Jessie looked my way. She raised a shaky hand. “Long-distance fist bump.”
Crohn blinked. He took a step toward April. She moved her hand closer to the crackling flames. He was fast, but he wasn’t that fast. Black smoke billowed from the ruin, forming a rippling shroud at April’s back.
“April,” he said, stretching out his fingers like a man reaching for a life preserver.
“Pride goeth,” she replied. Her eyes were steel, unblinking. Pitiless.
“April, don’t do this. We can work something out. C-come with me, you’ll be rewarded—”
“Come where?” April nodded to the patch of lawn where the helicopter had touched down. Nothing but windswept grass and rubble now. “Your ride left when the fire broke out. Bobby Diehl was your last refuge, the only bridge you hadn’t burned, and even he abandoned you. It’s over, Benjamin.”
“April . . .” He shook his head, forcing a desperate smile. “Come on, it’s me. We were partners. We shared our lives—we shared everything. We had some good times, didn’t we?”
“We did. I was very much in love with you, once.”
“So don’t do this. Give me the envelope, and we can—”
“Once,” April said, cutting him off. “Before you betrayed your oaths, your duty. Before you decided nothing in the world was more important than looking out for yourself. You sold out the human race, Ben. You sold us out, and for what? Power? A fat bank account? Was it worth it?”
“Idealist,” he sneered, the word a curse on his lips. “You’re fighting a war you can’t win.”
“That indomitable human spirit, I suppose,” she said drily. He inched toward her, like he was about to make a move. The envelope inched closer to the flames. He’d never make it in time to snatch it away from her, before she cast it into the fire, and they both knew it.
“I wanted what was mine,” he said, “so I went and I got mine. They offered me money, power, the world on a silver plate, and I took it. Anyone else in my position would have done the same. I’m just one piece in hell’s plan, April. You can stop me, but what happens the next time? And the time after that?”
He spun, looking back at Jessie and me, then at April, shaking his head.
“This war will take everything you have and everything you are,” he said. “It’ll grind you down until there’s nothing left, and hell will still win in the end. It always does. Don’t you understand why?”
“Enlighten us,” April said.
“Because there are more men like me than there are women like you,” he said. “There always have been, and there always will be. And while you’re wringing your hands about righteousness and duty, we’ll take what we want and do as we please. It’s the way of the world.”
I rose to my feet. I walked over, held out my hand, and Jessie clasped it. I hauled her up. She wiped blood from her lip with the back of her hand and leaned against me.
“You’re wrong,” I told him.
He turned my way.
“There’s more of us out there,” Jessie said. “A lot more. You just weren’t listening until now.”
Crohn looked back to April. He spread his hands at his sides.
“April,” he said, his voice softer now. “Don’t do this.”
April contemplated the black envelope. She turned it in her hand, the glossy material glowing in the light of the hungry flames barely an inch away.
“I know a little witchcraft myself,” she said. “It’s only one tiny thing. A magic word. Tiny, but so very powerful against people like you.”
“Don’t do this—”
“The word is no, Benjamin.”
“April, please!”
She flung back her hand. She opened her fingers. The black envelope spun, fluttering, landing in the fire.
“No,” she said.
I felt a gust of raw magic on the frozen wind. A swirling tempest, rising with the sound of shattered steel links and keys turning in ancient locks. Crohn stood between us, frozen and trembling like he’d stepped on an electrified rail.
His skin began to bulge. Under his dress shirt, his chest and back bubbled and rippled, tumors the size of softballs swelling up. Then, one by one, the tumors burst. He fell to his knees, screaming, blood guttering down and staining the ivory cotton. Tiny hands, like infants with claws, pressed out against the inside of his neck, his forehead, tearing at his body from the inside.
He flung out his arms. More clawed hands burst through. His skin shredded as grasping, flame-charred fingers dug at his flesh and yanked ragged fistfuls back inside him. Crohn’s scream became a choking gurgle as a tiny scaled arm burst from his mouth, scratching at his nose, latching hold of one eye and wrenching it from his skull. The greedy hand dragged the eye back down his throat.
He was disappearing. Imploding, one bloody piece at a time.
He thrashed on the wet grass. One pant leg lay flat now, the stump of his left leg receding by the moment. One shoulder a bony, exposed ruin, and the opposite arm gone, the clawed hands tearing at him in a piranha frenzy. He looked to me with half a face, his remaining eye wide with abject terror. Then they took that one, too.
The last wet chunk of Benjamin Crohn’s body turned itself inside out, squirming in the dark, and vanished. The demons bound inside him had stolen every last piece, leaving nothing behind but a pile of shredded, sodden clothes.
April grabbed hold of her wheels and pushed herself forward, rolling across the uneven grass. She passed Crohn’s remains without a second glance.
“Let’s get to the plane,” she said. “We still have work to do.”
On the C-130, as Aselia prepared for takeoff and Jessie tossed Mikki in the holding cell, I looked over the freed hostages. They were wet, scared, shaking, strapped into jump seats and trying to process what they’d been through. They reeked of gasoline and fear sweat. I knew a few of their faces from the news. By the time we landed, I’d know them all by name. Them, their role in Vigilant Lock, what they’d done, and what they could do for us going forward.
Jessie came back, and Linder waved her over. They murmured back and forth, hands passing close together. She passed him something, but I couldn’t get a good look before he slipped it under his jacket. Then he turned to one of the hostages, an older man seated at the end of the row.
“Senator McGillis? Could I speak to you for a moment before we take off? Privately.”
He mirrored Linder’s genial smile as he rose from his seat, walking alongside him as they strolled to the back of the plane.
“It’s funny,” Linder said as they walked past me. “When we were abducted, I was actually on my way to see you about some pressing business.”
Linder shot him in the back of the head.
The senator’s corpse crumpled to the floor. Linder put the heel of his Italian loafer on the dead man’s shoulder, gave him a shove, and sent him rolling down the loading ramp to fall in a twisted heap in the grass. Rain pattered down on his wide-eyed face.
Linder handed Jessie’s pistol back to her, nodded his thanks, and turned to face the others.
“The esteemed gentleman from Kentucky,” he said, “was a loyalist to the infernal courts. We’re taking a new direction. Severing old ties. As of today, Vigilant Lock is exactly what it was always meant to be: America’s first and only line of defense against the forces of hell. We will rebuild, we will regroup, and we will pursue our nation’s enemies without hesitation or mercy.”
Jessie moved to stand beside me. She holstered her gun.
“Good,” she said. “Now tell them what I told you.”
Linder’s gaze swept across their shocked faces. “Benjamin Crohn is dead. You all work for me now.”
He pointed at Jessie and me.
“And I work for them,” he said. “Remember the chain of command, and we won’t have any more problems.”
FORTY-SIX
We landed at the Chautauqua County airport, dawn’s light gleaming off the C-130’s mighty wings. A convoy of limousin
es waited at the airstrip. We’d been in constant motion since takeoff: deciding how to massage the news, to spin the abduction story, to simmer everything down. By the time we landed, three networks were already running with the tale of how the kidnapped officials had been taken by a terrorist cell and freed in a daring early-morning raid. That’d keep the media cycle distracted for a week at least.
The second news story, competing for attention and clicks, was the sad tale of how Benjamin Crohn was found dead in his holding cell. Disgraced and facing prison time, he’d hanged himself with his bedsheets.
Two days later the sunrise found us at another airport, another cold morning. I walked across the tarmac with a cardboard box in my hands, six cups of steaming coffee nestled inside. The loading ramp echoed under my footsteps as I strolled into the belly of the plane.
“This surveillance suite is pretty decent,” Kevin was telling April, both of them ensconced by the bank of screens. “But honestly, the software they were running is a little out-of-date, and I’ve spotted some redundancies. Think I’m gonna start by beefing up the satellite uplink.”
I leaned in, holding out my carton like a waiter, and they both reached for coffee. “Here. Brain fuel.”
April lifted her cup to me. “Much obliged.”
Jessie swooped in like a vulture, snatching a cup for herself. “Aw, yes. Coffee. You are my favorite person. Did you bring me a Danish?”
“Only have two hands,” I told her.
“Your favorite-person status is now dangerously precarious.”
Up in the cockpit, Aselia’s overalls were coated in black grease. So were her hands and her face. Beside her, Marco was elbows-deep in the open console. We hadn’t seen him since our escape from the bayou, but he’d shown up like magic yesterday morning with a rucksack on his shoulder and a battered toolbox in each hand.
“No, Marco,” Aselia said, “no tinkering. No experimental parts. We’re doing everything by the manual, okay?”
The frog-mouthed mechanic looked back over his shoulder and waved a placating hand. “Okay, it’s okay. Just fiddlin’.”
“No fiddling.” She took two cups, passed him one, and went right back to looming over his shoulder.
We had an unexpected guest.
Linder stood at the foot of the loading ramp. “Permission to come aboard?” he called up.
“Grudgingly granted,” Jessie told him. As he strolled up to meet us, she spread her hands wide. “Oh, and just in case there’s any question about this whatsoever, let me be perfectly clear: we’re keeping this plane.”
“I had no doubts,” he replied. “You’re going to need it. The directorate has just authorized your full access to Vigilant Lock’s archives as well as increased funding. What I can’t offer you, unfortunately, is a vacation.”
He held out a black USB stick.
“Your next mission,” he said.
Jessie took the stick and passed it over to Kevin. A moment later the bank of screens blossomed with maps, data, surveillance photographs.
“Urgent priority,” Linder said. “And there’s another waiting as soon as you’re finished. Oh, by the way, Mikki’s been safely returned to her old cell at Site Burgundy. I won’t repeat what she said upon arrival, but it was . . . quite colorful. So. I’ll leave you to it. Good luck, Agents.”
As his limousine pulled away, my phone chimed. I strolled down the ramp, out into the crisp breeze, as Fontaine’s syrupy drawl filled my ear.
“You sure know how to open a can o’ worms, don’t you, darlin’?”
“It’s what we’re good at,” I said. “Did you get the bounty for taking out Crohn?”
“Mmm, you should have heard my tale of derring-do and bravery. I engaged him mano a mano, mortal combat in the wilds of Vermont—”
“It was New York,” I said.
“You have your version of the truth, I have mine. And mine pays better. Anyway, I just wanted to call and give you a friendly warning. You know that no-kill order the western courts had on you and your lady friend? It’s officially been rescinded. You’re anybody’s game now.”
“Apparently we served our purpose.”
“You did. Though I don’t think they’re gonna come after you just yet. Caitlin doesn’t break a playing piece she might be able to use later down the line. Same can’t be said for the eastern coalition. They’re hoppin’ mad that you yanked their own hustle out from under ’em. Sounds like they’re looking for payback, and price is no object. Heck, they might even hire me to hunt you down.”
“Would you take that bounty?” I asked.
“I would,” he said, his tone lightly teasing, “but I’m just too darn busy at the moment. We’ll see how it goes. My old compatriot Nyx, on the other hand . . . well, you’ve got another handful of enemies in DC. Nadine and family have hooked their horses to Senator Roth’s wagon, and you put a heck of a scare into the man.”
I walked back up the ramp, taking a last look back at the sunrise.
“He’d better be scared,” I said. “He’s on our list.”
“Tread carefully. Lots of people—humans and demonkind—have a vested interest in Roth’s ascendancy to the White House. Lots of people with fingers in lots of pies. And then there’s Bobby Diehl—”
“In hiding, about to be under indictment, and his corporate empire is crumbling piece by piece as we speak. The IRS is having a field day.”
“You know better than that, darlin’. A man like Bobby Diehl doesn’t hide. He lurks. And plots. What I’m saying is, you’ve got a whole bunch of people gunning for your head now, and they’re gonna come after you with everything they’ve got. You ready for that kind of heat?”
I gazed across the belly of the plane. To Jessie, to April, to Kevin. Since the day I joined this team, each of us had been through the crucible. One by one we’d faced the ghosts of our pasts, stared them in the eye, and laid them to rest. Nothing to hold us back now.
We had a job to do.
“I’ve got a message for all of them,” I told Fontaine. “For the courts of hell, for Bobby Diehl and the Network. For anyone and anything who threatens the people we’ve sworn to protect. You can pass it on, if you like.”
“I might be so inclined. What’s the message?”
I looked to my team, my family, and smiled.
“Three words,” I said. “Bring it on.”
EPILOGUE
Roman Steranko hated meeting new clients in person. Meatspace was risky. Nobody could slap handcuffs on his wrists when he was in his element, safe behind a keyboard. Still, ten thousand dollars with no strings attached was a hell of an incentive. He wandered through an empty warehouse in the badlands of East Los Angeles, twirling a business card between his fingertips. Light filtered in from high, dusty windows, casting pale shafts across the bare concrete floor.
Almost bare. At the heart of the room stood a wheeled metal cart, and on the cart, a thick circle of stone about five feet across. The face of the smooth stone bore a graven pentacle, the five-pointed star surrounded by runes that made Roman’s vision blur. A power cable jutted from the side of the rock and ran to a portable generator.
He reached out to touch the stone, then paused as a voice called out from the shadows.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
Roman turned to face her. She was a tall, lean woman in designer clothes, her jet-black hair worn in elegant braids—and the left half of her face concealed behind white porcelain. Scarred, twisted burn tissue peeked out around the edges of her mask.
“It’s some kind of summoning matrix,” she said, her voice casual. “Golden Dawn seal, modified Enochian warding glyphs, and I couldn’t begin to guess what the electrical generator is for.”
“Peachy,” Roman said. “You the client?”
She held up a business card with crisp black type, identical to his own, in a hand concealed by a long white surgical glove.
“Afraid not. I’m Dr. Victoria Carnes, and I suspect I’m as puzzled as
you are. Charmed to meet you.”
“Roman. But if we’re both—”
The side door opened with a metallic clang. Sunlight streamed in around the silhouette of a new arrival. Tall, broad-shouldered, the woman with dreadlocks filled the doorway with her body—and consumed the entire room with the sudden force of her presence. She strode in like a conqueror, her turquoise eyes glowing in the shadows as the door swung shut at her back. She held up a business card.
“Which one of you invited me?” asked Althea Temple-Sinclair.
Roman and Victoria showed her their own cards in response.
“I’m Dr. Carnes,” the masked woman said, “and this is Roman. We were just comparing our befuddlement. I thought we might be competing for the same job, but something tells me the three of us don’t share the same skill sets.”
Roman half smiled, pointing at her and then himself. “Doctorate, doctorate . . . well, an education—that’s something two of us have in common.”
Althea loomed over him. Roman’s smile vanished. She leaned in close, and he swallowed, hard.
“Now why would you assume I’m not educated?” she asked, her voice deadly cool. “Is it because I’m big or because I’m black? Please, elucidate. Satisfy my intellectual curiosity.”
“I—I didn’t mean anything by it.” He took a shuffling step back. “Just making conversation.”
“Stick to what you’re good at.”
The generator turned itself on. It kicked to life, crackling, the cables beginning to hum. The ritual stone made a sound like a movie projector, celluloid slapping the reels as the rock glowed faint azure.
“I would step back,” Victoria said. “Maybe two or three steps.”
Motes of light swirled above the stone, and a new sound came with it—faint, as if heard from the far end of a tunnel. Screaming. A raw shriek of agony that went on and on, without breath or relief.
“Maybe five or six steps,” Victoria said.
“This is not cool,” Roman murmured, edging toward the door.
The sound grew, and the light churned, a cyclone now—then, with a crescendo and a flash, it stopped.
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