The Gathering

by Michael Timmins

  He surveyed the room of astonished faces. “Worse, many of them claimed to have posted them to their social media accounts or made posts about what they were seeing.” He paused for emphasis of the importance of this next part. “All of those posts have disappeared as well.”

  He watched them for some sign of knowing. These were the only players he could think of who could do such a thing.

  Nothing.

  Either they were all terrific actors, or none of them had any knowledge of how this had been done.

  “How is that possible?” Paul Rice, the Director of the NSA muttered to no one in particular. His long face scrunched up with a questioning look. “I mean. Some of that we could have accomplished, but not all of it. The shear scope . . .” He blew out a gust of air through his thin lips, causing his mustache to quiver and he shook his head. “What are we dealing with?”

  “What I want to know,” Lisa spoke again, “is which side did this? Was it,” she waved a hand at her tablet, “them?” She scanned the room, “Or was it, us?”

  Carl sat back and steepled his fingers in front of his face, tapping his lower lip. “I have to believe it is someone on our side, given the information I was given at the beginning of this.”

  “The experiments?” Lisa again.

  Carl nodded. “That thumb drive was given to me by someone in our government. Someone who could have entered my office unseen, and unreported.” Again, he studied the room for some indication if any of them were responsible. “Someone, who kidnapped, no purchased, imprisoned and . . . experimented,” his face contorted in disgust at the memory of what had been done to the poor girl, “on a child.”

  Roland Espi, the CIA director chimed in. “We know that some of these, er . . . creatures, hail from overseas. At least the ones we have been able to identify seemed to have all come from either England or Australia. As to what their purpose in coming here is, we don’t know.”

  Roland was part of the old school. At 71, he was the oldest participant at this meeting. His hair was gray, at least most of it was

  “Their motives are unknown to us,” Carl agreed. “What we have been able to ascertain, from both this recent fight in Chicago, and the last one is that some of them seem to be, for lack of a better description, ‘good guys’.”

  “Several police officers who we interviewed said that a group of them came to their aid in fighting off another group. They were the reason the other group fled. It certainly wasn’t because of the police.”

  “So, what is in these reports is . . . true?” Incredulity was written on Paul Rice’s face, and Carl knew what he referred to.

  “As far as we know, something akin to,” Carl motioned uncertainly with his hands, “magic was used.”

  “Magic?” Roland guffawed. “Are you serious?”

  Carl gave him a look. “Waves of fire from nothing, walls of ice . . . gallons of water falling from nowhere? What else would you call these things?” He scrutinized each of the directors in turn, challenging them to come up with a better term.

  He leaned in and reached forward planting one finger in front of him, pointing downward at the table. “This is what we know. . .

  “One, there are humans out there who can transform themselves into manlike beasts, and back again. Two, they seem almost impervious to conventional weapons and can heal themselves of almost any wounds. Third, some of them definitely are not good people, and fourth, they are here for a reason.”

  He sat back.

  “We need to figure out what we are dealing with and why. And, how do we stop them when we can’t even seem to hurt them.”

  Silence answered him.

  “Ahem.” Gina Valen cleared her throat. Her light brown skin flowed nicely with the brown leather of the chair. As director of CDC, she had largely been out of her element at this table and most likely wondered why she was there.

  “I understand why all of you are here, but why am I?”

  Carl had been waiting for this, and it was something he hadn’t put in the debriefing he had uploaded to all their tablets.

  He stood and moved behind his chair, gripping its sides.

  “There was something I didn’t put into your briefings.”

  He let it hang in the air for a moment, and like a boulder suspended above them, they waited for its weight to drop.

  “Attached to the thumb drive was the report describing the girl’s escape and what happened after.”

  They waited.

  “When she escaped, she attacked the man who oversaw doing the experiments on her. She changed into that . . . creature, and with her claws she sliced the man’s throat.”

  Gina’s mouth parted is shock, but Carl noticed a satisfied look on Lisa’s face which he empathized with.

  “There had been a doctor nearby who managed to save the man’s life. This is where it becomes important to you, Gina.” He nodded to her. “While he recovered from his injuries, he suffered a heart attack. Which he survived. Miraculously, his wounds healed. After he left the hospital, he disappeared. He drained his bank accounts and dropped off the grid. He hasn’t been seen since.”

  Gina was looking down at her tablet and flipping through pages of briefings before her finger stopped swiping and he could see her eyes dart back and forth as she scanned the page.

  She turned to him.

  He nodded at her.

  “She . . . infected him?”

  “That is my belief.”

  Roland nodded.

  “That would correspond with the events which occurred in London.”

  Carl regarded him blandly as this was the first he had heard of this.

  Roland shrugged apologetically.

  “Honestly, this information came to us just recently and our best put this theory together a couple of days ago. Most of it seemed unrelated, until the rest of this started to come to light.”

  Carl accepted this. All of this was well outside their scope of understanding, putting the pieces of a puzzle together when you can’t see the final picture was damn near impossible.

  “Go on,” he encouraged Roland.

  “The night of the earthquake, there was an apparent attack on a hotel in London. It was a hotel known to be used by hookers and criminals, but the place looked like it had been attacked by a wild animal more than by people, or injuries sustained from an earthquake.

  “Only two people survived and after being interviewed by the police separately, they both claimed the same thing.”

  “Let me guess. They were attacked by some giant monster?”

  Roland nodded. “Yeah. The police dismissed it as drug-induced hallucinations or something. Even though their tox screen came back negative.”

  Lisa snorted. “They interviewed them separately, and they didn’t have any drugs in their system, but they dismissed it?”

  Paul eyed her before responding, “As opposed to accepting that they had actually been attacked by a large monster?”

  Lisa considered this for a moment before inclining her head at his point.

  Roland continued.

  “The two survivors proceeded to have heart attacks, mysteriously healed and fled the hospital. They disappeared as well. Off the grid.”

  Gina stood, then sat back down. She ran a coffee-colored hand through her dark black hair.

  “So, let me get this straight. We have people who can transform into, as far as we can tell, unstoppable killing monsters and who can make more of them?”

  “So, it would seem.”

  “Dear God,” she responded, sinking lower in her seat.

  “What are we planning on doing?”

  Carl sat back down.

  “I have dispatched agents to locate these groups and determine what they can find out about them and their motives. I have dispatched strike teams to be at the ready in Texas and the surrounding states to act if needed.”

  “What do you want us to do?” Paul asked.

  “Information. We need to identify these people. Who they ar
e, who they know, what kind of people they are? Plus, we need to find them, and find them fast.”

  “And me?” Gina asked.

  “Study everything they gave us from those experiments. I know it isn’t much, but it is about all we have. Get with Paul and see if you can get the medical records from those two who survived in London. Maybe there is a way to counteract this infection.”

  Gina nodded, as did the others.

  “For the time being, we are going to be keeping this quiet. Whoever was responsible for the cover-up in Chicago had the right idea. We need to keep a lid on this for as long as we can.”

  He stood again, and they stood with him. “Fortunately, the ridiculousness of the possibility of this should keep it from going viral.”

  He looked around the room one more time.

  “Dismissed.”

  As the directors filed out of the room Carl felt a sense of relief. He had been keeping this threat to himself for almost a week and it was nice to get it off his chest, to share the burden of knowledge. It had weighed on him and he had no one he could share the information with, apart from a select few agents whom he had already dispatched.

  He hoped they were doing well.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Kat ended the call, sighed and looked around the room. The battle had taken place the night before and it was almost noon. Sylvanis, Clint and Ben shared the room with her. Hank was in his own room and everyone was giving him his space.

  “What happened?” Sylvanis questioned, her soft features pensive as Kat had failed to keep the despair from her facial features.

  She set her phone down on the nightstand and rubbed her palms on her legs. She sat on one of the beds in her hotel room. Sylvanis and Ben had arrived an hour ago. Clint had slept in the other bed.

  She glanced at Clint. He had slept fitfully throughout the night —tossing and turning, sometimes waking with a jerk, sometimes lying awake before crying himself to sleep.

  Kat had hardly slept at all. She was worried about him, about what he had gone through. Where he had gone. What he had done. What it had done to him. She vowed to be there for him when he needed her, and if it meant staying up all night watching over him, so be it.

  She glanced back at Sylvanis.

  “That was Jason. Beth, Stephanie’s friend didn’t make it through. They were unable to revive her when her body rejected the lycanthropy.”

  Sylvanis closed her eyes and her head dropped. After a moment she let out a long sigh.

  “She blames me?” The question was rhetorical, but Kat answered it anyways.

  “Yes. They aren’t coming. At least,” she spread her hands in resignation. “At least for now. Jason will do what he can to convince her, but he isn’t sure she will change her mind.”

  Kat shook her head. This wasn’t going well.

  “Jason says he will come regardless, but . . .” Kat trailed off.

  Sylvanis nodded. She understood it was likely he would choose to stay with her if she didn’t come.

  There was silence for a long time, their thoughts their own, no one choosing to further burden anyone else for the moment. In the end, it was Ben who broke the truce.

  “Are we going to talk about what happened to Simon?”

  No one answered him. Kat didn’t have any answers to give. The only one who had the slightest idea was Sylvanis, and she had made it clear she didn’t understand either.

  “I have been giving this a lot of thought since last night,” Sylvanis began, frowning.

  “I can’t say I understand it more today than I did yesterday. All I know is that it wasn’t Druidic, and it wasn’t Were. Whatever killed Simon was something new to me but smelled . . . old.” Her nose crinkled as if she had smelled something foul.

  “Druidic magic and even Were have a certain sophistication about them. Druids were a learned people. We studied and for the most part we were civilized.”

  She stared off into a place none of them could see.

  “The . . . thing that killed Simon. The weapon . . . it was raw. Uncultured. Primal.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know how else to describe it.

  “Whatever it was, it was something I have had no experience with.”

  “But it was magic, though, right?” Ben stumbled over the word magic. Like Kat, he still had some difficulty with the idea of magic. She, at least, was a product of it, and so had no choice but to accept its existence and functionality. Ben . . . well, Ben was a man of evidence. Proof. And though he had seen plenty of it, his brain still told him he was mistaken.

  “Yes. It was magic. Just not a magic I have ever encountered.”

  “And that should make us . . . very afraid,” Kat concluded.

  Sylvanis cocked her head in consideration and nodded.

  “It most certainly should. Weres are as close to immortal as one can be. You are long lived, though someone like Syndor, er, Samuel, should still have died long ago, he would have lived for centuries. You can heal from almost any wound. Except decapitation. That is one thing you wouldn’t recover from.”

  “So, a weapon that can kill one of them with what appears to be just one attack. That should be impossible?”

  Sylvanis nodded again. “Should be.”

  No one had anything more to say. They were still left with no answers.

  “Why did Kestrel flee?” Kat wondered aloud. It had been a question bothering her since that night. It was, at best, a stalemate at that point. Neither side seemed to be winning or losing, but Kestrel and the Rat-girl up and left. One moment, Kestrel and Sylvanis were exchanging spells and the next, she was gone.

  Sylvanis sighed. “It is my belief that she had no intention of staying in the first place. They hadn’t expected us to be there. Only the police. I believe she had meant for the Boars and Croc to be distractions. A delaying action, so that she and the Rat could leave without being noticed. Or chased.”

  Kat nodded to herself. It made sense. They knew Kestrel wanted to wage war on civilization. Engaging in street fights was not what she would want for herself. She needed to gather like-minded people to join her cause. Which would mean she would need to be free to follow through with that. Her Weres weren’t in any real danger, or at least they wouldn’t have been if Sylvanis and the rest of them hadn’t arrived, not that they put much of a dent in them.

  Kat stared off at nothing, replaying the fight in her mind. She had gone toe to toe with that monster Croc, and while she gave it everything she had, she hadn’t come close to winning. She didn’t lose either. In the end, when Clint showed, the asshole ran.

  “I need to get some air.” Kat stood and headed for the door.

  “Kat?” Sylvanis called to her as she reached the door.

  “Yeah?”

  “Be careful. This isn’t like before. They know us now. Whoever covered up the fight will be looking for us, and anyone who has the kind of power to manipulate social media and the news should be taken seriously.”

  Kat smiled at her ruefully. “You forgot to mention the person who can kill us with a single blade attack.”

  “You are a fighter, Kat, not stupid.” Sylvanis smiled ruefully back. “My guess is if someone approached you with a blade at this point, you would do your best to flee. An army, however, you might just stay and try and fight.”

  Kat snorted, turned and left. Well, she’s not wrong.

  Clint watched Kat leave the room, before returning to staring at his hands. He was not doing well. Ha! None of them are. Sarah had reached him. Pulled him back to his humanity. Again. With her calling his name, all the anger, all the savageness, left him. He returned to himself.

  Then he lost her, again.

  He took a shuddering breath and fought back the tears. He became aware of the silence in the room and looked up. At some point after Kat had left, Ben had also left. Now, only Sylvanis was left in the room with him, and she watched him with her soft green eyes.

  Quickly he glanced away and wiped a tear which h
ad barely formed at the corner of his eye.

  “Do you wish to talk about it, Clint?”

  He looked back at her. This girl, no, woman. He had to remind himself, despite her appearance, she was older than she appeared. She had lived long ago, when people had to grow up quickly. She had led an army. Fought a war. Had made decisions affecting the lives of thousands of people.

  “No.” He tried to keep the pain from his voice, but he could tell by the compassion in her expression, he had failed.

  “You are not the first Were this has happened to, Clint. During the war, sometimes, men and women would go . . . feral.” She made a face at the word. “Very few made it back. And even though they did, most were never the same.”

  He glanced away from her again. Her eyes seemed to delve into his soul. He had done awful things when he had gone . . . feral, yes that is the right word. He had killed. Worse, he had . . . fed. How does one come back from that?

  “Clint.” She stood and moved to squat down next to where he sat and rested a hand on his knee. It seemed like such a personal gesture for someone who hardly knew him, but somehow it felt, right. Natural.

  “The man I knew, your ancestor, was the strongest, bravest and,” she smiled, “stubbornest man I have ever known.”

  She reached up and grabbed his chin to make him look at her. He didn’t resist and found himself staring down at this young, but old, woman with clear, beautiful green eyes holding so much understanding it made him want to cry all over again. But he held it back. Barely.

  “I see some of him in you, Clint. The same stubbornness, the same bravery. I think if this had ever happened to him, he would find a way to rise above it. To not let it define him. He would understand that this hadn’t happened by choice. What he did, even though it was he who did it, wasn’t really his fault.”

  The corner of her mouth lifted slightly in a crooked smile as she watched his face and he realized something.