“Zero out of ten,” Victoria murmured. “Would not visit again.”
Dawes let a smile peek out. “Well, you’re back home now. So let’s get you all some medical attention.”
“What about Astaroth?” Adara asked.
“We already have people looking for her,” Dawes said. “Eventually, we’ll pin her down, and then you all can send her back to the fiery pit.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Gideon replied. “I owe that bitch for blowing up my apartment.”
Dawes huffed. “Get in line, Mr. Bell. You’re not the only one with a vendetta.”
“I have no qualms with cutting in line.”
“Really? I thought you were a military man, all rules and discipline.”
Gideon gave her a wry smile. “Things don’t always work out so neatly in the field.”
Dawes stared at him for a moment, as if taking his measure, and said, “Very true.”
With that, Dawes placed herself at the head of their procession and bid them to follow her to the wide perimeter, where medical care and transportation were plentiful. The group obeyed her without complaint, as they were all too sore and too tired to turn down good painkillers and a place to lay their heads.
They trailed after her down the bloodstained walkway until they reached the western edge of campus. Then they turned onto the street and continued toward a cluster of flashing ambulance lights several blocks down the road.
A few times, different SWAT agents offered to take the burden that was Adara off of Gideon’s metaphorical shoulders. But he rebuffed them despite the fact his knee must’ve been killing him.
Adara debated whether to tell him to cut it out with the stubbornness and accept some help. After scrutinizing his resolute expression though, she realized he’d issued himself a personal challenge: he wanted to prove that he could carry Adara the whole distance to the wide perimeter without his ruined knee buckling under the strain.
On the one hand, that was a stupid risk to take. On the other hand, she got where he was coming from. She too had done foolhardy things, many times, to prove to herself she was “worthy” in some nebulous way that no one else cared about.
So after considering how much it would hurt if he dropped her—not that much, as long as he didn’t fall on top of her—she decided to let it go. Whatever harm Gideon did, to himself or to her, could be rectified by the nearby paramedics.
Plus, Adara hadn’t had a boyfriend in so long that she kind of liked being carried around by this big, strong, ruggedly handsome soldier.
Not that she would ever tell him that.
Epilogue
The Girl, Unwearied
At noon the following day, Adara Caine sat on a concrete bench in the courtyard behind Agnes-Thorne Teaching Hospital. Her crutches were propped against the side of the bench, and her backpack lay by her feet, bow tied to the front, quiver sticking out of a side pocket.
She’d recovered the pack from Solomon’s house half an hour before, handed the map of the cornerstones and the spell scroll off to Jefferson for analysis, and then returned to the hospital to wait for Enzo and Victoria to be discharged. Due to the extent of their burns, the doctors had kept them overnight.
Everyone else had gone somewhere that resembled home.
Adara had gone back to her actual apartment for the first time since she’d fled from Belphegor; she found it undisturbed save for a scorch mark on the front door. Solomon had gone back to his apartment as well, cleaned up all the broken glass, and sealed his empty balcony doors with garbage bags and duct tape, new windows pending. Gideon, because his apartment was toast, had been put up at a hotel on the FBI’s dime.
Adara and Solomon had spent the morning banishing all the imps the Overlock agents had rounded up yesterday evening. While there were probably still a few of them slinking around, they were no longer a major threat to the populace.
Astaroth, however, had been spotted by some eagle-eyed state cops heading south in a stolen truck. But they’d been warned by the FBI not to engage, so they hung back and followed her for nearly two hours. Eventually, they lost track of her somewhere along Interstate 95, heading toward New York City.
We’ll catch up to her again, Adara was sure, as she had an inkling of where Astaroth was going. And when we do, she’ll get what’s coming to her.
Someone cleared their throat, and Adara turned to find Dawes standing at the gate to the courtyard. Adara slung her pack over her shoulder, grabbed her crutches, and tottered over to the waiting agent.
As she passed the line of squat trees near the gate, Jefferson, Gideon, and Solomon also came into view. They were leaning against a large black van and talking among themselves.
“There another team meeting on the schedule?” Adara said.
“There is now,” Dawes replied. “I’ve just been informed of some important developments.”
“What about Enzo and Victoria?”
“They’re being released as we speak.” She motioned for Adara to climb into the van. “We’ll swing by the entrance and pick them up.”
“Oh. All right then.”
Gideon helped Adara into the van, everyone else crammed in, and off they went around the side of the building.
When Jefferson stopped the van near the hospital’s main entrance, the automatic doors slid open to reveal Enzo and Victoria standing just inside the lobby. They were covered in bandages, and Enzo’s arm was in a sling. Apparently, he’d reinjured his wrist during the library operation.
Gideon opened his door and ushered the duo inside. They shuffled past Adara to reach the second row of seats in the back of the van. As Enzo squeezed by, Adara asked, “How’d it go with Nadine?”
Enzo gave her a sheepish look. “She said we can pay her back for the car in installments, no interest. As long as we don’t get her, or her property, wrapped up in any more, and I quote, ‘crazy magic bullshit.’”
Adara bobbed her head. “That’s fair.”
Enzo carefully sank down onto the seat cushion, wincing as the movement tugged on his burns. “Got to say though, she wasn’t too thrilled about being forced to sign an NDA by the FBI.”
Jefferson peered at him through the rearview mirror. “I’m sure you won’t be either, but you’ll do it anyway.”
Enzo cocked the half of his right eyebrow that hadn’t been singed off. “Or what?”
“You misunderstand, Mr. Vega,” Dawes said drolly. “There is no other option.”
“Oh.” Enzo gulped. “I see.”
“I’m glad you understand.” Jefferson put the car in drive. “Now buckle your seatbelt so we can go. You too, Ms. Wise. I don’t want anyone flying out of the van if we get blown off the road by a demonic fireball.”
Once Enzo and Victoria were buckled in, Jefferson hit the gas. They left the hospital behind and emerged onto the streets of Edgerton proper.
After the terrible events of yesterday, the traffic was thin once more. People thought being out and about would make them a target for the nightmarish monsters who’d murdered so many on Maynard, who’d blown up an occupied apartment building and reveled in the flames.
Last night, they had stripped bare the shelves of grocery stores and pharmacies. Today, they were holed up in their houses with guns and knives pointed at their doors.
Consequently, most of the vehicles on the road belonged to the National Guard, the police, or the FBI. A couple times, the van came upon a military roadblock, and men with guns threatened to shoot if they did anything remotely untoward. Jefferson and Dawes had to flash their government IDs to get through without having the van thoroughly searched by jittery soldiers who were clearly expecting demons to jump out of every shadow.
Adara didn’t like how nervous they were.
Nervous people with guns were prone to accidents.
But fear is the general state of things, she reminded herself. Everyone is scared.
Jefferson and Dawes didn’t talk for the entire trip. Their silence bled into the back of the van, encouragin
g everyone else to stay quiet. So they all just ruminated on what had happened to them since the Shattering of God, and what they believed might happen to them from here on out.
At last, the van parked in a gravel lot beside a small, nondescript brick office building. The only thing that marked the building as anything other than ordinary were the FBI SWAT agents standing guard at the door.
The agents happened to be from the teams who’d accompanied the shard holders to the basement, and they both respectfully nodded at Adara and the others as the group filed inside the building. Adara returned the nod.
Far too many SWAT agents had been killed yesterday, and these two had probably lost long-time friends. They were in mourning, but they were still here, doing their jobs for the sake of protecting others.
Inside the building, nearly two dozen agents wearing black suits and grim frowns scurried about the cramped quarters of the main office space. Several of these agents were clearly inhuman.
A few had red eyes, like Jefferson. A few had sharp features, like Dawes. And others possessed a range of qualities so bizarre—like gills on their necks or feathers in place of hair—that Adara doubted she was going to be able to sleep tonight. She’d wind up staring at the ceiling for hours, her head stuffed with so many questions that they’d come spilling out of her ears.
Jefferson and Dawes didn’t give the group much time to gawp. Dawes coaxed the shard holders into a narrow conference room. Jefferson shut the door behind them, muffling the bustle from the main room. Then they all sat down at a long, rectangular table that had seen better days.
A projector sat on the tabletop, pointing at the white wall on the opposite end of the room. As Dawes adjusted the height of her chair, she flicked the projector on. A scan of the cornerstone map appeared on the wall, with a bunch of notes typed across it in bold red letters.
Someone had gone through the painstaking process of working out the exact GPS coordinates of every single cornerstone across the entire planet. Two of the locations were marked with asterisks—the other two cornerstones in the United States—and one, the Edgerton cornerstone, had a green check mark beside it.
One down, Adara thought, two to go.
“First things first,” Dawes started, sliding a stack of folders over to Adara. She motioned for Adara to take one and pass the stack down. “Inside these folders are two documents. One is the standard Overlock nondisclosure agreement—which technically, I should’ve had you all sign before I told you the big secret about the supernatural—and the other is a work contract.
“As Jefferson mentioned earlier, the former is required. You must sign it. Or else.” Dawes grabbed a bundle of pens secured by a rubber band and sent those around the table as well. “The latter is optional, but I hope most of you decide to sign it. Because Overlock could very much use your continued assistance.”
Everybody got busy scribbling their signatures or initials across the many different lines highlighted in the NDA.
Meanwhile, Dawes continued her spiel. “On the matter of you ‘shard holders’—whom the government is officially dubbing ‘demigods,’ by the way—it has been decided that Overlock will oversee the development of a tailored educational program to teach you all the ins and outs of supernatural matters and acclimate you to life as a supernatural entity in the United States. All of you will be required to complete this program at some point. But it’s not up and running yet, so don’t worry about it right now.”
“Ha,” said Gideon. “A required government program? Sounds like a great way of creating a registry of shard holders.”
Dawes gave him a bland look. “The FBI keeps registries of many different groups, some of them benign, some of them more dangerous than you can imagine. Overlock in particular keeps tabs on many entities so strange that you wouldn’t believe your eyes if you saw them up close and personal. So don’t flatter yourself, Mr. Bell. You’re not getting special treatment. This is standard protocol.”
“And if the government decides to round us up one day?” Solomon asked, warily peeking above the top of the folder he’d set up vertically on the table.
Jefferson rolled his blood-red eyes. “The humans in the US government have long learned better than to try and wrangle supernaturals in that manner.”
“Really?” Solomon said. “What happened?”
Jefferson flashed his fangs. “Many things.”
Solomon stopped asking questions and went back to signing.
Adara preempted an awkward silence by asking, “So what’s this job contract about?”
Dawes settled back in her chair and rested her hands on the table. “To be quite frank, the federal government has been overwhelmed by the cascade of events that have occurred since this ‘Shattering of God.’
“The biggest issue is the continuing domino effect of environmental shard activations instigated by Belphegor triggering the shard inside the Barnaby and Pruitt building. Not only do more and more shards keep activating all over the world, but the shards that have been active for some time are beginning to exhibit new effects.”
She grabbed a small wireless keyboard next to the projector and swapped out the window that displayed the map scan for a browser window that had a dozen open tabs. Every tab was either a news site or a social media site.
The tab at the forefront was Twitter, and the page showed a feed for the hashtag “techgonewild.” Dawes used the down arrow on the keyboard to slowly scroll through the tweets. Most of them made claims about technology acting strangely near the areas where environmental shards were currently active.
“There have been numerous reports of electromagnetic pulses frying electronics,” Jefferson said, “many of them coming in from major metro areas that rely on EMP-susceptible technology to keep the lights on and the public transportation running.”
“Additionally,” Dawes picked up, “in other areas, the shards appear to be altering electromagnetic waves in a manner that allows humans to see and hear them without any sensory modifications. This unnatural amplification is also causing physical side effects to the people inside the impacted areas, including headaches, dizziness, and nausea.
“And like that isn’t serious enough”—she sighed—“as of this morning, all air traffic in the country has been grounded indefinitely. Because, according to our top scientists, these shard effects are extending all the way up to the stratosphere. Which means any aircraft that fly in close proximity to the shards are at risk of ending their journeys in a fiery crash.”
Jefferson sighed. “Long story short, the government has a major problem on its hands. Unless we can figure out how to deactivate these environmental shards, then these effects, and others that haven’t yet been observed, may keep spreading. If they do, then we’ll end up having to evacuate people from highly populated urban areas. People will lose their homes, their jobs, their entire lives.”
Adara dropped her completed NDA on the table. “We might be able to influence the environmental shards in some way, but I don’t know if we can switch them off.”
“We can’t,” said Gideon. “I tried it already.”
Jefferson shook his head. “After I picked him up from the Marriott, I brought Mr. Bell by Barnaby and Pruitt and had him try all manner of things to affect the shard—to no avail. The most he could do was sense the exact boundary of its effective area and tell how quickly it was expanding.”
“Then what do we do?” Victoria said, her head tipped down to hide her face behind what was left of her hair. Some kind nurse at the hospital had trimmed off the singed ends and evened out the length. She now had a softly curled bob an inch or so longer than the severely straight one that Dawes wore. “Or rather, what is it that you want us to do, if not deactivate these rogue shards?”
“The same thing you did yesterday,” Dawes answered, bringing up the map of the cornerstones again, “just with fewer casualties.”
Jefferson pointed to Adara. “According to Ms. Caine here, all the cornerstones were damaged by the
Shattering, which means they all need to be repaired. And since the ones in the United States were the most damaged of them all, it’s imperative that we repair them forthwith. There are only two more, the ones marked with asterisks on the map.
“Last night, we sent some agents from our Texas and Oregon field offices to scout the locations of these other cornerstones. This morning, they reported back. As of now, it appears that there is minimal demon activity in those areas. A few imps and nothing more.”
“So if we hurry,” Adara said, “we might be able to fix those cornerstones before any greater demons cross over and start wreaking havoc again. That’s what you want to hire us to do, yeah? Be the cornerstone repairmen?”
“Precisely.” Dawes gestured for them to peruse the contracts. “As you can see from the figures on page two, you’ll be compensated handsomely for your assistance.”
Enzo turned to page two and ran his finger down the lines until he found the monthly pay amount. His eyes bugged out. “Holy shit. Is that for real?”
Jefferson smiled. “It was calculated with a risk premium in mind.”
Adara glanced at the number and tried not to choke. It was more than the cost of a whole semester at Edgerton College. “You can afford to pay us that much?”
“Overlock has a substantial operating budget,” Dawes said. “And that budget will be getting a large bump very soon, due to the current state of emergency. So yes, that pay is guaranteed.”
Adara chewed on her tongue. “Well, that’s certainly generous. It’s just…”
“You need some time to think about it?” Jefferson guessed. “Admittedly, we can’t give you days. We need to get ahead of the demons this time. But we can give you a few minutes, if you’d like to discuss the pros and cons among yourselves.”
The shard holders all exchanged looks.
“Yeah,” Gideon replied, “let’s do that.”
Jefferson and Dawes headed back out into the chaos of the main room. As the door swung shut behind them, Dawes said, “We’ll be back in ten.”
Baptisms of Fire and Ice Page 26