SEAL Team 666: A Novel

tight as a drum. The skin had aged to the color of ochre, highlighting a mouthful of spiked teeth and fierce yellow glowing eyes.

Chi Long held a dagger in his right hand, and even as Walker watched, Chi Long pointed it to the sky that was beginning to brighten with the coming dawn.

Having seen what a sacrifice of blood could do to the contents of a single crate, Walker could only imagine what would happen if a thousand Karen did the same on the killing pitch.

Switching the selector switch to Fire, he took careful aim.

And fired.

A puff of dust exploded from the back of the demon’s head as the bullet tore through it.

He fired again, confused by the result.

He was rewarded with another puff of dust.

Chi Long turned toward him. As he watched, the holes made by his rounds closed.

The demon pointed at Walker. He felt its power from a hundred yards away. Then the demon curled its finger in the universal gesture of Come here.

Walker tried to squeeze the trigger, but found that his fingers no longer worked. The Stoner fell from his now paralyzed hands. Once again he was a child. The day was heavy with rain and he’d been walking home alone from school. It had begun with a whisper, one that he’d finally answered.

“Who is it?”

“Please,” came the low, soft voice from everywhere and nowhere at all.

“I can’t see you,” he’d said, such an innocent child about to be taken. “Who are you?”

“I am alone. I am lonely,” came the voice, now not so soft, sounding more like the crunching of broken glass.

Little Jackie Walker had felt the fear then.

He’d thought about running.

Maybe if he had, nothing would have happened.

Maybe if he had, his father wouldn’t have been killed trying to get payback.

Maybe if he had, he’d have lived the life of a regular kid with regular problems.

But he’d never know. He’d never know because he’d decided to be curious.

“Who are you?” he’d asked. “Where are you hiding?”

Then the words came in too many languages, sometimes all at once, sometimes separate. It sounded like a child. It sounded like a man. It sounded like a woman. It sounded like everyone and no one.

Then it said one word—“Jackie”—and everything went black.

Walker stumbled and found that he’d been moving toward Chi Long. He was less than a dozen feet from Chi Long and was unable to stop. He moved to within a half foot of the demon, who looked him up and down. He sniffed Walker, having to bend almost completely over to do so. Walker smelled the scent of hyacinth and death coming from the armor.

“Aaah, yesss,” said the demon. “We knew you once. You were ours.”

Walker’s eyes rolled into his head as he fought against Chi Long’s power. He didn’t know what the demon meant, but he needed to free himself. He had a pistol on his right thigh and a knife on his left thigh.

“Take this.” Chi Long handed Walker a long, wickedly curved dagger.

In Walker’s mind’s eye, he jammed it into Chi Long’s face, but in reality he found himself raising the knife and walking stiff-legged to where Laws was chained to a crate. Walker felt the impetus of the knife before it reached its destination.

Run, Laws! he screamed inside. Come on, man, please!

But Laws couldn’t move. He pulled himself to the end of his chains and made a furious face. “Snap out of it, kid!”

The knife came down slowly, piercing the skin of Laws’s arm, sliding through it ever so slowly.

Laws screamed.

Walker screamed on the inside. But it didn’t help. He walked around the other side of the crate and stabbed Laws in his other arm.

They both screamed again, inside and out.

Then he was forced to turn to Holmes. His knife hand rose, but then the control went away. Once again, he was his own. He turned to Chi Long in time to see a qilin spike buried in his chest and Yaya’s other hand coming around to stab him with another. Just as the second spike penetrated the demon’s chest, the demon screamed in outrage and flung Yaya away. Chi Long staggered.

Walker’s paralysis gone, he leaped forward and plunged the knife into Chi Long’s back. He started to yank it out and stab the monster again, but Holmes’s shout made him turn.

“Hurry, Walker!”

Now free of Chi Long’s influence, Walker shook his head to rid himself of the remnants of control, then hurried to comply. Each of the chains holding the other SEALs was held in place by a bolt, beyond their reach. But it was easy for Walker to release them.

They climbed down to the ground.

“What took you so long?” Ruiz asked.

Laws clenched his teeth as he ripped his shirt into strips to bind his wounds.

“Form a circle, SEALs. Here they come,” Holmes ordered.

Walker handed Laws the 9mm pistol and drew his own knife. The thousand or so Karen, who until this moment had been prepared to sacrifice themselves in order to give birth to the army of qilin, were climbing from their crates and running toward the SEALs.

“You’re fucking kidding me, right?” Ruiz asked the universe.

Then the first wave was upon them. The fact that they had to scramble around the crates made it so they all couldn’t attack at once. But the SEALs were in the thick of it. They dispatched the first four opponents without much thought. But more came on, and more after that. Fighting back to back, the SEALs’ only hope came from the fact that their opponents were completely untrained and simply threw themselves in their direction. One after the other after the other, they attacked and died, until the pile of bodies was higher than a man’s height.

For a moment, Walker thought they might be safer behind the wall of the dead, then he realized that now their opponents could jump on top of them. The other SEALs seemed to realize the same thing at the same time. They climbed on the crates they’d just evacuated, and Holmes and Ruiz got stabbed for their efforts.

Suddenly Chi Long was back. The spikes remained in his chest. He seemed weaker, but he still had command of his people. He shouted and they stilled, all eyes going to him.

Walker felt the power descend on him once more. He felt his loss of control and the power of another take him over. He turned and raised his knife. Facing Holmes, all he had to do was jam the knife into the man’s back and he would be irrevocably removed from the living. Walker took a step forward, then was launched sideways as a weight struck him. He fell hard to the ground, hard enough to lose the air in his chest and the knife from his hand. A growl erupted from the creature that had attacked him, but the growl wasn’t for him. Hoover! The dog launched herself at the demon, ripping with her teeth and shaking her head.

The demon howled and made a swipe at the dog with a taloned hand. It caught Hoover on the front leg. Blood spurted as flesh parted. The dog howled miserably, but hung on, even as the demon clawed at her again and again and again.

Holmes and Ruiz saw their chance. They leaped on the demon, grabbed the spikes, and jammed them over and over into any unprotected part of Chi Long they could find. He toppled onto his back, trying to defend himself against the naked fury of the SEALs.

Walker clawed his way to his feet and atop the fallen demon. He grabbed frantically at the creature’s hands and torso, but he felt nothing. He didn’t see any rings, nor did he see any bracelets. He had no necklace, no crown, nothing. So what was the focus?

With a roar, the demon surged to a standing position, throwing Holmes aside like a doll. Walker fell hard to