ONSET (Book 4): Stay of Execution Read online

  David didn’t know what the Herald was, but he knew that it was bad news—and that the answer to the creature’s plan was obvious.

  If unpleasant.

  He grabbed her claws with his free hand as she lashed out at him, and thrust.

  Memoria sliced cleanly through the arm she tried to protect her stomach with, and then went straight through the succubus, impaling her and whatever monster she’d been incubating alike and pinning them to the floor.

  Stone slammed into David a moment later, granite fists smashing into the ONSET Commander’s back like hammers, but David held on, holding the enchanted blade in place and keeping the monster spiked to the floor.

  Three times, Stone hit him. He felt his ribs crack and re-form as he withstood his subordinate’s blows. A flailing blow from the succubus’s claws tore through his armor, severing the connection between his computers and his helmet as they stabbed painfully into his flesh.

  Then it was over, the demon collapsing into ichor around his blade…leaving behind a mostly formed shape identical to the bat-creature that had guarded the door, but one-tenth the size.

  Not a Pure. Not a creature of magic…but a demon born in flesh.

  And now dead on his blade. Stone had stopped hitting him, but as David lurched back from his sword, the full force of the dark energy in the clinic came rushing back into the tiny form in front of him. The corpse lit on fire, but much of the energy also hammered into David.

  He fell to his knees, vomiting again and again as the power tore through his body.

  Stone’s hand was on his shoulder before he collapsed completely, the big man yanking him back up to his feet.

  “We’ve got to get you out of here!”

  4

  Commander Michael O’Brien sighed and leaned his massive body against the desk in front of him. Johnston’s summary report was bad enough. That defeating this “Herald” had apparently knocked David White clean out was a bad sign.

  Someone knocked on his door, and the big werewolf slowly lifted himself away from the furniture.

  “Come in,” he barked.

  Major Traci Warner stepped into the room, looking as tired as he felt. Accompanying her was the strangest member of his own ONSET Team Nine: the red-skinned rebel demon who went by Ix.

  Off-Campus, Ix would wear a hat of some kind to cover the row of small white horns that formed a circle around his gleaming, hairless scalp, and use makeup to conceal the red tinge to his skin. Even on Campus, he would often take measures to soften the sight of his true nature.

  Perhaps especially here, a demon—even one on their side—was not a welcome sight.

  “Ix wanted to speak to us both,” Warner told Michael, taking a seat. “You saw Thirteen’s report?”

  “Yes. Any update?” he asked. “Is David conscious yet?”

  “Not yet, though the medics at the New York upstate facility say he’s going to be fine.”

  Once, the Office of Supernatural Policing and Investigation had been headquartered in New York City. Then a demon had used mind control to take control of the entire HQ and tried to break the Seal. That building was still empty, and OSPI operations were directed out of a dozen regional offices.

  The “upstate facility” was the original base of the OSPI High Threat Response teams before they’d been absorbed into ONSET. It had gone mostly unused after that, until the shutdown of OSPI HQ had required a new facility in the area.

  It was a pale shadow of the Campus, but it could support multiple aircraft and strike teams—and a fully equipped hospital with all the information Omicron had on magical diseases and healing.

  “What do you need, Ix?” Michael asked.

  The demon looked uncomfortable but shrugged.

  “I probably shouldn’t have seen it, but I asked Charles to give me the recording from Thirteen’s op,” he admitted. “He clearly figured I had a good reason, so he gave them to me.”

  Charles was the only dragon the United States was aware of being awake in the modern world. He also ran Omicron’s Internet security and much of their IT infrastructure.

  Every so often, Michael was reminded that the dragon didn’t quite agree with Omicron’s priorities on a lot of things. Apparently, their regular conversation on that point was overdue.

  “I am…afraid,” Ix admitted softly. “Five mid-court demons is bad enough. But I’m not even certain what this Herald is.”

  Michael winced.

  Ix—properly Ixiltanequestelanaerith—was a mid-court demon. ONSET wasn’t quite certain where he fell on that spectrum, only that the Pure was far more powerful than most mortal supernaturals. Toad demons were weaker than him, but from Stone’s report, the succubus and bat demon might have been his equal.

  The succubus had certainly done a number on both Stone and White.

  “If he’s as important as what Sinclair suggested, how are you not?” Warner asked.

  “You are thinking of beyond the Seal of Solomon as a world,” Ix replied. “As a single space. It isn’t.”

  The demon was still standing and he began to pace in front of the two mortals. Four steps one way, then four steps the other.

  “Beyond the Seal is just…potential. The Mantles lose everything except potential from it; all that sneaks through is power,” he explained slowly. “The Awakened, like Charles, left their memories in their mortal flesh here. All that’s beyond the Seal is, again, potential. But when they Awaken, they have all their memories from before.

  “The Pure lost everything,” he hissed. “The least of the Pure are most of what you have seen, and they have nothing left of what they were. The more powerful the Pure, the more self-awareness we kept…but it took truly mighty Pure to create anything resembling a place on the other side.”

  He shook his head.

  “It took the Masters centuries to work out how,” he pointed out. “The ‘places,’ the ‘courts,’ these are all illusions hosted in the minds of half-dead gods. And the lesser Pure are parasites upon their dreams.

  “There were once a thousand types of Pure. Demons, angels, spirits, nephilim, kami…all of these names and more.

  “But after centuries of nothingness, we remember nothing. The Masters remember only that they were gods, worshipped and adored…and now all they have are illusions formed of their own will, full of parasites with only a tiny existence away from the Masters.

  “They want their godhood back,” Ix said quietly. “But they don’t even know what that means. Given the chance, they would crush the world to make it worship them. I…‘lived,’ I suppose, in the demesne of one Master.

  “I knew his plans, his desires, but I am bound to obey any higher-court demon from the demesne of any Master…and I know nothing of a Herald.”

  “So, it’s a creature of one of the Masters?” Michael asked.

  “It has to be. But…a Pure reborn in mortal flesh?” Ix shivered. “I did not think such was possible…and such a child, such a demon, would be the key to undoing all that was done.

  “And if the Seal is opened, Commander, Major…the world will see war such as it has never seen. Once, some of the Pure sought to rule or destroy, but they were opposed by others.

  “Now…none of them remember who they were. They will all fight you.”

  5

  For a man who could regenerate from being blown up in under forty-eight hours, waking up hurting in a hospital bed was a disturbingly familiar experience. David recognized the antiseptic smell, the standardized hard mattress, the soft clinks and beeps of scanners and testing software.

  He kept his eyes closed while he cataloged himself. An IV in his forearm, running a saline drip to counteract dehydration. No injuries he could detect, and he didn’t have the ravenous hunger of the energy and mass debt that came from major healing.

  David slowly opened his eyes, glancing around the room to confirm that he wasn’t alone.

  “You, Commander White,” a familiar woman’s voice said calmly, “need to be more careful.”


  He twisted in the bed to find Commander Kate Mason watching him from the side of the room. The petite blonde Mage was the woman in charge of ONSET Fifteen—and her use of his rank warned him that they weren’t alone.

  She was also his lover, but that was something they were keeping under wraps as the world seemed to be going to hell.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “You tell me,” Mason said with a chuckle. “You killed that demon and collapsed. Stone got you back to the Pendragon—and then started throwing up himself.” She shook her head. “Local civilians were even worse off. The medical team had their hands full.”

  “Damn. Are they…?”

  “Folks are okay,” she promised him. “Well…that’s probably overstating things. Nobody else died, but a lot of people are badly shaken up, and everyone who was even near the building is on an IV as the medics try to control the vomiting.”

  “Is anyone on site to control the mess?” David asked.

  “My people,” Mason told him. “Tsimote and Dupond are playing backstop, and a helicopter full of Dresden commando vamps showed up.”

  David winced.

  “And Tsimote let them live?” he asked. Hiro Tsimote was a flame elementalist, one of Mason’s heavy hitters—and he’d been bitten by vampires in the past. The man was only so sold on the “new order” of the Arbiter’s Peace.

  Mason shook her head, a shadow crossing her face.

  “You saw that clinic,” she said quietly. “Even Hiro is prepared to admit when he’s facing a worse evil.”

  The door swung open behind her and a white-coated doctor bustled in. The black woman’s face was drawn and haggard, and she pointed a clipboard at David like a weapon.

  “You, Commander, aren’t supposed to give us heart attacks like this,” she snapped. “Your file says that any injury should be healed within twelve hours. We don’t expect you to be down like this with no physical wounds.”

  “How long?” David asked sharply, looking over at Mason.

  “Fifty-three hours,” she said quietly. “You’ve been out for over two days. Something hit you hard.”

  “And I need to examine the Commander,” the doctor snapped. “He’s our best lead on how to deal with the lesser cases.”

  “Lesser cases?” David demanded.

  “Your people were supernatural. They were hammered, nauseous, sick, but are recovering. People outside the building are much the same.

  “Mundanes inside the building…” She shook her head. “I’ve got eleven comatose patients, Commander White, and I’m hoping your recovery might give us and the Mages an idea how to get them awake.”

  He levered himself up and extended his IV-pierced arm towards her.

  “Whatever you need, doc,” he promised. “I can survive some jabbing.”

  After the doctor had finished taking samples of just about everything that could be extracted from a human body—including two small biopsies that healed almost instantly after they were taken—she stacked the samples up and shook her head.

  “I hope we can find some kind of answer here, Commander,” she told him. “These people didn’t deserve this bullshit.”

  “No,” he agreed. “I don’t know what you’re hoping to find, though, Doctor. I don’t produce antibodies or anything that could be used for someone else—and so far as I can tell, the effect is basically thaumic overload.”

  “Likely,” she agreed with a nod. “Which, given that none of our impacted individuals are Mages, is strange enough in itself. We have the same set of samples from when you were unconscious, however, and studying how your regeneration changed you to wake you up should give us a clue.”

  That made sense. David wasn’t a doctor, after all.

  “Thank you, Doctor…”

  “Freeman,” she replied. “Lily Freeman.” She shook his hand briskly. “I’ll do what I can to help these folks.

  “You, however, from what I’ve read on regenerators, need to sit down, rest, and eat,” she told him. “There’s a couple of people waiting to see you, but I’ve got a bag of takeout on its way for you.

  “You’ll move to that chair,” she pointed, “you’ll eat, and you’ll talk and you will not do anything more strenuous for at least ninety minutes. Understand?”

  He smiled.

  “Yes, Dr. Freeman,” he chirped brightly. He’d learned not to argue with doctors by now.

  The doctor clearly had a better idea of what a regenerator would need in terms of food after a major injury than David would have expected. Three large bags of takeout were promptly delivered to the room, and he inhaled the smell deeply.

  Of course, he hadn’t actually been physically injured, and the major source of a regenerator’s appetite was the mass deficit they owed the universe after rebuilding organs and tissue from nothing. He was surprised by how many of the thick burgers he did end up putting away, but two of the takeout bags were still untouched when someone knocked on the door.

  He was still in a flimsy hospital gown, but he suspected that Dr. Freeman wasn’t going to let him get anywhere near a suit or body armor until her ninety minutes were up.

  “Come in,” he instructed with a shrug.

  Kate Mason was the first through the door, accompanied by a second woman clad in form-fitting black body armor and a masked hood with a heavily tinted faceplate.

  If the stranger’s clothing hadn’t been enough to give away her nature, Mason quietly walked over the tiny window to the outside—the room was clearly in a basement or underground facility somewhere—and closed a shutter over it.

  Once the only light in the room was artificial, the stranger removed her hood and facemask, revealing an ivory-skinned woman with shoulder-length black hair and dark green eyes.

  “Commander White, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” she told him with a smile as she gestured, a chair sliding across the floor to her.

  “You have the advantage of me, miss…?”

  “Dresden,” she told him, a slight German accent catching the name. “Veronica Dresden. I am Caleb’s niece, an Elder and Mage of the Dresden Familias.”

  “Ah.”

  So, this was the Very Important Vampire who’d diverted her personal bodyguard to help out in Detroit. Not merely a member of the Dresden Familias but of Caleb Dresden’s family.

  “How may I help you?” he asked politely. He may have been critical in forging the Arbiter’s Peace, the “new deal” for vampires in America, but he still wasn’t comfortable with vampires.

  “I believe the question today is actually how may I help you, Commander,” she pointed out. “My commandos are securing the site in Detroit in cooperation with Commander Mason’s people. I, however, have spoken to my uncle and we have come to an…agreement.”

  “What kind of agreement?” David asked carefully, glancing at Mason. The other Commander clearly knew what was going on.

  Dresden smiled and offered a single printed sheet of paper.

  “Consider this my résumé, Commander White,” she replied. “My uncle and the remaining leaders of the Familias wish for several of our Elders to more directly support ONSET’s operations. I—and several others—are submitting our applications to serve as ONSET Agents.

  “My own preference would be to work for the man responsible for the peace,” she continued. “Not to mention the man who killed Tatiana Romanov.”

  David was used to regarding vampire faces as inhuman, but the wave of grief and anger that flashed over Veronica Dresden’s face as she mentioned her now-dead Romanov equivalent was all too human.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Tatiana killed my lover, a vampire about to swear the oaths of a Keeper,” Dresden said flatly. “He should have been sacrosanct, but she killed him to get at me and my family. You avenged him.”

  “Fair,” he allowed. “You understand that no one in ONSET really trusts your people yet?”

  “That is why we must serve,” she insisted. “The first to serve will bear the
harshest burden, and I judge it right that that burden falls on the sons and daughters of the core families. We are the strongest—and we are the most responsible for the war that has been fought.”

  So far as David understood, most of those actually responsible for the war were dead—along with, thankfully, everyone Omicron had actually been able to link known vampire atrocities to.

  The moderates had survived. The rest…the rest had died in nuclear fire at Crater Lake.

  He looked at the printout. It was identical to an Omicron Supernatural Assessment Report, the same document that detailed the powers of any of his subordinates.

  Veronica Dresden was almost as fast and strong and tough as he was—and almost as powerful a Mage as Kate Mason was, to boot. The starkly printed sheet might overestimate her abilities, but it could just as easily underestimate them.

  With how understrength their teams were, he didn’t see a choice. Plus, if he turned down a vampire team member, no one else would accept one.

  “I’ll take to Major Warner,” he promised. “The call isn’t entirely mine…but as much as it is, you’re in.”

  “Thank you, Commander White,” Dresden said with a bow of her head. “I understand how much of a trust deficit we must overcome to be relied upon to keep the Peace we have promised.”

  She shook her head.

  “Much of what we see today appears to have been set in motion by my grandfather as well,” she admitted grimly. “Marcus Dresden’s descendants especially bear a burden here. We will undo this, Commander. We will save our country.”

  Once Dresden had replaced her mask and hood and left the room, Mason crossed over to David’s chair and leaned down to clear away the takeout bags, the camera blocked by her back as she gave him a quick kiss.

  “How are you feeling, David?” she asked.

  “Back to fighting trim,” he told her with one eye on the camera behind her. “Where am I, anyway?”

  “The old HTR facility in upstate New York,” Mason replied. “Until we’re back up to strength, we needed a second deployment nexus, so they pulled the dust covers off and moved us in.”