Reign of Evil

So it was with a heavy but proud heart that he addressed them. “You should be with your family. You should be getting baked ham, drinking too much, and making bets about who falls asleep first. You shouldn’t be here. Let me say it again, you shouldn’t be here.” He paused. “But you are here and you’re here because you are professionals. I thank you for that. The reason I thank you is that when you die, no one will thank you. They’ll never know that you tried to stand in the way of a supernatural force created for selfish ends.

“The things you are going to see this night, should you survive, will haunt you for the rest of your lives. But know, Marines, that without you, England is surely lost. With you, we have a chance to win her back. Now get ready to fight hard.”

Thirty curious faces were now stunned. Several of them glanced at their partners, but no one was laughing. He wasn’t sure if his speech did the trick, but it was something he’d felt compelled to do. He’d have wanted someone to tell him if he’d been in their place.

He brought them to attention.

Magerts stepped in front of him.

“Not exactly a Saint Crispin’s Day speech, was it?” Ian asked.

Magerts’s face was stone cold. “They need to understand the seriousness. I think you provided that.”

Ian turned the platoon back over to the lieutenant.

After a weapon and ammo check, they boarded into three vans and a car. The vans were white with dark smoked-out windows. The insides had been stripped and allowed room for ten Marines to sit. Each van had a driver. The car was a white BMW sedan also with smoked-out windows. The vehicles all had military license plates. Magerts would drive the BMW with Ian in the passenger seat.

Ten minutes later they were heading for Glastonbury Tor.

CHAPTER 38

SOUTH FROM WARWICK, ENGLAND. 0530 HOURS.

Walker drove with Laws in the seat beside him. Holmes, Sassy, and Yank were in the middle row. The last row held YaYa and Hoover. Walker kept glancing in the mirror at Sassy. Her plan was simple, but Walker doubted they’d be able to execute. It was based on too much theory. He’d rather charge through the front door, but the hounds had already proven to be unaffected by their rounds. Now they were on their way to meet a fellow witch who lived in Godalming. She was going to provide some items that would assist them. Then it was off to Sassy’s Boondoggle, as he was privately referring to it.

Her idea, once posed, was co-opted and coordinated into the larger effort. While Ian took the platoon of Marines to secure the home south of Glastonbury Tor, arresting as many of the partygoers as they could, Triple Six and their pet witch were heading for Bratton Castle in Wiltshire. The castle had been built in the Iron Age, but the hill fort it had been built upon was constructed during the Bronze Age, which according to Laws, meant about two thousand years before Christ.

What very few people knew was that the hill fort was erected on an even older Tuatha mound. Sassy had drawn a map of all the mounds she knew of and this one had been the nearest to Glastonbury Tor. The idea was to use the Tuatha inside Sassy to enter the mound, then use the Bratton Mound as a transit point to Glastonbury Tor.

That is, if the Tuatha had the power to get into the mound.

And if the Tuatha could bring them with it.

And if the Tuatha cooperated.

And if they could figure out how to travel through the mounds.

There were just too many ifs.

“You know, if you squeeze it hard enough I’m sure it will bleed.”

Walker glanced at Laws. “Huh?”

“The steering wheel. If you were planning on strangling it, then you’re done.”

Walker loosened his hands. He glanced in the mirror, then whispered, “I just don’t think this will work.”

“It might not, but I think what really bothers you is the whole going-through-the-mounds thing.”

“That’s doesn’t bother me.”

“Then you need your head examined.” Laws glanced behind them, then leaned close to Walker. “We’ve never done anything like this before. Sure, we’ve run, walked, crawled, and jumped into the mouth of danger before, but we’ve never traveled through an interdimensional portal. You realize that that’s what they are, right?”

Laws had put his hand on Walker’s right arm. Walker shook it off. “Now who’s the excited one?” But Laws was right. That was what was bothering him. He’d dealt with magic and seen it done, but he’d never really been in a position to use magic for his own ends. “We’ll be lucky if we don’t find ourselves stuck inside a hill.”

“You’re a complaining lot of military men, aren’t you?” Sassy said from the backseat. Her words dripped with condescension.

Walker felt his grip tighten on the steering wheel once again. He was about to say something when Laws jumped in.

“It’s been like this since Christ was a corporal, Miss Moore. We talk about it now and get it out of our system; then we’re clearheaded when the fighting starts.”

“I just never thought this was how you acted.”