Reign of Evil

CHAPTER 25

As it turned out, she didn’t need to ward the entire hangar. Just the room they were using as Van Dyke’s cell and a pentacle she placed in a cleared space at the front of the room, beside the worktables that had been set up for her use. The golem head sat in a smaller pentacle surrounded by salt. It looked none too happy but couldn’t do anything about it.

The SEALs integrated themselves into Section 9 and were data mining. One set was to determine all the known mounds in England, trying to create an overlay they could use to predict the Wild Hunt’s next move. They were also still searching for CCTV disturbances. Finally, Laws was conducting an Internet search for any and all artifacts linked to the Tuatha Dé Dannan.

Walker had just come from the bathroom when YaYa approached him.

“Walk, can I speak with you?”

“You don’t have to ask, YaYa.”

The Arab-American smiled weakly. “Let’s get some air.”

Walker glanced at the others who were hard at work, then at YaYa. Something was bothering the man. Even if they didn’t have the time, Walker didn’t think they could afford not to have the time. The last thing they needed was for one of them to lose concentration in the middle of the action.

He and YaYa exited the hangar together. They left the flight line and found a path that led through a manicured lawn to a five-story chain-link fence. Like military men the world around, they soon found themselves in step with each other.

Finally it was YaYa who spoke. “Do you ever get used to it?”

Walker smiled easily. “Not sure I know what you mean?”

“That supernatural, early-warning radar you have.”

Walker flashed back to when he was a child, locked in a closet and possessed by the Malaysian grave demon. “It comes with a price.”

“Don’t I know it!”

Walker stopped and turned to YaYa. “Are you kidding?”

“I wish.” He related to Walker what happened when they went to get Van Dyke. “It froze me. It was as if the thing inside of Van Dyke reached inside me and turned off a switch.”

Walker shook his head. “It’s not like that. I know what you think you felt, but that isn’t it.”

“Are you sure?”

They resumed walking. “Absolutely. This is just new to you, man. For a long time it was new to me because I refused to deal with it. But you have the opportunity to hone it. To refine it and use it as a tool.”

“You don’t get it, Walker. I don’t want any part of it. Every time it happens I remember who I was and how that demon got into me and wouldn’t come out.” He held up his left arm. “I cut off my own arm just to try and kill it. To have even a shadow of a memory come back is… I just don’t want it.”

“I’m with you. But there’s no going back. It happened. You can either deal with it or crawl under your covers, suck your thumb, and never come out.” He put a hand on YaYa’s shoulder. “But then you knew that, didn’t you?”

He sighed. “I guess I just needed to talk about it.”

The path ended at the chain-link fence. On the other side was an antenna farm—hundreds of different antennae, all shapes and sizes, as if they’d grown from the loamy earth. The two men stared for a moment; then Walker turned to YaYa.

“I have an idea.” He grinned as he took off running back to the hangar. When YaYa caught up with Walker, he added, “If it works, we might be able to get to the Red Grove faster than we thought.”

They ran the rest of the way back. When Walker entered the hangar he was ready to tell Laws and Holmes his idea, but he never got the chance. Everyone’s eyes were focused on the multiple flatscreens they’d affixed to one wall. Each screen showed a different variation of the same story.

A refugee encampment in Blackpool was overrun by monsters. The CCTV cameras failed to capture any of them, but someone uploaded some camera shots containing some stunning, unforgettable images.

YaYa pointed to an image. “What are those?”

“Hounds from the Wild Hunt. Created from the souls of those who have been culled, molded into something unstoppable, something that makes the bogeyman look like the Easter bunny.”

A Frankenstein combination of man and beast, the beasts had human arms for their front legs, and the back legs of a wolf. Their faces were an amalgam, but the eyes that were set in a simian face were unmistakably human.

One screen displayed shots of a man being torn apart, a great hound chewing through his head as it stared into the camera.

On another, a set of hounds were disemboweling a downed man.

Another, a hound was dragging a child away by its neck.

And then yet another showed a side shot of a hound, its neck craning to look at the camera lens, stare right into it. The full shot provided exquisite detail of the mythological beast.

Walker choked back a sob. “Jen.”

It was in the eyes. She’d always had a sadness about her. She’d called it her old melancholy. He saw it there in the eyes. The human eyes. The eyes of his dead fiancée.