Assassin's Code

Chapter Fifty-Seven

I sagged against the door frame.

“Ah… Christ…”

The Mouradipours had been stripped naked and tied to wooden chairs. On a nearby table were pliers, a hammer, matches, wire cutters, and other tools. Everything in the room was covered with blood and wrongness. They were both dead. I didn’t need to search for pulses to figure that out. It would be nice to believe that they had died quickly and with some shred of dignity left, but that would be an absurd self-delusion. The team downstairs had torn information from them and then continued on to tear away their humanity. And the bastards had used burning matches to sear crosses over their hearts.

The Mouradipours were Muslim, so if it hadn’t been for the stakes and garlic and all that vampire hunter bullshit I would have figured this for some kind of anti-Islamic statement.

And why kill the Mouradipours and then try to take me captive? Or, was capturing me a prelude to a trip up here to this makeshift torture chamber?

Probably.

Even so, why set up this hit at all? Just to get the flash drive? Or to keep its information out of someone else’s hands? Hours had passed, surely they had to know that I would have passed along that information by now. What was the point of targeting me now?

And how many teams was I facing here?

The Red Knights were one faction, and they were top of the line. I would like to think that I would have won the fight in the hotel without Violin’s help, but I’m not sure I can say that with conviction. I can say without fear of contradiction that I have never faced anyone as fierce or capable as that knight.

On the other hand, the fearless vampire hunters-though clearly organized and violent-were Triple-A ball compared to the knight’s major league status. Sure, the team downstairs was brutal, but they were absurdly clumsy. I’m pretty good in a fight, but I was unarmed when I stepped into the house, and I won this one too easily. They were not exactly amateurs, but they sure as hell weren’t very high up on the professional food chain. If they hunted the Red Knights I wonder what the win-loss ratio was. If this was Vegas I’d bet the farm on the knights for a shutout.

Now, my friend the rat-bastard Rasouli was a third team.

Violin and whoever she worked for were a fourth.

Could I make an argument for any of them being the same team? Hard to say, because I had no idea who was lying to me and who was telling me the truth.

The knight clearly wanted the flash drive and had no love for Rasouli. That seemed obvious. Violin was willing to work with Rasouli to set up the meet this morning, but she said that she considered him to be a spitty place on the sidewalk. She knew about the knights. The knight knew about Arklight, and so did Violin, and she tried to scare the bejesus out of me by saying that my even knowing that name could be fatal. She also warned me away from the knights. The bastards downstairs knew about the knights but so far they hadn’t mentioned anything about Rasouli, the flash drive, Arklight, the Book of Shadows, the Saladin Codex, or the nukes.

And on top of all that, were any of these teams the ones who planted the nukes?

If the nukes were even real.

My head was starting to spin. What would help me fill in the blanks?

I thought about Krystos and the Romanian guy. I looked at the dead bodies and the tools that had been used on them and some very ugly thoughts began forming in my head. The Civilized Man in my head cried out in protest. We didn’t do that kind of thing. The Warrior was grinning and sharpening his knife. He was all for it. I looked to the Cop for the voice of reason, but he kept looking out of my eyes at the innocent couple who had been torn apart.

There was a clean sheet on the bed, and I pulled it off and covered the murdered couple. I don’t know why: it wouldn’t matter to them; it wouldn’t make any of it better. I tried to tell myself that it was out of courtesy and respect, or a token act to afford them some measure of dignity even after this kind of death.

That sounded nice, but it was bullshit.

I couldn’t bear to look at them. If I turned away I knew I’d still see them that way in my mind. If I covered them, then that would be my last memory of them. Or so I hoped. Any lingering regrets I might have had for shooting Inigo drained away and left no trace.

I turned away and searched the upstairs for weapons and found nothing that provided any answers. So I stole one of Mr. Mouradipour’s clean shirts from a hall closet. In the bathroom I washed the blood off my face and throat, ran fingers through my hair, and took a moment to look at the blue eyes in the mirror. They were filled with doubts and questions.

“What the hell is going on?” I asked the man in the mirror. He had no answers at all, so I went back downstairs.

I found Ghost standing in the living room staring at Krystos, who stared back as if mesmerized. I clicked my tongue and Ghost looked at me with a strange expression in his brown eyes. He was not trembling as much as before, and there was more wolf than shepherd in the look he gave me. Maybe it was the smell of fresh blood or the sight of wounded prey. Or maybe the stress had pushed him into a different head space.

“Ghost,” I said, and for a moment he did nothing except stare.

I took a step toward him. It’s a pack leader move, challenging and demanding. He would either back down or go for me.

“Down!” I ordered.

And, with only the slightest hesitation, he lay down. He didn’t roll. I wasn’t asking that of him. But he obeyed my order.

I squatted between Ghost and Krystos. I don’t know if the Greek had participated in the horrors upstairs, or if he even knew about it, but he was part of this team. Apparently the leader of the team, and that put the whole thing on him as far as I was concerned. He could read those thoughts from my expression. He read other things too.

He began to cry.

Chapter Fifty-Eight

I stared at Krystos for a long time without speaking. Twenty, thirty seconds. It always feels longer when you’re holding the low cards. He may have been a tough guy when he had a gun and a crew, but when it came to toughing it out with me, he was holding four low cards and a joker.

Silence and patience were my cards while I waited for him to break.

“P-please…” he said in a hoarse whisper. “For the love of God.”

“Is that what you are, Krystos? A man of God? A true believer?”

“Yes.”

“Your friends, too?”

He glanced around at the dead. “Yes.”

“What’s that mean exactly, being a ‘man of God.’ To you, I mean.”

The word was a tough one for him but he came up with him. “Ordained.”

I raised my eyebrows. “You’re a minister?”

He shook his head. “Priest.”

“Bullshit. What about going to hell for torture and murder?”

Krystos raised his bound wrists and nodded toward his left arm. “Sleeve,” he said.

I pushed his sleeve up and there was tattoo of a cross with Latin words written in an arch above and below it. Above was

Below the cross

“What’s that?”

“Permission,” he said.

When I did not respond, he said something that I pretty much never expected to hear anywhere outside of a Dan Brown novel or an old episode of Monty Python.

“The Holy Inquisition.”

Interlude Six

Hassan ibn Sabbah sat on a couch that was draped in rich fabrics. Pillows littered the stairs of the dais on which the couch sat. Two warriors stood at the foot of the dais, naked swords laid across their naked arms, their faces as hard and unmoving as stone. The scent of hashish wafted through the chamber and out onto the breeze where it was whipped away high above the mountains.

A carpet lolled out like a great tongue, rippling down the stairs and stretching across the long reception chamber. Sewn into the fabric with delicate skill were fantastical battles. Eagles attacked dragons and tore them to pieces; desert djinn ripped the hearts from crusaders. It had been a gift from Ibn Sabbah’s much missed old friend, the mathematician and poet Omar Khayyam. How Ibn Sabbah wished that his friend had lived to see this day. To see what Ibn Sabbah had accomplished.

He accepted a cup of juice from a servant who then bowed himself away from the dais, and as he sipped Ibn Sabbah studied the fifty men who stood in silent rows on either side of the runner carpet.

His fida’i.

His assassins.

His sacred killers. Guardians of the secret shared with him by his cousin, Ibrahim al-Asiri. Guardians, too, of the faith. Men who would be used to spill the blood of the infidel in the cleverest plan Sabbah had ever heard. Preserving the word of God through the spilling of blood.

A door at the far end of the chamber opened and Ibn Sabbah’s chief advisor entered, followed by six bare-chested guards. Between each guard staggered a man in shackles. The prisoners were freshly washed and wore simple but clean clothes. Ibn Sabbah did not allow prisoners to be mistreated, and he absolutely forbade any unwashed person to enter this room or draw near to that precious carpet. The rows of assassins watched dispassionately as the prisoners were brought to the cleared space to the right of the dais and well away from the carpet. Ibn Sabbah nodded to his advisor who produced a key and unlocked the shackles.

Ibn Sabbah studied the three men. Two of them stared at the floor, terrified, confused, and lost. The third stared up at Ibn Sabbah with the defiance sometimes seen in the eyes of a man who is doomed but who wants to spit in death’s eye. A brave man, which was doubly impressive because this man had seen other prisoners taken from the cells, day after day, and probably heard their screams. This man knew that none of those prisoners ever returned to the dungeons. This one has heart, Ibn Sabbah mused.

The advisor nodded to the guards who trotted over and laid their swords at the feet of the prisoners.

“Pick them up,” ordered Ibn Sabbah.

Only the brave man raised his eyes to Ibn Sabbah. The man was a Sunni with a full beard and gray eyes. “Why? So you can snigger as fifty men cut us to pieces? I spit on such cowardice.”

He made as if to do so, but Ibn Sabbah’s voice stopped him.

“You have a chance to live,” he said. “Do not squander it on an insult that you cannot take back.”

Ibn Sabbah snapped his fingers and a single fida’i assassin stepped out of the line and padded silently to stand facing the prisoners. He carried no sword and had only a small curved dagger in his sash. The brave prisoner stood with lips pursed, but he did not spit. He eyed the assassin and then looked again at Ibn Sabbah.

“This is not a trick,” said Ibn Sabbah. “I make you an offer. Take up those swords and face my man. If you kill or incapacitate him, then you may go free. I will give you each a camel and a pouch of gold coins. Before Allah I swear that I tell the truth.”

The three Sunni prisoners shifted uneasily. The brave one continued to glare at Ibn Sabbah, though now there was doubt in his eyes.

“And if we fail to kill him?”

“Then he will assuredly kill you.”

The brave Sunni nodded. “Which one of us fights him first?”

Ibn Sabbah smiled. “All three of you will fight him. Three men, three swords against my man and his knife. Surely even men such as you-thieves and pirates of the desert-could not call those unfair odds.”

“Your word before Allah?” demanded the brave Sunni.

“May His wrath wither the flesh on my bones and make dust of my household.”

The brave man grinned and fast as lightning he hooked his toe under the blade of the nearest sword and kicked it into the air, caught it like a magician, whirled and charged at the fida’i. The other men, even cowed as they were, bent and snatched up the weapons and joined in, knowing that God had granted them mercy when they believed their lives were over. The three of them charged toward the assassin, closing the few yards in a heartbeat, swords glittering as they struck.

And then the fida’i moved.

His body seemed to vanish like smoke as he dodged in and to one side with incredible speed. The dagger vanished from his sash as he ducked under the sword of the left-handed prisoner, a fat man with bullish shoulders. The assassin danced past him and turned. As he did blood erupted from the fat man’s throat. Like a handful of rubies tossed into the wind, the drops of blood flew into the air and then spattered against the face and chest of the second prisoner, a tall man with the heavy forearms of a miller. The assassin pivoted and dropped low as the second man hacked at him with the sword.

“No!” cried the brave man, but it was too late. The miller was committed to the swing, and the assassin darted in and up; his blade opened a vertical line from crotch to breastbone. He stepped aside as the miller’s entrails erupted from the wound and flopped wetly onto the floor. The miller gagged out a shocked denial as he sagged to his knees and toppled forward.

And now it was the fida’i and the last Sunni.

The Sunni was not a rash man. He had just witnessed two men fall in two seconds, men he had seen kill in desert raids. The sword in his hand felt heavy but its solidity was reassuring. And yet…

The fida’i did not rush him, but instead began circling, stalking with catlike silence. The Sunni suddenly lunged, cutting upward at an angle that almost always caught an opponent off guard. It was nearly impossible to evade the cut at that distance, and the Sunni was not slow. But the assassin fell backward onto the floor, and as the blade passed, he arched his body and flipped to his feet again like an acrobat. When the Sunni checked his swing and cut backward to take the man across the thighs, the assassin leapt into the air, spry as a monkey, and the blade missed his bare feet by an inch.

The assassin landed on the balls of his feet, balanced and ready. The Sunni pivoted and cut again and again and again, alternating long and short slashes; stabbing and chopping. He stamped forward and darted left and right, whipping the sword at the assassin at angles impossible to evade. But the blade never once touched him.

“Stand still you devil!” cried the Sunni as his frustration disintegrated into doubt. With each passing second he began to fear that he was indeed fighting a demon, some desert ghost who could not be harmed by human weapons.

Then behind him, the Sunni heard Ibn Sabbah speak.

“Stop toying with him.”

For a fractured moment the Sunni thought that Ibn Sabbah had directed the comment at him; but then he saw the body language of the fida’i change. It was a subtle thing, a shift from acrobatic evasion to the attack posture of a hawk. With another blur of movement the assassin darted in under the Sunni’s next swing, slipping past the blade with a hair’s breadth to spare.

The Sunni felt the world freeze into a pinpoint of ice. He tried to speak, to ask what had happened, but his jaw would not move. There was a strange pressure under his chin, in his throat, and his brain felt wrong in ways the man could no longer identify. He heard a distant metallic sound and as an afterthought realized that he was no longer holding the sword. He saw the fida’i step back away from him, his hands equally empty. The Sunni reached up to touch his own throat and found the hard, cold edge of a blade there. That made no sense. How could a blade be in such an absurd place?

The room tilted as his knees gave way, and then the Sunni was falling, falling into the void with his jaws pinned shut so that he could not even speak the name of God.

The fida’i stood over him, his naked chest barely heaving to betray the effort he had just spent in the killing of these three men. On the floor, the Sunni lay with the hilt of the dagger pressed up against his soft pallet and the very tip of the blade standing an inch above the top of the man’s skull. The assassin glanced up at Ibn Sabbah, who nodded; then the assassin knelt and pulled his knife blade free.

Ibn Sabbah smiled down at the fida’i and waved him back to his place in line.

Yes, he thought, Ibrahim will be so very pleased.

Chapter Fifty-Nine

I stared at Krystos. He would not meet my eyes.

My phone rang and I looked at the screen display. NO ID. I punched the button.

“Hello, Violin.”

“Joseph, are you all right?”

“Now’s not a good time.”

“I-”

But I ended the call. I was confused enough and didn’t need another cryptic conversation.

On the other hand, in a weird way some of this was starting to make sense, but the sense it made was badly warped, and I knew I was out of my depth. I told Ghost to watch the prisoners; then I walked into the kitchen to make a call. Church answered on the first ring.

I said, “Look, Boss, I know you’re busy-I’m busier.”

“Are you at the safe house?”

“Yes and no. I’m here, but it’s no longer a safe house.”

A slight pause, then he said, “I’m in video conference with Dr. Sanchez and Circe. I’ll cycle you in. Okay, you’re on speaker.”

“Cowboy!” Rudy exclaimed. “How are-?”

“Not a social call, Rude. I’m going to give this to you fast.”

They listened while I told him what had just happened. I heard Rudy curse and Circe gasp when I repeated the word “Upier.” Everyone started asking questions before I even finished. I had to yell to get them to shut the hell up. “Hey, guys-I’m in a compromised safe house with dead bodies and two wounded prisoners. I’m calling for field support, not a panel discussion.”

“Tell us what you need, Captain,” barked Church.

“Sure. Let’s start with this Upier stuff. Do we believe in vampires?” I asked. “The DMS, I mean.”

“No,” said Rudy and Circe.

Church did not answer.

“Boss,” I prompted, “say something, ’cause you’re scaring me here.”

“We have to keep an open mind,” said Church.

“Mother of God,” said Rudy.

“What the hell does that mean?” I demanded. “Answer the question. Do we believe in vampires or not?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Church.

Interlude Seven

Sir Guy heard a scream as he stepped out of his room. The whole tavern was alive with shouts and yells and the stamping of boots as patrons and staff ran toward the front door.

“What is it?” demanded Sir Guy.

“It’s little Mary!” cried one of the tavern boys. “They’re bringing her in a cart!”

Sir Guy lingered for a moment, lips pursed, smoothing the wings of his mustache with two fingers. He heard a footfall and turned to see Brother Reynard, the little monk Father Nicodemus had sent to accompany him on this mission.

“You heard?” asked Sir Guy.

Brother Reynard nodded. “Is this what we came for?”

“Let’s hope so.”

They went downstairs and outside to join the crowd that was gathering around a rickety wooden cart pulled by a donkey. Sir Guy pushed his way through the throng. “Where is the reeve of this shire?”

A warty little man with a cheap sash of office was bent over the cart and looked up.

“I am, milord,” he said, snatching his hat off his head and knuckling his forelock. “Faville is my name, sir.”

Sir Guy removed a document from his pouch and held it up for inspection. The little man-chief constable of the district-could not read, but he was visibly impressed with all of the official-looking seals.

“I am here on orders from the Holy Father in Rome,” lied Sir Guy. “His Holiness has heard of your troubles and sent me and this good monk here to help.”

The reeve bobbed his head. “Thank you, milord. It is a great honor to have so distinguished a-”

“Let me see the body.”

Sir Guy pushed past the reeve and stepped to the side of the cart. He pulled on his gloves and then raised the threadbare horse blanket that had been used to cover the body.

Beneath it lay a shepherd girl of no more than fifteen.

“This is ’ow we found ’er, milord,” said Faville.

“God save us!” cried Brother Reynard, who peered past Sir Guy’s elbow. “This is surely the devil’s work.”

Sir Guy could not argue. The girl had once been lovely, in the way that peasant girls can be before hard work and hard use made them old before their time. She had yellow hair that gleamed in the early sunlight, and pale blue eyes. Though she was but a girl her figure was womanly, with a premature heft of breast and good hips. But it was all ruined now. She lay naked and torn and frozen on a bed of straw.

Sir Guy shifted around to examine her face and neck. There was a small amount of blood on her throat, caked around the savage wounds, but otherwise the girl was not bathed in gore as might be expected from such injuries.

He cut a look at the reeve. “Did anyone clean her off?”

“No, your lordship,” answered Faville. “This is ’ow she was. Stripped bare and bled white. Frozen stiff, too.”

“What about the surroundings? How much blood was on the ground?”

The reeve shook his head and touched the cross around his neck. His eyes were shifty and frightened. “None to speak of, milord.”

The crowd murmured. Sir Guy noted that although they were horrified, no one looked surprised.

“Her clothes?” he asked.

“Torn to rags and scattered among the bushes.”

Sir Guy bent close and probed the wounds. As is so often the case, the legends had it wrong. Not a pair of clean punctures-that was a fantasy spun by bad poets and liars-but rather a ruin of flesh savaged by many sharp teeth.

It was exactly as Father Nicodemus had described it.

Sir Guy dropped the cloth and turned to the reeve, who was fidgeting and frightened.

“How many others have there been?”

Faville looked uncomfortable and Sir Guy knew that it was because he was the law in these parts and murders were occurring unchecked. “Six, milord.”

“Where was the body found?”

Faville nodded toward the forest. “Near where the others were found, milord. She was in the fields up near the priory.”

Sir Guy ordered the man to give him a precise set of directions. “And recall all of your scouts and officers. No one else is to go into those woods until Brother Reynard and I have run this fiend to ground.”

“But… but, milord, at least let me send ten pikemen with you,” stammered the reeve.

“What use are pikes against the devil?” said Sir Guy, which left the reeve nonplussed. “No, Brother Reynard and I are armed with special weapons blessed by the Holy Father himself. Stay here and see to this poor child.”

Five minutes later he and the monk were galloping out of town.

When they eventually slowed their horses as they approached the scene of the murder, Brother Reynard asked, “‘Special weapons’?”

Sir Guy grinned. “Peasants love a good story.” He narrowed his eyes and studied the shadows under the trees. “Besides, in truth it is a weapon that we seek.”

The monk’s frown deepened. “Father Nicodemus sent us to find a monster.”

The Frenchman shrugged. “For our purposes, it is the same thing.”

Chapter Sixty

“Vampires…”

I repeated the word, trying to see how it fit in my mouth. It didn’t. Not in this context.

“Wait,” cut in Rudy, “are we talking actual monsters here?” I could only hear his voice, but I could imagine the way he’d look right now. Face tight, eyes dark and unblinking, his hand touching the middle of his tie, right over the spot where he wore a crucifix under his clothes.

“Dr. Sanchez,” said Church, “I don’t have the kind of answer you and Captain Ledger would like. Vampires exist, yes.”

“Perhaps you misunderstand my question,” said Rudy. “I’m asking if these vampires are-”

“Yes, Doctor, thank you for explaining the obvious to me,” said Church coldly. “I do understand the question. Are we talking about supernatural monsters or something else? Frankly, I don’t know. My tendency, as you well know, is to look for the scientific explanation.”

“The rational answer,” offered Rudy, but Church cut him off.

“Rational? You are a devout Catholic, Doctor. Is faith in an invisible God and invisible saints rational? Is it supernatural?”

“It’s religion,” replied Rudy. “It’s faith. And it’s not trying to kill my friend.”

“Do you believe in ghosts, Doctor? That is, I believe, a requirement of Catholics, as it is of most religions. Ghosts, spirits, demons, all manner of creatures that cannot be quantified.”

“ Yo! ” I shouted into the phone. “Can we save this for some time when I’m not standing in a house full of dead people?”

There was a brief silence, and Mr. Church said, “Quite right. To the point then. We have known for some time that the Red Knights either are, or pretend to be, some kind of vampire. We know that they are unusually strong and fast, which are qualities ascribed to most species of vampires in folklore. We know that they have unusual dentition, specifically they have sharp teeth and pronounced canines.”

“Yup,” I said. “I can testify to all of that. Fucker didn’t turn into a bat, though.”

“That’s not part of the vampire legend,” said Circe, joining the conversation after what I can only assume was a shocked silence. “There are a lot of legends of vampires transforming into different kinds of things. Mist and fog, swarms of flies, birds-mostly black ones-and even balls of light. But bats aren’t on the list. It was made up for fiction.”

I heard Rudy mutter. “I can’t believe we are having this conversation.”

“The knight I fought didn’t transform into anything but dead meat after Violin put a bullet in his head. Maybe I watched the wrong movies, but I thought stakes were how you killed a vampire. Bullets in the head are zombies, and we’ve pretty much done zombies. And, I might add-they were the products of science, not black magic.”

“The stakes are questionable,” said Circe. “In most legends the vampire hunters use sharpened poles rather than stakes, and they don’t kill the vampire. The stake was used to hold the vampire down, pinning it to the ground or to its coffin, so that the full Ritual of Exorcism could be performed.”

“Dear God,” said Rudy, “what’s that?”

“They cut the vampire’s head off, fill its mouth with garlic, turn it backward in the coffin, then drive iron nails into the arms and legs of the vampire and rebury it. Or cremate it.”

“I’m here to tell you, Circe,” I said, “a bullet in the brainpan does a spiffy job of dropping your modern-day vampire.”

“I have found that a bullet in the brain works on most things,” Church said dryly, and I couldn’t argue with that.

“So, are we talking about something nonsupernatural?” asked Rudy. “If he could be shot and killed, doesn’t that mean-?”

“It means we know how to kill it,” said Church. “It doesn’t mean that we understand its nature.”

“Surely it’s more likely that this is some kind of genetic aberration,” insisted Rudy, “or at most an evolutionary sideline. We know that there were many kinds of human species evolving at once.”

“It’s very possible,” agreed Church. “And it’s the working premise I’ve maintained for many years. If these Upierczi are vampires, then we will want to ascertain whether that is a subspecies or separate species.”

“Wait, roll back a sec. You said ‘many years’?” I asked. “How long have you known about these Red Knights?”

He paused. “For quite a long time. I first encountered them in Europe, but that’s a story that we don’t have time for now, and it may not be relevant.”

“Getting back to the whole ‘stakes’ thing,” I said. “These jokers tried to use them on me.” I described the general size and design. “Each one has the same thing written on it. It’s Latin, so bear with me.” I pulled the stake from my belt. “ Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio; contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto praesidium- ”

“Ah,” interrupted Circe, “it’s the prayer to Saint Michael created by Pope Leo XIII in the late nineteenth century. The whole translation is, ‘Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in the battle, be our safeguard and protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil: May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all evil spirits who wander through the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.’” She paused. “An interesting choice, considering the scope of this situation.”

“Interesting in what way?” Rudy asked, beating me to the question.

“The archangel Michael has a dual nature. His name is a symbol of humility before God and at the same time he is regarded as the field commander of the Army of God.”

“Ah, so we’re talking militant psycho vampire hunters,” I said. “Groovy.”

Church added, “Michael is also one of the very few angels venerated by Jews, Christians, and Muslims.”

“Did Michael have problems with vampires? If so, I missed that in Sunday School.”

“Not likely,” answered Circe, “but as the leader of God’s army he would naturally be the enemy of all evil. Going on the assumption that vampires are evil.”

“The Red Knights get my vote for being evil. So are these vampire hunters,” I reminded her. “Krystos and his asswipes tortured innocent people and were quite willing to kill me. Oh, and here’s another thing to throw into the mix. Krystos said that he was with the Holy Inquisition. Even had their motto tattooed on his forearm.”

There was a silence.

“No,” I said, “that wasn’t a joke. Say something.”

“How does one respond to that? I… thought that had been disbanded a couple of hundred years ago,” said Rudy.

“Sure, and vampires were myths,” I pointed out.

“Ah,” he conceded.

“It’s always good to keep an open mind,” Church said quietly.

“Are we tracking any groups whose symbology includes a vampire motif?” I asked. “Some weird cult? Anything like that?”

“Only two,” said Church. “The Red Knights and another group that may be the same as your Inquisitors.”

“Let me guess… the Saturday People?”

“What?” asked Circe. “They’re Sabbatarians?”

I said, “According to Krystos.”

“Sabbatarians,” she repeated, “are people born on Saturday.”

“So what?” I asked. “So was my nephew. He doesn’t run around stabbing people with pointy sticks.”

“No, in folklore the Sabbatarians are monster hunters. The old beliefs come mostly from Greek legends, but it’s found in other places, too. People born on the Sabbath are supposed to have special powers. They can see evil spirits and they are empowered by God to oppose supernatural evil.”

“Were they connected with the Inquisition?”

“I can check, but I don’t know. That’s not to say they weren’t. We’re paving a lot of new ground here,” Circe admitted. “I have a colleague, Jonatha Corbiel-Newton, she’s probably the world’s top scholar on vampire legends. I’ll call her and pick her brain. Covertly, of course.”

Rudy sighed. “Until five minutes ago I thought we were looking for nuclear weapons. Now we’re hunting vampires.”

“Yeah, about that,” I said. “This is definitely one case, but don’t ask me how they relate. We came into this wa-a-a-y too late to make sense of it without a guidebook.”

“So it seems,” said Church. “Here’s the rest. Vox is definitely connected with this matter at several points. Some of that intel comes from a source connected to the woman, Violin. When you have more time I’ll give you a more complete briefing, but for the short term, Violin is considered a friendly.”

“She saved my life, so I’ve got some fuzzy bunny feelings for her.”

“She is part of a deep-cover special ops group operating independently of any government. Their code name is Arklight. They have no political or national affiliation and very few friends. Their story is a long and very sad one. If the situation requires it I’ll have Aunt Sallie give you a briefing. Their leader uses the code name Lilith. She’s fierce, highly dangerous. Underestimate her at your peril.” And then he filled me in on what he knew of the Red Order, the Scriptor, the Tariqa, the Murshid and, saving the best for last, he dropped the bomb about Nicodemus.

“That’s it,” I said. “I quit.”

Church ignored me. “A lot of what we know is in bits and pieces. Let me make some calls and see if I can get more useful information. In the meantime, Captain, get what you can get out of Krystos, but don’t take too long with it. You eliminated their team, but it doesn’t mean they don’t have backup. Unless Krystos has direct knowledge of the nukes, he is a distraction rather than a pathway to a solution. Find out what he knows and then get out of there. I’ll call around and when I can verify a genuinely safe safe house, I’ll text the information to you.”

“Good. Before I go… where are we on the flash drive and the nukes?”

Circe and Rudy gave me the bullet points of what they’d found. Church wrapped it up by saying that field agents were working to verify the four known targets, and to remind me that Echo Team was already inside Iran and heading my way.

“First good news I’ve had all day,” I said, and disconnected. I pocketed my phone and leaned against the wall for a moment.

“Vampires,” I said aloud. There was no doubt in my mind that, as Rudy observed, this was probably some freak of genetics. I believed in God, but, contrary to what Mr. Church said, I didn’t much believe in angels, demons, or monsters. Ghosts? Maybe. Vampires of the supernatural kind? Nope; and the word still didn’t fit right in my mouth.

Chapter Sixty-One

When I came back to the living room, Ghost was standing over Krystos, growling right in the man’s face. Krystos cringed back as far as he could but he was trapped by a hundred pounds of furious canine.

“Down,” I snapped.

Ghost stopped growling but he held his ground, the hair standing stiff along his spine.

“Down!” I said again, but this time my tone was quiet. Ghost glared at me and uttered another low, threatening growl. There was no danger left anywhere else in the house. The growl was aimed at me.

“Down,” I repeated a third time, and after another moment of hesitation he lowered himself to the ground, but all of his muscles were tensed as if he was about to spring. I deliberately turned my back on him, the way a confident pack leader would. At the moment I wasn’t feeling all that confident. Dogs are smart, but when they’re hurt and confused their thinking can get dangerously skewed. From Ghost’s perspective, his pack leader was leading him into one painful situation after another.

Once more I squatted down in front of Krystos. I interrupted him in the middle of a prayer. His color was bad and he sat in a puddle of his own blood. I reached out and felt for Constantin’s pulse. He didn’t have one, and I felt a weird flash of irritation that he’d managed to duck out before we could have a meaningful chat.

Krystos watched me do it and read the news on my face. He closed his eyes for a moment and repeated the dead man’s name several times. Greasy sweat ran in rivulets down Krystos’s face.

I poked him on the forehead with a stiffened finger. “Pay attention, sparky.”

“I am praying for the dead!” he snapped.

“Did you pray for the people upstairs?” I snarled.

He faltered. “Yes. I… I mean that the others would have done this.”

“Before or after they tore out their fingernails?”

He looked at me with eyes that were glassy and bright. “They are the enemies of God!”

It was so hard not to yell back, to try and shout him down and make him understand that nobody’s God orders something like this. I wanted to make my case; I wanted to knock some sense into him. But-really, what would be the point? How could I ever make someone like him budge from an entrenched stance that was hundreds of years in the making and backed by a papal order? This wasn’t one of those debates where I could slide around to try to see things from his perspective. As the saying goes, that way lies madness.

The rage was hard to keep in its box, though. It burned in my mouth and in muscles, and it tingled like electricity in the dangerous tips of my fingers. When I trusted myself to speak normally, I asked, “Who told you I would be coming here?”

“I–I don’t know,” he said. “We got a call. My team was ordered to come here to do God’s work and-”

“Who made the call?”

“I don’t know.”

I searched his face for the lie but I think he was too scared to pull any new stunts on me, and unfortunately that meant that he was probably no more than a grunt. A foot soldier in a war that was out of step with reality and with my real mission. The nukes.

“How many more of you are there?”

His mouth tightened with either pride or defiance. “Enough.”

“Don’t get cute with me.”

“We are the Army of God,” he declared. “We will never stop hunting. We will never cease in our war.”

He said all that in awkward, broken English, but I got the point. I wasn’t impressed.

“All of this is because you want to rid the world of vampires?”

“No-not that. That is not our mission. We want to save the world from the Upierczi.”

“Upierczi? That’s another word for vampire, right? So, with all that’s going on in the world-wars, poverty, religious intolerance, disease-you ‘priests’ spend your time and resources hunting vamps?”

“Yes.”

“ Why? ” I demanded. “’Cause right now I’m thinking you psychopaths have done a lot more harm to the world. What makes you better than them?”

His face took on a contemptuous cast and with an imperious tone, he said, “We fight to save the world. They want to destroy it.”

“And how do they plan to do that?”

“They want to blow it up.”

I sat back on my heels and stared at him. Again he read my expression and he nodded.

“The Upierczi have hidden for centuries,” he said. “Now they are in the light. Now they attack openly. They have great weapons. Why else do you think they would reveal themselves to the world?”

“What do you mean by ‘great weapons’?”

“Great,” he repeated, letting me take the obvious definition from that.

Oh shit.

“How do you know this? Are you working for Rasouli?”

He looked blank.

“Hugo Vox?”

Krystos shook his head. “I do not know these names.”

“Who sent you here?”

“A priest of our church. He will know what you have done here. He will call down the wrath of the Almighty on you.”

His accent was atrocious but his message was clear enough; but I wasn’t buying. I’m pretty sure I could handle myself against a priest.

“I’ll take my chances,” I told him, but he sneered.

“Father Nicodemus will lay waste to your world. He has promised this!”

That, I thought, was mighty damn interesting, and it made me wonder whose side Nicodemus was on. There was Nicodemus with the Seven Kings last year. Nicodemus with the Red Order, and now Nicodemus with the Sabbatarians who were clearly enemies of the knights employed by the Red Order.

Who in hell was Nicodemus?

I left the room once more to call this in to Church, but got Aunt Sallie.

“What the fuck are you still doing at that house?” she bellowed.

“Trading Pokemon cards with the vampire hunters.”

“Why are you calling?”

When I told her about Nicodemus, Auntie shut up for a moment, then said, very grudgingly, “Good work. Now get out of there.”

“I wish I could spend some more quality time with this clown to see what else I can get.”

“If wishes were horses,” she said.

“Yeah. Tell you what, Auntie, much as it sounds goofy to say out loud, I think we need to take a look at this from the vampire doomsday perspective. I’m starting to think that maybe the Red Knights have the nukes.”

“We will, but I doubt whether your friend Krystos had that right. Circe and Dr. Sanchez have forwarded the idea of a doomsday cult.”

“You don’t buy it, though?”

“Do you?”

“No, but my logic is kind of goofy.”

“Big surprise,” she said. “Tell me.”

I said, “Answer me something first. Circe dismissed the changing into bats stuff, and we know that bullets kill the knights, so that’s two bits of folklore down the crapper. But, what do the reports you’ve collected about the Red Knights and real-world vampires say about immortality? That’s supposed to be a real theme with vampires, right?”

“Nothing lives forever, but from what little we know about the Red Knights, they’re supposed to be exceptionally long-lived. Not necessarily immortal, but with lifespans far exceeding ordinary humans.”

“Okay, so they’re immortal-ish. Enough so for the sake of argument, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Then tell me why immortals would want to destroy the world. No way that makes sense.”

Aunt Sallie grunted. “This isn’t like you, Ledger. This is very clever thinking. Let me run it by Deacon and Dr. Hu. In the meantime, Deke wanted me to text you. We have a safe house location that has been triple verified. It’s close to where you are now, and Echo Team will meet you there in a few hours. It’s an apartment over a convenience store. Deacon knows the man who owns it.”

“One of his ‘friends in the industry’?”

“No, just an old friend. Jamsheed Mustapha is a good man. We’ve worked with him in the past. Good guy, so try not to get him killed.”

I let that pass. “What about Krystos?”

Auntie said, “That’s your call.”

She disconnected.

I still had the phone in my hand when I went back into the living room. Krystos looked at me with mingled hope and dread, but his mouth continually repeated a prayer of deliverance.

“Well,” I said, “turns out that it sucks to be you.”

I shot him through the heart.

Chapter Sixty-Two

The gunshot made Ghost bark again, but it was a single sound. Loud and shocked and angry.

I ignored him as I watched Krystos slide slowly onto his side, eyes emptying of light, mouth hanging slack with his last prayers unfinished.

None of the thoughts inside my head were pretty ones. However, when I looked inside for self-recrimination I came up dry. That’s something I knew I should be worried about, and I was pretty sure that all of this was going to come back and bite me on the ass, at least in an emotional or psychological way. At the moment, though, I watched Krystos die and did not feel a single thing about it. Not for him or the six other Sabbatarians. They were ordained priests; they were official Holy Inquisitors acting on orders given by a pope centuries ago. They believed that what they were doing was right, that they were doing what they had to do to save the world.

From vampires.

Vampires with nukes.

I closed my eyes and imagined for a moment that I stood in a cool breeze that was scented with lilacs and honeysuckle and just a hint of salt water. I strained to hear the soft whisper of Grace speaking my name.

But there was nothing.

When I opened my eyes, though, it was only me and Ghost in a house filled with ugly death. Ghost looked at me and I couldn’t meet his eyes. I hung my head and told myself that the stinging in my eyes was from the gunpowder.

Yeah.

Before we left the house I dropped the magazines from the two nine millimeters and swapped bullets until I had a full magazine in one and a half-filled mag in my pocket. I took Nadja’s. 25 popgun, too, and the valise that was filled with stakes, hammers, garlic, and holy water. Who knows, maybe I’d really need them.

Lingering in the doorway to the hall, I glanced down at the dead man and spat on the floor by his shoes.

“That’s for Taraneh and Arastoo Mouradipour, you piece of shit,” I said quietly. And although it was true, I felt a hollow place in my chest. I’d just shot an unarmed man, a man who was injured and bound, and I’d made a joke about it as I pulled the trigger. It made me feel like a piece of shit.

My phone rang again. No ID. I didn’t answer. Instead I headed toward the door, clicking my tongue for Ghost. After a moment I heard nails clicking on the floorboards.

Ghost followed right at my heel.

We went out the back.

There were two cars out back. I debated taking one, but there was no time to do a proper search for trackers or other bugs, and I already had enough problems.

I did rummage around, though. I found half a chicken sandwich on flatbread and gave that to Ghost, who didn’t even bother to sniff. He attacked it as if it was trying to escape. As he ate, he cut me some hard looks, letting me know that we still had some issues to work out.

The first car had nothing else in it.

In the second I found a locked briefcase under a blanket on the rear seat. The locks were good and the case was reinforced. No time to jimmy it now, so I decided to take that with me. I popped the trunk and stood staring for a ten count at a full-blown arsenal. Six AK-47s with bundles of magazines held together by heavy-duty rubber bands, two rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and a small duffle bag of 1980’s-era Russian hand grenades. The underside of the trunk lid was rigged with slots for a dozen of the stakes and four hammers. These guys were serious about this. I took some party favors and slammed the trunk.

Ghost finished his sandwich and looked up for more.

“Sorry, kiddo, but that’s all I have.”

His look of disgust eloquently showed how deeply disappointed he was in me. Man’s best friend indeed.

There was nothing else to find.

“Let’s go,” I said softly.

We did not exactly run, but we walked mighty damned briskly away from there.

Interlude Eight

And death, in its many forms, stared back at him. The big stone fireplace blazed and threw its dancing light across the floor, and yet the shadows of the vast hall were not chased back. Rather they recoiled like some dark serpent, ready to strike the unwary.

Monks had brought a chair for Sir Guy and helped him into it, lifting his legs onto cushions and tucking a rug around his spindly limbs. The knight felt empty, like a suit of clothes stuffed with straw and sticks. No longer a vital man, not yet a corpse. Tottering in the gloom of a cancer that was consuming him from the inside out.

The figure closest to him was both death and life in Sir Guy’s mind. Father Nicodemus, wizened but unyielding. He had been old when Sir Guy was a boy, but the man had not changed. Not a line, not a day. In his cups, Sir Guy comforted himself with the thought that it was God’s own grace that touched this man with a lighter hand, sparing him so that Nicodemus could serve heaven on earth. Sir Guy needed drink to believe it then, and now, sober and loitering at the edge of the grave, he knew that it was sophistry of the weakest kind. In truth, he did not know how to think about the old priest. To do so conjured dreams, and his nights were already troubled.

“You have done so very well, my son,” murmured the priest. “You have served Almighty God with a fealty and a zeal unmatched by any in the Red Order.”

Sir Guy said nothing. He had so little energy that breathing was a herculean task that required all of his powers. Father Nicodemus patted him on the shoulder and his slender fingers lingered to stroke the dying knight’s neck where it was exposed above the soiled collar of the Hospitaller doublet. It was so strange a thing, a pretense of tenderness that felt like a violative caress.

Then the priest took a few steps forward and held his arms wide as if to embrace the other deathly figures who stood in silent stillness.

Three men. They stood in a row, shoulder to shoulder, like brothers. Hollow faces that gave them a starved appearance. Thin-lipped mouths like knife slashes. Three shapes that pretended to be men. Three creatures Sir Guy had brought here from different parts of Europe and Asia. From Newburgh, from the Carpathian Mountains, and from a destroyed town in Turkey. They shared no common language, no sameness of culture, no drop of familial blood. And yet they were cut like poisoned fruit from the same blighted tree. Slender, pale as wax, with dark hair and eyes that burned like red coals. And teeth. Christ Jesus and all His saints, those dreadful teeth. Even after all this time that was the thing that continued to haunt Sir Guy, awake or asleep. Teeth like dogs. Like wolves.

Nicodemus spoke a word and it hung burning in the air.

“Upierczi.”

Three pairs of red eyes widened, filling with fear, filling with wonder.

“The children of shadows,” Nicodemus said to them. “Yes-I know you. Born of cold wombs, shunned and hated. Slaves to a hunger that you have been told is an affront to God. Reviled and condemned. Excommunicated and driven out to hunt in the night.”

Three pairs of red eyes studied him. It was the only thing about them that moved, shifting slowly to follow Nicodemus as he paced across the burning expanse of the fireplace.

“The Upierczi have been called monsters, sons of Judas. Pariah. Demons.” He stopped and fixed them with his own stare and it was darker and more fell than theirs. “But that is not what you are. Not demons. Not creations of Satan or fiends from the pit.”

They watched him. Sir Guy watched them as they studied the priest. Now there was uncertainty on their faces.

“When Sir Guy asked you to come with him, he promised safety. He promised you a place where you would be free, and be protected. He extended the arm of the church to you, offering to bless and sanctify you, to forgive you your sins and let you walk once more in the light that shines from the face of Jesus Christ.”

They watched. One of them bowed his head and began softly to weep tears of blood.

Father Nicodemus stalked over to him and used one clawlike finger to lift the creature’s chin. “Listen to me, child of shadows,” he murmured in a gentler tone than Sir Guy had ever heard him use. “The Lord God has not forgotten you. You have not fallen out of His favor. You have not been barred from the grace of heaven.” He leaned close and licked the bloody tear from the weeping monster’s cheek. “God made you!” he whispered. He reached out his hands to touch the other two creatures, tracing lines across their wax white cheeks. “God is all and He makes all things and He made you. Therefore you are God’s creations. Whoever tells you otherwise is a heretic and will burn in hell.”

The silent creatures said nothing.

“I know what you feel, my children,” continued the priest. “I, of all who walk upon the earth, understand the fires that burn in your hearts and the need in the pit of your stomach. You kill because you cannot prevent yourself. A power greater than your own will compels you to hunt, to tear open the flesh of your prey, to bathe your face and lips and tongue in the heat of the blood. And afterward you revile yourself because this is against God. This is what you have been told. Yet what does Deuteronomy chapter twelve, verse twenty-three say? ‘The blood is the life!’ Did not Jesus shed his blood to redeem all? Does not His blood wash the world of its sins? Does the wine of communion not become blood as it touches the lips of each Christian?” He pulled them all closer still, and Sir Guy had to strain to hear. “You are not sinners, my children. You are merely lost. All your lives you have been seeking to understand why God would strike you with so heavy a hand and force you into a life of sin. I tell you now that God has not shaped you to be monsters or sinners. God has forged you into weapons.”

They stared at him, and the room-perhaps the world-was utterly silent.

“You have been brought here to be the holy weapons of God on earth. Do you hunger? Then know why: you were meant to feast upon the blood of the pagan and the heretic and the infidel. Do you seek shelter in the darkness? Then understand this: the darkness is yours. Use it. Let it heal you and hide you. Become the darkness and let it become you.”

He stepped back from them and signaled to one of his monks who came hurrying over with Sir Guy’s sword laid ceremoniously across his folded arms. The monk knelt and offered the handle to Nicodemus, who drew it with a ringing rasp. The priest turned and held the sword aloft, letting firelight flicker along its wicked edge.

“This sword,” he intoned, his voice deep and grave, “has drunk the blood of countless enemies of God. In the service of the king of France, in the cause of the Knights Hospitaller, and in the war of shadows we have fought with the Saracen and the Jew and other enemies of Christ.”

He turned and offered it to Sir Guy. “My son, my friend, take your sword.”

Sir Guy’s trembling fingers closed around the handle of the weapon he had thought he would never hold again. The touch of it lent some power to his withered hand and he held it out toward the Upierczi. The tip dipped for a moment but it did not fall to the ground.

“Sir Guy, Grand Master and Scriptor of the Holy Red Order, defender of the faith, servant and soldier of God, I entreat you to bestow upon these sacred warriors the title and privileges of knights of Ordo Ruber. ”

Sir Guy flicked a surprised glance at Nicodemus. This was nothing they had ever agreed upon. This was unexpected and strange, and he knew that it was wrong.

And yet, Nicodemus stood there, eyes burning and mouth smiling.

“I…” began Sir Guy. But he could not endure that stare, that will. “Y-yes,” he gasped. “Yes.”

One by one the Upierczi came toward his chair and knelt before him, and one by one Sir Guy LaRoque touched their shoulders with the sword, blessing them in the name of Michael the Archangel.

When it was done, so was the last strength in Sir Guy’s arm. Nicodemus took it from him and handed the sword to a monk, who bowed out of the chamber.

Nicodemus ran a fingernail along Sir Guy’s cheek. “You have served me well for many years, my son.”

Sir Guy looked wearily up into his face, and his heart seemed to freeze. The old priest stood with his back to the Upierczi so that only the knight could see him. The priest’s eyes underwent that process of change which Sir Guy had seen before, the colors swirling and changing, but this time the process did not stop until all color was completely gone, leaving eyes with no color, no whites. Eyes that were totally black. And the face also changed. It was not the wrinkled countenance of a priest grown old in the service of his God and his church. This face was both younger and older, timeless, endless; and endlessly wrong. It was a mask of a bottomless corruption and deception. The nose was still long and hooked, but the nostrils were more like slits; the mouth was lipless and lined with scores of needle-sharp teeth. Even the skin was mottled to an ophidian texture like a diseased toad. Worst of all, Sir Guy knew this face. It was the face of all the evil in the world. The face of the trickster. The enemy of God.

He screamed.

Sir Guy screamed and screamed and screamed until spit and blood flew from his mouth.

The trickster laughed.

Then Father Nicodemus turned away, his face once more that of a wizened priest. He swept a hand toward the screaming man.

“My knights,” he said softly, “my Red Knights. Sir Guy offers up his blood as a sacrament to seal our new covenant. Show respect for his sacrifice. Quick, while he still cries out for God’s own mercy.”

The Red Knights smiled with their jagged mouths. Their eyes were filled with tears and the light of joy as they rushed forward to partake of God’s mercy.

Chapter Sixty-Three

Violin was on the move, getting closer to Joe Ledger, and finding terrible wreckage along the way. It annoyed and angered her that Ledger wasn’t taking her calls, but it also frightened her.

Oracle provided her with the locations of likely safe houses where Ledger might go to ground. She had gone to the first one too late. All she found were Ledger’s footprints in the blood of a living room awash with dreadful pain.

The Red Knights had left their signature on every inch of that small house.

Seeing the carnage, Violin had braced herself against the possibility that one of the mangled figures was Ledger, but neither was. An old man and his son. She could tell at least that much from their faces.

Standing in the living room, Violin considered pulling the old man down from the wall, but it would take more time than she had.

She ran out the back and got into the car she used while in Iran. The car appeared to be sedate and slow, but that was all exterior illusion. A much fiercer creature dwelt under the hood, and the suspension was rigged for high-speed pursuit and hairpin handling.

Even so, she stayed within legal limits as she navigated the traffic toward the second safe house. One run by the CIA. She passed it and saw nothing untoward. Around back there were two parked cars. She circled the block looking for backup and found it.

Violin parked her car in the shade thrown by a tall stuccoed warehouse. Across the street a pair of white vans sat in the shade. She recognized them. Not those specific vans, but the type. And she knew what they signified.

Sabbatarians.

Her lip curled in cold contempt. Those maniacs should have died out years ago along with their blasphemous Inquisition. It offended Violin to her core that they continued to prosper and had even found some private source of funding in recent years. Their numbers were growing and the threat they represented was no joke.

She accessed Oracle.

“Oracle welcomes you, Violin.”

“Quick field update. Please mark this urgent and make sure my mother sees it right away.”

“Noted. Please proceed.”

Violin explained about the slaughter rendered by the Red Knights and the Sabbatarian strike team she was currently observing.

Instead of the placid computer voice responding to her update, a very similar but far more intimidating voice barked, “Do you have Captain Ledger under active surveillance?”

Violin froze and had to take a moment to find her own voice. She looked down at the small screen on her computer and saw a face that was as ageless and beautiful as it was stern and humorless. Black hair shot with snow white streaks, cat green eyes, a full-lipped mouth compressed into a stern line.

Lilith. Cold as the moon and equally remote. It was difficult enough speaking with Lilith on the phone, seeing her on the computer made Violin instantly feel like a naughty ten-year-old again.

“Hello, Mother,” said Violin, her voice immediately small and contrite.

“Don’t ‘Mother’ me. Answer the question, girl.”

“No, Mother. Ledger went into the wind after leaving his hotel, though I think I know where he is.”

One eyebrow arched high on Lilith’s forehead. “You ‘think’?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Why are you wasting time talking to me instead of verifying his location?”

“Because there is a Sabbatarian strike team positioned near-”

“Did I ask for an excuse as to why you can’t accomplish a simple task?”

Lilith’s tone was subzero. Colder even than usual.

“No, Mother, I-”

“And are you about to apologize instead of taking appropriate and immediate action? Is that the end result of everything I’ve taught you?”

“No, Mother, it’s just-”

“Do I need to send a trainee instead? Someone who understands how to follow a simple order?”

Violin took a deep, steadying breath. It was that or put her fist through the monitor’s screen.

“No, Mother, but-”

“Then follow your orders,” barked Lilith. “Rasouli gave Ledger a flash drive with information on where as many as seven nuclear bombs have been hidden. Four, at least, are in the Middle East. Find Ledger and get that drive. Is that order simple enough for you?”

“My God! Wait-how do you know what Rasouli gave-?”

“How do you think?” snapped her mother. “I used common sense and asked the right question of the right person.”

Ah, so that’s it, thought Violin. Mother spoke with St. Germaine.

No wonder she’s so angry. On a secret level, Violin was pleased to see her mother discomfited.

“Mother, I’m trying to understand why the Order sent a knight after Ledger. How could they have known about the flash drive?”

“I… don’t know,” said Lilith, her anger dropping down several notches. “That’s a good question, too.”

“On the other hand, this seems to confirm one of my theories-that Rasouli is not planning on accepting the role of Murshid.”

But the screen had already gone dark.

Violin clenched her teeth. She considered taking the computer outside and backing her car over it a few times. It might make her feel good. Instead, she turned off the engine and got out of the car.

She was dressed in a traditional Iranian chador and headscarf, which made her shapeless and faceless. The eye makeup she had applied would fool anyone. She took a net-covered cloth grocery sack from the back seat and began walking slowly across the street. Not directly toward the white vans, but at an angle so that she would have to pass them. They appeared deserted.

As she approached, she could hear the squawk of a walkie-talkie and the hushed voice of a man speaking awkward Persian with a European accent, though she could not make out the words. The man was inside the second van. From his tone, though, he sounded agitated, concerned. He kept repeating a word, or perhaps a name, and got no replies.

“ Krystos! Krystos! ”

Then the rear door of the van opened and four men stepped out. They were dressed in ordinary clothes, but they held their sports coats closed in the way men do when they are trying to conceal something. Violin had seen it a thousand times. It amused her.

She needed to be amused. It was that or let the memory of her conversation with her mother turn her into a screaming wreck.

The men saw her and paused. They said nothing to her but their eyes were on her as she walked past the van. They were only pretending to be Iranian, but their stares were frank and impudent by Muslim standards. Invasive and rude.

No way to treat a lady, she thought.

Violin let herself trip over a crack in the sidewalk. She stumbled and dropped the grocery bag. One of the men made a reflexive move to catch her.

And he died.

The other three men never saw the blade. All they were aware of was a flash of black cloth and the sparkle of sunlight on steel, and then the man who had reached to help the woman was sagging to his knees as a jet of impossibly bright red geysered from his throat. Violin gracefully sidestepped to avoid the spray.

The men were shocked, but they were professionals. Even without understanding what was happening they knew something was wrong, that this was an attack of some kind. They went for their guns.

And then Violin was among them.

Her chador flapped and popped like laundry on a clothesline. Her hands became a blur as she moved into the center of the group, a blade in each hand, her body twisting with a dancer’s grace. The steel wove patterns of light around her. Rubies of blood filled the air and splashed along the side of the van and on the front of the building. One gun cleared its holster but the hand holding it was no longer attached to its owner’s wrist.

The men had no time to scream.

Violin cut their faces and throats and mouths and eyes. She slashed tendons and muscle and bone and then she suddenly froze in the center of the storm of blood. The men collapsed around her, their many parts creating a grotesquely artistic pattern on the ground.

From the first cut to the last it took four seconds.

Violin stared dispassionately down at the carnage.

Four seconds.

Beneath her scarf her mouth twitched in disgust.

It should only have taken three.

She looked up and down the empty street, then opened the back door of the lead van and examined the interior. In the back, one side was given over to a large and clunky array of surveillance equipment that looked like it might have first seen service during the Cold War. The other side was a weapons rack, with pistols and automatic rifles in metal clips, rows of tapered stakes hanging in rings mounted to the inner wall, and a sack filled with pouches of garlic.

Violin sneered at the equipment.

“ Idiota. ”

She spat into the van and turned away. Then she ran for her car.

By the time she reached the safe house, though, Joe Ledger was gone.

She searched the house and read the complete story told by the dead. The tortured couple upstairs, the others, killed by stake and bullets.

Violin stood in the living room for a full minute, staring at the dead man who lay slumped by the wall, a bullet hole glistening red over his heart. She read that, too, and nodded her approval.

Then she went to the doorway and peered up and down the empty street.

Violin stepped back into the quiet, shadowy, bloody hallway. She pushed back her sleeve and tapped the face of her watch. The image of the clock vanished to be replaced with a blank screen. Violin pressed her thumb to it for a moment. When she removed it the screen glowed green for a moment. Violin tapped the small receiver bud she wore in her left ear.

“Oracle.”

“Oracle welcomes you, Violin.”

“Addition to mission report. A full Sabbatarian hit team tried to ambush Joseph Ledger. I eliminated the backup squad. Ledger took out the main squad.”

“Status of Captain Ledger?” asked the computer.

“Unknown. I need that list of probable safe houses and bolt-holes.”

“Processing.”

While she waited, Violin smiled because Joseph Ledger was still alive, but her smile was fragile because she had lost his trail. Worse still-much worse, in fact-was that she was treading on very dangerous ground. She had saved Ledger from a Red Knight, but in her report she had filed it as a “righteous kill,” Arklight phrasing for a necessary assassination. Killing a knight would never be questioned, not even by Lilith or the other Mothers.

This action, though, could possibly be construed as an act of war. Arklight was not currently at war with the Sabbatarians. This hit could not be labeled as “righteous.” A clever and devious mind could make a convincing argument that it was an attempt to save Ledger’s life. That put it into a different category entirely. That was blood obligation. That was sacred ground filled with thorns and deadfalls.

As she drove, Violin racked her brain-and her heart-for an answer to the question that she knew would be coming. She prayed for another of her “flashes,” but aside from the brief one this morning, there was nothing. It infuriated her. What was God’s plan in giving her a gift that was faulty, questionable, and distracting? The fact that the flash had happened at all was skewing her focus. Was she acting on behalf of her mission objectives, or was she trying to save the life of Joseph Ledger?

It should have been an easy question to answer. Everything she had ever done, everything she had ever learned, had been geared toward making the response automatic. The Mission was all.

All.

Violin gripped the wheel. The muscles in her jaw ached from clenching.

The Mission was all.

Right?

“God,” she breathed. Mother was going to be so angry.

Chapter Sixty-Four

In my trade, confidence is built on a platform whose legs are made up of good intelligence, continuous training, proper equipment, and field support. I had a sick dog, a dead man’s gun, a stolen briefcase, a vampire hunter’s stake in my belt, and a cell phone; and I was walking down a street in Tehran less than a day after breaking three political prisoners out of jail. I was involved in several murders and had left sufficient physical evidence behind to convict me on enough charges to lock me up until I was a thousand years old. Or enough to have me put against a wall.

Oh, yeah, and there were seven rogue nukes and somehow vampires were tied up in that.

My life used to be a lot less complicated.

I didn’t need a safe house so much as I needed a nice quiet place to have a nervous breakdown.

We headed to the place Church assured me was genuinely safe. Ghost walked more slowly with every block, the fatigue catching up to him again. I stopped to pet him a couple of times, but he barely wagged his tail. I couldn’t tell if we were friends again or if the events of the day had driven some kind of wedge into our relationship. It’s like that with humans, and it can be that way with animals too.

When we reached the convenience store we walked past it and cut through an alley to the back where there was a small door beside a Dumpster. The store was the only open business in a district of warehouses that had been closed during the local economic troubles. The nearest residential area was blocks away, but there was a graveyard nearby and frequent mourners formed the basis of the store’s customers.

It was a very useful setup for a safe house.

A key was hidden behind a brick, tenth from the ground, fifth from the door. I unlocked the door and peered inside. No crowd of armed thugs was waiting to pounce on me, so I nudged Ghost inside with my shin, checked that the coast was clear, and hustled inside, pulling the door shut behind me. The door looked frail and rickety, but it moved heavily, hinting at a steel core hidden beneath layers of weathered wood.

Ghost and I found ourselves in a storeroom with wire shelves stocked with dry and canned goods. I peered around the corner and saw a beaded curtain beyond which was the store. A clerk-the owner, Jamsheed Mustapha, I presumed-stood behind a counter pouring dry lentils onto a scale while an old woman watched. I crept to the edge of the doorway to eavesdrop, hoping they weren’t talking about the best way to sharpen stakes. They weren’t. They were sharing their outrage about the mosque bombing, which I imagine was still the number one topic of conversation in the country. The clerk did not look at me, although he’d probably gotten some signal that the security door had been opened.

In the corner of the storeroom was a tiny bathroom permanently marked “Under Repair.” I opened the door and again had to push Ghost inside. He was still sluggish and muzzy from the Taser and was recovering very slowly. Tasers are configured to knock out an adult male, not a hundred-pound dog. I’m lucky that son of a bitch hadn’t killed my son of a bitch.

I shut the door and sat down on the closed toilet seat. The stall was immaculate, and when I placed my palm flat on the wall I could feel its solidity and sense the faintest tremble of well-concealed electronics. If this was a safe house approved by Church then it was very likely built with “secure-pod” technology, something one of Church’s friends was bringing to market. An ultrasecure, ultrahardened capsule similar to the escape pod used on Air Force One. This one didn’t go anywhere, but it would offer physical protection and a secure spot for making reports.

Ghost immediately flopped onto the floor and whimpered softly. I bent down and ran my hands over him, checking to make sure that the Taser shock and burn were the only injuries he had sustained.

“You okay, fur-monster?” I asked.

He gave me an “Are you frigging kidding me?” look, but even with that he managed a wag. Just one, but there it was.

“Don’t know about you,” I said, “but I kinda want to switch gears from running and hiding to chasing and maiming.”

He curled a quarter inch of muzzle to show me one fang. Better than nothing.

I examined the briefcase and saw that the locks were even better than they’d first appeared, and small bulges on other side felt like the right size and shape for thermite charges. Force the locks and the case explodes into a white-hot fireball. Not the sort of thing I wanted to do with the case resting on my lap. I set it aside for the moment.

There was a small sink and I turned the spigot and let the water run until it was cold. Then I used some paper towels to wash my face and sponge the garlic out of my nose, trying not to feel as freaked as the situation warranted. Those sons of bitches had tried to stun me with garlic and drive a wooden stake through my heart. That’s something none of the guys back at the DMS is going to story-top.

For the third-or was it the fourth? — time today the immediate rush of adrenaline was flushing itself out of my blood. That fight or flight juice certainly amps you up but when it leaves it tends to take a lot of other things with it. Electrolytes were the least of it. I felt as if I had no energy left at all; I doubted I could go two out of three falls with Betty White.

When I closed my eyes I saw Krystos’s face, the way he looked at the moment I pulled the trigger. I’d made a joke as I killed him. Like I was a hero in some summer action flick. A cheap one-liner while I blasted the life from him.

I pulled out my phone and dialed a number.

Not Church this time.

The call was answered on the third ring.

“Cowboy?” asked Rudy.

“Hey.”

Are you alright?”

“I’m at the safe house. The one Church sent me to. It’s cool. The place is secure.”

“I am very glad to hear that. What about you, Joe? Are you okay?”

“No,” I said, and the word came out fractured. “No, man, I’m not. I just killed a man while he was praying.”

Chapter Sixty-Five

Rudy and I talked for nearly ten minutes.

“Joe,” he said when I’d finished telling him about Krystos, “what else could you have done?”

“Nothing,” I snapped. “That’s my damn point. What choice did I have except to kill them? I’m not saying that I was wrong, or that I did it wrong. But I made a joke while I was doing it. Jesus.”

“I think we both know that your sense of humor is as much a weapon for you as your fists or your gun. It protects you. It keeps the pain at arm’s length.”

“Except when it doesn’t.”

“Except then, yes,” he conceded. “Tell me, though, does any defense work all the time?”

“Running away?”

“Joe…”

“I know, I know. I just can’t seem to square this in my head.”

“A long time ago,” he said, “or what seems like a long time ago, when we joined the DMS, we talked about this. About how violence always leaves a mark. Only the immoral or mentally unbalanced can kill without taking some harm themselves.”

“We both know where I stand on that score.”

“You are psychologically unique, Joe,” Rudy corrected, “as is everyone. You are the end result of the damage you received and the work you’ve done to understand it and adjust to its presence in your life.”

“Doesn’t address the morals issue.”

“No, but it’s connected. When you were thirteen you had the common moral worldview shared by people of your age, gender, ethnicity, nationality, and family environment. When you were fourteen your worldview was knocked askew and you suffered intense physical and emotional trauma. As a result your morality underwent an adjustment. As you entered into a study of martial arts and learned to control your rage while developing dangerous combat skills, you began to understand that there were times and circumstances under which you would be willing to do harm to others. You knew then that if you ever confronted the teens who raped Helen and nearly killed you, that you could do great harm to them without suffering emotional harm from the act. This is not an irrational view given your history. Then, when you entered the military, your worldview was adjusted for you during basic and advanced training. You adopted the soldier’s view of violence, and had you gone into battle I have no doubt that you could have fought and killed without feeling that you were committing immoral acts.”

“It’s not as simple as that.”

“Of course it isn’t. I’m generalizing here to make a point,” he said. “After the army you entered the police academy. You learned another version of the worldview and adopted a new attitude toward when violence might be appropriate. And there was an adjustment of that when you became a detective and began working on the counterterrorist unit. The step into the DMS was an extraordinary one, Joe. Massive. The very first day you were in multiple firefights. Each time you have had to adjust your emotions and your worldview to allow for the reality of more and different kinds of killing. I know that with each step we have had to take a little time to explore what this is doing to you. And you know the warning I’ve given you several times.”

“I know.”

It was the kind of warning he, as a psychiatrist and a moral person, was honor-bound to give: be prepared for the day when you cannot do this anymore.

After Grace had been killed-after I’d tracked down her killer and torn him apart-I thought I’d reached my limit with this kind of work and this kind of life. Then the Seven Kings case blew up in my face and suddenly I was ankle deep in blood again. As much as I hated being a part of that fight, I discovered the ugly truth that it defined me. Not the killing. No, not that. It was the fight itself. It never seemed to be over and until it was, how could I, in good conscience, lay down my gun and let the innocent fend for themselves? How could I do that and not go crazy myself? Church had been a warrior in this far longer than anyone else I knew. During the Kings thing he tried to explain it to me. He said, “The darkness is all around us. Very few people have the courage to light a candle against it. We hold a candle against the darkness. Like the unknown and unseen enemy we fight, people like you and me-we are the darkness. In some ways we are more like the things we’re fighting than the people we’re protecting. We are part of the darkness. Granted our motives are better-from our perspective-but we wait in the darkness for our unseen enemy to make a move against those innocents with the candles. And by that light, we take aim.”

I repeated those words to Rudy.

“I remember you telling me this. And I remember when you decided that this was, in fact, who you were.”

“Sure, and that’s all very noble, very grand, but can I say that I’m that kind of warrior and measure it against cracking a joke while I shoot a bound prisoner who’s praying for mercy from God?”

Rudy began to answer, but there was a discreet tap on the door.

“I have to go, Rude.”

“Joe-we need to finish this conversation.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

I hung up, got to my feet, and pulled my gun from my waistband.

Chapter Sixty-Six

I opened the door a quarter inch. Enough to see a single eye peering in at me. If that eye was red or even reddish I was going to put a bullet through it.

“Are you okay in there, my friend? Do you need assistance?”

They were the kinds of question anyone would ask, but the exact phrasing was a prearranged code. I opened the door a few inches, pistol out of sight. Ghost stuck his nose into the crack and began cataloging everything he could about the man outside.

“I’m just a little tired from the trip,” I said, using the proper response to the coded questions.

“Perhaps I can help,” he said.

I opened the door and the store clerk’s eyes darted first to Ghost, then to my lowered gun and finally to me. No shock or surprise registered on his face.

“I am Jamsheed Mustapha,” he said.

I didn’t give my name, and he didn’t ask.

Jamsheed was about fifty but he wasn’t carrying it well. His posture was bad and his face was deeply lined. Stress lines, not laugh lines. “The store is locked,” he said, “and I’ve engaged the jammers. No one is listening and no one knows you’re here.”

“Works for me,” I said as I eased the hammer down on the pistol and returned it to my waistband. Jamsheed backed away to allow me to step outside. Ghost remained right where he was, cued to do so by a small finger signal I gave him. He would watch and wait and stay alert until I signaled him to stand down.

“ As-salamu ‘alaykum,” I said.

“ Wa-laikum as-salam,” said Jamsheed and offered me his hand. We shook. He had frail bones but managed to give a firm shake. He did a second, longer appraisal, taking in the ill-fitting shirt, bloodstains, my battered face, the works.

“You are hurt? I have a first aid kit in my apartment. We’ll get you cleaned up. I have clothes, too. There will be some in your size.” He paused. “Have you spoken to the Mujtahid?”

I nodded. Mujtahid was the Arabic word for “scholar,” but it was also one of the many code names for Mr. Church. I relaxed even more at that name and gave the stand-down signal to Ghost, who immediately flopped down and appeared to lapse into a canine coma. Apparently he was faking his combat readiness.

“Is there something wrong with your dog?” asked Jamsheed.

I explained about the Taser and the net. Jamsheed asked me to wait, and he went into the store and came back with a plastic bowl, two bottles of water, and a bag of high-protein dog biscuits. He handed everything to me. It was clear that he knew enough about military-trained dogs to not try to give the food and water to Ghost directly. I thanked him. Jamsheed earned a whole lot of points from me for that kindness. I knelt and emptied one bottle into the bowl, tore open the bag of biscuits, and laid six of them in a row. Ghost pried open an eye, flexed his nostrils, and wagged his tail. He got shakily to his feet and set-to with a will, lapping up the water and then suddenly going hog wild on the biscuits, his usual daintiness forgotten for the moment.

“Are the police looking for you?” asked Jamsheed.

I shook my head. “They’re looking for someone, but no one has my description.”

“That simplifies this. You look like you could use some food and drink as well, my friend.”

“At this point, I’d even go for one of the dog biscuits.”

Ghost shot me a “don’t even think about it” look and moved to stand between me and his food.

“My team is coming for me,” I said. “Can I stay here for a few hours and wait?”

“Of course, of course, as long as you need.” He didn’t ask for details, and I had no idea what information Church told him. Jamsheed seemed to be taking all of this in stride. He took me by the arm and led me through a small door into his apartment. It was cramped, but very clean and decorated with gorgeous framed photographs of children, animals, landscapes, and buildings.

“Your work?” I asked.

He nodded. “A hobby. I hope to retire from this work and concentrate on photography.” He leaned on the word “work.”

“You have an incredible eye,” I said, and I wasn’t joking. Each of the pictures was a small masterpiece of composition. Not just a flower, but an angle that showed light caressing the striations on a delicate petal in a way that cast it as an alien landscape. Not merely a photo of a child with a kitten, but a glimpse into the wonder in that child’s eyes and the trust in the body language of the kitten. Each piece was a statement filled with visual poetry that betrayed a deep understanding of the connection between the physical world and the spiritual. “These are really quite beautiful.”

He made a modest sound of dismissal.

“No,” I said, crossing to stand in front of one picture in particular, “you have the gift.”

Jamsheed came and stood next to me, trying to see the picture through my eyes-a foreigner, a soldier, a non-Muslim, a stranger. The image that caught me, that riveted me, was of a chain-link fence beyond which a group of kids played soccer in a deserted parking lot. Beyond the skill of the composition, the story it told struck me to the heart. A bunch of kids totally absorbed in their game. At that distance and with a gentle softening of the focus, he made the children nonspecific. It no longer mattered if they were preteens or teens, if they were boys or girls, or if they were Muslim or Christian. What mattered, what shone through, was that they were innocent and at peace with the fun they were having. That picture might have been taken anywhere. England or Uruguay, Alabama or here in Iran. There were so many lessons implied in the simple grace of those children, and it had been perfectly captured by this man’s camera.

He waited out my long silence, then asked, “What does it say to you?”

“Lots,” I said. “But I guess… two things most of all.”

“Oh?”

“Everybody has kids,” I said, “and everybody loves their kids.”

Jamsheed touched the edge of the frame near the image of a little girl who was no more than a happy blur as she ran after a ball. “Yes.”

“And… this is why we do what we do.”

I turned to him and saw a mix of thoughtful expressions play across his face. “It’s funny,” he said, “but I would have thought you would say something like, ‘this is why we fight.’”

“I know. That occurred to me,” I admitted, “but it isn’t the right way to say it. I’m not in this business to fight. Seeing these pictures… I don’t think you are, either. It’s not about the conflict. It’s about what it preserves and what it allows.”

Jamsheed nodded and went over to a tiny kitchenette and began filling a teapot with water. “I once knew a Sufi who said that anyone who goes to war is crazy. But… I don’t think he was exactly correct. I believe it is more accurate to say that anyone who wants to go to war is crazy.”

“That says it,” I agreed.

He put the kettle on the burner, then fetched a first aid kit and helped me clean and dress my wounds. He had to pick some window glass and wood splinters out of my scalp and back from when I had crashed out of my hotel room and onto the balcony while waltzing with the knight.

“You have a lot of scars already,” he said as he worked, “so these should blend in.”

“Hazards of the job.”

“Mm.”

I caught Jamsheed sniffing a few times as he worked, and it took me a moment to make the connection.

“Garlic,” I said.

“Yes.” He didn’t ask, though he clearly wanted to.

“Long, weird story. Probably best if I don’t share.”

He nodded. “Yes. I understand.”

“Do you do field work?” I asked.

“Not anymore.” He considered for a moment and then unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt and pulled the cloth apart to reveal two scars. Bullet holes. “Souvenirs of an adventurous youth.”

I noticed that he had other scars. More than his share. Around his eyes, around his fingernails. He’d been beaten and very likely tortured at some point. He noticed me looking and offered the smallest of shrugs, but he didn’t comment.

When he was done picking out the last of the splinters, he showed me the bathroom and even turned on the shower for me. Before I closed the bathroom door, I asked, “Why don’t you retire? The world needs more artists.”

He shrugged. “The time isn’t right yet.”

It was a simple statement, but a sad one, and it stayed with me while I showered, dried, and changed into clean clothes. Jamsheed was a lot smaller than me, but he was well stocked. When I came out of the bathroom I found several choices of clothes in extra-large. I dressed in khakis and a white dress shirt. Jamsheed also left me a makeup kit and a hot cup of tea. I sipped the tea as I touched up the dye job Khalid had given me before we rescued the hikers. My tan only needed a mild olive tint. Jamsheed didn’t have brown contact lenses, but there were plenty of blue-eyed people in the Middle East.

When I came out, Jamsheed inspected the work and nodded approval. Ghost had come in from the storeroom and lay sprawled in front of an oscillating fan, twitching every now and then as he dreamed.

Jamsheed set out plates of food and we ate a lunch of chelo kabab — steamed saffron basmati rice and grilled chunks of goat, accompanied by pomegranate soup. He apologized for it being leftovers, but I didn’t care. It was delicious and I cleaned my plate. When Ghost woke up and saw that my plate was empty, he looked truly wounded. However, Jamsheed fetched a bowl of leftover khoresht beh, a lamb stew thick with rice and vegetables. Ghost nearly fell on him and wept. Jamsheed watched with some amusement as Ghost attacked the food.

Jamsheed was not a talkative man. Perhaps it was because he did not want to know anything about who I was or why I was in Iran. He may have been our local contact, but it did not change the fact that he was Iranian. I wondered what conflicts warred inside his artist’s mind. What was it about his government that made him want to side with people like Church? I’d met a few people like him before, and they ranged from traitors whose souls could be bought to idealists who believed that change for their country was necessary.

Then I saw him cutting quick looks at me and twice he opened his mouth to say something then changed his mind. I set my fork down.

“What is it?” I asked.

Jamsheed furrowed his brow. “The incident last night. The young Americans.”

I waited.

“Was that you? Is that why you’re here?”

I sat back and dabbed my mouth with a napkin.

Jamsheed looked uneasy. “I know, I know-I shouldn’t be asking such questions.”

“Then why are you?”

He got up and walked over to the picture of the children playing soccer. He stared at it for a long time. “We are a warlike people. I don’t mean just us Iranians. I mean all people. Humans. The veneer of civilization is very thin.”

“At times,” I said. “Not always.”

He conceded with only a small nod. “No, not always. But too often it is true. War is a disease and we are all infected. And, like carriers, we pass it along to our children.” He touched the picture. “Sometimes, we even involve our children. That is against God. No matter what faith you are, no matter how devoutly you pray, it is an affront to God.”

“Yes it is,” I said.

He turned to me. “Not everyone in my country’s government is corrupt. Not everyone is in love with war. There are good people here.”

I nodded. “I know that. I can say the same about my government, or any government. There are always heroes and villains. And there are people who do bad things because they think it’s right. Depends on the viewpoint they’ve come to believe in. Some are misled, some come from a tradition of intolerance. Look how long it took my country to free its slaves and give everyone the vote. As far as I know, no one country holds the patent on moral perfection.”

Jamsheed sighed. “This was not the first time my government kidnapped young people and called them spies. Ever since we began our nuclear program, it has become unofficial policy to use these kinds of tactics. It gets into the world press, and even though we are condemned for it, there is just enough room for doubt to stall the process of releasing them. It is…” He fished for a word, waving his hand as if he could snatch it out of the air. The word he came up with was “dishonorable.”

“Yes it damn well is.”

“To use children is…” He wanted another word, a worse word. But what word was really adequate?

We looked into each other’s eyes for a long time. There were all kinds of things being said without either of us having to say another word. Eventually, though, I did say one word.

“Evil.”

He nodded. “Yes,” he said softly. “It is the worst face of evil.”

Chapter Sixty-Seven

“Hey, docs!” Bug called. Circe and Rudy glanced up and saw him waving to them on the big monitor.

“What have you got?” asked Circe.

“Weird, weird stuff,” he said, tapping the main screen on which were dozens of overlapping windows and text boxes. “I’ve been going through the field notes and even with most of the stuff corrupted there are hundreds of pages of stuff. I had MindReader index the words, and I hit a few I didn’t know. One in particular came up and I tried to translate it from Arabic or Persian, but it’s neither of those languages. Turns out its Russian.”

Rudy bent close to turn and make sense of the data on Bug’s screen, but there was too much that he didn’t know. “What’s the word?”

“Upierczi.”

“That’s the same word Joe heard from the Greek man, Krystos,” said Rudy.

Circe nodded. “Right. It’s the Russian word for vampires.”

“Ouch,” breathed Rudy. “Joe won’t like that.”

“What’s the context, Bug?”

Bug grinned. “That’s the part he really won’t like. According to Rasouli’s field agent, the Upierczi are high on the list of groups suspected of having planted the bombs.”

They looked at each other for several moments.

“Okay,” said Bug, “I found this stuff out, I forwarded it to the Big Boss, Auntie, and Joe, but I have no idea where to go with it, if you know what I mean.”

“I do,” admitted Rudy. “We can all say the word ‘vampire,’ and speculate about whether they are real or not, but that doesn’t connect us to the actual phenomenon. There are people involved in this case who other people believe to be vampires. The point is, what do we believe?”

“We can’t begin to answer that, Rudy,” said Circe. She chewed her lip for a moment. “I think we need an expert.”

“Who?” mused Bug. “Stephen King?”

“Close enough.” Circe looked at the wall clock. “God, it’s almost seven in the morning. Have we really been here all night?”

Very quickly, Rudy said, “At least last night ended well.”

Even though Bug could not hear the comment, Circe turned away to hide her flushed checks. She dug her cell phone out of her purse and searched for the number of Professor Jonathan Corbiel-Newton.

“This is her day off. She always sleeps in on Sundays.” Circe murmured as she listened to the rings. “She’s going to kill me.”

Rudy snorted. “She’ll get over it. Maybe Mr. Church will bring her inside his ‘circle of trust’ as the permanent DMS vampire expert.”

“Don’t joke.”

“I’m not,” he said.

Interlude Nine

“It is as cold as the grave in here.”

The young nun, Sister Sophia, scolded the old priest with her disapproving stare as she hustled around the room to pull closed the shutters and draw the heavy drapes.

Father Esteban, a hawk-nosed man of seventy, raised his head from the letter he was writing and watched her with mingled annoyance and amusement.

As Sister Sophia wheeled on him with a fierce scowl. “And look at you! By the blessed virgin you are positively blue with cold. What could you be thinking to let yourself get into such a state?”

“I’m sorry,” said the priest, his voice thick with fatigue, “I have been very busy.”

“You’ll be less busy if you get sick again, Father Esteban. You know what the doctor advised.” Sister Sophia was many years younger than the priest and ostensibly his servant during his retreat; however, Father Esteban knew that he had no authority in her presence. Not unless there was a third person present, at which point she would play the role of the dutiful bride of Christ and pad around him with quiet deference. But that was all an act. Sister Sophia had been charged by her mother superior-a harpy of mythic ferocity-to nurse Esteban back to health and prevent him from doing exactly what he had just done: work himself to the point of exhaustion while ignoring the needs of the body.

Father Esteban muttered some apologies as he accepted a cup of hot wine. He sipped the wine and peered through the steam to the last lines he had written. The report was the latest in a series of such missives he had prepared for the Holy Father in Rome. Reports on the murders of pilgrims on the road to Jerusalem, of churches burned, of nuns raped and sodomized. Saracens at their worst. From eyewitness accounts to blasphemous passages of the Koran written in feces or blood upon church walls. Two months ago the tone of his letters had changed, and these recent letters included accounts of retaliation by Knights Hospitaller and other remnants of the crusaders. Retribution was swift and it was brutal. Mosques were burned. Families of suspected Saracen raiders were tortured and put to the sword. Imam were skinned alive or burned at the stake. Father Esteban did not approve of such harsh actions, but he understood their purpose. To respond in kind and with greater ferocity to show that the children of God were not lambs for the sacrifice of heathens. After his most recent journey to collect reports, his latest letter had yet another flavor. The last week has been without incident. The pilgrim road is now under the protection of the Knights Hospitaller and the senior knight, Sir Guy LaRoque, assures me that the Saracens have been dissuaded from further attacks upon the children of God. However, I remain unconvinced that the threat has so easily been resolved after…

There was a clang behind him and he flinched as he realized what it was. Sister Sophia had raised the metal cover of his dinner tray and then slammed it down again as she saw the uneaten dinner.

“Holy Mary, Mother of God…”

If it had been anyone else, Father Esteban would have admonished her for swearing, but he knew better. It was more than his peace of mind-and perhaps his life-was worth to duel with Sophia when she held the moral high ground.

Before Sister Sophia could get to full gallop, however, there was a sharp sound at the window.

“What was that?” asked the young nun, her voice suddenly hushed.

“Perhaps a bird flew into the shutters,” suggested Father Esteban.

“Perhaps,” said Sister Sophia dubiously, and she took a reflexive step forward as if to stand between Father Esteban and harm.

They listened for several moments, but all they heard from outside was the fierce desert wind blowing across the endless wastes.

“A bird, then,” conceded Sister Sophia, though she did not open the window to confirm this. Both of them had heard the stories about this desert. About the jinni and other unholy demons who haunted the Arabian sands. Lost souls who lured travelers to oases and then feasted on them, flesh and bone.

Then the sound came again. A blow upon the casement, sharp and hard.

The nun crossed herself.

Father Esteban did not. Though a priest and investigator for the church, he privately regarded himself as a political cleric rather than a man of deep faith. It was not true to say that he had entirely lost his faith, because he had never entirely had it. He was the youngest son of his family and, as was traditional among the nobility, after his oldest brother began to manage the estates and his middle brother went to war, Esteban had gone into the priesthood. It had been expected of him, and gainsaying the policies of a thousand years of tradition and the iron will of his widowed mother had been impossible options.

Father Esteban slid his hand under a sheaf of old parchments to touch the handle of the thin-bladed knife he used to cut the tapes on official documents. It was not much, but it was better than prayer, at least in his experience.

Sister Sophia crept to the window and leaned an ear toward the drapes, listening. Her right fist was clutched so tightly around her rosary that her knuckles were white and her lips moved in a soundless prayer to the Virgin.

They waited. A minute. Two.

Five.

Silence was all they heard. Father Esteban let out a breath and uncurled his fingers from the knife.

Finally the nun began to relax, her cramped attitude of listening yielding first to conditional relief and then to rueful humor as she caught the eye of the priest.

“And here, look at us, cringing at sounds like children sent to bed on a moonless night. What a picture we are.”

Suddenly there was a tremendous crash as the shutters exploded inward, tearing the drapes from their rings and showering the nun with a storm of jagged splinters. The fierce impact staggered Sister Sophia, but she did not fall. Instead something dark lashed out and clamped around her throat, catching her, lifting her to her toes, choking off her screams. A bulky figure stepped through the shattered window, its face covered in a dark red mask, its body hidden beneath a cloak the color of old blood.

“Sophia!” screamed Father Esteban as he leapt to his feet and stared in uncomprehending horror at what he was seeing. The masked intruder held the nun with one hand. Sister Sophia twisted and writhed in the grip, beating at the hand with her small fist; and then the man did the impossible-he lifted the nun even higher until her toes barely touched the floor, and then higher still so that she hung inches above the stone.

With a cry of horror, Father Esteban snatched up the dagger he had just set down and rushed across the room, tottering on feet whose circulation had not fully returned.

The nun tried to scream a warning, or perhaps a plea, but she could force no sound at all past the stricture in her throat. Her pale face had flushed red and was now turning a violent purple.

“Let her go!” bellowed Esteban, and he drove the blade of the knife toward the chest of the figure cloaked in drapes and darkness. But the figure hissed at him like a jungle cat and flung the writhing nun at him with unnatural force. Father Esteban had no chance to dodge and he took her weight full in the chest; then they were falling in a shrieking sprawl of arms and legs. Father Esteban crashed to the stone floor and Sister Sophia’s weight landed hip first onto his chest with a sound like breaking sticks. Pain exploded in Father Esteban’s chest, and his eyes filled with sparks of white fire.

The nun sagged down, unconscious. Esteban struggled to push her off of him, to see the attacker, to draw in a single breath of air. The slender dagger was still clutched in one hand but it was useless to him.

Then, without warning, the weight was gone. The intruder was there, his fists knotted in the nun’s black habit, and without even a grunt of effort he tore the black cloth apart to reveal the white undergarments; then he slashed and ripped these until the naked and innocent flesh of the nun was revealed. It was a horrible transgression, and Father Esteban bellowed in outrage and fury, but the intruder ignored him as he studied the young breasts and clean limbs of the nearly naked woman. The intruder smiled and nodded.

“Yes, she will do very well” he said, and pushed her roughly aside.

The hulking black figure then turned slowly toward the priest. His red robes swirled in the stiff breeze that blew in through the destroyed window. There was no mark, no symbol or badge on any of his garments, and they covered him entirely except for a narrow opening through which two intensely unnatural eyes glared. They were fierce and strange, their irises as blood red as his clothes.

Like the eyes of a rat.

Like the eyes of a demon.

“God!” cried the priest, the word torn from him, from the deep well in which the last of his faith dwelled. He stabbed at the attacker, lunging with his failing strength to try to plunge the needle tip of the dagger into one of those inhuman eyes. But the man-the thing, for it could not possibly be a man-caught the priest’s wrist. Then, with an almost casual jerk, he snapped Father Esteban’s wrist as easily as if the bones were late winter icicles.

Red hot agony erupted in the priest’s arm and he screamed.

He screamed in pain and in fury and in outrage at this attack, and at all that it meant. He knew who and what this man had to be. A Saracen, one of the Hashashin come to murder him, come to silence the voice of the Holy Church.

But he, Father Esteban, was wrong about that, as he was wrong about so many things; and for him, clarity and understanding came far too late.

The intruder released his grip on the priest’s shattered wrist and reached up to his mask, pulling the red cloth slowly away. Revealing his face.

Not a Saracen face.

The skin was pale, the features narrow, the lips thin. A European face.

But not that either.

When the intruder smiled, Father Esteban knew with all certainty that this man did not belong to any country. He did not belong to this world. Thin, colorless lips peeled back to reveal teeth that were yellow and crooked. And wrong.

So wrong.

Each was tapered to a point as needle-sharp as Esteban’s dagger. Not filed the way some of the African cannibals do. No… Father Esteban knew that these teeth, as unnatural as they were, were completely natural to this man.

This creature.

“For the love of God!” cried the priest, his terror and shock greater than the pain in his chest and wrist.

The thing bent closer to him and Esteban could smell the rancid-meat stink of its breath.

“Yes, Father,” said the monster. “All things are done for the love of God.”

That awful mouth stretched open as the red-eyed thing lunged at him.

There was a moment of white-hot pain, and then the colors drained out of the world and took sound and feeling with them, leaving Father Esteban floating in a sea of nothingness. As the darkness wrapped its cloak around him, a single word echoed in his mind, pulsing slowly with the fading beats of his heart.

Vampiro.

Chapter Sixty-Eight

My cell vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it and looked at the code on the screen. Mr. Church. Jamsheed excused himself and went out to his store so I could take the call.

I doubted it was good news.

“I heard from Bug,” Church said. “He’s located a device here in the States.”

“Where?”

“Louisiana.”

Bang. There it was.

Chapter Sixty-Nine

“Christ,” I said. “Tell me.”

“Bug initiated a MindReader search of cargo ships, oil tankers, fishing fleets, and other craft capable of carrying a large, shielded device. Backtracking through ports where cargo could be quietly shifted from one craft to another. These are routes and transfers that would not ring bells on any standard-security computers, so we got lucky.”

“Now give me the bad news.”

“It’s on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico a few miles off the coast of New Orleans. We confirmed the presence of a nuclear signature with a flyover. Low levels, which means it is likely shielded, probably not a danger to the staff aboard the rig, but too high to be anything other than what it is. I have two of our people doing a soft infil right now under cover of a random inspection of blowout preventers. The rig is about due for a check, so we caught that break.”

“Shit.”

“I borrowed SEAL Team Six to work a coordinated operation with Riptide Team out of Miami. Aunt Sallie will coordinate it from the TOC at the Hangar.”

“When do they hit it?”

“The president is making that decision now.”

“Who’s stalling, him or you?”

“Me. I talked him out of giving an immediate go-order. We now know that the devices exist, and that the U.S. is on the list. I don’t want to hit one and have that serve as a signal for our enemies to trigger the other devices.”

“No joke. During my interrogation with Krystos, he said the Sabbatarians were trying to prevent the Red Knights from destroying the world, and he wasn’t talking about a global suckfest. His crew think that these Upierczi freaks are the ones with the nukes.”

“Aunt Sallie told me that you forwarded a theory along those lines,” he said, “so I’ve arranged for Dr. Hu to join us. I’m conferencing him in now.”

“Swell,” I said.

“I heard that,” said Hu.

“It was an expression of great joy,” I said. “I’ve missed you and longed to hear your voice.”

“Eat me.”

Church sighed heavily, which effectively silenced the sniping war.

The only person at the DMS who disliked me more than Aunt Sallie was Dr. William Hu, the head of Church’s vast science and research department. Hu was a couple miles beyond brilliant, and he had what would have been a fun pop-culture sensibility if it wasn’t for the fact that he was a totally amoral asshole. If there was a plague totally unknown to science that was killing thousands of people an hour, Hu was as happy as a kid on Christmas morning because he had a new toy to play with. By comparison, Hu made Dr. Frankenstein look like Jonas Salk. Granted, Bug had some weird detachments from the real world, too, but Bug had a heart. I’d need a full autopsy of Hu before I believed he did, and I’d pay for that procedure right now.

For his part, Hu once described me as a “muscle-headed mouth breather.”

“Doctor,” began Church in a rather more commanding voice than usual, “I would like you to give Captain Ledger some useful feedback on his theories.”

I heard Hu quietly mumble the word “theories.” “Sure,” he said.

“First up, what the hell are the Upierczi? Are they vampires?”

“I’d need to dissect one,” Hu said, sounding jazzed at the thought, “so I can only speculate on whether the model of the traditional vampire is medically possible. It isn’t. Not as Hollywood shows it. Therianthropy is-”

“Whoa-what?”

“Therianthropy,” he said, pronouncing it slowly for those of us on the short bus. “From the Greek therion, meaning ‘beast’ and anthropos, meaning ‘human.’ Creatures who can change their form. Also known as ‘shapeshifting,’ but it’s mythology, not science. Refers to creatures that could change shape from animal to human, or human to animal.”

“Like vampires turning into bats.”

“And werewolves, which would be subclassified as lycanthropes. Folklore’s filled with crap like that. You got cynanthropy, which is transforming into a dog, ailuranthropy, turning into a cat, yada, yada, yada. There is no evidence of any credible kind that humans can transform.”

“What about sunlight?”

“Possibly. Photophobia is a fear of sunlight and a morbid fear of it is called heliophobia, but Auntie said that your ‘theory’ was that these Upierczi have increased resistance to radiation. That would contradict a fear of sunlight unless the fear was purely psychological and not physiological.”

“Isn’t that likely here?” I asked. “If we’re going to talk about vampires of any kind existing, even if they’re just faking it somehow, then they are going to have to be aware of the myths and legends.”

“Okay,” he agreed grudgingly, “there are a couple of takes on that. Either the Upierczi are some kind of vampire, in which case their unusual nature inspired some of the legends about what we popularly think about vampires. Storytellers, campfire tales, and fiction writers filled in the rest.”

“Or, maybe the Upierczi deliberately provided their own disinformation campaign,” I suggested.

“Maybe,” he said, but I knew I’d scored a point.

“Could a human subspecies have a greater tolerance for radiation?” I asked.

“Sure. Not to the point where they can juggle isotopes, but we’ve seen a pretty big range. Some of the exposure studies after Chernobyl and Fukushima show that.”

“Enough for them to live in a postnuclear environment?”

“That would depend on where the nukes detonate, both in relation to prevailing wind and ocean currents and to actual proximity to the highest concentrations. When Chernobyl melted down everyone thought that the area around it would be a total dead zone, but we saw plant growth return much more quickly, and also the return of animals and birds. Nature loves to adapt. Now… another factor in species survival would be the number of nukes. If the Upierczi live anywhere near one of the blast zones, it’s doubtful they would be able to withstand the doses. However, if they are removed from the blast zones, it would be up to their unique biology as to how soon they could reinhabit those areas.” He paused. “We’re looking for seven nukes worldwide? That would not pose a lasting threat even to the normal human population.”

“It wouldn’t?”

“Well, I mean a bunch of people would be toast. Worst-case scenario from the five we already know of, including New Orleans, would be maybe fifty million dead from the blasts, maybe two hundred million dead in two to forty years from cancers. That’s nothing matched against the six and three quarter billion who wouldn’t die.”

“That’s ‘nothing’?”

“Try thinking big picture once in a while,” said Hu smugly.

“Are you-”I began, my voice rising.

“Don’t start,” warned Church. “We don’t have the time for it.”

I bit down on the things I wanted to say to Hu, and he was probably grinning at the other end of the phone, thinking that he’d just scored by having me yelled at by the teacher.

“What if the Upierczi stay underground?” asked Church.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “In graves or-”

“In tunnels. We have some intelligence that they live, or at least lived, in tunnels.”

“Well,” mused Hu, “rock and dirt are great insulators as long as they aren’t part of a contaminated water table or underground river.”

“In deserts?” I asked.

“Pretty good place to be. Again, though, they’d have to be away from water or, if Rasouli’s intel is right, away from the oil sands.”

“New topic,” I said. “Physiology. The Red Knight I fought was faster and stronger than me. Not just a little, either. What’s the upper range of human potential?”

“Impossible to say,” answered Hu, “because it depends on too many factors. Muscle density, bone density, and overall cellular structure. We keep pushing back the limits for fastest and strongest all the time, and I’m not just talking steroids. Every Olympic Games you have new world records set. There are going to be some extreme limits, of course. Human bones and muscle will never allow someone to bench-press a ton or outrun a sports car, but there is a whole lot of wiggle room; and that’s before we get into gene therapy. Remember the Berserkers from the Jakoby thing. They were big men who received DNA from silverback gorillas. Granted, it caused other mutations and it was a long way from healthy for the subjects, but in the short term those men were much stronger than ordinary humans. Now, if we talk natural mutation in terms of physical potential, that will vary, and we’ve seen average guys who are surprisingly strong and bulky guys who don’t have the strength to open a beer bottle. Like I said, I’d need to cut one of these guys to pin it down.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said. “What can I use to fight them? Those Sabbatarian freaks had hammers, stakes, holy water, and garlic.”

Hu snorted. “Forget holy water unless the Upierczi actually believe in it.”

“Why would that make a difference?”

“It wouldn’t, except psychologically,” said Church. “They’d fear it or try to evade it, which might open up an opportunity for you.”

“What about the stakes and hammers?”

“I expect,” said Hu, “that would work on anybody. If you don’t have a gun, a big pointed stick is worth a try.”

“And garlic?”

“Hm. Might be something to that. I did a search through the literature, and, though garlic allergies aren’t that common, there is plenty of documentation.”

“Fatal allergies?” I asked hopefully.

“Not usually. Most garlic allergies are a form of contact dermatitis. Chefs get it once in a while when they get garlic oil or dust in a cut. They present with patterns of asymmetrical fissures on the affected fingertips, maybe some thickening and shedding of the outer skin layers. In really rare cases that can progress to second- or even third-degree burns. Actually it’s a component of garlic, the chemical diallyl disulfide, or DADS, along with related compounds allyl propyl disulfide and allicin. You find all three in other plants in the genus Allium, too, like leeks and onions.”

“So what do I do, ask the Red Knights to make me some garlic bread and hope they have an accident with a knife?”

Hu laughed despite himself. “If the Upierczi have a congenital allergy, that could be in our favor. It’d be better if you could get some dust or oil directly into their lungs or bloodstream. That’s probably why the Sabbatarians threw garlic in your face. If you breathed it and you were a Upier, then you might go into anaphylaxis. Then they’d go all Buffy the Vampire Slayer on you and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

“Hope springs eternal,” Hu said. “The kicker is that we don’t know if garlic is a genuine allergen to them or if that’s more disinformation. You’re going to have to figure that out on the fly.”

“Swell. Anything else you can tell me?”

“Nothing that isn’t blind speculation. We don’t have the data to do more than speculate.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” said Church, and he dropped Hu out of the conversation. “Any other thoughts, Captain?”

“Just one. What are the chances that the Iranian government is behind this whole thing? I know Rasouli gave me the flash drive, but I can see how he could be pulling a fast one: planting nukes in Iran and in the States and tipping us off so that we find them.”

“To what end?”

“To whitewash their reputation. They discover a global threat and reach across political and religious differences to join with us in a joint operation that proves to the world that they’re part of the solution and not the core of the problem.”

“Why do so covertly?”

“Because if it goes wrong they can plausibly deny any involvement and probably dump it all on us. After all-we have the original flash drive now, and we have people operating inside their borders without permission. We flub it, they have proof; we don’t flub it and we can both retroactively spin the story that this was all a hush-hush joint operation from the jump.”

“Chasing Hugo Vox is turning you into a cynic, Captain.”

“Hard to stay optimistic with a bunch of nukes ready to pop,” I pointed out.

“I could accept that Rasouli is behind it, but not as an official representative of the Iranian government,” mused Church. “They couldn’t afford to come within a million miles of such a plan. It would do irreparable political harm to the sitting party.”

“What about a move by an opposition party or a dissident group?”

He considered. “It would take enormous resources and would be ultimately self-defeating.”

“Only if they pulled the trigger.”

Church paused a little before he said, “Yes.”

“Do we have an overall game plan yet?”

“If we can we locate the last two devices, then we go for a quarterback blitz.”

“That’ll be interesting.”

“Won’t it, though?”

I closed my eyes and prayed to the gods of war to cut us a break. What Church was suggesting was to have teams move against every target at exactly the same time. It was a strategist’s worst-case scenario because if thousands of years of organized warfare have taught us anything it’s that no major campaign ever goes off exactly according to plan. There are always snafus. And that word came into military parlance as a result. SNAFU. Situation normal all fucked up. Tells you all you need to know.

“And if we don’t locate the other two?” I asked.

“Then we may have to try something riskier.”

“Like taking out the five we know about in order to secure suspects who we can interrogate?”

“Glad to see we’re on the same page.”

“It’s not a good page, Boss. There are a lot of ways that can go wrong too.”

“Yes.”

“And only one way it can go right.”

“Yes.”

“Holy shit.”

“Yes.” He sighed. “I’ll be landing in Kuwait in a bit. Hope to see you there by this time tomorrow.”

I heard the faint bing-bong of the doorbell downstairs.

“I think the courier’s here,” I said, and disconnected.

Chapter Seventy

Hugo Vox was bent over the toilet, his stomach heaving and churning with nothing left to expel, when the phone began ringing. His private cell.

He clawed a towel off the bar and wiped his mouth and crawled out of the bathroom to the night table. Walking was an impossibility this soon after the dose kicked in. There was only enough time to drive home and swallow half a dozen aspirin before the first waves hit, and it was worse with each treatment. He joked to Grigor about the fact that the cure was going to kill him before it cured him. Now he wasn’t sure it was a joke.

The thick sausages of his swollen fingers were clumsy on the buttons, but he finally hit the right one.

“What?” he demanded.

“Mr. Verrecchia?”

Ah. It was Father Belloq, East Asia regional coordinator for the Sabbatarians. That group knew Vox by his old family name, Verrecchia-a name his grandfather had changed at Ellis Island, but which Vox still used for certain operations. As far as Belloq was concerned, “Luigi Verrecchia” was a devoted and very rich Catholic who was serving God by covertly using a great deal of his wealth to fund the operations of the Inquisition. And that wasn’t all that far from the truth, except in terms of motives. Vox couldn’t care less about the church, or its God, but he found it useful to have a vicious little private army he could aim at his enemies. The Sabbatarians were everywhere, their ranks significantly expanded over the last fifteen years thanks to the millions Vox funneled into their numbered accounts. They were blind fanatics who were convinced they were making serious inroads into the fight against supernatural evil. In point of fact, they had contributed significantly to five of the most lucrative operations of the Seven Kings.

They had no real role in the chaos that Vox was building around the Red Order, the Tariqa, Iranian politics, and the mad plans of the King of Thorns; but that was the point. Vox loved adding random elements. It would drive Church and the DMS up a goddamn wall trying to figure out how the Sabbatarians factored in. Sure, there was the obvious vampire connection, but the Sabbatarians created the wrong connection. Chaos was a lovely, lovely thing.

Vox took a breath and adjusted his tone. “Yes, Father. Do you have something to report?”

“We have had a problem, sir.”

“Tell me.”

Belloq told him about the failed ambush of Joe Ledger.

“You lost the whole team?” growled Vox. His anger was only partly contrived. It would not have surprised Vox to hear that Ledger had taken out at least half the team; he knew Ledger was that good. But all of them?

“Every last man is in the arms of Jesus.”

“Please, Father Belloq, this is madness,” said Vox, mopping sweat from his face. His stomach felt like it was ready to explode, but there was nothing left it in. “What could possibly have happened to all those men?”

“There is only one possible explanation,” said the priest with undisguised contempt. “Upierczi.”

Vox faked a gasp and then waited a few seconds for Belloq to appreciate how disturbed he was by this news.

“Surely no single Red Knight could-”

“No, sir. We believe that the Upierczi are out in force. Sir… I’m afraid that the thing we were afraid of is about to happen.”

“You mean…?”

“Yes… it seems certain now that the Upierczi have obtained nuclear weapons.”

Vox didn’t have the energy for a cry of dismay, so he let a protracted silence convey the right amount of shock. When he thought enough time had passed, Vox said, “Are you positive?”

“Sir,” said Belloq, “when you know the world of covert operations as well as I do, you understand that very little is certain. We operate on degrees of ‘confidence’ in a thing, and then we are forced to act. If we waited for absolute certainty it would be too late.”

“Yes, yes,” said Vox with feigned distress, “you are right, of course. I don’t understand these things. It’s just that… my God! Bombs? What would vampires want or need with such dreadful weapons?”

He heard Belloq sigh with exasperation. Good. That was the right reaction. He wanted the man to be impatient. Impatience was useful.

“Sir,” said Belloq, “I’ve explained this a dozen times. The Red Order has lost control of the Upierczi. The Kingdom of Shadows is in open revolt and they are about to make war on the world of men. And the human traitors who work for the Upierczi have infiltrated every government, every level of industry and world trade. The launching of bombs will be the first wave… and I believe it will send a signal for a complete takeover of world governments and key industries.”

“You think it will actually come to that? Humans helping monsters to conquer the world?”

“It is happening!” insisted the priest. “And we are running out of time. That list your chief of security provided… We need to act on that immediately. We need to cut off the Hydra’s head before we are overwhelmed.”

Vox almost laughed. The phrasing was so trite, so corny. Belloq might be a ruthless killer, but he was also a complete ham-bone. That was also useful.

“The list,” Vox echoed, as if fretting over a dreadful decision. In truth the list was one he had prepared and added to while still in the good graces of Church and the president of the United States. It was his own version of a nuclear bomb, and once used it would do far more damage than the Teller-Ulams hidden throughout the Middle East. That list would blow a hole in the world and leave nothing but chaos behind.

A very, very profitable chaos.

“I’m sorry,” Vox said contritely. “This is all beyond me, and it terrifies me.”

“We’re all scared,” Belloq assured him. “But courage is defined by acting even in the presence of great fear. God needs us to be courageous. God needs us to be the heroes in this battle against the forces of evil.”

Forces of evil. Vox had to cover the phone while he laughed quietly. He wished he could put that on a business card.

“Tell me what to do,” he said after a moment.

“There is only one thing you need do, sir. You need to give me permission to use that list. I promised that we would do nothing without your say-so. Mr. Verrecchia-now is the time. Search your heart, search your faith… Ask yourself what God requires of you.”

Vox was silent as he picked lint off his pajama bottoms, letting the clock burn. Letting Belloq imagine the torment that “Verrecchia” must be experiencing because of the consequences of this action. Many people would die. Thousands of them. Men, women, and even children. No one could be spared. It was the only way to protect the world from the vampire uprising.

Although he kept his voice grave, Vox was smiling as he said, “Let God’s will be done.”

He disconnected and tossed the phone on the bed.

The sickness in his stomach was still there, but Vox realized that the trembling in his legs and arms was less. Much less. Even though the side effects hit him sooner and harder with each treatment of Upier 531, there was no doubt at all that they were wearing off sooner. He rolled up his sleeve and peeled off the bandage to examine the puncture marks.

There were none.

Vox pulled open his robe and pulled up his vomit-stained undershirt.

This time his gasp was genuine.

The big puncture wounds from the horse needles Dr. Hasbrouck used on him were…

Well, shit, he thought. They were gone.

No. That wasn’t the right way to think of it, he realized with a new and dark delight.

They were healed.

He closed his eyes.

The treatments were working.

And with a jolt he realized that he hadn’t had a coughing fit all day.

Hugo Vox smiled. If Father Belloq had been there to see that smile, the Sabbatarian would have screamed and grabbed for a hammer and a stake.

Chapter Seventy-One

Church’s phone rang and he saw that it was Lilith again. He answered.

“Have you had a chance to look at the contents of the flash drive?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Your opinion?”

“It’s contrived.”

“That was Circe’s take.”

Lilith paused. “How is Circe?”

“She’s well,” said Church coldly, “but she is not a topic of conversation.”

“You are a difficult person to like,” she said.

“Many have said the same about you.”

Neither of them spoke for a few seconds, and in that silence much was said.

Eventually Lilith returned to Church’s original question. “Rasouli is feeding the Red Order to you.”

“So it seems,” agreed Church, “though I still don’t know what the Red Order is. Not in full. I suspect you do.”

“Actually,” she said, “I don’t. I know how they operate, I know some of the players, but there is something called the Holy Agreement, and I would give a lot to know what’s in it. We believe that the Agreement was drafted and signed by Sir Guy LaRoque, the first Scriptor of the Red Order, and his counterpart, Ibrahim al-Asiri, who was, in turn, the first Murshid.”

“Surely you have a guess about its content.”

“Guesses are useless in the absence of verifiable information. We have a thousand theories, and some of them may be correct, but there’s no meter that will let us know. It’s fair to say that Rasouli’s information does more harm than good to our speculations, because we can’t factor nukes into any of our scenarios.”

“We’re building some theories along the lines of a doomsday cult. Does that make any sense based on your understanding of this matter?”

“Doomsday? No.”

“What about a faction rising within the Order or the Tariqa with a bent toward mutually destructive tactics? Suicide bombers and big-ticket destruction are not unknown in these circles,” he said.

“Maybe, but in their own way, both sides of the Agreement have tended more toward moderation than extremist acts.”

“You view blowing up mosques and murdering nuns to be indicative of balance?”

“Yes,” she said. “No other view makes much sense, not when you consider how long this has been going on.”

“Interesting,” he said thoughtfully, then changed the subject. “We are trying to make sense of Rasouli’s mention of the Book of Shadows. My people are trying to decode the fragments of the book included on the drive.”

“Good luck. We’ve been trying to decode that damned thing for-” She suddenly stopped and there was a heavy silence at the other end.

“Lilith?” prodded Church. “How exactly have you been trying to decode the pages? Is there something you would like to tell me? Did you provide those pages to Rasouli? Is that what you started to say?”

“God, no. But…” Lilith cleared her throat. “We, um… we actually have a complete copy of the Book of Shadows. We’ve had it for some time.”

“Have you?” Church said mildly. “And were you planning on telling me about it before or after the nukes detonated?”

Lilith said nothing.

“How long have you had the Book?”

“Well… give or take… seven years.”

Church sighed. “This kind of obfuscation is exactly why counterterrorism is a bureaucratic nightmare.”

“Wait a damn minute,” snapped Lilith. “You speak as if you had a right to it. Some of our people died to obtain this copy.”

“So lay some flowers on their grave and move on from the dramatics,” he fired back. “I’ve made my resources available to the Mothers and to Arklight on a number of occasions.”

“Sure, but you never let us have access to MindReader. You keep that to yourself.”

“Hardly the same thing.”

“Well, it’s water under the bridge, isn’t it?” she fired back. “We have a copy of the Book of Shadows, and if you stop being such a prick I’ll consider e-mailing you a high-res scan.”

“Have you translated any of it?”

“No.”

“In seven years?”

“Perhaps we may have accomplished something if we had MindReader.”

“Point taken. Send me the e-mail now and I will make sure that it is fed through MindReader. I further promise that I will share the results of that scan. All of it, unreservedly.”

After a moment she said, “Thank you.” And hung up. Forcefully.

Chapter Seventy-Two

Church pressed the intercom.

“Bug, I’m sending through a file. It’s a complete scan of the Book of Shadows. The book is four hundred and thirty one pages of densely written and coded text. Run it through MindReader. Pattern recognition, decryption, the deciphering software, all of it. If you get anything, no matter how small it seems, contact me at once.”

“You got it.”

“Also, tell Circe and Dr. Sanchez that we have this. Let them have full access. Circe may want to compare it to the Voynich manuscript.”

“Sure.”

Chapter Seventy-Three

I went downstairs and out through the back to meet Abdul Jamar. Twilight brought the cool breezes and birdsong that are the rewards for anyone who survives the blistering heat of the day. I stayed in the shadows as a three-year-old Runna X12 pulled to the curb. I noted that the dome light was rigged not to come on as he opened the door.

Abdul was dumpy little man with face like a tired accountant and glasses with thick lenses. You’d never pick him out as a dissident operative working with the CIA to overthrow Ahmadinejad, which I suppose was the point.

He looked me up and down with apparent disinterest. “Cold for this time of year,” he said.

“More like January,” I agreed.

He sighed as if the simple exchange of code words was a burden and a pain in the ass. He glanced at Ghost, who was poking his head out past my thigh.

“Friendly dog?” Abdul asked, beginning to reach out for a quick pet.

“Not today,” I said. Abdul whipped his hand back. He opened the trunk of his car and produced a zippered laptop case and a blue gym bag.

“For you,” he said to me, keeping an eye on Ghost.

I took the items and handed him a plain white envelope that I had borrowed from Jamsheed. It was sealed and folded several times around the flash drive.

“For the pouch?” Abdul asked.

“Yes. I’m not joking when I say that you need to protect that with your life.”

Abdul managed to look deeply unimpressed. Without another word he got back into his car and drove away. Charming guy.

I checked that the alley was empty and went back inside. Jamsheed was in his store, so I took my gear to the bedroom and locked the door. The briefcase and valise I’d taken from the vampire hunters were on the bed. I told Ghost to guard the door and he did so by flopping down in front of it and falling asleep.

The laptop was a DMS tactical field computer. Ultrasophisticated, hardened against EMPs, rigged with 128-bit code scramblers, with a powerful satellite uplink. I turned it on and punched in the proper passwords.

The other bag included party favors. A Beretta 9mm with a Trinity sound suppressor and four extra magazines loaded with subsonic hollow points. A nylon shoulder rig was included with a fast-draw holster, and it had slots for two of the mags. A Rapid Response Folder, which is a nifty tactical knife that clipped on to my right pants pocket and hung out of sight. A snap of the wrist flicks out a 3.375-inch blade which, though short, allowed a fighter to cut and slash at full speed with no drag at all on the arm. There were four flash-bangs and four fragmentation grenades. And a Smith amp; Wesson Airweight Centennial, a hammerless. 38 revolver in an ankle holster. As I unpacked it I could feel my body happily pumping out testosterone. If I ran into another Red Knight, it was going to be a substantially different encounter, no matter what Church or Violin thought about my chances. I felt like saying “Fuckin’ A” or “Bring the pain,” but I knew Ghost disapproved of that kind of rah-rah crap.

I strapped on the Airweight and clipped the RRF in place, then shrugged into the shoulder rig.

The computer case had a few extra goodies, including a new set of earbuds with a pocket-sized uplink booster. The receiver looked like a mole and affixed to the inside of my ear. The mike was a pale freckle on my upper lip. The technology is a couple of giant steps ahead of what’s in all of the holiday catalogs for the covert-ops community. Mr. Church has a friend in the industry, and he always has the coolest stuff.

There was also a smaller zippered case containing a complete toolkit useful for everything from rewiring a toaster to, for example, de-arming a booby-trapped briefcase.

Back when I was a cop, we had specialists to come in and do this sort of thing. They were very brave men and women who had jobs I never envied. In the Rangers I had some basic bomb-handling courses, but it wasn’t until I began working for the DMS that I learned how to do this sort of thing for real.

It did occur to me-now, I mean-that it would have been more practical to have searched the cars and then asked Krystos for the combination before I shot him. Can’t unring a bell, though.

I took the toolkit and the briefcase into the bathroom and closed the door.

I removed a tiny electronics detector and ran it over the case. As expected, the locks were wired. The question now was whether they had a simple intrusion trigger or a dead-man’s fail-safe. I ran the scanner over every inch of the case and matched the readings against the unit’s stored records of over three thousand trigger variations. The reading was not one hundred percent, but it was weighted heavily toward the locks being simple antitheft. They’d blow if the wrong combination was entered too many times on the coded touch pad, or if the locks were tampered with.

However, when I ran the scanner over the front and back of the case there was no electronic signature. I smiled a larcenous little smile and set the case on the closed lid of the toilet seat and pulled my RRF. The blade flicked into place with hardly a sound, and I took a breath and then stabbed the case. Not all the way through, only enough to cut through the side, then I sawed a line through the leather and compressed cardboard. Nothing blew up.

“Amateurs,” I sneered.

This sort of thing was typical of people who didn’t quite grasp the philosophy of security. These are the kinds of people who will spend ten thousand dollars on security alarms and locks for every door and window on the first floor and completely ignore the windows on the second or third floor. Crooks count on that kind of thinking.

So do guys like me.

I cut a rectangular piece out of the center of the case, making sure to stay well clear of the locks and the trip wires; then I lifted out the panel and tossed it into the trash can. The resulting hole revealed several file folders and a few assorted items. A pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Passports for each of the people I’d killed at the CIA safe house, and IDs for four more men whom I had not seen.

I set those aside and removed the folders and flipped open the top one. There was a sheaf of documents held together with a clunky metal clip. I removed the clip and put it in my shirt pocket. The top sheet had an official seal that matched the tattoo on Krystos’s arm. The seal of the Holy Inquisition. The content of the letter and all of the attached papers were written in Greek. I can speak a little of the language, but I can’t read a word of it.

It was a speed bump but not a dead end. The field computer had a detachable wand scanner. I ran it over every page in the top folder and set it aside. The second folder had more of the same, as did the third. It wasn’t until I opened the fourth folder that I realized that I had found something that literally took my breath away.

Beneath the same sort of official-looking cover letter was a series of eight-by-ten glossy surveillance photos of me, Top, Bunny, Khalid, Lydia, and John Smith. On the back of each was a handwritten note in English that included a brief physical description and a summary of our military or police training.

I recognized the handwriting. I’d seen it a million times on reports from Terror Town and on evaluations of potential staff members being vetted for top secret clearance.

Hugo Vox.

“Shit,” I said aloud.

There was more, and it was worse. Much worse. A thick sheaf of printed pages held together by a heavy binder clip. I stared at the information on the lists and felt an icy hand punch through my chest and close its fingers around my heart.

I dropped everything and called Church right away.

Interlude Ten

Sister Sophia clutched at the tatters of her habit, pulling them to her to try to hide her nakedness. It was a hopeless task. Her clothes were little more than streamers of black and white. Grimed with dirt and filth, caked with blood.

A metal grate in the iron door clanged open and a pale hand shoved in a bundle wrapped in cloth and a leather pitcher. Immediately she could smell bread and cooked meat. The grate slammed shut and she listened to hear the soft footsteps fade into silence. Then Sophia sobbed and crawled across the floor toward the food and tore open the bundle. A small loaf of coarse black bread and a leg of something-she could not tell what animal it had come from. The meat was bloody raw inside and charred outside, but it was the first food they had given her in three days. She wept hysterically as she tore at it with her teeth.

After she’d eaten as much of the meat as she could stomach, she drank from the pitcher. The water was cold but it smelled of sulfur. Then she sagged back, once more trying to hide herself with her rags. It did not matter that there was no one there to see her uncovered skin. She was ashamed in the eyes of God. Ashamed for what she had become.

She closed her eyes and prayed to Mary, to Jesus, to the angels and saints. Not for rescue-Sister Sophia did not believe that she could be rescued. No, she prayed for death. If it were not a mortal sin she would have taken her own life, or at least tried. She contemplated smashing her head against the rocks, or taking her rags and making a rope of them.

But that would be suicide, and she would slide further down into the pit if she did that, her soul lost and unredeemable.

And… worse still, it would be murder.

She could not bear to touch her stomach, but she could feel it growing, day by day.

In the other cells along the hall, she could hear babies crying. She could hear the mothers. Some crying, others praying. A few cackling in nonsensical words, their minds broken by the horrors.

“Mother Mary,” she prayed, “please…”

Inside her womb, her baby kicked.

It was sharp and sudden. Vicious. But what else would it be? How could she expect anything but that from a child of a monster?

Chapter Seventy-Four

“Go,” said Church.

“I think Hugo Vox is working with the Sabbatarians.”

“What makes you think so?”

“I opened the briefcase I took from Krystos and found some stuff. Two things in particular and you are not going to like them. The first is a directory of safe houses all through the Middle East. Nothing newer than January first, though, so it fits with what he might have known before he went into the wind.”

“I figured as much. I sent out a network-wide warning after your ‘adventures’ today. The CIA has confirmed two other compromised locations, ditto for Barrier, and the Israelis lost one. Right now you’re sitting in the only safe house in Iran that we know for sure was never on Hugo’s radar. As bad as this is, it could be worse. Most of the houses are untouched, so staff was able to evac safely. We might be in the clear there and-”

“There’s something else,” I said. “Something a whole lot worse.”

I could hear Church take a breath. After today he was probably wishing he could change his number. “Tell me.”

I didn’t actually want to tell him. It would be like dropping a hand grenade into his lap.

“I found a printed list. Fifteen pages of it. Names, social security numbers, home addresses, family members. The works.”

“Who is on the list?”

“Everyone who works for the Department of Military Sciences,” I said. “And their families. Rudy’s on that list. My father and brother are on that list. And, Church-?” I said softly, “Circe is on that list, and it says that she’s your daughter.”

“God…” Church breathed. “Oh my God.”

The silence became huge, filled with flying debris.

Church disconnected without another word.

Chapter Seventy-Five

I sat on the edge of the tub and stared at the list. My father. My brother and his wife. My nephew. My best friend. Everyone I cared about.

Hugo Vox. The desire to find and kill him was unbearable.

If I were in Vox’s place I’d be hiding from Church. Vox seemed to be doing the opposite; he was on the offensive. But to what end? Pissing Church off even more than he already was would not seem to have a happy ending.

Vox loved chaos, but this seemed like something else. It was vindictive, it was needlessly cruel. What had happened to twist Vox into that kind of monster? Or was this another layer of the real Vox that we were only now seeing? If so, how deep did his corruption go? How deep could it go?

Those were questions I never wanted to get the answers to.

Fear crawled like ants under my skin. My hands were shaking so badly that I dropped the papers, which landed heavily on the corner with the chunky binder clip. It made an odd sound as it landed. Not the hollow metal sound you’d expect from a clip; this was a dull thud.

I snatched it up and peered at it. The clip was heavier than it needed to be to bind papers. I hadn’t paid enough attention to that at first; now I did. I opened the spring-metal jaws and studied the inside. There was a tiny bead of plastic inside, painted the same color as the clip’s body. I grabbed my scanner and ran it over the clip and the electronics detector pinged.

The little bead was a bug of some kind. But what kind?

Then I understood. It wasn’t a listening device or another booby trap. It was a backup in case the papers in the briefcase were stolen.

It was a tracking device.

“Oh, shit,” I said.

Two seconds later an explosion rocked the entire house.

Chapter Seventy-Six

The blast came from the back of the building and sounded like an entry charge. Someone-almost certainly the Sabbatarians-had blasted through the rear door.

Ghost leapt out of a dream and onto his feet. He gave a single startled bark and crouched by the closed door, eyes narrowed, ears straight up, fur bristling along his spine. I tore the Beretta out of my shoulder rig and whipped open the door.

Smoke billowed up the stairwell, and I heard Jamsheed yelling in protest for two seconds before his words were cut off by a meaty thud. No way to tell if he was dead or if they’d clubbed him down.

“Upstairs!” someone yelled in French. I heard someone reply with a German accent.

Definitely the Sabbatarians. Pricks.

My rage howled inside of me. The list of names burned in my mind, and I wanted to hurt these pricks. I wanted to hurt them so bad it was an actual physical ache in my chest.

But I did it smart. I backtracked to the bedroom and grabbed the grenades, shoved most of them into my pockets; but I pulled the pins on a couple of flash-bangs and dropped them down the stairwell. Then I wrapped one arm around Ghost’s head and the other around my own and huddled down.

The blasts were massive in the small house, and harsh white light etched the slats on the stair rails and the edges of the framed photographs on all the walls.

Before the echo had a chance to fade I was up and running; Ghost was right with me. There were six of them with automatic weapons, two with hammers and stakes. Jamsheed lay on the floor; he had a vicious bruise above his right eyebrow and blood was pooled around his head. Several of the Sabbatarians were kneeling or bent over in pain; most of them were screaming.

“Hit! Hit! Hit!” I bellowed, and Ghost shook off his pain and weariness and became a white missile of furious bloodlust. He took the closest figure hard, teeth tearing into the man’s inner thigh, high near his crotch. There was a sudden blast of red blood as Ghost’s fangs slashed open the man’s femoral artery.

I opened up with the Beretta, using double taps on everyone I saw, one to the chest to stall them, one to the head to blast them out of my life. My inner Warrior was screaming at me to kill them all.

One of the men turned toward me and even though he was dazed from the flash-bang, he opened up with an AK-47, the rounds chopping into the stairwell inches behind me. I closed to zero distance and put two into his face. As he fell his finger clutched around the trigger and hot rounds stitched a line up the wall and across the ceiling.

Ghost barked a warning and I turned in time to dodge away from a man raising a pistol with both hands. He shot where I had been and I shot where he was. The man staggered out of sight.

Behind me someone screamed in terrible pain as Ghost went for his throat. The scream ended with a wet gurgle.

There were five men down already and three on their feet. The flash-bangs had done their jobs in the confined space of the entry hall. These men were disoriented and, even though they were armed, they had no aim. I killed two of them before the slide locked back on my Beretta. The last guy didn’t have a pistol, and he thought I was helpless with an empty gun, so he rushed me with the stake. I used the pistol to bash the stake aside and then I snapped his leg with a side-thrust kick. He screamed and twisted down to the floor, and I rechambered the kick and slammed my heel against his ear, flinging him onto his side.

I swapped out the magazine as I spun around. Everybody was down. Ghost stood over the second man he’d killed, and his muzzle was black with blood.

The back door was a charred ruin, hanging in splinters from a single twisted hinge, and I could see a black sedan parked outside. Around me were the dead and dying. My rage was still boiling, but my inner Cop voice was telling me to dial it down, to find someone with a pulse. To get some answers.

And then a figure stepped into the doorway.

Tall, lithe, dressed in a black chador. I pointed my gun at her. Ghost growled from deep in his chest.

She said, “Joseph-they’re coming!”

Instantly a hail of bullets tore into the doorframe as Violin dove into the room.

Chapter Seventy-Seven

The bullets filled the air as Violin hit the floor, rolled over a dead man, grabbed him, and pulled him into a sitting position to serve as a shield.

Ghost looked to me for a command. To him she was another potential enemy, a danger to the pack. With a word I could order him to tear her apart or accept her into the pack.

“Home!” I snapped. It was the word that would change everything about how he would react to her. “Home” was code for “friend.” Instantly Ghost’s gaze shifted away from her and refocused on the barrage that continued to tear apart the doorway. He hunkered down behind the man whose throat he had torn out, bristling, muscles trembling as he waited for the command and the opportunity to fight.

Violin turned to me and tore away the chador that hid her face and body.

I don’t know what I expected to see. Certainly not the “monster” she considered herself to be. She was beautiful, but not in the way that Circe is. Not curvy and elegant; she had none of the fineness of features that belonged on the covers of fashion magazines. Her features were sharper, more foxlike than feline, with intelligent eyes, sharply defined cheekbones, thin lips that were curled into a wicked combat smile, and a body like a dancer’s. Small breasts, long limbs, superb tone. She wore black formfitting clothes with lots of pockets and cross belts for weapons. On a strap slung across her body was a compact Micro Tavor-21 Israeli bullpup assault rifle with an extended thirty-two-round magazine. Very sexy. She reminded me of Grace. Not in looks, but in her air of competence and lethal potential. It took a single microsecond to take all of this in.

“How many?” I yelled.

“Too many,” she said. “Two full teams. Twenty at least.”

“Christ.”

“Maybe more in front.”

We looked at each other in the way soldiers will on a battlefield, gauging each other’s competence and skills. It was a lightning-fast conversation that would have been slowed down by words. She nodded to me and I nodded back.

The hail of bullets slowed and I heard men yelling orders. They were coming.

“Call it,” I said.

“Front,” said Violin.

“Back,” I agreed.

She spun around and ran in a fast crouch toward the store; I pulled a grenade out of my pocket. Not a flash-bang this time. As shadows filled the destroyed doorway I pulled the pin and threw it.

“Ghost- frag out! ”

Ghost flattened behind the corpse.

The grenade hit the floor right inside the door and took a short bounce just as the second wave of Sabbatarians rounded the corner. The frag exploded at waist height, blowing the men apart. There were terrible screams from the attackers who hadn’t been in the direct blast radius. Men and women. Then gunfire.

I dove forward and slid chest-first to the doorway, my pistol out in front, and even before I stopped sliding I began firing. I emptied the second magazine into the mass of them, shooting for the center of any man-shaped shadow, firing the magazine dry as bullets tore through the air three feet above me. They couldn’t see me through the smoke, and the confusion was too great for them to grasp that I was shooting from a prone position.

Ghost barked, wanting to be in the middle of this, but this was a gunfight; there was no place for him.

Behind me the front door was blasted to splinters by heavy-caliber gunfire. A second later I heard the distinctive pop-pop-pop of the compact MTAR-21. And more screams.

Something came whistling through the air and struck the doorframe above my head; glass exploded and I was showered by splinters and a noxious-smelling liquid. Even with the intense stink of cordite in the air, I could identify the smell. Garlic oil.

Freaks.

They still thought they were fighting vampires. Suddenly I understood why they had sent so many. They were that afraid of the Red Knights. Maybe they’d found Krystos and his crew and thought that a Red Knight had taken out the whole team, so this time they sent two teams.

“Reloading!” I heard Violin yell.

I rolled onto my back and fired six shots downrange past where she crouched. I saw one figure fall and others scatter. As Violin slapped the magazine into place I heard feet crunch on glass, and I twisted out of the way as bullets chopped into the floor where I had been lying. I fired as I rolled away, sloppily but continually, and someone screamed.

But then several of them opened up at once and I had to throw myself behind the wall and curl into a ball to save my eyes from the glass and tile splinters that filled the air like a swarm of hornets.

Ghost kept barking, furious and frustrated.

Men began pouring into the building, running past me, unaware of the figure curled in the corner, hidden by smoke. They aimed their guns at the sound of the barks and I came up onto one knee and fired, hitting two of them and causing the others to skid to a stop. They realized their mistake and turned, but then Ghost hit them from the other side. He was among them like a white demon, and instantly it was all screams and blood. Guns were useless that close and already too late.

Beyond the melee I saw Violin rise up from behind the counter and kill three men in two seconds, her weapon switched to semiautomatic for accuracy and ammunition conservation. I’d only spotted two extra mags on her rig, and she had to be near the end of the second. I swapped out my own and slapped my last one into place; but as I came to my feet I pulled another fragmentation grenade and lobbed it outside. Just as it cleared the doorway there was a figure there and the grenade burst against the man’s chest, tearing him apart but effectively screening the knot of shooters behind him. I faded to one side and fired, but even as I pulled the trigger I saw three men fall. One flew backward from my bullet, but two more dropped with that distinctive rag-doll sprawl of men who had taken headshots.

Then a voice yelled in my earbud.

“ No fire from the house. Friendlies on nine, twelve, and three.”

I knew that voice.

Top.

I tapped my earbud and yelled. “Echo! Echo! Echo! Be advised, friendly taking fire in front of store. Friendly is female and inside.”

Bunny said, “ Got it. ”

Immediately the street out front and the alley behind were torn apart by bullets fired from three separate positions. Men screamed and shouted. The Sabbatarians tried to return fire, but they were being ambushed by Echo Team, and that is a bad place to be.

“Violin!” I barked. “Cease fire. My team is outside. Hold your position.”

There was no answer, and when I risked leaning out to look, her shooting position was empty. Ghost stood panting in the hallway, but beyond him there were only dead Sabbatarians and a floor littered with bullet casings and blood.

Then it was over.

The gunfire stopped. There were no more screams, no shouts. Just the sound of running feet as Echo Team swarmed into the store from both sides, weapons out, eyes blazing with anger.

“ Clear! ” called Khalid as he checked the small rooms downstairs. He and Lydia ran for the stairs and cleared the second floor. No one had tried to come in that way.

Bunny’s monstrous form filled the front doorway, a combat shotgun in his hands.

“Hostiles are all down,” he reported.

Top Sims helped me up off the floor. He looked me up and down. “I can’t leave you on your own for five minutes without you getting into some shit, can I?”

Chapter Seventy-Eight

“Did you see her?” I demanded as Echo gathered around.

Bunny frowned. “See who, Boss?”

“The woman. Violin. She was fighting them from the store.”

He shook his head. “Didn’t see anybody but the bad guys. Lot of hostiles down out there. Saw a couple stiffs with their throats cut, too. Whoever she was, chick can fight. Who was she?”

“Long story.” I hurried into the store and checked the bodies, and though one of them was female, it wasn’t Violin. “Check everyone. Do we have anyone with a pulse?”

“Got one here,” said Lydia, who was crouched over a slender figure. Jamsheed.

“He’s one of ours,” I said. “Khalid-?”

“On it.” Everyone on Echo Team was a certified medic, but Khalid was an actual medical doctor with a specialty in traumatic injuries. He went to work on Jamsheed.

Top said, “This was a pretty noisy frat party, Cap’n. We’re going to be ass deep in police real soon.”

We listened for sirens but did not hear any yet. I wasn’t certain how reassuring that was. Special Forces and military SWAT units don’t roll with sirens.

“Who’s watching the street?”

“John Smith and he’s got night vision.”

I tapped my earbud. “Cowboy to Chatterbox. What are you seeing?”

“Nothing.”

He wasn’t the most talkative guy on the team.

“Stay sharp. You see so much as an old lady with a shopping cart give a yell.”

“K.”

I turned to Khalid. “Talk to me.”

He looked up from where he knelt by Jamsheed. I could read it on his face. “Blunt force trauma to the head resulting in a depressed fracture. Got some pretty severe damage to the cervical spine…” He let the rest hang.

I moved over and dropped to my knees by Jamsheed. His eyes were open, but they were bright and glassy with pain and one pupil was fully dilated, indicating a cerebral hemorrhage. Khalid’s eyes bored into mine and he gave a tiny shake of his head. I took a cotton square from him and dabbed at the blood and sweat on Jamsheed’s face.

Before I could say anything, Jamsheed spoke. His voice was hoarse, low. “You cannot stay here. The police…”

“I know, but we have to-”

“No, you don’t,” he interrupted. “You can’t take me with you and still do what you have to do.”

“You don’t even know what we’re here for.”

He smiled faintly. “Does it matter? You work for the Mujtahid. He called me to say that I should trust you because he trusted you.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I nodded.

Jamsheed tried to lift his hand; I took it and his fingers curled as tightly around mine as he could manage. He looked into my eyes and saw the truth, but instead of panic I saw a peaceful expression settle over his face.

“I am so… tired… of war,” he said, and that said a lot.

I thought of the photos he had on his walls and the gentle way he had touched the frame of the one with the playing children.

“The little girl-?” I asked.

His lips formed the word “yes.” The hurt and loss was palpable.

“She’ll be waiting for you, brother,” I said.

He nodded and then hissed with the agony that it caused. When he opened his eyes he seemed farther away.

We regarded each other for a few moments, and then he squeezed my hand.

“ Ma’assalama,” he said. Go in peace.

I returned his squeeze. “ Fi aman Allah.”

Go with God.

Jamsheed died without another sound, a quiet man going silently into the shadows that stood between this ugly world of pain and the paradise he believed waited for him. I placed his hands on his chest and sat back, exhausted and defeated. Ghost came over and sniffed Jamsheed, then he whined and lay down as if in vigil.

From the storeroom behind me, Lydia snapped her fingers. “Got another live one.”

My exhaustion shattered and fell away, and I turned, instantly hot and angry. Even Bunny took an involuntary step back from me when he saw my face. Top quickly closed in and knelt down, and I think he also saw my face and wanted to get between me and a hostile who was still conscious. The Sabbatarian was a young Spanish-looking man with a slab face and beefy shoulders. There was a ragged red hole on his right sleeve.

“Took one through the biceps,” said Lydia. “Arm’s busted above the elbow.”

The Sabbatarian glared up at us with a mixture of anger, fear, and defiance.

“You got one chance, friend,” I said through gritted teeth. “Cooperate with us and we’ll provide protection and-”

But the Sabbatarian suddenly snapped his jaws shut and grimaced. I could hear something crunch.

“Ah, shit!” yelled Bunny. “Poison tooth. Fuck…”

It was over in five seconds. The bitter almond stink of cyanide rose from the man’s mouth as his lips went slack and hung open. Bunny spun away and punched the wall hard enough to leave a hole the size of a softball.

“Spilled milk,” said Top. “And we got to go.”

“Boss,” said John Smith in my earbud. “Six units coming hard from the center of town. Black SUVs. Five minutes.”

“Copy that. We’re out of here. Watch our backs and meet us at the end of the block in two.”

“K.”

I turned to the others; they’d all heard the same info from Smith. “What do we have for wheels?”

“White vegetable truck,” said Bunny. “Two blocks east.”

“Let’s go. Lydia, my laptop’s in the bedroom. Grab it. Khalid, you’re on point. Let’s move.”

Less than two minutes later we were crammed into a vegetable truck that smelled of rotting cabbage and diesel oil, rolling through quiet streets, leaving another scene of bloody destruction far behind.

Chapter Seventy-Nine

“Oracle,” said Violin.

“Oracle welcomes you, Violin.”

“I need to talk to my mother. Now. Priority Alpha.”

This order bypassed the computer’s AI conversation functions and sent an urgent request to Lilith. It took seventeen nail-biting seconds before the screen changed to show a live streaming image of Violin’s mother.

“Status report,” said Lilith instead of a greeting.

“The Sabbatarians sent two full teams against Captain Ledger.”

“Is he alive?”

“Yes.” She explained what happened and braced herself for the scolding she knew would follow the admission of having stepped in to help the DMS agent.

“Good.” Lilith frowned and her gaze turned inward as she sorted it through. After a few moments she demanded, “What about you? Are you unhurt?”

“Yes, Mother.”

There was a slight softening of Lilith’s stern mouth. “Good. You did the right thing.”

The comment hit Violin like a punch; and Lilith caught her expression. “I…”

“Close your mouth, girl, before you swallow a fly.”

Violin took a steadying breath and said, “What do you want me to do next?”

“What do you think you should do next?”

Several seconds flitted past as Violin thought it through. Then she told her mother.

Lilith’s tolerant smile vanished entirely.

“What choice do we have?” asked Violin.

“None,” said Lilith bitterly. “None at all.”

Chapter Eighty

We drove for miles, killing time to make damn sure we weren’t being followed. Tehran is a massive city, bigger and more densely populated than New York. We avoided main roads where security checkpoints would be more common and instead threaded our way through the poorer outskirts of the town.

“Let’s find someplace quiet,” I suggested. “We have a lot of catching up to do.”

“Another safe house?” asked Lydia, who was driving.

“Not a chance.”

Luckily there were plenty of abandoned buildings, and we found one with no squatters. It had once been a building-supply company but it looked like no one had set foot in it for decades. Lydia parked inside. We huddled inside the ruins of an office. Smith stood by the window and watched the access road that led from a little-traveled street to the loading bay.

“That guy back there,” began Lydia. “The Iranian guy. Friend of yours?”

“We just met, but he was one of the good guys.”

She nodded. They all did. At some later time we would talk about it. I’d want to tell them about the man and his kindness, about his photos, and the unspoken tragedy implied in those simple images. Such discussions are not for the battlefield. While they can strengthen us by connecting us to our shared humanity, to talk about it while we were still in danger was to invite in weakness. Everything in its place and time.

I straddled a crooked office chair that was missing its wheels. Bunny and Lydia sat cross-legged on the floor-near to each other, which is something they’d started doing a lot lately. Khalid sat on a crate and Top remained standing. John Smith was outside setting up an observation post and was listening in via the team channel.

Ghost flopped down in front of Bunny and Lydia and was getting his full share of petting.

“How much do you know?” I asked them.

Top spread his hands. “The big man was feeling unusually chatty today,” he said. “Told me just about everything you and he talked about. Nukes, Rasouli, Arklight, your girlfriend with the sniper scope.”

“Put laser sights on your nuts, huh?” asked Bunny. I ignored him.

“And he told us some weird shit about vampires.”

“Right,” I said, “and you met the fearless vampire hunters back at Jamsheed’s.”

Top ran a hand over his shaved head. “Cap’n, how much of this is happening and how much of this is Mr. Church having some kind of neurological incident?”

“It’s all happening,” I said, and gave it to them again from my side, filling in any details they might not have gotten from Church.

When I was done, my guys stared at me, at each other, and ultimately into the middle distance as seconds fell off the clock.

Top Sims was the first to speak. “Cap’n, I think I can speak for everyone when I say, what the fuck?”

“I hear you.” I looked at their faces. “Ask your questions.”

Lydia held up a hand. “Sir? Permission to return to reality.”

“Denied,” I said. “If I have to deal with this stuff then so do you.”

“Permission to shoot myself?” she asked hopefully.

“Let me get back to you on that.”

“Where the Christ do we start?” asked Bunny.

“Nukes,” suggested Khalid. “We have to start there. But… that’s problematic. I mean, do we have even a clue as to the players and their teams?”

“Lots of clues, but no idea where we stand with them,” I said.

Khalid shook his head. “Where does Rasouli fit into this? How does it make sense that he brings this to us?”

I shrugged. “Don’t know yet.”

“Whatever it means, he seems to be the only one on our side,” said Lydia. “Kind of makes me feel dirty.”

“Good dirty or bad dirty?” asked Bunny, which earned him a hard elbow in the ribs.

“Okay,” Top said slowly, “all of this is fascinating as shit, but who has the damn nukes?”

“We don’t know,” I admitted. “Though the Sabbatarians seem to think it’s the Upierczi.”

“Why the hell would vampires want nukes?” demanded Bunny. “I mean… they’re fucking vampires, right?”

“Guess they want to blow something up,” answered Top. “Same as anybody.”

I told them about the conversation I’d had with Hu and Church about the Upierczi and my still-in-the-development-stage doomsday theory.

“Right,” said Top, “Okay, I’m with Lydia now. I’d like to catch a cab back to the real world.”

Bunny shot him a sour look. “Which real world would that be, old man? This time last year we were shooting zombies.”

“Yeah,” Top conceded. “Fuck me.”

Chapter Eighty-One

“That doesn’t answer the question of why these Upierczi want to blow up the oil fields,” said Khalid.

“No it doesn’t,” I agreed. “So when we get one of these pointy-toothed bastards in a corner, I want him kneecapped and cuffed and then we’re going to have a group therapy session with him, feel me?”

“Hooah,” they agreed.

“If Rasouli knows about the nukes,” asked Khalid, “isn’t this something the State Department and NATO should be handling?”

I said, “We are not in a position of trust. Rasouli came to us on the sly, and he clearly didn’t trust his own government.”

“Swell.”

Bunny leaned forward. “Look, I don’t like to be the one to piss in the punchbowl here, Boss, but how come we’re not all shouting the name Hugo Vox? I mean, vampires notwithstanding, does anyone really think that he’s not the Big Bad Wolf here? He’s already wanted by every law enforcement agency on the planet. Shouldn’t outing him to the authorities as the main villain be a natural next step to finding and stopping the vamps from triggering five sonofabitching nukes?”

“Seven,” corrected Khalid.

“Seven sonofabitching nukes. Jeez. My point is-”

“We can’t do much about him for now,” I said, “because we don’t know his exact role and we don’t know where he is.”

Top gave me a shrewd look. “There’s something else, ain’t there? I can see it in your face, Cap’n, there’s more to this.”

“There’s one more thing.” They all came to point, eyes sharp and focused, waiting for me to drop the last bomb. “When I took out the first Sabbatarian team today I obtained a briefcase which had, among other things, materials that had to have come from Vox.”

“What kind of materials?” asked Top.

“A list of all DMS staff as of the end of last year. And… the names and addresses of everyone’s families.”

If I’d dropped a flash-bang into the center of the room I couldn’t have hit them harder. Top’s eyes went wide and his lips parted in a silent O. He had an ex-wife back home, and a daughter who had lost both her legs in Baghdad when a mine blew up under her Bradley. It was the reason he joined the DMS, and now he was thousands of miles away from being able to stand between them and an unknown group of killers.

I held up my hands. “Church knows about this and he’s taken steps. Everyone on that list is going to be taken into protective custody.”

“Which won’t mean shit if Vox is behind this,” growled Top. “He had people wired into the cops, the FBI, everywhere. Probably still does.”

“I know, but Church is on it.”

Top looked at me with a stare so hard and cold that it felt like physical blows.

“We didn’t start this war, Top,” I said. “We have to count ourselves lucky that we found that list. It gives us a chance.”

We sat in silence thinking about the possible consequences. If I hadn’t found that list, if the Sabbatarians had been able to move on it, the resulting carnage and grief would have destroyed the DMS at its core. Even if we survived, the damage done to us would be like third-degree burns on our psyche. We’d never recover.

“Vox,” said Top. Just the name, but it had so much meaning; he said so much with it.

“Vox,” I agreed.

Lydia cleared her throat and glanced at me. “What exactly are we supposed to do when we find the weapons?”

It took effort to turn away from Top. “What would your guess be?”

She shrugged. “Locate and secure each nuke, de-arm the weapons, and have a meaningful conversation with anyone left who still has a pulse. Then go home and drink a gallon of tequila.”

Everyone laughed. It was all forced, though. Even Top measured out half an inch of smile. “Now you know the game plan,” I said.

Bunny asked, “Is there any kind of evacuation plan in case we drop the ball?”

“Evacuate who, Farmboy?” snapped Top. “The entire Middle East? How exactly do we do that?”

I rubbed my eyes. “Okay, we’re waiting for the go-order to hit the Aghajari oil refinery. It’ll be a quiet infil. Locate and de-arm.” I opened my tactical computer and called up the mission files uploaded by Bug. “First thing we have to do is study the layout of the refinery according to the blueprints Rasouli provided, matching them against satellite photos and intel from our own sources. I want six ways in and ten ways out.”

“Hooah” said Top. No one else joined him.

“Then I want you to pair up and buddy-test each other on the wiring schematics of the Teller-Ulam bomb and its variations. Swap teams every half hour. Everybody knows what everybody else knows. We don’t want surprises and missed cues when de-arming the nukes. Hooah?”

“Hooah.” All of them said it this time.

“After that, everyone gets rack time.”

“Sleepy soldiers are clumsy soldiers,” said Khalid, then punctuated it by quietly going, “Ka-booooooom.”

“Hoo-fucking-ah,” said Bunny.

Chapter Eighty-Two

While the others worked on their de-arming drills, I read through the vampire information Circe had obtained from Dr. Corbiel-Newton. Most of it was useless fairy-tale stuff or speculation without hope of verification. Some of it, though, was more practical, taking a look at the possibility of vampirism as a natural phenomenon. That was the same ground I had covered with Hu, but there were some things here that I found very interesting. Especially about garlic. In the movies, garlic simply repels a vampire, kind of like pepper spray, but it doesn’t kill them. In a lot of the world’s folklore, however, garlic was lethal to them, especially if introduced into the bloodstream or via a mucus membrane. In something called the “ritual of exorcism,” fresh garlic was placed in the mouth of a vampire. In some cultures garlic paste was used on skin or clothes as a deterrent and could kill a vampire if one of them bit skin that was coated with it. Of course… that would require a vampire with a head cold who couldn’t smell the damn garlic.

As I thought that, an idea skittered across my brain. It was there and gone. My three inner selves-the Cop, the Warrior, and the Civilized Man-all made grabs for it, but we came up dry.

So I went out and retrieved the Sabbatarians’ valise from the back of the vegetable truck, and then laid out the contents. Hammers and stakes to one side. I doubted they would be useful. Ditto the vials of holy water. But the bags of garlic powder and the jars of garlic oil… even touching them coaxed that idea out of its hiding place in the shadows of my brain.

I held a bag of garlic powder in one hand and a jar of oil in the other.

It was the Cop who figured it all out.

But it made the Warrior smile and smile.

Chapter Eighty-Three

I needed to sleep, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. Instead I walked the perimeter of the warehouse to make sure it was secure. It was. We could not have been farther from the flow of life here in Tehran if we were on the moon. The night sky was immensely dark and littered with ten trillion cold points of light.

I fished a stick of gum out of a pocket and chewed it, enjoying the mint burn, glad to be rid of the lingering taste of garlic. Ghost came sleepily out of the warehouse and trudged along with me, pausing now and again to leave his mark on useful walls.

I called in for Church but was rerouted to Aunt Sallie. She listened to my report without much comment except to make a biting remark about my “letting” Jamsheed get killed.

“You’re a charming lady,” I said. “Anyone ever tell you that?”

“Eat me,” she replied. “Church will be in touch when he wants you to know something. Until then, lay low and try not to get anyone else killed.”

A crushing reply was poised on the tip of my tongue but she hung up on me.

Almost immediately the phone buzzed and I hit the button in hopes of flattening Aunt Sallie with my rejoinder.

“Hello, Joseph.”

I smiled, “Hello, Violin.”

She paused and I strained to hear if there was any background noise, anything that I could use to get a lead on where she was. But there was nothing. Ghost must have heard her voice and he actually wagged his tail. Dog’s a little weird.

“Are you somewhere safe?”

“For now,” I said, though that was only true in the physical sense. Everything inside my head felt like it was a junk pile of hand grenades without their pins and bottles of badly stored chemicals. “Thanks for the help today.”

“I wish I could have warned you, but I found out where you were by following the Sabbatarians. There are teams of them all over Tehran.”

“I’m surprised they can operate so freely.”

“They can’t. There have been a lot of arrests over the years, here and elsewhere. They are charged as spies. The church doesn’t know about them and their own people disown them. Most of them die in prison.”

“Pity,” I said. “Are they really part of the Inquisition?”

“How did you-? Oh. You must have questioned some of them.”

“Only one and he didn’t know much.”

“You’re probably wrong about that. How hard did you try?”

Ouch, I thought. Ghost stood sniffing the wind as if trying to catch Violin’s scent on the breeze. Something caught his attention and he wandered off into the shadows. Probably some interesting jackal poop. Ghost is a scatological connoisseur.

“Since I already know some of it,” I said to Violin, “how about telling me more?”

“Yes,” she said.

It took me a two-count to catch up to that. “What?”

“Yes,” she said. “I think it’s time to tell you what’s going on.”

“First-whoopee, and I mean that sincerely. Second, why the change of heart?”

“It’s… complicated.”

“That seems to be a theme lately. Care to elaborate?”

“I asked my mother.” When I laughed, she said, “I’m not joking.”

“Your mother. Lilith, right?”

“How-? Ah… Mr. Church told you. Good, that will make it easier. She’s here in Tehran and she’s asked me to bring you to her.”

“When?”

“Now. Can you get away for an hour?”

“Maybe,” I said dubiously. “Where are you?”

“Right behind you,” she said.

Chapter Eighty-Four

I spun around and tore my pistol out of its holster.

She was ten feet away and she already had her gun out and up.

Ghost came pelting out of the darkness like a white bullet, but I gave him a hand signal and he stopped thirty feet from Violin’s right flank, uttering a low growl that was full of promises. So much for wagging his tail. I guess that he didn’t like being blindsided any more than I did.

“Drop it,” I said.

“No,” she said, “I don’t think I will.”

We stared at each other.

She smiled first. Small and tentative. Then I felt my mouth twitch.

“On two?” I said.

“Sure.”

I counted it down and when I hit zero we both abruptly tilted our pistols to the sky and took our fingers off the triggers.

We stood there assessing each other, then lowered our guns. Neither of us reholstered them, though.

“Hello, Joseph,” she said.

“Hello, Violin.”

She was both similar and different to the image of her that I had constructed partly from memories distorted by the smoke and thunder of the gun battle at Jamsheed’s and partly from how I’d imagined her since that first call yesterday morning. Lean, fox-faced, with erect posture and the slightly splay-footed stance you see in ballet dancers. The MTAR-21 assault rifle hung from its strap, and she held a Ruger Mark III. 22 caliber pistol down at her side. In many ways she reminded me heartbreakingly of Grace, but she was also very different. Younger, taller, with an air of innocence about her-despite her profession-that Grace did not share. I wondered if they could have been friends.

“Come with me,” she said. “Lilith is waiting.”

“You call your mother by her first name?”

Violin shrugged.

“Is it a code name? Like Violin?”

“Nobody I know uses their real names,” she said, and there was sadness in her eyes.

“I do.”

She nodded. “And I find that so strange.”

Chapter Eighty-Five

Rudy set the coffee cup down where Circe could see it, but she was too focused to notice or care. Her workstation monitors were filled with multiscreen images from the Voynich manuscript and the Book of Shadows. Images came and went as Circe, sitting rock-still except for the hand controlling the mouse and her darting eyes, studied the arcane pages.

The communicator gave a soft bing-bong and Bug’s face replaced one of the screens. He was grinning.

“Hey, docs… I got some good news. Or, at least I think it’s good news.”

Circe looked up and Rudy could see the lines of stress and worry that were etched into her lovely face. That, and the desperate hope in her eyes, made his heart ache.

“What is it?” she asked.

“MindReader came through again. I had my buddy Aziz help me with some search arguments in a couple of different Persian dialects, and that gave us the edge we needed to slip through the security at the National Museum in Tehran. And guess what we found there?”

Circe’s eyes came fully alive and she half rose from her chair.

“You found it?” she demanded.

“Yes, ma’am,” beamed Bug. “I just uploaded it to the server. A complete copy of the Saladin Codex.”

“Is it in the same ciphertext?” asked Rudy.

The question dialed up the wattage on Bug’s grin. “Nope. There are fifty-four separate translations. Persian, Arabic, Pashtun, Farsi, and… wait for it, wait for it… English.”

The change that came over Circe’s face was miraculous. As Rudy watched he could see the weariness drop away, the stress burn itself to nothingness, revealing a refreshed intensity and a predatory glint that was startling and, he had to admit, a bit intimidating. For the first time he could see in her eyes the reflection of her father.

“Now we have a chance,” said Circe fiercely. “Damn it, now we have a real chance.”

“Let’s just hope that there’s some clue in there to help us crack the other books,” observed Rudy and he was instantly sorry he said it because the newfound confidence in Circe’s eyes diminished by half in the space of a heartbeat. He wanted to bang his head against the wall, but Circe set her jaw and almost sneered at the possibility of defeat.

“No, damn it,” she growled. “We are going to crack this. We have to.”

It broke Rudy’s heart to hear her tack on those last three desperate words.

Chapter Eighty-Six

Violin led me to another warehouse two blocks over. The rear loading doors were open and there were several cars and small panel trucks parked inside, out of sight. Ghost sniffed the air and growled, cutting inquiring looks at me. I signaled him to remain calm and alert. Having the signal seemed to calm him-dogs are always at their most content when the pack leader has things under control. Not that I actually did, but it was nice that my dog thought so.

There were twenty-five people in the warehouse, all women. The youngest was about Violin’s age, the oldest was at least seventy. They all looked fit and trim, though, and they were all armed. The women stood in a loose circle around another woman who sat on an overturned packing crate. As we approached, the circle opened to allow us in. The eyes that turned toward me were in no way welcoming. There were no smiles, no acknowledging nods. Twenty-five sets of eyes assessed me as if I were a side of beef, and not a very fresh one.

“I brought him, mother,” announced Violin. She peeled off from my side and went to stand by the seated woman. That gave me a chance to take a closer look at the woman I presumed was “Lilith.” Each of these women looked powerful, but Lilith was different. She was magnificent, with a face that was cold and beautiful, like the death mask of an ancient queen. Sculpted cheekbones and a strong chin, straight nose and a high, clear brow. But her eyes were absolutely compelling. Endlessly deep and intelligent. And totally without mercy.

“These are the Mothers of the Fallen,” said Violin. “And this is my mother, Lilith.”

Ghost whined faintly and looked at me. It was pretty obvious that he was confused in the presence of what was perhaps a much more powerful pack leader.

“Captain Ledger,” said Lilith. “My daughter has risked much to arrange this meeting.”

I stopped about ten feet from where she sat. “So what’s the drill? Do I bow and curtsy?”

“No,” she said, “but you can mind your manners.”

“Yeah, about that?” I said. “Kiss my ass.”

Violin stiffened but before she-or anyone else-could say anything Lilith raised her hand slightly. It silenced all reaction, but I could feel all those eyes burning into me. The Mothers of the Fallen were not lining up to join the Joe Ledger fan club. That went both ways.

“Here’s the thing,” I said, “it’s not that I have any specific disrespect for you-whoever the hell you are-or these fine ladies here. Or your daughter. It’s just that I just had a real bitch of a day yesterday, and I’m tired, sore, and cranky. I’ve been chased, attacked by Sabbatarians and vampires, and people have been very mean to my dog.”

Ghost woofed.

“And,” I concluded, “your daughter put sniper scopes on me to force me into a meeting with Iran’s biggest psychopath who told me that there are nuclear bombs planted all over the Middle East. One of those bombs is in the United States. My boss gave me the impression that you know more about what’s going on, but so far you haven’t told me shit. So, if you’re looking for deference or civility, I’m fresh out. In fact, I’m wondering why the fuck you’re wasting time with clandestine meetings, cryptic phone calls, and a lot of cloak and dagger bullshit.”

Lilith smiled a little. Beautiful as she was, her smile was unpleasant. Kind of an Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS vibe.

“I won’t apologize for the confusion, Captain,” Lilith began. “Arklight is not in the habit of sharing information except under very limited circumstances. When my daughter was contacted by Rasouli yesterday she had no idea who you were. Once you provided your name, she was able to do a database search to come up with some background on you. We know about your military and police careers, and we know that you are an agent of the Department of Military Sciences. You work for St. Germaine.”

“Who?”

“Mr. Church.”

“What do you know of Mr. Church?”

“Almost certainly more than you do,” she said.

“And we’re back to the cryptic bullshit. You still haven’t explained what the ‘Mother of the Fallen’ are, what Arklight is, and how you know anything about Mr. Church.”

Lilith ignored that. “There have been times when Arklight’s agenda has overlapped with his operations.”

“‘Overlapped’ is a slippery word. I don’t know who you ladies are or what you stand for. Granted, Violin saved my bacon at the hotel when the Red Knight attacked me, and she stepped in during the Sabbatarian hit on one of our safe houses, so she gets a lot of Brownie points for that.” I saw Violin look away to hide a smile. “But at the same time she’s stalled me all day long, feeding me enigmatic bits and pieces of information. Plus there’s that whole ‘working for Rasouli’ thing. Let’s start with that, and I’d like some straight answers. No bullshit, no runaround.”

“Watch your mouth,” snapped a tall woman as she stepped up and laid a hand on the butt of a holstered pistol. She was a hatchet-faced broad who looked like she could go three rounds with Top and Bunny. Ghost growled, but I flicked my finger and he went silent but stayed hyperalert. “You will speak to Lilith with respect or-”

“Actually, sister,” I interrupted, “I’ll speak to her any goddamn way I want, and you will pretty much stand down and shut the fuck up.”

I thought the woman was going to go for it. The others were equally tense, hands touching weapons.

But then a red dot appeared on the center on Lilith’s forehead. Violin gasped. The women turned and stared in horror.

In my ear John Smith murmured, “Call it, boss.”

Chapter Eighty-Seven

Lilith reached her hand up and touched her forehead as if she could feel the negligible heat of the red dot. When she lowered her hand she even looked at her fingers as if there should be blood there. She nodded slowly, more to herself than to me. Then she raised her eyes to me and I suddenly felt the full impact of her stare.

“If you must shoot,” she said, “then take your shot. You’ll live long enough to see me fall, but not a second longer.”

I had to admire her guts. I know from recent personal experience that it’s not easy to play it cool with a laser sight on you. She was doing a better job of it than I did yesterday.

“Lilith,” growled the woman who had fronted me, “I’ll cover you and-”

Another red light appeared out of the shadows and glowed on the center of her chest. Then another and another, touching the women on either side of Lilith. And a last one, floating right between Violin’s breasts.

“Let’s be clear about this,” I said calmly. “I give the word, you die. You make a move, you die. You fuck with me one second longer, you die. Screw with me, Lilith, and my team will pile up the bodies of these women and then I will ask you again. Is that clear enough or do I have to shoot your daughter to make my point?”

“You wouldn’t do that,” said Lilith, and Violin’s eyes pleaded silently for me to agree.

Then a voice from the shadows said, “Yes, he would.”

Ghost gave a single sharp bark of surprise and everyone turned to see a tall, blocky figure walk slowly out of the darkness. I don’t know why I was surprised. Not after the day I had. Not considering who this was-but I was still slack-jawed.

In my earbud I heard Top say, “I swear I didn’t see him, Cap’n. Came out of nowhere.”

Yeah, I thought, he tends to do that. Spooky bastard.

Mr. Church wore a summer-weight white suit and dark tie. He carried no visible weapon and his eyes were hidden behind the lenses of his tinted glasses. He walked past me without a comment and stood in front of Lilith, but I noted that he chose an angle that did not block John Smith’s line of sight.

I heard a ripple of murmured voices around me; most of them said the name, “St. Germaine.”

Lilith got slowly to her feet and stood face to face with Church.

“You came,” she said.

He smiled at her, and it may have been the only genuine and unguarded smile I have ever seen from him.

And then Mr. Church pulled Lilith to him and they embraced.

Let me tell you something, this wasn’t the kind of hug the president gives a foreign dignitary, or the kind two football players share after a winning touchdown. No sir. This had familiarity in it that went all the way to the chromosomes, and there was serious heat there. I cut a look at Violin, who had one eyebrow arched as far as it would go. When she saw me looking she gave a tiny shake of her head.

In my earbud I heard Bunny say, “Wow.”

Church released Lilith and stood back from her, and they both turned to face me.

“Please tell your team to stand down, Captain,” said Church. “Bring then in.”

The laser lights vanished at once. I tapped my earbud. “Hold your positions.”

If Church was surprised or annoyed by that, he didn’t show it.

“How did you know where we were?” I asked. “I only gave Aunt Sallie the coordinates of our warehouse.”

“I was invited,” said Church, nodding toward Lilith.

“Okay,” I said, “I am now completely and thoroughly confused. Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on?”

“You aren’t the only one who doesn’t know exactly what’s going on,” said Church. “We know some things and Lilith and her people know some things. We have to hope that if we all put our puzzle pieces on the table it will add up to one clear picture.”

“Thanks for giving me a heads up, Church,” I complained. He ignored me.

Church looked at his watch. “What’s the status of your team?”

“At the risk of sounding like a male stereotype,” I said, “Echo Team is cocked, locked, and ready to rock.”

“Good. I have transport on the way. We roll in one hour. And, yes, Captain, that means all teams are on active standby. On the president’s order we will hit all five of the sites in one coordinated strike.”

“What about the other two devices?”

Church paused and I could feel the eyes of everyone in the place burning into us. “We don’t know where they are. We’re going to have to run the play with what we have. If we’re very lucky we may secure one or more of the people involved in this and see if we can encourage them to unburden their souls.” It was said offhand, but the intent beneath the words was lethal.

“God help anyone who gets in our way, then,” I said.

Church gave me a bleak stare. “I believe they will discover that God has abandoned them.”

He turned toward Lilith.

“Now,” he said.

Chapter Eighty-Eight

“It all started eight hundred years ago with Sir Guy LaRoque, emissary for Philip II of France,” began Lilith. “He was a senior member of the Knights Hospitaller, which is a noble order dedicated to good works. However, Sir Guy created within the Hospitallers a second and very much more secret group which became known as the Ordo Ruber, the Red Order. The group was illegally sanctioned by Father Nicodemus, the senior Hospitaller priest in the Holy Land during the Third Crusade.”

“Nicodemus,” I echoed, and a chill raced up my spine.

“Sir Guy brought his plan to his counterpart,” continued Lilith, “a man named Ibrahim al-Asiri, who was emissary for Saladin. These two men were much of a mind, and between them they shared the observation that it was remarkable that, during times of the severest strife between Christendom and Islam, people flocked to church in greater numbers and showed much greater fealty to God.”

“No atheists in foxholes,” I said, but caught a reproving look from Church. I mimed zipping my mouth shut.

“Exactly,” agreed Lilith. “They likewise observed that in times of peace, people strayed from the house and the word of God. LaRoque and al-Asiri found this intolerable and feared that extended times of peace would lead inevitably to the decline of faith. Understand, Captain, these men were religious zealots as well as political manipulators. They were ambassadors and spokesmen for great leaders, and also advisors. They could see things from what they likely viewed as a big picture perspective, and indeed history has shown that religions rise and fall. Few endure. So, seeing that this was a trend, and knowing that the Crusades must necessarily end one day, these two men decided to dedicate themselves to a course of action that would ensure the eternal preservation of their churches. They drafted an agreement between them that there should always be tension and conflict between Christendom and Islam. Nothing fills a church, or indeed a mosque, more surely than the need to pray for the confusion and destruction of the enemy, especially when the enemy is the enemy of one’s God.” She paused and fixed me with a penetrating stare. “Sir Guy, with the help of Nicodemus, founded his Red Order to oversee this work. Ibrahim created the Tariqa-the Path-to do the same for Islam, and within months of signing the Holy Agreement, they began a campaign of selective murder, arson, and desecration. There has always been strife here in the Middle East-but this was the birth of a new kind of conflict.”

I goggled at her. “You’re talking about hate crimes.”

“Yes, Captain, in a very real sense the Holy Agreement formed by the Red Order and the Tariqa was the beginning of terrorism as we know it. They invented hate crimes as we know that concept.”

Even though I was standing still I suddenly felt like I was falling. “To get people to go to church?”

In my earbud I heard a low whistle. Probably Top.

Church murmured, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

Lilith nodded. “It’s possible, I suppose, that Sir Guy and Ibrahim had the best intentions as they saw it, but it speaks to a very malecentric viewpoint that what a person can see or imagine is his by right to have.”

My Y chromosome wanted me to protest, but anything I could say would be built on shaky ground. Lilith must have caught a look on my face and gave me a slice of a cool smile.

“These secret societies operate totally without the knowledge or sanction of the governing bodies of their religions,” she continued. “Neither the Catholic Church nor the imams of Islam would tolerate such acts. They would decry them as blasphemous and heretical, which they most assuredly are, but not from the perspective of the Red Order and the Tariqa. Much like a shadow government will often act in opposition to, say, the Constitution of the United States or the Magna Carta, because they believe their vision, however illegal and unpopular, is the best course of action. It’s sophistry, of course, and therefore self-justifying. The leader of the Red Order became known as the Scriptor out of respect for Sir Guy LaRoque drafting the original Holy Agreement. The leader of the Tariqa is known as the Murshid, or ‘guide.’”

“How did something like this fly under the radar for eight hundred years?” I asked.

Her cold smile was gone. “You would be surprised and appalled to know how many dreadful things are unknown to the world at large. Your organization fights such things, as does Arklight.”

Church nodded. “And assassinations are useful for more things than inspiring religious intolerance. Establish a pattern of swift and terrible retribution for the slightest act of betrayal and you can hide almost anything.”

It was an ugly point, but I knew that he was right.

“At first the Holy Agreement between Sir Guy and Ibrahim dictated that each side should carry out actions only against their own people. It was believed that this would allow each side to control the effect. Of course when one of Sir Guy’s knights murdered a pilgrim on the road to Jerusalem or burned a church, there was evidence planted to implicate the Muslims. Over time, however, men from both sides became sickened by committing atrocities against their own. Perhaps it was the last shred of conscience clinging to them, so it became necessary for the Holy Agreement to be amended to allow each side to commit murders and perpetrate the acts of desecration against the other side. These hits were strictly regulated and always agreed upon, but it was much easier for each side to strike with righteous fury at the other side. This became known as the Shadow War, and that has lasted all these centuries.”

“Who did the actual killings, though?” I asked. “It isn’t easy to pull something like this off over and over again, and suicide bombing is relatively recent.”

“These aren’t suicide attacks,” she said as she sat down once again on the overturned crate. “The Tariqa perfected the model first. There was already a group of highly skilled killers operating in the Middle East, an order of Nizari Ismailis founded in 1080 during the First Crusade. You know about the Hashashin?”

I nodded.

“That Order of Assassins was so effective that they tipped the balance of power in the Shadow War. The Knights Hospitaller were skilled fighters, but they were battlefield warriors, not the kind of subtle and nimble assassin who could scale a wall or pass stealthily past picketed guards. The Red Order needed something as effective, but Europe had no precedent. Not even the Roman legions were useful as a model for assassins of such high quality and effectiveness.” She paused and her face darkened. “This is where the story takes a darker turn.”

“Darker?” I said, half smiling. “How much darker can it get?”

“Vampires,” said Mr. Church.

“Ah shit,” I sighed. “I was kind of hoping we wouldn’t get back to that.”

“This is the real world,” said Lilith coldly, “and they are a part of it.”

“Are they supernatural? ’Cause that seems to be the big question.”

Violin moved to stand beside her mother. Her eyes looked haunted, and her mother touched her arm for a moment. Instead of reassuring her, the touch sparked an involuntary shiver. Lilith sighed.

“The Upierczi are monsters,” said Lilith, “and as twisted as they seem, they are a part of nature.”

“You know this for a fact?” asked Church, beating me to the punch.

Lilith nodded. “Arklight managed to obtain tissue samples from one-at a terrible cost, I might add. We did extensive testing. We ran a full metabolic panel-sodium, potassium, chloride, bicarbonate, BUN, magnesium, creatinine, and calcium. We did arterial blood gas to measure blood pH and bicarbonate levels. We did full blood count, Hematocrit, and MCV, ESR. We ran molecular profiles-protein electrophoresis, western blot, liver function. Everything. And we ran a full DNA. The Upierczi are genetically human, but they are not Homo sapiens and-”

“I hate like hell to interrupt this Discovery Channel episode, but can we get back to the actual point? The Red Order used the Upierczi as assassins. And-?”

Lilith nodded, accepting my rebuke. “The Upierczi are more than a match for the order of assassins, but their numbers have always been low. There were never many of them, thank God. They’ve tried to change that with breeding programs, however.”

There was a murmur of deep disgust among the women.

“The Red Order began this process. Capturing women, keeping them in pens, encouraging the Upierczi to rape them over and over again until they conceived. Most of the children were stillborn. Some few survived, and of those three quarters were normal babies that showed no significant trace of the Upierczi traits. Others were hybrids-dhampyrs-but attempts to raise and train them as Upierczi met with complete failure for the Order. A few-a handful-were born as Upierczi, and they kept their blasphemous bloodline alive.”

Lilith paused and wiped away a tear. Violin placed her hand on her mother’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze, and Lilith reached up and briefly clasped her daughter’s hand. I was clearly missing something here, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what it was.

“For a long while the Upierczi tried another tactic. They kept the women who bore Upierczi children and forced them to produce child after child. This was not ultimately successful, so they tried another tactic. When a dhampyr was born, if it was female, she was kept and raised, and when she was old enough, she was raped and impregnated and forced to bear a child. This nearly always resulted in an Upierczi birth. For a while this seemed like the solution to their problems… but the vampires and their Red Order masters did not understand the nature of genetics. Not then, at least. Generation after generation of forced inbreeding did not expand the Upierczi-it nearly destroyed them. Children were born who were Upierczi, but who were mongoloid and severely retarded. Freakish births, a sharp rise in stillbirths. Lunacy, madness, a drop in physical abilities, reduced intelligence.” She took a steadying breath. “For a while it seemed as if their own attempt to breed a master race was going to result in the death of the entire species.”

“I met one of the knights,” I said. “There was nothing genetically weak about him. What changed? What happened?”

“The science of genetics happened,” said Mr. Church.

I looked at him.

“Gene therapy, artificial insemination, gene splicing. Rebreeding techniques. Science caught up to the needs of the Upierczi.” He turned to Lilith. “Am I right?”

“Yes,” she said, tears glistening in her eyes. “The Red Order hired the very best scientists. They spent tens of millions to fund radical genetic research and development. They created a ‘rebirth’ process in the 1980s, improving upon it every year. Not just new births, but therapy to fix genetic flaws in living members. Understand, Captain, the Upierczi are not immortal, but their lifespan is exceptionally long. Some are more than two centuries old. And there is one who is rumored to be three hundred and twenty years old. Grigor, the oldest and by far the most powerful of the Upierczi. He is the father of the new order of vampires. His genes-never tainted by inbreeding-became the alpha cell line in a course of gene therapy called Upier 531. It was developed by Dr. Dieter Hasbrouck. Now, the new wave of Upierczi is stronger, faster, more durable-and many will live as long as Grigor. Hasbrouck did extensive gene therapy. He amped up the wound repair system so the knights heal much more quickly, and they have a greatly enhanced ultraviolet light repair system as well. I believe it was an attempt to make them better able to tolerate sunlight, which weakens them, but instead he gave them virtual immunity to cancer and a resistance to radiation. If these bombs go off, any Upierczi not in the direct blast radius might actually survive. That,” she said, “is what we face.”

“Jesus Christ,” I breathed. My heart was pounding so hard that I wanted to scream. If Church hadn’t been standing right beside me, nodding as Lilith spoke, I doubted I would believe it. But his presence-the absolute solidity of everything that he was-made it all doubly real. Too real.

I licked my lips. They were dry as dust.

“You… left something out,” I said.

Lilith nodded, clearly expecting the question.

“You glossed right over the dhampyri. The hybrids. The ones who were forced to give birth to so many of the Upierczi. What happened to them?”

Lilith stared at me with bottomless dark eyes.

“I think you already know the answer to that, Captain Ledger.”

“The Mothers of the Fallen,” I breathed, and those words hurt my mouth. I swallowed a throatful of broken glass. “And… their children? The girls, the dhampyri? What happened to them?”

Violin had tears in her eyes, but her voice was fierce. “Our mothers escaped to save us.”

“Some escaped,” said Lilith sadly. “Most died. The rest… we dedicated ourselves to a single cause.”

“To destroy the monsters. The Upierczi, Nicodemus, the Red Order. All of them.”

I tried to say something. Anything.

All I could do was look into the eyes of these women. Lilith, Violin, each of them.

Violin stared at me, into me. So did Lilith. Looking for my reaction, for my true feelings.

But I simply could not speak.

Chapter Eighty-Nine

For Rudy Sanchez it was like someone had driven a cold steel spike into his chest.

All of the display screens in the mobile computer center were filled with pages of ciphertext and meters showing progress on other sections of the two books. But the central display screen had a different image, a real-time feed from a button camera worn by Mr. Church. It was all there. The Mothers of the Fallen. Lilith and Violin. Joe.

The things Lilith said. The truths she shared.

Rudy wanted to close his eyes, but he couldn’t. To continue watching and listening and understanding was far more than a job requirement, however. To turn away would be the worst kind of cowardice-the kind that refuses to hear the truth. The kind that refuses to care.

He touched the crucifix he wore beneath his shirt.

He barely felt the pain from the crushing, desperate grip Circe had on his other hand.

Aunt Sallie stood apart so she could study the faces of her staff as they watched and listened to Lilith. She saw shock and horror. She saw tears. She saw jaw-clenched rage. She watched to see if any of them turned away, or sneered privately, or smiled, because God help them if they did.

What she saw on the faces of her people, however, was what she thought she would see. What she needed to see.

No one was looking at her. They were unable to look away. So no one saw her nod her approval of them.

Top Sims heard a small sound. A wet sniff, muffled and discreet. He cut a look sideways, expecting it to be Bunny. But he saw John Smith pull back from his sniper scope to wipe his eyes and nose. Top grunted softly to himself.

He had known Smith for almost a year, had been in every kind of fight with him, had fought to save the world alongside him, but he did not actually know him. The sniper’s file was filled with data but no insight. His psych evals were by the numbers, describing a quiet man with an interior life he did not care to share. Not uncommon for someone raised in an orphanage and bounced around from one foster home to the next. No criminal record, though. No politics, no religion, and if he had opinions he never shared them. He was a blank, a question mark except in one regard: he was the best sniper currently serving in the U.S. military. The best by a good margin. He killed whatever he aimed at. He never pulled a trigger in a questionable situation; he was patient enough to wait for a clear target and an unshakable reason.

Seeing Bunny, Lydia, or Khalid cry would not have jolted Top. Not even surprised him. Bunny, for all his size and experience, was a softie who really did believe that the good guys won in the end. Lydia also had a lot of heart beneath the wisecracks and trash talk. And Khalid, the scholar of the team, was a deeply passionate man, very religious, strongly invested in social justice and ethics. They would cry. They were all probably fighting tears now.

But Smith? Smith never showed a thing. Not a goddamn thing. Not when he killed. Not when his comrades went down. Not when he took a bullet. He was the only person who showed less on his face than Mr. Church.

And yet this-what the woman Lilith was saying, what they were all finding out about the strange mission they were on-was turning dials on the man.

Smith must have sensed him watching and turned slightly toward Top. He touched his left thumb to the tear glistening in his eye then reached out and smeared the wetness along the barrel of his rifle. He said nothing, did nothing else. It was a statement and he let Top interpret according to his own understanding.

Top nodded.

Maybe he did understand.

Chapter Ninety

“Do you understand now?” asked Violin, her voice quiet in the pin-drop silence. “Why I had to be careful? Why I couldn’t just-”

“Yes,” I said hoarsely. “I understand.” Though I wished I could tear that knowledge from my mind. I looked at Church. He nodded, his face uncharacteristically sad.

He patted me on the shoulder. “I knew a fraction of this,” he said. “If I had known more… well, the Red Order and the Upierczi would have been more squarely on the DMS radar a long time ago.”

“We’re going to do something about this,” I demanded. “Right?”

Church gave me a fraction of an arctic smile. “What would your guess be?”

In my earbud I heard several of my team softly growl, “Hooah.”

Church turned to Lilith. “You should have told me this a long time ago,” he said, but his tone was gentle.

“It wasn’t your fight,” she said.

Church grunted softly. “Of course it is.”

Violin looked at me. “Joseph, you and your soldiers, you fight against madmen and terrorists to defend the world and a certain way of life, but your fight is a new one. There are older struggles.”

“Yeah,” I said bitterly. “Believe me when I tell you that you’ve made your point.”

She nodded and gave me a small smile that seemed to hold a thousand different meanings. Grace had a smile like that, and for just a moment I thought I heard Grace’s sweet voice whisper my name.

I closed my eyes for a moment. Then I inhaled through my nose and let out a big chestful of air. “Okay,” I said, “I think I have almost all the players except one. Who or what is Arklight?”

“Arklight was formed as the militant arm of the Mothers,” said Violin, and her eyes were fierce with pride. “Most of the field agents are their children.”

“Dhampyri?” I asked, almost afraid to use the word.

Violin paused for a moment, then nodded. “We are dedicated to the destruction of the Holy Agreement, the Red Order, the Tariqa and the Upierczi. We are the children of monsters, and many of us are the mothers of monsters… but we are not monsters. In comic books and movies dhampyr have super powers. We don’t. Though, there are some useful qualities, I suppose. A few ‘gifts.’ Perhaps ‘side-effects’ is more medically correct. From the Upierczi blood in our veins we have some physical advantages.”

“Speed and strength?” I ventured.

“Some,” said Violin, though she smiled when she said it, allowing me to infer what I could from that.

“What about the age thing. Are you immortal, too? Or-what passes for immortal?”

Lilith shrugged. “Some of us are pretty well-preserved for our ages.”

And I saw a twinkle in her eye that made me wonder just how old she was. And… how old Violin was.

Church consulted his watch. “The president should be calling me any time now. We have to make some decisions, the first of which is whether we continue to work our separate and counter-productive agendas, or whether we combine our resources. The Red Order and the Upierczi are clearly tied to our hunt for the nukes. That makes it everyone’s fight.”

Lilith glanced around at the other Mothers. Some were stone-faced, a few still openly hostile, but most of them had predatory gleams in their eyes. Some of them even smiled. Kind of the way the big hunting cats smile. You don’t want to see that smile coming at you out of the dark.

The older women in the group nodded to Lilith, one by one, and she in turn nodded to Church. Some of the tension seemed to go out of his big shoulders.

“Then let’s go to work,” he said.

Chapter Ninety-One

Hugo Vox punched the wall.

He punched it for two reasons. The simplest was that it was the handiest wall, right there next to his desk. The other reason was far less obvious, even to him. It was a reason rooted in fear and hope, and that reason had a name.

Upier 531.

The wall was smooth, with painted drywall over lath. In his youth, Vox could have put his fist through a wall like that all the way to the elbow. He’d done it in college and in at least two boardrooms. Since the cancer took hold, his rage had not manifested in outbursts of that kind. Energy was to be conserved, and he feared the frailty which had transformed him from a robust bear to a tottering old man with bones of matchwood.

All of that, though, was yesterday’s news.

When he woke up after a midnight nap, his whole body was on fire. Not with pain… not the gnawing, destructive pain. No, this was something else entirely. This was a swollen pain, and expanded pain. When he’d gotten out of bed he’d actually yelled. Not from hurt, but from the sheer joy of having enough breath to do it.

Here in the office he’d spent the rest of the predawn hours working at his computer, his fingers flying over the keys. Playing. Twisting things for the sheer nasty joy of it. The fuck you fun of it. It felt like playing chess against an opponent who was bound and gagged. He moved all the pieces around on both sides. The Red Order, the Sabbatarians, the Tariqa, the Upierczi, Arklight. And Church.

As Vox thought about his old “friend,” he felt his mouth begin to turn down into its usual frown, but the burn wouldn’t let that happen. Instead his mouth twitched and rebelled and broke into a grin. A big, happy, malicious grin. The old bear’s grin.

He launched himself from his chair and slammed his fist into the wall.

All the way to the elbow.

“Fuck yeah!” he roared, and with a grunt he tore his arm free. The splintered lath tried to claw at his skin, but even though it drew blood it could no more stop him than the cancer could. Not anymore.

Not any fucking more.

He roared again and laughed, and punched the wall again and again.

Then he poured a huge glass of Scotch, gulped it down, and flung himself back into his chair. The computer was still on and he scrolled through his list of names, considering each player and the general chaos in which they all floated. All of them searching for meaning, fighting for it, killing for it, dying for it.

And not one of them-not even Church-appreciating that chaos was its own end. Chaos was its own formless agenda.

“Fuck you, Deacon!” he bellowed and pounded his fist on the table hard enough to make his whiskey bottle dance.

His phone rang and he frowned at it.

There was no screen display at all. Not even one to tell him that it was a blocked call. Vox smiled and picked it up.

“Hello, Uncle.”

“Hello, Nephew.”

“I feel fucking great today.”

“I know. It’s good to have you back.”

“Back? Hell, I was never like this before. I feel… I feel…”

“I know. It’s delicious, isn’t it?”

“Yes it goddamn well is.”

The caller paused. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah.”

“You know there’s no going back?”

“Shit, don’t try to scare me with burned bridges, Uncle. I’m ready to light the match.”

They both laughed quietly about that. Vox, perhaps, laughed a little bit louder.

“Then let it all burn down,” said Father Nicodemus.

Chapter Ninety-Two

We had a quick strategy session during which Lilith told Church that he could have Arklight teams to assist with the refinery raids. He accepted without hesitation. While they began working out the details, I moved outside, needing some space to process everything.

Violin found me in the shadows outside of the warehouse. We stood together looking at the stars. Then she said, “This must be so hard for you. So strange. You, an American soldier… fighting monsters.”

“Since I joined the DMS last year, nothing has been normal. I’m not sure I even believe in that concept anymore.”

“This is normal for me,” she said. “This is all I’ve ever known. I was born into this world.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No. It is what it is. Perhaps someday I’ll find another kind of normal.”

“Maybe I can help you look.”

“Maybe you could.”

“About the Sabbatarians,” I said. “You guys seem to hate each other worse than the Dodgers and the Giants. But you’re both kind of on the same side, right? So what gives?”

“‘Same side’?” she snorted. “Hardly. They know that most of us were either breeding stock for the Upierczi or born from those forced matings. The Sabbatarians, in their great Christian mercy, consider us Satan’s whores. The dhampyri doubly so.”

“Jesus.”

“They long ago named us enemies of God and marked us for extermination.” She shrugged. “We have responded in kind.”

“Then I’m glad we put a bunch of those assholes down.”

Violin nodded but said nothing.

Above, the Milky Way pivoted around us.

“You know, one of the things that’s eating at me here,” I admitted, “is Nicodemus. Who the hell is he?”

A haunted look flashed through Violin’s eyes. “As long as there has been a Red Order there has been a Father Nicodemus associated with it. My mother thinks it is the same man, but I don’t believe that. I don’t believe in ghosts or demons; I think it’s part of the propaganda the Red Order has always used. Besides, it’s probably a title passed down from one person to another, much in the same way that ‘Scriptor’ is passed down through the LaRoques.”

“Don’t priests sometimes take new names when they take holy orders?” I asked. “Biblical names?”

“Not as frequently these days,” said Violin, “but yes.”

I pulled my cell and called Bug and told him to hack the Vatican or whoever certifies priests. “If these Nicodemus guys are legitimate clerics,” I told him, “then there should be records in the registry of holy orders. Find out.”

I slipped the cell back into my pocket.

“Nicodemus is a strange man,” said Violin. “I saw him a few times when I was a little girl down in the Shadow Kingdom.” She cut me a look. “That’s what they call it.”

“Yes, very dramatic,” I said sourly. “Can you give me a physical description of Nicodemus?” She did, and I felt my skin crawl. “Okay, that’s a step over the line into weirdsville. That description exactly matches the inmate.”

“What happened to him?” asked Violin.

“He disappeared.”

“How did he escape?”

“I didn’t say he escaped,” I said. “He vanished from his cell. No evidence at all of a jailbreak. Security cameras went haywire, guards saw nothing, and then he dropped completely off the radar. I was there when it happened. Thoroughly creepy and borderline impossible the way it happened. But even so, it couldn’t be the same man. Could it?”

Before she could reply Church appeared in the doorway and snapped his fingers for us, and we hurried over. Lilith was with him. “Circe,” he said into the phone, “you’re on speaker. Repeat what you just told me.”

“When Rasouli gave the flash drive to Joe, he mentioned the Book of Shadows. When Lilith sent us her scan she included a note saying that Arklight believes that the Book is the secret history of the Red Order and the Holy Agreement. It’s in ciphertext, however, and it’s unreadable. Arklight had it for years and couldn’t crack it. The same ciphertext is used in a book called the Voynich manuscript, which is in a library at Yale. We now have both complete texts, and the language is the same. With me so far?”

She didn’t wait for an answer and instead plunged ahead.

“Rasouli also mentioned the Saladin Codex, which is a text on mathematics. MindReader pulled multiple translations of it and just finished a comparative analysis. The Codex is a work of minor importance and one with a number of flaws. Now, from a distance, we have two unreadable books and one that is readable but seems to be entirely unrelated to this matter.”

“That’s from a distance,” I said. “How about close up?”

“Well… Rudy and I may have made a little progress,” continued Circe. “First, you have to understand that ciphertext isn’t a code. It’s mathematical. However, even when using MindReader to analyze the Codex for a key to the cipher we came up dry. But here’s the thing, and this changes everything… this is where the Voynich manuscript comes in.”

I looked at Church and saw him stiffen. Lilith, too. You could feel the tension crackling all around us.

“We think the Voynich manuscript was allowed to be found by the Order. It puts it out there so that anyone can find it and read it. Every page is on the Net. They don’t care if the average person finds it-it’s gibberish to them. However, if you have that as a reference, and you have access to the other two books, then you can read them all.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Because,” said Circe, “we found the key to the cipher.”

“ What? ” demanded Lilith, almost in a shriek.

“At least we think we’ve found it. Bug is programming it into MindReader right now. He says that we should have a full translation within hours.”

Lilith shook her head. “We’ve spent years trying to make sense of it, and we have looked at the Codex as well. There is no key to the ciphertext.”

“There is,” insisted Circe, “and it’s in the Voynich manuscript. Rudy figured it out. Or, he kicked off the line of thinking that’s brought us to this point. He said that we’re overthinking this. You see, if the Book is the history of the Agreement, then the Red Order and the Tariqa want their members to be able to read it. Otherwise… why write it down?”

“Makes sense,” I said. “How does it help us, though?”

“Well, we backed up and looked at the issues of translation from the perspective of two ideologies, two cultures who are effectively at war on a permanent basis. They have different customs, different languages, different points of reference on virtually everything… except one. There is one area in which all advanced cultures can agree, language differences aside.”

I had no idea where she was going with this, but Church and Lilith said it at the same time.

“Math.”

“Math,” agreed Circe. “The Voynich manuscript and the Book of Shadows are written in an invented language that has order and structure to it. Therefore it has mathematical predictability as long as anyone who tries to read it has a set of precise, immutable guidelines.”

“Such as a ciphertext,” I said.

“Yes. And the third book in our mix, the Saladin Codex is a book on understanding the science and functions of math.”

Chapter Ninety-Three

Circe was so excited that her voice bubbled out of the phone. “One of the reasons historians never paid much attention to the Saladin Codex is it was widely regarded as a well-intentioned and fundamentally flawed set of theories about math. The author was so well-respected that the book was given a place of honor in a museum, but it was an open secret that al-Asiri was no true mathematician. Certainly not by the exacting standards of the Muslim world, and let’s remember that they invented algebra.”

“Is the math in the Codex actually flawed?” I asked.

“Yes, but now we no longer think that al-Asiri made a mistake. We think that he made a very precise set of deliberately flawed computations. Thousands of them. And somewhere in those flawed numbers is the key to the ciphertext.”

“How’s the Voynich book play into it?” asked Church.

“There are celestial charts and drawings all through that book. We know that algebra and trigonometry are used in celestial charting and navigation. The connection seemed obvious, or so I thought. Anyway, I had Bug use MindReader to plot the positions of the celestial charts in the Voynich manuscript, but we got error after error because the diagrams are wrong. The astrological star patterns in the Voynich book aren’t exactly in the right place. Scholars had dismissed this as the errors often found in old sky maps made before the invention of ultraprecise telescopes.

“Then Bug had the idea of trying those same calculations based on algebra and trigonometry as it appears in the Codex. Al-Asiri’s calculations have long been decried as bad math. They aren’t. They’re brilliant math, but they’re deliberately flawed math. When we charted the same astrological star patterns using al-Asiri’s skewed mathematics, they matched exactly with the star patterns in the Voynich manuscript.”

Church and Lilith looked stunned. So did many of the Mothers.

“Um,” I said, “speaking on behalf of C students in math everywhere, what the hell are you talking about?”

“Joe,” said Circe, “math is an exact science. However if you build a flaw into it, then the flaw becomes an exact flaw and every computation is exactly wrong in the same way.”

“So what? How does that help us?”

“If you look at the errors, you have a key to understanding math from a certain perspective. You can actually use al-Asiri’s errors to do proper calculations. That predictability and regularity is a cipher. It’s a key to understanding anything else that is based on the same code. We began applying it to other drawings in the Voynich manuscript. A predictable mathematical sequence is one of the most common replacement ciphers. We applied it to English and got nowhere. We tried French as it was spoken in the twelfth century, and nothing. The same thing with Arabic and Persian. Nothing. Then we thought about commonalities. Charles LaRoque and Ibrahim al-Asiri were diplomats as well as deeply religious men. They were creating an agreement designed to preserve their churches, correct? So, in what language would these men write that agreement? We thought they might have written it in Hebrew, the original language of the Old Testament, but LaRoque was a Christian and al-Asiri was a Muslim, and Hebrew was the language of the Jews. Both men would probably have had some anti-Jewish sentiments. The Bible was often translated into Greek and Aramaic. And Aramaic was the language of diplomacy throughout the Middle East for a thousand years, and virtually all Middle Eastern languages can be traced back to it; and the Aramaic alphabet was eventually adopted for writing the Hebrew language. Formerly, Hebrew had been written using an alphabet closer in form to that of Phoenician. Everything fit. We now know that Aramaic is the language used to write the Holy Agreement.”

Lilith seemed unable to speak, but she finally croaked out a question. “And the cipher?”

“We hit one last hitch. MindReader was able to translate the first page of the Book of Shadows, which is mostly introductions of Sir Guy LaRoque and Ibrahim al-Asiri and their various titles and political affiliations. Typical diplomatic stuff and not of any use to us because we know who they were.”

“Damn,” growled Violin, and a wave of disappointment began sweeping through the Mothers and Echo Team.

But Circe was not done. “The code is devious; it changes incrementally. MindReader’s pattern search figured this last part out. On the first page of the Book of Shadows, the mathematical error was exactly as described in the Codex. However, on the second page, the error is doubled, then tripled on the third page, and on and on until you get to page ten, then it resets to the first error. With that last piece, we can now calculate the rate of error and use those errors to create a key to crack the ciphertext.” She took a breath. “The Book of Shadows and the Voynich Manuscript are ours.”

“Good God,” murmured Church. “This is brilliant work, Circe.”

“Rudy and Bug did as much as I did,” she said.

“I will thank you personally when I see you,” he said. “Bug, how soon before MindReader deciphers both books?”

“Two hours. Because the books are handwritten, and by more than one person, it has to adjust to variations in the way the coded documents were phrased.”

“Do what you can to speed that up. Call me when you find anything, and I do mean anything.”

He disconnected the call and stood silent, his jaw tight, mind working. Lilith had the same inward-looking expression. Maybe we all did. No one said anything. This was massive news to Church and the Mothers, but I felt like I was on the fringes of it. Maybe it would help Arklight-with or without the help of the DMS-take down the Red Order and the Tariqa, but that seemed to be tomorrow’s battle. I didn’t see how the translation of old books was going to help us find nukes today.

Then Church’s cell rang again. Everyone came to point like a pack of retrievers, but it wasn’t Circe. Church listened for a moment and then said, “Very well.”

He closed the phone and looked at me.

“That was the president,” he said. “The word is given. The mission is a go.”

Chapter Ninety-Four

Church stepped out of the warehouse to make a series of phone calls to get this rolling; the first of which was to Aunt Sallie. She was in the big Tactical Operations Center at the Hangar, which made NORAD look like an Internet cafe.

Bug called us just as Church rejoined me.

“I ran down every priest who chose the name of Nicodemus,” said Bug, “and either MindReader is having a senior moment or there is something mucho freaky about the Vatican database.”

“Why?”

“Well, there is a pretty tightly managed registry of priests. Names, personal data, photographs, the works. This goes back pretty far, to the point where paper records were stored and later scanned; and back past that to written records. All scanned now into their systems. Worldwide there have been a couple of hundred priests who chose that name, and a few for whom that was their birth name. Now here’s the kicker. About once every generation, call it twenty-five to thirty years, there is a record of another priest taking that name. Always from the same place, Verona in northern Italy. The thing is, we have dates of births and dates of deaths of each priest, but when I cross-referenced this with public records in Italy, they don’t match. In fact, there are no records at all of any of those priests. Either these guys lied when they applied to priest school or whatever it’s called, or there’s a conspiracy to hide the true identities of these guys.”

“Swell,” I said. “Another mystery. ’Cause I was just thinking that I wasn’t nearly confused enough.”

“Then buckle up, Joe,” said Bug, “because there’s one more thing that popped up. I added Verona to the general pattern search for this case and guess whose grandfather was born there?”

“Just tell me, Bug.”

“The family name is Verrecchia. But that’s not the name he uses now.”

“What’s the name?”

“Vox.”

“Wait-Hugo Vox’s family comes from the same town as Nicodemus?”

“More than the same town, Joe. Half of the men who adopted Nicodemus as their priest names were born as Verrecchias. Nicodemus and Vox are from the same family.”

Chapter Ninety-Five

Vox looked at his watch and smiled. Time to make the first of his calls.

He took several fast, panting breaths while he punched a speed dial. Charles LaRoque answered on the second ring.

“ Jesus, kid, you got to stop them,” said Vox, putting panic and urgency into his voice in exactly the right amounts.

“Stop who?”

“The Tariqa, who the fuck do you think I’m talking about. That whole thing with Rasouli and the flash drive? That was a smokescreen. It was bullshit to get the authorities looking in the wrong direction. And all the time he’s working out a deal with your pet monsters to shove the Agreement right up your ass.”

“What are you talking about?” LaRoque’s voice was filled with genuine panic.

“I’m talking about doomsday, you stupid fuck. I warned you- begged you-not to tell Rasouli too much before he took the full oath. He’s not the Murshid and never had any intention of being that. You know what he wants? He wants to put a lot of Christian heads on poles. He doesn’t want to keep the Shadow War going. That’s small potatoes for him. He’s ramping up Iran to be a nuclear power. And he’s got a really goddamn good chance of uniting all of Islam against the West. You Red Order clowns think you’ve been keeping the church alive? Rasouli is going to blow Christianity off the planet with a mushroom cloud and remake the world in the name of Allah.”

“That’s ridiculous, Hugo,” said LaRoque with a forced laugh. “Even if Rasouli betrays us, he doesn’t have that kind of power. Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons yet.”

“Iran doesn’t,” Vox said, “but Rasouli does. He arranged to buy decommissioned devices from the black market. The same bombs you tried to buy before 9/11. He has them. ”

“Impossible. We never told him about-”

“He has an inside track to the whole Red Order. You have no secrets left, Charlie. Rasouli has you by the balls.”

“No, you’re wrong. No one in the Order would dare-”

“Don’t you listen? I never said that a Hospitaller betrayed you. What I’m saying is that those bloodsucking dogs you think you have on the leash have been off the leash for a long damn time.”

“What?” LaRoque asked, but now there was doubt in his voice.

“Yeah,” said Vox. “Rasouli has made a deal with your devils.”

Chapter Ninety-Six

“Vox and Nicodemus are related,” I said. “That’s it, I’m going home.”

I expected Church to looked rattled by the news, but he stood there, slowly nodding to himself.

“What?” I asked.

“Pieces are coming together.”

“Making what kind of a picture?”

“I’m not entirely sure yet, but let me ask you this, Captain, do you feel that we’re at war with the Red Order?”

I thought about it. “Actually, even though this thing is tied to them, I… I really don’t see how. We’re at war with someone.”

“Are we?”

“The nukes.”

“The nukes are in play, but we haven’t yet cracked the logic of their placement. There have been no threats, no demands. Nothing in the case files on the Red Order suggests an anti-American agenda.”

I thought about it. “Y’know, I kind of have the same feeling about Rasouli. I mean, he kicked this off by giving me the flash drive, but the drive itself is sketchy, and he’s been totally off the radar since it began. Granted, that’s not even a full day yet, but Rasouli feels like a day player. A walk on.”

Church shook his head. “He’s more important than that, otherwise the flash drive would have been sent anonymously through the mail. No, Rasouli and the Red Order are in this. I’m simply not convinced we’re at war with them.”

“They sent a Red Knight after me.”

“Someone sent a knight after the drive. Not the same thing.”

I grunted. “What about the Sabbatarians?”

“They’re independents. They hunt the Upierczi, which means they don’t work for the Red Order; and they are fiercely Catholic, which means that they aren’t acting on behalf of Rasouli.”

“The question, then, is who pointed them at me?”

“Captain-take yourself out of the equation. They were pointed at the knights, who were in turn pointed at the flash drive. You… got in the way.”

“Ah. I guess the villains just aren’t that into me.”

He manfully refused to smile.

“Okay,” I said, “I’m going to nominate Vox as the bad guy. Who else has ‘criminal mastermind’ on his business cards?”

“Vox alone?”

Interesting question. “Nicodemus?”

Church shrugged. He left to make a few more calls.

I saw Echo Team standing apart from the activity, looking like a biker gang that had crashed a women’s empowerment meeting. I gestured for them to follow me to the far end of the warehouse.

“Good job tonight,” I told them. “I was listening and I still never heard you on my six.”

“Kinda the point,” said Lydia. “Clumsy soldiers don’t get Christmas bonuses.”

We stood for a moment, each of us looking back at the cluster of Arklight women as they continued arming for war. I saw Violin sliding loaded magazines into slots on a bandolier. She saw me watching and gave me a brief nod that I returned. We turned away at the same moment.

“Top,” I said, “get back to the other warehouse and get everything ready. Finish modifying our equipment, but don’t use all the garlic. Church will have some kind of transport here soon. As soon I talk to the Big Man again I’ll come back for a mission briefing. Everyone eat some food, hit the head, take your vitamins. Finish that special project I gave you earlier from those notes Circe got from that folklore professor. Looks like we’re going to need it. We need to be ready to rock, and who knows how long this will take. Bring as much extra ammunition as you can carry.”

“Boss,” said Bunny, “what that woman said? That’s all true, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

He shook his head. Bunny was no naive kid, but this was all a long, long way from Southern California.

Khalid looked concerned. “There’s a question we need to ask these women here,” he said. “If garlic hurts the vampires, is it safe to use around the… um… what was the word?”

“Dhampyri.”

“Yes.”

“Good question. I’ll ask. In the meantime, let’s hustle.”

“Hooah,” they said, and I watched them vanish through the back door, silent as ghosts.

Chapter Ninety-Seven

As I turned to go find Violin, I saw Church heading quickly toward me.

“We’re hitting them all, Captain. A coordinated soft infiltration. Everyone is moving in at the same time. Four targets here in the Middle East and the one in Louisiana. I have every DMS and JSOC team not currently assigned to one of the targets on deck. Nuclear response teams are on high alert. We’ll do whatever is possible to do, but we can’t wait any longer.”

Soft infiltrations meant stealth and nonlethal weapons. Doing just one required extensive planning and training. Doing five? I whistled. “You ever do anything like this before?”

“No one has. So, we get to write the playbook on it. Your team has to avoid a political incident as well as find the bomb.”

“You want us to do this on tippy-toes?”

“Correct. You’ll infil during this evening’s shift change. Once you’re in position, you’ll begin an unobtrusive search for the device. Floor plans and construction blueprints for the refinery were on the flash drive, and Aunt Sallie has mapped out several likely areas for such a device to be hidden. Given its nature, and based upon the image from Rasouli’s phone, we are looking at a basement or subbasement. The construction blueprints of the refinery and the current surveillance layout are close matches, but they’re not exact. There are some postconstruction additions and some things that apparently were never built. Or at least that’s the CIA’s determination. Your map will have anomalies indicated by red dots. Don’t trust the Company’s report. When in doubt get eyes on those anomalies. Abdul will rendezvous with you here and deliver you to the site. He has a workable plan prepared.”

“Already? How’s that possible?”

“It’s a repurposed plan. Abdul was working with the Company to set up an operation at one of the nuclear power plants. He delivers heavy mechanical parts to refineries and the nuclear plant-turbines, generators, transformers, air purification systems, and so on. There’s a lot of overlap with the refineries and the nuclear station, and Abdul is well known. The refineries operate twenty-four hours a day, though at night the staff is reduced by about half. Nighttime deliveries are common. Heavy equipment is often delivered at night to be ready for installation by the larger morning shift, so this won’t raise any eyebrows. Abdul has been ordered to scrap the other plan in favor of this.”

“What’s our confidence in the infil plan? Can Abdul get us in?”

“Almost certainly, though this operation might compromise him, which means that his usefulness in Iran will likely end. He won’t be happy about it, and the CIA is definitely not happy about it, but I don’t particularly care about their feelings, Captain, and neither should you.”

“I don’t. Mission comes first, and our mission has a shorter shelf life than theirs, so it sucks to be them. End of story.” I paused. “What about the last two nukes?”

Church shook his head. “We’re nowhere with them.”

I stared at him. “Damn.”

“Yes.

“When do we roll?”

“Abdul should be here in twenty minutes. Figure two hours to the refinery, with a half an hour on either end for loading and unloading.”

I looked at my watch. “We’ll be hitting the place just shy of dawn. That doesn’t leave us much time to prepare a mission plan.”

“Figure it out on the fly.”

“Rasouli could be lying about the number of sites,” I pointed out. “There might only be five nukes. Or none.”

“Or there could be twenty,” said Church. “I’m aware of the risks; however, the overall threat increases the longer we let this play out. The president wants the sweep to focus on the known targets, regardless of additional intel.”

“Yikes. There are a whole lot of ways this could go wrong.”

“Yes, and very few ways to get everything right. And once this is all over there will be very angry people in several foreign governments, even among our allies. We’re putting armed soldiers into play without seeking permission from any government. A lot of sovereignty rules are going to be bent or broken, and that’s too bad. The State Department is working up several variations of a presidential response, no matter how this spins out. Best-case scenario is that we’ll later claim to the world press that we were always working in concert with, and at the invitation of, these governments. If we find and de-arm the bombs, then those governments will have to stand by us publicly and agree that they invited us in as advisors.”

“Armanihandjob, too?”

Church didn’t respond. I was two for two with nobody laughing at that joke.

“We have to face the possibility that our enemies will detonate the remaining two devices as soon as they know about the hits.”

“Well, you’re just a ray of sunshine,” I said. “I so look forward to our little chats.”

“If you want something cheerier, I hear that Best Buy is hiring.” He cocked his head at me. “Until you determine that the device is, in fact, at the refinery, you will be operating under limited rules of engagement. Avoid conflict but don’t get taken. If fired upon, you are not authorized to use lethal force. We are not at war with Iran.”

“So don’t start one,” I said, “yeah, I get that. You’re asking a lot from Tasers and beanbag rounds.”

“This order comes from the president, not from me. However, make sure the nonlethal weapons aren’t all you are carrying.”

“Something else,” I said. “Khalid brought up the question of whether these dhampyri are vulnerable to garlic? ”

“It varies. I know that some of them have been killed by Sabbatarians who attacked them thinking they were Upierczi. In heavy doses garlic is fatal to them too. But it’s not a matter of simply being around garlic. The garlic oil has to be introduced into the bloodstream, or in powder form into the lungs. They will be wearing ballistic shielding and each of them carries injectable epinephrine. Every soldier knows there are risks.”

He held out his hand.

“Good hunting, Captain.”

Chapter Ninety-Eight

After the call to LaRoque was finished, Vox was so charged with energy that he had to run around the house for several minutes just to calm down. His whole body seemed to be cranking out more energy than a nuclear power plant. He ran up and down the stairs twenty times. Finally, breathing heavily and bathed in sweat, he came back to his office and made the second call.

“It’s the middle of the damn night, Hugo,” Rasouli answered in an angry mumble. “This had better be important, or so help me.”

“Shut up and listen,” said Vox in a deep growl. “We have problems. The thing about using the phony flash drive to get the DMS to take out the Red Order-that worked like a charm. Church and his crew are ready to swat that psychopath LaRoque. You’ll come out of it looking like a hero. Rah, rah, we can all celebrate the new president of Iran. But,” Vox said, leaning heavily on the word, “there’s a wrinkle and it’s a big goddamn wrinkle. Those nukes are real. No, don’t say anything. I know what I told you, but it turns out LaRoque is even crazier than I thought he was. He didn’t just buy cases for them; turns out he had no intention of just using the photos as blackmail. No, this sick fuck bought real nukes from some black-market thugs in Kazakhstan.”

“Beard of the prophet…”

“And there really is one under the Aghajari refinery.”

The noise Rasouli made sounded to Vox like someone was choking a turkey. He jammed his mouth into the crook of his elbow to stifle a laugh. Then he took a breath and said, “Here’s the kicker. That agent you met, Captain Ledger, he’s going after the nuke. Yes, the one at Aghajari. And he’s doing it with a full American Spec Ops team. Right now. Today or maybe tomorrow at the latest. If you’re going to do something, you had better do it right goddamn now.”

He hung up before Rasouli’s head could explode. And because he couldn’t hold back his own laughter a moment longer.

Chapter Ninety-Nine

I left the warehouse and began walking back to where Echo Team was waiting. Ghost trotted along beside me. He was still a little off his game from the Taser and the fights yesterday, but he was coming back.

Before I was halfway there, I heard a familiar voice.

“Joseph!”

I turned and, despite everything, I smiled.

Ghost, the big furry flirt, wagged his tail.

Violin ran through the shadows to catch up then slowed to a stop five feet away. We looked at each other and my smile faltered. So did hers.

“Wow,” I said, “you really know how to show a guy a good time. Best first date ever.”

Violin laughed.

She had a good laugh. A genuine laugh, and given everything that I now knew about her I wondered how it was possible for her to have any trace of a sense of humor. It said a lot about the person she was. It was that indomitability of spirit that made me believe that women like her and her mother and the others would not only survive their own history but one day rise completely above it. I wanted to say that to her, but now was in every way not the right time.

“I don’t know where to put all of this in my head,” I admitted.

“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry you have to.”

Her voice was a little sad. She knelt down to pet Ghost, who immediately lost his damn mind and rolled on the ground like a puppy. So much for the impressive dignity of the military trained dog. She even found his happy spot that made him kick his leg.

“Over the years,” Violin said as she stroked Ghost’s thick fur, “different groups have deliberately clouded the public’s perception about vampires. First it was the church, labeling them as actual satanic creatures. Then it was the Red Order, building a mystique around them so that they would be feared, but also misunderstood. The Order were the first ones to distort the powers and vulnerabilities of the Upierczi. Many of the classic writings about vampires were influenced by the Order. Leone Allacci, Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould, Dom Augustin Calmet, Reverend Montague Sommers, Walter Map, William of Newburgh, and even Bram Stoker either worked for the Order or were heavily influenced by them. It was more useful to have people believe that vampires were supernatural. Like the hate crimes the Order and the Tariqa committed, such beliefs drove people back to the protection of the church.”

“It’s disgusting,” I said.

She nodded. “Over the centuries, though, even the Upierczi have come to believe some of it. Their leader, Grigor, believes himself to be a true immortal, a kind of dark angel. There have been Upierczi who have gone mad because they began believing that they were actually monsters. They collapsed in terror at the sight of the cross or the Eucharist. Propaganda is a powerful weapon.”

“Yes, and that’s the sort of thing Vox loves to play with. God help us all if he ever starts working directly with the Upierczi. It’s bad enough he’s screwing around with Rasouli and LaRoque.”

“I agree. If he was with Grigor, we’d be doomed.” She glanced down at Ghost. “Do you know why the knight who attacked you in your hotel room did not simply kill your dog?”

“I’ve wondered about it.”

“The knights are afraid of white dogs. There are many legends about the magical powers of white dogs. Vampire hunters have used them for centuries to find the graves of vampires. A lot of cultures, especially the Greeks, have always believed that dogs can foresee evil. And of course there’s the legend of the fetch dog.”

“The what? I keep hearing that word. What is it?”

She looked up, surprised. “I thought you knew about that. The Sabbatarians of legend had magical powers and they traveled with a dog called a ‘fetch’ who lived wholly or partly in the spirit world. The fetch dog could sniff out evil, which the Sabbatarians would then dispatch using various magical means. A white fetch dog would be exponentially more powerful than any other kind. This legend has been heavily reinforced over the years by Sabbatarian hit teams bringing trained attack dogs with them. The Upierczi-even the ones who do not believe themselves to be evil-know of many cases where a fetch dog was used to kill one of their kind.”

“So why didn’t the knight kill Ghost?”

“Oh,” she said, flexing her fingers in Ghost’s fur, “they can’t do that. Fetch dogs belong to God. They are to dogs what saints are to humans. To harm one is to incur the wrath of God and all his angels.”

I smiled. “Great, now that Ghost’s heard that he’ll be insufferable.”

Violin gave Ghost a final pat and stood up. The shadows around us seemed to create an opaque screen between us and the reality of what we were really facing. Or about to face.

“When this is over…” I said, and let it hang.

“Yes,” she said. “When it’s over.” She looked away, her eyes filled with sadness.

“No,” I said clumsily, “I meant when this thing tonight is over. Not the war. I don’t want to wait until the end of the war to get to know you.”

She took a tentative step toward me. And another. She was so beautiful, so powerful in the way that a woman can be powerful. I’d known her for less than a full day. Longest day of my life, but still less than a day. I wanted to know her for a lot of days, for years.

I looked into her eyes and saw-or thought I saw-my thoughts mirrored there. Can it be like that? Love at first sight is a romance novel myth. Isn’t it?

Violin took another step toward me and I moved to meet her. She was tall, almost tall enough to look me straight in the eyes. She touched my cheek with one strong, soft hand.

“Joseph,” she said and suddenly she was in my arms. I could feel the heat of her breath on my face as she went up onto her toes, and I bent toward her, our hearts hammering, mouths open.

Then panic instantly flashed through my brain and I pushed her away and staggered back, colliding with Ghost who gave a sharp startled bark.

“No!” I gasped, clapping a hand over my mouth.

Violin gaped at me for a horrible moment. Then her face twisted into a feral mask of fury. “I told you I was a monster,” she hissed and she turned to run, but I darted out a hand and caught her arm. She surprised me, though, and wrenched her arm out of my hand.

“Stop!” I yelled.

She did, but her eyes were filled with hurt and anger.

“Listen to me,” I said sharply. “It isn’t about you. It’s because I don’t want to hurt you.”

“No, you heard what I was and-”

“Violin-before I left the other warehouse I ate an entire bag of powdered garlic. That’s why I’ve been chewing gum. If I kissed you now…”

She studied my face, looking for the lie, her whole body still tensed to run. And then a smile slowly blossomed on her face. It was like seeing the sun coming up over the mountains. It lit up her features and painted the night in brightness.

“Violin…” I said.

But she threw back her head and laughed, and then she walked away into the night.

In my earbud Top said, “Abdul’s two minutes out, Cap’n. We’re ready to roll.”

“Copy that,” I said with a sigh.

Ghost looked at me as if I was the biggest fool who ever walked on two legs. He was a great judge of character and I could find no fault with his opinion.

Feeling like an idiot, I turned and ran toward the warehouse where my team was waiting.

Chapter One Hundred

The plan was for Abdul to take us to an auto repair yard ostensibly owned by his cousin but actually owned by the CIA. He wasn’t happy to see us. He was seriously disgruntled about having a woman along on what he clearly regarded as a “man’s mission.” He said as much in various ways, making sure his comments were loud enough for Lydia to hear. Regruntling him wasn’t high on my list of priorities. If we’d had a lot more time I might have put him in a room with Lydia so they could talk it out and come to some sort of meeting of the minds, though admittedly that would probably end with a meeting between her foot and his nuts. Detente would suffer.

We followed him in the vegetable truck. Even with what we were facing and everything that Lilith had told us-or maybe because of it-everyone was laughing during the trip. Mostly making fun of Bunny, though I finally got some mileage out of “Armanihandjob.” Yeah, I know, juvenile… but as an icebreaker on the way to de-arm a nuke possibly planted by vampires, what do you want?

Abdul led us to the deserted auto repair yard and parked by the vehicle that he would use to drive us into the refinery compound: a clunker of a Chinese Foton diesel truck. It had room for two up front and a big flatbed in the back.

Lydia turned to Abdul. “Unless you got a cloak of invisibility, cuate, how are we-”

Abdul cut her off with a curt shake of his head and then pointed. “Of course not,” he snapped irritably. He strode over to the closest box and opened it. True to its label there was a big hunk of machinery in there. Some kind of turbine. However, Abdul fiddled with a metal knob and the turbine suddenly opened with a hiss of hydraulics. It was a shell and inside was a tiny capsule with a bench. Bunny whistled, but Abdul gave him a sour look. “We made these to smuggle in a team of techs to the nuclear power station. To sabotage the centrifuges.” He shook his head. “We spent three years developing this plan. Three. Now- poof! — it has to be scrapped.”

Top smiled at him. “Did your station chief explain to you exactly what we’re doing?”

Abdul shook his head. “I don’t care. You Americans all think you’re Austin Powers. It’s all bullshit.”

Top, still smiling, bent close and patted Abdul on the shoulder. “I’m really sorry to screw up your plans for recreational vandalism, my friend, but we’re trying to keep your country from getting blown into orbit. So, if it’s all the same to you, you can take your sour feelings and your little pouty face and go piss up a rope.”

Abdul stared at him, uncertain how to react because Top’s friendly and affable smile never even wavered. Then Abdul’s eyes shifted away from Top and swept over the faces of the other members of Echo Team. He wasn’t playing to a friendly crowd.

“Okay, okay, but this is bullshit,” Abdul insisted. His expression suggested that he’d like Top and the rest of us to die in the desert and be eaten by vultures. Three years is a lot of time to invest in anything, but overall my nerves were running so high that, like Top, I managed not to give a shit. You know, the whole nukes thing.

I asked, “What’s the plan to get us into the refinery?”

“These are valuable parts that have been back-ordered for months,” said Abdul. “I have the actual parts here too, and I would have delivered them and waited until these parts were ordered for the nuclear plant.” He waited for us to console him about his great loss, got no love, and continued. “We set it up that way so that when the team was ready we could show up virtually any time of day or night.”

“Good.”

We were out of earshot of the others and Abdul cut me a quick look. He ticked his chin in Top’s direction. “Is what he said true?”

“Unfortunately.”

He sighed and cursed some more, mostly to himself. Or to God. When he had the last shell open he waved the team over and began locking us into the metal capsules. It was uncomfortably like going into a coffin, but it would get us in. I tucked Ghost into one with a rawhide bone and fresh water. It wasn’t the first time he’d done something like this, and he was trained for it, though he still contrived to give me an aggrieved look as I closed the door.

Because of space constraints, the cases had to be loaded after we were inside the capsules, so there was a lot of nauseous swaying as the chain hoist lifted us up and a heavy-and perhaps deliberate-thump as the crates were set down into the stake bed. The capsule allowed me to sit straight and move my arms and legs a bit. Standing and lying down were out of the question and after a while-and a few thousand jolts and bumps from the truck-my lower back was starting to sing a sad song. I figured Bunny had it worse than me. Kid was six foot seven, and Abdul had packed him into the crate like a magazine in a gun. Not a lot of rattle room.

We were radio silent, giving a bit of respect to Iran’s military police. They were a long way from stupid. Between their own science and what they bought from China and North Korea, they had an impressive array of security sensors, backed by satellites, hidden detection bases, and a general sense of hostile paranoia.

The Foton had, apparently, no shocks or suspension worth mentioning, and I do believe that Abdul found every single goddamn pothole to drive over along the way. Helluva guy. I’d let him marry my sister, if I had one and didn’t like her.

I spent the rest of the ride going over the de-arming sequences. I have to admit it, though… when the crate was opened and the air of the refinery, reeking of oil and sweat and heat, struck me full in the face, it was a relief.

The crate had begun to feel like a coffin.

Chapter One Hundred One

The refinery was a crazy house of people. It seemed like thousands to me, running, yelling, pounding up and down metal staircases, moving pallets of fifty-five gallon drums. For them, it was just another day.

There were so many people, and our intel about the daily operations of the refinery were so good-thanks to the now deeply bitter Abdul-that we were able to vanish right into the human herd of petroleum workers. Bug, at Mr. Church’s direction, had hacked into the operations computers here and inserted our work records, IDs, and other data. If someone didn’t recognize us and went to check, they’d find out that we were either just transferred from another rig or had been there for a while but in another part of the massive Aghajari complex. No one took the risk of questioning security officers. Too many of the ordinary cops on rigs like this were actually members of Rasouli’s secret police. This wasn’t Stalinist Russia, but it wasn’t tremendously far away from it, either.

Before we left the storage room where Abdul uncrated us, we synched up and ran through the game plan. We had miles of the refinery to cover. The photo of the nuke showed a poured concrete floor and rock walls, which meant that we didn’t have to crawl around up in the pipes looking for it. However, there was a basement and four subbasements that included endless corridors, storerooms, offices, closets, and even staff quarters, as well as rooms dedicated to water, sewage, electricity, fire systems, alarms, and more. We divided the place into three sections, checked the function of our digital Geiger counters, tapped our earbuds to make sure everyone was on the team channel, and then went to work.

“Okay,” I said as everyone crouched down, “combat call signs from here out. Everyone on coded channel one-eight. Warbride, Ghost, and I will do a sweep of the north half of the lower level. Dancing Duck, you and Chatterbox take the upper levels. Shouldn’t take you long.”

That was true enough. Although a bomb does more damage in an air burst-which could be approximated by mounting it high on the rig-the likelihood of it being there was small. It would be spotted and it wouldn’t do as much damage to the oil, and the oil was a more likely target than a refinery stuck out in the middle of a desert. The upper-deck sweeps were necessary for certainty, though, even if they felt like time wasters.

“Sergeant Rock and Green Giant, sweep the lower levels. If either or both teams come up dry, then rendezvous with me down under. Rasouli’s picture showed a cavern or underground chamber.”

“What if we meet the fearless vampire hunters or those Red Knight goons?” asked Lydia.

“They’re not Iranian nationals,” I said. “No grace for them. So that means one person on each team has a nonlethal gun for diplomacy and the other has live rounds for deal-closing. Chatterbox, Sergeant Rock, and Warbride are the best shooters, so you get to play with the grown-up toys.”

“Hooah,” they acknowledged.

I unslung the bag I carried and opened it. We had used most of the garlic powder and oil according to Jonatha Corbiel-Newton’s instructions, but there was some left. Everyone held their hands up and I filled their palms with powder.

Bunny’s face was screwed up in distaste as he choked his down. “Never eating Italian food again,” he complained. He washed it down with a mouthful of water. We’d been following this ritual for hours now, and I felt like my stomach was churning from all I’d swallowed. I passed around my pack of gum and everyone took a stick.

I used the last of the powder on Ghost, working it into his fur. He absolutely hated it, and it probably reduced his sense of smell by two-thirds, but I was the pack leader and he endured it. Pretty sure he was going to crap in my shoes first chance he got.

Before we broke the huddle I added a final note. “This is a shit job and we all know it. We’re rolling on squeaky wheels here as far as intel goes and we know for a fact that we have more enemies than friends. Watch your asses, trust no one, and do not get taken.”

“Yeah,” said Warbride, “and don’t take candy from strangers.”

Everyone grinned, and it seemed for a moment as if they were all at peace with this. Maybe, I thought, it was the kind of warrior’s calm that sometimes happens when soldiers know that they’re walking into the valley of the shadow of death and that there’s no real way out.

Chapter One Hundred Two

The last call was the kicker, and he was looking forward to this. It rang eight times before Grigor answered.

“There’s been kind of a wrinkle,” said Vox breathlessly. “This is urgent and you have to act right now. You need to get the triggers in place, and I mean right now.”

“We don’t have the-”

“I know, I know. Look, Grigor, you’ve played fair with me and I’ve been jerking you around. That was wrong, and I’m saying it to you right now. I was wrong and I apologize. I’m also sorry as hell about your son. I… lost my son recently, too. So I’m going to stop screwing around with you. I’ll text you the password to activate the code scrambler.”

Grigor said nothing, but Vox was sure he could hear the Upier’s mind churning.

“Something’s happened that made me realize that I’ve been screwing with the wrong guy here.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s LaRoque… he knows. ”

“Knows what?”

“Everything. He knows about the bombs. He knows that the Upierczi are about to rise up. He knows everything.”

“Impossible!”

“No it’s not impossible. He’s kept you in chains for eight hundred years-do you think he hasn’t had you monitored? Especially since the rebirth? You’re more of a threat to him than ever, and he knows it. Just as he knows that the Order isn’t as strong as it used to be. The Agreement’s in pieces, and you know as well as I do that Rasouli is never going to restart the Shadow War. That fucker wants a true jihad. Guess who will be caught in the middle? Guess who LaRoque will use as cannon fodder to force a new Shadow War? Do you honestly think LaRoque or Nicodemus cares a wet fart about you?”

“So what?” sneered Grigor. “Let them come for us. Let them hunt us in the tunnels.”

“Jesus, man, do you ever listen to yourself? Stop auditioning for the remake of Dracula and pay attention. LaRoque isn’t going to come after you himself. He’s too afraid of you. No, he’s leaked information to the authorities. To the DMS, to that agent Ledger, the one who killed your son at the hotel. LaRoque will go into hiding while Special Forces teams come after you, and believe me they will hunt you through the tunnels, and there are a lot more of them than there are of you.”

Grigor was silent, and Vox smiled to himself. Nice. Now it was time to play his final card. The one real kicker. The one that would take all the chips on the table.

“Grigor… there’s one more thing.”

“What?” demanded the King of Thorns.

“The American Spec Ops teams have allies in this. Allies who can help them find you and hunt you.”

“Who? Those Sabbatarian fools? We laugh as we kill them-”

Vox said, “Arklight.”

The sound Grigor made was somewhere between a snarl of animal hatred and a hunting scream. Vox leaned away from the phone, wincing. He thought he heard the name Lilith in there somewhere. Vox was sure he had never heard so much hatred directed at a single person before.

It made his groin throb.

“Give me that password,” seethed Grigor. “I will show them a war like nothing they have ever seen. I will drown them in lakes of blood…”

Vox stopped listening to the tirade. He tapped in the password that would activate the code scrambler he had given Grigor. The scrambler, with its powerful satellite uplink that could send detonation codes to those lovely nuclear devices.

As soon as the password went through, Vox called up the file of all DMS personnel and their families and sent that too. What the hell. The Sabbatarians didn’t seem to be getting the job done. Let Edward the Sparkly Vampire and his undead hordes tackle it. That sounded like a whole lot of fun. Maybe Grigor would be the one to finally tear Deacon’s throat out. How sweet would that be?

Vox disconnected the call halfway through Grigor describing how he would crack his enemies’ bones and suck out the marrow. Or something like that. Vox didn’t care.

All of his cares were over.

Chapter One Hundred Three

Church had a complete tactical operations board in his Humvee. It was a new design, one that used flexible circuits for a display board that could be erected in curved panels to form a large semicircular arena. High-res images and holographic overlays created a three-dimensional model of the two theaters of operation. Louisiana and the Middle East, and this latter was subdivided into four separate locations: the Aghajari oil refinery in Iran, the Beiji oil refinery in Iraq, the Abqaiq in Saudi Arabia, and the Toot oilfield in Pakistan.

Small glowing dots indicated the transponder signals from the teams that were moving into position.

A central screen showed Aunt Sallie and the TOC at the Hangar. Church was an observer here, watching Auntie run the show.

“All teams on station,” said Aunt Sallie, who was seated to his right at a gleaming command console. “WMD alarms and hot loop equipment stowed. OPs pulled in. All personnel report alert. Infil teams one through six report ready to move immediately. We are at REDCON-One. Waiting for the word.”

Church sensed movement and saw Lilith standing by the opening to the little arena, and he waved her inside. She studied the display and nodded approval.

“You always did like your toys,” she said with a faint smile.

“High technology used correctly allows for the greatest efficiency,” he murmured as he tapped keys to bring up another smaller set of display windows. This showed the screens that Rudy, Bug, and Circe were looking at. He and Lilith leaned forward to study them.

“Is that the translation?” asked Lilith.

“Yes.” He touched a button to open a line. “Circe, what do you have?”

“MindReader has decrypted four percent of the Book so far and about twice as much of the Voynich manuscript. Each one is different, and each is very disturbing in its own way.”

“How so?”

“The first few pages of the Book of Shadows is the Holy Agreement, and it’s what we expected. The Red Order and the Tariqa agree to work together to do ‘what is necessary’-that’s the phrasing they were apparently most comfortable with-in order to ‘lead the people to faith and to fealty to God in all things,’ yada yada. Essentially, it’s an argument in favor of hate crimes. Or maybe we should call them ‘faith crimes.’ Something like that. The rest of it though… my God! It’s a kind of history without commentary. It lists every single thing both sides have done to carry out the Agreement. If the whole book is like this, it will be the most complete confession of guilt ever recorded. Hundreds of thousands of deaths. More if you count wars that were started or extended because of the Holy Agreement. We even found a section that shows that the Order influenced Pope Clement V to disband and excommunicate the Knights Templar because the Red Order needed their fortune and resources to continue their private war. That will rewrite a lot of history books. Actually-this all will.”

Church didn’t comment. “Keep at it,” was all he said. He muted the audio feed.

He turned to Lilith. “This is what you wanted,” he said. “You can take this to the world court, to NATO, to any group of governments and they will start a new version of the Inquisition to hunt down anyone responsible, anyone still connected to the Order or the Tariqa.”

Lilith stood with her hand to her throat, considering it. “It doesn’t take down the Upierczi. Unless we can produce a body, no one will believe that they even exist.”

“They are slaves of the Order,” said Church. “Perhaps one of them will give the Upierczi up as part of a deal.”

But she shook her head. “This is where you and I differ,” she said. “You think Nicodemus is the power behind all of this. Nicodemus and now Vox. I don’t.”

“You think it’s Grigor.”

“I know it is. I can feel it in my bones, in my heart.” She closed her eyes. “I lived in one of his cells for fourteen years. He took thirteen children from me. Ripped them from my womb, one after the other. I can’t even count the number of times he raped me.” Her eyes were as hard as fists. “I know what his dreams were. It may have been the LaRoques who brought in the scientists and paid to have Upier 531 developed-but it was Grigor who demanded it. Yes, he demanded it. He made the Order repair the bloodline of his kind. It fulfilled a dream he had. He talked about that dream incessantly. In the night, in the long dark when no one from the Order was down there in the tunnels. Grigor talked to himself, to his people, about the dreams of the Shadow Kingdom. I would lay there at night, naked, filthy, starving, chained to the wall with an iron collar around my ankle, listening to the echoes of his words whispering through the darkness. You call them slaves, but they see themselves as warriors. A race of warriors. The Red Order kept them in shackles through faith, and then when God would not save the Upierczi, science did. Do you think that lesson was lost on Grigor?”

“What’s your point?”

“Look at it from Grigor’s perspective. At first the Upierczi were a scattered race of genetic freaks, or at best a dying and failed offshoot of Homo sapiens. The Red Order found them and gave them purpose, but for centuries kept them in chains. They are called knights, but they are slaves and they know it. Over the centuries, despite the promises of the Order and their own prayers, the bloodline of the Upierczi has failed, become polluted. They’ve faded to the brink of extinction. God did not come even when the Red Order called on Him. Then science saved them. By taking the DNA of the greatest among them, Grigor, their race was reborn. Not in the image of God. Not by the grace of God. They were remade in the image of Grigor. When faith fails and science answers, where do you turn?”

Church said nothing.

“When you have lived as slaves for centuries and accepted your slavery because it was God’s will, what happens when you stop believing that?”

Church said nothing.

“There is a war coming, Deacon, no doubt about it. But it’s not about oil and it’s not about politics. I’ve known you a long time and yet I don’t know you at all. So I wonder how willing you are to fight this kind of war.”

He stood up and walked to the entrance and looked out at the night for a long time. Far in the distance a night bird cried out in a voice that was as sad and desolate as all the pain in the world.

His cell phone rang. Mr. Church answered it and listened for a moment.

“I understand,” he said. “Thank you, Mr. President.”

He set his phone down and touched a button on the console. “Auntie, the word is given and it is ‘go.’”

Aunt Sallie nodded and sent the command signal. “All dogs off the leash.”

On the screen, the glowing dots began to move.

Church looked at Lilith. “A theory, however compelling, is not a target. If Arklight has any intel that you haven’t shared, then now is the time. Give me a target, Lilith, and I’ll show you what kind of war I am willing to wage against those monsters.”

There was a soft ping and Church touched the button to unmute the computer center.

“Mr. Church,” said Rudy, “we have something you need to see.”

“Is it about the Red Order?”

“It’s about the nukes,” said Circe. “There aren’t seven of them.”

“Then how-”

“There are eight.”

Chapter One Hundred Four

We moved down a set of metal stairs that zigzagged along a steep wall, with Ghost’s nails clicking behind me. I was dressed like a security guard, and Lydia was in her chador and carrying a clipboard with important looking papers on it. She made sure not to make eye contact with any of the men, and she walked a half pace behind me. The men who passed us did not avoid looking at her. I don’t know how they were able to determine how good looking she was under the billowing black clothes-and Lydia was a hottie by any rational definition, a little bit of JLo but with a Michelle Rodriguez badass bad-girl sneer-but every single man who passed us gave her a thorough up and down.

At one point, when we were alone, she murmured, “I can’t tell… are they undressing me with their eyes or wondering how I would look with another layer of clothes on?”

“Beats me, sister.”

“I can’t tell you how much I’d like to flash my boobs at them just to see them have total coronaries.”

“I think they stone you for that here.”

“Might be worth it.”

I grinned and we kept going.

Although it’s usually cold beneath the desert floor, it was hot as hell down here. Steam hissed up from vents like the whole place was going to blow-or that’s how it looked to my frenzied imagination. When we passed refinery staff, they were going about their business as if it were just another day on the job, which to them it was. Actually, I guess for me it was too. Jesus, I need to get into a safer line of work. Lion taming, maybe; I heard the benefits package is good.

The farther down we went the more humid the air became, and the heavier the smell of raw oil and cooked petroleum. Two levels down I saw that the walls were lined with stretches of dark lichen and cobwebs.

“Are we at the center of the earth yet?” asked Lydia.

“Australia’s a couple of floors down.”

When we were at the base of the last stairwell, Lydia slid back her sleeve and tapped the keys of the PDA strapped to her wrist. We studied the map and compared it to our surroundings. The floors were marked with old painted lines color-coded for different destinations for routine maintenance. We followed one that rounded a snaking series of turns, passing dozens of small rooms with locked doors.

Lydia was a better lockpick than I was and she fished out a couple of pieces of flexible plastic and loided the locked rooms. Janitorial office, supply closets, bathrooms. Nothing of interest, so we kept moving.

Ghost, with his heightened senses, was drinking it all in, cataloging a thousand smells and their variations. He was trained to react to nitrites from explosives, to decomposing flesh, and to a few other key smells, but so far he wasn’t giving me any of the signals that said he’d found anything. You can’t train dogs to detect nuclear materials.

When we were in a stretch of empty corridor Lydia checked the PDA again, then looked at the walls and up at the low ceiling. “We’re getting seriously deep here, Gaucho. We still have a signal?”

I tapped my earbud. “Talk to me, Dancing Duck.”

Khalid said, “Checked all my unknowns off the list on levels eight and seven. Nothing. Laundry rooms and showers. Heading down a level.”

His signal was almost buried under a hiss of static.

“Roger that,” I said. “Sergeant Rock?”

“Nothing yet but we need to finish level two. Five more unknowns to put eyes on. Lots of foot traffic here. Slowing us down.” His signal was even worse; he sounded like he was whispering at the bottom of a well.

“Copy. Your signal is weak and variable.”

“Back atcha. What’s your twenty, Cowboy?”

“We’re rock bottom. No joy. Moving to zero point.”

Zero point was the last spot where Abdul’s spies had been able to penetrate and add to the map. Based on the original design plans of the refinery, there should be four hundred yards of corridor and several utility rooms there.

We rounded another bend and encountered two problems at the same time.

The corridor ended forty feet beyond the turn. Not in a closed door but in a flat brick wall. There were doors along the side of the corridor, however, and one stood ajar as four security officers stepped out into the hall.

They glanced at me and Lydia and Ghost.

The guards were all low-ranking patrol officers, the kind who were too far down on the pecking order to know if I was part of the staff or not. Unfortunately the other guy wore the bars of a major in the Iranian security forces. The top ranking officer in the whole refinery was a major with big eyes and buck teeth. He ignored Lydia-who was pretending to look at the floor-and pointed at me.

“You!” he said.

One word, but he said it in a way that we all knew was going to be trouble.

Damn.

Chapter One Hundred Five

Church put the call on speakerphone. Lilith bent to listen.

“Remember I told you that I thought this whole thing might be part of a doomsday cult?” asked Circe. “We all dismissed it because those kinds of cults are usually small and underfunded. Now I think I was right the first time.”

“Tell me,” said Church.

“When MindReader used the math code on the two anomalous pages Rasouli gave us, we think we found something. These are scans, of course, but from ultra-high-res analysis they don’t appear to use the same materials as the other pages. Toomey down in handwriting analysis tells me they were written with a fine-point gel pen, not a quill, fountain pen, or brush, which Voynich and the Book are.”

“This is modern?”

“This is recent. This is what we’re looking for. Rasouli had it but apparently couldn’t translate it. One page includes records of a purchase of eight nuclear devices. The five we’re already targeting and three we can’t locate. According to the records, the locations were picked by mutual agreement back in 1999, a year before the devices were purchased. The money was paid to black marketers in Kazakhstan in August 2001. The process of taking possession of them and delivering them to the refineries was slowed by everything that happened after 9/11. We also have the contact information for the black marketers, so we can target them whenever we want.”

Bug cut in at this point. “Now it gets tricky, Boss, because some entries aren’t in ciphertext-they’re simple two letter abbreviations. Like a personal shorthand. We were able to identify five of them because we already know where those nukes are. The codes are B/I, A/S, T/P, and L/A. That has to be Beiji oil refinery in Iraq, the Abqaiq in Saudi Arabia, the Toot oilfield in Pakistan, and the Louisiana platform in America.”

“What are the other three codes?”

“V/I, M/S, and J/I,” said Circe. “We’re running pattern analysis but so far we haven’t figured it out.”

Chapter One Hundred Six

We were twenty feet away.

The major’s hand strayed toward his holstered pistol. The other cops grabbed for the AK-47s slung from their shoulders.

I said, “Hit!”

Ghost went from a tense crouch to full speed in two steps. The bucktoothed major’s gun cleared his holster but that was as far as it was ever going to go because Ghost hit him like a cannonball, catching the man on the meat of his forearm and using all of his canine weight and mass to slam the major back against the edge of the doorway. The major screamed and fell down and out of sight with Ghost atop him.

I can’t run as fast as a shepherd, but I’m no slowpoke. I barreled right for the guards, all of whom made the mistake of taking half a second to gape in mingled horror and indecision. That was a half second too long.

When I was ten feet from them I threw myself into a rugby tackle that plucked two guys completely off their feet. They fell down and I bodysurfed one of them for three yards. I heard Lydia’s footfalls less than a yard behind me.

I hammered the rifle out of one guard’s hand, smashed him across the mouth with an elbow, and rolled sideways off of him and whipped the same elbow around into a backward blow that caught the second officer in the nose.

From that angle I saw Lydia slide into the third guard like Rickey Henderson stealing second base. Her right foot caught him on the shin and chopped his leg out from under him. His body crashed down on hers, but as he landed she caught his shoulders and turned at the perfect moment, slamming him face down onto the hard floor.

I had most of my weight on the second cop, and I gave his nose a couple of extra pops while I axe-kicked the first guard into dreamland. Then I pivoted on my hip and hopped atop the second guard, who, despite three hits to the face, was still full of game. I straddled his chest and arms with my thighs, grabbed two sides of his shirt and cross-choked him. Do it wrong and the guy either dies of a fractured hyoid bone or struggles with you like they do in the movies. Do it right, using valve pressure on both carotid arteries and the cloth to cut off the airway, and your opponent goes sleepy-by in eight seconds. I did it right.

As soon as he sagged down, I released the pressure, flipped him over, and speed-cuffed him with his own handcuffs. I looked up to see Lydia whipping cuffs around the third guard. His face was a mass of blood, but he was still struggling feebly.

“Hold still, cabron, or I’ll break off something you don’t want to lose.”

“Get the other one. Wrist and ankles,” I said, and left her to cuff the first cop. I was up and moving, skidding around the doorway into the office.

The major was down and he was bloody, but he wasn’t dead. The pistol lay in the doorway and the arm that had grabbed for it was torn and bleeding-though still attached. Ghost was crouched down over the officer, his bloody fangs clamped around his throat. Not hard enough to kill or even break the skin, but hard enough to make a very clear point: lie still or die.

The officer had put up a struggle, though. Blood was smeared eight feet into the room, which meant that he was trying to drag himself away from Ghost even while the dog was chomping on him. I glanced past the major. There was a glass case with a fire ax on the wall by the door to a small bathroom. Ghost had shifted from a tug of war with the major’s arm to a more effective hold on his throat only a few inches short of the wall with the ax. His teeth hadn’t torn into the man’s throat, but the pressure was there and the major was one bad decision away from dying.

He stopped and lay utterly still except for his heaving chest. The wounds on his arm must not have been as bad as they looked because they only bled sluggishly. Must have hurt like hell, though, because the officer’s face was as white as milk.

I drew my pistol and put the barrel to his temple.

To Ghost, I said, “Off. Watch.”

Ghost opened his jaws with great reluctance and moved to sit in the corner between the bathroom and a wall on which was a poster-sized copy of the same floor plan I had in my PDA. Ghost sat down where he and the major could have a meaningful visual encounter. Like me, Ghost had shaken off most of the ill effects of yesterday, and like me he was in no mood to get pushed around today.

Lydia appeared in the doorway with one of the rifles in her hands. Before she could speak I gave a quick shake of my head and then ticked my chin toward the door. She nodded and went outside without a word.

I knelt by the major. The officer was wide-eyed with fear, but he wasn’t looking at me. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from Ghost, who was, to be fair, looking smug and giving him the evil eye. I snapped my fingers in front of the major’s eyes, and he flinched and shifted his gaze to me.

“Listen to me,” I said in hushed Persian, but I gave my accent a tweak, putting just a hint of Russian in it. “This can go two ways, and I don’t think I need to explain the bad way. If you play fair with me, I’ll let you bandage your arm and I’ll tie you up without further injury.”

The major’s lip curled back from his big horse teeth as he prepared to fire back a vicious comment, but Ghost warned him with a soft growl.

“We are not here to sabotage the refinery,” I said. “I don’t care if you believe that or not. It won’t change anything. Someone else is here to sabotage the place. Listen closely to what I’m about to say next. They have planted a nuclear device in one of the subcellars. I am here to de-arm it because neither of us wants that device to detonate. Can we agree on that?”

“No! We do not have any weapons like that here. What stupidity is this?”

I put a little extra pressure on the gun barrel. “Be nice. If you know anything about that device, then now would be a good time to unburden your soul.”

He started to shake his head, but the barrel wouldn’t permit the movement. Instead he said, “No!”

“Take a second,” I cautioned. “Think it through. It would be so unfortunate if I learned otherwise and had to come back here to discuss it with you.”

“No,” he said again. “Why would I plant a bomb in my own country? It is the Americans who-”

“Shhh,” I soothed. “You don’t want to debate politics with me right now, trust me on this. I’ll ask it one more time: do you know anything about the device?”

“No. Of course not!” He spat the words at me. “I do not believe it.”

If he was lying, then he was a pretty good actor.

“Very well. I’m going to step back and you can get up. Be smart about how you do that.” I kept the gun on him, and the major sat up, wincing and hissing with pain. He clamped his left hand over the ragged wounds in his right forearm. I asked him to tell me where the first aid kit was and he nodded toward a box mounted to a wall.

“Bandage your arm. Do it quickly,” I said and stepped back while he did so.

“I need to wash it,” he said and started walking toward the bathroom. That fire ax would have been an easy grab for him.

I put the barrel of the gun in his ear. “Nice try. Clean it with alcohol or wrap it dirty.”

He threw me ugly looks and aimed uglier looks at Ghost, who managed not to wilt and die under the lethal glare. The major opened the first aid kit and started angrily tearing open packaged alcohol swabs.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

“No one,” I said. “I’m not even here.”

“You are not Russian,” he said, and then tried to prove it by rattling off a quick insult in that language. Something about my mother and a goat. In the same tongue I told him that his father dallied with little boys and ate pork during Ramadan. That shut him up and probably raised his blood pressure by too many points. He cut another look at the wall with the fire ax.

“Those are bad thoughts you’re having, friend,” I said.

He continued cleaning his wounds, though his eyes flicked to the wall over and over again.

My earbud buzzed and, through a burst of bad static, Khalid said he was two floors up. I touched the bud and, still in Russian, said to wait until further orders. Khalid doesn’t speak a word of Russian, but it didn’t matter. He was sharp enough not to spoil whatever play I was making. The major, however, looked somewhat mollified, if still alarmed and confused. And he kept shooting frightened looks at Ghost, who in turn occasionally licked at the blood on his muzzle. A nice effect.

When the major was done wrapping his arm, I took him into the adjoining bathroom and used his own metal handcuffs to chain him to the toilet pipes. Then I had Lydia stand guard as I dragged the other cops in and similarly secured them. It was a tight fit in the tiny bathroom cubicle. The place stank of old urine and fresh blood. The guards started coming around, but they were sick and dazed and hurt; they had no real fight left in them.

“If nothing goes boom,” I said to them, “someone will be along to let you out. Hopefully that will be today. If you start yelling or try to escape, I will come back here and kill you. Tell me you understand.”

The major answered for all of them. A short guttural grunt. Good enough.

I closed and locked the door and barricaded it with a desk.

“Come on,” I said to Ghost, and went back out into the hall.

“Gaucho,” Lydia said quietly, “I’ve been trying to raise the rest of the team but all I’m hearing is my own voice.”

I tried my earbud. Nothing.

“Worry about it later,” I said. “We still have a nuke to find before it blows us all into orbit.”

She faked a coquettish grin. “Aww, you sure know how to sweet-talk a girl.”

The clock inside my head said tick-tock.

Chapter One Hundred Seven

But the hall wasn’t telling us anything. It was a short run to a blank wall made from gray bricks. I pulled up the floor plans for this level and studied them. The original designs called for a corridor leading ten yards straight ahead and then a big square room forty yards per side. The plans had been to use the room for bulk storage and to build a heavy-duty elevator down from the loading bay. Technically this is where Abdul’s machine parts should have been taken to be uncrated and then switched to other elevators to bring them where the parts were needed. But the chamber had been x-ed off of the blueprints in favor of a more practical ground-level storehouse that would allow parts to be rolled in from trucks by forklift. Less expensive and cumbersome than a subterranean storeroom.

Lydia pounded a fist on the wall and shook her head. “This doesn’t make sense, Gaucho. I mean… it had to be expensive as hell-and time consuming-to cut a corridor this far into the rock just to put in a few extra storerooms and a security substation. And it would have cost even more to run plumbing, electricity, computer and phone lines, and everything else all the way the down here. Who does that without a reason?”

“No one does that,” I agreed.

And yet there was no door hidden in the wall.

“Shall we go ask the major again?” she asked.

“It’s that or go out for a beer.”

Ghost wagged his tail. Booze hound. But as we approached the door, Ghost immediately started growling. The fur on his back stood up like the bristles on a wire brush, and he barked sharply at the closed bathroom door.

“ Cuidado,” snapped Lydia, bringing the rifle up.

I pulled open the door and we went in fast. The room was as we left it. Ghost ran straight to the desk that blocked the bathroom and his growls deepened. Something was pulling the wolf out from under the dog’s facade.

“Cover me,” I said as I grabbed the desk and hauled it out of the way. Lydia and Ghost moved to one side. I drew my gun and yanked the bathroom door open.

The soldiers we’d roughed up were where we had left them, except that they were dead. Their throats had been torn away and they lay in a lake of blood. The metal cuffs I’d used to secure the major were twisted out of shape as if someone had put them in a vise and applied a hell of a lot of leverage. Or an unnatural amount of physical strength.

And the major was gone.

Ghost snarled. Not at the dead men, but at the rear wall of the small cubicle. There were bloody handprints on the wood behind the toilet, and the back wall-actually my missing hidden door-stood ajar. I quieted Ghost with a gesture as I bent close to the opening. There was no sound, but a harsh, foul-smelling odor wafted out on a sluggish current of air. It wasn’t the stink of petroleum or the sewage smell of methane, and it wasn’t the garlic I’d swallowed. This was a stench that provoked the most primitive reactions in me so that in my head the Civilized Man cringed back, the Cop became aware and defensive, and the Warrior bared his teeth in fearful, vicious defiance.

It was the sick-sweet aroma of rotting meat.

The perfume of death.

Chapter One Hundred Eight

Violin tapped her earpiece. “Oracle.”

“Oracle welcomes you, Violin.”

“Patch me through to my mother.”

Lilith came on the line in a few seconds. “Where are you?”

“I’m a mile from the Aghajari refinery.”

“Good. The rest of the team is ten minutes out. Leave a trail of bread crumbs for them.”

Violin patted her pockets to make sure that she had plenty of transponders. They were small and designed to look like discarded cigarette butts. All she had to do was crush the filter to activate the battery. All Arklight field teams had trackers.

“And, daughter?” said Lilith.

“Yes?”

“Be smart.”

“You trained me well, Mother.”

“I’m not talking about the mission. I trust you in combat. But you know nothing at all about men.”

Violin hesitated. “What do you mean?”

“You’re not a good liar, my love. I saw how you looked at Captain Ledger, and how he looked at you. I did not live my entire life in a cell. Don’t let infatuation or any other feeling affect you. Not now, not tonight. Be the warrior you are.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“‘Yes, Mother.’ I wonder if you heard a word I said.”

“I hear you, Mother. I’ll be careful and I’ll be smart.”

“Good,” said Lilith. “And there’s one more thing…”

“Yes?”

“When you face the Upierczi… I know some of them are your brothers.”

“Yes.”

“They are not family to us, girl. They are monsters. Show them mercy and they will consume you.”

In the darkness, Violin smiled. It was as cold as knife steel. “Mother-‘mercy’ was a lesson you never taught me.”

She disconnected the call and melted into the shadows.

Chapter One Hundred Nine

I backed away from the open door. “Listen, this is what we came for. Go upstairs until you get a signal and then get everyone down here.”

Lydia eyed me dubiously. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to wait right here until you get back.”

“C’mon, Gaucho… I was born at night but it wasn’t last night.”

“Just go. That’s an order, Warbride. Clock’s ticking so do it now.”

She gave me the kind of look my mother gave me when she was really pissed, but she did as she was told. “Try to be alive when we get back,” she snapped, and then with a swirl of black robes she was gone.

I stepped over the corpses and moved to the door once more, listening to the darkness. Nothing. I even tried the earbud once more. Same thing. I would like to think that the lack of signal was simple interference from the dense rock, but I wasn’t actually stupid.

“Uh-oh,” I said to Ghost. I said it like Scooby-Doo. “Rut-roh!’ The joke didn’t make either of us feel any better.

I debated getting the hell out of there, and if this mission was about anything else I would have. This was so phony they should have just painted the word “Trap” on the secret door. On the other hand, if I walked away now and the device was really here, then what was my next play? Buy a condolence card for the relatives of anyone who used to live in the Middle East? Not much of an option.

I licked my lips and used my toe to nudge the door open. I wasn’t afraid of smaller explosives like Semtex. Ghost was trained to sniff them out and warn me. I glanced at him. He wasn’t barking but he was shivering and his hair was standing out in all directions. Not as comforting as I would have liked. I clicked my tongue and he flinched. Then he shook his body like he was shaking off cold water and he looked up at me with troubled eyes. I wished he could talk because the information his senses were processing were probably going to be pretty crucial to my survival over the next few minutes. But only Lassie can explain complex predicaments with a bark; Ghost was merely a dog.

Letting the barrel and flashlight lead the way, I stepped out of the bloody bathroom and into a narrow passage with rough stone walls. The same kind of stone as the wall in the picture Rasouli showed me. Rough, gray white. A little whiter than the walls behind the metal stairs I’d climbed down. A different mineral composition this far down.

I moved down the hallway. Ghost, as silent as his name, was right behind me. The corridor turned and turned, making sharp rights and lefts and then tilted as it angled down deeper into the underbelly of the desert bedrock. The air moved past me, flowing up from below. The stink of death was still there.

I rounded the last turn and the hallway ended at an open doorway beyond which was a massive chamber. There were stacks of wooden crates in uneven rows, but this was clearly not a storeroom. I stood in a vast cavern whose ceiling was a mass of dripstone stalactites that hung like the fangs of an infinitely large dragon. Water dripped seventy feet to the concrete floor, where it pooled around broken stones, fallen rock, and the corpses of at least two dozen men.

They were piled into a mound, their bodies torn and slashed, their skin crawling with maggots and cockroaches and vermin that skittered away from my flashlight beam. The stench of all that rotting meat was dreadful.

I moved cautiously forward. All of the bodies were male, and some of them were naked. No way to tell if they were Iranian, but that was my guess. Many of them were tough-looking, well-muscled, in their twenties and thirties. From the uniforms of the clothed ones I could tell that they were refinery roughnecks and security people. Some of the naked ones probably were too; the killers had likely made them strip off their uniforms before the killing began. I wondered if one of the killers was wearing a major’s uniform.

I shined the light over them, frowning more and more at each new detail I picked out. These bodies were at least a couple of days old. Did that mean that their killers had been fully infiltrated into the refinery for two days? If one of the dead men was the major, then his impostor could easily have ordered staff changes of any kind. Reassignments, replacements. It’s not like Iran has union reps who can make protests or ask questions.

How deep did the infiltration go? And what was its purpose?

I walked around the mound of dead. The injuries were traumatic. Crushed skulls. Arms and legs torn out of their sockets. Throats savaged.

I took a step forward and my foot crunched down on something. I lifted my foot and looked at what I’d stepped on. Dentures. Big buck-toothed dentures. Or… maybe false teeth is a better word. The Hollywood kind that fit over regular teeth. Like the major’s teeth.

“Oh, crap,” I said, but I was only half surprised.

The major had been an Upier. Had to be. I replayed the fight in the security office. The major had gone down easily, but he’d gone down because Ghost attacked him. Ghost was a white dog-a fetch dog, as far as the Upierczi were concerned-and he was covered in garlic powder. Ghost had eaten some garlic too, and during the fight he’d bitten the major. Garlic was supposed to be fatal, but there might not have been enough of it in Ghost’s saliva for a lethal dose. Instead it had probably weakened the Upier, but not enough to keep him from breaking out of the cuffs. Then he’d killed the other guards and fed on them. Disgusting as that sounds. What had that done for him? Probably like Popeye eating spinach.

As I looked at the corpses, I understood that there had to be a lot of Red Knights here at the refinery, and they’d just started their workday with an O-positive energy drink.

Ghost trembled beside me. I tore my gaze away from the corpses for a moment and looked at my dog. He was cross-trained for all sorts of things including searching for dead bodies, and he doesn’t weigh moral or social implications. He shouldn’t have been scared by this. Excited by blood and the evidence of slaughter, sure, that’s hardwired into his animal brain. But not mass murder. And yet he was clearly terrified. His eyes were huge and rolling as if he was checking every possible line of escape at once, and drool dripped from the corners of his mouth. At the point where his body touched my leg I could feel his heart hammering away at dangerous speeds.

“Easy, boy,” I said in a voice I hoped was soothing. Ghost glupped back some of the drool and looked up at me, though whether it was for reassurance that the pack leader would protect him or instructions on what to do next was anyone’s guess. I stroked his side and patted his flank. He pressed more firmly against me. “It’s okay, Ghost… it’ll all be okay.”

I was pretty damn sure I was lying to him. To both of us.

Then I tore myself away from the carnage and looked around the cavern. I shined my light and saw something dark on top of one of the crates and at closer inspection saw twenty sets of folded clothes. Not the missing uniforms, but almost certainly the clothes of the men who had taken them. Black pants, black shirts, black balaclavas.

“Oh… shit,” I said aloud. Did that mean there were twenty Upierczi down here? Or were they up in the refinery? Up where my team was.

Shit.

I dropped the balaclava I was holding and directed the light into the cavern. It was so wide that the beam didn’t reach the far side, and from the uneven walls and ceiling, it was apparent that this hadn’t been cut into the earth but was a natural cavern that had been repurposed. The far end looked to be a jagged tunnel, but from where I stood I couldn’t make out any details. I crept quietly toward the stacked crates. Some were open and heaps of straw or packing popcorn were spilled like guts onto the ground. A few were still sealed, and I began circling the stacks looking for a crowbar.

Then I suddenly lost all interest in the crates, the crowbar, the dead bodies, and every other damn thing. I could feel the blood in my veins turn to ice water. My guts clenched as I saw what sat on the far side of the crates.

It was there.

Sixty feet away. It squatted there in the center of the big cavern. Sitting out in the open, all by itself except for thick power cords that coiled like snakes toward the nearest wall.

Huge, powerful, feral. Sophisticated in a brutal and primal way.

Deadly as hell.

My heart started beating as fast as Ghost’s and all the spit in my mouth turned to dust.

“God,” I murmured, but I was looking at the devil.

The bomb.

Chapter One Hundred Ten

I moved toward it. I wanted to run. God, I wanted to run for my life.

I kept moving toward it, drawn to the sheer enormity of what it represented at the same time as I was totally repulsed.

Ghost was right with me, but he seemed happy to be away from the dead, which is weird. Dogs like smelly, rotting stuff. He should have been having a field day cataloging all the scents. He wasn’t.

The device was larger than I thought. Four feet high, six wide, eight long. The data on these models gave a weight range between eight hundred and sixteen hundred pounds. This one looked bigger, maybe a ton. I wasn’t going to slip it into a pocket and run out of here with it, and I wasn’t going to sneak it out on a hand truck.

I was going to have to de-arm it.

I tapped my earbud again in the vain hope that somehow there was a signal. Nothing, and glancing over my shoulder at the heap of corpses I had a pretty good idea why. Whatever was happening, whatever the Red Order and the knights, or the knights themselves, had running-the infiltration, the communications jamming-was happening now.

The only thing that kept me from having a stroke right there was the thought that there were a couple of dozen of our unknown hostiles here at the refinery. Not the time to detonate the device.

Hopefully they were not suicide soldiers.

My inner Cop told me to shut the fuck up and pay attention to the task at hand.

I used my forearm to wipe sweat out of my eyes, then took a long steadying breath, and focused my mind on the PDA strapped to my forearm. I tapped the keys to pull up the de-arm procedures for the nuke. I scanned it to refresh my mind and then scrolled back to the first step.

“Okay,” I said aloud, hoping that my voice sounded competent and calm. Maybe tomorrow I’ll cure cancer. About as likely.

I have a little bit of religion. Not much, just enough to get me to church on Christmas and Easter. I wasn’t much for personal prayer. Not like my friend, Rudy, who was a staunch Catholic. However, as I removed my tool kit on the cowling of the beast, I was praying as hard as I could.

My tools were all made from an ultra-high-density polymer rather than metal. Plastics are nonconductive. The steps sound easy. Remove the screws holding the cover plate in place, disconnect the wires leading from the battery or the timer to the detonator. Sounds easy, but this is where you’re most likely to encounter a booby trap. Trembler devices, fake wires, micromotion detectors, heat sensors. If nothing goes boom at that phase you hit the whole red wire-blue wire thing.

I slowly unscrewed the six screws and checked to make sure that there wasn’t a trip wire rigged to an anti-intrusion trigger. There was no wire visible. Sweat ran down my face and stung my eyes. Ghost smelled my fear and whined nervously. I held my breath as I removed the plate.

Nothing went boom.

I set the plate down and addressed the wires. The leads from the battery were easy to spot. And, yes, they were red and blue. Always have to appreciate the classics.

There was a second plate covering the electronic trigger device. This was the brains of the machine, a computer that operated the neutron trigger and would fire it as soon as the activation code told it to. In devices like this, the code could be radioed in or hand-entered. I glanced up at the rocky walls. No, maybe the device on the oil platform in Louisiana could be activated via radio, but no radio signals at all were getting in here. They must have come and hand-entered it. As soon as I removed the plate I should be able to determine how much time was left before detonation. With any luck it would not already be ticking. Ideally, a two-hundred-year countdown would be nice.

I gingerly removed the screws and lifted off the plate.

And stared at the digital screen display.

“What the fuck?”

The bomb was not ticking away its last few seconds.

All of the little lights were dark. The timer wires were not even attached.

I stood up and backed away from the device.

The bomb wasn’t live. Not yet.

I wanted to fall down. Swooning like a Victorian maiden seemed like a proper response.

The universe so rarely cuts me a break that I usually don’t recognize them, or believe in them, when they show up.

Nevertheless here it was.

“Ghost old buddy,” I said. “I think we finally got lucky.”

There was a sound behind me. A soft scuff.

I spun around. I knew what I would see standing in the dark behind me.

A Red Knight.

But I was wrong.

There were two of them.

So much for luck.

Chapter One Hundred Eleven

Church swiveled in his chair, looking from one screen to another. On each of them the teams were in motion, but on the Aghajari screen the little glowing dot that indicated Joe Ledger had winked out.

There were two possible explanations. Either he was deep underground, or his transponder was damaged. Neither optioned seemed to be a happy one.

Church touched the communications button. “Talk to me, Auntie.”

“The ball’s in play. Riptide Team reports zero resistance, no apparent hostiles. They’ve taken the rig and are searching for the device. SEAL Team Six is in the water checking the underside and the drill head. Landshark Team is inside the Beiji refinery but no joy so far. Same for the Abqaiq in Saudi Arabia. Only resistance is at the Pakistani site. We have satellite and predator surveillance, but, as yet, bubkes. Local military were on-site for an inspection and they encountered Zulu Team. At present no shots fired.”

“Keep me posted.”

He turned to the screen on which the remaining identification codes were posted. V/I, M/S, and J/I. Circe’s face looked at him from an adjoining screen.

Lilith had been staring at these for minutes now.

“This doesn’t make senses,” she said. “In the previous codes, the I in A/I had been Iran. But J doesn’t fit with Iran’s other refineries, nor does V. And there is no M refinery in Saudi Arabia. Why change the code in the middle of a single list?”

“It’s not LaRoque’s handwriting,” said Circe. “Bug checked it against samples he found in the computer records at the foundation for which LaRoque sits on the board. He has a clunky style in print and a scrawling cursive. This is elegant. Toomey in handwriting says that the style and grace is indicative of a highly trained person, probably with Catholic school education. Someone who has spent much of his life writing in cursive. LaRoque’s young enough to have grown up with computers and e-mail.”

“LaRoque’s father is out,” said Lilith. “He would have been alive when the Order first tried to buy the nukes, but he’s long dead now.”

“It’s not Hugo’s,” Circe said. “Grigor?”

“No. I’ve seen his handwriting. It’s as terse and brutal as he is.”

Church said, “Nicodemus.”

Lilith and Circe stared at him. And nodded.

“Knowing that doesn’t help us understand the code.” He paused and grunted. “On the other hand, we might be overthinking this again.”

“What do you mean?” asked Circe.

“What if the list is not a code but a simple uncomplicated shorthand?” He tapped a key on his console and Bug’s face appeared on one of the screens. “Bug, initiate a search. Listen first. If the first letter in each pair is the name of the target- A for Aghajari and so on-and the second letter is the first of the location, I for Iran, we missed a clue right there. I was used to indicate both Iran and Iraq. The answer is right there and we looked through it.”

“But there’s no J or V refinery in Iraq, either,” insisted Circe.

“Stop thinking about specifics and go general. The additional targets may not be refineries. They could be anything. And remember, these were written by two different people. The code, and even the order of the letters might not match. Allow for flexible thinking.”

“If they aren’t matches, how will we ever find them?” asked Rudy.

“The second letter. Bug, let’s start there. Make a list of all oil producing countries beginning with the letters I and S. No, give me J as well, in case the order is skewed. Then get me a general alphabetized list of all countries. Run both through MindReader’s counterterrorism assessment package and cross-reference with significant potential targets beginning with V, J, and M. Do it now.”

Circe and Bug’s screens went dark. Lilith put her hands on Church’s shoulders and gave them a single squeeze, then she went out to deal with her teams.

Church sat back and waited, his face showing none of the tension that burned through him. His cell buzzed and he picked it up, looked at the screen display, and frowned. It read ID NOT AVAILABLE.

There were only two systems that could block MindReader’s phone trace technology: the one he had provided to Lilith years ago and which he could break if he chose to, and the one that had been used as a weapon against him by the Seven Kings.

He answered the call. “Hello, Hugo.”

“Sorry, Mr. Church” said an unfamiliar voice, “wrong monster.”

Church straightened. “Who is this?”

“Nobody.”

The accent was London, South End. That, plus the access to this kind of phone, told him a lot.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Chismer?”

“That person doesn’t exist anymore.”

“Should I call you Toys?”

“Toys is dead. He’s burning in hell where he belongs.” There was a sound. A soft sob. Then, “Can we do this without names? It won’t take long. I know you can’t trace the call.”

“What’s on your mind?”

“Hugo told me that you are a religious man. Was he telling the truth about that, too? Please tell me the truth.”

“Yes.”

“Hugo thinks that you used to be a priest. Was he right?”

“No.”

“I need to make a confession,” said Toys. “Will you listen?”

Church said, “Yes.”

Chapter One Hundred Twelve

They stood between me and the tunnel that led back into the refinery. One was dressed in the orange coveralls of the refinery’s general maintenance staff; the other was the major. I’d walked on the false teeth he’d dropped, and he smiled to show me his real teeth. His fangs.

And I realized that he must have been wearing contact lenses earlier and had discarded them as well. Both Upierczi glared at me with hellish red eyes.

I had a flashlight in one hand and a plastic screwdriver in the other. My pistol was in its holster. So were theirs, but that wasn’t as comforting as it should have been.

Usually in situations like this Ghost would move to one side and slightly forward, preparing to defend the pack leader and launch the first wave of attacks. He didn’t. Instead, shivering and whimpering, he peed all over the floor. The Upierczi may be scared of white dogs, but my super-highly trained, ultrafierce attack hellhound was a whole lot more scared of them.

The two men stared at Ghost, and their smiles grew bigger.

Swell.

“Fetch dog,” laughed the major and made the same sign to ward off evil that the first goon had made back at my hotel-touching his heart and drawing a line above his eyes.

“If you kill that piece of shit dog we will make it quick for you,” said the maintenance man.

He smiled when he said it.

It was bad enough that he made that suggestion. He shouldn’t have smiled when he did, because until that moment I was genuinely terrified.

Now I was pissed.

“Here’s an idea,” I said conversationally, and I threw the screwdriver at the maintenance guy with my left hand and drew my Beretta with my right.

Two things happened at once.

The Upier in the coveralls shocked the hell out of me by catching the screwdriver.

A microsecond later I put a bullet through the bridge of his nose.

Do not fuck with my dog.

Chapter One Hundred Thirteen

The maintenance man flew back. The bullet blew out the back of his head, and the force of impact snapped his neck. Hollow points. Booyah.

The major didn’t stop to gape at his fallen comrade. He moved like a blur and I pivoted, firing round after round at him. Ghost barked and lunged, but he was trained not to run into a field of fire.

The Upier was stunningly fast, but he really ought to have run serpentine. I fired at the target and caught him with my fourth round. He was fast, but a nine millimeter bullet is a whole lot faster. The round hit him sideways, clipping his elbow and drilling into his hip. From the way he fell it was clear that his pelvis was shattered.

“Hit,” I told Ghost, and he flashed across the concrete floor toward the screaming vampire. The major’s screams instantly jumped to a higher register.

It was over very fast, and I wasn’t sure if it was because of Ghost’s aggression or the bullet. Jonatha Corbiel-Newton had made some very smart recommendations, and we’d used them. A drop of garlic oil into the mouth of a hollow point, sealed in place with a bead of wax. We’d used the same syringe to inject garlic into all of our shotgun shells, sealing the plastic cases with a cigarette lighter.

And we had some other surprises.

Which left a big problem.

Echo Team was still upstairs, and there were a couple of dozen Red Knights somewhere in the facility. The Knights didn’t know that and I couldn’t call my team. Lydia either hadn’t found Echo Team yet or something was slowing up their progress up there.

My instinct was to hot-foot it out of there and find them; but that was poor thinking. Just because the bomb wasn’t active at the moment didn’t mean that it couldn’t be activated by one of the Upierczi here in the refinery. The only way I could prevent that would be to remove the entire triggering system, and that was going to take ten careful minutes. Inactive or not, it was still a nuke and there was always the possibility of booby traps.

Ghost suddenly looked past me and barked. Loud, angry, and scared.

I spun, bringing the pistol up.

Red Knights.

And I didn’t have nearly enough bullets.

Chapter One Hundred Fourteen

Church closed his phone and thought about what Alexander Chismer-Toys-had told him. Much of it was information he already had. Some of it was Toys’s guesswork whose accuracy Church doubted. Some of it, though…

Hugo’s cancer.

Upier 531. Dr. Hasbrouck.

The disease and its possible cure explained two key parts of this puzzle. The viciousness was born out of frustration as a narcissistic megalomaniac lashed out from his deathbed. Vox wanted to light a nuclear pyre to mark his own death. Very dramatic, mused Church. Very Hugo.

Then there was the improbable amount of useful information on Rasouli’s flash drive. Vox had used Rasouli to provide the DMS with virtually everything it needed to hunt for the nukes. Why would he do that?

It made no sense unless Dr. Hasbrouck’s treatment had worked.

Hugo no longer wanted to burn the world because he intended to live in it.

Toys had not said any of this in plain language. The young man was more than half crazy with guilt and self-loathing-both for past actions and for betraying Vox with this call-but the essence of Vox’s plan was buried within Toys’s rambling confession.

One element remained obscure, however. Nicodemus. No matter how this thing was turned, the old priest-if priest he was-leered out at them.

Church called Joe Ledger, but there was no signal.

The most crucial thing was the leverage Vox had used to stall Grigor long enough in order to receive the full set of Upier 531 treatments.

The code scrambler. Without that, the nukes were dangerous, but they were sleeping dragons. He called for Lilith and briefed her and then used the team com channel to call Top Sims.

“Deacon for Sergeant Rock.”

“Go for Rock.”

“Sit rep.”

“Cowboy is at zero point. We’re converging on his location. No fuss, no muss upstairs.”

“Proceed with utmost haste. High probability that the nuke is not yet armed. Grigor may be on the way there with the code scrambler. Unknown if other activation codes have been sent. Regardless, obtaining that scrambler is now priority one, superseding all mission objectives and restrictions. Confirm understanding”

“Copy that.”

“Sergeant Rock, listen to me. The Red Knights are the hostiles. That is confirmed. All other combatants are secondary.”

“Copy that, too. We’re ready for them.”

“There are no time-outs, no rematches in this game. We win this or we lose.”

“Hooah. Rock out.”

Church made similar calls to the other teams. It was only Toys’s guess that Grigor would be coming to Aghajari. It was closest; Grigor’s Kingdom of Shadows was a mile below Tehran. However, all of the teams had to be prepared to encounter Upierczi.

When he was done he called the president.

As he ended that call, Bug rang through.

“Okay, Boss,” said Bug, “here goes. Oil refineries by nation are as follows. For I we have Iran, Iraq, Israel, and Indonesia, Ireland, and Italy. By ‘J’ we got Japan, Jordan, and Jamaica. And for S we have South Africa, Sudan, Singapore, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, and Suriname. But like you said, this mixes things from the order of the codes.”

Church pursed his lips. “Give me all the countries that start with those letters.”

“For I we have nine countries: Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, and Italy. For the ‘ J s’ we have six: Jamaica, Jan Mayen, Japan, Jersey, Jordan, Juan de Nova Island. And the big list is ‘ S ’: Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia and Montenegro, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, and Syria.”

“Did you run it through the CT package?”

“Got it, sending it to you now.”

There were multiple potential targets on the list from the counterterrorism software package, but MindReader was designed to look for patterns and probabilities. It weighted its choices, and at the top of each list was the most likely target, the one that would have the greatest economic, social, cultural, or political impact.

Church scanned the list.

“My God,” he said.

Lilith saw it too. And then Circe.

Rudy and Bug said, “What?”

And then they saw it.

“This isn’t about the Holy Agreement,” murmured Circe in a small, shocked voice. “They may have wanted the bombs for some purpose before 9/11, but this has nothing to do with that.”

“No,” said Church. “This is about the Upierczi. They are without doubt the ones with the bombs.”

“But why?” demanded Rudy.

“They were monsters and slaves for centuries,” Lilith said in a hollow voice. “They had become weak and almost died out. Now they are stronger than they ever were. Much, much stronger.”

“But-”

“We are about to go to war with a new nuclear power. The vampire nation.”

Chapter One Hundred Fifteen

There were thirty or forty of them standing at the edges of the spill of light, but I could see indistinct shapes moving in the darkness. More of them. Many more.

Their ranks parted and one of them walked toward me. He was taller and more muscular than the others. His skin was milk white, his eyes the color of bright blood. He wore black clothes and a crystal teardrop on a silver chain. In the center of the teardrop was a brilliant ruby.

I aimed my gun at him, but I heard soft, furtive footsteps on either side of me. And behind me.

The lead Upier studied me for a moment. Around him his people were whispering to each other: “White dog… white dog!” They all made their protective signs, touching hearts and tracing lines on their eyes.

Their leader half turned and silenced them with a growl like a wolf. The silence was immediate. He turned slowly back to me, and a slow, broad smile spread over his hideous face.

“I know who you are,” he said in a voice that was every bit as cold as a Halloween wind. “You are Captain Ledger.”

And I said, “Oh shit.”

It is never going to be good news if a vampire knows your name.

“You are a traitor to your own people,” he said, “and an enemy of mine.”

“The fuck are you talking about?”

“Our friend told us,” he said, smiling so that I could see his teeth. Those teeth were scaring the living hell out of me. “He said that you conspired with Rasouli and the Red Order to keep us in chains.”

“I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about, pal. I’m here to keep this bomb from going boom. When I’m done with that, we can sit down with a latte and talk about it.”

I’ve always marveled at my own ability to be a smart-ass when there is neither a good reason to be one or time to screw around. It’s way high on my list of character flaws.

“Do you know who we are?” asked the leader. The other vampires had me completely surrounded. Ghost whimpered and shivered beside me.

“At a guess? Grigor, chief bloodsucker of the Upierczi,” I said.

He didn’t blink, just gave me a nod of approval.

“Then you’ll know what an honor it is to die by my hand.”

“That’s actually not on my day planner.”

His eyes cut left and right. “Bring him to me.”

The Red Knights closed on me.

“Ghost- hit! ” I yelled, but Ghost simply stood there. Trembling, drooling with terror. His bladder let loose and he peed all over the floor. Again.

Not exactly the response I was hoping for.

The Upierczi stared for a two count, and then they all burst out laughing.

“Oh shit,” I breathed.

The closest Upier darted in and kicked Ghost in the side. It looked like a light kick, but it lifted Ghost’s hundred pounds and flung him against the side of the bomb case. Ghost slammed into the hard metal with a terrible yelp of pain, rebounded, and fell. He lay whimpering on the floor.

The vampires laughed and laughed at Ghost, but they were looking at me. Red eyes and red mouths surrounded me.

I pivoted and shot the Upier who had kicked Ghost. I hit him in the balls because I wanted him to suffer. He screamed and fell, and the bullet punched all the way through him and hit another Upier in the thigh. Two down. Their screams were so high, so shrill that it wiped the leering smiles from every face.

I liked the effect, so I kept shooting.

I wanted Grigor, but two Upierczi threw themselves into the path of the gunfire and died for their king.

I shot the gun dry, and in the confusion I swapped out the magazines.

But I never had a chance to fire the gun. A pale figure moved toward me with such insane speed that I couldn’t bring the barrel to bear. Grigor. He swatted the Beretta out of my hand and it went spinning away.

He grabbed a handful of my shirt and pulled me toward him. I used the impetus to hook a palm-heel shot across his temple. It turned his head but it didn’t drop him with a sprained neck like it should have. All that I accomplished was to shake loose of his grip, though as we staggered apart the whole front of my shirt tore away, exposing the Kevlar vest beneath.

With a snarl he darted forward and punched me square in the center of the chest. The blow slammed into me like a cruise missile and literally plucked me off the ground and hurled me ten feet through the air. I hit the flat front of the bomb housing near where Ghost had struck, and a twenty-one-gun salute burst along my spine. My feet landed flat but my knees buckled and I went down hard on my kneecaps and then fell forward onto my palms.

One punch.

He was unbelievably strong. Far stronger than the one I’d fought at the hotel.

Jesus Christ. It was all I could do to suck in half a lungful of air. Kevlar stops bullets, not foot-pounds of impact.

Move or die, bellowed my inner voices. Cop and Warrior, both of them shouting at once.

As the king of the Upierczi came at me I launched myself from hands and knees and tried to drive my shoulder all the way through his midsection. I’m two hundred pounds and six feet tall buck naked, and that’s a lot of PSI to absorb.

Turns out, not only was he strong as a bull, he could fight. He caught my charge and with both hands and a pivot of his hips sent me flying again. I collided with a line of Upierczi and we all went down. The impact tore a cry of pain from me; they merely grunted. They were laughing as we hit the ground and cold fingers were suddenly plucking at me.

“No!” bellowed Grigor. “Leave him be. This one is mine.”

Disappointment flickered on their faces, but that was quickly supplanted by evil smiles. They shoved me to my feet and one of them even steadied me and slapped dust from my clothes. He gave me a friendly grin and a wicked wink.

“Thanks,” I said, then I flicked my rapid-release folding knife from my pocket and whipped the blade across his throat. It wasn’t my best cut, not even that deep, but the whole knife had been soaked in garlic oil. Mr. Friendly staggered back, clutching his throat while he gurgled a wet scream.

Everybody watched him fall, watched the blood geyser from his throat and then fade to a trickle. Then every set of red eyes shifted to stare at me.

I moved away from them and dropped into a fighting crouch, blade ready for Grigor.

“Garlic,” he observed. “Clever trick.”

“Come over here and let me show you how it works.”

We all had a good laugh over that.

The other Upierczi began circling me again, laughing, taunting me, pretending to lunge at me. Some-friends of the dead, I guessed-told me how I would die and what I would feel. Not really necessary-Grigor was about to show me firsthand.

He lunged in and swatted at my knife. I evaded but only just. He was wary of the garlic on the blade and his hesitancy allowed me some seconds of breathing room. I pressed that advantage, leaping at him, slashing and hacking with a dozen overlapping cuts. But all I really cut was air.

Then he faked high and came in low and wickedly fast. He punched the bicep of my knife arm and the whole arm went dead. The knife clattered to the floor. Grigor rose from his crouch and hit me again in the chest. Same place. Same effect.

I flew backward into the stack of packing crates, splintering the side of one that was the size of a refrigerator.

In the movies, these crates fly apart like they’re made of balsa wood. In the real world they become a network of sharp splinters and jagged edges that gouge into you, tear your skin and your clothing, and pin you like a butterfly on a display board. I was stuck fast, my shoulder caught as surely as if an alligator had its jaws clamped around it.

I couldn’t free myself. Couldn’t escape.

Smiling, Grigor stalked toward me as all around us the vampires howled in the darkness.

Chapter One Hundred Sixteen

Violin felt a small vibration in her earpiece and she tapped it.

“Go,” she said very quietly. The sound of the refinery in full operation was like thunder. Two sentries walked along a catwalk twenty feet below her.

“Daughter,” said Lilith, “listen to me. We have new intelligence. We’ve cracked the Book of Shadows. It has everything the Order has ever done. Names, places, dates. Everything. Mr. Church is going to coordinate a worldwide police action against the members named in the most recent entries. We are going to tear the whole thing down!”

“Oh my God!” cried Violin. “That’s-”

“There’s more. You need to find Joe Ledger right now.”

“That’s what I’m trying to-”

“No, listen. No matter what it takes, no matter who gets in your way- find him. Church is certain Grigor is there.”

“ What?”

“The device is unarmed. Vox helped the Upierczi obtain and position the bombs, but he withheld the activation codes until they gave him the full spectrum of a gene therapy to cure his cancer. Upier 531. Daughter, they’ve made Hugo Vox one of them. Now Vox is fulfilling his end of the deal.

Grigor is there to activate the Aghajari bomb. He has a device for it, a code scrambler. He has to be stopped.”

“I’ll cut his-”

“Listen,” said Lilith sharply. “The code scrambler has all of the codes on it. All of them, do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Daughter,” said Lilith, “we figured out where the other devices are. You have to get that code scrambler. If those other devices are activated… God.”

“Where are they?”

Lilith told her.

Violin had to clap a hand to her mouth.

Before another second passed she was moving. Leaping down to the catwalk, running nimbly along it, heading down toward the basement. Looking for Joe Ledger.

Looking for Grigor.

Racing to save the world.

Chapter One Hundred Seventeen

I bellowed my pain as I tried to wrench my flesh from the teeth of that shattered crate, but I wasn’t going anywhere. Grigor bent low, his body language becoming like some animalistic and predatory thing, vulpine, unnatural. His mouth was a wide, red slash in his pale face. He flashed out a hand and knotted my hair in his fist. Blood ran down my face, blinding my right eye, snaking hot lines inside my clothes. My arms were pinned by the jagged wood and I couldn’t reach my back-up knife clipped inside my pocket. He could have killed me right there and then. I knew it, he knew it. My life was nothing to him, an inconvenience at worst or an amusement at best. But he paused before going for the kill.

“Your world is going to die,” he snarled.

It was the kind of grandiose threat that might have sounded corny in pretty much any other circumstance. Not now. Vampires with nukes. Yeah, they get to mouth off any way they want.

The best reply I could manage was a wheezy, “Yeah… well fuck you.”

Not original, but effective. The effect was, however, that he pulled me halfway out of the nest of splinters and then slammed me back in, deeper.

“When the bombs go off,” whispered Grigor, “your own stupidity and paranoia will drive the nations together into a war that will devastate the earth. When the skies darken with ash, your kind will cower. When the fallout spreads, they will sicken and die. In the coldness of nuclear winter, the Upierczi will rise up and claim dominance.”

“Not a chance,” I said, but that was defiant bullshit.

His plan was a pretty good one. The war would probably start as soon as the bomb in Pakistan detonated. That government was conflicted and paranoid, and ever since SEAL Team Six popped a cap in Bin Laden on Pakistani soil, political tensions have been high and hostile. They would never believe that the bomb was triggered by vampires. I mean… who would believe that? Sure, I was a true believer right now, but I wasn’t going to be there to testify to the existence of monsters. No, the bomb there, the bombs in Iran and Saudi Arabia, the bomb in Louisiana, these were going to be seen as acts of war, and war would be the result. By the time anyone ever figured out what the hell was going on, the whole world would have become a hell.

And the Upierczi could live in a radioactive world. They were perfectly adapted-and genetically modified-to live in the world they were making.

The fact that this was all becoming crystal clear to me right now was a pain in the ass. Would have been nice to have put this all together back at the Arklight camp, and then sipped a beer while Church called in a multinational airstrike on Grigor.

As Church said, “If wishes were horses.”

“I thought you believed in God,” I said, fumbling for something to use as a lever. “How does this serve Him?”

“Read the Old Testament,” he said. “Our God is the God of vengeance and warfare. We are the new chosen people. We were chosen by Father Nicodemus and blessed by him in God’s name. Your kind should worship us.”

I had no answer to that. I’m not a theologian. So I again fell back on my old favorite. “Fuck you.”

Another pull and slam. Hard enough to rattle the whole stack of crates. A whole new array of burning points of pain blossomed where my body was pressed into the splinters. He leaned in close-not close enough for me to bite his nose, though-and snarled at me to worship him, emphasizing it with another shake. I was getting chewed up pretty bad by the splinters and blood was pouring down my body. I could feel it running out of my hair and down my cheeks.

“The Red Order thought they were working to maintain the faith,” said Grigor, his tone full of mockery, “but they polluted their own mission. When the bombs go off, every human who survives will be on his knees. Not the first bombs-no, that will merely start the war-but the three we have placed on the altars of faith.”

“What… are you talking about? Where are those other bombs?”

Grigor leered at me and the other vampires laughed. This was the heart of their plan, and the delight they took in it crackled through the air like electricity.

“We will strike the very heart of the faiths whose stupidity and superstitions have made monsters of my people, and whose pointless holy wars have done nothing but drive people away from faith. When I have drunk your life, Captain Ledger, I will send the activation codes that will detonate high-yield nuclear devices that we have placed in tunnels beneath Jerusalem and Mecca and the Vatican.” He leaned close. “Do you think that will bring the faithful to their knees?”

Chapter One Hundred Eighteen

John Smith lay prone on a catwalk and tracked a dark-clad female figure with his scope. He had crosshairs on her the entire time. His finger lay along the outside curve of the trigger guard.

Without moving he said, “Company’s coming.”

In his earbud, Top said, “One of theirs or one of ours?”

Before he could answer, a second figure leaped out of a place of concealment and landed right in the woman’s path. The second figure moved unnaturally fast and he whipped out a long, curved dagger.

One of them.

John Smith slipped his finger into the guard, but before he could wrap it around the trigger, the woman ducked under the swing of the knife and there was a flash of silver in each of her hands. The Red Knight seemed to disintegrate into a cloud of bloody mist. Part of him landed on the catwalk, the rest fell into the steam below.

“One of ours,” said John Smith. “I hope.”

Chapter One Hundred Nineteen

I thought I had heard the worst, most shocking things I could hear. I was wrong.

Jerusalem.

Mecca.

The Vatican.

God almighty.

The King of Thorns sniffed the blood on my face and then suddenly darted his head forward, his tongue slithering out like a snake’s to lick fresh trickles from my cheek. It was a horrible thing, invasive, intrusive on a level I’d never personally experienced before, and deeply disgusting. He took a second, longer lick and I tried to squirm away from his hot tongue running over my jaw and cheek and all the way up to the corner of my eyebrow.

He pulled back for a moment, and his smile was truly horrifying.

I think I screamed.

His face wrinkled in disgust and he spat out the blood, but then he smiled. “Eating garlic is an old trick. You have to do it for years before your blood is poison to us.”

He laughed, stretching that mouth wider still. I recoiled and thrashed and kept screaming. Then Grigor bent closer still and pressed his cold lips to my ear.

“Hugo Vox gave me a very special list, my friend. Would you like to guess what is on it?”

My heart froze in my chest.

“There are Upierczi in America. Even now, even as you die here, my brothers are heading toward Baltimore. Shall I tell you who will die?”

He whispered the names of my father, my brother, my sister-in-law, my nephew.

“If your brother’s wife is still fertile, we may let her live. Our birthing cells are waiting. But she will see her husband and child torn to pieces and consumed. ”

I howled in fury and tried to tear myself free of splinters. All I accomplished was to drive the jagged points deeper into my own flesh.

Grigor was not done with me. His lips moved against the flesh of my ear. “I can spare her. She will still die, but she can die quickly… and whole. You can save her. I offer you a chance to assure an easy death for those you love.”

“Go to hell.”

He slapped me so hard that I felt a tooth crack. But the impact shifted me in the nest of splinters. I felt one shoulder suddenly slide free, greased by my own blood. The rest of me though, was still trapped.

“I’m offering you a chance to save your family. Are you too stupid or heartless to listen?”

“O-okay,” I wheezed. “Tell me…”

“Pray to me,” he said. “Fall to your knees and pray to the King of Thorns. Pray to the Upierczi. Be the first of your kind to worship us and you will earn my mercy. That’s all you have to do.”

Around me the Upierczi had fallen into an expectant silence.

I closed my eyes and thought of my sister-in-law. Jenny. Beautiful, sweet-natured. A schoolteacher and mother. I thought of my brother, Sean. A detective, a loving husband, and father. And Sam, his son. Cute, smart as a whip, and an expert on all things baseball. He wanted to play third base for the Orioles when he grew up.

If he grew up.

My tears mingled with the blood on my face.

“Okay,” I gasped. “Okay…”

He moved slightly back, easing the pressure that held me within the shattered crate.

“You will be remembered as the first of your kind to-”

“ Fuck you,” I snarled as I tore my loosened other shoulder free of the splinters and clamped my right hand around his balls.

Full-fist grab, hard as I could, backed by all the terror and desperation that howled in my mind.

Grigor’s eyes flared wide and he tried to simultaneously back away and twist his body free, but I clamped down and held on with everything I had. I came out of the crate with a spray of bloody splinters, and hit him across the face with my left. Once, twice, twisting his nuts as each punch landed. His scream was so high and loud that stalactites trembled loose from the roof and fell around us.

So I spit right into his screaming mouth. There might not be enough of garlic in my bloodstream, but there had to be a lot of it in my saliva.

Even in the midst of his pain, he stared at me in blank surprise for just a moment.

Then he hit me.

A third straight punch to the center of my chest. My hands and feet went instantly numb. I lost my grip and I lost my ability to stand as the punch sent me crashing back into the crate. I hit the corner of the big one and spun off and down, landing on my face near my fallen flashlight. For a single burning moment I could not feel my heartbeat, and I was positive that the shocking force of the blow had stalled it in my chest.

I gasped like a dying fish and could not move.

The Upierczi had begun to laugh like spectators at the Roman circus, amused at my defense but delighted by Grigor’s apparent victory.

Then their laughter died.

My body seemed to be catching fire. My chest was a solid knot of agony. I collapsed down as the darkness closed around me like a fist.

Behind me I heard Grigor gagging and keening as he staggered away from me, but he wasn’t clutching at his groin. I could just barely see him through the gathering haze. He was clawing at his own throat. His pale face was turning red, and I could see his chest labor as he fought to suck in a breath. All he managed was a high-pitched wheeze as the allergic reaction shut down his upper airway.

It was the garlic in my spit. Maybe even what was in my bloodstream. He’d tasted my blood after all. I’d eaten a whole lot more of it than Ghost had.

At least I hurt him, I thought as I lay dying. At least I did that much.

Then there was a huge sound as Grigor suddenly dragged in that lungful of air. His chest and abdomen expanded with it and he blew it out. He took another breath. And another. His color was still bad, but my trick hadn’t been enough.

He looked at me and began to laugh. It was hoarse and phlegmy, but it was a laugh of triumph.

Well, fuck me, I thought. The trick hadn’t worked after all.

Then something came out of the dark and moved at me and across me and over me. A monstrous white creature that howled like a demon from the pit as it leaped into the air and struck the King of Thorns like a thunderbolt.

The vampire’s laughter turned into a terrified shriek.

Ghost.

Chapter One Hundred Twenty

Maybe it was that Ghost could sense me teetering on the edge of the abyss.

Maybe it was the sound of vulnerability in the knight’s shrieks of pain.

Maybe Ghost just plain had enough.

Whatever the reason, my dog had clawed his way back from helpless terror. His eyes blazed with bottomless animal hate, and his teeth flashed as he bore the King of Thorns backward into the darkness.

I think that’s when my heart started beating again.

The Upierczi howled in mingled shock and horror as their master went down with a white dog tearing at him. They hesitated at the edges of inaction, stepping forward but not attacking. My pistol lay on the floor and I wormed my way toward it. My chest was on fire and I knew that something inside was broken, but I stretched bloody fingers toward the gun.

Grigor tried to fend Ghost off, slapping and punching at him, but there was no art or skill in his defenses. He was absolutely terrified of Ghost. Of the fetch dog who had suddenly become the thing he and his kind truly feared.

Ghost tore at Grigor’s flailing hands, slashing with his fangs, biting. I saw a couple of fingers arc through the air trailing streamers of blood. Grigor screamed for the Upierczi to help him and suddenly they were moving, rushing forward, converging on Ghost.

I clawed the pistol butt into my hand, racked the slide, rolled over, aimed.

Sudden thunder filled the chamber. The whole line of Upierczi closest to me went down but I hadn’t fired a shot.

The Upierczi spun and looked up.

And more of them died as bullets tore through faces and chests.

I heard a voice, leathery and deep-chested, bellowing one word over and over again.

“Echo! Echo! Echo!”

And the slaughter began.

Chapter One Hundred Twenty-One

Charles LaRoque sat hunched in one corner of the limousine as it raced toward the border checkpoint between Iran and Kuwait. Forty miles and they would be out of the accursed country.

Across from him, Father Nicodemus appeared to be dozing.

LaRoque’s phone rang and he snatched it up, looked at the screen display, and punched the button.

“Where are you?” asked Vox.

“Nearly to the border. We’ll be out of the country in less than an hour.”

“Good. Things are going to hell here. Get out and lay low, and I’ll call you when the dust settles.”

“What about the bombs?”

Vox laughed. “You’ll know if they go boom.”

“Goddamn it, Hugo.”

“Look, Kuwait’s safe ground. Grigor isn’t targeting that. But once you get to the airport go somewhere really safe. Outside of the prevailing weather patterns. Fallout drifts, you dig?”

LaRoque glanced at Nicodemus, who was smiling in his sleep.

“How could so many things go wrong all at once?” asked LaRoque. “I thought you said it was all under control.”

“Yeah, well,” said Vox. “Shit happens.”

Vox was laughing as he disconnected, and LaRoque frowned. His father had trusted Vox, but his grandfather had not. Now LaRoque wondered which one truly knew the man.

“Father-?” he asked.

Nicodemus opened one eye. “What is it, my son?”

“That was Vox.”

“Yes,” said the priest, as if he had heard the conversation. Perhaps he had. He was sneaky like that.

“Were we wrong to trust him?”

“‘We’?” The priest smiled. “I wouldn’t say that we were wrong to trust him.”

LaRoque stared at him in puzzlement, confused by the inflection.

“I’ve always trusted Hugo. Ever since he was a boy.”

“What? But I… I thought… you said you didn’t know him before this.”

“Oh,” said Nicodemus. “Yes, that was a lie.”

“What?”

“I do that,” said the priest. “Lie, I mean.”

“What are you talking about?”

The priest gestured to LaRoque’s pocket. “Look at your mirror. Tell me what you see.”

Deeply confused, LaRoque removed the compact from his jacket and opened it. The top mirror showed his own troubled face, mouth turned down in a frown, brows knitted. Then he angled it to show the bottom image.

It was the priest’s face. It was not the first time LaRoque had seen the priest in his mirror, but there was something different about it. The face was much younger, less seamed and spotted. A healthy face that was nonetheless un healthy. Diseased in a different way. The face was grinning-the merry, devious grin of a trickster.

“Sir Guy was a trusting fool, too,” said Nicodemus. “That’s why I loved him. You, however, are a disappointment even as a pawn. I’ll have to find some new toys.”

LaRoque heard the words, but he could not tear himself away from the image. As he watched the trickster opened his mouth and blew out his cheeks in a huge exhalation. But it was not air that he exhaled; instead a burst of living fire erupted from between the lips of the face of the demon in the mirror.

Sixty yards above the limousine the Nightbird 319 stealth helicopter hovered without lights in the endless predawn darkness.

“Target acquired.”

A voice on the radio headset said, “You are cleared to fire.”

The pilot squeezed the button and launched a Hellfire missile. It struck the car in less than one second and a massive fireball blasted upward from the hard-packed sand of the Iranian desert.

“Target destroyed,” reported the pilot, his voice bland, detached.

“Return to base,” said Mr. Church.

The helo banked left and flew toward the Kuwaiti border. The ground-based radar looked right through it as it vanished.

Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Two

I struggled to get to my feet.

A minute ago I had thought that the whole world was sliding into the mouth of hell, but now a different kind of hell had come to this place of shadows. There were screams and Upierczi running everywhere. Flares popped in the air, painting everything in bright white light.

I took a step toward Grigor and my foot kicked something. I looked down and saw the code scrambler.

I bent and picked it up.

“Cowboy-on your six!”

It was Khalid’s voice, and I turned to see one of the vampires four feet away. I had no time to run. I didn’t want to run. As he slammed into me I buried the pistol under his chin and blew off the top of his head. We hit the ground and I lay there, Upier blood all over me. In my face, my eyes, my mouth.

I rolled over and threw up.

Grigor was still screaming. Then I heard a sharp yelp of pain and looked up to see the Upier fling Ghost aside. Ghost hit the side of a packing crate and collapsed, spitting blood onto the floor. I saw a couple of teeth, too.

That made me mad. Maybe I needed that to shake off the damage and the pain. I came out of my daze and finally the situation gelled in my mind. The Upierczi were rushing outward from me, some were seeking cover, most were rushing at Echo Team. Bunny and Top were at the foot of the metal stairs. Bunny had a combat shotgun with a drum magazine and he was firing, firing, firing. Everything that came at him died. The heavy buckshot soaked with garlic oil poisoned every Upier that wasn’t instantly killed by his blasts. The ones who took a few pellets staggered away, gagging and twitching with the onset of allergic shock.

Top was watching his back, firing a big Navy Colt automatic, the hollow points doing terrible work in the tightly packed crowd.

On the other side of the chamber, Khalid and Lydia were behind a packing crate, using it as a shooting blind to create a cross fire.

“Frag out!” Lydia yelled and lobbed grenades into the heart of the vampires.

The fragmentation grenades weren’t filled with garlic, but the blasts tore the monsters to pieces.

I saw three Upierczi running along the wall toward them, well out of Lydia’s line of sight. I raised my pistol but before I could fire the monsters went down, one, two, three, their heads burst apart by sniper rounds. John Smith, firing from somewhere I couldn’t see.

My knife was on the floor too, and I grabbed it as well. I shoved knife and scrambler into my pocket and tapped my earbud. “Echo, Echo, this is Cowboy. I have the football and I need a doorway out of here.”

“I have your back,” came the reply, but it wasn’t in my earbud. I whirled, and there she was.

Dressed all in black, splashed with blood, a wickedly curved blade in each hand.

“Violin,” I began, but she shook her head.

“No time.”

She lunged past me as several Upierczi rushed my blind side. Until that moment I didn’t understand what “gifts” the dhampyri had gotten from the cauldron of their birth. Violin was not as physically powerful, but my God, she was fast.

She met the rushing vampires, and even though I am trained to observe and understand combat at any level, I could not follow what happened. Her arms moved so fast, her body spun and danced as she threaded her way through the pack, the silver blades whipped with such frenzy that the monsters seemed to disintegrate around her. It was so fast that their blood hung in the air like mist. It was hypnotic and beautiful in the most awful way that perfect violence can be beautiful; and it was horrible because there was nothing natural about what I was seeing.

Violin was a thing born from rape, torn from a tortured mother by a monster of a father, raised in a culture of rage and humiliation. If it was possible for the concept of vengeance to be embodied in one form, then that’s what I was seeing.

The Upierczi did not understand the nature of their death. I could see that on their faces. They saw a woman-something that to them represented a thing to be taken and used and discarded-and they attacked her with the arrogance of habitual users. They expected her to fall. They expected her to be weak.

Then she spoke to them, a snarled challenge filled with hate. I don’t know what she said, or what language it was, but I caught three words. Grigor. Lilith. And Dhampyr.

The Upierczi recoiled in terror, and then she was among them, and strong as they were they fell before the precise and unstoppable fury of this daughter of Lilith.

She killed and killed and killed.

And yet, with all of that, I knew it wasn’t going to be enough. There were at least a hundred of the Upierczi in the chamber. More of them were seeded through the staff of the refinery. There were a handful of us.

We were going to lose this fight.

In my earbud I heard John Smith say, “Mother of God.”

And then I heard him scream.

I raised my gun, searching the catwalks for Smith. I saw him.

I saw what was left of him fall.

Grigor, bloody, torn, perhaps dying, stood on the catwalk fifty yards away. His mouth was bright with fresh blood.

John Smith struck the hard stone floor in a broken sprawl. His throat was completely torn away.

“ No! ”

I heard that scream of denial fill the air. From Bunny’s throat, from Lydia’s and Khalid’s. From my own.

Before I knew what I was doing I was running with my gun held in both hands, firing, firing. Bullets pinged and whanged off the steel pipes of the catwalk, but Grigor ducked away and fled out through an open doorway.

I raced toward the stairway, but Khalid was closer and he bolted up the metal steps in hot pursuit. Seven Upierczi saw what was happening and they leapt like apes onto the pipes and climbed upward. I emptied my magazine at them. One fell away. By the time I reached the foot of the stairs I had the magazines swapped out and I ran upward. I was still hurt, still bleeding. Maybe inside, too. My chest was a furnace and it felt like it was consuming me, but I didn’t care.

As I reached the top deck, the last of the Upierczi turned and blocked my way.

I put three rounds through his face and kicked his body out of my way.

Behind me there was another massive explosion, and I lingered at the doorway, knowing that the blast signature didn’t match our fragmentation grenades. I was right.

Smoke and fire billowed out of one of the tunnels and Upierczi bodies were flung backward. Then a wave of new figures flooded in. Thirty of them. Women.

Arklight. The Mothers of the Fallen come for justice. Of a kind.

The battle below became a bloodbath.

I turned away and ran after Khalid, the Upierczi, and Grigor.

Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Three

The corridor ran straight for a hundred feet and then jagged right, and I could hear shouts and gunfire. A Upier lay dead in the hall, his face shot away. A second limped toward the fight. I put a bullet in the back of his head and leapt over him as he fell. At the corner I skidded to a stop and whipped my gun around.

Four of the Upierczi surrounded Grigor in a defensive circle. They had muscled past Khalid somehow. They were bleeding. Grigor looked bad, but not as bad as I’d hoped. Maybe Ghost hadn’t done as much damage as I thought, or maybe drinking John Smith’s life had given his system a boost. Goddamn it.

Khalid had his gun on them, but he was seated on the floor in a lake of blood. He tried to fire his pistol, but the weapon toppled from his hand. He was alive, but they’d torn him to rags.

“Cap…” he tried to say, but blood dribbled from between his lips. His eyes were unfocused as he slumped against the wall.

I ran past him and emptied the Beretta into the crowd. The Upierczi huddled up to protect Grigor and my bullets tore pieces out of them. One went down, two, and then the slide locked back on my pistol. I don’t remember firing that many shots, but I was badly hurt and my brain was full of broken glass.

I tried to swap out the mags, but Grigor shoved one of the monsters at me. The Upier staggered in surprise, but he corrected his motion and dove at me. I drove the unloaded gun into his throat and heard the cartilage snap. His momentum carried me back, but I turned to shrug him off. I was clumsy with pain and my gun slipped from my bloody fingers.

There were two Upierczi left on their feet, but both were wounded. We all were. Bleeding and panting. They looked at me, at my empty hands, and smiled, showing me the jagged weapons that would tear the life out of me.

I whipped out the rapid-release knife and showed them my fang.

They rushed me.

In my mind was the image of Violin with her two knives, moving like a ballet dancer, elegant and balanced and wickedly fast. It was nice, but that wasn’t something I was capable of. Not at that moment.

When I rushed them it was awkward and dirty; it was rage with no finesse. But my blade was coated with garlic and that gave me my first real advantage. I slashed and chopped at them, cutting tendons, taking their eyes, punching holes in their throats. I used my elbows to knock their teeth out. I kicked their kneecaps off and stamped on their faces when they fell.

Not pretty, but it would do.

Grigor backed away from me. He was missing the pinky and ring finger from his left hand, and there were long gashes on his arms and chest and face. Ghost had tried his best.

He flicked a look over his shoulder. The exit door was fifteen feet behind him. If he made it into the refinery I had no chance to catch him. He had backup there, I didn’t. Even hurt, he could outrun me.

He should have run.

Instead he pointed at me.

“I saw you pick up the code scrambler,” he said. “Thank you for bringing it to me.”

“You want it, asshole,” I said, shifting my weight to run or fight, “come and take it.”

He really should have run. He would have won. Vox was still out there. Vox could give him another trigger device.

But Grigor’s hate was too intense. In that one way, we were alike. In that way, in that moment, hate mattered more to us than anything.

He rushed at me, once more swatting the knife from my hand with shocking speed. He punched me in the face. I tried to duck under it but the blow caught me on the forehead. The shock ruptured something in my neck and broke a bomb inside my skull. The air was filled with red fireworks that burst and did not fade.

I staggered backward, suddenly blind in one eye. Blood poured from my nose and I could feel it in my ears. Grigor came at me again, clamping his mangled hands around my throat. Even with fingers missing he was immensely powerful.

And yet… it was the wrong thing to do.

I dropped my chin as hard as I could, pinning his thumbs against my sternum. It wasn’t enough to stop him-he was way too strong for that-but it was enough to slow him down, to buy me maybe ten seconds more life. My heart was banging around all wrong, so I figured ten seconds was probably all I had left.

I only needed five.

I whipped both arms over his and boxed his ears with full-power blows of cupped palms. The sudden inward pressure burst his eardrums, and he screamed and let go, reflexively grabbing his pounding head. I kicked him in the groin as hard as I could, channeling everything I could muster into the blow. I thought of Lilith and the Mothers and every wretched thing they had endured. I thought of the threats he made against my sister-in-law, Jenny. I thought of all the women the Upierczi had tormented. I took all of that and kicked him with the tip of my steel-toe shoe. Over and over again. Without mercy. Without stopping. The impact shattered the underside of his pelvis, pulping any tissue that was in the way. His shriek went ultrasonic and he froze, eyes goggling in their sockets.

Nice targets.

I used my thumbs on those.

He fell screaming to the floor. I stood swaying over him. He was blind, broken. But as deeply as I looked inside myself I could not find a single splinter of mercy. Inside, a black voice howled from the cold furnace of my soul. The sounds of gunfire and screams echoed down the hall.

I bent close to Grigor and whispered in his ear. “A bunch of women are chopping your master race to pieces. Bet that really fucking stings.”

I straightened.

“This is for the Mothers of the Fallen.”

And I stomped him to death.

Somewhere along the way I went crazy. Broken things inside me shifted and there were bursts of color and walls of darkness. I could hear myself laughing every time a bone shattered under my heel. While I was in that bad, bad place, the damage in my chest and the damage in my head caught up to me. I coughed and spat blood on the wall.

I reeled away from Grigor and went toward the sound of the battle, but I kept hitting the walls.

I heard a woman’s voice. Familiar.

“Grace!” I yelled.

That’s what I thought I said, what I tried to say. But my words came out slurred as I wandered sideways on feet that no longer understood their purpose. I made it as far as the metal stairs, but when I tried to step down I forgot how my feet worked. I fell. Rolling, tumbling, hitting the metal, spilling and sprawling as the cavern swirled around me.

I don’t remember landing.

I thought I heard voices. More knights? No… was it the cold voice of Mr. Church speaking in the meaningless language of the knights?

My dead mother smiled at me from behind the stacked crates, her eyes weeping blood.

Rudy whispered in my ear, “I was so sorry to hear that you died, Joe.”

I said, “No!”

But the darkness said, “Yes.”

I fell forward into its embrace.

Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Four

I heard someone calling from the other side of a wall. The wall was a million miles high and made of darkness.

I thought I heard a woman speaking. She was close, kneeling beside me, whispering in my ear, but her words made no sense.

Then silence.

A moment later…

“Cap’n? Jesus, Cap’n… are you dead?”

I knew that voice. Male, gruff. Filled with emotion. But I had no label to hang on it.

Dead?

“No,” I thought, or perhaps I said it aloud.

Then there were hands on me. Another vampire? I screamed and tried to fight them off.

“Watch!” barked another voice. “Hold his arm. Hold him.”

My wrists were caught. One, two. Held, though I fought against it.

“Hold him!”

“I am holding him, Farmboy!”

“Christ, he’s a mess.”

I tried opening my eyes, but the world was filled with lights that were too bright to look at. Then someone forced my eyelids open and let the burning sun blast me.

“Look at his eyes!”

“They’re hemorrhaged. Concussion… might be a skull fracture.”

I wondered what that was. I knew that I should know.

More hands on me, under my arms, lifting. Pain was a defining characteristic of the whole universe.

“Watch his head.”

I heard a dog barking. Funny. I used to have a dog when I was a kid, but he died. How could he be barking now?

“He’s coming out of it… watch, watch!”

“Top, hurry the fuck up. They’re coming!”

A rattling sound. Loud pops. Some screams too. I wondered what movie we were watching.

“Warbride… get those cocksuckers!”

Pop! Pop! Pop!

I had the weirdest sensation, like I was floating along on just the toes of my boots. Gliding.

More pops and bangs.

“Go- go! I’ll hold them here. Get him out of here.”

No, I tried to say. I wanted to see the movie. I tried to pull away.

“Don’t let him go!”

“Juice him, damn it. Give it to me. I’ll do it, give it to me.”

There was a pinpoint of cold heat on the side of my neck.

And then nothing again.

This time the nothing was wonderful. If it was death, then I liked it.

Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Five

I woke up in a truck that smelled of diesel oil and fertilizer. The first thing I was aware of was pain.

Everything hurt.

Every.

Single.

Thing.

The worst was my head. It felt like the Hindenburg after the fire started. Even my eyebrows hurt.

I opened my eyes but everything was a pale and uniform white. No details at all.

My neck didn’t hurt as much, but I couldn’t move it. I couldn’t move anything. When I was able to separate the painful things that were my ankles and wrists from the bigger painful thing that was my body, I realized that they were held fast.

I was tied down. I could feel bindings across my chest, my waist, my thighs.

Panic surged in my chest.

Who had me? The Iranians?

The Red Knights?

My mind hit a wall going eighty miles an hour.

The Red Knights. What about them? Why was I afraid of them?

Sure, there was the goon back at the hotel, but he was dead. Had I met another Red Knight? If so… where? Everything was so-detached. I fumbled for pieces of my mind but they were slippery and they rolled away.

Where had I been? If I could remember that maybe I could figure out where I was now.

I told myself not to move. My inner voices echoed this.

Don’t let them see that you’re awake, cautioned the Warrior.

Remember your training, whispered the Cop. Observe first, gather intel. Process it, evaluate it. Assess the situation and determine your tactical position.

Position? Up shit creek without a paddle.

Then I felt a presence near me. It wasn’t exactly a sound; more of a sensation of awareness, as if someone was watching me and noticed that I was awake.

A voice said, “Cap’n?”

I had to concentrate to identify the voice. “Top…?” I whispered.

“Yeah,” he said and squeezed my shoulder very gently.

My eyesight came back slowly, slowly. It was dim and blurry, but I could see Top sitting beside me in the back of the truck.

“Where’s the team? Is everyone okay?”

“We got out,” was all he said. A few moments later he added, “Got a stealth helo coming for us. Be here any minute.”

I licked my lips, and Top put a straw to my lips and let me drink.

“Top…?”

“Yeah?”

“What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I move?”

There was a pause.

“Come on, First Sergeant… tell me.”

Top said, “You’re all messed up. You took a lot of-”

“Christ! Is my back broken? Is that why I can’t move?”

“No,” he soothed. “No. It’s your head. Lydia thinks you might have a skull fracture. Definitely a concussion, and a mother of one.”

“What does Khalid say, goddamn it? He’s the frigging doctor.”

Top’s face was filled with pain. “Khalid’s gone, Cap’n. You know that. You were there.”

But I didn’t remember.

“Gone? Christ, what happened at the refinery?”

“We got the scrambler. You did, you and Khalid. But…”

“But what? Stop screwing around and tell me.”

“Those knights. They killed some of the staff and took their places. They were rigging the whole place. C-4 charges on wellheads, charges all over. Looks like once the nuke was active they wanted to bury it under a couple million tons of flaming debris. Wouldn’t stop the nuke down there in the subbasement, but if we were an hour later we’d never have gotten to it. Not unless we knew the tunnel system, and we didn’t.”

“We stopped it, though, right?”

“The nuke? Yeah. Nobody’s going to set it off. Not now.”

I didn’t like the way he said that. “What’s wrong? What are you not telling me?”

Top sighed. He nodded to someone, and I slowly turned to see Bunny sitting at the back corner of the truck. There were tear tracks on his cheeks.

“Good to see you awake, Boss,” he said, but there was no life in his voice.

Top said, “Open the door.”

Bunny cut a worried look at me and back to Top. “Sure you want to do that?”

“Open it, Farmboy.”

With a heavy sigh, Bunny pushed the door open so that I could see the bright noonday sun.

Except that it was early morning and the sun was still behind the mountains.

The big smiling face of the sun was not that at all. It was the leering demon face of a mushroom cloud. Many miles distant but massive, and it seemed frozen against the darkness, like a brand burned onto the flesh of night. Not a nuclear blast, which is a mercy, I suppose. This was the entire Aghajari oil refinery curling upward in a fireball five hundred feet high.

I said the word that I didn’t want to say, asking it as a question.

“Violin?”

Top sighed.

“She and the Arklight team tried to stop the knights from setting off the charges. She… never made it out, Cap’n.”

I could feel all of the horror and outrage and fear of the last couple of days sear that image onto my soul. I knew that I would never forget it. I would never be able to forget it.

We had won, but we had also lost.