Child of Darkness (The Federal Witch Book 8)

by T S Paul

  Agent Smith licked her lips before speaking. It wasn’t a sexual move or anything, but the captain could tell she was nervous. “What do you know about the incursion in Sicily?”

  Captain Gentry Phillips sat rock still. This was about Demons? “Just what the news has said. That it was confined to Italy.”

  “Ok. My team is here in your city tracking a woman who may or may not have been responsible for opening the Portal there,” Smith replied.

  Gentry felt his mouth drop open even as he yelled, “What?”

  “Her picture was taken by tourists here in the city a couple of weeks ago. She was supposedly killed in a Magical attack last year in Maine, so we were somewhat surprised to see her alive here. Agents working with our government found evidence that she was also in the same area where the Demons were discovered,” Smith explained.

  Gentry leaned back in his chair and shook his head, “I don’t understand. Why or how did she come to be here?”

  “How we don’t know, but we do know her daughter lives here. Autumn Fredericks has a house out on Oyster Point, and another near Washington Square.” Smith smiled grimly. “We don’t know her motives or activities. All she’s done since coming here is meet with locals and shuttle between the houses.”

  “So why tell me now?” Gentry asked.

  “Because it’s not on the news yet but Demons have been spotted in California, again. There is too much of a coincidence of having Demons show up on this continent with her here. We think she raised a Demon Lord. If that is the case, he or it is here with her,” Anabelle stated.

  “There’s a Demon loose in my city?” Gentry jumped up out of his chair.

  Anabelle smiled again. “No idea. My boss told me to inform you and whomever is in charge at the base that there is the possibility of an incursion here. I’m in the dark as much as you are, Captain. We were just sent here to watch. My team is four agents.”

  Gentry held both hands against his head like he had a sudden migraine. “So now what?”

  “We do our jobs. If you should hear from me or one of my team, the code word is Plan Omega. That is the warning to prepare for something… It could be a Demon Lord or an invasion. We just don’t know, but at least you have a heads up that it’s possible. That is way more than the Italians got,” Anabelle replied. She looked up at the ceiling for a moment as if in thought. When she looked back it was directly into the captain’s eyes. “There is a slight possibility that she IS the Demon Lord. So think on that, as well.”

  <<<>>>

  Thinking back to that meeting, Gentry remembered watching Smith leave and cataloging in his head the number of officers available. There wasn’t enough in his town to fight a war. That was a job for the military. All he could do was hold the fort and wait for backup.

  He was still thinking as his radio lit up with calls, explosions in the district, panicking tourists, and Demon sightings. A lot of Demon sightings.

  <<<>>>

  Agent Anabelle Smith crouched behind what used to be her unit’s surveillance van. Both she and Agent Jones had been fighting off Demon attacks for more than thirty minutes and they were almost out of ammunition.

  “How’d that happen?” Jones asked, pointing at Agent Smith’s head.

  Anabelle reached up, touched her forehead, and her hand came away red with blood. Watching as drops of it fell from her fingers, the Agent slowly shook her head. “I haven’t the foggiest idea. It might have been that last group.”

  In hindsight, jumping out of the van and into the fray might not have been Anabelle’s job, but it was the right thing to do. Or at least she had thought that. The very moment she had exited the van, three Imps had attacked her. After she had killed the first one, the rest had dogpiled her. She barely remembered the action.

  Blam! A shot to the mid-section blew Demon number two in half. An elbow to the head followed by a strike with the shotgun barrel incapacitated Demon number three. Just to make sure, she put two into their heads. She yelled at every tourist she could see to find cover and stay there.

  Entire packs of the little multi-colored Demons were pouring out of the sewer drains like a reverse rainstorm.

  FBI Agents rarely get to cut loose. Paperwork needs to be filled out and there are rules about who and what you can shoot, but these were Demons and Anabelle lived in Charleston.

  Blam! Blam! Two more Demons down and a couple injured from the penetrating power of the 00 shotgun rounds. At 1200 feet per second the buckshot could punch through a car door. Demons were nothing.

  Slinging the shotgun, Anabelle pulled her issue Glock and started firing as if she were on the tactical range. A Demon head would pop up and blam! No more Demon.

  Back in the surveillance van, Agent Alicia Jones was typing as fast as she could. Hard lines were down but she had a satellite phone as backup and was using it. Yesterday she and the Special Agent had made a list of who and who not to call in an emergency just like this. Some of them were easy, ring! “Plan Omega,” and she would hang up. Others like the Charleston PD were more difficult. That idiot who answered the phone over there needed to be shot.

  Alicia didn’t know if the message was passed along but she prayed it was. Charleston PD had more than two thousand officers from public relations to SWAT. If all of them were mobilized they might be able to protect the citizens before the military or whomever could come save them. But Alicia’s hopes were low, knowing California was under a similar attack.

  <<<>>>

  Billy Sale heard the sounds of explosions and gunfire coming from the historic section of town almost immediately after Captain Phillips left the area. Cursing to himself, he knew that now would have been a good time to have that missing armored vehicle back. For the life of him, he didn’t know who had taken it. He really had told the truth to the captain. Now he was torn. Find the thing or race toward the sound of the guns.

  “Jimmy! I need a favor,” Billy all but shouted into the phone.

  “Who in the hell is this? Do I know you?” Jimmy Hager didn’t recognize the number.

  “Listen up, it’s Billy,” Billy yelled again. He’d borrowed a patrol car when he sent every available officer toward the market area. That was where most of the tourists would be.

  “Billy who? Is that you Billy Bob? Remember what I told you ‘bout calling me at work?” Jimmy asked.

  “Sale! It’s Billy Sale. Now listen. Somebody stole the station’s BearCat and I really need to find it. Like freaking right now,” Billy started to explain.

  “Hey Billy. You should’a said it was you. Whatcha need?” Jimmy responded.

  “The BearCat? What do you know?” Billy asked again.

  “Dude, you know I can’t talk about stuff like that. Especially on the phone. You’re a cop and I’m no snitch!” Jimmy replied.

  “There’s something serious going on in town and I think we’re gonna need the thing, that’s all. Who took it?” Billy asked.

  “Honestly? I thought you did! Me and the boys thought you had it stashed up at your family’s place. You could hide half of Charleston up there. All I’ve heard is some rumors is all,” Jimmy explained.

  Billy took the corner a little too fast and almost drove up on the curb. “Crap!” Regaining control of the car, he hit the lights and sirens. No sense not using them.

  “What rumors Jimmy? I need to know!” Billy yelled.

  There was a moment of silence, then Jimmy spoke. “The Sons took it.”

  Billy looked down at his phone and cursed. There was no chance of getting it back now. Tossing the phone into the passenger seat, he hung a left and started back toward the station. Calls were bouncing back and forth on the radio about Demons and a citywide mobilization. A missing armored vehicle was even on his radar right now. At least he knew who had it. Maybe Captain Phillips would give him some slack. What did a biker gang need with a tank?

  Less than five miles away from Billy, in an unused part of the cruise ship port, twenty men were figuring that very answer out.
>
  “It is time for the great purge! The Master has shown us the first sign: I have seen a light and it has illuminated the sky in glory!” exclaimed Eddie Davenport, or Mammon, as he was known to the Sons of the Devil motorcycle club. “The lesser servants are breaking free as I speak. The second sign is upon us. Soon he will call and we will fulfill our destiny. Is the tank ready?”

  A large biker with bloodstained leathers nodded. Using sign language, he signaled that the stolen armored car was fueled and ready.

  “Good. Good. You have done your job well, Wallace. Do you feel the power your sacrifice has given you? That is only a taste of what is to come,” Mammon announced. “We must be prepared. Remember to kill anyone that stands in our way. You are the chosen ones, True Sons of the Devil!”

  <<<>>>

  The Sons had turned into the biggest movers and shakers in Charleston over the past year, and it was all due to a chance meeting in a bar. Eddie still couldn’t believe his luck. He had come to the area from California with four other nomads. They weren’t true outriders for their clubs, as they’d been kicked out for being meaner, nastier, and even more violent than anyone else. Eddie grew up in Hollister and had run his own club into the ground with debt and too many arrests. Wanted in three states, he had thought the East coast looked really appealing.

  “Bartender, another round for my friends here,” Eddie called to the man with the bottle in his hand.

  For a bar, it was pretty grungy. The sort of place where they sweep up eyeballs at the end of the night. Which meant it was perfect for one-percenters.

  “Boys, if this place is an example, we’re gonna fit right in around here. What do you want to call the new club?” Eddie asked.

  “Needs to be something cool sounding and not related to any of our previous ones. So no Angels, Knights, or Pagans. We can’t call ourselves anything like that. But you’re right, this place is perfect. It would make a kick ass clubhouse,” Wallace replied.

  Eddie was lucky to have Wallace. He too was a wanted man, but by a large handful of government agencies. His habit of carving up his victims and making offerings to the devil were too much for most folk.

  “How about the Sons of the Devil? That sounds like a club people could be afraid of?” a female voice stated.

  All five men turned as one to see a mid-twenties woman in a business suit standing in the doorway. Two very large men stood right beside her. Their very appearance screamed Bodyguards.

  Eddie nodded. “It’s a good name. Not one I’ve heard around at the meetups. Wallace has a certain fondness for the devil as well. Might work. You are?”

  The youngish woman held out her hand, “Autumn Fredericks. I own this… establishment. The one you were just saying you wanted to turn into a clubhouse. How would you like that to happen for real?”

  And that was the start of it. It had come as a shock to all five men that there was actually such a thing as Demon cultists, and that some of them would make pretty good bikers! Autumn turned out to be much more than a businesswoman. She thought strategically, and within a year they controlled the prostitution, gambling, and the majority of drugs flowing in and out of the port. Through her, Eddie met the real power behind it all and he was transformed. Mammon was born, and together they would rule over all that they could see.

  <<<>>>

  “It is how you said it would be, Master,” Autumn bowed her head and stared at the ground. “The humans only care for material things. They place all value on trinkets and toys. They have no idea what true power even feels like.”

  “We shall teach it to them, then. Perhaps they will glean something as they scream in pain for an eternity. You have done well… The time of rebirth is almost upon us. Soon our armies will roll across the land and nothing will stand in our way.” Camilla Blackmore patted her ‘daughter’ on her head. “Retain your form and prepare them for the future. This world will burn.”

  Chapter 11

  “Agatha, we’ve got a problem up ahead.” Cat looked back over her shoulder at me.

  Peering down so I could see out the front, I looked ahead of us. The road we were on ran parallel to both the railroad tracks and the Cooper River. Like a child’s toys, railcars were lying all over the road and atop several buildings.

  “Any way around it?” I asked.

  Cat stared at the smashed railcars and shook her head. “Not unless we go through someone’s backyard, and I don’t think that will happen. There’s fences, cars, and other buildings every which-a-way around here.”

  “So we walk?” I asked.

  “We walk,” Cat answered.

  I sighed. “Let me wake up sleeping beauty over there. No sense in letting him be a snack.”

  “Do we have to? I was getting used to the quiet,” Chuck joked.

  Pulling Blake up by his arm I carefully stood him back up, leaning him against the bench. “He isn’t that bad.”

  “I agree, but that was before he shot me, so excuse me if I’m a little jaded about him,” Chuck replied.

  Knocking him out required a complex spell I had to set up in advance. Freezing someone is easy. Making sure they are still breathing after the fact is the hard part. There’s frozen and then there’s rock hard. Blake was somewhere in between the two. Muttering a cantrip I released the spell. Even as I did it, I wondered if the human Mages behind us could do something like this.

  “Blake, wake up!” I gave his frozen body a shove.

  “Yahhhhhh!” Blake woke up with a scream, his hands grasping at thin air, looking for his shotgun.

  The bus lurched to a stop as Cat pulled up next to one of the train cars blocking the street. Blake staggered forward, arms outthrust to stop himself from falling. He bumped into me and grabbed my arm to pull himself up.

  Bzzzt!

  There was a bright blue flash as a tiny lightning bolt shot out of my bracelets, shocking the young Agent.

  Grabbing his arm, Blake yelled, “What did you do to me, you bitch?!”

  “Rule one Blake,” I said as I slapped his hand off my arm, “Nobody and I do mean nobody touches the Witch! Am I understood?”

  I glared so hard at the younger Agent that I could almost feel fire burning in my eyes. Disrespect was something I couldn’t have on my own team.

  Blake glared back at me but nodded, “I understand. What happened?”

  “I asked you a question and you turned with a loaded weapon and shot Chuck. Instinctively I froze you. We’ve reached our destination on the outskirts of the historic part of Charleston. As you might be able to see, the road is blocked. We’re going to have to hoof it. Would you like to come with us or stay here?” I asked.

  For just a moment he looked like a weasel to me. Beady little eyes and a slinky attitude. I shook it off as a flash of preconception. He was pretty sneaky already.

  “I’d like to come with you,” Blake replied.

  “Grab your gear. Chuck has your shotgun.” I started to turn away but looked back. “We picked up some military stragglers and that super-secret team we were informed about. They’re back there. We’ve agreed to temporarily work together.”

  Blake looked to where I was pointing and saw the two military trucks which were now closing on our six.

  Blake nodded as Chuck spoke to him.

  I didn’t hear all of Chuck’s response, even if it was louder than his normal voice because Fergus thought now was a good time to wake up.

  “That was a long nap! Where are we?” Fergus asked, his head sticking up out of my shirt pocket.

  I grabbed my gear and started reloading my guns. Fergus pulled himself out of my pocket and stood up on my shoulder. I could feel the slightest hint of Magick coming from him. He was using a spell to stay upright.

  “Is that a train?” Fergus asked me.

  “Good eye. It’s blocking the road. We have to walk to get to Camilla,” I explained.

  “You haven’t taken care of her yet? What did you do with my energy then?” Fergus complained. He peered down into my
gear bag. “Is there food for me inside there? I’m hungry.”

  I continued to load my magazines. There were a lot of Demons around here. “I might have a protein bar or three in here. Want one?”

  Fergus’s head came up and his ears went flat against his head. “Those are the white bar things right?”

  “Of course. You’ve seen me eat them all the time in the field,” I explained. Reaching into my bag, I opened a compartment and took one out.

  “Keep that crap away from me! I only eat organic, and by organic I mean hay. Got any hay?” Fergus asked.

  “There’s some back on the plane but if you think I’m going back there for you, you’re crazy,” I told him. “You know where I put it, teleport it yourself.”

  “Speaking of crazy? Did you cast a shield spell?” Cat asked.

  Clicking the last round into the magazine, I looked up. “I didn’t. Why?”

  “Look around us. No Demons. If you look down the street you can see them, but not here. Why is this place different?” Cat pointed out the windows.

  “I don’t know, but we need to find out. It could be something to help us out of this situation.” I checked on Blake and Chuck. “You two kiss and make up? We should be surrounded by Demons and we aren’t. This is either a good thing or very, very bad. Grab your gear.”

  Cat jumped off the steps, landing in a protection stance almost immediately. The saying that cats always land on their feet was a huge understatement when you were talking about Werecats.

  “It looks clear. All I smell is death,” Cat’s voice whispered in my ear. When I was looking for ammo I had found the team comm system earbuds. To be truthful, neither Cat nor Chuck needed them within several hundred yards, but it was a good habit to put them in anyway. Not wanting to break a foot or head, I walked down the steps, taking up my position near the front of the bus. Amongst the train cars were the ripped and torn bodies of people. A lot of people. They were innocents.

  “We need to do something…” I paused as a sob came from deep in my throat. “Are any of them alive?”

  “I don’t hear any nearby heartbeats other than ours... Sweetie, we need to get moving.” Cat pulled me away from the body of a small human child.