But he didn’t have a good feeling. Pollyanna was gone. He had a very bad feeling. Very bad indeed.
Forty-Two
“What are they handing out?” O’Donnell asked.
“They look like giant licorice twists,” Ahlstrom said.
“Get us a little lower,” Rees said into his mouthpiece. “But not so close they take notice just yet.”
“Staffs of some kind,” Bullfinch said.
They’d been in the air more than an hour, watching random people trekking about and tourists leaving cars and beginning to hike in the direction of a small congregation of people near Ballinskelligs Castle.
“Are they going to stick them in the ground again?”
“They aren’t as big as those we saw before,” Bullfinch said. “An individual can carry it alone. What is that, about six and a half feet?”
“You’ve been in America too long, Professor,” O’Donnell said. “That’s just shy of two meters if I’m judging the perspective.”
“So we’ve got the hand-held variety,” Rees said.
“Why don’t we round ’em up?” O’Donnell said. “Get the regional team over there. Take ’em to a barn somewhere for questioning?”
“At the moment they’re peacefully assembled,” Rees said. “I’m betting there are Americans down there. Botherin’ them alone’s an international incident, and we’ve got other nationals down there as well, you can be sure. Do you want to tell Sky and CNN we’ve arrested people on suspicion of conjuring a giant serpent? After you explain setting off grenades near the most popular pilgrimage site in the country?”
“I’m surprised nothing from Clew Bay’s trending on YouTube,” O’Donnell said. “No one recorded anything?”
“It’s trending as a really impressive waterspout,” Rees said. “Since it’s serpents we’re dealing with, interestingly there’s plenty of what the Americans call wiggle room.”
“Will a closer look get us called before a world tribunal?”
“Not if we use discretion.”
“Soul of,” O’Donnell said. “Right, Professor?”
“Certainly.”
“Set ’er down,” Rees said into his mouthpiece.
Kaity had not seen Liam Hennigan in some time, but he was as striking as ever with a few years on him. Standing shoulders above those around him with shoulder-length hair and a beard, he looked like some kind of sage. She went to him when he stepped out of his vehicle and gave him a hug.
“It’s been too long,” she said.
He took off his round-brimmed hat and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Too long indeed. How are things shaping up?”
“For having to improvise with plan B? Not bad. We’ve got nearly enough equipped for an attempt based on the theories. A few more and we’ll have a firm contingent.”
She found a completed staff and offered it to him.
“Not bad,” he said, turning it over in his hands, testing its heft, fingers checking the indentation of the markings.
“How do you want them aligned?”
“Get them down to the beach. Shoulder to shoulder. Where are our friends?”
“Already down there. A shame your father won’t be here to see it.”
“Least he got a glimpse out there from what I heard, confirmed it all for him. He knew we’d carry on. It’s my grandfather I’m sorry for. Died long before it was all realized.”
He turned back toward land and lifted a palm into the wind, testing the strength.
“Not bad he said, and it’ll pick up.”
“It did out at Clew Bay. Once everything began.”
“I’ll take that on at water’s edge. I’ve heard my dad Malphas do it enough times. Time for me to be Balor.”
Long ago, embarking on his father’s mission, he’d drawn the name from Irish myth as his persona in mystical proceedings. He shrugged off his toggle coat to reveal a silky black robe with markings embroidered into the folds that hung down his body. A girl who’d climbed out of his rover with him brought up a burnished wooden staff with a textured and curved top. It didn’t show the signs of wear the old man’s had, but he held it up, confident with its balance.
“Let’s get to it,” he said.
“Who’s this fellow?” Bullfinch asked.
He and O’Donnell had made their way to the ruined gray stone tower that had come to be called the castle, and they stood on opposite sides of what had been a window, peering out while keeping themselves hidden.
“He’s dressed like their messiah, and it looks like Kaity knows him.”
“He’s going to take some kind of position, I believe,” Bullfinch said.
O’Donnell clicked her mobi.
“If I were still in counterterrorism, we’d invoke national security about now,” she said.
“Let’s move forward cautiously,” Rees said in her ear. “We’d better interrupt this. I’ll get the regional team over. We’ll deal with the diplomats later.”
As he turned where he stood a few feet over and lowered his head to speak into his mouthpiece, O’Donnell climbed to the window bottom and prepared for a hop to the ground beyond as she drew her sidearm.
“Can you keep up, Professor?”
“Don’t worry, I’m with you.”
He slipped the sword from the folds of his coat, but she took only a few steps before pausing.
The tall one had stepped to the beach, and as he reached a spot where the waves lapped against the shore and slid up around his feet and lower folds of his robe, dark, heads began to rise from the water, just the tops of rounded, slick domes at first. Then large round eyes, black at their core, emerged.
Five.
Eight.
Ten.
All of them had to be like the figure the professor had battled at Clew Bay.
“I’m afraid one sword’s not going to do it,” Bullfinch said from her side.
“How do we get caught with our pants down even when we’re ahead of them?” O’Donnell. “The fates hate us.”
“This has been planned for a long time,” Bullfinch said.
“Snake gods are not exactly the kind of chatter our analysts listen for. We’re going to need the regional team and their guns.”
“Coming,” Rees said. “I’ve been trying to convince some people we need an air strike and help from the Brits.”
He jogged to their side and watched.
The dark figures turned and faced the waters of the bay, parting slightly to allow the tall man to walk to the center of their formation, to take point.
O’Donnell fought the cold feeling at her core that coupled with a tension in her innards. “We didn’t get around to discussing what the fuck those are, Professor. I have my theories, but I’m just a copper.”
“Hybrids,” he said. “I’m not sure how they were formed, but they must contain the DNA from whatever beings are sequestered down there. There are legends of hybrid priests from as far back as Lemuria, cross-breeds.”
“Where’s Lemuria again?”
“Atlantis. Irish myth also references some unpleasant figures called Fomorians…”
“Got the idea,” O’Donnell said.
The tall man had stepped farther into the waves as the figures moved forward, ahead of him as they were washed in the bay’s waters. As they moved forward, their heads bobbed, and they became his protectors, a phalanx.
When the water had reached his waist, he raised the staff, and appeared to begin shouting.
“Just like the old man,” O’Donnell said.
As an arm shot skyward with the shaft perpendicular to his body, a cadre of the people holding the issued staffs stepped in the water behind the man, shoulder to shoulder, moving toward his back and lifting the hooped ends high. As wind whistled through the openings, a ripple stretched across the water’s surface beyond the leader, becoming a furrow, as if opening a channel within the water.
More figures stepped toward the beach edge, aligning on the sand and also lifting hooped staffs,
a small battalion of tourists and villagers, women in casual dresses and raincoats, men in parkas, hikers, farmers in anoraks and sheepskin jackets, shopkeepers…
“How’d this happen?”
“A summoning,” Bullfinch said. “Brewing for a while in the backs of their minds. Planted by dreams.”
“My god, I had a dream,” O’Donnell said. “I thought it was…”
Bullfinch pointed. “Look back from shore a few meters.”
A shiny black obelisk about a meter and a half tall stood near the Hummer. Had to be made from the same plastic as the staffs.
“That channeling something?” she asked.
“Focusing,” Bullfinch said. “In some way.”
Pointing her sidearm into the air, O’Donnell paced forward and fired into the air, hoping to gather attention. The wind deprived the blast of its roar, and the people continued falling into place, aligning along the shoreline, raising staffs, aiming the ring mouths to the water. Meanwhile more were filing under the tent near the Hummer while more were emerging from the other side with staffs.
“We’ve got to interrupt this,” O’Donnell said.
“Dear God, they’re so focused it’d take a bloody massacre, wouldn’t it?” Rees said.
“Then if what’s down there’s like before, we’d better get that patrol ship and a few more headed our way.”
Bullfinch raised the camera eye in the back of the tablet toward the shore and snapped pictures then tapped a few keys to send the snaps on to his colleagues, at least wanting to alert them to what unfolded before him. If he failed, they’d need to prepare.
Then he stood observing the line and the movement between camps.
“Each addition must make the signal stronger.”
“Turning our guy there into Charlton Heston.”
Water in the bay indeed seemed to be moving in an odd pattern, as if a furrow or trench was forming.
“The sound is doing it,” Bullfinch said. “Those staffs are forming notes with the wind.”
“With the regional response team, maybe we disrupt it, slow it down. I can work with them,” O’Donnell said. “Do it as politely as possible.”
“I think we’re going to have to try it,” Rees agreed.
Bullfinch’s tablet vibrated. A message had come in.
“Looks like The Song of the Air Rottman wrote of,” came Rebecca’s response. “No easy answers in the text. Event in story only thwarted at a distance while others look on.”
“Like Lovecraft’s ‘Dunwich Horror,’” Bullfinch said. “Avoiding detail.”
O’Donnell moved beside him and looked past his sleeve at his screen.
“Looks like we’re gonna have to improvise,” she said. “How about I join the regional team, you head out to the ship, Professor? That’s where you’re likely to offer the most advice or spot vulnerabilities. Keeps us from all being in one place in the worst case scenario.”
“I’ve never rammed a sea monster with a ship,” he said.
“No, but you’ve got more judgment related to that than I do,” O’Donnell said.
He slipped the sword from the folds of his coat.
“You might need this more than I do.”
“Sure, I’ll have it on hand. I’ll act like it’s not a lost cause. All we can do is give it our best shot, isn’t it? When we fail, somebody’s gonna have to make the call on the nuke. Someone who doesn’t want the world conquered by a snake-thing.”
Forty-Three
As Ahlstrom settled in at the controls, Bullfinch crawled into a seat in the chopper that had brought them to Ballinskelligs Beach. He buckled his harness in a seat beside a response team member who’d been sent with them. As the rotor turned, soon he felt the craft rise. When he’d plugged his headset in, he tapped the tablet face, activating the app connection Mack had pre-loaded for him.
After a few seconds, a jagged version of Rebecca’s face came onto his screen. Lucky he had that much, he thought. He felt a comfort in seeing even a distorted version of her features. It was almost like channeling a bit of her calm.
“What are you up to, Professor?”
“Heading out to sea,” he said. “To find a ship that’s allegedly headed this way but without the firepower to stop what we’re likely to face.”
“So, Tuesday,” Rebecca said.
He couldn’t fight the smile. If O’Donnell’s dark sense of the inevitable was rubbing off, the levity pushed his own sense of futility aside, just for a moment.
“Air support?”
“Working on that too,” he said. “Hoping we can avoid a massacre or worse.”
“You don’t actually have serpents above wa-aa-ater yet, do you?” The signal had skipped and her face froze then moved again.
“No.”
The chopper climbed and he could look down at waves, swirling back, seeming ready to part.
“Any ideas?” he asked.
“StopThe Song of the Air.’”
“On it,” he said.
“A-a-a-nd k-k-eeeep your h-heaaaaad d-d-doooown.”
He thumbed his screen again and brought up Mack.
“I’m headed out to an OPV,” Bullfinch said.
“I’ve been listening to the chatter. I’m up to speed, professor.”
“Any gains? Any answers.”
“They’ve kept a lot of this off the grid but I’ve been assembling data. Reading Rebecca’s story on my Kindle now. Keep me posted when you’re on the ship.”
“Talk soon,” Bullfinch said.
O’Donnell and Rees stayed near the tower wall, looking past at the stream of new figures moving toward the beach. Girls with backpacks filed behind old men and women, an array of nylon and wool attire, snap-brimmed caps, scarves, tams and knit hats.
When she saw the chopper with the regional team descending, O’Donnell pulled away from the stone and ran toward the transport as it set down and men in black armor and helmets shuffled out, looking a little like spacemen with their dark helmets and visors. Rees stayed just a few paces behind her, his badge and ID raised.
“You’re the one from SDU in Dublin?” the unit commander asked as he stepped forward.
“Used to be. Eileen O’Donnell. Special assignment.”
“What is Ais…”
“Long story. You are?”
“David Quinn.”
Rees added his fist to the bumps.
“Zach Rees.”
“So what the hell is going on over there?” Quinn asked as his team assembled behind him, assault rifles cradled.
“It’s hard to explain, but we need to disperse them before something bad happens,” Rees said.
Quinn looked past him to the shoreline, surveyed a moment and gave a nod. “We can give a dispersal order from the airship.”
“They’re probably in some kind of thrall, but we can try it,” O’Donnell said.
“Your show. You want the mic?”
“I can give it a try.”
They jogged to the aircraft flanked by a couple of Quinn’s officers. A young woman grabbed the craft door, yanked the levered handle, and then leaned in.
In under a minute, a circular black speaker had been positioned on a tripod, and a gray case opened and connected. The young woman stood behind the speaker, tapping buttons and producing a quick whine before offering a mic to O’Donnell.
With the mic in her palm, O’Donnell took just a second to think then raised it to her lips.
“This is the Garda,” she said. “The Garda Síochána. I’m Special Operative Aileen O’Donnell. You are ordered to cease your current activity and disperse this assembly. Immediately. Put down any weapons and step back from the shoreline.”
Her words thundered from the small black circle, rising over the ongoing trill of the channeled wind. She let a finger off the mic and looked toward the beach. Then her stomach clenched. No one had even turned a head toward the sound.
“Can they hear me over the frickin’ noise they’re generating?” she asked.
“They should, ma’am,” the officer at the controls said. “It’s capable of clear communication at three thousand meters in all weather.”
“I’ve read the brochures,” O’Donnell said. “Personal opinion.”
“Even with the noise, they heard us.”
O’Donnell gave a nod then repeated a version of her message into the mic. Still no reaction from the group.
She let out a long breath and looked toward Quinn.
“We need to try a non-lethal physical dispersal.”
Quinn raised a hand and offered a round-up hand signal to his team, bringing everyone into a huddle.
“Sling your rifles. Shotguns and beanbags ready,” he said.
He took a step forward, looking at the line along the shore and the staffs they held.
“What are those? Spears?”
“Consider them religious objects initially. Not pointed,” O’Donnell said. “Not gonna be fun if we’re whacked with ’em, though.”
“Bullet catchers,” Quinn shouted to his team. “We’re gonna treat it just like we would a riot in Grafton Street with cameras pointed at us.”
Team members shuffled back to the chopper and began pulling out equipment cases and large black nylon bags, removing orange-handled shotguns and unsheathing tactical shields, black rectangles with twin headlights positioned just below narrow ballistic viewports. Small signs on the front read “Garda Armed Support Unit” in shiny gold letters.
“If I can get to the man in the bay, that may help,” O’Donnell said.
“We’ll do what we can,” Quinn said.
The shields were hoisted, the guns readied, and the team formed a line, shoulder to shoulder for an approach of the beach.
Rees and O’Donnell began the walk toward shore behind them, their sidearms holstered but ready. O’Donnell kept the sword close at her left side, using the arm that hadn’t been injured and wondering if she’d fare as well as the professor had against those sons of Fomoire surrounding the man in the water if her sidearm failed.
As they moved, she thought the rift in the water was starting to look more and more like the parting of the Red Sea from The Ten Commandments.
Forty-Four
The patrol ship came into view, tossed on heavy waves while more white blankets of water burst up in front of it, the striped bow almost lifting out of the ocean before crashing down again for the cycle to start anew.
Disciples of the Serpent: A Novel of the O.C.L.T. Page 20
