"Dad's free, Mom," Julie said as she rocked a magazine into her rifle. There were flashlights approaching from all directions and the shouts of Hunters. Julie pulled back the charging handle and let it fly forward. "You're done here."
"Not yet, I'm not." Susan bent over to pick up the artifact, but Julie's bullet knocked it flying away from her hand. Susan snarled. "So that's how it's going to be?"
Julie took careful aim. "Yeah, I guess it is."
The bullet passed through nothing. Susan's bloody clothing fell to the ground as a thick gray mist rolled across the ruined cemetery. Within seconds the mist had mingled with the fog and rolled out of sight.
"Are you all right?" I shouted at Julie.
"I'm fine. Check Sam."
The burly Hunter was sitting down, pressing his hands against his side. I squatted next to him. "Sam? You okay?"
"Naw. . . ." He moved his hands. Torn sheets of Kevlar parted, and I could see inside his chest cavity. Desperate to protect his wife, Ray's blow had been so powerful that he'd cleaved right through the armor. Sam coughed violently and blood drenched his giant walrus mustache. "Shit, that hurts."
"MEDIC!" I screamed at the top of my lungs. Julie spoke into her radio, calling desperately for an orc healer. I wrenched open my first aid pouch and pulled out a pack of bandages. I ripped them from the package and stuck them against him. It was soaked useless almost instantly.
"Gotta lay down," Sam wheezed. I put my hand on his back and gently lowered him. "We . . . win?"
"Sure did, man."
Julie knelt at his other side, shining a flashlight at the wound. The vampire's claws had torn four terrible lacerations deep through him. Blood was pouring out. I was shocked he was still conscious. Julie looked up at me, a terrible knowledge in her eyes. "Hang in there, Sam. Gretchen's coming."
Sam's strong hand grasped mine. "It's all good, guys." Other Hunters surrounded us. A group of Feds found Agent Franks and called for a stretcher.
"Not Sam," Holly cried when she arrived. I glanced around the assembled Hunters. None of us could do a thing. Sam could have taken an injury like this in an emergency room and still not have had a chance. Holly began desperately cutting the rest of Sam's armor away. There was no way she was going to stop the bleeding in time.
"Figures it would be Ray. He always was a dick." Sam closed his eyes. His breathing was rapid and shallow. "I taught you kids good, though. Where's Milo?"
"Right here!" the little man shouted as he sprinted up to us. "Oh, Sam, no . . ." Milo dropped down beside me. "What happened?"
His eyes opened. "No biggie." Sam coughed. "Listen . . . brother . . . I . . ."
Then he was dead. The great heart simply quit beating. The hand grasping mine was suddenly still . . . just like that.
"Sam?" Milo asked. "Sam?"
We were all quiet. Finally Milo, trembling, reached up and closed Sam Haven's staring eyes.
Chapter 22
The mortuary became our temporary headquarters while we regrouped and figured out what was going on. Myers had not accompanied his men through the rift from Alabama but was in contact. With Franks incapacitated, Archer was in command. The thin man was pacing back and forth in the mortuary chapel, speaking excitedly into a satellite phone.
"No, sir. I don't see any way that we can cover this up. Negative. It's like twenty stories tall." The agent stalked back to the window. When the sun comes up, the town below us would surely see the giant alien tree. It was a secret agency's worst nightmare. Archer nodded as Myers gave him instructions. "Yes, sir. I'm on it." He closed the phone and started yelling orders. "Johnson, contact British MI4. They have an office in Auckland. They'll have to evacuate the town before dawn. Have them make up something about . . . anthrax or plague or something . . . hell, I don't know, maybe an outbreak of rabid sheep."
I was standing in the doorway, waiting. "Auckland? We're in New Zealand?" That would explain why my watch was saying that it was afternoon in Alabama; it felt like we were getting close to sunrise. That, and it had seemed unseasonably cool.
Archer glared at me. "What? I'm busy."
"Yeah, Myers sure does make it look easy, doesn't he? Keeping all those lies straight and all that. The man has a gift," I said. Archer frowned, waiting. "I was wondering if Franks . . . is he okay?" We had blown up a god together, after all. Now that's male bonding.
Archer actually smiled. He really wasn't a bad sort. "Franks will be just fine. It takes more than getting his spine pulled out to kill him. He probably won't even take sick leave. I'll tell him you asked."
"Thanks." I turned to leave.
"Hey, Pitt . . ." He stopped me, suddenly uncomfortable. "Just so you know, man. I was just doing my job. I didn't know about Torres. I really was just trying to protect you."
I nodded once, then left the young Fed to his damage control.
The Feds had taken the comfortable waiting room, leaving MHI the soaking wet and partially burned chapel. Our people had moved in to tend to our injuries and check our gear. The mood was chaotic and somber. Julie was sitting on one of the pews, wrapped in a wool blanket. She looked haggard, with big dark circles under her eyes. She gave me a weak smile when she saw me. I flopped down next to her.
"I just got some good news," she said. "Nate's going to be fine. He broke his leg when he fell down that hole and took a good whack on the head, but other than that, Gretchen's not worried about him."
"Good thing Shacklefords are so hard-headed," I responded.
She didn't laugh. "I haven't told him about Dad yet."
"Oh . . . okay." That was going to be hard. This would be the second time they would have to deal with his death, only this time, it was permanent. "Have the Feds found the artifact yet?"
Julie bit her lip. She seemed deep in thought. "No . . . not that I know of."
"Well, when they do, they better stash it someplace that nobody will ever find it. That thing's too dangerous. I hate the idea of them even having it, because eventually somebody is going to use it again. Anything else?"
She shook her head. "Amazingly enough, we've got a ton of injuries, multiple gunshot wounds, and one Newbie lost a foot, but we only had the one fatality. The Feds lost two pilots, but the other two lived."
"How's Skippy?"
"He's good. He managed to put the Hind down right side up. Not bad considering the tail rotor was gone. Minor injuries on the orcs running the door guns, but that's it. Skippy even thinks that we can fix it, provided we can ship it home."
"We're in New Zealand," I pointed out.
She nodded. "We checked GPS as soon as we stepped through the portal. By the way"—she pointed at my armor—"your patch is upside down." Sure enough, I had stuck it back on wrong after tearing it off Torres. I had been a little preoccupied at the time. "Will you look at that? Upside down, it's a penguin . . . swimming right at you. Never noticed that before."
Milo arrived and sat down next to me. He looked even worse than Julie. He and Sam had been friends since Milo had joined MHI as an orphaned teenager. He was holding together right now, but that was only because there was still work to do. "I checked. The magic rope's toast. Half of it is still stuck under that stupid tree, so I don't think I can turn it back on. Don't have the ward stone to juice it up either."
"How did you do that, anyway?"
Milo shrugged. "Couple of clever people, a killer deadline, and a mutant that happened to be familiar with the inventor's work. Esmeralda figured out how to turn it back on, and I said, why not splice it into a couple hundred feet of climbing rope and fly some attack helicopters through it . . . Seemed like the reasonable thing to do with a magic teleporter thingy. Then we took volunteers to go through it, and that turned out to be just about everybody who wasn't already banged up."
"Well, you guys saved my life. I'll never forget that."
"Don't ever forget Sam." Milo sniffed and blew his nose into a handkerchief. "Darn, I must be allergic to penguins or something, making me tear up and stuff. Well, if you'll excuse me, I've got to see about arranging transport out of here. I'm assuming most of us didn't bother to bring passports."
Milo walked away. I corrected my patch. "Does New Zealand have penguins?" I asked.
Julie shrugged.