“By the time the local police arrived, the house was on fire… and the residents were all dead, at least six bodies—men, women, children.”
“Goddamn it,” said Paco.
Buck scowled at Paco and then continued. “The police witnessed four animals they described as giant wolves savaging the bodies. When they fired on the creatures, instead of running away, the animals attacked, breathing flames on the squad car, catching it on fire. Luckily, the two police officers weren’t injured. The animals ran off.” Buck paused and let his gaze drift over the assembled crowd. “I’ve seen these things before. These are the hellhounds, the same creatures that have been stirring shit up for almost two weeks. Only now they’ve moved from attacking cattle to killing people. They’re not afraid of us anymore—if they ever were. Trust me on this: these things are dangerous. Do not underestimate them. If you let them get close, you will catch on fire and die horribly. They are four-legged flamethrowers with big fucking teeth.”
Once again, Buck paused for effect. Cassie looked at the soldiers. Each looked serious, attentive. She saw no fear in any of their faces. Buck said he had seen these before. When? Had they known about the basilisk, as well? Could they have prevented the attack at the hospital?
“Okay,” continued Buck. “Here’s the mission. We’re going to arrive on scene, where Special Constable Fitzroy will make sure the locals give over to us. I will then take charge. We investigate the site, and then our trusty Injun scout and his doggy sidekick start doin’ what they do best—tracking the animals.” Buck nodded at Paco with a grin that looked anything but friendly. “So, you all know me. You know I like simple. Here’s the plan. We find ’em; we kill ’em—fast, with no bullshit. Let the snipers take ’em from a distance. We’ve got a chopper on call. Once we secure the carcasses, we get back to the Magic Kingdom.”
The soldiers all nodded.
“I’m in charge,” Buck said. “If anything happens to me, Captain Benoit takes over.” Buck indicated Alex with his chin. “After that, if we both go down, you guys can fight over who gets to be boss.” Buck flashed a huge, self-appreciating smile.
“Lead vehicle is call sign Romeo-1; second is Romeo-2. All comms are encrypted. Zero is control, but I don’t want anyone but me talking to the boss. We clear? You sure as hell don’t say anything to the locals.”
Cassie had no idea what he was talking about, but she found herself nodding just like the others.
“Questions?” Buck looked around.
Elizabeth, separated from Cassie by a small knot of soldiers, raised her hand.
Buck glanced over at her, a frown on his face. “Yeah, what?”
“What do you want us to do?”
Buck chewed his lower lip for a moment as he considered her question. “Stay out of the way,” he finally answered. “The three of you stay in the MRAPs until you’re told otherwise. You don’t do nothing. We need you, we’ll come get you. We clear?”
Elizabeth stared brazenly back at him. “We might be able to help.”
Despite the fact that Elizabeth could be a religious pain in the ass, Cassie felt a momentary surge of pride in the other woman. Clearly, she wasn’t intimidated easily.
Buck snorted and shook his big head. “Miss Chambers. If I need someone to float paper airplanes around my head, you’ll be the first one I ask. Until then, you stay in the vehicle and stay out of the way. Got it?”
Although her face looked as if she had just sucked on a lemon, Elizabeth nodded.
“Good,” said Buck. “Let’s mount up and go hunting.”
* * *
The diesel engine of the MRAP whined as the vehicle coasted down the woodlands surrounding the Pine River Valley. In the air-conditioned passenger space in the rear of the vehicle, Cassie sat with Duncan and five other soldiers. Alex sat up front in the co-driver’s seat, wearing a headset with a microphone extended over his mouth. On his lap, he held a large folded map, which he would turn in order to follow the road. Every now and then, he would press a button on a wire clipped to his shirt and reply to a radio conversation only he could hear.
They had been on the road for about a half hour. The passenger seats in the back were built against the boat-like sides of the MRAP so that Cassie had to sit with her back to the window port, facing the other passengers. In order to look out the wire-mesh-reinforced windows, Cassie had to turn in her seat and look over her shoulder, which was awkward as hell, but staring at the other passengers was boring. Besides, whenever they passed another vehicle, there was always a look of surprise on the faces of those inside. People didn’t often see the army in northern British Columbia, especially driving around in large, tanklike vehicles. Did they think the army was here on maneuvers, or were they worried that something had gone wrong?
Something had gone very wrong, beginning with the night of the electrical storm and getting progressively weirder. Despite what McKnight and his soldiers were saying, Cassie was certain they were hiding secrets. She could see it in their faces when they spoke about the attack at the hospital and the farmhouse. They didn’t act like people who had shown up to help in an emergency; they acted as though it was their fault and they needed to do something before more people died.
She rubbed her sweaty palms against her combat pants, closed her eyes, and tried to take long, calming breaths. It didn’t help; she still felt butterflies in her stomach. Duncan sat directly across from her, looking just as out of place as she felt. He stared at his hands in his lap, his face pale. In stark comparison, the five soldiers she sat among seemed confident as hell, bored even. Each held a rifle loosely between his or her legs and wore a tactical vest stuffed with spare magazines of ammunition and other gear. Like her, they wore floppy bush hats and ballistic glasses with yellow-orange lenses that gave everything a yellow tint but also somehow made everything look clearer. She watched their faces, wondering if they were American or Canadian. Each wore a Canadian uniform with a maple leaf on the shoulder—including Buck—but none of them wore a name tag or rank insignia. One of them was definitely French Canadian, but several others had accents she couldn’t place. If Task Force Devil is this official joint American-Canadian team, why are they hiding their nationalities? The answer was obvious. Because it’s a covert op—a black op.
The whine of the engine changed as the vehicle slowed down and took an abrupt turn off the main road. The MRAP began to vibrate as it pulled onto a dirt road and picked up speed again. The forested land that had been on either side opened up into farmland, areas of the Pine River Valley suitable for growing crops.
Paco had known the Coogans. Everyone on that farm had died, even the children. She hoped the bodies wouldn’t still be there. The hospital attack had been horrible enough for one lifetime.
The MRAP began to slow. Through the windshield up front, just past the first MRAP, Cassie saw the remains of smoldering farm buildings. Even inside the air-conditioned vehicle, she could smell the stench of burnt wood. Red-and-blue lights pulsed from the police and emergency vehicles on the scene. They coasted to a stop, only feet behind the rear of the first MRAP. Nobody within her vehicle moved. If the soldiers felt any excitement, they were hiding it well.
Cassie leaned forward in her bench seat and stared out the front windshield just as Buck and the RCMP liaison officer dismounted and approached one of the on-scene RCMP vehicles.
Well, I am here to help. Closing her eyes, she opened herself up to the ambient mana, letting the energy rush through her. As it did, her skin tingled, and her senses felt as though they had become supercharged. Her eyes snapped open, and she saw Duncan staring at her, concern in his face.
“What?” Duncan asked.
“There’s something weird here. Can you feel it?”
“What do you mean, weird?”
Up front, Alex turned and watched them.
“Channel,” Cassie told Duncan. “You’ll see what I mean.”
Duncan did, and a moment later, a look of puzzlement came across his featur
es. “What?”
“You feel it too?”
He nodded. “Someone was using mana here.”
“Or some thing,” Cassie released her seatbelt and leaned forward, putting her hand on Duncan’s knee. “I think it’s the animals, the hellhounds. I feel them. I think I can sense their presence or at least where they were using mana.”
Duncan’s puzzled look gave way to one of fear. “Shhh.” He raised his hand and glanced about the interior of the vehicle at the soldiers who were now all watching Cassie and him.
“Duncan, don’t you see what this means?”
Alex climbed out of his seat up front and maneuvered himself into the rear between the rows of passengers, kneeling between Cassie and Duncan, watching their faces. Duncan looked like a bird caught by a cat. His eyes darted from Cassie to Alex. “No, I don’t see what this means, and you’re making assumptions. It may mean nothing at all.”
“It means,” Cassie continued, hearing the excitement in her own voice, “we can help. We might be able to track these things or at least know if they’re still about.”
Duncan’s face went pale, and he swallowed nervously. “I… I don’t—”
Alex met Cassie’s gaze. He raised his eyebrows. She nodded, and he keyed the microphone attached to his shirt. “Romeo-1, this is Romeo-2. We’re coming out.” He grinned at Cassie. “There’s been a new development.”
Chapter 24
Getting out of the MRAP had been a bad idea. Even from a hundred feet away, Cassie could feel the heat from the still-smoldering farmhouse and barn. And the smell… the stench was overpowering, so bad that Cassie had literally gagged, coming very close to throwing up. How did firefighters cope with this? Even now, hours later, the fire department was still spraying water over the remains of the farmhouse. Laid out in a neat row behind the fire truck were six corpses, fortunately all encased in white coroner bags. She had overheard one of the first responders telling Buck that the corpses had been roasted and then torn apart, their internal organs consumed. It seemed the hellhounds liked to cook their meat before eating it. She shook her head as she stared at the row of bags.
The hellhounds used mana when they breathed fire; that was now obvious. She had no idea if they channeled the mana the way she, Duncan, and Elizabeth did—or manipulated it in some other way—but it didn’t really matter. She could sense them or, at least, feel that they had been here recently. When she concentrated, she could still feel them far away to the north. How much longer would she be able to track them? She really didn’t want to get any closer to those things, but at the same time, she knew that if they didn’t go after them soon, they might lose the beasts. Exhaling deeply, she felt queasy suddenly and leaned against one of the police cruisers. A moment later, a hand came to rest on her shoulder, and she looked up. Alex was watching her closely. “You all right?”
“I’ve never…”
He leaned back against the hood of the vehicle beside her and crossed his arms over his weapon, which hung from a sling so that it dangled down near his hands. “This is a bad one.”
“You ever seen… this sort of thing before?”
His nod was barely perceptible. “In Afghanistan—usually whenever something went really bad, which was surprisingly often.”
“Creatures like this?”
“No. I’m talking about combat.”
“You get used to it?”
He shook his head. “Some guys become numb to it, but I never have. I’m not sure that’s best anyhow. Focus on what you need to do for now. That might help.”
She watched his face carefully. “You guys did this, didn’t you? You didn’t come up north to fix this problem. You were here before it started.”
He wouldn’t meet her gaze. Instead, he stared at the long row of bagged corpses. Two clearly belonged to children. “Maybe,” he finally whispered. Then, he did meet her gaze, and his eyes held the most profound sadness she had ever seen. “But at this point, does it really matter whose fault it is? Someone has to stop those things. And like it or not, it’s our job.”
“Can we stop them?”
“Hell yes.” He pushed himself away from the police cruiser and walked off.
* * *
While the three mag-sens stood beside the hood of one of the MRAPs, watching, Paco and Clyde went to work. The tracker and his dog began searching the ground, starting from nearby the smoking cinders that had been the farmhouse. In ever-widening arcs, Paco and Clyde circled the ruins. Clyde moved slowly, sniffing the ground, his nose only inches from the grass. Paco, a magnifying glass in his hand—reminding Cassie of Sherlock Holmes—walked beside his dog, stopping every now and again to drop down to one knee and examine the ground through the lens. In his other hand, he held a stick about three feet long with several rubber bands wrapped around its length.
“They’re getting farther away,” Elizabeth said.
She was right. Cassie could now only barely sense the presence of the hellhounds far to the north.
“What’s up north?” Duncan asked, a slight tremor in his voice.
Cassie could tell the young man had been terrified since getting out of the vehicle. Both Cassie and Elizabeth had been sickened by the stench of the burned corpses, but only Duncan had actually vomited. He shouldn’t be there, she knew. He was out of his league. Hell, all three of them were out of their league, but Duncan was clearly too sensitive for this. The kind of guy who was always picked on at school, he just didn’t fit in among the Special Forces soldiers, all of whom were definitely alpha males—even the two women. Not one of them ever treated Duncan with anything more than complete indifference. Had Duncan not been a mag-sens, he would have been completely useless to these people. Only Cassie and Elizabeth talked to him at all.
Still… frightened or not, he needed to stop acting like such a little bitch.
“Mostly forest and hills. There are some small lakes, then you hit the Moberly River.” Cassie paused, shading the setting sun with her hand. “Unless these animals can swim the river, they’ll still be on this side. So, at most, they’re only about ten to fifteen kilometers away over some pretty rough ground. Wild animals could run around out there forever.”
“How do you know all this?” Elizabeth asked.
Unlike Cassie and Duncan, Elizabeth didn’t look so out of place in her army clothing. Maybe it was because she had copied the soldiers’ manner of dressing, tucking her pant legs into her boots the same way they did. Maybe it was just because she carried herself with an aura of responsibility—something that Cassie, with her hands in her pockets, most of her buttons undone, and sleeves rolled up to her elbows—didn’t.
Duncan pulled a cigarette out of a packet from his pocket, his third in less than an hour, and lit up. Cassie reached over, snatched it from his mouth, and took a drag before handing it back. The instant hit of nicotine felt pretty awesome. She only smoked when she was drunk or stressed. “I spent a couple of summers working at Moberly Park as a volunteer ranger. Hudson’s Hope is only about an hour’s drive to the northeast.”
Elizabeth nodded then glanced at the body bags in their neat little line. She chewed her lip. “Did you know these people?”
Duncan sighed. “We should go wait in the vehicles. They don’t need us out here.”
Neither woman moved or even acknowledged he had spoken.
“No.” Cassie shook her head. “This place is pretty isolated. Never really had a reason to come out this way before. Paco says they were good people.”
“Goddamn it,” said Duncan. “We’re all good people, but we need to leave this hunting-monsters bullshit to the soldiers. We’re just in the way out here. Let’s go back inside.”
Cassie fought back her anger and frowned at him. “We’re not in anybody’s way, Duncan. Besides, Paco’s the one doing all the work, not the soldiers.” Which was true enough. Buck, Alex, and the rest of the soldiers all stood near the hood of the second MRAP—as far from the three mag-sens as they could get—talking amongst
themselves.
“It isn’t right,” said Elizabeth, still staring at the corpses. “They deserve better than to be abandoned like that.”
That wasn’t exactly true, Cassie knew. No one had abandoned the bodies. In fact, RCMP officers and forensics specialists were still present, photographing them and documenting what had occurred. The fire department was still on site, as well, although there was little they could do other than make sure the fires stayed out. Everybody was waiting, not really doing anything but watching Paco and Clyde. Cassie felt worse than useless, and every minute, the hellhounds moved farther away. Hadn’t she come here to help?
“They’ll move the bodies when they’re ready to,” Cassie said.
“Someone should say a prayer for their souls,” Elizabeth said, abruptly walking off toward the corpses.
Cassie sighed. Elizabeth would do as she wanted; that was pretty clear. Besides, who was Cassie to argue that saying a prayer for the dead wasn’t helpful? It was more than she was doing.
“Let’s go back inside,” whined Duncan. “I hate this shit!”
“This isn’t about you, Duncan. We came here to help, remember?” Cassie turned away, not wanting to see the hurt look on Duncan’s face. She felt bad but only for a moment. She approached Paco and Clyde, now about a hundred meters away, kneeling in front of a broken section of wooden fencing.
“Hey!” yelled Buck. “Where are you going?”
Cassie stopped and turned to face him. All the soldiers were now staring at her, including Alex.
“It’s okay,” she yelled back. “There’s no danger anymore. They’ve gone.”
Buck scowled but waved her off then turned back to say something to the soldiers around him. They all laughed—all except Alex. Cassie’s face flushed with heat, but she turned away and kept going.
Out in the fields surrounding the farm, the stench from the burned cows was revolting. Most of the carcasses were littered around the edges of the fence. When the hellhounds had attacked the farm, the cattle had run as far away as they could before getting trapped against the fence. Not a single cow had survived. The hellhounds had killed everything and everyone, even though they obviously couldn’t consume all the dead. What kind of animal killed just for the pure savagery of it?
Starlight (The Dark Elf War Book 1) Page 19