by John Conroe
“I don’t think I’m here to tell anyone much of anything, Brystol. Don’t make me out to be some kind of religious icon. I’m not. I’m a soldier, that’s all.”
“Don’t you have any words at all for my listeners?”
“Yeah, stay inside on Halloween and keep the kids home. Practice whatever form of religion or spiritual exercise brings you comfort. Ring your house with salt and iron. If you own a gun and know how to use it, keep it loaded and close at hand. Be ready as if a storm was coming. You know, have water, food, blankets, lights, and first aid supplies. And stay behind good thresholds.”
“Thresholds? As in door thresholds?”
“Yes. The old bit about vampires not being able to enter a home unless invited? That wasn’t vampires, it was demons. And it’s true. A dwelling that is truly a home, where families live and grow, have a threshold that has power. Don’t invite in strangers unless you are certain of them,” I said.
“Line the entries with salt: doors and windows. And get a good shotgun,” Stacia threw in. “And don’t trust the government… they’re not here to help you.”
“Well, okay. So a storm is coming?”
“Yeah, of sorts. Unless we can stop it,” I said.
“And that’s if the government doesn’t stop you,” Brystol replied. “I’m struggling to see how you and your merry band are actually terrorists.”
“Well, Brystol, it turns out that if you drop an orbital object on US soil and decimate a portion of the forest, you meet the definition,” Lydia quipped.
“Ah, the Girl Friday speaks. Lydia, tell us about your role in all this.”
“I can actually live with the Girl Friday moniker if, by Girl Friday, you mean the ass-kicking, ultra-efficient and beautiful organizer of this little charade,” Lydia replied smoothly.
“You’re the glue that holds it all together?” Brystol asked. The rest of us were all nodding.
“She is my oldest friend, my teacher, protector, counselor, and confidant. I would be adrift at sea without Lydia,” Tanya said, smiling at the small vampire.
“See, when you interact like this, it’s sometimes difficult to remember that you’re, in fact, vampires. Predators of humans,” Brystol said, causing an immediate shift in mood.
“Well, that’s because we’re all people, Brystol. And people are complex, multifaceted creatures,” I said.
“Wow, boy toy, big words,” Lydia quipped before Brystol could speak.
“I’ll explain them to you later,” I replied.
“See, that right there. It’s more like a family interaction than two very dangerous people arguing,” Brystol said.
“We do squabble, if that is the right word. But you’re right. We’re dangerous… very dangerous,” I said.
“You threatened to kill police and federal agents, Chris. Did you mean it?”
“Yes, Brystol, I did. They poisoned my mate, then tried to shoot us. There is a limit, and I had reached it. I don’t want to harm soldiers and cops just doing their jobs, but when their job is to kill me or mine, the gloves come off. I’m not a nice guy, Brystol, not really. I’m tainted with evil and while I fight it every day, make no mistake, it’s there, like an unexploded stick of dynamite.”
“You know, when you say stuff like that, you make the President’s case for him,” she said.
“Yeah, well, he’s not entirely wrong. I have a temper. I have a mission—a purpose in life. My mandate is from a higher power, and so I have to do what I have to do. That sounds crazy… the whole mission from God defense. So I don’t really expect anyone to buy it. I’m not sure I would, if it were me sitting home watching this. But at the end of the day, or in our case, the night, it doesn’t matter. We have to fight. Our goal is to avoid the US government while we do so, but if we’re pressed in a corner, we’ll do what we have to.”
“Any other words for the audience before we wrap this up?”
“Well, I expect the Secret Service to follow up on Brianna Duclair. I would advise them to treat her like they would treat me. She’s utterly dangerous and much more ruthless than I. In fact, their best bet would be to point me in her direction and stay out of the way.”
“Once again, volunteering to step up to the breach. There you have it. Our interview with vampires and others. A chance for you, the watcher, to judge for yourself, if Chris Gordon, Tanya Demidova, and their companions are this nation’s highest threat or best chance. I’m Brystol Chatterjee and I expect you won’t be hearing from me for a while. No doubt I’ll face some tough questioning by the Man, so good-bye for now.”
Chapter 21
Brystol’s crew was fast. We wrapped the interview up just before ten and they had it edited, auctioned, and sold before the eleven o’clock news. ABC won the bid and played it in its entirety. I hated it. Can’t stand looking at myself in video.
“Do I really look like that?” I asked.
“Actually, you look worse in real life. You’re ugly and nobody likes you,” Lydia said.
“Hurtful words. But that’s to be expected from a small, bitter person such as yourself,” I replied.
“Shhh! Trying to listen here,” Stacia said, the others nodding in agreement.
The clip finished and we all sat back. We were in another cheap motel room, those being the only real option for us to watch television without being recognized or, in the girls’ case, hit on.
“Not too shabby,” Stacia said, when the program shifted back to the anchors. For their part, the seasoned news staff seemed rather stunned by the interview.
“I don’t know, Jacob… I mean, I watched the President’s speech and all, but after that, I’m having a hard time picturing them as the Nation’s biggest threat.”
“I agree, Sonya. After all, they aren’t pitching a cause. They’re just trying to carry on with this mission of stopping these horrific creatures. And according to viewer emails, there are new videos popping up on the web, videos showing that group in previous engagements with these so-called demons and usually with federal agents right there watching.”
“He’s right. Chester just released a whole slew of material to the Internet,” Tanya said, looking at an Android tablet that was hooked into the motel’s Wi-Fi. It was a new purchase and she was looking at the same stuff that literally millions of others were, so there was nothing to alert any cyber watchers out there.
We watched the anchors’ reaction for a few more minutes before Lydia turned the volume down.
“Okay, that looks successful. If nothing else, it will leave people undecided and it should push the feds into at least talking to Brianna,” Lydia said.
“Oh, it’s better than that. You guys don’t realize how powerful that’s gonna be. People are going to eat it up. The President, whose ratings and popularity are in the dumps, is much less believable than that earnest, highly attractive group of heroes we just watched on the news. You wait and see,” Stacia said.
“She’s right. The comments coming in are mostly supportive. A few from the other side of the fence, but most are questioning the government’s story. And these videos are getting huge hit numbers,” Tanya agreed, still surfing the web.
Trenton suddenly moved to the television and turned the volume back up.
“In another development, it appears Homeland Security has picked up an individual matching the picture of the woman mentioned by Chris Gordon during his interview. According to sources actually in the hotel where she was staying, not far from the White House, heavily armed SWAT teams arrived a few minutes ago and took her into custody. That person, a blonde woman, was understood to be a visiting federal agent. Not much else is known at this time, Sonya.”
“Well, Jacob, if it is this the Brianna Duclair named by Chris Gordon, then you would think the authorities would at least have a discussion with her. Most likely they will transport her to the Liberty Crossing Intelligence campus for an interview.”
“Hotel is not too far from here. We should follow?” Arkady asked.
/> “We should,” I agreed.
We did, the seven of us jumping into the two cars and heading toward downtown Washington.
Trenton drove our car with Tanya, Arkady, and myself. Lydia drove the Subaru with ‘Sos and Stacia. Tanya still had the tablet and we were watching a streaming feed from the news channels through the cell network. The shot was coming from a traffic helicopter that had been sent up as soon as the story broke. The cameraman in the copter was using a night vision-equipped camera to track a squat, FBI panel van caravanning between two big, dark SUVs.
“- bringing coverage to you live as it happens. The van is, to our best knowledge, carrying a woman who matches the description of Agent Brianna DuClair. DuClair has been a Department of Homeland Security agent for eleven years although there is some confusion about her most recent assignments. At one point, she was a team leader for Homeland Security’s Directorate of Anomalous Activity. That’s not a division I’ve ever heard of before, Sonya, have you?”
“No, Jacob, and my sources in Homeland Security either haven’t heard of it or refuse to speak about it. Since 9/11, the intelligence community and federal law enforcement has literally exploded in size and complexity. To my knowledge, there really isn’t anyone who has their arms completely around all the divisions, units, groups, and alphabet agencies. The Washington Post did a story about just this—Holy Mother of God, Jacob did you see that?”
The video feed showed the panel van exploding from within, the metal walls peeling open banana-skin style in a flash of red light. The follow-on SUV slammed into the twisted remains of the van even as a black-clad, SWAT-suited body fell back and through the SUV’s windshield. The news copter swooped closer, shaking and shifting the video shot so hard, it was difficult to tell what was happening. When the picture settled, it was apparent that the front SUV had stopped and armed agents were boiling out of it and shooting at someone or something still in the interior of the burst van. That someone ignored the gunfire, too busy tearing a SWAT soldier in half.
“Trenton, you need to get us there now!” Tanya said.
“What is happening?” Arkady asked.
“It looks like Brianna, or I should say Amaymon, decided going with the nice agents wasn’t really his style. The vehicles were taking him/her away from the White House and seeing as how midnight has come and gone and it is officially Halloween, I don’t think the demon lord was planning on spending his day in an interview room,” I said.
“It’s tearing those agents apart,” Tanya said. “How we doing, Trenton? Do you need directions?”
“No ma’am. The flashes of light, the explosions, and the circling helicopters up ahead are a pretty good indication of which way to go,” he said calmly.
“You’ve been around Lydia too much,” she said, still watching the tablet.
“Yeah, she’s contagious,” he agreed, slamming our Honda into a tight turn and slipping into the new traffic stream amidst blaring horns and squealing brakes. I could hear the Subaru squealing behind as it followed our dangerous lead.
Watching the scene unfold from an overhead news camera was distinctly surreal. My confusing, secret, creepy-as-hell hidden world was now being transmitted to virtually everyone on the planet via mainstream media. The world would never again question the existence of the supernatural. Clutching my two demon horn spikes in my left hand, I alternated between watching the tablet and looking up at our crazed ride through downtown Washington.
More agents had appeared around the destroyed van, but Brianna was killing them almost as fast as they arrived, moving at vampire speed and ignoring the full automatic gunfire that should have torn her to pieces. In one fast sequence, she punched an agent’s heart out of his back, tore an arm from another, and decapitated a third with a slap, laughing as she did.
The news helicopter suddenly flared backward as two black government choppers shot past it and down toward the nightmare scene on the ground.
Sharpshooters leaned out the open sides of the Blackhawks and opened fire on the grinning blonde in the torn clothes. They had brought bigger guns… much bigger guns. The boom of the big Barrett M82A3 .50 caliber rifles was audible on the tablet and audible to my naked ear over the sounds of the racing engines, blaring horns, and sirens. We were getting close. The tablet video clearly showed the half-yard bloom of muzzle flash as the sharpshooters started to put rounds on target.
Brianna/ Amaymon had been pretty much shrugged off the pistol rounds and even the 5.56mm M4 rounds that the dying agents had been peppering the demon lord with, but the big .50 caliber rounds refused to be ignored. Most .50 Browning machine gun rounds have muzzle energies of well over 13,000 foot-pounds, or six and a half tons. Brianna was only about seventy or eighty yards from the snipers. The rounds blew her head-over-heels like a rag doll, over and behind a parked car. Not resting on their laurels, the snipers kept firing, shooting through the parked car until it exploded in a massive fireball that sent a mushroom cloud of smoke and flame roiling up into the sky.
The remaining ground agents moved forward in crouched, weapons-ready stances, all muzzles on the last known location of their enemy. It looked good, I mean, even I was thinking they had put the Hell bitch down. It all went to shit a second later.
There were three manhole covers on that hundred-yard section of road. I know that because all three shot straight up into the air at the same time as three pairs of clawed hands reached out and dug into the asphalt. The things that flowed up out of the sewers were long and lean, a hellish cross between wolf hounds and velociraptors. They shot forward on four legs before standing up and bounding on two. Six to seven feet of lethal black and red muscle, claws, and teeth. A bald-headed man in a leather duster climbed out of the sewer behind them, strolling along with a grin.
It was one of those moments when you want to yell at the screen, to try and tell the heroes right through the monitor that doom was racing up on them from behind. It unfolded right in front of our eyes, laid out in high resolution, graphic pixels under glass.
The rear line of federal agents was scythed down under the reaping claws and teeth of the bounding monsters, the agents in front too focused to realized their backup was now face up.
Of course, the front row guys had their own problem, one that stood up in the midst of the burning car fuel, stretching to a full nine feet in height, strips and chunks of burning human flesh falling off its reddish-hued, plated body as the demon fully manifested.
Will the real Amaymon please stand up? Long cabled arms ending in banana-sized claws that looked like knife blades. A sharp-snouted shark face filled to overflowing with triangular saw teeth that locked together—literal scissors from Hell. A crown of spikes grew straight up out of his head. Plates of thick chitin covered much of the demon’s vital parts like a built-in suit of red armor. Brianna was gone; her driver had outgrown her as a vehicle. I never even got to curse her goodbye.
The prince of Hell had morphed into his unnatural form and the Department of Homeland Security was in a lot of trouble.
Trenton took a sharp left and I happened to glance up long enough to catch sight of a street sign: Pennsylvania Avenue. Wait, isn’t there an important address there? Oh yeah, the President’s house. DHS had been carting Brianna toward their headquarters northwest of the Capital and the White House. Amaymon had just declined their hospitality, rather forcibly, preferring, no doubt, the traditional architecture of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and the chance to slaughter the leader of the free world on his front lawn to the modern sterility of the spy headquarters.
Oh well, I didn’t vote for the guy… wait… did I? I couldn’t recall the last election, but I doubted I voted Garth in because he was a piss poor leader and far, far too liberal for my conservative values. Still, I should probably try and keep the leader of the most powerful nation on earth from being sacrificed to a new order of demonic overlords, if only on principal. Just because I differed in political bent didn’t mean I could just give up on my country, right? I me
an, how would it look if God’s warrior let that happen? No, it would besmirch my image. And I’m all about image lately, right? Hey, I used the word besmirch in a sentence. Look at Mr. Vocabulary now.
Back on the tablet, Amaymon was tossing aside the twisted, blackened remains of the burning car, the flames not appearing to bother him at all. Duh… Hell lord… fire, like peanut butter and jelly. The towering figure advanced on the retreating agents, ignoring their puny assault rifles. The big boom of a Barrett sounded and Amaymon was knocked backward a step. He straightened and snapped his head toward the Blackhawks hovering above him. Turning, he looked back at the road, raised his long right arm, and made a throwing gesture. Two of the heavy flat manhole covers shot off the asphalt and disappeared from the camera view. The suddenly crashing Blackhawk that fell past the news chopper answered the question of where at least one of the metal discs had gone.