by Jenn Stark
“Over five thousand,” Max said. “Lists with open-ended results is fourteen hundred ninety-six, but a lot of those are pretty much gobbledygook.”
She nodded, and Finn watched the play of emotions on her face. “Call up my name, please,” Dana said.
Max started typing furiously. “I knew it,” he nearly cackled. “I totally knew it.”
A noise sounded behind him, and he turned, searching the brightly lit room full of cubicles for movement. And first, nothing stirred, and then…
No. He was imagining things.
“Has Morrow reported in?” Finn asked, his eyes narrowing on the far doors. Guards stood there, and this was only the innermost set of doors. Lester had constructed his office floor to specific requirements, he’d told Finn. Requirements that included three lines of interior walls, each with fireproof doors. Fireproof, bulletproof, and blast proof, Max had confirmed. They were safe inside Lester’s little fortress, he’d made sure of it. Finn looked down at Max, who was watching him with curiosity. “What did you say?”
“I just got word this second. Lester is on his way. He said all systems were go for the list, he’d gotten the last approvals,” Max reported. “He has his own men with him, he told me to tell you, Dana. A half dozen, I think. I don’t think he’ll get into any trouble.”
“Oh, I doubt that,” Dana said thinly. She glanced up at Finn as Max turned back to the monitors. “What do you make of this?”
He looked at the screen that was populating with Dana’s family tree. He recognized none of the names, but beneath her two parents—both indicated as Dawn Children—her name had been inscribed in the same bright blue font color as her sire’s. Everyone above that trio was recorded in dull gray font. He looked back at her, and her smile faltered.
“I think that means they’re still alive,” she said. “My biological parents.”
“This could be an old list,” Finn warned. “There’s no telling when it was last modified.”
A knock came at the door, and Finn turned—then lifted his brows in surprise.
“Sir.”
Finn looked down at the same young man who had held a gun on him not sixteen hours earlier, his expression open and unmarked by guile, his eyes a soulful blue. Beside him, Dana stiffened.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Timothy Rourke, ma’am,” he said with a curt nod, his attention straying only for a moment from Finn. “Sir, there’s something coming up through the elevator shafts.”
Max piped up. “You have visual in the elevators?”
“We do,” Timothy said. “But it doesn’t make sense. There’s something there—but not there.”
“Demons,” Finn said curtly. “Not Possessed, but actual demons. They can cast an illusion, take on different looks if they want, or no look at all.”
Everyone in the room stared at him. “But…the surveillance system tracks heat signatures too,” Max offered.
Finn shrugged. “Great with humans. Not so much with demons.”
Tim squared his shoulders. “Well, I can sense that something is coming, and I want to move you into Mr. Morrow’s secure room. He left us with specific instructions that none of you were to be harmed, and so I ask you—”
“What do you think is coming up, Mr. Rourke?” Dana asked coolly, her eyes challenging the young guard. “Did Morrow prepare you for this?”
“Not exactly,” he said carefully. He flashed a smile and looked all of twelve years old. The effect wasn’t wasted on Dana. Even now, she was standing more at ease, her head canted forward, her eyes gentle in the face of the boy’s feigned nervousness. A master manipulator, Finn thought. “Morrow doesn’t know I’m pushing the panic button here. But I suspect that what’s out there isn’t going to be pretty, and I’d rather you be smart and alive than cocky and dead.”
“Sounds like good reasoning to me,” Max put in, and Finn fought a smile. The tech specialist had been eyeing the rifles and guns they had been sporting, and his mind had clearly been turning. “I really don’t want to lose what we have here, Dana, if we can avoid it. Even if it’s a false alarm and not demons crawling up the elevator ducts, we need to protect the data.”
Dana shook her head. “Fine. But where else are we vulnerable? They’re going to have to get humans in here too, I’m thinking. That was more Bartholomew’s MO, not full-on demons. Where would they come in?”
“The freight elevators,” Finn said in tandem with Max.
Finn glared at the teenager. “Tell three guards to meet me at the side wall of elevators. Those are the freight ones, right?”
“Yes,” Max said, flinching away when Rourke scowled at him. “Hey, hey, hey, back it down, buddy. I’ve lugged plenty of computer stuff up those elevators. I know the layout.” He turned to Finn and Dana. “It’s an open floor space there. Nothing to hide behind for either party.”
Dana moved over, frowning, and stopped in her tracks. “What are these, Max?” she asked, and Finn stepped in for a closer look as well. The pictures currently flashing up on the screen weren’t randomly scattered photos—there was a pattern to them, a familiarity, which apparently made a more than passing impact on Dana.
Finn moved a step right, but as he did so, he heard it again. A low, guttural, scraping noise, overridden by dozens of feet stomping in unison, the rush and tumble of voices sounding like only one thing.
Demons.
He turned to Dana. “They’re here,” he said.
She grimaced. “How many of them and where?”
Rourke’s earpiece crackled, and he tapped it, instantly wincing at the loud burst of static that hit him. “Report!” he said sternly, and the voices came back clear and steady through the rain of machine noise.
“We have visual,” someone said, and Max looked up, instantly changing the screens over. From lines of text with ancient secrets, he moved to a thumbnail scan of all computer surveillance images—there were more than thirty of them.
Lester apparently didn’t believe in taking chances.
“There they are,” Max said, but the words were weak.
Finn stepped in immediately when he saw what was slinking its way down the corridors. At least thirty demons, armed to the hilt, fresh into a possession and ravening with hunger.
“I’m going to have to take them,” he said to Dana, and she shot up in response.
“Not alone. How many men do we have, Rourke?” she asked.
“Eight total. Six within the building, two guarding the perimeter with on-foot surveillance.”
“Try to reach them if you can—” Dana began.
“We can’t wait for that,” Finn interrupted her, shaking his head. Bartholomew wouldn’t underestimate the humans again. “Rourke, how long have you been working with Lester’s combat unit?”
“Three years,” Rourke said, and Finn took his rifle out of his hands before he could blink, sighting through it.
“Where can we get more of these?” he asked.
“Weaponry cabinets are on each level.” Rourke spoke quickly as he turned, and Finn could already hear the cries of the men on the outermost doors. Lester’s façade was bulletproof glass, but a wall of glass seemed like pale security against a demon.
“We’ve got an eye-witness sighting,” Max called out. “And from the looks of it, a couple of seriously freaked-out security guards.”
“This isn’t your average group of punks,” Finn said. “Their leader will kill his own men if he has to.”
“Bartholomew will be with them?” Dana asked, and Finn nodded.
“Oh, I don’t think he’d miss this.” He tore Rourke’s earpiece-mic unit out and held it up to shout into it. “Aim for their legs, their arms—any extremity. Do not shoot to kill. Do you understand me? Unless—” He shot a look at Rourke. “Are there any more as good as you?”
Rourke frowned, shook his head. “No.”
“Then do not shoot to kill. There’s no point. Wait for us to do that.”
The man on th
e other end of the line bristled. “Who the hell are—”
Rourke pulled the mic out of Finn’s hands. “Lester called. He’s put Finn in interim control of security. Do what he says,” he said. “What’s the status of the intruders?”
“Well, they’re not doing much of anything,” the man said. “They seem to be getting louder, though, their words—I can’t understand a goddamn thing they’re saying.”
Finn nodded. “They’ll keep doing that until they’ve built up enough of a field to crash the glass. Physical bravery is beyond them, but hive mind rules.”
Dana stared at Finn. “What are they here for? We don’t have the full list yet.”
“Apparently, they don’t know that,” Finn said. “You need to stay safe.”
“Bullshit. I’m going with you.” She pulled on her own rifle, flipping off the safety. “Rourke, we need someone to stay with Max.”
“Max is going to be just fine packing up all this prize data and getting the hell out of here,” Max interjected tartly. He pushed a small tech gadget at her. “Put this in your ear. I’ll radio you my location and you can come pick up what’s left of me, if something goes south.”
“On second thought—” Dana pulled her Glock out of her shoulder harness, and handed it to Max, butt out, trading it for the comm unit. “I know you know how to fire one of these things. I’m hoping that we can keep them out of here, but if anything gets too close, blast first and radio us second. You say the word, we’ll come back for you.”
“Roger that,” Max said faintly, looking down at the gun. “You know, on second thought…maybe I’ll call in some backup. I got some guys who owe me…God knows we’ve got enough weapons here to spare.”
“Do that,” Dana said sharply. “But tell them to be careful.”
Over the radio, they heard another scream, and then the sound of crashing glass.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Exeter Global Services
Cleveland, Ohio
9:20 p.m., Dec. 24
Dana, Finn, and Rourke ran through the doors just as fire opened up in the lobby area of Exeter, the level of firepower more than overmatching the guards. Dana watched as two of Lester’s men were blasted completely out of their stations against the far wall, their bulletproof vests buckling but not breaking under the blast of automatic gunfire. The three of them dove for the nearest cubicle walls as the leader of Bartholomew’s attack crew paused and held up a gauntleted fist, an eerie false silence falling upon the room.
Slightly ahead of her and to her right, she could see Rourke. There was something funny about him, like he was lit from within. Not as bright as Finn was, but…something. She wondered if Finn had given him a ward for demons when he’d handed him back his gear.
She sure the hell hoped so.
Dana crawled forward, her gun out, and lifted her head slightly to get a better view of the creatures.
Bartholomew hadn’t been so careful this time, after all. There were easily twenty men, but they were freshly possessed, looking more like the creatures she’d seen on the street than the men in the nightclub. Each human wore a medallion, but their eyes were wild, their bodies shifting and quivering, as if the demon had been shoved into them unawares and was now desperately trying to get out. They fanned out in a slow perimeter sweep of the room, and Dana blinked to see them there, among the tidy cubes that sported pictures of spouses, children, and dogs, castle-of-the-month calendars, and Browns bobbleheads. The men were large, rough looking, and to a one looked like thugs. These men had not been handpicked for anything other than their ability to kill, and it was showing. Their eyes goggled and whirled, even as their focus on the head of their little pack was unwavering.
Now this was a man who had once been intelligent, Dana thought. Eastern European, like most of the rest of them, but his eyes were hard, not wild. He moved easily with the demon inside him, rough and grisly, but cunning. He’d be the one to watch.
She glanced around. Were any of these men actual demons displaying glamour, not Possessed? She would need to learn how to tell them apart eventually. Not today.
“Finn,” the man called out, and Dana was surprised to hear his voice. It didn’t match his body but cut through the heavy silence with elegant superiority. “We know that Morrow has given you a list—at least a partial one. What you don’t know is that he’s dead.”
Dana stiffened, but she couldn’t turn to look at Finn. Dead? But he had his bodyguards with him!
“We don’t wish to harm your woman. At least, no more than you’ve harmed her already. We only want the list of the Children. Ten, a hundred, a thousand, they deserve what we can offer them. A choice of eternal servitude and restriction, or a choice of freedom.”
The demon waited a moment, and when no action was forthcoming, he made a curt motion with one of his hands. Two additional guards were shoved forward out of the mix of Possessed. They had been slashed across the face but were otherwise unharmed. At the leader’s gesture, they were forced up onto a table at the front of the room, in front of the monthly call-center statistics board that Lester had posted for the troops. They stood there, resolute, as the sign blinked through the numbers for calls held, calls dropped, and calls transferred.
“You want to see the start of the human carnage at your hands, Fallen? Or do you want to give me the list and let the Dawn Children choose for themselves?”
Dana could feel Finn near her, her heightened sensitivities reaching out to him. He shifted, and she could picture his face. Agonized over the loss of mortal life, a life they could not get back, while he, immortal, would live on through their suffering. She closed her eyes. No, she thought at him. Don’t do this, don’t listen to the empty promises of one who would take so much, and give back so little.
“As you wish,” the Possessed said, and he dropped his arm. Instantly, the creatures around him opened fire on one of the guards, only one, while the other flinched but remained standing, his brother-in-arms crashing over the table with a sickening crunch, collapsing to the ground. As one, the horde roared with satisfaction at the kill, their mouths gritted into horrible masks, their nostrils flaring. Dana could hear Finn hissing in distress.
“That was not enough to convince you, I see? There are two more like that outside. And I think if we look hard enough, we can find a few more.” Dana couldn’t see what he had done, but a whizzing missile flew by her head, crashing into the pod beside her. Instantly, the tightly knit cluster of computer stations, monitors, printers, and high-tech Wi-Fi routers exploded, throwing her backward into the rubble.
“Dana!” Max hissed in her ear, and she slapped her hand against her temple to shield the noise. As if anyone could hear over the exploding circuitry, a million dollars’ worth of workstations going up in flames around them. “What the fuck is going on out there?”
“Finn!” roared the main demon, and Dana scrambled forward, pulling her gun. The demon now stood on the table with the remaining guard, a man he held up by the collar. Someone had lashed the man’s hands together with computer wire, his feet as well, but his mouth was free. As the smoke cleared around him, the demon chuckled.
“Tell Finn who you are, Mr. Green.”
“Mike Green, security guard, sir,” he said, and Dana closed her eyes. Oh no. This was not a trained professional. This was one of the men the building had hired.
“And how did you come to be involved this evening?”
“I’m on duty, sir. I heard the sound of men running, and I followed. I pulled Christmas Eve so…” He swallowed. “So I could be home with my family on Christmas Day. Tomorrow, sir.”
Dana winced, her throat closing up. If she could get close enough…
“Uh, Dana, you need to know this, and you need to know it now.” It was Max’s voice again, only he sounded deadly calm. “You’ve got a problem out there.”
“We’ve got several of them,” she hissed back. The crackling of a computer monitor beside her covered her talking, as did the man speaki
ng above the din, a knife to his neck drawing blood as the creatures surrounded him. He had a daughter, only two years old. He’d missed Christmas at home the year before because of the job. He just—he just wanted to go home.
Dana drew her arm level, and Max would not shut up. “The kid you have in there with you,” he hissed. “Rourke. You gotta get him out of—”
Then the demon started shouting again.
“He is going to die, Finn, a human! A child of God. And his family will lay his death at your feet, an entire generation marked by your blind faith in those who would see humans as bound as he is, their lives utterly destroyed. A pity,” he said, and he raised his arm, the Possessed around him growling in renewed excitement. “You seem like a good man, Mr. Green,” he said, and his voice was all the more chilling for his cool rationality. “My condolences to your family.”
“No!” Two voices screamed out at the same time, Green’s and a man much closer to Dana, his voice young and strident, his eyes flaring wide with rage. In the space of a second, faster than Dana’s eye could track, Rourke raised his gun and opened fire on the demon on the table. The demon fell back off the table, definitely wounded, while the other Possessed turned in snarling fury, their guns drawing down.
Explosions shattered around her. Across the room, Rourke gave a startled cry.
“Son of a bitch!” Dana gritted out, rolling to the right, Max’s voice pounding into her ears.
“He’s a Dawn Child, Dana,” he shouted. “He’s one of your own. You can’t let him die!”
Dana’s eyes widened in shock as she burst into the cubicle corridor, both hands on her Glock, firing low and hard while running forward. She reached Rourke within the space of two breaths, moving faster than she would have thought possible. With the full impact of her urgency guiding her steps and her mind totally focused, she could see the aura around him burning bright with purpose and fire. Throwing Rourke roughly over her shoulder, she crouched and ran as Finn rose up behind her, laying waste to the first line of demons even as more poured into the room from every doorway, as if a hive of the bastards had opened upon them.