Cold Spectrum

by Craig Schaefer

The airboats circled, both of them trying to get alongside us for a clean shot. We swung around, leaving a perfect opening as Aselia pointed us to the oaks. Digging deep, feeling my stomach clench into knots and a wave of heat washing over me, I conjured up another water wall. This one smaller than the last, crashing down twice as soon, my strength running out.

  I shot a look to my left. A man stood on the prow of the second boat, bringing up the silhouette of a long-barreled rifle, locking us in the glint of a night-vision scope. Then a small matte-black .32 in April’s clenched hands spat fire, three quick rounds, and the rifleman tumbled from the boat and splashed down into the brine.

  Jessie looked at her, wide-eyed. “You carry a hold-out piece? Since when?”

  “Since always.” April glanced at her. “Why don’t you? I raised you better than that.”

  We hit the gap between the oaks, the boat bouncing over brambles and tangled debris. Aselia jerked hard on the rudder and steered us through the shallows as more shots pinged off the fan at her back. Two more fast, tight turns, and the gunfire stopped, but I could still hear the whine of distant engines on our tail.

  “This patch of the bayou’s like a maze,” Aselia called out. “I know it like the back of my hand. Doubt they do. You got an exit strategy?”

  “We’ve got an SUV parked back in town, at Beau’s place.”

  “Beau.” Aselia shook her head. “Goddamn it. I liked Beau. He brought me beer sometimes. If your ride’s still there, it’s compromised, which means your exit strategy is shit. We’ll use mine instead.”

  Kevin, clinging to the floor and looking nauseous, shot Jessie a look. “And you wanted me to leave my stuff in the car.”

  The pursuing engines faded into the distance. The sounds of the sultry night swept back in, the hoots of night birds ringing out over the thrum of our fan. Aselia slowed the boat, easing through tight bends in the tangled oaks. A mosquito landed on my cheek, drawn by the smell of sweat, and I brushed it away.

  “Doubt you did all this out of the goodness of your heart,” Aselia told me, “but I’m not ungrateful. Ready to hear that long story now.”

  I didn’t see any reason not to lay everything on the line.

  “We’re operatives for Vigilant Lock,” I told her. “It’s a black-ops program designed to hunt and eliminate occult threats to the United States.”

  Aselia wore a poker face. She looked my way, nodding slow. “Go on.”

  “We crossed Douglas Bredford’s path on an unrelated investigation. He pointed us toward an old and buried operation. Cold Spectrum. He was killed not long after that, but he left a trail of clues—photographs, a USB stick filled with old files—just enough to guide us.”

  “And what do you know,” she asked me, “about Cold Spectrum?”

  “We know that the project’s members were targeted for assassination by our own government. That a clandestine op called Glass Predator, intended for eliminating domestic terrorists, was called in to make the kill. Before he took over Vigilant, a man named Linder—our boss—was the guiding hand behind Glass Predator. All three of these programs are . . . connected, somehow, and Linder is the common thread.”

  “That he is,” Aselia said, almost too low to hear.

  “You know him?”

  “I do,” she said. “Not sure you do, though. Hold on—we’re almost clear. I want us off the ground and far away from here as fast as humanly possible. You and me, we’ve got a lot to talk about.”

  THIRTEEN

  We put in at an empty dock somewhere north of the city. The prow of the airboat bumped a plastic buoy. Aselia was the first one out, jumping up onto the warped wooden planks.

  “Don’t bother tying her off. We’re not coming back.” She waved us along. “C’mon, I don’t know how much of a lead we’ve got. Let’s move.”

  We hustled along a grassy embankment and across a narrow strip of black tarmac. Up ahead, electric lights burned inside a small hangar, the curving arch of the roof just tall and wide enough for a single twin-prop plane. A man in greasy overalls was up on a stepladder and halfway inside the open canopy of the Cessna’s engine, tools scattered around his feet.

  “Marco!” Aselia shouted. “Marco, tell me she can fly. Tell me you fixed the intake manifold.”

  The man looked over at her and shrugged. He had the docile eyes of a cow and a big, wide mouth.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s okay. Just fiddlin’.”

  “No fiddling. Seal her up. That thing I said might happen someday? It just happened.”

  Marco slammed the canopy and jumped down from the ladder.

  “Okay,” he said, placating. “It’s okay.”

  Kevin looked around the cluttered hangar and out to the sparse landing strip.

  “Wait a second,” he said. “Small plane, unlisted runway in the middle of nowhere. Are . . . are you a smuggler?”

  Aselia pursed her lips. “I’m an occasional purveyor of herbal medicinal remedies.”

  “You’re a weed smuggler.”

  “Everybody’s gotta pay the bills,” she said. “Why are you here, anyway? Are you even old enough to shave?”

  “I pulled him out of witness protection,” Jessie told her. “Needed a hacker.”

  Aselia ran along the side of the Cessna, flung open the side door, and pulled down the boarding steps. She paused, looking back at Jessie.

  “Yeah,” Aselia said. “We probably are going to get along just fine. Okay, everybody on board. Marco, go to our safe house and stay there. I’ll contact you at the dead drop in Baton Rouge once I’m clear.”

  “Okay, okay,” he said, walking backward with his open palms raised.

  I climbed into the back of the plane, sitting down just as the aftermath hit me. My guts cramping up, burning like someone shoved a branding iron into my belly. As April strapped in, Kevin folding her chair and stowing it with the luggage, her brow furrowed.

  “You weren’t hit, were you?”

  I shook my head. “No, it’s this . . . all that energy I was throwing around, keeping Mikki off us. It’s the family curse. The more power I pull, the more I pay for it after. It’ll pass in about fifteen minutes. I’m good.”

  I wasn’t good. When I’d used my magic in Atlantic City, it had been effortless. Flowing like water from an open tap, clear and easy and not even a twinge when I was done. This time was a little harder—and as I slowly recovered, a too-familiar hunger started creeping in around the edges. The rush of power I’d stolen from Romeo’s kiss was wearing off.

  Aselia eyed her instruments and flipped rocker switches on the console, running through a preflight checklist at top speed. Jessie took the copilot seat, strapping in beside her.

  “We’re going to New Orleans,” Aselia said. “We’ll put in at a private airport—the owner goes deaf and blind if you kick him twenty bucks—and head for this place in the French Quarter. Restaurant with a sideline in moving contraband. They know me there. More important, they won’t sell me out. Then we can plan our next move, which I imagine is gonna involve a lot of guns.”

  “Tell me you’re single,” Jessie said.

  “Sorry, wrong team.”

  “It’s true what they say,” Jessie sighed. “All the good ones are straight or married.”

  Aselia jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “I figured you were with her.”

  “Harmony? Oh, no, she’s straight, too.”

  Aselia paused. She turned in her seat, looking me up and down, taking in my suit and tie.

  “Dressed like that,” she said.

  Jessie nodded, wide-eyed. “I know, right?”

  The engine purred like a tiger, and the propellers began to spin. We rolled out of the hangar, taking a sharp left turn to line up with the runway, landing gear rumbling as we poured on the speed. Then we were airborne, lifting up into the starry night sky. Our hunters behind us and the answers we’d been looking for dead ahead. I thought I was ready to uncover the truth.

  I wasn’t. But that�
�s the thing about buried secrets: when they emerge, you have to face them. Ready or not.

  Raimond’s was on Bienville, just off Bourbon Street. A touch of the old world, with white wood slats, ornate black ironwork, and windows tinted absinthe green. A black-tied maître d’ swooped in and kissed Aselia on both cheeks. They spoke in soft Creole, the man’s expression turning grave as he listened. He nodded and ushered us across the candlelit dining room, past tables draped in emerald cloth, and up a short hallway.

  Beyond a locked door, a private dining room awaited. A single large table, big enough for a dozen people, beneath a glass chandelier. The deep-green walls, the same shade as the tablecloth, were festooned with old sepia-toned portraits of grave men in military uniforms. A few had names scribbled in faded margins, but I didn’t recognize them.

  “You’ll be safe here,” he said in English. “Have you eaten?”

  “Best food in the city,” Aselia told us, then looked to the maître d’. “Besides, no telling when we’re gonna get another solid meal. Let’s start with the huitres thermidor, escargots à la Bordelaise, and the écrevisses cardinal.”

  He backed out of the room, shutting the door behind him. We took our seats at the table.

  “We came a long way to find you,” I told Aselia.

  “I wasn’t aiming to be found. I assume you know about the RedEye patch, right? When the kill order went out, Douglas couldn’t save us all. He had to pick. Who would live, who would die.”

  “I think it broke him,” I said. “When we met him in Michigan . . . he wasn’t in good shape.”

  “That wasn’t what broke him. It was just the cherry on top. Anyway, he picked the people he thought would have the best chance of survival. Houston was obvious: with that precognition trick of his, he could get out of almost anything. Always said nobody could take him down unless they boxed him in.” Aselia sighed, her gaze going distant. “I guess they boxed him in, huh?”

  “There wasn’t any way out. He told us that right before he told us where to find you. I’m sorry.”

  “As for me,” Aselia said, “I was Cold Spectrum’s transportation and logistics expert. Air, water, land—I could move men and material in and out of hot spots all over the nation. Stealth mode. When it came to getting off the grid and digging in deep, nobody did it better than me. So Douglas figured I’d have a shot. I got my shot, and my friends, my teammates, people I trusted my life to . . . they didn’t. RedEye tracked them, Glass Predator hunted them, and one by one they started filling graveyards.”

  She fell silent as the door opened. A pair of waiters swooped in with glasses, spreading them around the table, uncorking bottles.

  “A 2013 Domaine la Chapelle,” one told Aselia. “Compliments of the house.”

  Dollops of chardonnay, like liquid sunlight, splashed into the crystal glasses. Aselia raised hers, sniffed, took a sip, and nodded her approval. When the waiters got to Kevin’s glass, he glanced left and right at April and me.

  “So . . . nobody’s stopping them? You’re actually letting me have a glass of wine?”

  Deep in thought, her fingers steepled and her glass untouched, April didn’t reply. I didn’t stop him, either. Right now, underage-drinking laws seemed like the furthest from anything I cared about. Maybe I just thought we were all about to need a drink.

  The waiters left us. The door clicked shut.

  “We know Linder was involved with Glass Predator,” I said. “Was it him? Did he give the kill order?”

  Aselia shrugged. “Maybe? Maybe not. He probably made the call, but not the actual decision. Linder’s a middleman. That’s his niche, the nice little spot he’s carved out in the shadows of Washington, DC. He gets his hands dirty so other men—wealthier, more powerful ones—don’t have to. We always reported directly to him. Never got a line on the people above him.”

  “Wait,” Jessie said. “He was also part of Cold Spectrum? Linder was involved in all three operations?”

  Aselia raised her glass. The wine glimmered in the candlelight.

  “You’re asking the wrong question,” she said.

  “Try this one, then,” I told her. “Aselia, what was Cold Spectrum?”

  She gave me a cold and ugly smirk.

  “Cold Spectrum,” she said, “was a black-ops program designed to hunt and eliminate occult threats to the United States.”

  I shook my head, hearing my own words from the airboat parroted back at me.

  “Is this a joke? Aselia, that’s . . . that’s us. That’s Vigilant Lock.”

  “Sure is.”

  She laid her palms flat on the table.

  “You’re just the latest flavor,” she told us. “Vigilant Lock is Cold Spectrum. You’ve been chasing your own shadows since day one. Same covert program, same people in charge, with a shiny new coat of paint. And now you’re learning what happens to Linder’s people when they get too close to the truth: the exact same thing that happened to us.”

  FOURTEEN

  A chill descended upon the room, the icy hand of an autumn midnight. The electric chandelier couldn’t chase it away. Neither could the wine, as I tossed back a swig and swallowed hard. No warmth in the bottle, just more confusion.

  “We weren’t the first, either,” Aselia said. “I did as much digging as I had time for, when the shit hit the fan. Far as I can tell, the original version of our little black-ops adventure started in the late 1960s. Lyndon B. Johnson was the first and last president to be kept in the loop. The original team lasted almost a decade on the job, with, of course, regular turnover in staff. Then the program was abruptly mothballed.”

  “What happened to the team?” Kevin asked.

  Aselia made a gun with her fingers and pressed them to the side of her head. She let out a puff of breath as she pulled the imaginary trigger.

  “There are two ways out of this life,” she told us. “You die fighting the monsters, or you get to the little rotten nugget of truth at the heart of this whole mess. How clued in are you people? What do you know about the infernal courts?”

  I thought back to our first meeting with Fontaine, in a bustling Michigan diner. How he’d laid out the map of the universe over a plate of pancakes he couldn’t eat.

  “At some point, a long time ago,” I said, “there was a civil war in hell. After the dust cleared, the courts rose up. Each one has a prince and a hound—their right-hand agent on Earth. And, if everything we’ve been told is true, they’ve laid claim to territory here.”

  Aselia swirled her wineglass. “Every inch. From the Court of Jade Tears on the West Coast to the Court of Windswept Razors on Wall Street. Overseas, too. Every spot of dirt on the globe and most of the water.”

  “They’re not united, though,” Jessie said. “They just don’t fight openly, and they’ve got rules they pretend to follow. What did Fontaine call it, Harmony? The Cold Peace?”

  “Cold war, more like it,” Aselia said. “Demons are almost as good as politicians when it comes to twisting words around. And, yeah, the courts hate each other, but full-on hostility would cause a dog pile. One court steps up, commits their troops to a battle, and suddenly five others would jump in and carve them up like a Thanksgiving turkey.”

  I reached for the bottle and poured myself another splash of wine. “So they scheme around. Stab each other in the backs, but not in a way that can be traced back to the source. It’s just like Earth’s Cold War, but between a dozen small nations who all hate each other instead of a pair of superpowers.”

  “We were on a mission in Utah when everything went sideways,” Aselia said. “Our last mission. Linder called our target: a cult of cambion, demon half bloods, holing up in this desolate farmhouse. They were terrorists, he told us. Getting ready to launch a major attack on the East Coast. We found the cult, we found the explosives, we found the evidence. Mission successful. But Douglas, he smelled a rat. And he kept digging.”

  I remembered Bredford’s drunken confession, his words to the director of RedEye.
<
br />   “The last shot at the last battle,” I said, my voice low as I echoed them out loud. “Douglas said . . . humanity lost.”

  Aselia’s gaze went distant. Her hand tightened around the stem of her glass, turning her knuckles white.

  “Sure did,” she said. “See, we went down the rabbit hole. And what we found at the bottom was the truth. We found out who we were really working for.”

  An icy fingertip ran down my spine.

  “Tell us,” I said.

  “The courts don’t fight head-on, but they sure do love using proxies. Proxies and patsies.”

  Aselia sat back in her chair. Looking across the table, taking us all in one by one before looking me in the eye.

  “Cold Spectrum, Vigilant Lock, every incarnation of the program, no matter what name they slap on it . . . it was created and sponsored by the infernal courts. There is no human resistance. There never was. You aren’t fighting the powers of hell, Harmony. You work for them.”

  “That’s not—” Kevin said, a stammer in his voice. “That’s not true. That can’t be true.”

  “This is an east side–west side feud,” Aselia said. “The courts clustered along the East Coast are smaller, weaker than the heavy hitters out west. So they put their heads together and hatched a plan. A team of humans who believe they’re fighting to protect humanity from the things that go bump in the night. And technically that’s true. Except what they’re really hunting is anyone the eastern coalition wants taken out. And when they do, well . . . who’s to blame? Just some meddling humans. Hands clean. Every once in a while—like we did back then, like you are now—somebody figures out the game. So they scrub the program, sanction the operatives, and start it up all over again under a new name.”

  “She’s making this up.” Kevin looked to April, desperate now. “She is, isn’t she?”

  April’s face was carved from stone. She sat perfectly still and silent.

  Aselia looked him over. “Tell me something: How often have you been sent after a demon on the East Coast? Ever? Even once?”