Reign of Evil - 03 (17 page)

On another, a set of hounds were disemboweling a downed man.

Another, a hound was dragging a child away by its neck.

And then yet another showed a side shot of a hound, its neck craning to look at the camera lens, stare right into it. The full shot provided exquisite detail of the mythological beast.

Walker choked back a sob. “Jen.”

It was in the eyes. She’d always had a sadness about her. She’d called it her old melancholy. He saw it there in the eyes. The human eyes. The eyes of his dead fiancée.

CHAPTER 26

CHICKSANDS RAF, ENGLAND. AFTERNOON.

Phones began ringing. Not just those belonging to Section 9 but also those carried by Triple Six. Everyone began shouting into a telephone. Pandemonium existed for twenty seconds; then they all hung up at roughly the same time.

Even as Ian addressed the group, the TV screens went blank. “That was the Home Office. They’ve declared a national emergency. They’re pulling all the footage and banning further broadcasts of any nature relating to it.”

“They can do that?” Yank asked.

Ian gestured at the screen, which went blank. “Just did.”

Preeti hung up another phone. “My brother’s been asked to monitor the Internet. He’s been given superuser privileges. If anyone tries to post anything, he’s authorized to remove it.”

“Same thing in the United States.” Holmes pocketed his phone. “The networks were set to run this. Senator Withers got the president to sign an emergency declaration. Last thing they need is to scare the average citizen. Better to think such things are sci-fi TV fodder than know that they really exist.”

“Even my mother called,” Trevor said, holding up his phone. “She was alerting me to the possible dangers of the Wild Hunt.”

Sassy Moore shook her head, a grim, knowing smile on her face. “I mentioned this before. It’s fear. They need it. The Wild Hunt grows more powerful because of it. Back before television, before cell phones, before the Internet, mothers told their children stories which scared them. It’s this sort of fear they’re trying to cultivate.”

“They’re not going to like that we’re blocking this, then,” Laws said.

“Shit’s fucking scary.” Yank shook his head. “Television or no television, people are going to be talking about it. That it’s no longer available for viewing is going to give it more power. Trust me. I’ve lived this sort of thing in Los Angeles. Rumor and gossip can be hells more powerful than fact.”

“Even if it’s not on British or American television, it’s going to come out,” YaYa said. “Something like this is too big to keep secret.”

“Yeah, but when it comes out, it can be discredited,” Laws said. “Look at UFOs. It’s to the point where national media covers strange-looking lights in the sky and no one gives it a second thought.”

Trevor stepped forward. “Wait a minute. Are you admitting that UFOs are real? That America is covering it up?”

Laws laughed. “See what I mean? The idea is already there even if I don’t say anything.” He turned to Sassy. “What we need is a way to get the Red Grove to come to us. If we could find them, it would go a long way to helping us stop the Hunt.”

Walker cleared his throat. “I think I have an idea.”

All eyes turned to him. Preeti saw the naked emotion on his face and made to move toward him, but Trevor held on to her and shook his head.

“Listen, the faster we can get this over, the faster I can make those bastards pay.” A lone tear rolled down his cheek. “Not just for Jen, but for all these others.”

“That’s what we want too, son.” Holmes stood motionless, but his words had a calming effect. “What’s your idea?”

Walker closed his eyes and remembered how he liked to watch her—the tilt of her head, the pursing of the lips. “It came to me when YaYa and I were outside. There’s an antenna farm about a kilometer from here.”

“It’s an old antenna farm,” Ian said. “Hasn’t been used for years, but no one wants to take it down.”

Walker opened his eyes and smiled grimly. “It’s not the place; it’s the idea. What if we lay a trap? After all, we do have the bait.”

Laws stroked his chin. “It would have to be somewhere defensible.”

“More than defensible. It would need to be a place where the Hunt couldn’t go.”

Sassy shook her head. “They can go anywhere.”

YaYa looked at her. “Not inside.”

She laughed. “They ripped my house down around me.”

“Then something a little more permanent,” Walker said.

“What about the National History Museum?” Sassy offered.

Laws snapped his fingers. “I love it.”

Yank narrowed his eyes. “The Smithsonian?”

“Did your mother drop you as a child? Not the Smithsonian. That’s in America. We’re in England, McFly.” Laws shook his head but kept his ever-present smile plastered on his mug. He turned to Ian. “I saw a special about the basement storage rooms at your National History Museum and how they’re discovering things that were right under their nose.”

“Spinops,” Preeti said. “They discovered a new species of dinosaur they’d had for a hundred years.”

“That’s it. The museum is perfect. It’s a public place, built like a castle, and the logical place for us to store something like a golem head.”

Holmes stared at Sassy. “Think they’d go for it?”

“Who they? The Grove or the Hunt?” Walker asked.

Holmes shrugged. “Does it matter?”

The witch nodded slowly. “At the very least, it would get their attention. If I were them, I’d be concerned that their Sidhe has returned to England. It’s much more powerful here. If loosed, it might just make it a point to do something to the Red Grove for keeping it away for so long.”

“Perhaps we can use the Sidhe, then,” Ian said.

Holmes nodded. “Perhaps. But for now, we’re going to see if we can’t get one of the grove members to pop their heads up so we can play Whac-A-Mole. Everyone get their gear ready. Ian and I are going to plan this.”

The teams began to move, but Preeti made them pause. “One thing that’s been bothering me.” Everyone stopped to stare at her and she blushed. She pressed a few keys to show the pictures from Blackpool. “These aren’t digital. They’re scans. See these edges?” She pointed to a white border around the images that was larger at the bottom than at the top. “These have to be Polaroids. Who uses Polaroids anymore?”

Laws and Holmes stared at each other. “No one,” they said simultaneously.

“So if no one uses them, then how is it that someone was using one at the scene of the last attack?” Preeti shrugged. “An attack that disrupted all the electronic image-capturing devices. Just asking.”

Ian put a hand on her shoulder. “Smart girl. You caught what everyone else missed. It could be nothing; then again she could have been put there to get pictures.”

Laws nodded slowly. “CCTV broadcasts were disrupted, but not still photography. Then again, no one really uses still photography anymore. It’s all digital. From our cell phones to top-of-the-line Nikons. That’s something to remember.”

“So if she was placed there, then she must be a part of the Red Grove.” Yank grinned as he looked at Laws. “Not bad for Marty McFly.”

Holmes held out his hand. “Everyone slow your roll. We’re piling on supposition and calling it fact because it’s so thick. Let’s work on the hypothesis that this was just a girl with a Polaroid camera until we can prove it.”

“You’re right, of course,” Ian said. “Preeti, see what you can come up with. She had to have signed a release or something for the pictures to be put online.”

CHAPTER 27

CHICKSANDS RAF, ENGLAND. NIGHT.

Preeti knew what she was going to do even before she sat down at her workstation. She’d waited until the team left, assisting them where she could. She provided the SEALs with digital schematics of the museum and basement. Their integrated electronics suites were incredible. It was a testament both to how well-funded the American military machine was and to how impoverished Britain’s had become.

They left her alone with only the tall Navy man to keep her company. Of course, he was really there to guard the prisoner, but she’d at least been able to pry a little out of him about his past. The cultural and emotional makeup of military men interested her no end. Before she’d met Trevor, she’d had her own ideas, shared by most of the public, that the people who ended up in the military were those who couldn’t do anything else.

Trevor had joined because his family had a tradition of service going back hundreds of years. Walker had joined to be like his brother.

Genaro Stewart, she now learned, had joined because it was the only way he’d be able to afford college. His intention was to stay in long enough to have his loans paid off, then get out, but he’d ended up liking the service more than any possibility higher education could unleash.

They all had reasons for serving. She’d originally joined to help out Trevor, to show her appreciation for what he’d done for her and her brother. But that had quickly changed as she came to learn that she enjoyed doing something that made an impact greater than she could alone. What she was doing had an effect on everyone in her beloved country. And to think she never would have discovered any of this had the hooligans not decided to target her and her brother.

Her brother had provided her a log-in screen behind his firewall. It gave her similar superuser privileges. While he was busy trashing links his algorithms found, she’d do a little detective work. She went straight to the CCTV database. Although the Blackpool cameras had been interrupted during the attack, they wouldn’t show any problems prior to the attack. For the woman to have been in place to take pictures at the right time, she would have had to have been there previously.

Preeti spent an hour cycling through Blackpool images before she found her. Wearing a white dress and with blond hair, the woman behaved as if she knew she was being filmed. She kept her face down and away from every camera she came near. Preeti didn’t have enough to run face recognition. But she had a better idea.

She walked the woman to the point at which the CCTV cameras were interrupted. She already had her camera out and ready, possible proof of Preeti’s theory. When the cameras started working again Preeti was able to find and follow her from camera to camera until she got in a vehicle. The first was a municipal bus, which took the woman to a bus stop on Church Street. The woman got off, waited for ten minutes, walked west for three blocks, then boarded another bus, which backtracked to Devonshire Square. Then she took yet another bus, this one all the way to Blackpool North Railway Station, where she got out and went inside.

Preeti sat back. This next step was a problem. She spent the next twenty minutes hacking into the British Transport Police servers, which got her access to the cameras inside the terminal. She was able to view live feeds but couldn’t find any stored feeds. After another twenty minutes she found out where they were supposed to have been.

Someone had gotten there first.

“Bastard.”

Preeti could always check the train schedule, but without a clear biometrically capable shot of the woman’s face it would mean nothing.

She rattled her fingers on the desk for a moment. Had she missed something?

Of course she had!

She checked the footage from inside the buses. She got access to the cameras and found where the files should have been stored.

Again. “Double bastard!”

Someone was covering their tracks quickly.

She needed to hurry.

Then she had a brainchild!

She went back along the woman’s route of travel and marked the location of each ATM and found one at Grosvenor Convenience Store that had the perfect angle. It took her a few moments to hack into it; then she was able to back through the photos taken during transactions.

And there it was.

Or at least, there half of it was. She had the upper half of the woman’s face, seen over the shoulder of a haggard-looking man withdrawing money. The rest of the pictures had buses or taxis in them.

Then she zoomed into one of the faces in a bus window in another photo. The route of travel from Devonshire Square to Blackpool North had brought the blonde back by the ATM for the second time. The woman was good, but she wasn’t as good as Preeti.

There, in the window of the bus, she could make out a full side shot of the woman’s face, even as she kept her head tilted forward so she could hide from the camera in the front of the bus.

Preeti collected the image, cleaned it in Photoshop, then uploaded it to her biometrics program. Then she set it to search. It could take a minute, or a day, or a month, or forever. At the very least, her program would scour the system for matching faces in both real time and storage. Her guess was that the woman—or an associate—had gone in and removed evidence of her in storage, so it would have to be in real time.

She stood and stretched. She went over to the fridge and grabbed a can of Coke. Genie sat at a nearby table watching a TV episode on his laptop.

“Want one?” she asked.

He did. She gave him one, then sat next to him, watching the episode run on the screen. She had no idea what it was, but it looked like nerds sitting in a living room singing songs.

“Want to hear?” He pulled out one of his earbuds.

“No. Just trying to clear my head.”

“This shit will do it.” He angled his head toward the back room. “Anything to keep from thinking about that back there.”

“He just looks like an old man to me.”

“Whatever that is inside him was out for a while back at Van Dyke’s house. I saw it. It looked like a stick man, walking in the shadows of his house. One minute it was there; the next it was a pile of sticks.” He shuddered. “Some things you just can’t unsee.”

He put his earbud back in and resumed watching the show.

Preeti sat there as long as it took to finish the soda. Then she got up, tossed the can in the garbage, and went to the restroom. By the time she came out, an alert on her screen was blinking.

Stewart stood beside it. When she came up behind, he said, “I wasn’t sure if there was anything I should be doing.” He pointed to the screen, which showed a live image of a woman in a long coat who was walking down a city street. “Is that her?”