The speaker paused.
“Anybody know if it’ll even show up on radar?”
Arthur tapped his mike.
“This is Major General Purcell,” he told the two Air Force officers. “It’ll be faint and it won’t look anything like an aircraft, but it will show up on radar.”
“How do you… No, nope, I don’t think I want to know,” Overwatch Leader concluded, cutting of his own question. “Skies are still clear, Strike Leader. We have the high ground.”
Overwatch Flight’s ten aircraft lifted high and moved forward, sweeping the airspace above Portland as Strike Flight went in low and fast.
The low-flying F-16s were relaying video feed back, and Arthur shivered as he saw it. The city had gone dark. There was still power, but most of the populace was clearly choosing to keep the minimum amount of lights up as night fell.
No one left wanted to attract attention to themselves. No one was quite sure what was going on—but demons and men in strange black coats patrolled the streets.
Those patrols looked up as the jets shot over, watching but not acting. There wasn’t much they could do, Arthur knew, but he’d wondered if they would try something.
“Approaching target zone,” Strike Leader announced. “Damn…this is weird.”
“Strike Leader, what’s weird?” another voice interjected. Arthur sighed. It wasn’t good for anyone to have the Air Force Chief of Staff on this channel.
“Target isn’t showing up on radar at all but is just glowing on IR, and I can see the damn thing.” Pause. “More hostiles emerging from it, too. More organized than the footage from earlier.”
Arthur studied the camera feed, trying to identify what he was seeing. He knew he wasn’t as fully versed in demonology as the people he’d replaced, and he wished he had managed to keep Warner around somehow.
Most of the demons they were seeing now were still the weaker shadow demons, but these were a different variety of those from this morning. They were taller, more distinctly humanoid, and moved in neat ranks. Organized units, gathered around small numbers of red-skinned humanoids—mid-court demons.
Larger, uglier beasts moved around the perimeters. The toad demons ONSET’s files mentioned, but other physically large demons that didn’t match anything in the Omicron files. Several of them were a perfect match for the stereotypical bat-winged demons of legend…and those were starting to take off.
“Strike Leader, you have air-capable enemies lifting off in your direction,” Arthur interjected.
“They’re using wings,” Strike Leader replied dismissively. “They can’t be that danger—”
Wings or not, the flying demons rose from the ground faster than most planes could, and bolts of black fire flickered out from their hands as they closed with the fighters. F-16s started to come apart as the demons tore into them.
“Overwatch, back us up!” Strike Leader snapped. “This is Strike Leader, Rifle, Rifle, Rifle.”
Air-to-surface missiles flashed onto the screen, screaming in at the portal like homesick meteors as the demons tore through Strike Flight.
Overwatch Flight dropped through the fog a moment later. Unlike Strike Leader’s planes, they carried air-to-air munitions—but Arthur could already tell they were going to have a hard time locking on.
They didn’t even bother.
“This is Overwatch Leader. Guns. Guns. Guns.” The chant was taken up by the other nine pilots and ten F-16s swept into the melee, cannons blazing as they closed with the demons.
For a few seconds, it looked like it would be enough…and then a new shadow erupted from the fog. The dragon smashed half of the Overwatch fighters out of the sky before they could react.
“This is Strike Leader! Break off! Go supersonic and get out of here.”
The fighters spun away, diving for the sky and shattering windows as they crashed past the sound barrier.
That much, it seemed, the demons and dragon couldn’t match—but only fourteen of forty planes lived long enough to run.
“Status on the portal?” Arthur demanded. “Do we have eyes? Tell me we did something?”
“We have no eyes on the ground,” Bantam reported grimly. “We’ve got Predator drones coming in from offshore for a sweep. Navy is sending in eight of them.”
“Are we expecting any back?” the General asked.
“They’re transmitting live. Does that answer your question?” his subordinate replied.
Five of the drones were down before they even reached the shore, the flying demons now spreading out to provide aerial security. Two of the eight managed to get close enough to get visual on the portal.
The area around the circular thing was scorched and burnt. Concrete was shattered, grass was dead, and dirt and walls were cratered. Nothing was intact where the Air Force had dumped literally dozens of three-hundred-pound warheads.
But the demons were still marching through the portal.
34
“The military remains disturbingly silent on just what has happened in Portland, Maine, as we reach the fourteenth hour of this incident,” the reporter reeled off.
“We have confirmed that some kind of ‘gateway’ was opened on the Portland waterfront and that an unknown hostile force has emerged. While we have no confirmation from the military or the government as to what is going on, martial law has been declared across the northeast United States and massive sections of the interstate highway network have been shut down for troop movements.
“Citizens on the ground report a complete failure on the part of the National Guard or police to contain this attack and suggest that the government has abandoned Portland to the enemy. Casualties, civilian and otherwise, are unknown—but we do have reports of air strikes launched by the US Air Force.”
The blonde woman on the screen looked terrified by what she was saying. David couldn’t blame her, especially as the images cycled across behind her. Most of them were taken on people’s phones, shaky video and photos made no less terrifying by their poor quality.
“Turn it off,” Riley ordered, the Elfin Lord sighing.
Young obeyed, and he turned to face the leadership of Black Echelon.
“We have a few more resources than the news media right now,” he told them. “But…not nearly as many as I’d like. The government has gone into full-on information lockdown—my sources say that directive comes from the White House and is being struggled against by the officers involved in managing the largest, fastest deployment of troops in the continental United States…ever.”
Riley shook his head.
“That’s why we’ve stayed put so far,” he admitted. “I don’t trust the government not to lash out if they see someone else moving troops around right now.”
“It’s worse than that,” O’Brien told them. “Once everything started coming apart, the Governor tried to give a press conference, warning people to evacuate the metro area. He’s been detained by the Secret Service.”
“That can’t hold in the long run,” David objected. “Congress is going to go over this whole mess with a magnifying glass now.”
“But it’ll keep order right now, and that’s all that the President cares about,” Riley said grimly. “He’s more focused on keeping order than he is on protecting people, unfortunately.”
“We have the resources ready to go,” David said. “Do we go in?”
The room was silent for a long moment.
“We can’t,” O’Brien finally said. “They have a goddamn army of demons. We have a few strike teams. I…I don’t want to wait, but we need a distraction. We need to see what the Army does and make sure we’re ready to go in and support them.”
David closed his eyes, reaching out toward the pulsing sore in reality that he could feel only a few hundred miles away. Poking it with his mind, studying it. He winced as it lashed out at him, but stayed focused, trying to force it to divulge its secrets.
It finally hit him hard enough that he gasped aloud, his eyes popping
open as Kate laid her hand on his.
“David?”
“Testing our enemy,” he said softly. “I think…they overcharged the gateway initially, and the Air Force did more than they thought. Their first wave is through, but their reinforcements will slow for the next three, four days.
“Based off my earlier visions, though…” He shook his head, remembering what he’d seen. “I’m guessing the Herald has a plan for that. If they forge hybrid Awakened out of local materials and bound Pure, they can force-multiply their initial weak demons dramatically.”
“We need to get that information into the hands of the military,” Kate said.
“It’s in Purcell’s hands,” O’Brien admitted. “I gave him everything, and from what I can tell, he bought it all. For the moment, we have to put our faith in him.”
“But we also have to be ready ourselves,” Riley concluded. “The Army will make their move. I’d love it if they’d tell me in advance, but that’s not going to happen—so we need to be ready to move when they do. When the Herald has to send most of his troops away to make sure the US Army doesn’t knock down his new house, we are going to kick in his damn door.
“And then we’re going to send the bastard back to the Hell he came from.”
Charles’s new lair lacked most of the amenities of the plushly appointed cavern underneath the ONSET Campus. It had been one of three covered loading docks for trucks for the Ambrose Overlook hotel before its conversion, and it retained a very industrial feel to it.
A massive keyboard and trackball were set up on the end of the dock, and the wall behind them was covered with screens. The lowered portion of the space, where trucks would have backed in, was now filled with a collection of mattresses and pillows at least two feet deep.
The dragon was sprawled lazily in that nest, his head resting on a queen-size mattress he’d tucked against the concrete as a pillow as he typed. He heard David and Kate coming, however, and lifted his head to look at them.
“I’m afraid I don’t have anything in terms of seats,” he admitted. Once again, David was struck by the sudden complete lack of brogue in the dragon’s voice. He wondered when it had become an affectation—probably long before he’d met Charles.
“The edge of the dock is fine,” Kate replied, dropping down onto that ledge as she spoke. David joined her, their legs hanging over the pit of cushions as his lover took his hand.
“How are you making out?” David asked the dragon.
“I miss my books,” Charles admitted. “It would be even harder to read them now, I suppose, but I’d spent a while collecting them. I was trying to reconcile your history of my time in Ireland with my own memories and synthesize something useful.”
He shrugged.
“Perhaps once this is all over, I will be able to convince your government to give me my library back. Not to mention my back pay.” He smiled. “I may not be as bad as legend makes my people, but I am a dragon and they do owe me money.”
David chuckled.
“I don’t envy the poor bastard you have that conversation with.”
“I will be most polite. I was most polite to General Purcell, after all.”
“You did hand him a pair of nukes,” Kate pointed out.
“And he fired them at me,” Charles replied. “Anything short of detonating them in his face counts as polite, in my opinion.”
“That’s fair,” David admitted. “It seems to have made an impression. The General appears to be mostly on our side at this point.”
“David, at this point, Hitler would count as on your side,” the dragon warned dangerously. “The Masters Beyond will reforge your entire world in their half-remembered image of how things were. Humanity as we know it won’t survive that process.”
“I know.” David shook his head. “So, we fight. And we make what alliances we have to.”
“Exactly.” Charles rested his head back on the mattress, gesturing toward the screen. “You told me there was another dragon. I…didn’t honestly believe you. I didn’t think any of my kindred would let themselves be bound to this kind of monstrosity.”
The screen he pointed to was showing a shaky cellphone video of a dragon tearing through a collection of jet fighters.
“From the vision I saw, her name is Serena. She traded service for desperately needed healing,” David allowed. “I don’t like to give credit to my enemies, but…I doubt she knew what that service was going to be.”
“She should have,” Charles rumbled. “The first of my kind to wake up other than me, and she swears even temporary service to the Masters Beyond?” He growled.
“What do we do about her?” Kate asked. “We demonstrably don’t have any weapons that can actually hurt one of you.”
“Oh, you’ve a few,” the dragon replied. “If I hadn’t known about the Dragonslayer Patriots, they would have been quite effective. Regular cruise missiles will hurt, if nothing else.
“But you’re correct. My kin will be my problem.”
It was easy to anthropomorphize Charles’s face. In many ways, it was quite human. As he spoke, however, a very alien cast shadowed his eyes. David could tell that the dragon was angry, but the anger was so far beyond anything a mere human could comprehend…
He shivered.
“Step carefully with what you See of me, David,” the dragon warned, realizing what was happening. “Mine is not a mortal soul.”
“Neither, I’m warned, is mine,” David replied quietly, squeezing Kate’s hand. “I’m not sure what to make of that.”
Charles chuckled.
“You’re not the first Battle Seer I’ve met, David White,” he pointed out. “You won’t even be the first Battle Seer I’ve carried to war. Do you want the advice of a very old friend?”
David laughed.
“I didn’t even know Battle Seers were a thing,” he replied. “Lake Tahoe was the first to call me that. Walker was the first call me an Immortal.”
“I knew,” the dragon admitted. “I knew from the moment I saw you in the tunnels under the Campus for your test. I knew what you could become. You were…a larva then. And when you awoke fighting Marcus Dresden and Ekhmez, then…well, then you were a caterpillar.”
“And now I’m a gorgeous, beautiful butterfly?”
Kate elbowed David gently, and he chuckled.
“Now you have completed your apotheosis and become what you always could have been. The first of a new era of Battle Seers.
“But my advice to you, young David? Do not worry overmuch about the future. Battle Seers do not die of old age…but I have never met a Battle Seer for whom that was a likelihood anyway. What are you about to do, after all?”
“He’s about to go into a city occupied by demons, find the most powerful demon, and challenge it to a fistfight,” Kate snapped. “I don’t suppose you could discourage that?”
“If I could fight this entire battle myself, I would,” Charles said seriously. “I have too few friends among the mortals of this time. Fewer still who have proven themselves to the level that you have, young David.
“But powerful as I am, I am but one creature. Powerful as you are, you are but one man. Mage Mason will be critical to what is to come, as will the friends and armies that are gathering for the moment.”
“I fear…that the Herald is planning for this. Expecting this,” David admitted.
“He has thrown down a gauntlet that he expects your world to pick up,” Charles agreed. “I am not sure why. I have never seen such a portal as he has conjured before—in my time, such a thing would have been useless, for even the Pure walked the world.”
“And now the world is broken,” Kate murmured
“And can never be fixed,” the dragon reminded him. “If we were to remove the Seal entirely and unleash the Pure on the world once more, the Masters would destroy everything.”
“Wouldn’t you rather have other dragons?” Kate asked. “This new one…it’s a she?”
Charles laughed
.
“Please leave the matchmaking until after the war, my dear Kate,” he told her.
35
None of the senior officers in the impromptu command center had slept since the portal had opened. Arthur had made sure the actual technicians and staff were cycling on proper shifts, but he wasn’t enough of a hypocrite to order his Colonels to sleep.
Not when he wasn’t going to.
The night had brought a measure of apparent peace. The slow advance of the demonic attack had stopped with nightfall. The newer, more organized demon units were moving up to secure territory.
“Sir!” one of the technicians snapped. “The local TV just came back on.”
“Someone has overridden the emergency broadcast protocols,” Colonel Bantam added, leaning over another technician’s shoulder. “The radio is live as well.”
“Play it,” Arthur ordered.
One of the several screens flipped over to a plain TV studio. None of the usual backing screens were live, just a plain podium with an utterly terrified-looking newscaster.
“That’s James Hotel,” someone said. “He’s the local evening news anchor. And he looks like someone has a gun to his head.”
“From the nature of this enemy, I suspect he wishes someone had a gun to his head,” Bantam said grimly.
“Shush, we need to hear what they have to say,” Arthur snapped.
“Citizens of Portland, greetings,” Hotel said slowly, reading from a prepared script in front of him. “This is an emergency broadcast to update you on the new state of affairs in our city.
“You have seen the strangers moving through the streets. They are here to help us, but to make sure of their own safety, they have been forced to take control of our policing and military duties. That their first greeting was to be shot at and, in some cases, driven over by concerned citizens should explain why this is necessary.”
Arthur had never seen a man so obviously convinced every word he was reading was utter tripe before in his life—and he’d watched some of the Iraqi speeches during the US invasion of their country.
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