“Nah, but we need a ride.” I found the number for a taxicab on my phone.
Ab had left his hammer back in San Diego and brought only a pair of heavy dragon-skin gloves. I’d brought my swords and another SIG Sauer. Ab’s gloves and everything except my gun were in a bag he carried easily over one shoulder. I was dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and a light jacket, while Ab wore fatigue-style pants and a performance-type long-sleeved shirt with a gun manufacturer’s logo on it. At size 4XL, it barely contained his biceps and chest. It was the closest he could probably come to blending in with the mundane world.
It took about thirty minutes for the cab to arrive. Meanwhile, we stayed on the bank of the river to avoid drawing attention to ourselves. Once the cabbie called to tell us he’d arrived, we crossed the sandbar and walked up the soggy riverbank and strolled straight across to the cul-de-sac where the cab waited. Nothing special—just a mythical Greek king from the Trojan War and a seven-foot-tall albino giant strolling out of the trees.
The tiny Vietnamese cabbie nearly fainted when he saw Ab. I had to sit in front because Ab barely fit sitting up in the back. During the entire half-hour drive, the cabbie kept taking glimpses of Ab in the rearview mirror. I had to work at keeping myself from laughing. I gave the driver a hefty tip when we pulled up in front of the house. He muttered something about Ab’s size before he took off, spraying us with loose gravel. So much for Southern hospitality.
The house we stood in front of was beautiful and brand-new, a typical bayou waterfront home built up on wooden piers some fifteen feet off the ground in case of flooding. The house itself was a plain two-story design, painted pale yellow, with a giant wooden staircase leading up from the driveway to a porch that surrounded the main floor of the house. The front entrance sat at the top of the staircase in the center of the façade—ornate leaded glass and dark wooden French doors. Under the house sat a giant custom truck with dual back tires for increased towing capabilities, a bass boat, and a BMW. From the driveway, I could see there was someone out on a pier behind the house.
“Stay here till I call for you, okay? I don’t want to scare the crap outta anybody yet. But keep your eyes open. If you see anything suspicious, do what you gotta do.” I walked toward the pier.
“Can I help you, mister?” said a voice from above and behind me. The heavy southern drawl was unmistakable.
“I’m not sure. But could that southern accent get any thicker, Frigate?”
“Demo?” came the puzzled reply.
My nickname in the Teams was Demo because of my predilection for destroying things. Apparently, my skill set was fairly focused.
“Nice to see you again, Kyle,” I said, turning toward the house with my hands on my hips.
“Holy crap, Chief—it is you, ain’t it! I haven’t seen or heard from you since that mess in Africa a few years back.” He walked down the staircase to ground level.
I hadn’t seen Kyle “Frigate” Sellers in four years. He still appeared young for his age, but his dirty-blond hair was longer than before and kind of frizzy, making him look like Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein. His arms, shoulders, and chest were still muscular enough under his shirt, though he was somewhat leaner than I remembered. His lithe build emphasized the fact that he was at least four inches shorter than me.
When we’d first met about ten years before, he was significantly younger than I was supposed to be, a young pup just out of the Green Course and fresh from the Marine Scout Sniper School, where he’d graduated at the top of his class. He served six years in the SEAL Team Development Group as a sniper before quitting. His first two years were in my platoon, and I was his chief petty officer. I gave him his nickname because frigate birds had the uncanny ability to show up out of nowhere and pick off baitfish at the water’s surface. They sat sometimes as high as a mile up, riding the jet stream, watching for prey. When they spotted it, there was no warning and no escape. Frigate was like that with a rifle.
“Yeah, it’s been a few years. I live in San Diego now. I take people out fishing.”
“No shit?” He eyed me skeptically.
Once he’d made it down the steps, he approached me and offered me his hand, which I took.
“If you take people fishin’ in San Diego,” he asked with a curious gaze on his weathered face, “then why you show up here? And carryin’, no less?”
I gotta get a better tailor. Frigate always did have good eyes, and like most snipers, he saw everything from a tactical point of view. He never beat around the bush, and he never took his eyes off me.
“I’ll be straight with you,” I said. “I need your help. Weird crap like back in Africa, only weirder.”
“Kurt,” he called past me to the kid on the dock, “why don’t you go up and help your mom for a minute.” His voice was serious and his thick accent gone. The smile on his face was forced.
The kid’s shoulders sagged, followed by his head, and he began mumbling. Frigate mussed up his hair as he walked past, and I could see the affection and pride take over Frigate’s face as he did so. Suddenly, I couldn’t help thinking that maybe it was a mistake to come here.
“Kid’s your spitting image, only younger,” I said, grinning.
Frigate just gave me a sideways glance as he watched to make sure his son was out of earshot. His brow furrowed deeply as his eyes narrowed, and his lips formed a tight line as if he were trying to determine whether I was serious. “How long’s it been?”
“A few years—2008, I think. Look, I need to talk with you for a few minutes. Preferably not someplace in the open,” I said, pointing toward the house.
“Come on up to my office,” he said, and I followed him back toward the house. “Why don’t you invite your big friend there, too, before he scares somebody.” He pointed nonchalantly toward the street out front where I’d told Ab to wait for me.
I didn’t even realize he’d noticed Ab, but I should have known. It made me smile. I whistled to get Ab’s attention and then waved him over. He gave me a confused frown and then started walking toward us.
Once on the porch, Frigate and I continued around to a side door that led into a small office filled with papers, filing cabinets, bookshelves, and a desk with two computers. The place was a mess. On top of one bookshelf were a revolver and six silver bullets, sitting on a book about lycanthropy. On the wall above it, under a mounted striped bass, was a photograph of a half-dozen guys out at a bar. Other than the haircuts on a couple of them, you probably wouldn’t guess it was from our days in the Teams, taken just before I retired. Frigate and I were the only two in the picture still alive. The other four died in Afghanistan the next week. I’d pulled Frigate and our lieutenant, Matt Kane, out of a two-day-long firefight and carried them both for nearly twenty miles. The lieutenant didn’t make it.
Seeing the image brought back memories of all the comrades-in-arms I’d watched die over the centuries—good men, just like Kane and countless others, dead at the hands of other men for reasons we never questioned. I didn’t even want to think about the friends I’d lost in wars against Parans they weren’t even aware they were fighting.
I missed the SEALs, as well as the other military units I’d been attached to over the centuries—not the mindless bureaucracy but the interaction, teamwork, loyalty, and connection to others with a similar drive and mindset. While serving as a soldier was the closest I felt to belonging to the human world, it was always bittersweet because I could never serve more than a few years at a time before my agelessness raised suspicions. That was probably why I got along so well with Duma and Abraxos. While they weren’t human, at least they understood what it was like to live in my world.
I pointed at the photo, chuffed, and shook my head. “Seems like a thousand years ago.”
He didn’t respond. Instead, he just sat down heavily in an old wooden office chair and leaned b
ack with his hands behind his head, watching me. The chair squeaked horribly.
“So… looks like you’re a building contractor now,” I said, hoping for some sort of response this time.
“Yeah, since I quit a few years back. Took over my daddy’s business. You wanted to talk—about weird shit, I believe?”
Outside I could hear Ab clumping up the wooden staircase to the porch. I knew he was doing it on purpose. Big though he was, he could have walked across bubble wrap without making a sound.
I took a deep breath and let it out. “I need your help. I’m not sure how to explain this, but it’s combat related and has nothing to do with any standing military you know anything about. It’s… complicated.”
“Chief, you aren’t just beatin’ around the bush—you’re swingin’ around some trees along the way.”
“Look, I don’t know any way to say this without you thinking I’m crazy, so…” I walked back out the door to check on Ab, who was now just a few steps away. I returned inside, and Frigate raised his eyebrows in anticipation. The chair continued to make its annoying squeak as he rocked slightly. “You remember back in Africa, that creature that had you guys pinned down for days until I showed up? It wasn’t a genetic experiment or a freaked-out rhino; it was a chipekwe, and I killed it and the witchdoctor that controlled it.”
I could tell by the sudden eclipse of daylight that Ab was at the door. “You remember my friend Ab?” I asked, gesturing at him. “He and his brother were helping me when we ran into you and that SBS squad. Ab and his brother are not what you’d call ‘human.’”
Ab had to duck to get in through the door. He just grimaced and waved, and though I wouldn’t have thought it possible, Frigate’s eyebrows managed to climb even higher as his eyes got wider.
“He’s the last of a race of beings called Peris, and he’s one of many kinds of fairies that exist in our world. Wizards and witches exist. So do dragons and other so-called monsters.”
Frigate swallowed hard and then shook his head slightly. I could tell I was losing him.
“Chief, you sure you’re okay?” Frigate asked. “I mean, your friend is big and kinda odd-lookin’, but I seen a few Marines that looked like him…” He got up and started to move uncomfortably around the small room, but there was no way out except through Ab. “And we all agreed that big creature was just some kinda rabid hippo or something,” he said, rubbing at his forehead.
“My real name is Diomedes, son of Tydeus of Calydon. I fought alongside Achilles and Ulysses during the Trojan War. I’m thirty-two hundred years old, and I’m known as a Guardian, and I work for a being you’d know best as Athena, Goddess of Wisdom and Warfare. It’s my job to protect human life from all nonhuman threats.”
Maybe dumping all this information on him wasn’t the best strategy, but it felt cathartic to tell someone who I really was. I would have kept going, too, but I could see Frigate eyeing the windows, wondering if it was worth the jump. I could see it in his eyes. I couldn’t blame him, really.
“Just calm down, Kyle. I’m not lying, and I’m not here to hurt you or your family. Look at Ab…” I waved a hand toward the burly Peri then intercepted Frigate before he could work his way into a corner. I easily beat him, causing him to bump into me.
“How the hell—?” he stammered, pointing back to where I had just been then squinting at Ab.
“Sit down, please, before you fall down.” I helped him to his chair, and he fell into it. “Look, I know it’s a lot, but I’m not lying to you. I seriously need your help.”
“If you’re really what you say you are, why do you need my help?” Frigate put his head in his hands and rubbed his face with the heels of his palms.
“I need a sniper, one I can trust. We’re going against a very powerful witch who likely has an army of creatures and an item that may give her the ability to see us coming.”
“Oh. Okay. Sure,” he said staring at the floor.
“Dammit, Frigate, I’m not making this up, and we need your help. You of all people have to believe that there are things that exist outside of the normal.” I grabbed the lycanthropy book off the shelf, scattering the bullets in a cascade of metallic clanks and dumping the gun onto the papers beneath with a heavy thud. I tossed the book at him. “That stuff is real,” I said, pointing at the book. “You recall all the stories you used to tell us out on the Pearl River during training about there being a Rougarou in the swamps around there? You said you and your father had even seen it while hunting and that the locals all whisper about it but no one openly acknowledges it. You used to joke we needed silver bullets in our guns as we ran the river.” I bent over to snatch one of the scattered silver cartridges off the floor and then tossed it to him. “Well, you were right. Locals call it a Rougarou, but it’s actually a loup-garou, a type of werewolf. A very nasty one. Hell, there’s an entire clan of werewolves that have lived in the swamps along the Pearl River for over a hundred years. They use loup-garou for protection.” I paused for a few minutes to let it sink in.
Frigate couldn’t hide his confusion as he stared at me, clearly trying to make sense of what I’d just told him. Finally, he just started rubbing at his hair nervously.
“My point is, there’s a lot more to this world than you know, and I need your help protecting it. Ab, hand me one of my swords,” I said, hoping to somehow prove myself.
Ab let the heavy bag slide off his shoulder with a thump that practically echoed on the wooden floor, dug in until he found them, and handed me one.
“Look,” I said, offering it to Frigate. “It’s not made here on Earth. It’s lighter than it should be, and it’s incredibly sharp, and I can run it through the armor on an M1 tank. In fact, I have.”
“You mean those slashes down the side of that one Abrams tank on the air base in Turkey?” he said, the recognition clear on his face. “They said they had you on surveillance video hacking apart someone or something next to that thing. I remember that. They couldn’t figure out what you could have done to create the damage to the armor plating on the tank, and they couldn’t find any remains, so they chalked it up to a computer glitch. You mean you really did hack something up there?”
“Yeah, a group of Moroi—mortal vampires that feed on energy. Four of them.”
“Freakin’ leeches,” added Ab from behind me, shivering and making faces. “Gross.”
Frigate just arched his eyebrows and nodded as if he agreed, his face a mask of total disbelief. “Well, if that’s all true, then what good is a rifle gonna do at a thousand yards? Don’t you need some kinda sword or magic weapon to kill things like that? Silver bullets and garlic and all that?” For emphasis he held up the silver bullet I’d tossed at him.
“Not really. A bullet from a fifty-caliber sniper rifle will rip pretty much anything apart, human or not. Some creatures can take more damage from a weapon like that, but hell, I bet even Ares himself would have an issue with a fifty-cal round in his ass.”
Frigate’s features had practically aged ten years over the course of our conversation, and I could see the disbelief etched on his face, but I could also see something in his eyes that suggested that at least some of what we were saying made sense. Part of me felt vindicated for dumping so much crap on him all at once.
“So, you aren’t human?” Frigate leveled at me, his voice becoming calm and steady.
“Well, technically, yes. At least, at one time I was just as human as you are. Now I’m not really sure anymore. I’m rare. I am the champion of a dominant Protogenoi, the representation of its power and ethos here on Earth. There are a few of us, but I’m the oldest still around.”
Having said all that, my brief catharsis from telling someone who I really was suddenly made me feel more like a freak and even less human. Damn. I couldn’t even explain myself to a guy I’d shed blood, sweat, and tears with for years.
How could I ever relate to Sarah? Maybe I was no different from the monsters from which I was supposed to protect humanity.
The sound of Frigate’s voice brought me back to the conversation at hand. “And you want me to grab my gun and join you to run off and fight a witch?” he asked, shaking his head.
I grinned. “Well, when you put it that way, it sounds weird. But basically, yes. At a distance, if you still got it, you’ll be safe, and you can offer my assault team the long-distance cover and support we’re likely to need. It’ll be just like old times. Well, almost,” I said, my grin widening. “Look, Ab will pass back through here tomorrow at 1100 Zulu. If you’re willing, he’ll bring you to the staging site. If not, I completely understand. If you choose to help us, I promise you I will do everything I can to keep you safe. I’m also trying to keep my assault team safe, and you’re my best option. Kinda flattering, if you think about it. All the bizarre and powerful creatures in the world I could work with, and I need your help.” I pointed at him. “We aren’t just fighting to save the American ideal anymore—this is to save the human ideal. And bin Laden and al-Qaeda are pansies compared to the bitch we’re after.”
“Enough, enough with the recruitment speech, Chief. I’ll think about it. Right now, I need to think.”
“Got it,” I said, holding out my hand.
Frigate shook it, and I knew he was in. I could feel it in his solid grip and see it in his eye. It made me proud to know there were humans out there willing to face any enemy, even a supernatural one, without accolade, to preserve life as we know it.
“It is good to see you again,” I said, chucking him on the shoulder. “Let’s go, Ab.”
CHAPTER 25
“Next stop is Bournemouth, England, to find Geek,” I told Ab as we left Frigate’s home.
Ab stopped and surveyed the area as though he had lost something, changing directions every few seconds, and finally led us into the woods halfway up the block from Frigate’s home.
Havoc Rising Page 20