WRATH * VIII * WRATH Security Eliphaz had called another meeting for security. A man named Bradley Cunning had taken Kiss' place at the table, sitting in the first chair to Greggory's left. Also replaced at that meeting was Coldlove. A somewhat less friendly, but surely less cowardly, beast of a half-wolf named Sabre had taken his place. Bradley Cunning was an ex-Navy man. He'd been tossed out of SEAL training when it was discovered he'd put together a smuggling empire with which to keep himself busy on his free weekends. He knew helicopters, heavy machines, firearms, explosives, SCUBA, boats, attack dogs and field surgery. A veritable mind-well of destructive tactics, he was. Nothing had been said of his military career to Randy. Randy would've had to kill him for not being a Marine. The most notable feature of Bradley's face was the metal stud he wore through the side of his cheek: a surgical steel plug the size of a nickel, but thicker. Bradley had taken a bullet there, fired from the gun of an actual Miami Vice Cop. The bullet had entered his mouth and punched its way out through his right cheek. At the interview with Eliphaz he mentioned it only in passing when he was asked about luck: "Talk about luck?" Brad said. He fingered the plug in his cheek and began, with his soft southern drawl, "I'll tell you about luck, man..." But even by his own account it hadn't been all that dramatic; at first he'd thought he'd been stung by a bee. At the meeting's opening, Randy explained what had gone right and wrong during the mobilization after the breach of security. "I think," he said, "our problem was over-pursuit. We had one detected intruder that drew everybody. We had no plan for a decoy being used to cover up an attack by an enemy agent that had already been inserted. Of course it was really one of the last things we'd expected." "You have a plan to prevent this from happening again?" asked Eliphaz. "I do. We've implemented a more rigid structure for posts, assignments and who backs up who. Any one intruder will distract no more than six to ten men. The others will stay in place, in case the maneuver should happen to be another outflanking tactic." "Loyalty is of concern to me," said Greggory. "We can ill afford to have another Joey Price." "Or Kiss Nekro," said Brad. Eliphaz: "Kiss is another matter altogether. She wasn't just a question of loyalty or integrity. She was one of the enemy's agents. I should have caught her at the interview, before I joined her up. That was my fault. I wasn't expecting the enemy to be that subtle. I wasn't expecting the enemy to even pretend to be on our side for the sake of disguising an attack. Greggory, however, does have a point in mentioning Joey. The problem is how to keep the men alert to conspiracy without widespread paranoia. Any suggestions?" "I agree," said Randy. "'Watch thy neighbor,' is not a good philosophy to maintain. It disrupts unit integrity." After a few seconds of further, silent deliberation, Randy added a shrug and a raised eyebrow. "Well. It is a problem to consider. But we're going to have to put it on the back- burner for now. We have to move onward; I wanted to explain a little bit about the enemy. There have been rumors aplenty since Kiss' death. Most of these rumors involve her having been a demon." Randy chuckled. "Some of the guys claim that Mick, Mr. Chopper, said she didn't die until you tore her heart out and shishkabob-ed it on a screwdriver." Brad was barely able to keep his face straight as he said it. "That is correct." Total, awesome, silence. "She was a demon, gentlemen. More precisely, she was a demon champion. A Champion of Death. She was a Succubus. She was a wicked spirit that had grown fat on the stolen life of others. A vampire." "You're not kidding." "No. I'm not kidding, Bradley." Randy said, "I would laugh in the face of anyone but you, Mr. Montrego." "Greggory," continued Eliphaz, "killed her once with his scatter gun. I killed her once with a grenade -- losing my arm in the process. I killed her again, beheading her in the helicopter blades. But none of that was enough to keep her dead. We did have to finally tear her heart out. Right now, that heart is buried, in a jar, in the basement." Nobody had anything to say, so Eliphaz went on, "The only reason I'm telling you this, is so we can prepare." "Prepare for what?" asked Brad. "Prepare for the others. The other Champions of Death. The Magician, the Shapeshifter and the Animator." "Good God." "Our encounter with Kiss has shown us that the Champions of Death are not invincible. They can be overcome. But while we have reason to be encouraged by this, alone, we also must know that any victory we might have will not come easy." On Brad's face, it could be seen; his confusion, as he struggled to come to terms with his having been hired for fighting against the Champions of Death. Equally disturbing to him was the fact of his sitting at a table with three other men who were able to accept the fact so easily. And confusion was not all that he felt: there was suspicion too. He kept thinking the whole thing was part of some game or rite of initiation that the other three were playing on him. "I believe I have some information that could be of use when the Animator comes," said Eliphaz. "Wait a minute, man." Brad. "Wait a minute." The table offered him their attention. "Why are we waging war against supernatural characters here? I mean, this isn't normal. Things like this don't just happen, man. What do these Champions of Death want?" "They want to kill Greggory." "Why?" "He figured out a way not to die." "What?" "And if someone refuses to die by normal means, well then, extreme measures need to be taken. In this case, Death sent his champions." The look of bewilderment and disbelief stayed on Brad's face, but he asked nothing further. He silently mulled over what he had heard while the others went on talking. He wondered what the consequence of his having this piece of information was. "The Animator," Eliphaz was saying, somewhere in the background of his rambling thoughts, "specializes in haunted houses. Paranormal scientists and investigators believe haunted houses to be the work of several different classes of spiritual beings: poltergeists, phantoms, ghosts, but in reality, all those hauntings are just the work of one entity: the Animator. Noises, floating objects, apparitions, self-willed appliances, furniture and doors -- all animations. The Animator can possess any non-living object and cause it to act as though it were alive. Any non-living object." "What about the bodies of the recently dead?" asked Randy. "I believe it would depend on how recently dead they were. There are cells and tissues in a living organism that can live on, perhaps for as long as days, after the rest of the organism has died. In humans: hair and fingernails. I believe the presence of any life whatsoever would prevent the Animator from possessing it." "I was just wondering because when I was in Nam, there was this buddy of mine--" "Randolph. There will be time for war stories later. Let me say what I have to say before I become distracted and start rambling." "Yessir." "As I was saying, that is one thing I know about the Animator. He can only possess inanimate, non-organic, non-living things. Thinking further on the matter, I realized there was also one other thing we may know about him. There is one thing that all haunted houses have in common with each other." "Cold zones," said Brad. He spoke it like he was in a dream. "Exactly," said Eliphaz. He slapped the table with an open palm. Sabre's ears twitched at the noise. "The Animator is an unseen force, moving from place to place, but, it has been reported time and time again that as a person enters a haunted area he frequently encounters cold zones. I believe, therefore, my friends, that cold zones are areas that are showing manifest, physical evidence of the Animator's presence. They are places that the disembodied force of the Animator is passing through." "Could be," said Greggory. "Makes sense," said Randy. "Makes perfect sense," said Brad, but he was whispering and no one heard him. "All the sense in the world." "I think," Eliphaz continued, "if we tune up our thermal imaging devices and set them to alert us to the presence of a cold air mass, instead of just detecting areas of body temperature or higher, we will be one step ahead of our friend the Animator. We'll know exactly when he enters our range." "Good idea," said Randy. "Fantastic," said Brad. He was still whispering. The meeting adjourned. *** And this is what Mick said he saw... When he said it, he was drunk. He was off duty; tired looking. Fatigue made his eyes seem heavy and dull, and even the droop in his mustache somehow looked as though exhaustion were to blame. And, in fact, it had been forty-five hours since he'd last managed to get any sleep. So when he did say it, there wasn't much showing for his credibility. His eyes were shot over with blood, and his speech was slurred. He couldn't sit up straight. His uniform was wrinkled up like it had just been pulled out of the washer and then put on while still damp; but it didn't smell clean. Not like soap. It smelled like sweat... and fear. On the table before him, his dinner was sitting, untouched. He hadn't so much as picked up his fork yet, but his glass had been emptied many times over. Someone set him off. Someone. Just a voice at the table that said, "Jeez, Mick. You look like shit." And he sat there, silent for a while, nodding. Agreeing with that sentiment, but only barely. To a casual observer it may have looked more like he had a nervous tremor in his neck. He nodded, nodded, nodded. Like his head was mounted on a shaky spring. No one thought he was going to reply, let alone speak at length. No one expected at all what he was going to say. "Sometimes, you think you have it all figured out." That was how he started. And he started out soft and quiet, so people had to really listen in order to hear him. Listen, and even lean towards him. "You think you've seen it all, but sure enough, as soon as that thought comes to mind, life throws you a curve. Something you didn't expect at all. Something that makes you wonder about everything. And suddenly, you realize you don't have any of it figured out. None of it." And the way he paused, it seemed as though he were going to be satisfied having said just that. So somebody else at the table said, "What do you mean, Mick?" "I mean, what do any of us know about our employer? I mean, the Clefferts guy. None of us has even seen him without that robe on. You can't even see his eyes when he's in that get-up. Do any of us know what he's hiding? Do any of us know why we're here? What we're trying to protect him from?" He sat back for a moment, watching as shrugs and 'I don't knows' made a slow circuit of the group seated around him. There were mutters; non-comments. One man said, "It involves some kind of company spy-thing. Technology secrets." But at the silence his suggestion was met with, he felt compelled to add, "doesn't it?" after a couple of seconds. "Our man isn't hiding out from some jealous, Japanese tech-head, boys." More shrugs. More 'I don't knows.' The man who had suggested "technology secrets" said, "What do you know about it, Mick?" "No more than you do," said Mick, enigmatic, still speaking softly, but carrying a big interest. "But I seen something. Something with no natural, worldly explanation. That night we had the scare. With all the alarms that Price set off down by the kennels? I was the pilot that night. As soon as the alarms went, I started the copter, figuring on the standard evacuation drill, and sure enough, before too long, Clefferts himself comes up on the roof. He wasn't in any big hurry to leave, though. He seemed kind of casual, like the emergency may have been handled already. "Well. A second later, both Montrego and Nekro come up to the landing pad too. And they start to fighting. She's got this bowie knife, and he's got this strip of razor- wire or something, and they were going after each other. I mean really. There was blood all over the place. Montrego cut Nekro's arm off, and then he sliced her face up, like a piece of Polish sausage -- cut a chunk right away from the front. Took her nose right off. Then he tackled her, and he was straddling her, with his knees around her waist. And he shoved a grenade into her face." "What are you talking about?" "Slow down, man. Take a breath." But there was no slowing of Mick's tongue by then. He was primed and running; barely stopping for breath. "When everything exploded, Mr. Montrego's arm got blown right off. And Miss Nekro -- she was just all gone to smithereens. But a second later, she was back. All the bits of her body, they just got right back up and went back together, like someone had just glued her back. But she was naked then." "Hoo, Lord," said one man. Indeed, while it seemed as though everyone was having considerable trouble following Mick's narrative of the fight and the explosion, they could all understand Kiss Nekro being bare in the flesh. A round of hoots and hollers went up. Gestures meant to signify breasts and fucking went wildly around the table; fingers and mouths and hands all pantomiming obscenities. "You don't get it," said Mick, waving his hands; canceling. "Stop. Shut up. Stop. She wasn't no woman. She wasn't no woman at all." "You need to get yourself some new pair of glasses then, Mick." "Yeah," someone agreed. "It don't even take blurry eyesight to see that. She was all woman." Another round of hoots. "No," said Mick. "She wasn't no woman. She wasn't even human." He pounded his fist on the table to punctuate. He was so serious looking he forced them to silence. "She was like a demon or something." And when the mutters started up again, he yelled, "Shut up!" and evil-eyed them, with his drunk, bloody gaze, back into listening. "Montrego cut her head off with the rotors on the copter. Lifted her right up into the blades. It was like it was raining blood for a second. It came down all over the cockpit windows. But you know what?" Now no-one dared to interrupt. "She still wouldn't die. She kept right on fighting. Like the way a chicken keeps running even after you cut its head off. She wouldn't die. Clefferts came into the cockpit with me for a second, to grab the toolbox underneath my seat. Then he and Montrego cut Nekro open and tore out her heart. I could see it. It was still beating and everything. And it kept right on beating until they stabbed it with a knife and a bunch of screwdrivers. Like a shish-ka-bob. Then she was finally dead." For a time, there was quiet at the table then, as Mick's story settled on his audience. Finally, someone said, "Was that before, in the middle of, or after the keg?" The whole table laughed, explosively (except for Mick), though the comment wasn't really that funny. They were just looking for a way to break up the tension. A way to excuse, and brush away, Mick's crazy story that no-one wanted to think about. "Well, I don't know," said Mick. "I just know what I saw. And I expect none of you has any way to explain how Montrego lost his arm, or why Miss Nekro hasn't been seen around here lately. Do you?" The laughter subsided. "I thought so. You think I don't know how crazy what I just said sounds? You think I believed it any easier than you?" "A demon, Mick?" Chuckling. "I just know what I saw. But I can tell you something else too. This is just the beginning of it. Whatever it is. This is just the beginning. Big trouble is coming." Then, Mick, struggling to stand and walk, swaying as though being blown at by a gale wind, made his way out of the dining room. The rest of the men at the table watched him go. He was completely gone from sight before anyone spoke next: "Do you think he really saw Kiss Nekro naked?" And that got them all started again.

In an attempt to make this story manageable, I have broken it down into chapters, so it doesn't read as one page as long as a football field. Use these buttons to navigate through the chapters, and don't be fooled by the fact that Chapter 13 is called "The End". This story is 14 chapters long!