’re right behind me,” Sandy shouted. “Go!”

Jack bolted into the room, pushing the mullah in front of him, Sandy right on his heels. He turned and helped Sandy move the heavy door.

“Don’t close that!” Jeff said. “It—“

The door slammed with a hollow thud, and Jack almost immediately heard pounding on the other side.

“can’t be opened from this side,” Jeff said.

“As long as they can’t open it from that side for a while,” Jack said, “I’ll take that.” He turned to Sandy. “Your men?”

Sandy shook his head. It was all they needed to say.

“Okay,” Jack said. “Looks like we have a few minu—“

Susan screamed.

Jack looked over and saw that the mullah had slid to the floor, leaving a wide, wet streak of blood on the wall behind him. He was hit bad, much worse than Jack thought.

Daniel was already kneeling down next to him, trying to stop the bleeding. His hands moved with steady assurance and experience, the practiced motions of a trauma surgeon. But Jack had seen enough battlefield casualties to know it was already too late.

“Behind—“ the mullah said.

“Save your strength,” Daniel said. “Don’t talk.”

The mullah grabbed Daniel by the shirt. “Behind the altars,” he said. “The vision of—“ he coughed, blood spattering from his lips, “of angels will point your—“

The man slumped over. He was dead.

“The vision of angels?” Jack said. “What the hell does that mean?”

Daniel ran across the small room and grabbed an ancient helmet off one of two small altars set off in an alcove. “This,” he said. He put the helmet on and Jack saw the eye holes close off, replaced by two flat black convex lenses.

“Holy shit, what is—“

“Quiet,” Jeff said. “Danny, go look behind the altar.”

Daniel walked over to the alcove and began examining the walls behind the altar. “I see it,” he said. His voice was loud and deeper than usual, almost booming. “The readout in the helmet is showing me a hidden door, superimposing it. If you didn’t know it was there, you’d never find it.”

Daniel pushed in on the stones and a small section behind the altar moved away, maybe two by three feet. It wasn’t much of an escape hatch. “There’s a tunnel here,” Daniel said.

“Daniel,” Susan said. “It’s pitch black. I can’t see a thing.”

“I can,” Daniel said. “Clear as day as far as the helmet’s concerned.”

“Okay,” Jack said. “Daniel goes first, since he can see what’s going on. Then Susan, then Jeff.”

“No,” Jeff said.

Jack turned to the old man. “What do you mean, no?”

[In the second draft, have this happen after they find they can’t shut the door behind them]

Jeff took the AK-47 away from Jack. “Get a move on,” he said. “I’ll hold them back as long as I can. I remember a thing or two about firing from cover.”

Daniel took the old man by the shoulders. “Jeff, you don’t have to do this.” The soft words sounded odd with the helmet’s booming amplification.

“Yeah, I do, Danny. You have to get this story out. It can’t be limited to conspiracy nuts like me. You have to make people believe. You can do it. I know you can.”

The door cracked, and Jack could tell the demons were breaking through. Jeff started shooing people into the tunnel. “Go on, get moving! I’m gonna hole up behind these altars and buy you all the time I can. But it won’t matter much if you don’t get the hell out of here!”

Jack watched as Daniel, then Susan, then Sandy climbed into the tunnel. He clapped Jeff on the shoulder. “Thank you.”

“Just look after him, okay?” Jeff said.

Jack nodded and scuttled into the tunnel. He’d gone maybe ten meters when he heard Jeff open fire.

26: The Lost Gospel

Daniel snapped awake again when the Humvee hit a bump in the road. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw it wasn’t so much a bump as a hole. Or a crater.

He’d been trying to sleep as they moved south, but the road conditions, lack of any meaningful shocks or suspension on the military vehicle and the heat kept waking him up. He was pretty badly jetlagged. To him it was still the middle of the night, not late morning. And he really hadn’t had a good night’s rest in a week, so that made it even worse.

And of course, there was also the fact that Jack wouldn’t stop talking.

“Hey, check this out!” Jack said from the front seat of the Humvee. He’d put a copy of Susan’s database on Jeff’s laptop, and had been digging through it while Susan did her own digging in the other Humvee.

“What’s that?” Daniel said. He noticed the soldier sitting next to him in the back seat looked far less uncomfortable than Daniel felt. How do they do that?

“Sandy, you know how we keep reporting Said Hamza dead, and then find him alive again have to retract listing him as dead?”

“I told you, call me Captain. Yeah, he’s the Al Qaeda in Iraq number two guy.”

“Turns out there’s a good reason,” Jack continued. “He’s a friggin’ immortal. We probably are killing him each time, but the bastard just won’t stay dead!”

“Shit, LT, you mean to tell me some of the bastards in Al Qaeda are these immortals of yours?”

“From what I can see, they’ve got demons placed in the IRA and Tamil Tigers, too. A lot of work in Central and South America. And yeah, they get around the Middle East.”

“They always did, according to you.”

“Wait a minute,” Daniel said, leaning forward. “You’re saying the demons have been key players in—“

“In every war, revolution, junta and terrorist organization down through the ages. They were in the Crusades, on both sides, it seems. They were in Nazi Germany. They were in Stalinist Russia. Hell, it says here Rasputin was a demon. No wonder they couldn’t kill the bastard.”

“All this time, they’ve been walking among us—“

“Stirring up trouble,” Jack said. “Anywhere you find blood and death at human hands, they’re not far off. You stumbled into the biggest secret of all time, Daniel.”

Sandarski swerved the Humvee to avoid one of the larger craters, then said, “And you really believe this, LT?”

“Captain Sandarski—“

“Thank you, sir.”

“Captain, I’ve seen one of these things with my own eyes, and met one of the angels personally. According to Susan, the angel that stood at the gates of Eden with a flaming sword. I’ve tried and failed too many times to kill a demon to think they’re anything other than real. You saw the videos I sent you.”

“A lot of the men thought those were a joke, LT. Hollywood special effects.”

“Untouched, Captain. You saw on those videos what I saw with my Mark One eyeball. They’re real. The one we fought, Batarel, was impaled, beheaded, bludgeoned, electrocuted, blown up, shot—and I mean I emptied a whole clip into the bastard, should have died from lead poisoning at the very least—and it wasn’t until Daniel there tossed him into a vat of molten steel—“

“Holy shit, that was real?”

“That’s the kind of damage it takes to kill these things, Captain. Napalm might do it, or white phosphorus. The lab rat back in DC told me they’ve got tiny machines running through their bodies, fixing damage down to the cellular level as fast as it happens. They can heal from almost anything. You have to hit them so hard there’s nothing left to rebuild, and you have to do it fast.”

“Well, shit,” Sandarski said. That about summed it up for Daniel.

“And this temple in Najaf?” Sandarski asked.

“The Mosque of Imam Ali,” Jack said. “One of the most holy Islamic sites. Shia think Noah and Adam are buried there next to Ali, the third caliph.”

“Adam. As in—“

“The book of Genesis Adam, yeah,” Jack said. “Saddam damn near destroyed the place back in ’03—“

“Yeah, I remember hearing about that.”

“And it’s been rebuilt a few times over. But according to Uriel—“

“The angel you were talking about? Wonder if he remembers Adam.”

“According to Uriel, there’s a secret society inside all the Abrahamic churches that knows the truth about the immortals, but believes them to be what they say they are.”

“You mean,” Sandarski said, “you believe in these things, but you don’t think they’re demons?”

“Would a biblical demon have had trouble with molten steel?” Jack asked. “Should have been like going home, brimstone and all that. I never saw horns or a tail, and Uriel didn’t have any wings I could see. They’re immortal, and I don’t doubt they’re where the legends of angels and demons came from, but I don’t think they have anything to do with God.”

“Huh,” Sandarski said.

“So anyway, huh!” Jack said has they hit another hole in the road. “Can’t you keep this thing level?”

“At the speed you want, LT? Consider yourself lucky the ride’s as smooth as it is.”

“Anyway, this secret society has hidden artifacts all over the world. In the mosque, there’s supposed to be a scroll with proof of immortal existence. It’s been kept there for centuries, and kept a secret even though the place had been destroyed and rebuilt a bunch of times even before Saddam.”

“It’s a rough neighborhood, I’ll give you that,” Sandarski said. “So who do you talk to when we get there?”

“Mullah Hassan Mohammad,” Jack said.

“Hope he’s still there, LT. Not a place you want to hang out if they decide they don’t like us.”

Daniel sat back as the two men stopped talking. The desert and small villages sped past his window. He was in Iraq. On the way to a holy mosque. I don’t even have a passport, Daniel thought. He looked again at the soldier in the back seat, who still hadn’t said a word, and Sandarski. Jack trusted them, and he trusted Jack. He hoped they were good hands.

He tried to go back to sleep.

#

“Okay, LT, here we are,” Sandy said.

Jack looked out the Humvee window at the Mosque of Imam Ali. They were just west of the city of Najaf, and the sun was behind the mosque, scattering light around the golden dome that towered above the two story structure. It was a lot bigger than Jack expected, and there were dozens, maybe hundreds of people scattered around the complex.

“Let’s go,” Jack said, and opened the door.

Daniel hopped out after him, and he saw Susan and Jeff get out of the other Humvee with the rest of Sandy’s men. The locals looked curiously at the soldiers, but Jack didn’t see much hostility in their eyes. He supposed after seven years, they were used to American troops.

Not sure I’d ever feel the same were our positions reversed, Jack thought.

“You want us to go in with you?” Sandy said.

“No, just hang tight out here. I don’t want to insult them by bringing guns into a mosque.”

“Saddam did it,” Sandy said.

“And look how things turned out for him,” Jack said. “We’ll be right back. It shouldn’t take long.” He motioned to the other civilians and they walked into the mosque.

Jack walked up to the first person he saw inside who looked like they worked there and said in Arabic, “I’m looking for Mullah Hussan Mohammad.”

“I am sorry, there is no one here by that name,” the man replied.

“Please, I beg your pardon,” Jack continued in Arabic. “We have come a long way, and were told to seek a Mullah Hussan Mohammad here.”

“I am most sorry. I cannot help you.” The man walked away.

“Well,” Jack said in English, “that didn’t get us anywhere.”

“You speak Arabic?” Susan said.

“Badly,” Jack said. “I picked it up the last time I was here.”

“Useful skill to have,” Jeff said.

“Only if we can find someone who knows something. Come on.”

He walked down the central aisle of the main chamber, looking for a mullah who might know more. He saw a man in mullah’s robes talking to the man Jack had just spoke to. They both looked over at him, and then the mullah clasped the man on the shoulder and disappeared down a side corridor. The man followed him.

Jack picked up his step and tried to follow, only to watch as the door to that corridor shut just as he got there. He tried the knob and found the door locked.

“Something’s going on,” he said. “They’re ducking us.”

Jack looked around, and it looked like there were fewer worshippers than there had been before. He had to be imagining that.

“Can I be of service?” a voice behind them said in accented English.

They turned and Jack saw an old man in a threadbare suit. He didn’t look like one of the priests or their support staff. “Maybe. We’re trying to find Mullah Hussan Mohammad. We’ve come from America.”

“So has everyone else, these days,” the man said. “My name is Afif Ibn Ghalib. I’m the foreign attaché for the shrine. I help academics and other visitors who are not worshippers. And since none of you appeared to be here to pay your respects to Ali, I thought perhaps I could help.

“But I’m afraid there is no Mullah Hussan Mohammad here. I’ve been working for the shrine for decades, and I can’t remember such a man ever working here. Are you certain you’re in the right place?”

“We’re pretty sure,” Jack said.

“Why do you seek this Mullah Mohammad, if I may ask?”

Before Jack could answer, Daniel stepped in. “We were sent to retrieve a scroll. A very old artifact.”

“I see,” Ibn Ghalib said. “And you are?”

“My name is Daniel Cho. This is Jack Harris, Susan Richardson and Jeff Frankel. I was under the impression we were expected.”

“I see,” Ibn Ghalib said again. “Well, I’m not sure how I can help you. Who did you say sent you?”

Just loud enough for Ibn Ghalib and the other three to hear, Daniel said, “We were sent by the Archangel Uriel, Mullah Mohammad.”

The man nodded, and seemed to age another twenty years before Jack’s eyes. “I see,” he said again, with far more gravity. “I knew this day would come, but I prayed to Allah that I would not live to see it. Come with me.”

He turned and led them down another hallway to a stone staircase, and then proceeded down. As they followed, Jack whispered to Daniel, “How’d you know he was Mohammad?”

“While you were talking to him,” Daniel whispered back, “the other worshippers were quietly ushered out. Even though he seemed calm, his pulse rate, which I could see by his jugular, was rapid, indicating he was much more agitated than he appeared. And he only showed up after you asked for him by name. Seemed like a solid guess.”

“You must have been hell on wheels in an operating theater,” Jack said.

Daniel just looked at him. It occurred to Jack that he still didn’t know why Daniel quit being a surgeon.

“Just because I’m old doesn’t mean I’m deaf,” Mohammad said in front of them. He led them out into a narrow, low-ceilinged stone passageway, thick with dust.

“Sorry,” Daniel and Jack said in unison.

Mohammad led them into a small room, which appeared to be empty. He walked over to the stone wall and pushed in on a stone, moving it about an inch. Then he stepped over a few feet and pushed another. He pushed seven total when they heard a deep rumbling. Dust shook loose from the walls as the far wall receded as one piece, then moved aside, exposing a small alcove.

“Behold,” Mohammad said. “The Lost Gospel of the Angels.”

#

Sandy was standing guard outside with the men. He saw the usual traffic patterns, pretty much what you’d expect to see at a holy Muslim shrine. It was starting to get dark, and he knew the heat of the day would fade quickly. He was going to have a hard time keeping warm if they didn’t hurry—

Something tripped an alarm in his mind, something in his peripheral vision. He looked over and saw a group of men who didn’t seem to be all that different from any of the other traditionally dressed pilgrims to the mosque. They wore long flowing robes, and—

And if you didn’t know what to look for, you might not see the weapons and explosives they were concealing.

“Sergeant, radio Camp [whatever is closest to Najaf] and have them send reinforcements,” Sandy said.

“Sir? How many?”

Sandy did a quick calculation on what the men he saw could do if they really had as much semtex as he thought they did. “All of them.”

[In this chapter, make Jack wait outside and observe the approaching demons. Inside, give Jack’s dialogue, minus the Arabic, to Susan or Jeff. That way we avoid making Sandy a POV character. Never seeing a scene from inside his head is vital to his reveal in the third act of Crusade to be one of the Grigori. Also, have him ask Jack in the Humvee if the database lists all the immortals, and have Jack explain that there are 200 demons, part of something called the Grigori, that are listed only by their true names, but with no human identities.]

25: Turnabout Is Unfair Play

Kyung-Soon Cho smiled and nodded as the last customer left for the night. Shin was standing by the door, smiling as well, and locked the door behind the man. He gave a little wave through the glass, and Kyung-Soon almost laughed. Her husband seemed so childlike, sometimes.

“Come now!” she said, turning to face her two daughters. They were cleaning up, Leah was sweeping each aisle of their small grocery store, and Mary was fronting the shelves, making the stock look neat and orderly. “We need to get upstairs,” she said. “The news will be on soon.”

“It’s okay, Mom,” Leah said. “If they’d posted another video, I would have gotten an alert on my phone.”

“Pah!” Kyung-Soon said.

“What?”

“You rely too much on your phone. You need to look around more often.” Kyung-Soon closed out the cash register and put the drawer in the safe. There would be time to balance it in the morning. She had to get upstairs.

“Come now, you heard your mother,” Shin said. “Let’s go upstairs and see what trouble your brother has gotten into now.”

Kyung-Soon didn’t care much for her husband’s flippant tone, but she knew it was just his way of dealing with the issue. They’d only heard from Daniel that one time, and every other bit of information about how he was came from the television news, as they rebroadcast the videos posted by that woman from Washington. Kyung-Soon didn’t care much for her, either, but at least the videos showed that her son was still alive. Right now, that’s all that mattered.

She and Shin shepherded the girls upstairs, along the rickety stairway that ran along the back wall of the building. They got up to the top floor and flowed into their home. Kyung-Soon was proud of what she and Shin had been able to build for their family. Daniel, Leah and Mary hadn’t had all the newest toys and designer clothes growing up, but they knew they were loved and they got solid educations. Leah was about to start law school in the fall, and Mary was on track to graduate high school with honors. So how had things gone so wrong with Daniel?

“Turn on the television,” Shin said, “I want to—“

Mary screamed.

“What is it?” Kyung-Soon said just as she saw the answer for herself. Two men stepped out of their kitchen into the living room. They were wearing expensive suits as well as gloves.

“Who are you?” Shin demanded. “What are you doing here?”

“We’re here to send a message,” one of the men said. He walked up to Shin, reached out his hands and put them around Shin’s neck.

No…

With a crack far too loud for the room, the man let go and Kyung-Soon watched her husband of thirty-two years collapse to the floor like a sack of potatoes.

“No!” she screamed, and ran to the man. He back handed her across the face and she fell back.

“Girls!” she said, tasting blood, “Run! Downsta—“

The other man, who had walked behind her when she rushed the man who had ki—who had—her mind couldn’t complete the thought—the other man had walked behind her and locked the door.

“It wouldn’t be the right message if we let you go,” he said.

Mary started to cry, and Leah hugged her, telling her it would be all right, even though it was clear she knew as well as Kyung-Soon did that it wouldn’t be.

“If your son had stayed out of our business, this all could have been avoided,” the first man said.

Daniel…

“But now it’s too late,” the second man said. He took some kind of electronic device out of his pocket, pointed it first at Sh—Shin, then at her, and finally at the girls. It’s a camera, Kyung-Soon realized. He’s filming us.

“Any last words?” he asked.

She held her hands together in front of her and began to pray.

“Our Father, who art in heaven,

Hallowed be thy Name.

Thy kingdom come.

Thy will be done,

On earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our trespasses,

As we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation,

But deliver us from evil—“

“Yeah, about that,” the man said.

#

Daniel pulled the small carry on he’d brought over his shoulder and trudged out of the Iraqi Air 737. He was already exhausted. They’d flown from JFK to Frankfurt, Germany, and then switched planes to fly down to Baghdad.

And now they were here. Almost halfway around the world from his parents in San Francisco. Jeff and Susan fell in behind him, and he saw Jack striding ahead like he just got up from a massage and a nap. Daniel had noticed that while he and the other two “civilians” had grown more and more ragged over their journey, Jack became more directed, more determined, the closer they got to Iraq. They hadn’t been able to sit together on the flight, so Daniel hadn’t had a chance to ask the FBI man about his excitement.

No, Daniel thought, that was the wrong word. Jack wasn’t happy to be here. If anything, he was grimmer than the rest of them. But there was something there. A focus.

He also noticed that Jack was already on the phone. He remembered a comment in Frankfurt about Jack calling his “contacts” when they landed, but who did he know in Baghdad?

None of them had checked baggage, so they skipped baggage claim and went straight out to the street. Daniel expected to have to take a bus or something to Najaf, where the Mosque of Imam Ali was located. It was a little over a hundred miles, according to Susan. Too far to take a cab.

Daniel saw Jack stop and exchange salutes with some US servicemen in desert camo. Then Jack hugged one of them, and motioned them over.

“This is Captain Bob Sandarski, United States Army. He and his men will be escorting us to Najaf.”

Sandarski, a burly man in his mid-thirties, reached out to shake Daniel’s hand. “You civvies can call me Sandy,” he said with a trace of southern drawl. “I’m only going to insist LT here calls me Captain Sandarski.”

“LT?” Daniel said.

“Sandy was a butter bar back in ’03, when I was a First Lieutenant,” Jack said, adding with emphasis, “and his commanding officer.”

“You get one. From now on it’s Captain Sandarski, G-Man.”

“Let’s get loaded up,” Jack said. “Hand your bags to the soldiers, and we’ll get a move on. How’s traffic today, Captain?”

Sandarski adjusted his cap. “Insurgent troubles in Al Hillah,” he said. “Got Highway 8 blocked off both ways. We’re going to take 9 through Karbala, should be about three, maybe four hours ride to Najaf.”

“Let’s get a move on, then,” Jack said, ushering Daniel, Jeff and Susan to the two waiting Humvees. “I want to get there before dark.”

#

Stan Winchell switched tabs and checked his site stats again. Friggin’ amazing. There was just no substitute for violence and controversy. Especially if people had to come to his site to get it. He’d had to file a few DMCA takedown notices in the past week, keep the moochers from copying his content and using it to drive traffic to their own damn sites. He even made sure to watermark the video with his site URL so it showed up even with the TV networks rebroadcast it, which they just couldn’t resist doing. His site traffic had skyrocketed this week and it just kept getting better. Ad buys were through the roof, and as soon as he could find some good offshore tax shelters to keep the dough away from Uncle Sam, he was going to have a very good year.

He made a mental note to buy Susan a token of his appreciation. A sweater or something.

His other reporters were feeling the heat. He could tell. None of them had ever brought him anything this juicy. Well, the bar was raised, boys and girls. New American Century had hit the big time, and if they didn’t—

His computer beeped at him. It was his instant messenger going off. I thought I had it set to Do Not Disturb, he thought. Weird.

He checked the flashing window in his taskbar. It was from some random combination of letters and numbers, friggin spambot. He was just about to close it when he saw the message.

We warned you.

“Warned me? What the fu—“ He stopped. Something was different. Stan spent nearly all his time in his house. One of the benefits of working from home, at least to him, was that he didn’t have to rub elbows with all the idiots out there unless he chose to, and he rarely chose to. But by nature of spending that much time in his home, he’d grown finely attuned to it, would notice the slightest change. He’d even put in a bunch of soundproofing so he wouldn’t have to listen to his idiot neighbors. And he knew something was wrong. He didn’t need science poindexters to tell him the air pressure had dropped slightly, or that the temperature had gone up half a degree. He knew.

Someone was in his house. Someone other than him.

He looked at the screen again.

We warned you.

Nah, he thought, I’m just getting spooked by my own success. There’s nobody—

He heard a footstep, behind him.

Stan turned around and saw a man standing in his living room. The man wore a designer suit, custom tailored from the looks of it. Snazzy, but not ostentatious. And the man was wearing surgical gloves.

Oh, this can’t be good.

“You don’t take direction very well, do you, Mister Winchell?”

The question was so out of left field Stan didn’t know how to answer it. He should have told the guy to get out of his house. He should have gone for the gun he kept under his desk. But all he could say was, “Um…”

“Well said,” the man said, and took a step forward.

The movement jarred loose whatever had Stan’s brain in neutral. “Get back!” he said. “I have a gun!”

“Yes, your second amendment rights. Please, by all means, get it.”

What the fuck was this guy smoking? Stan reached down and grabbed the Smith & Wesson he kept, loaded, of course, in a desk drawer. His buddies at the range preferred Glocks, but he’d be damned if he was going to buy an Austrian gun. A good old-fashioned American Smith & Wesson was good enough for him.

“Do you feel better?” the man asked. “More in control?”

Stan noticed the guy had an accent. Not much of one, but it was there, just behind the words. Sounded… what, European? No. That wasn’t it.

“Yeah, now get the fuck out of my house!” Stan said.

The man smiled. “In good time, Mister Winchell. After you are dead.”

“Fuck!” Stan said. He recognized the accent! It was fucking Arabic! He fired the pistol, but the first shot went wide, over the guy’s shoulder. Fucking camel jockey didn’t even flinch.

“Your eloquence astounds me, surely,” the man said. He still hadn’t gone for a weapon of his own. Didn’t this idiot towel head know what he was dealing with? Why is he still fucking with me? Stan wondered.

“Would you care to try again?”

“You bet your ass, Abdul,” Stan said and fired again. This time he hit the bastard square, right in the center mass. Would have been a bull’s-eye on the range.

The fucker didn’t fall down.

In fact, he smiled. The bastard smiled! And then it dawned on Stan. Holy shit, this is one of them things Susan’s been filming! A…

A demon.

“There it is,” the demon said. “I can see it in your face. You know what I am, now?”

Stan nodded.

“And you know why I’m here?”

Again, Stan nodded.

“And, of course, you know you’re already dead.”

Stan nodded and dropped the pistol.

“Good,” the demon said. “Then we can begin, and take our time. You have much to atone for, Mister Winchell. One of our kind hasn’t been killed in millennia. And now you will pay the price.”

His neighbors heard nothing when Stan started to scream.