“If I was a man, it would be called taking charge or alpha male or something else good.”
Occam tossed my leaves to the ground and squatted down beside me, his throat exposed in what might look like submission, but I knew better. His eyes were laughing. “You trying to lecture me about women’s rights and misogyny, sugar?”
“No. I’m trying to say being bossy or an alpha isn’t a problem if I’m right. I needed to be on that side of the road to read the house properly.”
“Why?”
“’Cause tar tastes bad.” I drank down the water, crushing the bottle.
His eyebrows went up again, his burned one a little lower than the other. “Oh. I didn’t know that. And maybe I should have.”
“Yeah. Let’s go find Rick and tell him.”
“You’re in charge.”
“Now you’un jist messin’ with me.”
“Pretty much,” he agreed.
Rick wasn’t surprised when Occam and I showed up, all hot and sweaty and covered in beggar-lice. I told him about the vamps and the graves. The sheriff’s department had shown upand launched an RVAC, a remote-viewing aircraft, one with advanced cameras and sensors, and had seen the turned earth. They had also skimmed around the house and acquired infrared images through all the windows, giving them a head count of the living humans—fifteen. He and FireWind put their heads together, muttering, and wandered away, toward a group in front of the abandoned house.
The brass were standing around a makeshift table covered with house plans (which were on file with the county) and the security system (which had been provided by the company once a warrant had been delivered). They included the sheriff, the chief of the Highway Patrol, a TBI investigatory agent wearing suit pants and a jacket, and six SWAT team members in camo and laden with gear, most of it lethal. All of them were sweating in the heat.
The SWAT captain—Gonzales—was former military and opened the discussion with the words, “Listen up, people.” He held up four fingers. “Ends, ways, means, risk. Strategy is like a three-legged stool, with ends, ways, and means balancing a plane of varying degrees of risk. We create strategy based on known variables and face risk depending on how we use our resources and what the enemy does. We have weapons, we have tools, we have floor plans, we have personnel. What we willnothave is military backup before sundown. This is on us. Gather around!”
I yawned and ate an apple. SWAT and local LEO brass discussed ingress and egress and potential barriers and the proper times and places to use flashbangs, which were the perfect weapon against vampires, affecting their light-sensitive eyes and their better-than-human hearing. A well-timed flashbang was enough to knock an ordinary vamp on his butt for several minutes.
They also covered strategic choices such as bait and bleed, which would have meant letting Ming’s people attack and the vamps fight it out among themselves. This would have let the demon loose and maybe killed Rick. They decided to keep the local vamps out of the picture and go in before sunset, which was a good thing, as I’d have gotten myself fired warning Yummy. To no one’s surprise they decided on a blitzkrieg offensive with SWAT as the sole offensive wave.
Despite the fact that this was a paranormal crime scene, SWAT determined that PsyLED wouldn’t be going in until the scene was contained and the house was cleared, because the hallways were too narrow and the chance of getting in the way of people with lethal weapons was too great. I listened long enough before I shouted, “What about sleep spells?”
The SWAT captain looked my way and saw a skinny female in jeans and a T-shirt, with a pink blanket over her shoulder. He grinned, one of the patronizing expressions a big man sometimes gives a woman who he perceives as a lesser being.
I didn’t like his grin at all, and maybe I was feeling a little too prickly, but I scowled at him and said, “Kent, how many combatants did you take down last week with one spokenwyrd?”
T. Laine said, “I think it was twelve.” That got Gonzales’ attention. The captain looked from me to T. Laine and back, his grin fading.
“Magic keeps our side from getting hurt,” I said. “You walk into a magically protected site with mundane weapons and you may not come out again.”
T. Laine moved through the crowd, saying, “I’m Kent, a PsyLED witch. My intel says the vamps lairing in the basement have at least one very powerful sorcerer with magical protections and one daywalking vamp with superior mesmeric capability.Wyrdworkings like thesleepspell are not the only offensive or defensive weapons in my arsenal.”
Gonzales asked, “How long for my men to develop proper techniques with your arsenal?”
“Tell me, Cap,” T. Laine said, halting in front of the group. “You go to an operation and turn your weapons over to someone with less training and experience?” Gonzales scowled. “I didn’t think so. I’m a witch. I’m not giving you my weapons.”
I glanced at Rick and FireWind, their faces carefully blank, observing.
“Your whole, entire plan,” she said, “is mundane weapons against paras. You want a dynamic entry, rush in, fire a few silver rounds, round up everybody, and toss Jason to us. You have no contingencies except Unit Eighteen to deal with paranormal defenses and combatants. What if there are magical workings protecting the entry to the basement? What if they’reprepared to repel boarders with any and all magical means? Godfrey de Bullion is a daywalker capable of clouding human minds. What happens if he stops your men cold? You guys ready to be munched on? What if the demon gets free ahead of schedule?”
Every eye was on T. Laine. Her head was back, shoulders back, her nearly black hair catching the light. “FireWind? You got something to say? You just came from an interagency confab to discuss exactly these types of problems.”
The SAC East moved smoothly to the front of the group. “SWAT-Knox are top-notch against humans. But our evaluation suggests there’s a blind spot in your training. All your previous military experience was in the Middle East, where there are very few witches due to ethnic cleansing of anyone with the trait.” FireWind stopped about ten feet out from the SWAT team, his business casual clothes contrasting with the single long braid down his back, and with the military-style uniforms on the SWAT team. “All your paramilitary training since has been directed toward human targets and human situations. Here you have a mixture of human and para and you need Kent and the rest of us to meet your objectives.”
“So what’syourstrategy?” Gonzales asked.
“Limited incursion from front and back doors. Take it slow. Clear the humans in the upper part of the house before entering the basement. Let Kent detect any magical defenses. Take it slow. We have the time.”
Gonzales asked, “Former military?”
