Reign of Evil

“I don’t know, Mother.” He took a tentative step toward the flap but stopped when several more screams sounded. He glanced back at the fearful looks on his family’s faces and knew that he wore his own version.

Suddenly a sound like a freight train descended upon them, so loud his sisters clapped their hands over their ears.

Justin felt compelled to investigate. He felt his mother’s hand on his arm but shook it off. He stepped to the entrance and opened the tent flap.

Indistinguishable figures hurtled by the entrance at breakneck speeds. Now everyone in the camp was screaming. The tent was ripped from its moorings and flew to the right. A tent pole struck him in his head, sending him to a knee as he fought the starry pain. With his eyes closed because of the dust and wind, he turned and crawled to his mother. He felt around, but she wasn’t there.

He opened his eyes to the maelstrom.

Gone was the table.

Gone was the heater.

Gone was the tent.

Gone were his mother and sisters.

He surged to his feet and screamed their names. Looking around, he saw that the land had been cleared of all the tents. Several people lay on the ground. The protestors were fleeing. Where their signs had been dropped, one picket could be seen impaled in an older man Justin only knew as Pham.

Justin searched for his family, but his eyes were drawn toward the dogs who began to turn toward him. Realizing he was the only person left standing in the encampment, he started to back away.

Something growled behind him.

He whirled.

Then the growling grew as the beasts that surrounded him began to stalk toward him.

His mind sought to flee where his body was unable. What was this? Was it a nightmare? If so, he desperately wanted to wake—

They lunged in pairs, grabbing his legs, ripping, tearing, raking teeth along the edges of his femurs. Another beast grabbed his head. He felt a tremendous pressure. His eyes bulged from his face. Somehow, his gaze locked in on a young woman across the street, red hair, white dress, taking picture after picture with an old Polaroid camera.

Then came a pop.

He didn’t know how he knew, but he knew that he was dead. For one second he saw everything, knew everything, and understood exactly why he’d been murdered. But then it was sucked away from him and, as if he lived on the end of a whip, he snapped back into an existence he knew all too well.

He ran with the others.

He bayed.

And then came the King.

CHAPTER 24

CHICKSANDS RAF, ENGLAND. MORNING.

Everyone from Section 9 including Sassy Moore stood inside the hangar watching the gargantuan plane pull forward. Although the Royal Air Force had C-17s in their inventory, there weren’t many of them. The Globemaster was the sort of plane that looked like it ate smaller ones. Preeti, Trev, and Sassy, on the one hand, stared at it in wonder. Ian, on the other hand, projected the same bored confidence he’d had when fighting the homunculi.

The hangar was a new addition to Section 9 office space. Thanks to a phone call from Lord Robinson, space which hadn’t been available to the diminishing equities of England’s premier supernatural defense force suddenly appeared. A hangar that had been used for storage was quickly emptied. RAF airmen had then moved Section 9’s paltry belongings out of the basement and into the twenty-five-by-twenty-five-meter space. With two offices situated at the rear of the hangar, one was cleared for Sassy and Preeti to stay in for the duration of the emergency and the other was reinforced to hold a prisoner SEAL Team 666 had said they were bringing. The rest of them, SEAL Team 666 included, would sleep on cots in a common area created on the hangar’s left side. The right side had been set up with their communications suite, computer systems, a projector that blasted a map on a white screen, and several tables and chairs.

Walker stood at the front of the group waiting outside the hangar. For all the welcome he’d had from Section 9, SEAL Team 666 was his unit and the team members were closer to him than anyone else. Where he’d once set his life against the image of his dead brother, now he had living, breathing replacements against which to measure himself. He remembered the grudge he’d held against Holmes, who’d been in charge of the SEAL team when his brother had died in a roadside bombing. Then after Holmes had relayed the classified details of his brother’s death, his feelings had all but evaporated.

Holmes could have no more influenced the way Walker’s brother lived and died than he could Walker. Although Walker and his brother were SEALs through and through, their inner cores had been forged long before. Their ideas of right and wrong, their need to be heroic, their desire to make the world a better place, had been engineered within them on a genetic level.

The bottom line was that his brother had died saving children. Some called his actions stupid. Some called his death a waste. But Walker knew that his brother would have done it again given the chance.