At least they had a dragon. David had only seen Charles outside of his “hacker cave” in visions and using his Sight. The sight of his friend settling down next to cars and helicopters was stunning. His scales were an iridescent dark red and green in the sun, his wings each a hundred feet long before he folded them in against his sides, his eyes glittering, liquid gold as he looked over the crowd of admirers.
“Ah, yes,” he said cheerfully. “I’ve forgotten what it was like to be adored.” There was a crinkle to his eyes and a feline smile on his face. “This has been such an excellent trip.”
He paused.
“I don’t suppose you have a dragon-sized keyboard and monitor anywhere?”
Riley seemed to materialize from nowhere, the Elfin Lord demonstrating the gift for melodrama that seemed a requirement for his rank. David wasn’t sure where he’d acquired the long cape that swirled around him as he crossed the hotel grounds to meet Charles.
“I may have had a chat with the original supplier, yes,” he told the dragon cheerfully. “Greetings, Charles. It’s a pleasure to meet you at last.”
The dragon lowered his head to sniff at the Elfin, then laughed.
“We have never spoken, my lord, and yet I suspect you know me as well as I know you,” he concluded. “Where’s David? I come to honor a debt.”
Kate shoved David gently, but he was already walking forward. He was sure his jeans and white dress shirt paled into casual insignificance next to Lord Riley’s suit and billowing cape, but they both wore swords.
It was all so very medieval.
“I’m here, Charles,” he told the dragon. “You know what’s coming.”
It wasn’t a question. The dragon had his own gifts of foresight.
“Some,” he admitted. “A storm, the likes of which I have never seen.”
“A Herald,” David said quietly. “A child of the Masters, to spawn Armageddon.”
Until the crowd around him hissed in shock, it hadn’t occurred to him that that knowledge hadn’t been spread around yet. He cast an apologetic gaze at Riley but turned back to Charles.
“You said you owe me a debt,” he reminded the dragon. “I am not fool enough to make demands of one of the Great Awakened. How would you see it paid?”
Charles chuckled, the ground seeming to vibrate with the sound.
“You are a smart one, aren’t you?” he said. “As a servant bound by boon, I would fight for you, Commander David White. As a friend, asked to stand by your side?”
He leaned his head forward again, snuffling against David in a very catlike way.
“As a friend, I would be honored to carry the first of the new Battle Seers to war.” The dragon grinned again. “Now, it seems we owe these people an explanation of just what we’ve all signed up for. Lord Riley?”
Riley took a few minutes to walk the gathered crowd through the visions David and Walker had been having, explaining what they knew, what they didn’t know, and what they suspected.
“It appears,” he concluded, “that it is no longer a possibility that we will be called to action: it is a certainty.” He looked around at everyone. “Now, we all accepted this as a possibility, but I understand if the near-certain knowledge that it will fall to us to face the apocalypse has a chilling effect on your enthusiasm.
“Anyone who wants out, speak to your superiors or to myself later. There will be no repercussion, no threats or argument,” he promised. “We’ll pay you out and let you leave.”
No one was stepping forward to bow out, but that was why Riley was offering the quiet out. Like the Elfin Lord, David knew that very few would chicken out in front of everyone. Some would have real fears or real reasons to back out, however, and making sure they knew they could was the responsibility of their leaders.
“Most of you have received your assignments, but we’ve discussed how this is going to work,” he continued. “Like ONSET before us, Black Echelon will exist to support the spearpoint: the five Echelon Teams who will take the fight to the Herald and his Incursion.
“If you’re part of those teams, you know,” Riley said with a chuckle. “But with the exception of Echelon One and Echelon Two, you don’t know who your team leaders are.
“Echelon One is my team, our reserve and command element,” he noted. “Believe me, we’re probably going to be just as much in the thick of things as anyone else. We’re not sure just what can kill the Herald, but an elf-blade is high on the list of possibilities—and between us, Echelon One has three.
“Echelon Two is our night-strike team under Joseph Reginald of the Familias Reginald,” he continued. “Our vampire Mages and Elders make up Reginald’s team, and some of his people have tested ways for them to operate in daylight. If we need them to back up the other four teams, they’ll be able to, but they’ll be most efficient at night.
“Echelon Three will be commanded by one of our living legends,” Riley commented, gesturing for Michael O’Brien to come forward. “You all know of Commander O’Brien, at least. Once Brigadier of the HRT and commander of the counter-forces at the Montana Incursion. He’s the only one of us who’s seen the kind of fight that’s coming firsthand. We’re lucky to have him.”
Michael joined David and Riley, gesturing for Mason to follow him as he did. The blonde Mage strode out as well and David took her hand, squeezing her fingers gently both in reassurance and to draw reassurance from her ever-unflappable self-confidence.
“Echelon Four will be our magical support squad under Mage Kate Mason, formerly of ONSET,” the Elfin Lord pointed out. “Most of our high-power Mages will work with Commander Mason, making sure we all live long enough to do our jobs.”
David inhaled steadily, looking out over the crowd and wondering just who was going to be assigned to him.
“Echelon Five will be our direct strike team,” Riley concluded. “Once we locate the Herald, Echelon Five will be sent after him with maximum prejudice. My own Second, Brianna Young, will be second-in-command of this team—under another man we are all familiar with. A Seer. A demonslayer. A troll-slayer, seen on national television!”
David managed not to visibly cringe at that as Riley gestured to him.
“Commander David White will lead the attack on the Herald,” he concluded. “We may not be able to stop the bastard arriving, but we will make damn sure his stay on Earth is a short one!”
27
Young led David into a meeting room on the second floor of the hotel a few hours later to actually get introduced to his team. The eleven other members beyond him and the Elfin Mage were roughly evenly split between men and women—including Young and excluding him, it was an exactly even split.
If you counted Ix as a male, anyway. The demon was lazily sprawled in the biggest chair, grinning at the fellow members of the team who were mostly managing to not give him too obvious of a berth.
Thankfully, Ix was clearly more amused than offended. He’d wormed his way into ONSET’s good graces once. He clearly expected to have to do the same with Black Echelon.
“All right, folks,” Young said loudly as she took a seat, gesturing David to the head of the table. “We all know who the boss is, but the boss only knows me and Ixiltanequestelanaerith.”
She actually pronounced it right. Even David hadn’t managed that the first dozen times he’d tried.
“So, the floor is yours, Commander White,” she told him with a grin.
He shoved the chair at the head of the table aside with his foot and leaned on the table itself, surveying his team without giving up the slight height advantage he had over their sitting forms.
“You all know who I am,” he echoed Young. “Some of you have even heard the term Battle Seer.”
That got a few confused looks—and a complete cessation of lazy amusement from Ix. The demon was suddenly bolt upright and paying attention.
“So far as we know, I am the only Battle Seer currently on the planet,” he told them. “I can see the future, both in terms of lo
nger-term visions and in terms of short-term combat prescience. I am faster than most of you and as strong as most of you.
“And if you’re wondering why I’m in charge, it’s because I’ve led tactical teams, both supernatural and mundane, for years now. And it’s because of this.”
He drew Memoria and laid it on the table in front of him.
“Memoria was forged from the souls of seven brave supernaturals by the demon lord Ekhmez before I banished him,” he told them quietly. “Those souls demanded that I wield them in the defense of humanity. If Black Echelon has a weapon we know can kill the Herald, it is Memoria. And if there is a set of hands Riley and others have faith can wield it to kill the Herald, it is apparently mine.”
He let that sink in. It sounded egotistical to him, but it was also true.
Which was terrifying to him.
“Now, if this were an ONSET team, I’d have detailed files on all of you,” he continued. “I’d know your names, your backgrounds, your powers. Black Echelon is…not so formalized. All I know about most of you is that Riley and Young thought you belonged on a handpicked team intended to go up against the most powerful entity to walk the Earth in living memory.
“So. Fill me in, people.” He gestured to his left at a tiny red-headed woman who barely came up to his already-low shoulder.
“Teena Kendall,” she introduced herself, her voice soft but clearly pitched. “Empowered. Speed, strength, durability, I’ve got the full set. I don’t heal like you, but I’m stronger and just as fast—and even silver bullets tend to bounce off. If they hit me,” she concluded with a wicked grin.
The next woman was a dark-haired older Indian, with a golden shawl wrapped over her hair and a faded bindi tattooed on the center of her forehead. She bowed her head silently for a moment before speaking.
“I am Deepika Joshi,” she said quietly. “I am a banshee. My voice is a tool and a weapon I have spent years mastering. I can strike down foes and sustain allies alike.” She nodded firmly and leaned back, having said her piece.
The man sitting next to her was a lanky blond youth, who might have been all of twenty-two years old. He smiled brightly.
“I’m Landon Tatton,” he said in a broad Texas drawl. “They call me a quicksilver sharpshooter. Move like lightning, kill like it too.” He tapped a silver oak leaf on his color. “Don’t need silver, either. Anything I touch is deadly to anyone it hits.”
The next man was a familiar-looking dark-eyed Asian youth. It took David a moment to place the family resemblance, though the Elfin oak leaf he shared with Tatton helped.
“Ezra Klein,” the youth introduced himself. “Elfin Battle Mage. You met my older brother. He taught me.”
“Your brother was a brave man,” David told him. “He helped end a war.”
“I know. I miss him.”
David nodded at the young man, hopefully reassuringly. Jun Klein had died in the battle on the Mountain, trying to hold back the vampires determined to prevent Omicron holding their crèche. He’d died a hero…but dead heroes made for poor family members.
Sitting with Klein, a little closer than would be acceptable in a more formal organization, was a pale redheaded man of roughly the same age, also wearing the Elfin oak leaf. The pair of young men weren’t visibly holding hands, but their body language was such that David wouldn’t have been surprised to realize they were doing so under the table.
“Clem Knight,” he introduced himself. “Also an Elfin Battle Mage. Also trained by Jun Klein,” he noted.
Across the table from the Battle Mage couple were three nearly identical women with alabaster skin and raven hair. They shared glances as the introductions made it around to them, and then the center one shrugged and smiled.
“I am Amelia Belmont. These are my sisters, Lisette and Caroline,” she noted, gesturing at the other two women. “We are…” She paused to consider.
“Many things,” Lisette Belmont continued for her after a moment. “We are individuals, but we share our thoughts and senses.”
“And those senses are far greater than regular humans,” Caroline Belmont concluded. “We do not see into the future as a Seer would, but our senses in the moment are superior to even yours.”
“We are also not entirely here,” Amelia explained. “We can, at will, phase into and out of reality, taking anything we are holding with us.”
“Walls. Security. Armor. These are nothing to us,” Caroline said with a grin. “It is a more powerful gift than you might presume.”
“We are also faster and stronger than mortals,” Lisette noted. “And we have spent years learning to protect ourselves from danger. We will watch everyone’s backs.”
Sharing each other’s eyes would make that easier, he supposed as he nodded to them. Sitting next to the triplets, looming in a somewhat protective manner over them, was one of the largest black men David had ever met. The sheer size of the shaven-headed man put everyone David had ever met, including Michael O’Brien, to shame.
“I am Joe Carver,” he introduced himself. “I am…” He paused. Searching for words, apparently. “A werelion, I think, is the simplest description? That is all.”
“All,” the man said, after stating he was one of the most powerful types of animal shapeshifters, most likely only weaker than Michael O’Brien due to age.
The much more diminutive, distinctly Inuit man sitting next to Carver chuckled.
“I am Nukilik,” he said briskly. “I am polar bear skin-changer.”
“So I know which pair to hide anyone who’s looking fragile behind,” David murmured as he studied the two shifters. They were an interesting contrast, the big black man and the tiny Inuit, though both transformed into large, powerful creatures.
The last member of the team was probably a good candidate for “looking fragile,” and smiled at David’s comment as the team’s attention turned to him.
He was a gaunt man of about six feet tall, almost frail with how skinny he was, with a shaved head and mixed ethnic features that made his ancestry hard to pin down.
“Dr. Karl Wong,” he introduced himself in a cheerful voice. “Healer. Surgeon. Sorcerer.” He gestured at the two Elfin Battle Mages. “I can’t match those two for sheer magical power, but I have a medical background and they don’t. While some members of the team can patch themselves up, I’m the best chance the rest of you have of being put back together.”
He smiled wryly.
“Which you can all regard as an incentive to keep me in one piece, right?”
With the introductions complete, David took a moment to study his team. They seemed like good people and they definitely had the quotient of physical and magical power to serve the purpose, but he only knew two of them at all—and he didn’t know Young well.
“Our last team member doesn’t fit in this room,” he finally told them. “Charles will be joining us as transport and close air support.”
“The dragon?” Knight asked carefully. “That’s… Damn.”
“Charles and I go back a long way,” David said. “He’s currently sorting out his quarters, but once we start doing training exercises, he’ll join us.”
“What quarters do you give a fifty-foot dragon?” Ix asked, the demon’s voice curious. “I mean, it’s Charles, he’s happy with an Internet connection…but where do you put him?”
“One of the shipping docks is the plan, as I understand it,” David replied. “The bed Riley acquired isn’t big enough now, so I suspect we’re scrabbling together mattresses for him as I speak, but the computer and monitors should work just fine.”
“What kind of training do you have in mind?” Carver asked. “I did not see an obstacle course here anywhere.”
“We don’t have any of the facilities I’m used to,” David admitted, “but we don’t know each other. Two of us were ONSET and half of us are Elfin, but we need to be a team.
“I have Seen what is coming, and I have no intention of meeting it without being ready,” he assur
ed them. “This is going to be Hell. Literally Hell on Earth. No matter how powerful we are, how good we are…some of us won’t come back when Black Echelon goes into action.”
He let that sink in.
“We are the direct-action team,” he continued. “It will fall to us to find and assault the Herald himself. We can expect that he will have all of the known powers of higher-court demons—except more powerful.
“We know he will be guarded by human Mages, mind-wiped soldiers, and a dragon. The Mages and the cultists around him will have chosen to be there. The people whose minds he’s destroyed…” David shivered. “We don’t know if they can be healed, but we do know they’ll be shooting at us.
“Our choices in that circumstance suck. We will do what is necessary to survive.”
“What about the dragon?” Knight asked, the battle Mage looking…uncomfortable at the thought.
“Her name is Serena,” David told them. “And she will mostly fall to Charles, I hope. Certainly, none of us want to try and fight her head on. Combined, we almost certainly can take her—but I would rather not fight both a dragon and the Herald.”
“How do we even know this much about the Herald?” Klein said quietly. “For a being that doesn’t exist yet, we seem quite certain about its nature.”
“We encountered one attempt to bring him into this world already,” David replied. “ONSET put a stop to that without even knowing what we were facing. As for the rest…” He shrugged. “It is possible that the visions that I had were inaccurate. We are looking for the Mage we know is involved in the summoning. We might find him and short-stop this whole mess.
“But.” David held up a hand. “We cannot plan to get lucky. Our enemies are intending to unleash the apocalypse. We can hope we stop it before it happens, but we must be able to contain it and fight it if it does.
“After all, if we train for the end of the world and the world doesn’t end, well…I can live with Black Echelon having been an insurance policy after all.”
Stay of Execution Page 16
