Reign of Evil

And her brother had been largely responsible for their escape. They now had no doubt that Sir Robert Montgomery was involved with the Red Grove and possibly the Wild Hunt. There was also no doubt that once these entities learned of the demise of their golem guard, they’d be searching for the Tuatha, having determined that it had returned to the Isles during the brief period before the witch shielded it. So as they knew that the SEALs had been at the museum, it would be a simple task to track them back to Chicksands RAF, that is, if the MP hadn’t outed them already. It would additionally be simple to track them once they evacuated and headed to Point Bravo. All the surveillance detection routes in the world couldn’t evade a network of CCTV cameras. So, just as they’d planned it, Preeti’s brother launched an immense DNS attack on the British Transport Police Servers, using underground networks in Romania and Uganda. The denial of service attacks successfully blocked all incoming traffic feeds, replacing them with live streams from various sex cams from around the globe for two orgasmic hours, allowing Section 9 and SEAL Team 666 to fall off the map. With the additional change of vehicle, their vehicular biometrics was now also different. The only way to find them now would be through witchcraft, which Sassy was spending all of her time thwarting.

Once Preeti finally filled her plate, then Sassy, the men approached the food in a less aggressive manner. They found space on the pews and ate in silence. This was the first nourishment they’d had since before the mission at the museum and Walker had to force himself to eat slowly. He’d almost finished when the witch, who’d been in the rear of the room, writing runes on the floor around Van Dyke with chalk and dust, approached them.

“He’s dying,” she said flatly as she took the plate that Holmes had prepared for her. “It’s only a matter of days.” She shrugged. “Might be hours.”

Laws spoke first. “He said he had cancer.”

Sassy shook her head so her hair almost covered her face as she chewed. She spoke around a bite of vindaloo. “The cancer should have killed him two years ago. It’s the Tuatha Dé Dannan that’s keeping him alive.” She laughed huskily as she wiped her mouth and set her plate aside. “It’s clear what the Bohemian Grove is all about now. I don’t know if this is the only one, but they have at least one Tuatha Dé Dannan that they let someone host in order to prolong their lives. They might even give it to healthy people, because what this thing does is share its life force, giving the host strength and, in the case of Van Dyke, enough strength to live a few more years.”

Walker suddenly understood. “And the golem was there to protect their property.”

“They’re going to want it back,” Holmes concluded.

“You saw how interested Sir Robert was, as if he knew Van Dyke was there. Had they gone to the hangar instead of the museum, they would already have it.”

“But I had it well shielded. Going to Chicksands would be a crapshoot, while the museum was a sure thing.”

Walker gestured at the Navy chief. “Thanks to Genaro for holding him and his thugs off long enough for us to come.”

YaYa, who’d been looking sideways at Van Dyke in the back of the room, joined the conversation. “It still doesn’t answer the question of why they want it.”

Sassy’s eyes widened. “Alas. The million-pound question. I think I have the answer to that.” When she was certain she had everyone’s attention, she told them, “It’s the mounds. Legend states that the Tuatha lived in them. I believe the mounds are a sort of parallel universe. It’s clear that they are connected somehow, which would explain how the Wild Hunt can move around so swiftly.”

Holmes nodded, got up, and stuffed his plate and plasticware into a garbage bag. “Van Dyke is the key.”

“Not Van Dyke, the Tuatha,” she corrected.

“He—it can get us access to the mounds. Will it cooperate?”

“Not as long as it’s in Van Dyke’s body. It wants a new host.”

Holmes stared for a long moment, then shook his head. “No way. It could be a parasite. Maybe it lets the host live longer because it needs something from the host to live? Did you think of that?”

“Perhaps, but—”

Laws joined in as he was throwing away his plate. “Legend has it that after their defeat by the Milesians, the Tuatha descended into the mounds. Hence their other name, Aos Sí, or Sidhe, ‘people of the mounds.’ Now this is where Tolkien stole his ideas for elves, from legends resident in the British Isles. Although the term ‘Tuatha Dé Dannan’ is of Irish origin, there are cognates–different names for the same entities–throughout the peoples who populated Dark Age Briton. Realize that when the texts came out, they were referring to a race of people who existed more than nineteen hundred years before Christ.”

Sassy laughed tiredly. “He really is a walking talking Wikipedia entry.”

“He has an eidetic memory. Remembers everything he sees.” Holmes gestured for Laws to continue.