Reign of Evil

“They wouldn’t be inside the mounds, would they?”

She stared at the screen. “I couldn’t imagine that.”

“So they just appeared there, attacked the witch’s house, then went back.”

She nodded. “It would appear so.”

Walker was used to dealing with magic on a small scale. A chupacabra or a skin-wearing religious fanatic he could parse, but this was on a much larger scale. He wasn’t sure what to think.

“Have there been any other disturbances like this?”

“I’ve been working on an algorithm to find that out.”

“We can’t just go to the Home Office and ask?”

She was about to answer when she smiled, sat back in her chair, and shook her head. “That would be the obvious answer, wouldn’t it?” She put on a headset and began to make a call, acting like Walker wasn’t even there.

He paused a moment, then said, “Glad I could help.”

She waved a hand but was too deep into her problem set to pay attention to anything else.

Walker left the room thinking about the barrows and the Wild Hunt. There was something the witch had said that he felt was important, but he couldn’t remember exactly what it was.

CHAPTER 14

TWIN PEAKS, CALIFORNIA. AFTERNOON.

Director David Lynch made the place famous, but there was really nothing to the town of Twin Peaks other than several hundred homes and a quickie mart. The TV series by the same name started out with a mysterious naked body wrapped in plastic found on the side of the road. Nothing like that really ever happened in this sleepy out-of-the-way hamlet overlooking the Rim of the World Highway and downtown Los Angeles. Which is why many old Hollywood movie stars settled in the greater Lake Arrowhead area. A normal day out near the lake or in one of the nearby towns such as Twin Peaks or Crestline could find a person passing Will Smith or Heather Locklear or Vince Neil from Mötley Crüe. One of the unspoken rules, however, was not to approach them and to give them their space. Although there were tourists who didn’t know this, the locals treated it as dogma.

So when SEAL Team 666 landed, loaded into the NCIS-provided SUV, and headed toward Lake Arrowhead it wasn’t any surprise when they found themselves at a stoplight next to a Mercedes convertible with a woman behind the wheel who resembled a star from a famous 1970s TV show.

Yank drove. Holmes sat in the passenger seat. Behind him sat Laws. Behind Yank sat YaYa. They all wore jeans and T-shirts and light jackets to cover their shoulder rigs, which carried Sig Sauer P229s.

Yank thumbed toward the Mercedes. “Isn’t that that actress from The Love Boat? What’s her name, Jane?”

All four SEALs turned to stare at the older woman in the car next to them. Although she couldn’t see them through the heavily tinted windows, she turned and looked at the SUV that towered over her car, giving them all a clear look.

“That’s Julie,” Laws, the man with the eidetic memory, said. “And it’s Love Boat minus the ‘The.’”

“Julie, right,” Yank said, smiling wistfully. “She was the cruise director. Never knew she got so old.”

“It’s called the passage of time,” YaYa said from the backseat. “It’s been more than thirty years since that show was on television. Which begs the question, what’s a Compton kid like you watching an all-white show like that?” He snapped his fingers. “That’s right. The bartender was black. What was his name?”

“Isaac Washington played by actor Ted Lange,” Laws said flatly.

Yank spoke into the rearview mirror. “You’re always so cliché, Yaya. Why is it a black guy like me only watches black people on television? Do you only watch ragheads?”

“That would mean I’d spend my days watching nothing but Al Jazeera. We’re seriously underrepresented on television unless it’s some terrorist blowing themselves up. What do they expect me to do, clap and shout, Hooray, another one for the seventy-two overworked virgins!?”

A car honked from behind.

Yank looked up and saw that Julie in the Mercedes was already three car lengths ahead.

“We can go anytime,” Holmes said.

“Yessir.” Yank cursed inwardly. YaYa was always getting him in trouble. He put the SUV in gear. They drove a mile farther before he added, “Anyway, my adopted father watched it as reruns. He made me sit in the living room and do my homework when he watched it. I couldn’t help but watch it. It was either that or math.”

They drove in silence for several minutes, during which Yank thought fondly of the man who’d adopted him and given him a new life after his mother had perished in a house fire. He wished the man was still around so he could see how his work in progress, as he sometimes called Yank, turned out. Being a Navy man, he’d have been very proud his adopted son had become a SEAL.

“Let’s review,” Holmes said. “YaYa, give us the rundown.”