Reign of Evil - 03

by Weston Ochse

  Patrick wasn’t exactly sure what he was seeing. It looked as if a line of men had their backs against a drop-off and were defending against grayish hound-like creatures while red-robed figures stood in a line behind the beasts.

  “What the hell? Is this some Lord of the Rings shite?” Keith asked. “Which side are we on?”

  Patrick thought that was a good question. Then he saw one of the men in line waving for them and pointing to a flat of land just below them on the stair steps. The LZ was only large enough for a single chopper, but another stair several steps down was large enough for another. He ordered Keith to take the lower one and he took the upper. He was wary of his blades. Although they were five meters away from the edge of the hill, a person would have to be careful when descending to them.

  CHAPTER 50

  CADBURY CASTLE, ENGLAND. A FEW MINUTES EARLIER.

  Laws scrambled up the second to the last step before the plateau of Cadbury Hill. Holmes was to his left with Yank. Walker and YaYa were to his right with Hoover. The witch was behind them carrying her thousand-year-old Viking wand and was madder than a wet cat inside a hornet’s nest.

  Magerts and Ian and their men were posted at the road. They were to arrive on command, based on the lay of the land on top of the plateau. There could be nothing. Or there could be a whole mess of beegees just waiting for them to arrive.

  When the men were in line, Laws pulled a peeper cable from his pocket and slid it over the edge of the hill. Nothing but grass. He moved it around but couldn’t see anything. Whether it was the lay of the ground or that nothing was there, he couldn’t see anything, which could be good news or bad.

  A moment from when he was a child flashed into his mind. He’d been waiting for his father to come home, but it had gotten so late his mother had made him go to bed. She’d left the door cracked, so light came in from down the hall where she sat watching Johnny Carson. Little Timmy Laws could barely make out the words, but whenever Carson said something funny the audience would roar. He’d sat on the edge of his bed for an hour, eager to tell his father about the story they’d read in school that day—one about butterflies and dinosaurs and time travel and how the strangest things can affect the universe. Then the Carson show had ended and his mother had turned off the television and she’d put on a Burt Bacharach record. He must have fallen asleep, because he next heard yelling, his mother hurling epithets toward someone. The sound of a shriek was followed by footsteps thundering down the hall. Was it his father come home? Then a creature with the face of a mad ape sprang into his room and beat its chest and howled. Little Timmy Laws had screamed. Pee soaked his Spider-Man pajamas. He held trembling fists out, wishing so hard that his father had been there to protect him. Then suddenly the ape became his father as he removed a prop mask from one of the sets. His father came in close, smelling of whiskey and perfume. He whispered to his son that he was sorry, hugged him, then staggered out of the room. A week later his mother made his father move out, and Laws saw him less and less until it was only major holidays when he’d make an appearance, even though he just lived across town.

  Laws wiped tears from his eyes. He sat down heavily. He didn’t want to fight. He didn’t want to be here. He wanted nothing more than to be nine again, before his father had an affair with the costumer, before his mother kicked his father out, before he realized that a scary plastic ape mask could change the life of a small child as efficiently as a butterfly crushed under the foot of a time traveler.

  He glanced over and saw that Walker and YaYa were sitting like him, sobbing violently into their hands. On the other side Holmes stared into space, tears streaming down his face. Yank punched the dirt, crying, saying, “Can’t stop the burning, Momma, can’t stop the burning.”

  The only one not in tears was Sassy, who stood transfixed, gripping her rod until it quivered, her eyes as far away and glassy as Holmes’s.

  Then the feeling was gone, sadness replaced by a hollow, empty nothing. Laws sighed, realizing that he could never fill the hole that memory made in his soul. A single tear fell; then he wiped it.

  “What happened?” Holmes asked roughly.

  “Empathetic magic,” said Sassy. “They were all working together. I had a hard time stopping them.”

  “Fucking asshole witches.” YaYa glanced around, clearly still in the clutches of whatever memory had captured him. “My father had me in a madrassa for two weeks before my mother found out. Ever been to a madrassa? It’s like being a Catholic monk, only I was ten. They took everything away from me, even my name. I was…” He wiped his face with the sleeve of his uniform. “Shit.”

  Walker touched YaYa’s real arm. “It’s okay, brother. We all have memories we’d rather never remember.”

  Holmes helped Yank to his feet. “Is that the last of it?”

  “Takes a lot to put a spell like that together,” said Sassy. “I’d be surprised if they were able to repeat it. They might have something else up their sleeves though.”

  Laws realized he’d been clutching the snooper cable tight enough to make his hand ache. He rolled it and shoved it into a cargo pocket. “At least it means we’re on the right track.” He’d hated Halloween masks for years after that episode. Ironic that he’d ended up in an occupation that put him into contact with real monsters. If he were a psychiatrist, he’d probably tell himself that each time he took down a monster he was taking down that version of his father in the mask who’d ruined his life. But then again, what did they know?

  Holmes nodded toward the lip of grass. “Let’s do this.”

  All five SEALs and their dog surged over the top. They never got above a squat before falling into a prone position. Even Hoover hugged the ground, ears alert, eyes searching.

  Cold seeped from the earth into their uniforms and body armor. Laws checked through his sights and without them and didn’t see anything except for some low ground fog near the center of the plateau, where he knew the archeological excavation to be. Laws gauged the distance to be about 150 meters.

  On command, the SEALs formed a wedge and moved in a tactical walk toward the center of the plateau, weapons seated in their shoulders, eyes gazing along the barrels. Hoover ranged in front of them. Sassy Moore followed behind, moving with her wand held up as if she were a disheveled shepherd, herding them across a high pasture.

  They got fifty meters before a hound betrayed itself by baying.

  The SEALs each dropped to a knee. Each one knew their quadrant of a 270-degree arc.

  Sassy spoke from behind them. “I can feel them summoning power. They’re there; we just can’t see them.”

  “Can you tell me where they are?” Holmes asked.

  “What do I look like? A dowsing rod?”

  Holmes sighed.

  Laws had the same feeling. They just loved it when they had a smart-ass helping them. It made life so pleasant and so worth surviving for.

  “What are we doing here?” Yank asked.

  YaYa responded, “What do you think we’re doing here?”

  “No, I mean, aren’t SEALs supposed to be near water, hence all of our water training? Kneeling on a plateau in the middle of BFE seems so out of place.”

  “You’re out of place,” Walker said.

  Laws gritted his teeth as the tension built. The air around him felt like the skin of a balloon filled past capacity. It was only a matter of time. “We’re a different type of SEAL. We’re pasture SEALs.”

  YaYa laughed. “BFE. Usually stands for ‘Bum Fuck Egypt,’ but I guess we’re in England, so it fits.”

  “Do you boys always talk so much?” Sassy sounded exasperated.

  Laws knew it was any second now. “Only when there’s imminent danger.”

  Two hounds rushed toward them. One from the right and one from the left.

  Hoover squared with the one on the left, running full out for it. They met in midair. The heavier hell hound took Hoover down, its massive jaws clamped around the dog’s back right leg. Hoover twisted a
round and clamped her smaller jaw on an ear, ripping it off. Then she managed to bite down on the hound’s neck.

  Yank and Holmes let their rifles fall, catching and hanging on their slings as they drew the gladius machetes.

  Laws wavered between joining and watching his sector of fire. Holmes stood a few feet from him, and by the way he stood, it looked as if he could take on a pack of hell hounds single-handedly. And Laws hated that. Why was it that the rest of them had to work so hard, yet everything came so easy to Holmes? It was infuriating the way he could be so lucky. Hell, his own ire was shared by half the casinos in Vegas, Holmes’s hometown. Even they thought he was too lucky.

  The other hound thundered toward them from the right. Yank held his gladius in his rear hand. The creature leaped. Yank sidestepped and brought the weapon down on its spine. The hound cried out as it fell to the earth. Holmes sliced off its head. Then the two pieces of hound evaporated.

  Fucking Holmes. Like he wasn’t even trying.

  Laws was aware his barrel had drifted toward the other two SEALs but didn’t care. After all, it was Holmes and Yank. Boy weren’t they a pair. Different sides of the same coin. On one hand you had the impeccable Holmes, King of Cool-Ass Luck, and on the other you had Shonn Yankowski, black on the outside and white on the inside. “Hell, he might as well be a—” Laws caught himself at the last moment. He’d pressed the trigger but rode the firing into the sky.

  Holmes turned on him, eyes blazing.

  Yank turned to Holmes, gladius raised for a killing stroke. Laws could hear YaYa and Walker shouting at each other behind him.

  Once more Sassy saved the day.

  The feeling of unreasonable anger passed, but it couldn’t stop Yank’s sword.

  “Holmes!”

  The SEAL team leader spun, catching most of the descending blade on his own gladius. The rest of it sliced into his arm, which immediately began welling blood.

  Yank dropped his blade. “Oh shit. Sorry, Boss.”

  “Let me guess.” Laws glanced at Sassy Moore. “Empathetic magic?”

  She nodded abruptly, then continued her thousand-yard stare. Suddenly she went down as two dozen darts pierced her body.

  Laws spun and spied what looked for all the world like a Gatling gun that had appeared forty yards in front of them … except this one fired flechettes instead of rounds.

  Son of a bitch.

  Simultaneously, more hounds bounded onto the plateau from where they’d been hiding in the archaeological dig. A line of seven Red Grove druids also appeared. All the while, flechettes ate through the air. Laws threw himself to the deck as three flechettes bounced off his armor, one dug itself into his face near his left eye, and five of the three-inch steel slivers lodged in his unprotected legs.

  “Fucking hell!” he screamed with pain.

  What was going on? The witch was down. Holmes was wounded. No telling what the other men were doing. And where was Hoover?

  Laws’s hand had gone to the wound in his face and was now coated with blood. Still, he found his grip on his rifle, raised up a foot, and began to fire at the guy manning the flechette cannon. This was beginning to feel like a trap. Laws wondered where King Arthur was. Was he at the dig site? Was he even here?

  The entire place felt wrong.

  Then came the sound of helicopters.

  CHAPTER 51

  CADBURY CASTLE, ENGLAND. NOW.

  Walker shot up from his prone position and fired at the druids and the guy manning the flechette cannon. He saw one druid go down. The cannon began to swing Walker’s way again and he dove to the ground. Three slivers of pain caught him in the back of his right thigh. The ground drove the breath from him, but he didn’t have a moment. He’d seen Hoover getting her canine ass handed to her by the hell hound. Without help, they might lose her. Hoover was as much a part of the team as any of them. It just couldn’t happen.

  He lurched to his feet again and began running. The flechette cannon was no longer firing. He didn’t know if it was because the cannoneer was down or out of ammo, but he couldn’t spare the moment it would take to turn and look. His entire focus was on the interlocked canines—one supernatural, one SEAL.

  He stumbled once but soon closed the distance. The last ten meters he ripped free his rifle and tossed it aside. He pulled his gladius. It felt like a fire poker in his hand and he had no idea how to use it. Still, he had to do something. Hoover was howling as the hell hound savaged her leg. Walker raised the gladius, intent to strike, but something in the eyes of the creature before him stilled his hand. As it looked his way with a large blue eye, he could swear it paused and regarded him. Somehow within its brutish baboon face there was something remarkable. The way the eye looked at him, the shape of the orb, the slight sadness surrounding it, sent a shock wave through his memories. A great well of sadness exploded, filling him past bursting. The feeling of loss … of nearness … of need … shot through him like a lightning bolt.

  He staggered backwards. Could it be?

  He uttered a single word. “Jen?”

  The eye blinked at him.

  He inhaled emptiness.

  He’d known all along that the hounds were fueled by the souls of those they killed, but it had always seemed like an academic idea, something so unfathomable that he just took it for granted. Never once did he imagine that he’d be put in a position to not only face her but also possibly kill her.

  She stared at him. My god, how he loved her. A thought struck him. He remembered what the witch had said about the souls of the hounds possessing the fonts. Was there a chance? Could he at least get that part of Jen back that was her essence? She wouldn’t look the same, but then that wasn’t what made her … her. All he had to do was find someone to possess.

  He shook his head. What was he thinking? He couldn’t do that to someone else!

  Not even to have his girl back?

  Not even to have the love of his life back in his arms?

  He’d give the world to kiss her one more time, the feel of her soft lips, the warmth of her hands as she held him, knowing that he could close his eyes and she’d be there forever.

  She blinked at him as if she was reading his mind. He could see recognition in her eyes.

  The gladius felt heavy. He knew he needed to use it to save Hoover, but he couldn’t kill her. Not again.

  Then she did something at once beautiful and terrible. She opened her great monstrous jaws and released Hoover’s leg. The hound’s human hand that had been holding Hoover let go as well. It reached out to him, slow, tentative.

  He choked back a sob. This was not her. This was a hellish creature of the Tuatha. This was …

  Fuck.

  It was her.

  He reached out to her.

  Hoover had had a grip on the hound’s neck before, but it had been inadequate. Now the SEAL dog reared back and sunk her teeth into the hell hound’s jugular. Growling and snarling, favoring her wounded rear leg, Hoover whipped her head back and forth.

  The expression in the hound’s eye changed from wonder to pain. It blinked rapidly. Its hand stalled in its arc to meet Walker’s.

  Then it screamed.

  Hoover ripped the jugular free. Victory shone in her eyes.

  Walker let out a barely audible, “No!”

  He glared at Hoover, ready now to use the gladius.

  But then the hound evaporated, leaving nothing of it behind.

  Hoover limped over and licked Walker’s outstretched hand.

  Walker sunk to his knees. He dropped the gladius and threw his arms around Hoover. Great tides of anguish flowed through him, rocking his shoulders.

  “Hoover did it right.

  “Hoover did it right.”

  If he said it enough it might make it all okay.

  “Hoover did it right.”

  Walker spent a lifetime in a single second, living and dying with the woman of his dreams. When it was over, he felt different. Was it a sense of closure? He couldn’t be sure. A
ll he knew was that the pain had receded to a dull ache. Seeing her in the hound, knowing that she loved him and had longed to be with him in that gesture of its hand, ameliorated some of his pain. Even so, he knew it wasn’t the end of it. He’d need more time. But that was a luxury he didn’t have at the moment.

  Walker stood, shakily at first. “Come on, girl.” He closed his eyes tightly for a second, then collected his weapons from where he’d dropped them.

  Hoover licked his back leg and gave him a sorrowful look. “Don’t be a sissy. We’ll fix you up later. We got beegees who need killing.”

  His words went unheard because Hoover was already limping at a half run toward the line of red-robed druids. It was strange that they hadn’t done anything yet. What were they waiting for?

  Walker ran after Hoover. The other SEALs were fighting a pitched battle with the remainder of the hounds and the cannoneer was down. So it was him, Hoover, and the druids. Fuck their magic.

  He raised his rifle and fired several three-round bursts at the druids nearest him. He saw the rounds pass through the material of their robes but have no effect on the wearers. Still, he fired again. He wondered what the hell he was going to encounter when he reached them. After all, who or what could withstand 5.56mm rounds traveling at 788 meters per second? Certainly not anything natural.

  He screamed and pulled out his gladius with his left hand as he ran. Firing one-handed with his rifle, he swung the machete above his head in circles until he reached the first statue-like druid. He swept his blade through it and felt no resistance. The material fell to the ground along with the bundles of sticks inside that had filled out its dimensions.

  But these things had appeared. They hadn’t been staged.

  Which meant they’d been populated—were populated—by Tuatha, but to what end?

  Then it hit him.

  Stalling tactic.

  There was nothing here.

  He’d felt it in the beginning.

  Cadbury Castle, or Camelot, had been part of a wild-goose chase. So where was King Arthur and the rest of the Wild Hunt? If Arthur was intent on becoming the ruler of England, the only way to do it successfully was to depose the present ruler. So, wherever Elizabeth was, Arthur could be found.