In my mind, the Harvesting Souls Church had crossed the line from a legitimate religion into a cult. A death cult. And I had only a week to come up with a plan to prevent that weird cult from marching a thousand people into the Rift.
Something I had no doubt about was that Whittaker and the Council might not be taking it seriously ahead of the event, but they would be completely up in arms afterward. From the missing persons reports and the interviews Carmelita had conducted in Kensington, it was obvious that at least a dozen members of Hundreds Families were involved with the church. Maybe twenty more were from Thousands Families. And the mothers of those people who disappeared forever were not going to be happy.
For some reason, I didn’t expect Whittaker and the Council to accept the blame. They were a lot more likely to look for an underling to sacrifice.
Time to pull out the big guns.
“Carmelita, come into my office.”
“What’s up?”
“I know you said that you and your uncle, the one who’s a Catholic bishop, don’t get along that great,” I started.
She snorted. “What do you want?”
“Well, I was hoping that if someone dropped some information about the Harvesting Souls Church in the right ears, perhaps someone might get indignant and bitch to the Council…” I let my sentence tail off. Her uncle was the Archbishop of Baltimore, and her grandfather sat on the Council as head of the Domingo Family.
She pursed her mouth and dropped into a chair, a thoughtful expression on her face.
“Maybe,” she said after a minute or two.
I waited while she thought about it some more.
“I’d have to present it the right way,” she said. Then her face brightened. “I know! I’ll invite Danny to go watch with me!”
She lost me. “Danny?” I asked.
“Yeah. Uncle Danny. He’s Archbishop Rodrigo’s younger brother, and just a little bit older than I am. He’s a Comparative Religion professor at Loyola. There’s a birthday party for one of my nieces tomorrow night and both of them will be there.” She gave a little shrug. “I hadn’t planned to go, but this should be fun.”
Chapter 32
I took a drive up to Loch Raven, had dinner with my parents, and then Dad and I dusted off the plans for the Metroplex electrical grid. The plans and schematics were stored in the main computer system, but he also had paper copies in a locked closet off the computer room.
Personally, I thought it was amazing that the scheme he created had lasted twenty-three years without any breakdowns or maintenance. Sure, I had maintained the turbines, generators, and magitek enhancers, but the switches, control computers, and cables hadn’t been touched since his kidnapping.
“You’re joking,” Dad said, staring at me. “You’ve never touched the computers? They’re still running? The programs have never glitched?”
I shrugged. “I’ve rebooted everything a couple of times. I have to use the computer to take a generator off-line so I can work on it. But the computers themselves? No, they’ve been rock solid.”
“And you never considered that…” he sputtered, looking for a word, “…unnatural?”
“Not really. My daddy built them.”
He continued to stare at me for a moment, then he pulled me into a hug. There were tears in his eyes.
When we really got into the plans, I discovered that not only was there a dedicated line going to Findlay House from one of the run-of-the-river turbines but also the turbine that fed Wilmington had a switch so its electricity could be diverted to another line that ran to Findlay. There was also a third line to the estate from the main power array at the dam. If the primary line went down, the computers would automatically cut over to the next line, and then the next.
“Were you paranoid that Olivia might lose power for her hair dryer?” I asked.
Dad chuckled. “My mother and Uncle George’s generation were very fond of triple redundancy on anything that might protect them from demons. And although I doubt they would ever admit it, the idea of using their control over the power system as a weapon surely figured into their thinking.”
“You mean, they could cut power to anyone in the Metroplex—or the whole Metroplex—and still have all the electricity they needed.”
“Something like that.”
“They looked only outward for threats,” I said. “Too bad they never considered that dear, sweet Aunt Courtney might murder them in their beds.”
He shook his head. “George always had a blind spot as far as she was concerned. So, now that you know how to kill the power to the estate, what do you plan to do?”
“Good question.” I stood and started rolling up the plans to put them away. “It does provide me with a weapon, but we have to figure out how to use it. Even without power, she still has a thousand guardians armed to the teeth at the estate, and Akiyama has a lot more than that to back her up.”
As we locked up and got ready to go back to Mom’s house, Dad said, “Don’t let all this talk about war and battles constrain your thinking. Courtney didn’t get where she is through a massive frontal assault. Firepower may be the way to defeat a demon horde, but subterfuge and smart thinking might work better when your target is a single person.”
I grinned. “In other words, I might be better off hiring a pretty-boy assassin.”
Carmelita came in the morning after her family birthday party whistling a popular tune that she knew I hated. Leaning against the jamb of my office door, she gave me a lopsided grin.
“Let me guess,” I said, “your Family elected you queen.”
“Almost. Uncle Rodrigo plans to hit Whittaker first thing this morning, or at least that’s what he said. But Uncle Danny said he’d come and watch the show with me. He was very enthusiastic.”
“Great. Just what we need. More civilians putting themselves at risk.”
“Don’t be a party pooper. I’ll bet we can find someone willing to advertise it and sell tickets. We could get rich.”
I immediately thought of Aleks, my business-obsessed boyfriend, then pushed the thought away.
My phone rang.
“Captain James,” I answered.
“If you can spare me a moment, I’d like to see you in my office. Now,” Whittaker growled.
“Right away.” I hung up and grinned at Carmelita. “Our boss sounds as though he’s had a chat with your uncle. He also sounds like he wants to shoot the messenger. Wish me luck.”
When I reached the commissioner’s office, I found a dark-haired man in a black suit with a clerical collar chatting with my boss.
“Reporting as ordered, sir,” I said as I entered.
“Captain Danica James, this is Archbishop Rodrigo Domingo,” Whittaker said. “The archbishop has learned of the event the Harvesting Souls Church plans for this weekend, and wants to know what we plan to do about it.”
I had done some research, and come up with what I thought was a masterful plan, and perfectly legal.
“As soon as you approve the necessary resources, I plan to arrest everyone who shows up,” I said. “Except for the first twenty-five people, of course. We’ll need a lot of buses to haul them away, as well as officers to keep the crowd in-line, and probably extra booking officers on duty.”
Domingo gave me a satisfied, tight-lipped smile and settled back in his chair. Whittaker’s mouth dropped open and his eyes bulged a little.
“And what charge do you plan to use for the arrests?” he asked.
“Unlawful assembly. Holding an event with more than twenty-five people without a permit,” I replied. “Rock Creek Park is part of the National Park System, and you need a permit to hold large gatherings in a national park.”
Whittaker blinked at me. “National park? There’s no National Park System. At least, there hasn’t been since the first time DC was nuked.”
“Ah, but there is,” I said. “When the Magi Council established itself as the world’s formal governing body, they decided it was too
messy and cumbersome to adopt a whole new set of governing laws. So, they accepted all the established laws and said if any of them needed changing or repealing, they would deal with them on an individual basis.”
I took the liberty of sitting down. “Among those laws from long ago that we still enforce are speed limits, parking laws, laws against dumping trash on downtown sidewalks, murder, and armed robbery. There are still national parks, and there are even people who administer the various national parks. What doesn’t exist is an administrative office that issues special-event permits for Rock Creek Park. But the law requiring them is still on the books.”
The archbishop barked out a laugh.
Whittaker’s stony-faced glower slowly cracked, and a grin appeared. “How many men and how many buses?”
“I figure about three hundred officers and as many buses as we can wrangle. The Harvesting Souls Church will have the buses they use to haul their worshipers to the park, and we can commandeer those.”
“Oh, only three hundred officers,” Whittaker leaned back in his chair and chuckled. “I’m sure I can find a little loose change in my budget for that.”
I leaned forward. “Good. But I’m not sure things will be that simple. I suspect that the church is actually run by demons. And if they decide to object to our operation, then I’m going to need troops to protect both the cops and the church’s followers.”
Archbishop Rodrigo nodded. “When my niece first told me about this church, and what they’re trying to do, I also suspected demon involvement. Who else benefits from this blasphemous charade? I think your captain’s right, Tom. Demons have little sense of humor, and very short tempers. When they’re thwarted, the whole thing is liable to blow up.”
Whittaker didn’t look happy. “I don’t suppose the Catholic Church is willing to contribute some resources to the cause?”
Rodrigo gave him a beatific smile. “Our thoughts and prayers will be with you.”
Chapter 33
Carmelita and I took a drive down to Rock Creek Park that afternoon. A battered old sign, barely readable, told us when we reached Picnic Area 21. The map we were following on my car’s computer showed the Rift extending to the edge of the open area there.
There were a couple of cars parked there, just off the road. I parked a few yards away, and we got out. The forest was as thick as hair on a cat, and we couldn’t see more than thirty or forty feet in any direction.
Drawing my pistol, I let it hang next to my leg. I raised an eyebrow at Carmelita, and she drew her pistol as well.
We walked over a small bridge into an open area with picnic tables, firepits and grills, a sandy area for volleyball, and a covered gazebo. At the end of the open space, a picnic table was cut in half by the Rift. A wall of sparkling colors rose into the sky as far as I could see. We were looking at the very northern end of the Rift, and it was only a few feet wide in the part closest to us but widened into the distance. The forest stood on either side of it, but we couldn’t see into the Rift at all.
“Absolutely amazing,” Carmelita breathed.
We walked closer, stopping about fifty feet away from it. I had never ventured closer, though I had talked to a couple of scientists who had poked instruments into it. They didn’t get any readings, and never retrieved what had gone in.
“I don’t see how they’re going to get a thousand people into this space,” my partner said.
“Yeah, me neither. I guess they’re just going to march the sacrifices in as they arrive.”
“How do we know they go to demon land? I mean, if the Rift was in Norway, would they go to the land of the elves?”
“Not according to the elves,” I said. “My grandfather said that they never saw anything come out of the Rift. As far as we know, only upper-level demons can go back and forth, and they use some kind of magik to do it.”
“Your grandfather has been here a long time. Maybe at the time he was in Alfheim, there weren’t any elves here who tried to go back.”
I shook my head. “We just don’t know, and the dangers of experimenting are too great.” I didn’t tell her that my dad might have more knowledge on the subject. I hadn’t even told Whittaker that Dad was back.
“So, you think the priests are going to use some kind of demon magik?” Carmelita asked.
“I’m not sure what to think. Let’s map out where we plan to station our forces, and then go back to Baltimore and start putting this operation together.”
We drove back to Police Headquarters and held a planning session in one of the conference rooms.
“I envisioned it as a large production, with speeches, or at least a sermon,” Mychal said when he looked at the photos we had taken of the area. “Lots of pomp and ceremony. There isn’t room for any of that.”
“Yeah, well, it’s more like a funnel,” Carmelita said. “Get off the bus, walk through a relatively small clearing, and pass out of this reality. A really low-budget operation. I assume there will be a priest there to bless them as they cross over to the other side.”
“This may be easier than I thought,” Commissioner Whittaker said. “There isn’t space for a large force of guards. We take out the guards, substitute them with our own people, and direct the would-be sacrificial lambs out the other side of the clearing.” He pointed on the map. “Here. Then we load them onto our own buses and take them to a holding area.”
He was right. Doing it his way would be super simple. But I was inherently suspicious of anything that looked too easy. I couldn’t escape the feeling that we had to be missing something.
On Friday afternoon, we had our people in place, stationed at all the road entrances to Rock Creek Park, with communication and food stations set up at the other picnic areas, and a hundred SWAT officers in the woods surrounding Picnic Area 21.
Drones monitored the various Harvesting Souls Church’s locations and alerted us when the buses filled up and hit the roads.
But none of the buses went to Rock Creek Park. They all went to the main temple in Kensington, their occupants got off, and the buses turned around to pick up another load of passengers.
It continued that way all evening until midnight and started up again at eight o’clock on Saturday morning.
Whittaker and I spent some time on the phone, then we sent most of our force home, telling them to report back at six o’clock Sunday morning. I also went home and caught some sleep.
On Sunday morning, I was back at the park, expecting that we’d soon see some of the church people show up to start staging their event. By mid-morning, nothing had happened.
Around noon, Luanne called me from Police Headquarters in Baltimore. “Captain, I think you should take a look at what the drones over the temple in Kensington are showing."
I hiked up the road to Picnic Area 22, where our main command post was set up. Entering the large van packed with electronic equipment, I glanced around at the screens covering the walls. Two of the screens showed the temple.
As I watched, two buses pulled into the parking lot and drove up to the entrance. The passengers got off and filed inside the building. Then the buses pulled away and drove back to the highway.
“Any idea how many people those buses have hauled in there this weekend?” I asked the room.
“Nine hundred and fifty-six so far,” someone answered.
I stood and turned in the direction of the voice. “Any idea how many people total are in the building?”
A uniformed cop with sergeant’s stripes on his sleeves shrugged. “Hard to be precise, as we don’t know how many people were in there before we started keeping track. One thousand one hundred and eighty-three people have gone in since Friday, and seventy-six have come out. If someone went in and out twenty times, we’d have them counted as twenty people.”
I studied the screens some more. Three buses were parked in the lot. That meant twenty-seven buses were out on the road. As I watched, another bus came in, discharged its passengers, then parked next to the other thre
e. The driver got out, went to a car parked nearby, and drove away.
Pulling out my phone, I called Luanne. “Hey. I’m watching the drone feed. What am I missing?”
“Seventeen rented buses have already been returned to the company that owns them,” she said.
I waited for her to say something more. When she didn’t, I thought about what she’d said. “How are they going to get all those people to Rock Creek Park?” I asked.
“Teleportation? Divine intervention? Walk?” she replied.
Duh. Forest and trees. “They aren’t going to the park at all.”
“So it appears. They aren’t setting up anything outside, so they must plan to hold their mass ascension ceremony inside.”
But the rift was six miles away. Unless the mass ascension was only a metaphor. Or they had a way of opening a portal…
I contacted Dad through my implant.
When you were kidnapped, did the demons take you through the Rift, or did they open a portal? I asked him.
Ashvial opened a portal. Why? He answered.
I’ll tell you later.
“Crap! Is Whittaker at headquarters?” I asked Luanne.
“I don’t know.”
“Get hold of him or someone who can get hold of him. We need to change our target site. They’re going to open a portal inside the building.”
“How are they going to do that?”
“Long story. Tell Whittaker.”
I hung up and found the commander of the SWAT team. He wasn’t overly-enthusiastic when I told him we had set up our ambush in the wrong place. He was even less enthusiastic when I told him the real event was going to take place inside a building. Especially when I said that I had little knowledge of how the inside of the building was laid out. The only plans I had been able to find were two hundred years old, and we had no idea what kind of renovations the Harvesting Souls Church had done.
Soul Harvest (The Rift Chronicles Book 3) Page 17