Black_Tide (2 page)

On the monitors, a half-dozen Ramiels stumbled to their knees and smoldered. CNN, Al Jazeera, FOX, BBC, they all zoomed in as the charismatic leader who'd enraptured thousands faltered in his live speech at six different locations. Split-screen, the hacked signal broadcast the growing, shouting crowd around the blackened, demonic skeleton.

It looked up, crouched, and leapt.

The pilot jinked right, and the black form streaked past them, missing the rotors by centimeters. Skeletal wings spread, it roared and dove. Claws four inches long punched right through the door. The soldier scrambled in mad panic, a useless gesture in his flight harness. Matt helped himself to the man's service pistol and shot the claws, point-blank.

Shards of boiling-hot keratin ricocheted through the cabin, and Sakura cried out. Matt fired again anyway as the bolts holding the door shuddered and bent.

"Matt!"

He turned as Sakura tossed him his AA-12 combat shotgun. Behind him, metal sheared and air rushed in, loud even through the headphones.

Hovering twenty feet away, Ramiel spun and threw the door.

The pilot jerked up and it dinged off the landing skids with a shudder.

Matt took two steps and leapt into open space, pulling the trigger as he slammed into the demonic form. His standard-issue fin-guided fragmentation rounds had been blessed by a bishop, a dubious but cooperative rabbi, and an Imam, just in case—he had no idea if any of it did any good. They entered the joint where Ramiel's wings met his back and exploded.

Chunks of smoldering flesh spattered Matt with a sizzle, and as they fell his robe caught fire. He grabbed the damaged wing one-handed and put his feet on Ramiel's back, then twisted his body. His muscles bulged. He gritted his teeth against the strain. The bone shifted in its socket, and then the tendons tore free with a dry crackle. He let go and a gust buffeted the skeletal wing upward and away.

Wind drew the fire up his robe, and burning cotton mingled with the stench of smoldering hair. Feet on Ramiel's back, he pointed the shotgun down and pulled the trigger, full-auto. Round after round plunged into the falling angel, rupturing flesh and blowing apart bone, but it healed almost as fast as he destroyed it.

Matt braced for impact. A year ago, a thirty-foot fall wouldn't have even fazed him. This wasn't a year ago. Neither his reflexes nor his regeneration worked like they used to.

He bent his knees and used Ramiel's body as a cushion, then tucked to roll as they hit. A sickening crunch, and white-hot flame seared through his right leg. His head hit the ground and he saw stars. Writhing, he rolled to put out the flame, to get away from the burning rage underneath him.

He tried to crawl with his arms and left leg, his right one hanging useless behind him. Over the howling wind the demon shrieked, and over that the crowd chanted, "Efrit! Efrit!" Someone covered him with a blanket and beat out the flames, each impact an explosion of pain from his leg. He turned his head to the side, cheek against hot sand.

Ramiel stood, a withered wing clawing its way into reality where the severed one had been, the stench of brimstone smoking off of the malformed limb. At full height Ramiel stood four meters, a titan of charred bones glowing red from internal heat. It screamed at the crowd in a language Matt didn't know, something akin to but not Hebrew. Its voice drowned in the crowd's chant of rebuke.

It withered further, tendrils of smoke where blazing shimmers of flame had been. Wisps of ash fell from his crumbling skeleton as the crowd pressed forward into the sulfurous cloud of stench, burnt matches and charred bone. Matt panted on the ground, trying not to pass out as the pain in his leg faded to a numb burning sensation. The wind screamed, joining the demon and the crowd in its fury.

A vortex formed around the demon, an opaque, howling tornado of grit and sand, shot through with gouts of flame. The crowd dropped to its knees and with a single voice praised Allah for their deliverance.

Sakura's voice cut through the noise, and Matt realized he still wore his headphones. "Matt, you alive?"

"Yeah." He gritted his teeth against the pain and the whirling sand that seared tiny holes in his exposed skin. "Can't walk, though. Extraction requested."

"Be right there."

An eternity passed, then the world shuddered. As the helicopter landed, a streak of ashy mist shot skyward from the maelstrom. The wind died, the crowd stopped, and sand rained from above, revealing the morning sun under a pale blue sky. Matt hissed as someone lifted him by the shoulders, and as they dragged him to the helicopter he looked at where Ramiel had stood.

A sand-crusted pillar, still red-hot, stood like an obelisk in a pool of hardening glass.

"Is it dead?" Sakura asked through the headphones. Automatic weapons chattered in the distance. Something exploded in the distant city, the fireball rising into the sky.

Matt shook his head. "I don't think you can kill these things, not permanently. But it won't be enslaving anyone's mind for a while. I hope."

Back on the chopper, he watched the monitors as Sakura cut off his pants and splinted his leg. Ramiel, all of them, had melted, burst into flame, or crumbled to ash the moment the wind had stopped. Sakura didn't comment on Matt's frayed, light blue boxers with red hearts, a gift from Monica too many years ago.

"How's my leg?"

"Give it a couple days. You'll be fine."

He healed a thousand times slower than he used to. From a compound fracture to Olympic sprints might take as long as a week.

"How did you know?" the soldier asked them, his accent a thick Scottish brogue.

"Know what?" Sakura asked.

"That it'd work?"

Matt shrugged. "We didn't. Ramiel went out of his way for publicity, and the more popular he got the more power he demonstrated, so we thought maybe his growing power depended upon his worshippers. Expose him for what he is, and down he goes."

"Shit. What would've happened if you were wrong?"

Matt shrugged again. "I’d be dead, and the Earth would drown in a religious firestorm."

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph."

Matt leaned back and closed his eyes, letting the chopper's percussion sing him to sleep.

Monica Rowley looked up as the deck stairs creaked. She set down her tea, rushed to the door, put her finger to her lips, and opened it.

Matt grinned, his smile as dazzling as the day he'd first sat next to her in the middle school cafeteria, his face now more rugged, more handsome than she deserved. Muscles rippling under a tight T-shirt, black with the White Spruce Volunteer Fire Department shield on the breast, he flashed his eyebrows at her and tiptoed to the door. He slipped inside and slid the door closed, turning the lock after it shut.

"He just went down." Monica kept her whisper just above silence. Their son had taken his first tentative steps the week before, and the days since ricocheted between chaos and silence with no predictable pattern.

He kissed her, and she folded into his arms. They held the embrace in the doorway, and she breathed him in, Old Spice and gun oil, rugged masculinity.

"You didn't tell me it'd be on TV."

He tightened, as she knew he would. "I couldn't. Operational secrecy."

She tried to understand, tried to let it go. His job as a police officer had barely paid the bills, and validated him as the hero only on some small scale. He'd needed more, and signed up for augmentation. She understood. Monica just wished it wasn't so damned dangerous. She ran a hand through her hair, dislodging a chestnut curl.

He swept her off her feet and kissed her nose. "Nobody can do what I do, babe. Anyone else they sent in wouldn't have come out."

"I know. But I saw you on the ground—I mean, I couldn't see your face or anything, but I knew it was you on the TV, with your leg all broke up like that, and I couldn't take it."

He set her down. She stepped back and chided herself. They'd had this conversation before, a dozen times, and it all came down to the same thing. She'd support him, and he'd try to be safe, and she'd complain about it anyway because she couldn't help but worry. Not that they had much of a choice. As the last augmented human on the planet, the tattered remains of ICAP still owned Matt for another eight years. Minimum.

He shifted from leg to leg and bounced, an almost comical slow-motion dance, one eyebrow lifted in a "See?"

She sighed. A crippling injury for anyone else, an inconvenience for her superhero husband. She turned and walked inside. He followed her into the kitchen, the nook more used than their dining room.

"Coffee? Tea?"

He shook his head. "I'm good. Where's Ted?"

"Out back, sleeping in the sun. Been there an hour, easy. I'm not sure he can handle the strain of such an intense life." Lazy and lovable, their Basset Hound liked to bark at everything and nothing, and loved Adam with both his brain cells.

"Best not wake him, then."

She looked at the clock on the wall, a mail-order internet thing that chimed bird calls on the hour. "Amy's coming in twenty minutes. I should be back around four."

He appraised her sweat pants, tank top, and sports bra. "Kung fu?"

"Sifu's got another batch of prospectives, wants me to put them in their places." Nineteen adults from eighteen to eighty, each out to prove they're too good for the "Beginners" class, waiting their turn to get manhandled by a hundred-and-thirty-pound ass-kicking machine. If past experience held any indication, two or three of them might be right. "Not my fault their egos outmatch their ability."

Matt picked up the phone; spotty service in the Appalachian wilderness made a landline necessary, even in this day and age, even with a priority government job.

"Who are you calling?" Monica asked.

"Amy. No need to have her come this way if I'm home."

Monica chuckled, plucked the phone from his hand and hung up, invading his personal space so that her lips lay inches from his. "Don't be silly. You cancel on her too much and she'll stop saying 'yes' when we really need her." She set the phone on the counter and wrapped her arms around his neck.

"This is why I leave the important thinking to you, babe." He kissed her, a smooch, then something more. His hands wandered to her ass and she spun away.

"No time for that."

He glanced at the clock.

She followed his gaze, then grinned. "Can you be quiet and fast?"

"Fast I can do. Can you be quiet?" He picked her up and carried her to the bedroom without the slightest sign of effort.

"Let's find out."

*   *   *

Fifteen minutes later the doorbell rang. Matt winced and glanced at the nursery, but Adam didn't stir. Very little upset that boy, but he woke like his daddy, groggy and ungrateful. Monica answered the door, her hair a touch messier than when he'd walked up the deck stairs. Amy rounded the corner into the living room, a bottle-blonde knockout at sixteen, too young and too cute.

Your daddy's got to get a shotgun, and quick.

"Hi, Mr. Rowley!" She'd figured out how to beam with enthusiasm and whisper at the same time, something Matt had yet to master.

"Hi, Amy. How's school?"

"Good!" She prattled on about trigonometry and US history with far too many mentions of a boy named "Frank," then excused herself to peek in on Adam.

Monica leaned in from behind and pecked him on the cheek, her breath hot in his ear. "Bye. Back in a few."

She bit his earlobe a little too hard.

"Bye, babe. Drive safe, and watch for deer."

He watched her go, and part of him lamented the moral downfall of western civilization while the rest admired her ass in the too-tight sweat pants with JUICY scrawled in block letters across them. She caught him looking, blew him a kiss and slapped her right cheek, then disappeared out the door.

"Love to, baby," he muttered.

Amy came back in and sat on the loveseat, laptop in hand. He smiled inwardly at the lack of ear-buds—wearing them a strict no-no while babysitting—and watched her shuffle a stack of textbooks, an e-reader, and her computer into the optimum working arrangement.

She smiled, almost shy. "Are you going to be here long?"

He didn't have anywhere to go, but felt awkward staying home with the babysitter. "I've got a few errands to get to, so I'll be in and out."

*   *   *

His phone rang halfway to the grocery store, a number he didn't know with a Washington, D.C. area code. He pulled over, killed the truck's engine, and hit "Talk."

"Rowley. Go ahead."

"Sergeant Rowley, this is Lieutenant-Commander Roger Smith, SACLANT's office, authorization eight-two-seven-one-five-five-one. Got a minute?"

The daily code checked out, and Matt had all kinds of minutes, but he didn't much want to talk to NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic's office a half-hour after he'd gotten home from six weeks abroad. He had no idea how formal Smith might be, but Matt hadn't been a sergeant for more years than he had been, and the tired formality rubbed him wrong. "What's up, Roger?"

A pregnant pause told him everything he needed to know: Roger wasn't too keen on being "Roger" rather than "Lieutenant-Commander Smith." With ICAP's disintegration, Matt found himself without rank, command, or superiors. His reassignment to the Department of Homeland Security's newly created Special Threats Bureau came with no mission and no directives, but a shiny new ID badge that might get him out of speeding tickets. As the only Aug left in the world, the UN, NATO, and the United States never ran out of things "only he" could do.

"Mister Rowley, we have some disturbing news coming from an oil rig off-coast. I need you to report to NSA Mid-South for immediate deployment to the Gulf of Mexico. Your chopper leaves at eighteen-hundred, so get driving."

How quickly "sergeant" had become "mister." Even with lights and sirens, White Spruce to Millington, Tennessee would be a three hour drive, maybe more.

Screw this.

Matt rolled down the window to let in the late October air. "Monday work for you?"