And then she looked up and saw him.
Chapter Forty-Two
Washington DC, USA
Day 37
Calvin was alive?
No, Harrow realised, a moment later. Calvin was quite definitely dead. But somehow he’d managed to cling to the mortal world as a ghost. There was no mistaking that translucent form, or, for that matter, the signs that the other ghosts had taken a bitter revenge upon him for his foolishness. And ghosts were harmless to the living. Very few people without magical senses could even see them.
“Fool,” she said, although she wasn't sure if she was speaking to either Calvin or herself. The ghost could do nothing to her apart from distract her, and it was hard enough keeping so many minds in thrall. “I cannot restore you to life, nor will I. You turned on me.”
Calvin gave her an odd look, as though she’d said something that had hurt his feelings, and vanished. Like most ghosts, his concept of space and time would be even weirder than any human concept, even that of a magician of the first rank. Harrow looked at where he had been briefly and then turned back to her conquest...
The thought struck her a moment later. What was the ghost doing near her? There was no way that Calvin should have wound up attached to her, if only because they weren't blood relatives. Harrow had never had children and she’d killed her family literally thousands of years ago. Everything she knew about ghosts suggested that Calvin should have been haunting his sister, the only one he’d been unwilling to kill, or his parents. She rather doubted that he would have wanted to stay in Arlington. The ghosts there would eventually have ripped him apart.
Closing her eyes, she reached out with her mind, searching for people who didn't belong. It was impossible to spread a completely secure ward out over a city the size of New York, but she had put up some basic early-warning spells. And they hadn't been triggered...of course; the locals had a Hunter and several magicians of their own...and they even had Calvin the ghost to advise them. They’d literally ghosted through her warning network.
In her prime, she would have turned them into toads and squashed them like bugs, but she didn't have the power to spare, not now. Instead, she started to reach out to the mobs. It was time they went to war on behalf of their mistress...and if some of them died during the fighting, it would ease the burden on her mind.
***
“Calvin says that she saw him,” Mindy said. “And that she’s searching for us.”
Matt swallowed a vile curse, reminding himself that Mindy was only eight years old. “I think we’d better run,” he said, firmly. The howling was growing louder – and although it sounded as if it came from animal throats, he suspected that it was the noise of the human mob. “Now.”
“I think it may be too late,” Joe Buckley said. The werewolf sniffed the air. “There’s a mob coming up right behind us.”
Matt keyed his radio as they started to run, hoping that it would work despite the interference. “Caitlyn, the target is on top of the Empire State Building,” he said. “Can you deal with her?”
There was a burst of static, followed by a brief acknowledgement. “Understood,” Caitlyn said. “The Predator is inbound now.”
Matt glanced over at Mindy and then nodded to the werewolf. “Carry her,” he ordered. “And prepare to take her away from the rest of us if the shit hits the fan.”
Buckley scowled as he started to shift to wolf-form. “You think it hasn't already?”
***
The Predator had been assigned to the CIA for deployment against terrorist leaders hiding in countries that were, at least diplomatically, friendly to the United States. It had been pulled back to the US for refitting two weeks before the first werewolf had been sighted in New York City, just in time to be borrowed by the Mage Force and outfitted with one of the latest devices that Jorlem and his team had invented.
Controlled from the FOB, the Predator swept in from the north, heading over Manhattan as silently as a ghost. The whole system was intended to prevent terrorists from having any idea that it was even there, at least not before the first Hellfire missile was launched at its target, by which time it should be too late. A primitive like Harrow shouldn’t even know to look for it, although she had brought down other aircraft in her takeover of New York City. And even if she did, she would have problems knocking it out of the sky. The main device mounted on the Predator was the latest model of the Niven’s Wheel.
“I think I have her,” the operator muttered to Caitlyn, as she peered over his shoulder. “There's a shitload of distortion around the Empire State, but our sensors think that there’s definitely at least one human life form on top of the building.”
Caitlyn smiled. Maybe it would be that easy, after all. “Take her,” she ordered. “Now.”
The Predator launched two Hellfire missiles in rapid succession, both aimed directly at Harrow. Moments later, the rooftop was wrapped in a brilliant ball of fire.
***
The attack came completely out of nowhere. Harrow was knocked back to the rooftop as the missiles slammed against her wards, detonating against them with staggering force. Only centuries of experience kept them in place; her knowledge of modern weaponry, purely theoretical, hadn't really encompassed what modern weapons were. Angrily, she reached out with her mind, intent on finding the mystery aircraft, only to draw a blank. There was a moving field of very low mana high overhead, heading away from her position. The aircraft had to be hidden inside it.
How was that even possible? Harrow was trying to hold most of the city’s population in thrall and the mana field hadn't dropped that far. But the moving patch of mana-less air high overhead suggested that the modern world had managed to find a way to limit the amount of mana in a given area. In theory, Harrow could see how they’d managed it, but she’d never seen anything like it. Few magicians would risk draining themselves completely of mana...
But the modern world had learned, over painful centuries, how to live without magic, without mana. Their world operated under an entirely different system than her own. Just as they – and Calvin – had had new ways of looking at mana, they might not feel the urge to keep magic. What if they managed to shut it down completely?
Desperately, Harrow reached out with her magic, heedless of the expense, and picked up a number of cars, pitching them through the air at the retreating aircraft. An object in motion would stay in motion even if the spell holding it up collapsed, at least until gravity reasserted itself. At least she could try to take the aircraft down before it returned...but how many more were there? The modern world had a system for industrial production that far exceeded anything she’d seen in the past. They didn't need trained sorcerers, or craftsmen, to produce their weapons. And they had thousands of concepts they’d imagined over the years to draw on...
It crossed her mind that she should teleport out, abandoning New York, and find somewhere new to serve as a base. She could spend years, if necessary, building up her knowledge of the modern world...but she wouldn't have that time. The modern world would crack the secrets of magic, one by one, and combine them with their technology. And then they’d find her and...
Her immortality was impossible to remove, but it depended upon mana. If there was no mana, her life would end.
And if she lost this battle, everything would be over.
***
“I think she survived,” Caitlyn’s voice said, through Matt’s earpiece. “She’s throwing cars after the Predator.”
Matt shook his head in disbelief. The briefings had claimed that the latest model of Hellfire missiles could take out an entire terrorist complex with a single shot, but Harrow did have wards and at least some understanding of the modern world. Even if she didn't really understand how a missile worked, she could certainly use her magic to shield herself.
“Grief,” he said, as the first of the mobs came into view. “I think we could be in trouble.”
The mob came after them like a swarm of zombies, moving at terri
fying speed rather than shambling along. They moved as if they were animated by a single mind, with more unity than Matt would have expected, but perhaps that wasn't too surprising. Men who looked to be bankers from Wall Street rubbed shoulders with gangbangers and prostitutes, many with bloodstained hands. Some were wearing their nightclothes, as if they hadn't bothered to get dressed before joining the mob, others were completely naked. They all had the same expression, a hungry fury that chilled Matt to the bone. It was easy to believe that Harrow was looking out through their eyes, eager for blood.
“Deploy the gas grenades,” Lesage ordered. The SEALs wanted to try to stop the mob without bloodshed, but Matt knew that might not be possible. Even a normal mob, without supernatural influence, would be far more resistant to pain than a single person. Harrow would drive her slaves onwards until they were dead, or until there was no longer any threat to her supremacy. “And then...”
“Too late,” Golem said. Matt looked up. Another mob was running out of a side street, heading towards them with deadly intent. They were caught between two fires. The SEALs might have been able to escape by scrambling up the walls – Matt had heard enough about what they went through during training to believe they could climb up anything – but he knew that Misty and Mindy couldn't escape that way. “We may need to use deadly force.”
Matt glanced back. The gas grenades had sent a number of mob members staggering to the ground in pain – the gas affected their eyes and noses as well as their throats – but the remainder had just trampled on them as they'd just kept coming. It was a shame that there was no such thing as knock-out gas, like they showed in bad TV cop shows. Apparently, the military was trying to invent one, but so far without success.
Misty lifted a hand, casting a spell. Several members of the oncoming mob stumbled to the ground, fast asleep, but the remainder kept coming. “It didn't work,” she said. Matt could hear the fear in her voice. “She’s just got them under too firm control.”
“Yes,” Golem said. “There is no other choice.”
He ran forward at terrifying speed, right towards the onrushing mob. Matt watched in disbelief, then horror, as he tore through them with his arms, every blow far stronger than anything a mere human would be able to throw. Heads shattered, bodies were torn in two and blood flew everywhere. The mob just kept swarming around him, punching and kicking at his clay skin, until they were all dead. Golem pulled himself out of the shattered mass of bodies and looked around him without any visible emotion. Matt felt his rifle twitching in his hand, almost as it wanted to shoot Golem down. He wasn't human and that made him a supernatural threat.
“You...” Surprisingly, it was Joe Buckley who spoke first, shifting partway into human form. “What have you done?”
“There was no choice,” Golem said, flatly. Matt had heard plenty of justifications in his time, mostly from men who were trying to forgive themselves for doing something unforgivable, but this was different. Golem was speaking the plain and simple truth, as he saw it. He didn't even seem to care that he'd just killed hundreds of humans. “Now, run!”
Matt swallowed a curse, caught hold of Misty’s arm and led her through the slippery mass of bodies. They were going to have to do something about Golem, sooner or later, he told himself. He wasn't driven by human impulses and he had his own duty, the same duty that had thrust him after Calvin the moment the black magician had shown himself. But if he'd succeeded in killing Calvin, New York would never have been brought to the very edge of destruction.
“There are three more mobs converging on your position,” Caitlyn’s voice said. She sounded reassuringly professional, even though the UAV sensors would have picked up at least something of what had just happened. Or perhaps she thought it was better to let Golem take the lead right now and try to destroy him later. Who knew what would happen if he were placed in a cell next to a working Niven’s Wheel? “The SEALs are going to do what they can to block them.”
“They can’t block them,” Matt said, bitterly. Under normal circumstances, a single sniper could hold up an enemy army for hours, but Harrow’s thralls would just keep going and going until they were all destroyed, or their targets were killed. Golem might have been right, he admitted, even though he didn’t want to admit it. Once they started slaughtering New York’s population, why did they bother to try to prevent the use of a nuclear warhead?
“The army has MRLS systems in position to bombard the city,” Caitlyn said, after a moment. “They could start firing on the mobs.”
Matt blanched. Had they really run out of other options?
“At this rate, we’re going to destroy New York in order to save it,” he said, softly. And how could he condemn Golem if he agreed to have rockets fired into the city? But there was no other choice. “Do it.”
“Understood,” Caitlyn said. “We also have another Predator inbound.”
“Order it to engage the mob,” Matt ordered, feeling a part of himself die. Perhaps it would be better to end it all, afterwards. He snorted, rather sardonically. Harrow would probably kill him and render the whole problem moot. “And then try to keep it away from Harrow. We’re going to need it providing top cover.”
They ran past the New York Public Library, now seemingly closed and locked, and then up towards the CUNY Graduate Centre. Bodies were strewn everywhere, as if they’d been taken apart by the mob or simply died of hunger or the effects of mental control. One of the logistics officers who’d been trying to help deal with the crisis had pointed out that feeding New York’s inhabitants wasn't an easy job at the best of times – and, right now, nothing was coming into the city. He'd even suggested that they would wait for Harrow’s thralls to starve, but Caitlyn had overruled him. Given a few days to make sacrifices and build up her mana, Harrow might just be completely unstoppable. Besides, using a nuke would be kinder.
The Empire State Building rose up in front of them as they reached 5th Ave; as always, it took Matt’s breath away. Harrow had deployed another of her mobs around the building, blocking access, just before the latest spread of rockets came howling into the city. One set were aimed directly at Harrow herself – Matt saw them explode against her wards – while the other set came down among the mob. Those few who survived were grievously wounded, unable to interfere further.
“Start setting up the devices,” Golem ordered, as he stared up at the ball of light surrounding the building’s famous roof. Harrow was taking no chances with her own safety, although in her place Matt would simply have cut and run. The independent state of New York was doomed by simple geographical fact. “I have to get up there to distract her.”
Matt looked over at him. “Are you sure you can...?”
“I have no choice,” Golem said. “Just have everything ready down here.”
Matt nodded, pulling his rucksack off his shoulders and then unpacking the first of the Niven’s Wheels. They all carried two of them, broken down for easy transport; setting them all up took less than five minutes. The SEALs took up guarding positions as explosions ran through the city, with missiles and cannon shells being aimed at the mobs. But Harrow had millions of people in her thrall...whatever else happened, New York was never going to be the same again. It was quite possible that the injured – or the relatives of the dead – would try to sue the army for killing them.
A brilliant flash of lightning crackled down from the rooftop, lancing out towards Misty, who deflected it with an effort. It was followed rapidly by a second burst, and then a third, seemingly aimed at random. Joe Buckley howled as a flicker of lightning set fire to his fur, pushing his werewolf regenerative powers to the limit. Mindy lifted her hand and shot a burst of orange-red light back towards Harrow. It didn't seem to have any effect.
“I have to go now,” Golem said. His red eyes looked, just for a second, alarmingly human, almost fearful. He had to know that Harrow might well be able to overcome his protections and destroy him. “Good luck.”
He bent down and then launched himself i
nto the air, jumping right up towards the rooftop. Matt watched him go, shaking his head in disbelief, and then looked at the wheels. One by one, they were coming to life, draining all the local mana in the area. They’d just have to hope that Golem could keep Harrow busy long enough to build up an area where magic would be impossible, where it would even be leeched out of her body. And if she realised the trap and tried to escape...she might well manage to get out of range of the nuclear blast, leaving a devastated New York behind.
Matt pushed the thought aside. Failure was not an option.
Chapter Forty-Three
New York, USA
Day 37
Golem had no time for doubts as he slammed into Harrow’s outermost wards. Unsurprisingly, she’d keyed them to resist modern weaponry, deflecting bullets and detonating missiles before they could reach her. They weren’t designed to cope with a Homunculi who had had all kinds of powerful protections woven through his clay body, or the ability to use magic himself. The wards cracked around him and he tumbled onto the rooftop and pulled himself to his feet, facing Harrow.
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