by Weston Ochse
When they got closer, he started toward them. He grinned but kept his head down. The closer he got to them, the more full the feeling was in his chest. They dropped their bags and, as one, embraced him. He felt the dam burst and he began to sob. They surrounded him, protecting him, keeping the world at bay, so he could mourn in the comfort of his company of friends.
Ten minutes later, after introductions, Holmes had Genie bring out Van Dyke. The man’s wrists and ankles had been zip-tied, but as Van Dyke stood him on the tarmac Genie cut the zip ties on his ankles.
Van Dyke stretched his legs, limping slightly from a bandaged gunshot wound. As disheveled as he was, he carried himself with a certain elegance. With his chin up and his eyes staring straight, he let Genie march him into the hangar. He sat in a chair that had been set up in front of the others. Genie zip-tied his feet to the chair’s front legs, then stood and backed away. YaYa handed him an HK416. He took it and held it ready.
Holmes and Ian had the floor. They bade everyone have a seat.
Sassy refused. Instead, she pointed at Van Dyke. “Do you even know what you have here?”
Walker watched as Holmes appraised her. The SEAL team leader knew she was a witch. Walker had relayed every aspect of their interactions. That said, he was curious how Holmes would deal with her.
“We’re hoping you can help with that, Ms. Sassy.”
Walker grinned, knowing it was an intentional error. Holmes, however, stood straight-faced.
“Sassy is my first name.”
“Of course it is. What was your question, ma’am?”
She dropped her arm and gave Holmes a look. Then she turned and approached Van Dyke, her high heels clipping against the concrete floor. She began to circle him, her arms crossed, her face with an air of appraisal. She leaned in and sniffed, then made a face. She backed away and moved her fingers and hands over her face and chest, as if she were casting a spell. When she was done, she looked at Holmes.
“You say he was in America?”
Holmes nodded.
“Was he being kept prisoner by any chance?”
“How’d you know?” Laws stepped forward carrying a box, which he sat on one of the tables at the front of the room.
“Not that I’ve ever seen one before, but they’d be able to escape given a chance.” She concentrated on Van Dyke, who’d been watching her the entire time, his face shifting back and forth between interest and fear. “You have a tattoo?”
Van Dyke nodded and looked pointedly to his left breast.
She waved a hand at the area. “Can someone please remove his shirt?”
Laws came over and ripped the buttons free of the shirt, revealing three interconnected crescent moons.
The witch hissed. She held her hand out toward the tattoo and it glowed gold. Then she spun. “How in the seven bloody hells did someone get a Tuatha Dé Dannan inside this man?”
Laws walked over to Yank, who pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and passed it over.
“I told you she’d know,” Laws said.
Yank looked anything but pleased.
Sassy suddenly looked concerned. “You knew what it was and you brought it here?”
“Here’s our thinking.” Holmes moved to the front of the room and opened the box. He was the only one in position to see inside it. He glanced in, then turned to Sassy Moore. “Hubert Van Dyke is on the board of the Red Grove. A money trail can be traced from the group of druids who usually perform the Winter Solstice ceremony at Stonehenge to the Red Grove. Mr. Van Dyke also sits on the board of the Bohemian Grove, which has long been rumored to be a place where rich men go to get even richer. When we went to see him, we found in his employ a golem, which was not only acting as his housekeeper but was also guarding him.”
Holmes tipped the box so the golem’s head rolled out.
Preeti screamed as the face of the woman blinked and snarled.
“Hubert, who seems to be possessed by a Tuatha Dé Dannan, and the undead head of the golem seem to be our only clues. We felt it was important to bring them along so that experts might be able to examine them.” He turned to look around the room. “You, Ms. Moore, seem to be our only expert.”
Her eyes were fixed on the head. “You can call me Sassy.”
Holmes raised an eyebrow. “Indeed.”
She stepped over to the table and picked up a pen. Then she poked the head. It blinked and looked at her. “You going to tell me who made you?”
“Fuck off,” said the head.
Sassy grinned. “This is going to be fun.” She pointed at Van Dyke. “That, on the other hand, is going to get us in a load of trouble. I wished you had told me you were bringing one of the Sidhe here. I would have warded the place even more. Everything supernatural, including the Wild Hunt, knows that a Sidhe is out in the open. She will draw them to us.” She poked the head in the eye with the pen and sighed. “So now I’m going to have to spend the day warding the entire hangar.” She put her hands on her hips and glanced around. “And it’s a bloody big hangar.”
CHAPTER 25
CHICKSANDS RAF, ENGLAND. AFTERNOON.
As it turned out, she didn’t need to ward the entire hangar. Just the room they were using as Van Dyke’s cell and a pentacle she placed in a cleared space at the front of the room, beside the worktables that had been set up for her use. The golem head sat in a smaller pentacle surrounded by salt. It looked none too happy but couldn’t do anything about it.
The SEALs integrated themselves into Section 9 and were data mining. One set was to determine all the known mounds in England, trying to create an overlay they could use to predict the Wild Hunt’s next move. They were also still searching for CCTV disturbances. Finally, Laws was conducting an Internet search for any and all artifacts linked to the Tuatha Dé Dannan.
Walker had just come from the bathroom when YaYa approached him.
“Walk, can I speak with you?”
“You don’t have to ask, YaYa.”
The Arab-American smiled weakly. “Let’s get some air.”
Walker glanced at the others who were hard at work, then at YaYa. Something was bothering the man. Even if they didn’t have the time, Walker didn’t think they could afford not to have the time. The last thing they needed was for one of them to lose concentration in the middle of the action.
He and YaYa exited the hangar together. They left the flight line and found a path that led through a manicured lawn to a five-story chain-link fence. Like military men the world around, they soon found themselves in step with each other.
Finally it was YaYa who spoke. “Do you ever get used to it?”
Walker smiled easily. “Not sure I know what you mean?”
“That supernatural, early-warning radar you have.”
Walker flashed back to when he was a child, locked in a closet and possessed by the Malaysian grave demon. “It comes with a price.”
“Don’t I know it!”
Walker stopped and turned to YaYa. “Are you kidding?”
“I wish.” He related to Walker what happened when they went to get Van Dyke. “It froze me. It was as if the thing inside of Van Dyke reached inside me and turned off a switch.”
Walker shook his head. “It’s not like that. I know what you think you felt, but that isn’t it.”
“Are you sure?”
They resumed walking. “Absolutely. This is just new to you, man. For a long time it was new to me because I refused to deal with it. But you have the opportunity to hone it. To refine it and use it as a tool.”
“You don’t get it, Walker. I don’t want any part of it. Every time it happens I remember who I was and how that demon got into me and wouldn’t come out.” He held up his left arm. “I cut off my own arm just to try and kill it. To have even a shadow of a memory come back is … I just don’t want it.”
“I’m with you. But there’s no going back. It happened. You can either deal with it or crawl under your covers, suck your thumb, and never come out.” He
put a hand on YaYa’s shoulder. “But then you knew that, didn’t you?”
He sighed. “I guess I just needed to talk about it.”
The path ended at the chain-link fence. On the other side was an antenna farm—hundreds of different antennae, all shapes and sizes, as if they’d grown from the loamy earth. The two men stared for a moment; then Walker turned to YaYa.
“I have an idea.” He grinned as he took off running back to the hangar. When YaYa caught up with Walker, he added, “If it works, we might be able to get to the Red Grove faster than we thought.”
They ran the rest of the way back. When Walker entered the hangar he was ready to tell Laws and Holmes his idea, but he never got the chance. Everyone’s eyes were focused on the multiple flatscreens they’d affixed to one wall. Each screen showed a different variation of the same story.
A refugee encampment in Blackpool was overrun by monsters. The CCTV cameras failed to capture any of them, but someone uploaded some camera shots containing some stunning, unforgettable images.
YaYa pointed to an image. “What are those?”
“Hounds from the Wild Hunt. Created from the souls of those who have been culled, molded into something unstoppable, something that makes the bogeyman look like the Easter bunny.”
A Frankenstein combination of man and beast, the beasts had human arms for their front legs, and the back legs of a wolf. Their faces were an amalgam, but the eyes that were set in a simian face were unmistakably human.
One screen displayed shots of a man being torn apart, a great hound chewing through his head as it stared into the camera.
On another, a set of hounds were disemboweling a downed man.
Another, a hound was dragging a child away by its neck.
And then yet another showed a side shot of a hound, its neck craning to look at the camera lens, stare right into it. The full shot provided exquisite detail of the mythological beast.
Walker choked back a sob. “Jen.”
It was in the eyes. She’d always had a sadness about her. She’d called it her old melancholy. He saw it there in the eyes. The human eyes. The eyes of his dead fiancée.
CHAPTER 26
CHICKSANDS RAF, ENGLAND. AFTERNOON.
Phones began ringing. Not just those belonging to Section 9 but also those carried by Triple Six. Everyone began shouting into a telephone. Pandemonium existed for twenty seconds; then they all hung up at roughly the same time.
Even as Ian addressed the group, the TV screens went blank. “That was the Home Office. They’ve declared a national emergency. They’re pulling all the footage and banning further broadcasts of any nature relating to it.”
“They can do that?” Yank asked.
Ian gestured at the screen, which went blank. “Just did.”
Preeti hung up another phone. “My brother’s been asked to monitor the Internet. He’s been given superuser privileges. If anyone tries to post anything, he’s authorized to remove it.”
“Same thing in the United States.” Holmes pocketed his phone. “The networks were set to run this. Senator Withers got the president to sign an emergency declaration. Last thing they need is to scare the average citizen. Better to think such things are sci-fi TV fodder than know that they really exist.”
“Even my mother called,” Trevor said, holding up his phone. “She was alerting me to the possible dangers of the Wild Hunt.”
Sassy Moore shook her head, a grim, knowing smile on her face. “I mentioned this before. It’s fear. They need it. The Wild Hunt grows more powerful because of it. Back before television, before cell phones, before the Internet, mothers told their children stories which scared them. It’s this sort of fear they’re trying to cultivate.”
“They’re not going to like that we’re blocking this, then,” Laws said.
“Shit’s fucking scary.” Yank shook his head. “Television or no television, people are going to be talking about it. That it’s no longer available for viewing is going to give it more power. Trust me. I’ve lived this sort of thing in Los Angeles. Rumor and gossip can be hells more powerful than fact.”
“Even if it’s not on British or American television, it’s going to come out,” YaYa said. “Something like this is too big to keep secret.”
“Yeah, but when it comes out, it can be discredited,” Laws said. “Look at UFOs. It’s to the point where national media covers strange-looking lights in the sky and no one gives it a second thought.”
Trevor stepped forward. “Wait a minute. Are you admitting that UFOs are real? That America is covering it up?”
Laws laughed. “See what I mean? The idea is already there even if I don’t say anything.” He turned to Sassy. “What we need is a way to get the Red Grove to come to us. If we could find them, it would go a long way to helping us stop the Hunt.”
Walker cleared his throat. “I think I have an idea.”
All eyes turned to him. Preeti saw the naked emotion on his face and made to move toward him, but Trevor held on to her and shook his head.
“Listen, the faster we can get this over, the faster I can make those bastards pay.” A lone tear rolled down his cheek. “Not just for Jen, but for all these others.”
“That’s what we want too, son.” Holmes stood motionless, but his words had a calming effect. “What’s your idea?”
Walker closed his eyes and remembered how he liked to watch her—the tilt of her head, the pursing of the lips. “It came to me when YaYa and I were outside. There’s an antenna farm about a kilometer from here.”
“It’s an old antenna farm,” Ian said. “Hasn’t been used for years, but no one wants to take it down.”
Walker opened his eyes and smiled grimly. “It’s not the place; it’s the idea. What if we lay a trap? After all, we do have the bait.”
Laws stroked his chin. “It would have to be somewhere defensible.”
“More than defensible. It would need to be a place where the Hunt couldn’t go.”
Sassy shook her head. “They can go anywhere.”
YaYa looked at her. “Not inside.”
She laughed. “They ripped my house down around me.”
“Then something a little more permanent,” Walker said.
“What about the National History Museum?” Sassy offered.
Laws snapped his fingers. “I love it.”
Yank narrowed his eyes. “The Smithsonian?”
“Did your mother drop you as a child? Not the Smithsonian. That’s in America. We’re in England, McFly.” Laws shook his head but kept his ever-present smile plastered on his mug. He turned to Ian. “I saw a special about the basement storage rooms at your National History Museum and how they’re discovering things that were right under their nose.”
“Spinops,” Preeti said. “They discovered a new species of dinosaur they’d had for a hundred years.”
“That’s it. The museum is perfect. It’s a public place, built like a castle, and the logical place for us to store something like a golem head.”
Holmes stared at Sassy. “Think they’d go for it?”
“Who they? The Grove or the Hunt?” Walker asked.
Holmes shrugged. “Does it matter?”
The witch nodded slowly. “At the very least, it would get their attention. If I were them, I’d be concerned that their Sidhe has returned to England. It’s much more powerful here. If loosed, it might just make it a point to do something to the Red Grove for keeping it away for so long.”
“Perhaps we can use the Sidhe, then,” Ian said.
Holmes nodded. “Perhaps. But for now, we’re going to see if we can’t get one of the grove members to pop their heads up so we can play Whac-A-Mole. Everyone get their gear ready. Ian and I are going to plan this.”
The teams began to move, but Preeti made them pause. “One thing that’s been bothering me.” Everyone stopped to stare at her and she blushed. She pressed a few keys to show the pictures from Blackpool. “These aren’t digital. They’re scans. See t
hese edges?” She pointed to a white border around the images that was larger at the bottom than at the top. “These have to be Polaroids. Who uses Polaroids anymore?”
Laws and Holmes stared at each other. “No one,” they said simultaneously.
“So if no one uses them, then how is it that someone was using one at the scene of the last attack?” Preeti shrugged. “An attack that disrupted all the electronic image-capturing devices. Just asking.”
Ian put a hand on her shoulder. “Smart girl. You caught what everyone else missed. It could be nothing; then again she could have been put there to get pictures.”
Laws nodded slowly. “CCTV broadcasts were disrupted, but not still photography. Then again, no one really uses still photography anymore. It’s all digital. From our cell phones to top-of-the-line Nikons. That’s something to remember.”
“So if she was placed there, then she must be a part of the Red Grove.” Yank grinned as he looked at Laws. “Not bad for Marty McFly.”
Holmes held out his hand. “Everyone slow your roll. We’re piling on supposition and calling it fact because it’s so thick. Let’s work on the hypothesis that this was just a girl with a Polaroid camera until we can prove it.”
“You’re right, of course,” Ian said. “Preeti, see what you can come up with. She had to have signed a release or something for the pictures to be put online.”
CHAPTER 27
CHICKSANDS RAF, ENGLAND. NIGHT.
Preeti knew what she was going to do even before she sat down at her workstation. She’d waited until the team left, assisting them where she could. She provided the SEALs with digital schematics of the museum and basement. Their integrated electronics suites were incredible. It was a testament both to how well-funded the American military machine was and to how impoverished Britain’s had become.
They left her alone with only the tall Navy man to keep her company. Of course, he was really there to guard the prisoner, but she’d at least been able to pry a little out of him about his past. The cultural and emotional makeup of military men interested her no end. Before she’d met Trevor, she’d had her own ideas, shared by most of the public, that the people who ended up in the military were those who couldn’t do anything else.
