Weston Ochse: Reign of Evil

“They were able to prepare the area. Those are from spell traps they’d put in place. Only reason I didn’t notice them was because of this.” She held up the wand. “It’s both a help and a hindrance. There’s enough power in here to help me defeat, along with the Baen Sidhe, most anything. But if detecting residual magic is what I need to do, then this gets in the way because all I can feel is this.”

“But they’ve never been to Sandringham Estate?”

“Not that I know of, plus the Royal Warlock would have taken care of it had he seen anything.”

“The what?”

“You heard me.”

“There’s a Royal Warlock? And why have I never heard of it?”

“It’s not necessarily for the English monarch. That’s just the way it worked out. The Warlock is assigned to protect the House of Wettin. This dates back to Theodoric the First in AD 900. He protected a coven of warlocks from persecution and so did his line all the way until the 1600s. In return, we vowed to protect the line.”

“When you say ‘we’ you mean…”

“The modern incarnation is the Fraterni Saturni, to which I belong.”

“But you’re not a warlock.”

“Glad you noticed. Let’s say I’m ex-official.”

He nodded. “Got it. What happened in the 1600s?”

“Praying Ernest, or better known as Ernest the First, Duke of Saxe-Gotha, was the first to allow witch trials and burnings. We lost many because of that ass.” She splayed two fingers apart and spit through them onto the aircraft floor, then said a few guttural German epithets.

“Elizabeth the Second is related to the Wettins?”

“Through patrilineal descent courtesy of Prince Albert, she is.”

“And your service to the family?”

“Returned when Queen Victoria invited our founder, Gregor A. Gregorius, to continue the tradition in 1900. He founded our order upon her command, revived the tradition, then made it public in 1928.” She spread her hands. “Thus is our boring history.”

“Anything but boring. This Warlock, are you on speaking terms with him?”

“I know Garland quite well. He doesn’t particularly like me, but he does respect me.” She frowned. “Unlike most of my fraternity.”

“Can you contact him and tell him we’re coming?”

She gave Holmes a shocked look. “I already have. He’ll be meeting us at the LZ.”

Holmes felt exasperated. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You looked busy running the show.” She smiled knowingly. “I didn’t want to get in the way.”

Holmes thought about that and would have called her on it if he felt it would do any good. “And have you brought him up to date on what we know thus far?”

She nodded. “I have.”

“And how are you able to communicate with him? Magic, I suppose?”

“Not magic. Astral projection.”

Now it was his turn to smile. “Of course. Astral projection. Makes perfect sense.”

She beamed back. “I thought so.”

Walker felt it inside him. It called itself Myrddin and felt like a giant fucking snail was laying a vile trail through his brain, only to spin into a millipede, scratching the sides with a million spiked feet, then to change into a neon-green dragonfly with razor blades for wings. It hurt so bad he wanted to cry, but the Tuatha wouldn’t let him do anything but sit dumbly, laugh at the occasional crack by Yank or YaYa, and act appropriately concerned for Laws’s awful face wound.

Was this what Van Dyke had felt? And to think he brought it into his body on purpose. Had it been worth it? If this was the Tuatha’s soul then Walker would rather bathe in a cesspool.

He felt it look inward at him, condescending, treating him less like a man, more like a child. It showed him a memory, except in this version he was out of his body watching. Walker knew the scene well. It was Subic Bay, 1985. His father was dead. His brother was gone. And he was possessed by a demon.

And there he was hiding in a pile of trash—Little Jackie Walker. The liquid from banana skins, coffee grounds, and rain-soaked rags seeped through his clothes, making him shiver. His teeth chattered. Beneath the soft skin of his bare chest he felt what could have been gravel. A rubber thrown away by a hooker on Llo-Llo Street in Barrio Barretto rested like a deflated sausage two inches from his nose. A wasp crawled inside, causing the skin of it to wriggle and jump. He felt rats crossing the backs of his legs. When they sniffed at him, he fought the urge to jerk as their whiskers tickled the soft underskin of his knees.

Feral.

Like a pig.

Or a dog.

He was wild and eager to gnaw on something that screamed.

Twice old men shuffled by, coming home from a day spent at the dump.

Each time he screamed like a dying cat. “Hoy! Hoy! Tanda! Halika. Sayaw tayo.” Hey! Hey! Old man. Come and dance with me.

Whenever the men would look over, he could barely contain himself with glee. Although they looked right at him, he knew they didn’t see him. He was invisible. He was like the air.

But then came the old cripple, pulling himself along with one withered arm, a hand gnarled like the fingers of a twisted branch. His skin was the color of old chocolate. He had a few hairs on his face and even fewer on his head. His eyes were the color of olive pits and were sunken into craters of wrinkles.

Jackie could barely contain his laughter as he leaped free of the trash and high into the air. Pieces of debris sprayed the cripple. Jackie screamed like a beast. He picked up an old hubcap and swung it as hard as he could. He caught the cripple in the side of the head. The cripple screamed. The slick metal slid off without doing much damage, so Jackie brought it around again, this time coming straight down with the hubcap on the crown of the cripple’s head. Blood exploded outward, the sight of it fuel for another swing of the arm. This time it came around in a flat arc, catching the old man beneath the eye.

“Hoy! Hoy!” he cried. “Dance with me, you fool!”

The cripple fell to his side, his mouth twisted into a curl of fear as he whined miserably.

Jackie growled and peed on the man’s withered arm. Then he turned and ran, giggling, his bare feet slapping at the ground, all the way down La Union Street.

And the memory dimpled his soul.

What was the Tuatha trying to tell him? That it wasn’t as bad as the grave demon? That it wasn’t making him do these things? Or was it trying to show Walker that he could be evil all by himself, because every time that memory rose to the surface, a part of Walker asked the question: Did I do it because I wanted to or because the demon made me do it?

Walker jerked. He realized Holmes was talking to him.

“Sure, Boss. I’m fine,” he found himself saying. “Just saving my energy.”

Holmes gave him a worried look, then returned his attention to Laws, who was just finishing a fentanyl lollipop.

Laws flashed Walker a smile and a wink, then touched the back of his hand to his patched facial wound. Worry found a home in Laws’s eye for a moment, then was gone as he began to work the slide on his pistol.

Walker turned to Hoover. As they stared at each other, Walker wondered how Hoover was dealing with the possession. Was the dog crying on the inside like Walker?

Then the helicopter began to descend.

YaYa felt the change in the pair. At first he’d written it off as nothing, but his new senses told him otherwise. Hoover wasn’t responding to him like she normally did. Sure, she was responding like a typical dog should, but then whatever was controlling her didn’t know the nuances of the SEAL team dog’s personality or the way she sometimes looked at you as if you were a lower life form when you made an off-color joke.