Weston Ochse: Reign of Evil

She got it right away.

She began to mouth indecipherable words as she reached out to touch Commander Holmes with her wand.

But he was prepared.

He pulled his pistol and shot her in the stomach.

She went down hard.

“Sam?” Laws screamed. “What are you doing?”

“It’s not him!” YaYa yelled above the chaos. “It’s Tuatha. They’re possessed. Walker and Holmes.”

Holmes spun toward YaYa, but the lithe young SEAL was ready. He grabbed the pistol with his prosthetic hand, stronger than any human hand and reinforced with titanium alloys; he twisted the weapon out of his commander’s hand as if it were a toy.

Holmes staggered and fell against MacMasters.

Meanwhile Yank had Walker down on the ground and disarmed him. Magerts came up and helped, bringing zip ties from his cargo pocket. He bound Walker’s hands in front of him, then his feet.

Laws had his rifle pointed at Holmes.

“Sam. What are you doing?”

Holmes blinked his eyes. “Tim, it’s me.”

A horn came again. This time it was closer.

YaYa noticed a bank of fog rolling toward them.

“How do I know it’s you?” Laws asked.

“Whatever it was is gone.” Holmes glanced around and saw the witch on the ground. “Sassy. Fuck.” He ran to her and pulled a QuikClot bandage out of his cargo pocket. He applied it to her wound and pressed to stanch the flow.

“If it’s gone, then where is it?”

Everyone began to look at everyone else.

YaYa stepped forward. “I can tell you. I just need to—”

“Marines, disarm these men,” ordered MacMasters. “I don’t know what kind of bloody shitstorm you’re trying to bring to the royal family, but I won’t have it.”

YaYa’s eyes narrowed as everyone turned their weapons on one another. SEALs against Marines. Magerts’s Marines against MacMasters’s Marines. Then Ian put a hand on Magerts’s shoulder.

“Marines,” Magerts called. “Follow MacMasters.”

The Tuatha had hopped from one person to the other and were now in command of the largest military forces in the area. YaYa finally saw them for what they were. This had been the plan all along. The SEALs were now outnumbered thirty to six. The chances were grim. With all the modern technology at their disposal and the latest gear, the SEALs had been outmaneuvered by the Tuatha Dé Dannan, a race of beings who’d slipped into the shadowy crags of mythology more than three thousand years ago.

In his mind’s eye he pulled up and out. His group of SEALs stood in the center of a circle, Holmes on the ground trying to save their witch. They were surrounded on all sides by Royal Marines, all pointing the working ends of their SA80s at them. In the distance came the fog and with it the Wild Hunt. And somewhere inside Sandringham Estate was the Queen. Myrddin and Arthur didn’t even have to kill her. All they had to do was possess her and have her abdicate her throne on national television. It would be a relatively peaceful coup d’état with no one the wiser that they’d entered an Era of the Tuatha, when Arthur would once again be king.

What the fuck was SEAL Team 666 going to do?

She was in a deep pool of pain, falling deeper and deeper. As terrible as the flechettes had felt, the bullet in her abdomen was far more awful, introducing her to an ache so profound, she found it hard to think of anything but fleeing from the pain. So she swam away from it, pushing and pulling her soul into a tight little ball where she could rock herself, much like she had when she was a little girl and Hitler’s buzz bombs roared across the London sky like nightmares made real.

She was only remotely aware of hands around her wound. She heard chaos, she heard angry voices, but she was too far away to understand them. But then a single voice came to her.

Sassy.

If she ignored it, maybe it would go away.

Sassy Moore.

She pulled herself tighter until she was cloaked in darkness, just like she’d been in the underground shelter, huddled with the rest of the children, each of them trying to be strong, trying not to cry.

Sassy Moore. You have the power. The wand. The Baen Sidhe. Use it.

How many times with the buzz bombs roaring overhead, their hiccupping journeys heard from even far beneath the surface, had she prayed she could stop them, keep them from doing any more damage? If only she’d had the same power back then as she had now. Fat lot of good that did her against the SEAL commander and his pistol. She saw him draw and heard it bark. Her soul flinched and she pulled in tighter still.

Sassy Moore.

Leave me alone, Garland.

Sassy. The wand. Use it.

Was she still holding on to it? In order to find out she’d have to unlimber herself and feel the pain once again. It seemed hardly worth it.

She felt warmth suffuse her.

I’m too far away to do more. Help us, Sassy. Help yourself. I’ll save the Queen.

She cursed and shot free from her body. Looking down from her great height, she saw the trouble for what it was. She saw the predicament and how she and the SEALs were about to die. She cursed again. This had better be worth it.

She shot back into her body and gasped as the pain she’d been striving to avoid hit her like a dozen buzz bombs, exploding into her stomach over and over. Her back arched. She felt a hand on her and heard the words, “Easy, Sassy. Keep still.”

Bloody fucking pain. She felt along the ground with her right hand until it found the cold iron of the old wand. She gripped it and pulled from it. The wand went from cold to warm as she sucked hundreds of years of built-up power into her body. She sent it swirling toward her wound and felt immediate relief as it began to bind and repair. She pulled harder, her will sucking at the essence of the Baen Sidhe. She worked yet another magic, empathetic magic, sending her pain to those around her, interrogating each of the men’s memories and forcing them to relive the worst pain they’d ever felt. For some it was birth, darkness, light, the transition to breathing air and the panic they’d felt as they left the sanctity of the birth canal. For others it was a gunshot, or a knife wound, or a broken bone, the ends of it pressing through flesh, the very air like acid to the nerve endings. Still for others it was a different kind of pain, a pain of the soul, like when a daughter dies or a wife leaves you.

Sassy hurled pain around her like water flung from a bucket, catching anyone not her. She snarled. She cursed. She gave every one a taste of what she’d felt and more. She sent them to a place where they too huddled beneath the London streets, mothers dead, fathers off to war, homes destroyed, and their entire universe the sputtering, doddering V1 bombs sent by Adolf Fucking Hitler to terrify and destroy.

The more pain she gave the less pain she felt until she was surging to her feet, whole once more, woundless, skin alive, hair moving to unseen winds. Her arms flung out. Everyone around her was on their knees or their backs or curled into fetal positions, heads down, mouths pulled into rictus masks as they relived their own worst moments as well as her own.

Then the wand was empty. She flung it to the ground and screamed.

From nearby came the sound of a hunting horn.

Her mission returned to her.

Garland, she said across her astral channels. I am back.

Good, Sassy. Very good. Now do what needs to be done.

She nodded. She was alive. She was free of pain. She had her powers. But what was it that needed to be done?

Then she knew. Without the wand to mask their presence with its own power, she saw the Tuatha and knew them at once. One was Merlyn and the other was Arthur. They moved from one man to the other, trying to confuse her, but she could see them perfectly, glowing from within, illuminated and pulsating.