Reign of Evil

CHAPTER 50

Laws scrambled up the second to the last step before the plateau of Cadbury Hill. Holmes was to his left with Yank. Walker and YaYa were to his right with Hoover. The witch was behind them carrying her thousand-year-old Viking wand and was madder than a wet cat inside a hornet’s nest.

Magerts and Ian and their men were posted at the road. They were to arrive on command, based on the lay of the land on top of the plateau. There could be nothing. Or there could be a whole mess of beegees just waiting for them to arrive.

When the men were in line, Laws pulled a peeper cable from his pocket and slid it over the edge of the hill. Nothing but grass. He moved it around but couldn’t see anything. Whether it was the lay of the ground or that nothing was there, he couldn’t see anything, which could be good news or bad.

A moment from when he was a child flashed into his mind. He’d been waiting for his father to come home, but it had gotten so late his mother had made him go to bed. She’d left the door cracked, so light came in from down the hall where she sat watching Johnny Carson. Little Timmy Laws could barely make out the words, but whenever Carson said something funny the audience would roar. He’d sat on the edge of his bed for an hour, eager to tell his father about the story they’d read in school that day—one about butterflies and dinosaurs and time travel and how the strangest things can affect the universe. Then the Carson show had ended and his mother had turned off the television and she’d put on a Burt Bacharach record. He must have fallen asleep, because he next heard yelling, his mother hurling epithets toward someone. The sound of a shriek was followed by footsteps thundering down the hall. Was it his father come home? Then a creature with the face of a mad ape sprang into his room and beat its chest and howled. Little Timmy Laws had screamed. Pee soaked his Spider-Man pajamas. He held trembling fists out, wishing so hard that his father had been there to protect him. Then suddenly the ape became his father as he removed a prop mask from one of the sets. His father came in close, smelling of whiskey and perfume. He whispered to his son that he was sorry, hugged him, then staggered out of the room. A week later his mother made his father move out, and Laws saw him less and less until it was only major holidays when he’d make an appearance, even though he just lived across town.

Laws wiped tears from his eyes. He sat down heavily. He didn’t want to fight. He didn’t want to be here. He wanted nothing more than to be nine again, before his father had an affair with the costumer, before his mother kicked his father out, before he realized that a scary plastic ape mask could change the life of a small child as efficiently as a butterfly crushed under the foot of a time traveler.

He glanced over and saw that Walker and YaYa were sitting like him, sobbing violently into their hands. On the other side Holmes stared into space, tears streaming down his face. Yank punched the dirt, crying, saying, “Can’t stop the burning, Momma, can’t stop the burning.”

The only one not in tears was Sassy, who stood transfixed, gripping her rod until it quivered, her eyes as far away and glassy as Holmes’s.

Then the feeling was gone, sadness replaced by a hollow, empty nothing. Laws sighed, realizing that he could never fill the hole that memory made in his soul. A single tear fell; then he wiped it.

“What happened?” Holmes asked roughly.

“Empathetic magic,” said Sassy. “They were all working together. I had a hard time stopping them.”

“Fucking asshole witches.” YaYa glanced around, clearly still in the clutches of whatever memory had captured him. “My father had me in a madrassa for two weeks before my mother found out. Ever been to a madrassa? It’s like being a Catholic monk, only I was ten. They took everything away from me, even my name. I was…” He wiped his face with the sleeve of his uniform. “Shit.”

Walker touched YaYa’s real arm. “It’s okay, brother. We all have memories we’d rather never remember.”

Holmes helped Yank to his feet. “Is that the last of it?”

“Takes a lot to put a spell like that together,” said Sassy. “I’d be surprised if they were able to repeat it. They might have something else up their sleeves though.”

Laws realized he’d been clutching the snooper cable tight enough to make his hand ache. He rolled it and shoved it into a cargo pocket. “At least it means we’re on the right track.” He’d hated Halloween masks for years after that episode. Ironic that he’d ended up in an occupation that put him into contact with real monsters. If he were a psychiatrist, he’d probably tell himself that each time he took down a monster he was taking down that version of his father in the mask who’d ruined his life. But then again, what did they know?

Holmes nodded toward the lip of grass. “Let’s do this.”

All five SEALs and their dog surged over the top. They never got above a squat before falling into a prone position. Even Hoover hugged the ground, ears alert, eyes searching.

Cold seeped from the earth into their uniforms and body armor. Laws checked through his sights and without them and didn’t see anything except for some low ground fog near the center of the plateau, where he knew the archeological excavation to be. Laws gauged the distance to be about 150 meters.

On command, the SEALs formed a wedge and moved in a tactical walk toward the center of the plateau, weapons seated in their shoulders, eyes gazing along the barrels. Hoover ranged in front of them. Sassy Moore followed behind, moving with her wand held up as if she were a disheveled shepherd, herding them across a high pasture.

They got fifty meters before a hound betrayed itself by baying.

The SEALs each dropped to a knee. Each one knew their quadrant of a 270-degree arc.

Sassy spoke from behind them. “I can feel them summoning power. They’re there; we just can’t see them.”

“Can you tell me where they are?” Holmes asked.

“What do I look like? A dowsing rod?”

Holmes sighed.

Laws had the same feeling. They just loved it when they had a smart-ass helping them. It made life so pleasant and so worth surviving for.

“What are we doing here?” Yank asked.

YaYa responded, “What do you think we’re doing here?”

“No, I mean, aren’t SEALs supposed to be near water, hence all of our water training? Kneeling on a plateau in the middle of BFE seems so out of place.”

“You’re out of place,” Walker said.

Laws gritted his teeth as the tension built. The air around him felt like the skin of a balloon filled past capacity. It was only a matter of time. “We’re a different type of SEAL. We’re pasture SEALs.”

YaYa laughed. “BFE. Usually stands for ‘Bum Fuck Egypt,’ but I guess we’re in England, so it fits.”

“Do you boys always talk so much?” Sassy sounded exasperated.

Laws knew it was any second now. “Only when there’s imminent danger.”

Two hounds rushed toward them. One from the right and one from the left.

Hoover squared with the one on the left, running full out for it. They met in midair. The heavier hell hound took Hoover down, its massive jaws clamped around the dog’s back right leg. Hoover twisted around and clamped her smaller jaw on an ear, ripping it off. Then she managed to bite down on the hound’s neck.

Yank and Holmes let their rifles fall, catching and hanging on their slings as they drew the gladius machetes.

Laws wavered between joining and watching his sector of fire. Holmes stood a few feet from him, and by the way he stood, it looked as if he could take on a pack of hell hounds single-handedly. And Laws hated that. Why was it that the rest of them had to work so hard, yet everything came so easy to Holmes? It was infuriating the way he could be so lucky. Hell, his own ire was shared by half the casinos in Vegas, Holmes’s hometown. Even they thought he was too lucky.

The other hound thundered toward them from the right. Yank held his gladius in his rear hand. The creature leaped. Yank sidestepped and brought the weapon down on its spine. The hound cried out as it fell to the earth. Holmes sliced off its head. Then the two pieces of hound evaporated.

Fucking Holmes. Like he wasn’t even trying.

Laws was aware his barrel had drifted toward the other two SEALs but didn’t care. After all, it was Holmes and Yank. Boy weren’t they a pair. Different sides of the same coin. On one hand you had the impeccable Holmes, King of Cool-Ass Luck, and on the other you had Shonn Yankowski, black on the outside and white on the inside. “Hell, he might as well be a—” Laws caught himself at the last moment. He’d pressed the trigger but rode the firing into the sky.

Holmes turned on him, eyes blazing.

Yank turned to Holmes, gladius raised for a killing stroke. Laws could hear YaYa and Walker shouting at each other behind him.

Once more Sassy saved the day.

The feeling of unreasonable anger passed, but it couldn’t stop Yank’s sword.

“Holmes!”

The SEAL team leader spun, catching most of the descending blade on his own gladius. The rest of it sliced into his arm, which immediately began welling blood.

Yank dropped his blade. “Oh shit. Sorry, Boss.”

“Let me guess.” Laws glanced at Sassy Moore. “Empathetic magic?”

She nodded abruptly, then continued her thousand-yard stare. Suddenly she went down as two dozen darts pierced her body.

Laws spun and spied what looked for all the world like a Gatling gun that had appeared forty yards in front of them… except this one fired flechettes instead of rounds.

Son of a bitch.

Simultaneously, more hounds bounded onto the plateau from where they’d been hiding in the archaeological dig. A line of seven Red Grove druids also appeared. All the while, flechettes ate through the air. Laws threw himself to the deck as three flechettes bounced off his armor, one dug itself into his face near his left eye, and five of the three-inch steel slivers lodged in his unprotected legs.

“Fucking hell!” he screamed with pain.

What was going on? The witch was down. Holmes was wounded. No telling what the other men were doing. And where was Hoover?

Laws’s hand had gone to the wound in his face and was now coated with blood. Still, he found his grip on his rifle, raised up a foot, and began to fire at the guy manning the flechette cannon. This was beginning to feel like a trap. Laws wondered where King Arthur was. Was he at the dig site? Was he even here?

The entire place felt wrong.

Then came the sound of helicopters.