The Second Seal

by Sean Deville

  In the distance Lilith could hear the trickle of a stream, a lifesaving sound that drew her closer. She had to keep the path to her rear, but still veer towards where she had started out. With exaggerated caution, she forged forward, the sound of water getting closer.

  Five minutes left, give or take.

  When she reached the stream, it was easily waded, an unimpressive affair. However, the banks were steep and she knew she would leave a definite trace for others to follow. So be it, if anything that was a good thing. If she followed the stream, it would be more difficult for her tracks to be seen, if at all. The constantly flowing water would evaporate anything she left behind. But that wasn’t the only thing the stream provided.

  Lilith needed the mud.

  Even with the heavy canopy, her pale flesh would stand out to watching eyes, so she spent a valuable minute coating her skin with the thick mud that had formed at the water’s edge. She caked it on, lathering it into her hair, leaving no surface that she could reach uncovered. It gave some protection against the chill as well, and the insects that would be drawn to her sweat. Another use was that it masked her scent. Although they did not have the capacity of blood hounds, the priests would be looking to catch the smell of her on the breeze that flowed between the trees.

  Two minutes left.

  She forged on through the water, heading back towards where the truck would have been left. She knew she couldn’t go near it, but she hoped to get close enough so that those following would not think to look for her there. Creating distance wasn’t an effective strategy. What she needed to do now was find a way to leave the stream without leaving a trail and then discover a gully or a fallen tree where she could coat her still moist layer in fallen and dead leaves. Hiding, lying still and unseen was the only way out of this.

  Lilith would do everything she could to evade those following. Whether she would get away with it would have a lot to do with how good her hunters truly were.

  Then came the sound that blasted through the woods, an air horn. The priests were coming, and they brought their fists, their boots and their canes with them.

  38.

  Watford, UK

  Dmitri and his team had been given the go-ahead, despite the risk their actions posed. If five covert Russian operatives were found operating on UK sovereign territory, there would be a diplomatic shit-storm of immense proportions. The only saving grace would be such an event would never be reported in the British or international press.

  “If you are captured or killed, we will deny all knowledge of you,” the FSB Director had told him.

  Dmitri felt uneasy about this. Never before had a Wolf Squad acted in this manner. They were supposed to protect the integrity of the Russian Federation and Dmitri had, for the first time ever, questioned the orders given to him. His loyalty did not stop him pointing out stupidity when he thought he saw it.

  “This is not a decision I take lightly,” Popoff had said. “Know that if the person you are to rescue breaks under interrogation, it will be to the detriment of the country you love.” So here Dmitri was, the black limousine they were in presently pulling into the grounds of an abandoned warehouse. The driver of the vehicle remained silent, a local FSB operative who had no idea who these strangers were or why he had been asked to pick them up at the airport.

  After the cold war, the Russian intelligence services kept a significant presence in the United Kingdom. Ever since America’s puppet Yeltsin had been replaced, Russia had let it be known they were no longer a country to be messed with. They were a proud nation with a long memory and a horrific history which shaped their thinking. Normally they were no friend to the west, but Dmitri’s actions today would go beyond such international and petty rivalries.

  Getting into the United Kingdom had been simple, a private jet easier and more efficient than a standard commercial flight. Dmitri’s credentials marked him as a man of considerable wealth, and the fluent German Anastasia spoke had seen her play the role of an assistant to a powerful man who would not abide being delayed by bungling bureaucrats. She had dealt with the mandatory customs officials with the disdain that was expected when representing someone of immense financial power.

  The passports they all used were of German origin, thus making passport control easy to bypass. Wealth had its advantages, and exaggerated displays of opulence was an adequate cover to divert any suspicion. The team were dressed the part, tailored suits that would soon be abandoned for more functional garments. All had been on the plane that had landed at the secretive abandoned airfield.

  The driver brought the limousine to a stop. Dmitri suspected their driver would be glad to see the back of his passengers.

  “There is a van with everything you need inside the warehouse.” There was no hint of nervousness in the driver’s voice. Perhaps there would have been if he had been made aware of the identity of his guests.

  Dmitri and his team stepped out of the limo, not a word said to the man who had delivered them here. They would never see him again, and if Dmitri’s team failed, if their mission went bad, the driver would suffer an unfortunate and fatal accident.

  Likewise, Dmitri knew he could never allow the British to take him alive, not with what they were about to do.

  Inside the warehouse, they found the van as promised, the equipment they needed in the back of it. Smuggled in years before, the contents had been requisitioned for this mission. Kosta climbed aboard and opened the boxes eagerly. What he found in the assorted crates delighted him intensely, the hunger building within him. Anastasia joined him, passing down the items to the remaining team members.

  - Claymore anti-personnel mines

  - Semtex, enough to bring down a whole building if they so desired

  - Four Heckler and Koch HK17's, with enough ammunition to fight a war

  - One M32 40mm grenade launcher.

  - Five Beretta M9 side-arms, each magazine fitted with armour-piercing ammunition

  - Four grenades per agent

  - The latest Ratnik gear protective armour and western-made communication devices

  - More than one KA-Bar knife each, extremely effective in hand-to-hand situations, especially when you threw a hell of a lot of guts behind them.

  Nothing they used or left behind was to give any indication this was a Russian operation. Kosta lifted a particularly long case and laid it down on top of the crates.

  “And for the lady,” Kosta said, unsnapping the lid to reveal an M110 sniper rifle.

  “You do know how to treat a woman. Does this mean we are engaged?” Anastasia quipped.

  “I am not worthy of a woman of your beauty,” Kosta replied. He enjoyed the banter he had with Anastasia, but neither of them would ever act on it.

  “No man is,” Anastasia reminded him.

  “Save it,” Dmitri said from outside. This was not the time for such antics. They were about to attack a safe house run by one of the British intelligence services. Hopefully, they would be facing lightly armed opponents, but if they didn’t do their jobs properly, the whole world would fall on them.

  They would each have a role to play. Anastasia would provide them sniper cover. It would be Fedor’s job to disable the communications of the building they would soon assault. That would be the easy part. He would also need to deactivate the power. When they attacked, they had to be assured there would be no risk of a call for help being sent out.

  Kosta and Vadik would be the hammer against anything opposing them on the ground.

  39.

  London, UK

  When she proposed the idea to her immediate supervisor and the prison warden, Vicky had made it sound like she was doing the prison a favour. By continuing the interview through Damien’s cell door, there would be no risk to anyone, she had insisted. It was against procedure, but she only had a few supplementary questions left, no reason to risk another assault for something that would take minutes at most.

  “I think I’m ready to ascertain his definite insanity
,” Vicky had added over the phone. That decision wouldn’t be hers alone, but as the only person who had been able to interview Damien, her opinion would be given significant weight.

  The warden was delighted to hear that. This was a prisoner he no longer wanted within the concrete walls he was in charge of. Four warders at a single time to guard a single prisoner was a severe stretch on resources, so the prison warden had readily agreed, meaning there were no ears to listen in on her conversation with Damien now. There would be no recording of the conversation either which was just as important.

  Vicky needed the privacy to ask the questions that would have sounded insane if you didn’t understand the context. When she lowered the hatch in his cell door, she wasn’t surprised to see him already staring at her. Seated on the floor, Damien gave the impression he had been expecting Vicky.

  “So, you survived another night,” Damien noted. “I must say I’m impressed.”

  “How do you know about my dreams?” She had briefly considered that Damien was playing some kind of mentalist trick on her, but there was no way he could have known what she had been through.

  “I told you,” he replied. “I see the sickness that is trying to be infused into you.”

  “How do I stop it?”

  “You probably can’t. And I’m not the one to ask, I only know so much.” After all, it wasn’t demons he hunted, but the earthly sons of the Fallen.

  “Then how do you know it’s a demon?”

  “Because I have seen such things before. In my travels, I have encountered those that knew me as I knew them.” Vicky didn’t know it, but he never killed the possessed, letting them free to peddle their wickedness on the world. They were of no interest to Damien or Legion, and he of no interest to them. His craving was murdering and defiling the usurpers who could claim his place.

  “My daughter says she can see it, too.” Vicky knew it wasn’t wise to share such knowledge with a patient, but she was desperate for some sort of understanding in all this.

  “Then she is in grave danger.” Damien pulled himself up from the floor and stepped the short distance over to the door. Vicky didn’t recoil. Instead she reached into her pocket and pulled out the folded drawing Emily had done. Vicky passed it through the door hatch. Briefly their fingers touched, giving Damien the chance he could have taken. It would have been no effort for him to grab her and break her arm. He could have done worse, her neck in easy reach through the hatch.

  “My daughter drew that. Is that what you see?”

  “I don’t see it as clearly. Your daughter has a powerful gift which is also her curse. Demons do not like to be seen. Who is this in the picture?” I can sense the girl in the drawing, Legion whispered. There was something new here, something he’d never before encountered. But what? The paper tingled to his touch.

  “It’s supposed to be her teacher.” Although it could just as easily be Vicky herself. You weren’t supposed to believe the imaginations of children, but Vicky was all but convinced now.

  “So Legion was right.” Vicky barely caught the words.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Legion knows things that I can’t explain. Most of the time he remains quiet, but sometimes he shares things with me. The demons are rising, Vicky Ralph, and they are coming for your world.” In such a scenario, a prison cell didn’t seem such a bad place to be trapped in. Damien knew his killing days were a long way from being over, but it did no harm to pause and take a time out.

  “What does this demon want?” Damien passed the drawing back through the cell door. He was reluctant to, though. There were secrets in that paper, whispers about something he had never before encountered.

  The girl is important, Legion said in the pit of his mind.

  “That would depend on the demon. Most that come through are after mayhem. They like to take those that are innocent. Sometimes they kill them. Other times the fate delivered is much worse than that.” There were indeed things worse than death. Pain was memory, and an ended life freed one from that purgatory.

  “My dad wants me to see a priest.” There she was again, sharing vital and personal information. If her mentor and clinical supervisor learned of this, Vicky would be in serious trouble. But then, she already was.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know if that will help.” Damien turned and returned to the floor.

  “I’ve never really been religious.”

  “Then it probably won’t work. Religion requires faith. Without that faith behind it, religion has no meaning except to control the gullible. Tell me, Vicky, how long can you go without sleep? That’s when demons have the most power.”

  “Probably about three days,” Vicky said. Before her eyes, Damien physically transformed. Legion was here.

  “Then that is how long you have,” Legion said in his altered voice. “I can smell the demon on you. It is coming, Vicky Ralph. It will consume you. It will take you and make you do things to those you hold most dear.” Vicky closed the hatch and stepped back from the door. “You will be forced to watch”—she heard Legion say–“as your hands do unspeakable things to the child you love.” If she had needed to run at that point, she wouldn’t have been able to. Her legs suddenly felt like jelly.

  ***

  “You didn’t hear this from me.” When Vicky had been given back her phone at the prison’s security station, she saw she had a missed call from her friend Natalie. Waiting till she got outside, Vicky phoned her friend back.

  “You rang, madam?” Vicky asked.

  “You know I have a friend who works for the Met?” Natalie’s friend was one of the many civilian administrative workers who took care of the Metropolitan Police’s bureaucratic burden.

  “Yeah?”

  “Well she gave me the lowdown. Mrs Robinson was found murdered yesterday.”

  “Oh my God.” Although she hated to admit it, a small part of Vicky was relieved. As horrible as it sounded, that at least solved part of the problem she was having with her daughter.

  “You won’t believe what else she said.”

  “Natalie, you are such a gossip.” For once Vicky was glad of it.

  “I know, right.” Natalie was clearly loving spilling this dirt. “They found Mrs Robinson’s body at the scene of a Satanic ritual.” Sensationalist titbits like that were bound to leak out, especially to the press.

  “But she seemed so nice.”

  “They always do,” Natalie insisted. “The headmistress must be beside herself.” There was a hint of satisfaction in Natalie’s voice about that. “And how’s Emily?”

  “I think she’s going to be okay,” Vicky lied. This was the final piece that her mind needed to decide on what she needed to do. The dreams, Emily’s reaction to her, Damien and now this. It was enough to push her into accepting the suggestion her father had made. She would phone her dad and they would go and see the priest together. Vicky couldn’t see how it would help, but right now she was willing to try anything.

  Was she starting to believe in the supernatural?

  “Are you going to tell her about her teacher?” That was a good question. Another worry was placed on Vicky’s overburdened shoulders. Mrs Robinson being dead might have removed a problem, but how would Emily react to it? One of the reasons she had been so upset by the darkness she had seen was because Emily had liked her teacher. All the kids did.

  “I will have to think about that. We still need to get to the bottom of what this was all about.” As a friend, Vicky had shared her daughter’s problems with Natalie. What if she started seeing things around other people? What if the black shroud Emily saw around her own mother came back?

  Vicky would see the priest, anything to protect Emily. Nothing else mattered.

  40.

  New York, USA

  “Tell me what I want to know and we won’t have any problems.” Brian Fox towered over his informant. As a Special Agent with the US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Counterterrorism and Criminal Exploita
tion Unit, he hated those who wanted to bring harm to his country.

  “I have not heard anything. Please, you must believe me.” The informant was not someone who helped Fox out of an altruistic nature. The informant had no choice, men like Fox happy to use threats and violence to get tongues wagging and lips flapping.

  “You see, I hear you say that, and yet somehow I don’t believe you. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m not a trusting soul. It’s a shame, though.”

  “What is a shame?” The informant had been dragged from the business he helped run. It was a small family run convenience store, but it was part of why the informant had come to America. Better here than the hell hole that was Iraq. Here he could make something of a life for himself and his family.

  “I’ve been doing a bit more digging on you,” Fox said. The alley where they stood stank of rotting food, the rats too bold to care two humans were out here. The scavengers ran past the two men, eager to get at whatever food had been cast out by the various businesses that backed onto this alley. “I see your sister has applied for a visa to come and visit you.”

  “Yes. I have saved up money for her flight. She very much wants to come live here. She will get a Green card and work hard.”

  “That might be a problem.” Fox stepped into the informant’s personal space. “It would be so easy for the wrong information to be put in her file. She might not get that visa. In fact, she might find herself banned from the country altogether.”

  “Please,” the informant begged. “You cannot do this.”

  Fox acted shocked. “Me? It’s nothing to do with me. It’s just that, you know, mistakes occur. And even worse things can happen. Errors creep in all the time. That nephew of yours, what’s his name?”

  “Hassan.”

  “That’s it, Hassan. Good boy from what I hear.”

  “He is a good student,” the informant insisted.

  “But what if he fell into the wrong crowd? He’s on a student visa. It would be terrible if he should be arrested and charged for something. Some of those folks he hangs around with, I’m sure there’s drugs floating around.” Fox put a hand on his victim’s shoulder.