Demon (31 page)

“I understand.” Semyaza wept. “Thank you, Uriel.”

“You are welcome.”

“If I could go back and change what I did—”

“I know; I know. I just wish your brethren would see things the same way. Unfortunately, they have even harsher punishments in store for them.”

Semyaza said nothing.

“Farewell, Semyaza.”

“For good?”

“For good.”

“Well, then, farewell.”

Uriel's human form dissolved and transformed into a swirling ball of fire. It swooped in and wrapped around Semyaza. The Firmament radiated through Uriel and burned Semyaza to his core. Then the mighty seraph cast the fallen angel into the dark chasm for eternity.

T
he night came and went, and everything remained quiet. Mike had moved from the death spaces to the wardroom, where he passed out on the sofa in the lounge. The next morning, the crew of the
Rushmore
started moving back on board. Mike helped as long as he could until his body just gave out. Temms ordered him to bed and Mike concurred, after he got his bag back.

In his room, Mike slept for a full day.

When he woke up, all the bodies had been returned to the sea; and the ship was en route for Djibouti. It would have to remain in quarantine off the coast for a week rather than a month. Temms had told the president it had been a biological specimen and Mike had successfully found the carrier and disposed of it. A couple of days without further outbreaks seemed to convince the president the crisis had ended.

Mike decided it was time to tell his side of things to Glenn. But when he called him, he couldn't force himself to recount the story, as if he'd imagined all of it and didn't trust what he believed.

“I know you're holding out on me,” Glenn said.

Mike stood on the forecastle and watched the sun dipping near the horizon over the African coast. The salt air never smelled so good to him.

“I don't even know where to begin,” Mike said. “It's all pretty unbelievable.”

“Tell it to me when you get back to Langley. Get your thoughts in order. Write it down if you have to.”

“Langley? No desk job, right?”

“No desk job.”

Mike took a deep breath. “I'm not killing any more people. I'm done with that unless it's in the line of duty. No more assassinations.”

Glenn was silent for a moment. “We'll talk when you get home.”

“As soon as I'm allowed to set foot on Djibouti soil, I'll hitch a ride home.”

“Before you do,” Glenn said, “I want you to take a short detour to Iraq.”

“I thought—”

“Go to site R91. I want you to see what's there.”

Mike shook his head. “Glenn, I've already been there. I can tell you what's at R91.”

“Go to R91 and see what's there.”

The line went dead.

Mike looked at his phone and then the sea and wondered what the hell his boss was playing at.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

M
ike stood at site R91 under a blistering sun and in a whipping wind that pelted him with sand. All around him, earth-moving equipment groaned and roared, lifting soil and burying large pipes in the ground. The yells of crews interrupted the grind of machinery, barking orders in both English and Arabic.

In front of him was the pit that Semyaza's prison had been in. Now a large sewer line sat there. It had not fallen in like the piece that had freed the angel. Instead, it had been placed there, the branch of several lines coming together.

“What the hell happened?” Mike said. “Where did it go?”

Glenn had told him to come to R91 and see what was there. What he saw was one missing prison, gone, erased from the face of the earth.

“Can I help you?”

Mike turned and saw an Iraqi in a hard hat with safety glasses on staring at him. Sweat had soaked through almost every inch of the man's clothing. On his vest he wore a nametag: A. Haddad.

“Uh, yeah. Are you the foreman?”

Haddad nodded. “I have taken the place of the late Henry Prince.”

“Smart to hire an Iraqi.”

“The company felt it would help eliminate some of the information lost in translation.”

Mike smirked. “I was here not long ago investigating the massacre.” Mike pulled out his identification for Jeremiah Hosselkus. “There was a strange tomb down in this pit last time I was here. What happened to it?”

Haddad inspected his ID before saying anything. “It's gone.”

“I can see that.” Mike looked back down in the pit. “Did the Department of Antiquities excavate it?”

Haddad looked at him a little longer. “How much do you know about what was down there?”

Mike hesitated, then figured what the hell. “I was in it. Basically a box constructed out of this weird material. Like nothing you ever saw before. Strange writing carved into—”

The words stuck in Mike's throat as he noticed a tattoo on the foreman's chest. It wasn't noticeable at first. But when Haddad shifted his weight to his other foot, the collar of his shirt opened a little more, revealing the writing just under his collarbone.

Haddad caught what Mike stared at and closed his shirt. “I am afraid you must leave now. Employees only.”

Mike shook his head. “You're one of them.”

“I do not know what you are talking about.”

“Bullshit.” Mike got close, almost nose to nose. “I was here when your little group attacked. And they had those same tattoos. Just like the writing on the walls of that prison that has mysteriously disappeared. So you tell me what I want to know, or I'll take care of you right now.”

“Arrest me? On what charge? Too many tattoos?”

Mike smiled, the old reflexes kicking in. “Who said arrest?”

The foreman's face slackened and his eyebrows drooped. “You would not.”

“I was here that night, and it wouldn't be the first time I've taken care of one of your kind.” He didn't want to kill, but inflicting some pain wasn't sounding so bad. “Now tell me what happened to the prison.”

Haddad looked away, biting his bottom lip.

“Tell me.” Mike fingered the Spyderco in his pocket. “Now.”

“It disappeared.”

“It what?”

“Disappeared. Vanished. As if Allah's breath blew it away.”

“And the angel inside?”

“The what?”

“The demon, damn it. I know what was in it. Is it gone?”

Haddad shrugged. Mike gazed down in the pit.

“You have seen it, have you not?” Haddad said.

“Why do you say that?”

The foreman pointed at him. “You have a look on your face, like you are relieved.”

“You're not relieved?” Mike said. “I thought that was the whole point of your little gang.”

Haddad nodded. “I was raised on stories about my duty as a guardian. I did what was required of me.” The foreman pointed at him. “You, though, were a witness to it, were you not?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.” Mike smiled. “And I'm going to do some checking on you, friend. If I find out you were involved in that attack that night, this won't be the last time you see me.”

Mike turned and walked away, leaving the foreman stammering. He headed for his car, ready to put all the supernatural shit behind him. Ready to go to Langley.

Ready to do some real work.

 

 

A secret order at war with itself.

A Syrian official who wants to set the Middle East ablaze.

And all of them want nothing more than one unlucky CIA agent . . .

 

 

Read on for a sneak peek of the sequel,

GUARDIAN

on sale January 27, 2015,

from Harper Voyager Impulse!

An Excerpt from

GUARDIAN

CHAPTER ONE

M
ike Caldwell hadn't killed anyone in a couple of weeks. Hadn't wanted to, either.

Until now.

He sat in his Lincoln Town Car in the makeshift lot at construction site R91 outside Ur in Iraq, the A/C blasting. He chased dark thoughts away and tried to gain a handhold on calm.

Go back to site R91,
he thought.
See what happened. And I did. Just like Glenn said. What do I discover? The prison's gone. Up and pulled a disappearing act. Oh, and the site foreman also happens to be a tattooed asshole member of that wonderful group that tried to kill you not too long ago.

Speaking of which, A. Haddad, the site foreman, stood by a backhoe thirty feet away, talking on a cell phone, staring at Mike.

Probably calling his buddies.
Which meant he better get moving.
They might be after you. Come at you in numbers. And you're all alone out here.

But the dark winds swirled around him with greater velocity. Mike considered throwing caution to the wind. He rubbed his fingers and licked his lips. He wanted his flask. Longed for the burn.

You're a killer. It's what you're good at.

The old thoughts bounced around his head as the blackness pushed in on him. Haddad stood there in the infernal Iraqi sun, never breaking his stare. Daring Mike to add him to his closet full of ghosts.

Mike had made peace with his past. Locked the ghosts of his victims away. They would always haunt him, but he believed he could bear them. As long as he didn't add to their grim population. But now, looking at Haddad, part of him wanted to bump up the total. Stuff one more in the closet of death that was his head.

Enough.
He licked his lips and looked away. He typed the foreman's first initial and surname into his cell phone and pressed save. He wished he could have gotten a first name, but it hadn't come up before the conversation turned sour. All he could do was grab the name and initial off the foreman's nametag and make a promise to find out his role in the attack on R91.

Now leave.

But he didn't want to leave. He wanted to get back out and walk up to Haddad and put a round through each eye. One for Lowe and one for Greengrass.

Not now,
he thought.
You're burned. Get moving.

Mike shifted into drive and floored it. He'd had enough of R91 for several lifetimes. The rear tires spun, creating a cloud of sand. The Lincoln roared from the lot onto the main road leading from Ur to An Nasiriyah. He cranked the stereo and blasted Stevie Ray Vaughn through the speakers.

Just when he thought he'd put the last bit of craziness behind him, he learned not only that the prison had vanished into thin air, but that the guardians still circled the site. They knew the prison had disappeared, too. Haddad had said as much. But they were still here. Why?

Doesn't matter,
he thought.
Ponder it when you're in safe country and no longer outnumbered. Because you have no idea who else is out here besides Haddad.

Just because there wasn't a prison to guard anymore didn't mean the desert-dwelling assholes wouldn't try something stupid. It wouldn't be the first time. How many times had they been wrong so far? Well, one: they thought they'd been guarding a demon.

But it wasn't any run of the mill demon,
Mike thought. It was something more. One of Satan's very own. The assholes had it big-time wrong on that front. Not an Arabic folklore version of a demon at all. Nope, a fucking fallen angel.

Two, they hadn't even known the exact location of the prison. Just knew it was buried near Ur. So they protected a whole swath of land for God knows how many years. And the one time it did need protecting, when the construction crew dug it up and opened it by accident, they were nowhere to be found.

But it was all over now. Semyaza was gone. The prison had mysteriously disappeared. What did it matter anymore if Haddad belonged to the Ancient Order of Dumb Fucks or the Masons?

Mike's thoughts drifted to Greengrass and Lowe. Good men. Great Marines. The former now severely wounded and the latter dead, thanks to Haddad and his buddies. Maybe Mike wouldn't stop with Haddad. If he found out enough about the guardians . . .

Should have just killed him,
Mike thought, his grip on the wheel tightening. Maybe not kill—just a good throttling. Beat him within an inch of his life. Something to relieve the anger until he found out more information on the guardians. Let Haddad know how lucky he was to be alive, at least for now. He could have exacted a little revenge for Lowe and Greengrass at the same time.

Mike considered turning around. Only for a second or two. He needed to keep his priorities straight and
numero uno
on the list was getting out of Iraq and back to Langley.

“Fuck it.” Mike pegged out the volume. Stevie's long solo in “Texas Flood” reverberated around him. “Get back to work and put this shit behind you for now.”

The back window exploded into hundreds of pieces. Little bits of safety glass raked his right ear and the back of his neck. Mike swung the wheel hard left, swerving out of the line of the next rifle burst. He took a quick glance in the rearview. A dark blue Renault barreled down on him. An Arab with an AK-47 stood up through the sunroof, firing on full auto. Haddad's friends.

You took too long getting the fuck out of here,
he thought.
Doom on me.

Mike swerved right and then accelerated back to the left, cutting serpentine trails down the road. The pursuit driver, though, was experienced and matched his movements, keeping the Renault close enough for the gunner to unleash another dozen rounds. Most of them connected, blasting out the left rear window. Glass flew; other rounds pierced the door and ripped up the passenger seat, sending leather upholstery soaring around the cabin.

“Motherfucker!” Mike risked taking one hand off the wheel to grab his cell phone. He made sure it was still on with the GPS locator active. He texted code 9-9-9 to Glenn. Then he slipped the phone under his seat before grabbing the wheel again.