by Matt Rogers
A faint growl sounded from below as he was halfway across the street.
Below?
He hesitated for just a second.
What he didn’t see was that the grille to the storm drain lying in the middle of the street had been removed, and a gaping hole now lay in the asphalt.
What he did see was the stark white hand, complete with razor-sharp claws, reach up out of the darkness and wrap its cold grip around his ankle. With a soft cry of surprise, the hand whisked him down into the sewers.
He landed in a waist-deep river of thick, viscous liquid. Above, the grate was yanked back into place. He didn’t want to imagine what he was lying in, but he couldn’t see anyway. There was nothing but pitch black all around. He waved his hand in front of his face. Not even a faint outline.
Shivering violently, Hamish groped around until he found a metal landing. It was cold to the touch. He heaved himself up out of the liquid. It dripped from his clothes, running in rivulets through the slats in the platform. He clambered to his feet and took a blind step forward, arms rigid, searching for a surface.
They found nothing. He should have walked into the wall of the sewer tunnel. But he didn’t. He gulped back fear and, with a deep breath, continued onward.
The atmosphere shifted. It was a subtle thing, but he noticed. With no sight, his other senses were temporarily heightened. He heard his footfalls grow louder. He had entered a vast space. And in the silence, there was a soft hush of movement. Like an enormous crowd shuffling silently as one. The noise came from everywhere at once.
He forgot he had his cigarette lighter on him. No-one knew he smoked, so he tended to treat the lighter as if it didn’t exist. Now, he remembered, and fished it from his pocket. Hastily, he flicked it on.
The soft flame lit up the darkness momentarily, and Hamish found himself face-to-face with an army of monsters. He was standing at the lip of an underground cavern, unimaginably huge. The walls were rough, like they had been dug by hand. He looked up. The ceiling sloped away into the dark. The cavern was crawling with hundreds upon hundreds of pale, bald creatures. There was one standing less than a metre from him. His flashlight lit up its wide eyes and crooked teeth.
It snarled, and that was the last thing he remembered before the slayer horde descended on him in a blood-fuelled frenzy.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The cogs in Jake’s brain were whirring faster than he could keep up with. Slowly piecing together the puzzle. He made completely sure he was seeing correctly and had clearly identified the person in front of him before he spoke again.
“Dad?” he repeated.
The last time he had seen Mark Hawkins, Jake had thrown a lamp at the back of his head.
A wave of disbelief and confusion crashed over him.
Wolfe had never existed.
It had been his father all along.
He was seeing it, but it was hard to believe. It was clearly his dad. He recognised the short, close-cropped hair and ice-blue eyes better than anyone else in the world. But there was something different about his face. Something strange. Jake realised that it was the expression. Mark was smiling.
Mark never smiled.
“I don’t understand,” Jake said. It was the best he could manage.
“I’ve got a lot of explaining to do, my boy.” There were tears in his eyes.
“I don’t –” Jake said. He sunk lower into his chair. Stared at the man in front of him long and hard.
“I guess I’ll start from the beginning. We didn’t have much of a relationship, right? I was always at my job. I told you I trained troops at the local army reserve barracks. You remember?”
Jake nodded. He was too stunned to speak.
“I never worked there. Truth is, I left the military sixteen years ago. Just after you were born. ‘Wolfe’ told you a story, about how we were ambushed in the Amazon Rainforest, as a newfound Delta Force squad. That didn’t happen to Wolfe. It happened to me. I was in Delta, for the four years before you were born. These three men with me here were my squad members. So was Sam. You know that story.
“After we were cut loose by Link’s father, we made it back to Australia, covertly, of course. And we never went back. I was the only one originally from here. Your mother was here in Melbourne, pregnant with you. I only found that out after we came back.”
“Did Mum know?”
“About the slayers?”
Jake nodded.
“No,” Mark said. “I never told her. Truth is, I didn’t get into hunting them until after you were born. I was the only one with a family. Sam, Crank, Thorn, Felix. They all had nothing. They were alone in a foreign country, so they began hunting. I didn’t get involved. They were willing to devote themselves to the cause: I wasn’t. Your mother was expecting you within weeks. So I tried to forget all about what happened in the Amazon, and focused on starting a family.”
“How did Mum die, Dad?”
His dad paused. “Archfiend came for me.”
“No…” Jake’s stomach somersaulted.
“It was the middle of the night, Jake,” Mark said, tears brimming once again at the corners of his eyes. “Only a couple of days before Liz was due. We were both sound asleep when he broke in. To finish what he started, I guess. I have no earthly idea what that bastard’s motivation is. But somehow, he had tracked me down. He came charging into the bedroom, and for some sick, twisted reason, he attacked Liz first.” Mark went to speak but his voice failed. Tears welled up in his eyes. “He slashed her throat…”
He trailed off. Jake was speechless. He felt a deep sadness in his chest. He saw his dad suppress a sob. The man’s throat heaved, then he paused for a second, and continued.
“The swipe didn’t kill her. But she was dying; blood loss is a fast process. I beat Archfiend half to death in rage. That was the closest I ever came to killing him. He fled eventually. He knew he couldn’t fight me. I was too angry. So he took off, like the coward he is. I rushed your mum to the hospital, and she managed to give birth. Then she died of her wounds.”
Jake was shocked beyond words, but above all, sad. Archfiend had ruined so many lives. He couldn’t believe his dad could keep something like that secret. “You … you told me she died of natural causes. A heart attack.”
“I told you a lot of things that weren’t true, Jake.”
“My whole life has been a lie?”
“I wasn’t going to tell you of how she bled to death in the ER, subject to an open throat wound from a monster I met in the Amazon. It would have been too much.”
“So you kept it a secret,” Jake finished. “You kept everything a secret.”
“I had to raise you on my own. But after that, there was no way I could turn my back on slayers. Not after Liz. I contacted my old team, and joined up with them. Remember how you found out I had wasted the fortune your mother left?”
“Uncle Rich told me,” Jake said. “Up at the farm. I was so angry. I … I still am.”
“That’s what I had to pretend had happened. In reality, I put it all into the operation. The money funded the guns, the equipment. It was only when Link came on board that we could afford all the flashy stuff. But I provided the groundwork for what we are today.” He hesitated. “What we were…”
“To avenge Mum?”
“It’s what she would have wanted. I strengthened our chances of taking down Archfiend. I had no other use for the money.”
“But now it’s sixteen years later,” Jake said. “And you’re still hunting them. You’re still in. And now I’m in too…”
Mark bowed his head. “That’s what tore me up inside. I had to bring you in. It was too much of a risk for you to remain on the outside. Archfiend knew of our operation. He didn’t want anyone knowing what slayers were. He wanted my head, and he would do anything to get it. I now knew my family wasn’t off limits.”
“You didn’t…”
“It was for your own protection, Jake. I had you in kickboxing and rugby almost before you coul
d crawl. But my intention was never for you to hunt them. It was always for protection.”
“Why do I need protection?”
“Archfiend tried to kill you. Twice. You were too small to remember, but the first time you actually saw him. The second time, you were fourteen. Both times, I stopped him. After the second attempt, I knew it was too risky to keep you oblivious. So long as Archfiend was alive, you could never live a normal life, Jake. But you were too young. You couldn’t have hunted them. So I waited.”
Everything was falling into place.
“But I wouldn’t go willingly, would I?” Jake said. “You had to shut me off. Make me want to leave. Right?”
“It was the two hardest years of my life,” Mark said. “I had to pretend I didn’t care about you. It was horrible. The worst part was, I could see you forming a wall against me, as you matured. It broke my heart.”
“That’s impossible. You couldn’t have been faking it, that whole time. I thought –” Jake paused. “I thought you hated me.”
“And I hated myself for it.”
“You never meant any of it?”
It was slightly relieving, but Jake was still deeply confused. It couldn’t have been acting. Surely not.
“Not a word,” Mark said. “But I had to do it. I had to give you a reason to want to leave. There was no other option, Jake. I had no idea when Archfiend was going to come for you again.”
“Why did he want to kill me so bad?”
“It’s almost like he holds a personal grudge against me. Because I escaped from him, in the past.”
Something clicked in Jake’s mind. “That day I was ambushed in the alleyway – the first time I ever saw a slayer. You said some harsh things that morning. You made me react the way I did.”
“You needed incentive. You had to think returning home would be suicide.”
“I did. But you knew. You knew I was going to be attacked by a slayer, that day. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have escalated things.”
Mark nodded solemnly. “It was all a set-up, Jake. I killed the engine of the van you were travelling in with an electromagnetic pulse. I made you choose that alleyway.”
“You turned a slayer loose on me?”
“You needed to see one, up close and personal. But you were never in any danger. I had it in my sights at all times. That apartment you ended up in – Thorn and Felix were on the other side of those doors. Just in case things got out of hand.”
Jake remembered Wolfe’s all-out brawl. “They almost did.”
“I must admit, I wasn’t expecting that second slayer. I directed the first one into the alleyway, but the second came out of nowhere. I took care of it, though.”
Jake sat in silence, pondering. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“Why the disguise, Dad?” he said. “Why this whole, elaborate ruse, to cover up who you really were? Why am I only finding out just now?”
“I was supposed to tell you, after you decided to join,” Mark said. His head was in his hands. “But … I’m human, Jake. I’m scared of rejection, just the same as the next man. I was so scared that you would condemn me for what I did. I kept delaying it. I was going to tell you after our first hunt. And then our first hunt sent us into a hive.”
Jake glanced down at the mask on the floor. “How the hell did that thing stay on the entire time?”
“That’s not something you can buy in a store, my boy,” Mark said, motioning to the material. “I got that from an old Delta Force contact. It cost tens of thousands of dollars. Those disguises are for undercover operatives, operatives who need face-to-face meetings with the enemy without revealing their true identity. You can’t tell one of those masks from a real face. And it wasn’t coming off unless I wanted it to.”
Jake spread his arms wide in a gesture. “You did this to protect me?”
“Archfiend took Liz away. I wasn’t going to let him take you away. And I didn’t know how else to do it. If I had just come out and told you about slayers, would you have wanted a part of it? Would you have believed me?”
Jake shook his head. “No way.”
“Exactly. It was cruel, but it was necessary. If I had to ignore you for two years, at least you were still alive. It was harder than expected, but I just did it. Because I love you.”
Now Jake felt the tears coming on. He held them back. “But Archfiend didn’t kill me. He had the chance to, in the hive. And Thorn, too. He wasted the opportunity.”
“I was unconscious,” Thorn said. “And he just left me there. But he took Wolfe.”
“You don’t need to call me that anymore,” Mark said.
There was a melancholic pause.
“Mark,” Thorn said, and smiled. “I should be used to that. It’s what I’ve called you for sixteen years. Those were a long two months, brother. Glad you finally got the nerves to own up.”
“I think Archfiend wanted to leave us all alive,” Mark continued, “to witness his plan unfold. He’s been preparing this for years. I think he killed Sam out of reflex, nothing more. It wasn’t his intention. He wants us to watch him destroy an entire state.”
Jake took a few moments to mull over the revelation, to cast his mind back to his days of training, and to his life before slayers. He scoured his brain for signs of the lie, all throughout his childhood.
“I nearly caught you, Dad,” he said. “When we were sparring. I gave you a good punch in the face, and I swear I saw your face shift. Then everyone rushed you upstairs.”
Mark nodded. “You hit a sweet spot, just under my chin. Loosened the glue under my cheek. Part of the skin slipped.”
“And that photo. I walked into your room, before I went out scouting with Link. You were holding a framed photograph. I thought I recognised the woman.”
“An old photo of Liz. I’ve gotta say, I nearly had a heart attack when I noticed you were there.”
“Wow.”
Jake’s entire life had just been turned on its head. A long time passed without either party speaking a word.
His dad broke the silence. “Do you hate me, Jake?”
Jake said nothing for a long time. Then he spoke. “No. I can see why you did it. I would have done it differently, but I can see you had good intentions.”
“I love you,” Mark said. It seemed as if he had wanted to get those words off his chest for a long, long time.
“To be honest, I wasn’t happy with my old life, anyway. There was no … excitement.”
Mark smiled. “You’ve got my genes, kid.”
Jake turned to Crank, to Thorn, to Felix. “You guys are the closest friends I’ve had in all my sixteen years. So I’m fine with the way things turned out.”
The three men nodded in acknowledgement, but said nothing.
There was a moment of hesitation, then Jake rose and crossed the cabin to where his dad was sitting. They clamped their arms around each other in unison. His dad held tight. It was an embrace the man had been waiting for for two years. Jake felt the emotion behind it. He couldn’t hold back the tears.
He buried his face into his dad’s huge shoulder and began to cry.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Jake and his dad talked for the next two hours as the others dozed. Memories from the past resurfaced, some with joy, and others with apprehension. Jake was filled in on his father’s entire sixteen-year history with slayers: from the initial years of trial and error, to developing a system within the madness, to evolving into an unstoppable unit. Jake then recounted his time in the Amazon: from their ambush by the pack of slayers in the middle of the night, to being taken hostage by mercenaries and fighting Koji, to his underwater battle with the slayer-jaguar hybrid, which finally culminated in their approach on the clearing.
“Archfiend’s been toying with us this whole time,” Mark said, after listening to Jake’s tale. “Iquitos proves he had at least a hundred slayers in the Amazon. They could have outnumbered you at any time. I think he wants us all alive to see this.”
“We’re going to stop it, right?” Jake said. “You’re Wolfe. You always know what to do.”
“Honestly, I don’t see how,” Mark said. “But we’ll find a way.”
*
Jake drifted into an uncomfortable sleep. He was plagued by dark visions of the task ahead, but his dad wrapped a reassuring arm around him. Anytime, he was expecting to be woken by the inevitable ringing of the phone in the cockpit, signalling the massacre had begun.
It came after a few hours of somewhat peaceful rest.
Irene woke him. Her urgent calling pulled him from his dreams. She was yelling from the cockpit. Telling them to get up.
Jake was wide alert in seconds. He looked around and saw the other four men already on their feet, heading to the front of the plane. Crank was hopping on his good leg, supporting himself on the backs of the seats ahead. Zoe was slower to stir than the others. They all crowded around the small entrance to the cockpit.
Through the windscreen, Jake could see the urban sprawl of Washington D.C. dead ahead. Even from fourteen thousand feet, the grounds surrounding the White House were visible. He had only ever seen the monumental building on television. It was nothing more than a white speck, but a shiver of anticipation still snaked down his spine.
“Has the President made contact?” Mark said with urgency.
Irene shook her head. “No. Nothing. Whatever’s hiding down there, it’s still hiding. You gentlemen have been asleep for five hours. We’re only ten minutes out now.”
“Get us over the White House,” Felix said.
“Why?”
“Whatever’s going to happen, it’ll happen close to there.”
“Do you know for sure?” Irene said.
“Archfiend’s kept slayers hidden from society for years. Now he’s introducing them. He’s going to want to make an impact, and that’s how you do it.”
“He has to be behind us, right?” Jake mused. “Even if he stashed himself on board a plane somehow. He can’t have made it out of the rainforest faster than us.”
