by Myke Cole
He caught the Blackhawk out of his peripheral vision, cursed himself, and shook off the thought. The helo was stable, but its rotors pitched drunkenly, the cabin shaking. The pilot was descending, struggling to find a safe spot to land amid the burning wreckage.
Harlequin bulled through the remaining birds, came alongside the cabin. Only one soldier remained. He crouched over the bloody remains of his comrade, his uniform shredded, exposed skin a field of bloody holes. The third soldier was gone. He turned to Harlequin, terror gone, simply exhausted. Harlequin pointed at the DMV. ‘I need every rocket right there, right now!’
The soldier stared blankly at him. ‘Do it!’ Harlequin shouted, and the man’s paralysis abruptly broke. He lurched to his knees, crawling forward toward the cockpit.
Harlequin kicked off and raced toward Downer. ‘Move! Move!’
She looked up, saw his waving arm. The elemental shot skyward, taking her with it just as the rocket contrails streaked below him. Harlequin followed her up as explosion after explosion sounded beneath him.
He looked down in time to see the façade of the DMV collapse, the apartments above crumbling down around it, filling the street with rubble.
The Terramancer’s current spiked, winked out.
The animal tide dispersed as quickly as it had come, receding like breakers from a rock, leaving the skeletons of Harlequin’s people exposed to the sun, stripped nearly clean of flesh. The birds drifted apart with a final screech of confusion, a cloud dispersed by a strong breeze.
The Blackhawk touched down on a clear patch, killed the engines, let the rotors begin to spin down as the remaining crew abandoned it, fleeing the approaching fire.
Suddenly, all was silent save the gentle crackling of flames. Harlequin let the summoned wind take his weight, drifted for a moment, closing his eyes and giving in to fatigue. But only for a moment. Screams from the park called him back to reality. He opened his eyes, turned to Downer.
‘Thank . . .’
She cut him off with a wave, cupping one hand over the commlink in her ear. He felt her current focus, and the elemental around her began heading back north. ‘No time,’ she said. ‘Barricade One is getting hit hard.’
‘Of course,’ he said, but she was already gone.
More screams. He shook his head and dove back into the park’s perimeter. Drake lay against one of the T-walls, cradling a shoulder he must have broken when Harlequin blew him clear of the exploding truck. ‘You okay?’
Drake looked up at him, tears streaming down his face. ‘I’m sorry, sir.’
Harlequin crouched, the dying flames warming one side of his body. ‘What the hell are you sorry for?’
‘I couldn’t do it . . .’ Drake said. ‘I tried, I really did. But I couldn’t . . .’ He sobbed.
‘The Whispering? Hell, Novice, that was a long shot. Nobody could have expected that of you.’
‘I couldn’t save them . . .’
‘Beamer? Brezni . . . the other guy?’
Drake nodded, pointed. A few yards away, two corpses lay facedown. The bodies were so badly mauled that they could have been anyone. Harlequin stood, swallowed, tried to think of something to say. A better leader would comfort, inspire.
All he could see were the faces of those eight Marines. As deep as he dug, all he could find was hollow exhaustion. ‘You just sit tight,’ he said. ‘I’ll get a medic for you.’
Drake nodded, lowering his head between his knees, shoulders wracked with sobbing.
I know exactly how he feels. This will either make him or break him. He looked over his shoulder as he walked away. And we won’t know which for a while.
He made for Castle Clinton, taking in the devastation. Corpses littered the ground, ragged patches ripped from them, clothing flapping open, showing excavations in flesh. Others were burned. The motor pool was destroyed, the vehicles still burning, piled atop the corpses of the refugees who’d sheltered close by.
Cormack leaned against one of the bulletproof barriers outside the entrance. A medic was taping a bandage in place, covering his left eye. His uniform was tattered, his exposed arm covered in scratches.
He came to attention and saluted. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘we held.’ Harlequin returned the salute, awed by the man’s stoicism. ‘Outstanding, Captain. I never doubted you would.’
Cormack seemed smaller as he dropped his arm, a tired man standing on a charnel-house floor.
‘Your eye . . .’ Harlequin began.
‘Birds got it. Don’t worry, sir. Not my dominant one.’
Harlequin smiled at that. ‘What’s the SITREP?’
‘We’ll try to get a body count, sir. I’m getting the breach in the perimeter sealed right now. Should take me a few minutes to get a crew together to put a replacement T-wall in place. Until then, I’ve detailed troops to keep it under guard.’
‘How bad is it?’
‘Bad, sir. We lost a lot of people, and we didn’t have many to begin with. I’d say . . . maybe forty percent? That’s just a rough guess.’
Harlequin blinked. Half a battalion to hold a postage-stamp piece of ground at the ass end of a war zone. ‘Where’s Colonel Hewitt? We need to get more people here . . .’
But Cormack was already shaking his head. ‘I’m sorry, sir. We climbed on top of the barriers to get away from the rats. The birds came at us. I lost my eye hanging on. He . . . he fell off.’
Cormack gestured to a boot sticking out from behind the opposite barrier. The tip had been chewed down to the steel toe. The top ended at a shiny white stretch of bone. Only scraps of meat remained to show what had once been a leg.
‘Jesus.’
‘It’s not pretty, sir. I know you two didn’t get along, but . . .’
‘We’d just worked it out,’ Harlequin said. ‘We were . . .’
There was nothing more to be said. ‘You’ve got a burial detail together?’
Cormack nodded. ‘I’ll see what I can muster from Dix, and I’ll get in touch with Hewitt’s XO at Hamilton. We’re going to need the command handoff done as quickly as possible to get supplies flowing again.’
Harlequin covered his eyes with his hand. ‘Christ. They caught me flat-footed. I never thought they’d come at us that way. Why the hell didn’t I think of that? So damned obvious.’
‘What difference would it have made, sir? How could you prep defenses against a hojillion rats and birds?’
Harlequin wracked his brain, but fatigue overpowered thought.
Cormack touched his earbud, looked up. ‘Gatanas is on the line. Sorry, sir. He wants to know what happened.’
‘I’ll talk to him.’
‘Roger that,’ Cormack said, began limping away from the barriers toward the ruin of the motor pool. ‘I’ve got things locked down out here. We’ll get the perimeter secured. Restore order. You focus on figuring out how to win this.’
Without more arcane support, there is no winning this.
Harlequin walked into Castle Clinton, doing his best to shut out the cries of the wounded who’d been dragged inside, tended to by soldiers using what scraps of medical training they’d received in boot camp. A single trained medic moved among them, pointing, instructing, barking orders.
Harlequin slumped in the metal folding chair before the VTC monitor. Gatanas’s eyes widened. ‘What the hell happened?’
‘Whispering, sir. We just scraped by.’
‘A pack of animals?’
Harlequin was too tired to rouse anger. ‘A rather large pack, sir. Not sure what the exact casualty count is, but it’d be optimistic to call us at half strength.’
‘Can you hold?’
‘We can damn well try, sir. I need more Sorcerers, I need more soldiers. I need General Bookbinder.’
‘It’s all inbound, Lieutenant
Colonel. You just need to hang on.’
Harlequin didn’t even bother trying to keep the incredulity off his face. ‘And the Québécois? Their famed Loup-Garous?’
Gatanas sighed. ‘You haven’t seen the news.’
‘We don’t exactly have a lot of time for TV lately, sir. I’m afraid my intel section’s a little light.’
Gatanas nodded. Leaned forward, tapped away at his keyboard. A small cutaway appeared in the lower-left-hand corner of Harlequin’s screen.
A fat man with thick jowls and thinning hair stood behind a podium, purple-faced. He hammered the faux-wood surface with one meaty finger, his string tie flying. SENATOR DONALD LOVEWELL, the caption read, KENTUCKY.
‘. . . and now we are to be delivered by permitting foreign troops on American soil. And not just any body of foreign troops, no! Probes. We are to utterly ignore the tenets of the McGauer-Linden Act and make common cause with a nation whose own political status is a matter of some debate. We are to welcome the devil himself into our financial center? It is time to ask ourselves, are we a nation of laws? Will the president simply flout the rules made by the elected representatives of the people simply because he finds it expedient? As I am a servant of God almighty, I will not lie down for this. The people of Kentucky elected me to lead! And that means . . .’
‘Shut it off, sir. I get the point.’
Gatanas tapped a key and the screen inset disappeared.
‘I assume this is all over the Internet?’
‘It’s gone viral. I think that’s the term they use. Lovewell’s getting a lot of support from a wide cross section of the population.’
‘Not from New Yorkers, I suspect.’
‘Kind of hard to poll them, just now.’
‘Any reaction from the Québécois?’
‘They’re citing . . . logistical concerns. They still say they’re coming, but they fear they may be delayed.’
‘They’re not coming.’
‘I wouldn’t g . . .’
‘Sir, please. I just lost half my unit. Is help inbound or isn’t it?’
Gatanas was silent. Harlequin sighed and stood.
‘There may be . . . significant delays in your relief. The Mescalero evolution is becoming . . . complicated.’
‘Understood, sir. Harlequin out.’
‘Now wait just a . . .’
Harlequin broke the connection and walked back outside, pausing to grab a bottle of water and a granola bar from the dwindling supply in stacked cardboard boxes along the entryway.
Cormack was deep in conversation with another soldier. Over his shoulder, Harlequin could see a forklift moving another T-wall into place. Drake had stood, was running his hands over the seams and cracks in the concrete, his magic making the stone run fluid until it re-formed smooth and hard. That was good. Work was always good in the wake of a tragedy.
Harlequin was amazed by the resilience around him. Up to their ankles in gore, his people put their backs into their work, reconstituting the camp as if nothing had happened. They patched cracks, tended the wounded, passed out bottled water, MREs, and ammunition. They secured gaps in the perimeter and established new chains of command from the old ones holed by the deaths of their NCOs.
They worked as if nothing had happened.
But something had happened. And that something had left Harlequin’s tiny force decimated.
There weren’t enough of them. Not by a long shot.
And help wasn’t coming.
Interlude Six
Our Little Secret
Mexico’s attitude toward Latency is a study in conflict. It is a deeply religious, Catholic country, but also a country in love with mysticism and superstitious ritual. The Conquistadores were never able to fully eradicate the cultural roots that hearken back to shamanistic religion, and Mexican Catholicism is pregnant with iconography and pageantry not found to the north. Publicly, their attitude toward magic is one that will satisfy their northern neighbor. But privately, many Mexicans embrace their brujeria, which they feel is a gift from God himself.
– Professor Osvaldo H. Soto
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Six Years Earlier
Morelli Lopez stared into the middle distance. Her scorched dress had been replaced by a pair of ill-fitting cargo pants and a T-shirt that hung to her knees. Her long, tangled, black hair was streaked with gray. Her whole body seemed to droop, the extra weight dragging earthward. Harlequin found it hard to reconcile the demon who’d burned the housing project with the sad, fat, old lady who sat before him. Sergeant Ward and a SOC Suppressor, a bull-necked chief warrant officer called Rampart, stood behind her. The burned portion of Ward’s moustache had been neatly trimmed away, leaving it lopsided.
Crucible knelt before her, tapping a clipboard. ‘We just need your signature, ma’am. Then we can get you out of here.’
She stared over his shoulder, her mouth slightly open, saliva bubbling at the corners. ‘Ma’am?’ Crucible asked again. Ward translated into Spanish.
She twitched, eyes coming into focus, grabbed the clipboard. ‘I speak English,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to do anything bad. I had the devil take me.’
Crucible looked up at Harlequin, who in turn looked to Ward. Ward looked surprised. ‘I never heard her speak anything but Spanish before.’
‘The devil,’ she croaked again, dropping the clipboard.
‘I got it,’ Crucible said, retrieving it and pressing it back into her hands, ‘but that doesn’t change the fact that you need to be kept in custody. All we’re promising here is more comfortable accommodations and a chance at some experimental therapies that may help you . . . get the devil out, let’s say.’
She looked up, eyes suddenly focused. ‘You can get the devil out?’
‘Sure,’ Crucible said, gesturing at the clipboard, ‘in a manner of speaking. Sign it, and we can get started.’
Harlequin stared at the back of Crucible’s head, sickness churning in his stomach. This wasn’t right. He looked at Ward, but the NYPD sergeant simply looked on. He doesn’t have the courage to challenge the SOC.
‘Sir,’ Harlequin said, ‘this isn’t . . . she doesn’t know what she’s doing.’
Her expression went hard at that, jowls quivering. ‘The fuck? I know what I’m doing.’ She shook the clipboard in his direction, brandished the pen at him.
Harlequin ignored her. ‘Sir, we should order a psychological . . .’
But she was already signing, pushing the pen so hard that he could hear the paper ripping beneath it. ‘Know what I’m fucking doing,’ she muttered. Crucible snatched the clipboard out of her hands the moment she was done.
‘Thank you, ma’am,’ he said, then turned to Harlequin. ‘It’s done, Jan.’
‘Sir . . .’
Crucible waved the clipboard in front of him, her signature half off the underline, illegible. ‘Leave it. It’s done. We have authorization, and now we have consent. Let’s do our jobs.’
Harlequin was silent as they escorted her out of the room and into an unmarked van and headed for the Channel building downtown, but the knot in his stomach wouldn’t quit. He repeated Crucible’s words in his head. She’s going to be helping, and the drug might even help her. This is all authorized by command. It’s not my call. I have to follow orders.
But he felt no better as they stepped out of the car and into the building’s spartan lobby, her slippers padding across the reflective marble surface.
Grace and Weiss were there to greet them, along with two brawny security guards in matching gray shirts and cargo pants. Body armor was visible beneath their baggy jackets. Harlequin couldn’t see pistols, but he guessed they were hidden in the smalls of their backs.
‘Hello, Miss Lopez,’ Weiss said. ‘Welcome to Channel and thank
you for volunteering.’
‘Huh?’ Morelli asked, craning her head up to take in the building’s atrium, blinking at the sunlight filtering in from the slanted windows. ‘You got plants up there.’ She pointed.
‘Yes.’ Grace glanced at the hanging fronds arranged in the recesses of the ceiling. ‘Do you like them?’
‘Why am I here?’ Morelli asked, suddenly looking frightened.
‘Because we’re going to help you,’ Grace answered. ‘Because you’re Latent.’
‘Latent? Latent! I’m not fucking Latent!’ She tugged experimentally against Ward and Rampart, but they held her fast.
‘You’re Latent’ – she pointed at Harlequin – ‘and you!’ she added, pointing at Crucible. ‘I can feel it.’ She tugged an arm free from Rampart and pointed at him. ‘You, too.’
Rampart smiled. ‘That, I am. You get used to it.’
‘And you.’ She pointed at Grace. ‘You, too.’
Grace smiled nervously, her eyes flicking from Harlequin to Crucible. ‘No,’ she said haltingly. ‘No, I’m not.’
‘You are,’ Morelli said again. ‘You are. You need help.’
The smile fled Grace’s face, and her voice sounded tight as she moved toward the elevators. ‘Come on, let’s take this downstairs.’
Grace swiped a plastic card at an elevator that stood separate from the bank of six, a sheet of black in the stainless-steel surface of the wall. It opened to reveal a car large enough to house a truck. They walked Morelli inside.
‘We’ll take it from here,’ Crucible said to Ward. ‘Many thanks to you and the department for your help with this.’
Ward hesitated, looked to Harlequin. After a moment, he released Morelli’s elbow and stepped back. ‘Sure. So . . . You’ll keep me posted?’
‘To the extent we’re able,’ Crucible said. ‘I’m sure I don’t need to remind you of the nondisclosure agreement you signed when you agreed to work with us, Sergeant. It’s superimportant that you stick to that.’
Ward tensed, still standing as the elevator doors shut, replacing his face with Harlequin’s own, staring back at him from the stainless-steel surface.
