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.

27: Something Old, Something Older

Daniel looked into the alcove. It held two small altars, each carved from a single block of black stone. On one altar was a scroll casing. On the other was a bronze helmet. Both looked very, very old.

“The scroll,” Mohammad said, “tells the story of the great war of the angels, the fall of Lucifer and how the angels and demons came to walk among us. It is written in ancient Babylonian, and according to myth is only a translation of a far older work handed down in clay tablets, which itself was transcribed from oral traditions. No one knows how old the story really is.”

“And the helmet?” Daniel asked.

“It is one of the few remaining angelic artifacts. It is the helmet of an angel killed in the great war.”

Daniel was transfixed by the helmet. It looked bronze only at first. The more he looked at it, the more trouble he had in determining what metal it was actually made of. The color was a dark gray-green, mottled with age. “May I examine it?”

“They are both yours now, Daniel Cho. By order of the archangel.”

Daniel picked up the helmet. It was heavier than he expected. He looked inside, and immediately saw why. Not only were the walls of the helmet thicker than usual, but the helmet was padded with some kind of polymer. As he turned it in the light, he saw… No, that was impossible.

“Susan, bring your camera over here. Does that thing have zoom?”

“Sure.” She aimed where he directed.

“Zoom in on that. What do you see?”

“It looks like a circuit board,” she said. “Like the motherboard on my laptop.”

Microcircuitry, Daniel thought. In an ancient angelic helmet. How much had Uriel not told them?

“Okay,” he said, “stand back.”

“Whoa, there, sport,” Jeff said. “What do you have in mind? You’ve got that look on your face.”

[make sure we hear the story of Jeff’s wife and his search for her murderer earlier in the story, so it informs Daniel’s sense of vengeance later]

“I’m just going to try it on,” Daniel said. “It’s a couple dozen centuries old, right? My laptop battery doesn’t last four hours.”

“I don’t think this is such a good idea, Danny.”

“Jeff, we need to know everything we can about these things, right? And besides, would Uriel have sent us after this if it was dangerous?”

“Probably no worse,” Jeff said, “than the Holy Grail, the golden fleece, Prometheus’s fire…”

Daniel looked at Susan. “You getting this?” She nodded, keeping the camera on him.

“Okay,” he said. He looked down at the helmet again, raised it up and put it on his head.

As soon as it was steady, he heard a soft “thwup” sound and felt something soft close around his throat. The sounds of the room faded instantly to nothing, only to come back up slightly different, like they were being run through a digital filter. The eye holes went black, and then faded back to transparency. Superimposed over his field of vision, Daniel could see various readouts floating in the air around him. The characters were foreign to him, but they look old, like the Sumerian or Babylonian writing he’d seen in museums. Despite the seal around his neck, he found he could breathe normally, although the dusty smell of the room was completely gone. The air was clean and cooler than the room air on his body.

“Daniel?” Susan said. Her eyes were huge.

“What do you see?” he asked.

She jumped at the sound of his voice. “The—the eye holes are black and have a matte finish, like you have black stones in there. You can see?”

“I can see fine,” he said. He decided not to try to explain the heads up display yet. “What else?”

“Your voice is loud, like a bullhorn. It’s been processed, too, sounds deeper than normal.”

Daniel chuckled. “The voice of God,” he said.

“I wouldn’t call it that,” Susan said, “but that’s the effect.”

Daniel turned his head and looked at Jeff. He saw that the Mullah behind Jeff was praying to himself. “Well,” he said, “they clearly have better battery technology than Dell.”

“You’re a riot, Danny. Now take that blasted thing off.”

Daniel reached up and put his palm to either side of the helmet and tried to lift it off. It didn’t budge so much as a millimeter. “Uh oh,” he said.

“It doesn’t come off?” Susan said. “How are you going to eat?”

For that matter, Daniel thought, what happens if the power gives out and the air filtration stops working? He was about to suggest she give it a shot when they heard a loud bang from above. Dust rained down from between the stones in the ceiling.

The mullah reached into his robes and pulled out a pistol. “You will wait here,” he said, and stepped out the door, closing it behind him. Jeff ran up to the door and tried the knob.

“It’s locked,” he said.

#

Dante Hicks shut down his PC and prepared to leave the office. It was early afternoon, but there was no one around to miss him. The rest of the office had either already left early to get a head start on the weekend, or they were already on vacation. June was quiet month in federal service, or at least it was supposed to be.

He slung his laptop bag over his shoulder and walked past the elevator to the stairwell. He’d been trying to get in shape for a while, and given the recent events with Agent Harris he figured now was as good a time as any. Some pretty weird shit was going on, and he wanted to be ready for it.

Actually, Dante had been dreaming about something like this for… well, pretty much his whole life. He always thought his life would be cool, like the stuff he grew up watching on TV. But when he graduated from MIT and thumbed his nose at several corporate job offers to get a job with the FBI, he found it couldn’t be more unlike the X-Files. Hell, it wasn’t even as exciting as Barney Miller. At least until this week.

Now, he was at ground zero of something big. Something he didn’t have to embellish over beers with Randall. In fact, he hadn’t even told Randall about the nanites. Those were the weirdest of the weird, and he wanted to puzzle it out himself a little more.

As he walked down the stairwell to the biolabs, he thought he heard a weird echo of his footsteps. It stopped when he stopped, so he wasn’t being followed, but it sounded… different.

I’m probably just paranoid, he thought. All this stuff is getting to me.

He exited the stairwell and rounded the corner to the labs. He badged in and saw that Sheldon, the lab tech he’d given the blood sample to, was the only one on duty here as well. Nothing cleared out like DC on a beautiful summer day, he thought.

“Mister Cooper!” Dante said. “How’s it hanging?”

“The answer will require further experimentation to verify repeatable results,” Sheldon said. Dante felt a wave of depression. Not only did he get the joke, he recognized that it was a joke. He needed to hang out with non-geeks more often.

“Are you likewise seeking to escape the sinking vessel?” Sheldon asked.

“Uh…”

“I refer to our rodentine coworkers, and their efforts to leave the building as though it were a ship at sea taking on water.”

“Gotcha. Actually, I’m on my way out. I was wondering if you’d discovered any more about that blood sample.”

“You mean apart from the fact that it contains nanotechnology far in advance of anything commercially reproducible today? Or perhaps apart from how each nanite appears to derive power from no discernable source. I’m afraid I haven’t had much time to look into the matter, as I’ve got several dozen algae blooms to cultivate.”

Damn, Dante thought. “Really?”

“Of course not, you fool. I was employing sarcasm. I’ve been spending every waking moment in a thus far futile attempt to discern the workings of the nanites. I swear, you CompSci types can’t take a joke.”

“That’s, uh, great, Sheldon, but what else have you found?”

Sheldon walked around a lab table, motioning for Dante to follow him. Dante was again struck by how the biochemist moved with short, precise motions, like a bird. “I put the blood into a growth culture,” Sheldon said. “Tried to grow it like any other cellular material.”

“And?”

“It reacted accordingly to the growth matrix,” Sheldon said. “But as the red blood cells increased in number, so did the number of nanites.”

“Really?” Dante asked. “Where did they come from?”

“The luminiferous ether, Dante,” Sheldon said, sounding annoyed.

“What’s a luminescent—“

“The either,” Sheldon said, “the background medium in which Newton thought all matter existed. It was another sarcastic remark. I can see I’m going to have to dumb things down a little with you. Engineers.” He harrumphed and continued. “The nanites are capable of reproducing on their own. It’s impossible to tell exactly how without greatly increased magnification, but it’s clear that they are capable of drawing carbon atoms out of their environment and building new versions of themselves, establishing an effectively unlimited supply.”

“So if you had these in your blood…” Dante said.

“You would not only be effectively immortal, but the mechanism by which you became immortal would be in and of itself inexhaustible. You’d live forever. Or at least until the sun goes red giant, at which point—“

“And you said the nanites had no effect in other blood samples?”

“None at all. I don’t know how such simple machines could store such programming, much less process and execute it, but they have no reaction to cells that don’t contain the DNA of the original sample. Ponce De Leon would have found this discovery intensely frustrating.”

“The means to eternal life, but it’s not transferrable,” Dante said.

“Precisely.”

Behind them, Dante heard a single pair of hands clapping.

He turned around and saw two men in expensive suits standing at the entry to the lab. He hadn’t heard them badge in. One of them was clapping, slowly. The other was closing the blinds over the one window into the lab.

“Who are you people?” Sheldon demanded. Dante knew the tech didn’t appreciate people intruding on his territory.

“I would think,” the clapping man said as he stepped forward and stopped the applause, “that you’d be happy to see us.” The man’s accent was faint, and Dante couldn’t tell if it was British or Australian.

“And why would I be happy to have you intrude on my lab?”

“You are studying the blood of immortals,” the man said. The other man quietly moved to the other end of the lab, and Dante noticed that just like that, he and Sheldon were pinned in. No way to get past the men other than going through heavy lab equipment.

“I’m sorry,” Dante said before Sheldon could reply. “You must have us confused with someone else. I was just asking my friend here about some gunshot residue.”

“No you weren’t,” Sheldon said. “I would never stood to running GSR tests.”

“Shut up, Sheldon,” Dante said, as quietly as he could.

“Get out of my lab!” Sheldon said. “Do not make me call security!”

The man smiled. “You won’t call security on us. For one thing, that would imply that the security guards were still alive.”

The other man, the one that hadn’t spoken, pulled something out of his suit jacket. It was a small digital camera. Dante thought it was probably similar to the ones Richardson had used to record her videos. He started filming them, being sure to get him, Dante and the other demon in the shot.

Demon. Dante knew what they were now. He could see it in the way they moved, a graceful economy of motion borne of centuries of practice. The one who had spoken reached out, took a graduated cylinder and smashed the end of it against the lab table.

“That is expensive laboratory equipment!” Sheldon said. “I’m going to see that you pay for that!” The poor guy still had no idea what was really going on.

The end of the cylinder was now a jagged point, a more expensive but no less lethal version of a broken beer bottle. The demon held it out in front him.

“Please,” he said, “resist. It will make this take longer.”

#

Jack jumped through the hole in the side of the mosque blown open by the demons. He had a flamethrower from the Humvee, and a bandolier full of grenades. He knew neither would do much against the demons long term, but he should be able to do enough damage to slow them down. Hopefully enough to extract Daniel, Jeff and Susan and get the fuck out of there.

Sandy and his men jumped through behind him, similarly armed. Sandy had an RPG that might pack enough punch to kill one of the bastards, though Jack wasn’t sure. Batarel had a grenade shoved down his pants and was on their asses the next day.

The interior of the mosque was a study in high end destruction. The demolition guys knew their business, and Jack supposed that fit. They’d probably been practicing since the invention of black powder. The upside was that they left a pretty clear trail behind them. The hole in the wall opened into a smaller temple, and with another explosion on the other side into the main hall. Jack saw breadcrumbs made of dust, shards of marble, and ash leading down a side corridor. He supposed when you were immortal, you didn’t have to wait for the blast to clear.

“Come on!” he shouted to Sandy and his men, and ran down the corridor after the demons.

#

Dante grabbed a Bunsen burner, turned it on, and threw it at the demon. It caught on the feed tube and fell to the floor less than half way to him.

“Impressive,” the demon said. Great, Dante thought. Not only is he going to kill me, he’s going to stop to make fun of me first. Why don’t we just go back to high school gym class and get it over with?

“There’s, uh, more where that came from,” Dante said.

“I’m sure there is,” the demon said.

“Why are you doing this?” Sheldon screamed. Poor guy was still looking for logic.

“We’re cleaning up a mess,” the other demon said, behind Dante and Sheldon. “Batarel was an idiot, and let this get out of hand. So it falls to us to clean up the loose ends.”

“I won’t tell anyone!” Sheldon said.

“You already have,” the second demon said. “Which is why you have to die.”

Sheldon started to sob, but Dante wasn’t finished. He went over everything he knew about these guys in his head. They were just as human as he was, apart from the nanotechnology that kept them eternally healthy. They bled. They could be killed, if he could do enough damage.

He broke out his best William Shatner impression, complete with hand gestures. “Look,” he said as he surreptitiously pulled of the rubber hose from the gas nozzle the Bunsen burner was attached to, “there has to be,” waving his other hand like a mad starship captain, “a way,” grabbing the igniter with his other hand, “we can make a deal.”

“That’s the worst Captain Kirk I’ve ever seen,” Sheldon said.

The demon stepped forward again, forcing Dante to retreat, then calmly reached over and turned off the gas. “Your kind is trouble, Mister Hicks. You’re too clever for your own good. Curiosity killed the cat.”

“Actually,” Dante said, “I’m pretty lazy. You know, the early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.” He was babbling now, saying anything he could to stall them. Give him time to think of something.

“I think we’re done with the chit chat,” the demon said. “It’s time to end this.” The demon took another step forward, and his head exploded with a sharp crack.

“Agh!” Sheldon screamed behind Dante. “Another one!”

Dante turned and saw a blond man standing at the door to the lab with a hunting rifle. He looked vaguely familiar.

The remaining demon actually hissed at the newcomer. “Back off, Uriel! This is none of your concern!”

Uriel? The angel Jack had talked to? He’d seen him, briefly, on one of Richardson’s videos. Dante looked down and saw the first demon’s head reassembling itself. Damn, that’s unnerving, he thought.

“Step away from the humans, Zagiel,” Uriel said, walking into the room and keeping the rifle trained on the standing demon. “They are under my protection.”

The demon, Zagiel, stepped away from them, towards Uriel. “You should not interfere in our dealings, angel.”

Uriel smiled. “The rules are changing, Zagiel. I would think demons above all would embrace change.” He fired, and the bullet struck Zagiel in the chest, knocking him back.

“Come on,” Uriel said to Dante and Sheldon. “We need to get you somewhere safe.”

“Safe?” Sheldon screamed. “We’re in the Hoover Building!”

“Yeah,” Dante said, hopping over a table towards the angel. “And so are they.”

He looked back to see Zagiel pulling himself back to his feet, and the other demon also trying to stand, head mostly reconstructed and hair growing back out at a visible speed. Spooky.

“Oh, very well,” Sheldon said, and scrambled to follow them.

“Get behind me,” Uriel said, backing to the doorway. As Dante ran past, he saw the angel pull a grenade out of a pocket and pull the pin. Dante thought of all the gas pipes in that room. Aw, shit, he thought.

As soon as he and Sheldon were in the hallway, he tackled the biochemist to the ground.

“What the deuce?” Sheldon had time to say before Dante felt the angel fall on top of them and the room went up.

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.

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.

19: Electrocution in Philadelphia

[scene with Jack trying to convince the Philly PD that no, really, he’s chasing a terrorist, not just assaulting neighborhood dogs; cops leave Jack to his own devices]

#

Daniel stood next to the power station. It was fully night, now, and they had no idea where Batarel was. He should have found them by now.

“Any sign of him,” he said into the walkie talkie.

“Nothing here,” Jeff said.

“Nothing here either,” Susan said.

Daniel was starting to think this was a dumb idea. What made them think they could make an immortal walk into a tra—

“Cho.”

He knew that voice by now and it stopped him cold. He was here. But still, Daniel couldn’t see him. He had to be just beyond the edge of the lights.

“Batarel.”

The demon didn’t reply, so Daniel couldn’t determine the location from the sound.

“He’s here!” Daniel said into the walkie talkie. As soon as he spoke, a knife flew at his head from the dark.

“Shit!” he said, dropping and rolling away. He heard Jeff and Susan running towards him just as he saw Batarel step out of the darkness. Somehow he wasn’t surprised to see that the demon was walking into a fight with them while wearing another designer suit.

He heard a bang as he was getting up, and saw a bright red hole appear in Batarel’s shirt. The demon didn’t even slow down.

“This is even more pathetic than the last attempt,” Batarel said. “I take it this is an elaborate ruse to electrocute me? Let me get that out of the way.” He walked over to one of the towers, hopped up to the lowest run, a good ten feet off the ground, and climbed until get to a live wire. Looking back down to make sure they were still watching, he reached out and grabbed the wire in his hand.

Sparks shot a hundred feet in the air and Daniel heard thundering bangs from the capacitors behind him. The lights went out, and Daniel could see that all the houselights were out in all the nearby houses.

Batarel dropped back to the ground, charred and still smoking. What was left of his hair was sticking straight out, and his suit was in tatters. But in spite of that, he was smiling.

“My turn,” he said. He snapped a leg out and caught Daniel in the midsection, knocking the wind out of him and throwing him backwards a dozen feet.

Jeff brought up a shotgun and unloaded in the demon’s chest. “Susie, get in the car!” he said. Susan was standing just off to the side, getting it all on camera.

The demon grabbed the shotgun out of Jeff’s hand and hit him across the jaw with the stock. “There’s no need for that,” Batarel said. “You’re not getting away this time.”

Daniel rushed him, and fell to the ground again as the demon easily sidestepped him. “We’re not doing this again,” Batarel said. “But I’m not about to make it quick and easy, either. Not after the trouble you’ve caused me.”

The demon turned the shotgun around and aimed it at Susan. Daniel was just rising to his feet when he heard the shot.

#

Jack looked down the barrel of his pistol, cordite pungent in the night air. Instead of dropping from the ten millimeter slug in his back, Hendriks turned around, almost casually.

“A new face!” he said. “Or, wait, I know you. Didn’t I kill you last night?”

“Drop the weapon freak!”

“Or what, officer? All you’ve done is ensure you share their fate.”

Jack fired again, this time a head shot. The back of Hendriks’s skull exploded in a red mist, and Jack could clearly see through the hole as the man raised his shotgun in return.

“Oh shit,” Jack said as he dove for the ground. He actually felt the pellets pass by over his back.

“Hey, Batarel.” Cho said. Jack looked up to see Cho swinging a fucking Samurai sword with one hand at the demon, chopping off the arm holding the shotgun just below the shoulder.

“Oh,” Hendriks said. “You’re going to pay extra for that.”

Jack got back up and shouted at Cho. “Stand back!” As Cho hopped away, he emptied a clip into Hendriks’s center mass. With the man’s back turned, to him, he could actually see the hole in the back of his head sealing up. The brain expanding to refill the cranium.

What in the holy fuck is this? Jack thought. He’d seen perps on PCP or meth shake off what should have been disabling wounds. He’d seen men in Iraq crawl to safety missing limbs. But he’d never seen anyone who could do—

“Head’s up, Agent Harris!” Cho said as he swung the sword again, aiming to sever the head from the neck. This time Hendriks ducked, and the sword only caught his hair, skimming across the scalp. Hell, Jack thought, even that should have hurt enough to put him down.

From his lower stance, Hendriks lashed out with a kick that caught Cho squarely in the cast. Cho went down screaming.

The old man had gotten back up, and leveled an automatic at Hendriks. “Susie, I ain’t telling you again. Get in the damn car!” He emptied a clip in Hendriks, which knocked him back just enough for Frankel to get Cho’s arm over his shoulder. “We’re bugging out, girl! Get!”

Richardson ran past Jack. “Sorry, Agent Harris!” she said.

Jack slapped another clip into his pistol and started firing at Hendriks again, just trying to keep him off balance. He wasn’t aiming for center mass now, but trying to take out kneecaps, hit the shoulder and spin him around, anything to buy time.

Frankel and Cho limped past him. “Much obliged, sir,” Frankel said.

This is, without a doubt, Jack thought, the weirdest night I’ve ever had.

He could hear sirens in the distance, faint red and blue lights visible in the blackout. “You can’t leave me here with him!” he said. He heard Richardson fire up the Crown Vic he’d seen coming in.

“Sorry, Agent, but we don’t have much choice!” Frankel said, easing Cho into the back seat. “Sounds like help’s on the way, though!”

The door shut, Jack popped another couple rounds into Hendriks, and the Crown Vic pulled away, lights off and nearly invisible in the blackout. They were using him, and his gunfire, as a distraction to slip past the police. He had to give them credit, they were resou—

Hendriks leapt at him and Jack fired another shot as he dodged. But Hendriks wasn’t attacking him. He was just vaulting over him and trying to chase down the Crown Vic on foot. And until they shifted into third, he had a shot at it.

The sirens were much closer now, and Jack didn’t want to try to explain this. He slunk off into the night himself, going the opposite way he’d seen Hendriks run. No sense tempting fate.

18: Mother and Invention

“Have you seen this man?” Jack asked. He was in a diner just off Interstate 95, the fourteenth such diner he’d stopped at that afternoon. On the theory that they had gone north on 95 from DC to Baltimore, he just kept going north, sticking to cities big enough for Richardson to mask her signal if she tried to upload another video. He was stopped in south Philly and starting to think he was working a dead end. Maybe they headed west instead.

“That guy?” the hostess said.

“Yes, ma’am, the man in this picture.” Who else would I be talking about? Jack thought.

“Yeah, now that you mention it, I seen him,” she said. “He was in here with some geezer and a brunette for lunch. Took up a corner booth for two hours, thought we’d never turn that over.”

“He was here?” Great, now it was his turn to ask stupid questions. He hadn’t gotten much sleep.

“Yeah. They took off after the chick started making a scene, yelling at the geezer. Thought I’d have to separate them, but they left just after.”

“Did you see which way they went?”

“Nah, once they went outside Bert dropped a tray of orders and we had to clean stuff up.”

“Thank you,” Jack said.

“So,” she said. “Is there some kinda reward for information?”

He flashed her his ID. “Just the thanks of a grateful nation, ma’am.”

“Yeah, that and a buck fifty’ll get me a cup of coffee.”

Jack walked out the door and was about to call Dante just as his phone rang. It was Dante.

#

“Daniel! Oh my God, son, where are you?”

“I can’t tell you that, Mom. I just wanted you to know I’m okay.”

“Daniel, there were FBI men here yesterday.” Daniel imagined her standing in the stockroom of the store she and his father ran in Oakland. It was just a neighborhood grocery store, little more than a convenience store with produce, really, but it had been his home growing up. His family lived above the store and Daniel and his sisters had all spent as much time there as they had in school. That was where his parents had drilled into him the unlimited promise of America, the drive to excel and the work ethic that got him through medical school and working as an ER surgeon.

For all the good that did him.

“I know, Mom.”

“Daniel, they said you were a terrorist.” She nearly hissed the word, pronouncing it with vehemence she usually reserved for Kim Jong Il.

“I’m innocent, Mom.”

“Then why don’t you turn yourself in?”

“It’s complicated, Mom.”

“Pah!” she said. “It’s not so complicated. You did nothing wrong, you turn yourself in. Your father, he worried about you.”

Wow, Daniel thought. Her grammar didn’t start to slip unless she was really upset. His mother took great pride in becoming fluent in English, and worked very hard to speak it without much of an accent.

“I can’t tell you what’s going on,” Daniel said. “Not yet.”

“Why, Daniel? Why can’t you tell me?”

Because the FBI is almost certainly recording this conversation, Daniel thought. “I wish I could, but it’s going to have to wait until the next time I see you.”

“If you keep running, they arrest you? When do I get to see you then?”

“I’m innocent, Mom,” Daniel repeated. “But there’s more to it than that.”

Daniel heard his mother sob, and instantly, his eyes began to well up. Shit, he thought.

“Daniel, please turn yourself in, so you can come home. It wasn’t your fault, that night at the hospital. No one blames you. You don’t have to run so far.”

He couldn’t tell her. He couldn’t tell her that he was being chased by more than just the FBI. He couldn’t tell her that an immortal monster was trying to kill him. He definitely couldn’t tell his mother, a devout Christian, that he was being hunted by a demon from the Book of Enoch. So what could he do?

“I’ll be home as soon as I can,” Daniel said. “I love you, Mom.”

“I love you too, Daniel.”

He hung up.

#

“Talk to me, Dante,” Jack said.

“The tap on his parents’s phone paid off,” Dante said. “He called them.”

“Number?” Jack asked.

“Didn’t tell us anything,” Dante said. “It’s a pre-paid disposable.”

“Dammit!” Jack said. How many of those did Cho have?

“But we were able to locate it.”

“And you didn’t start with that bit of information why?”

“He’s in north Philadephia,” Dante said. “In a residential neighborhood.”

“Any known contacts in the area?”

“None, but I’m not sure how much that means. If he was staying with someone, he could have used a land line.”

“Unless he knew we had a tap on his family line.”

“He’s a smart guy, sir. He probably figured that out. I’m thinking that’s why he used a disposable.”

“So he’s not still talking to them?” Jack asked.

“No sir, it was a short call. After he hung up he turned off the phone and we lost the lock on his location. I’m sending a transcript of the call to you by email, and I’ve got the lab going over the recording to see if we can pull out any background sounds that could give away what he’s up to”

“Good,” Jack said. “Let me know if he turns on the phone again.”

“Will do, sir.”

Jack hung up the phone and got in his car. He was close, and he was right about them coming up to Philly. He could get them today, tonight at the latest.

Only, something had been nagging at him all day. What if Cho was right? Jack knew Cho had been right about some of it. He’d seen Hendriks with his own eyes. Something was going on that he didn’t understand. What was Hendriks? Why was he trying to kill Cho? Was Cho right that he, Richardson and Frankel wouldn’t be safe in federal custody? And how would Jack possibly explain what they needed to be protected from?

He shook his head. None of that mattered right now. First, he had to capture them. What happened after that was for someone else to decide.

He started the car and pulled into traffic.

#

Batarel checked his face one more time in the hotel bathroom mirror. The wound had healed, of course. It had healed before he even left Baltimore. Something still felt… off… somehow. Maybe it was just that that the annoying little speck of a human had pushed him recently, forced him to regenerate more than he had in a thousand years. Well, nearly a thousand years. That second Crusade was a bitch.

He ran his hand through ginger hair and sighed. Cho had no chance to kill him, but last night had almost been worse. To be captured, and captured with proof of his true nature sticking out of his God damn head, that was just too much to risk. It was worse than his death, because it threatened the cause. Fortunately, no one other than Cho and his compatriots survived to tell the tale, and they’d be dealt with soon enough.

They’d better be. This was dragging on too long, and he wasn’t going to be able to dodge Zagiel much longer.

He strode into the living room and looked out the wide glass doors at the cityscape of Philadelphia laid out in front of him. He was in a four star hotel, using one of his spare identities. It felt good to get out of the muck for a while, to treat himself to a little luxury. He damned well deserved it.

He walked out on the balcony, let the summer evening breeze brush past him. He couldn’t quite figure why Cho was giving him so much trouble. He’d learned some valuable lessons from the experience, true. He knew he had to get better with firearms. He hadn’t really practiced with a hand weapon since the crossbow. And he needed to get better at online tracking. He’d had absolutely no luck thus far in tracking down Richardson online, not in any way that would lead to her, and thus Cho’s, physical location. And now he’d been thwarted in Baltimore, he didn’t want to use his contacts in the Church here in Philadelphia. It would not do for him to look weak, and no one talked like priests talked.

He knew they were here. He felt it. They’d stayed in major metro areas so far, never stopping for more than supplies in small towns or rural areas. They were sticking to I-95, heading relentlessly north, like they were looking for something. He wasn’t sure what that could be, and he was half tempted to let them find it.

But no. This had to end, and it had to be tonight.

#

“Penny for your thoughts,” Susan said.

Daniel was sitting on the hood of the car, watching the sun set over west Philadelphia. The sky was a beautiful mix of orange, red and indigo above. He turned and looked at her. “People always say that,” he said. “But then you have to put your two cents in. Somebody’s making a penny.”

“Steven Wright,” Susan said. She’d heard that joke before.

“Yeah. Weird how stuff like that stays with us, even in times like this, huh?”

Susan hopped up on the hood next to him. “I’m sorry about the diner this morning. I don’t know why I snapped like that—“

“You snapped because you were exhausted and terrified. We all were. Still are, really. It’s okay, I probably over reacted.”

“You didn’t. I could have gotten us caught.”

“Well, you didn’t. And hopefully, after tonight, it won’t matter.” He reached down beside him and grabbed a pistol, one of the ones Jeff bought in Baltimore. He pulled the top part back and it jerked forward with a “chickt” sound. He started messing with something on the side of it.

“Do you know how to use one of those?” Susan asked.

“I had a friend in college who was a gun nut. He took me to the shooting range a few times. I know how to fire a pistol, but my accuracy’s nothing to write home about.” He put the pistol down on the side away from her, and then picked up the sword he’d used in D.C. “Speaking of writing, how’s that going?”

“I have a draft written about today and what we’re planning to do. And I’ve got the camera ready for tonight, all the space freed up for new footage.”

“Good,” he said, inspecting the blade of the sword. “We need this documented in as much detail as possible. If Batarel isn’t the only one of his kind, the way Jeff says, then we need to know everything we can about how to destroy them.”

“Do you really expect to use that?” she said, pointing to the sword.

“God, I hope not,” Daniel said. “It’s really not designed to be used one-handed, and I can’t hold it with my left hand [make sure the break and cast is on Daniel’s left arm]. But it was effective in slowing him down a couple nights ago—“

“Oh my God,” Susan said.

“What?” Daniel said. He put the sword down and grabbed the gun again.

“No, nothing’s wrong,” she said. “I just can’t believe that was only two nights ago. Four nights ago I was in my own bed, trying to figure out how to track you down for an interview. It seems like a lot longer.”

Daniel put the gun down and laughed. “Yeah, and less than a week ago, I was just some nobody paramedic trying to disappear. Now I’m a nobody paramedic trying not to get killed by an immortal demon. It’s been a rough week.”

Susan started laughing, and she found she couldn’t stop. Once she started snorting, Daniel broke out laughing too, and before long they were both doubled over on the hood of the car, trying to catch their breath.

Jeff walked up from behind the car, where he’d being going over their supplies in the trunk. “What’s so funny?” he asked.

This got Susan and Daniel going again in a whole new bout of laughter.

It was a nice moment. It would be quite a while until they laughed again.

#

“We’ve got him, Agent Harris.”

Jack struggled to fit the earbud in his ear so he could talk without holding the phone up to his ear as he drove. “Where?”

“Feeding the GPS coordinates to your car now. He just turned on the phone, but he hasn’t placed a call yet. He’s not moving either. It’s another residential neighborhood, not far from the other one,” Dante said.

“So they’ve set up a base of operations here, but he moved away from it to call his parents? Why would he turn it on now and stay still?”

“I don’t know, sir. Looks like you’re about three miles away.”

Jack accelerated and hoped for the best. If he was lucky, he’d catch them unawares. “Talk me in, Dante.”

Dante relayed instructions to him, which matched the little arrow on the GPS screen in his dashboard. He still wasn’t used to following those and keeping his eyes on the road at the same time. The department just got them six months ago. Finally, Dante directed him onto a residential street.

“He’s four houses up, sir, but that’s about all we can tell. It looks like he’s on the left side of the house, but that’s well within the margin for error in the GPS triangulation—“

“Got it Dante, thanks. Can you get a position off my phone?”

“How do you think I’ve been directing you, sir?”

“Right. Okay, I’m parking.”

“You’re right in front of the house. My best guess is that he’s in the back yard on the left, but again—“

“Margin of error. Right. Okay, I’m going in.”

Jack got out of the car, strapped on his bulletproof vest reading “FBI” in huge yellow letters, and then started in. “You’ve got backup vectored in on my position?” he whispered into the phone.

“Coming in silent, but yes, local PD is on the way. They’ve been briefed on the situation.”

“Who’s the homeowner?”

“Leroy Jenkins, no priors. No evidence he’s ever even heard of Cho.”

Jack saw that around the left side of the house, there was a six foot wooden fence. The gate was padlocked. “Padlock on the gate, but you say the cell phone is on the other side, right?” he hissed.

“Yes sir.”

“That’s probable cause in my book.”

He looked for something to help him climb. The next door neighbor had some steel garbage cans on the side of his house. That’ll do, Jack said. He pulled one of the cans over to the fence as quietly as he could. He stepped up on to it, then peeked into the back yard.

“Nothing there,” he told Dante.

“We’re still getting the signal,” Dante said.

“Fine, I’ll get a closer look. How far off is that backup?”

“Five minutes, maybe.”

Jack really didn’t want to risk losing them. “Going in alone. Radio silence until I say.”

He held on to the top of the fence with his left hand, and while holding his pistol in his right hand, vaulted a leg up to the top of the fence. He rolled over the top and dropped to the grass on the other side. Carefully, he stepped around the corner of the house.

Simultaneously, he saw two things. One, he saw the phone, lying alone in the middle of the yard, clearly tossed there. And two, he saw the two Rottweilers growling at him from the patio.

And of course, Jack thought, they’re not on chains. Thanks, Cho.

#

[Somehow, they lure Batarel to the power station. Yes, I’m skipping a whole scene. I can do that, because this is a rough draft. And rough drafts be slippery, precious, slippery indeed…]

16: No Harbor

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

“Go.”

“I’ve got good news,” Dante said.

“And bad news?”

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

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

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

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

"Yes sir."

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

#

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

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

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

And he would win.

#

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Susan fired.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where the machine gun was mounted.

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

#

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

Assuming, you know, he was still alive.

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

"Almost there," Daniel said.

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

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

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

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

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

#

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

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

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

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

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

"Who?"

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

"I know no such thing."

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

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

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

"We impounded your camper, you know."

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

"You were busy today!" Susan said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"In more ways than one," Jeff said.

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

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

"You could untie me and let me help," Harris said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"We’ll see about that," Harris said.

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

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

15: Requisitions

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

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

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

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

“Sure thing, old timer. You in ‘Nam?”

“I was. ’67-’70.”

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

“What’s your name, son?”

“Russell, sir.”

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

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

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

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

"I can pick this up today?"

"Yes sir. When’s your hunting trip?"

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

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

"What about handguns? As a last resort."

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

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

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

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

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

"No sir."

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

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

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

"Oh my God."

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

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

"What do you need?"

#

"Make me happy, Dante," Jack said.

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

"I have good news and bad news," Dante said.

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

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

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

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

“That’s not making me happy, Dante.”

“I do have some good news, though.”

“And what’s that?”

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

“Weird how?”

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

“Particles? What the hell does that mean?”

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

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

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

“And how long will that take?”

“They don’t know.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And would Richardson know this?”

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

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

“That makes sense, sir.”

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

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

“You’re catching on, Dante.”

#

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Our resources are yours, as always.”

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

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

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

“At once, my Lord.”

#

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And?”

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

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

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

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

“And if we’re not lucky?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I keep forgetting you’re a doctor.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

13: Don’t Lose Your Head

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes, sir.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Lou,” Jack said. “What’s up?”

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

“Yes, Lou, I’ve seen it.”

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

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

“I got calls from the Hill, Jack.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#

“Danny, you know martial arts, right?”

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

“I’m a black belt in Tae Kwon Do.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#

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

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

#

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Call 911,” Daniel said. “It’s over.”

“What’s over?” Susan said.

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

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

“Just make the call, Susan.”

“Look,” she said.

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

“No way,” Daniel said. “He can’t—“

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

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

“Go! Go! Go!” Daniel said.

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

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

#

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

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

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

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