"Tom, where are you going?" Stopping and turning around, he saw Keith, who had a pistol and wasn't looking very friendly at all.

  "To order everyone to stand down. Now put that pistol away, Keith. They see you with a gun, I'm sure they'll shoot."

  "Who, Tom? Who is going to shoot me?"

  "The paratroopers who were just dropped on top of us. Apparently you did something you weren't supposed to be doing. Didn't you?"

  "I haven't done anything I shouldn't be doing! I'm keeping us safe from these animals! These unnatural beasts! They have to be stopped! What do you think they're going to do after they rid the world of the demons? We're next, I tell you!"

  "Put the fucking gun down, Keith, or I'm going to bitch slap you into next week!" Tom yelled at him, and taking a step forward, he raised his right hand.

  "Stop right there or I'll shoot! You're a traitor! We need to order everyone to fight, we need…"

  Tom suddenly realized that things here were a lot more fucked than he'd suspected. Taking the remaining two steps to close the distance, he backhanded Keith hard enough to spin his head halfway around.

  Of course he got shot twice in the process, but that wasn't the worst of his problems. Oh, no, the worst of his problems was that as soon as Keith's now dead body stopped sliding from the force of his blow, it started to twist and grow.

  "Oh, I am so fucked…" he growled and back-peddled away from the demon taking shape on the floor. "The president is going to have my balls for this!" Pulling out his phone, he hit the speed dial for his secretary.

  "Tom! What's …"

  "Shut up! We've got demons! Tell the paratroopers we've got a betrayer over in section C-9, by the conference rooms!"

  Tom stuck his phone back in his pocket and continued to back down the hallway as the betrayer slowly got to its feet and came at him. Suddenly he was grateful his wife had decided she wanted a werewolf for a husband. Otherwise he'd be dead for sure.

  #

  "Sean! We've got reports of a betrayer demon up by the director's offices!" said the paratrooper Sean had tagged along with as they moved to clear the building and round people up. He hadn't bothered to set his comms up for the channels the paratroopers were using—he hadn't trained with them, and he didn't want to step on their toes by stepping in the middle of their chain of command.

  "Where is that?"

  "C-9."

  "Where's that?"

  "How the fuck should I know?" the paratrooper replied, then looked a little embarrassed.

  Sean grabbed one of the people they'd been herding towards where they'd set up a holding area.

  "Do you know where C-9 is?"

  The guy was shaking like a leaf.

  "Y…ye…yes!" he said.

  "Good, tell me how to get there."

  "What!" he almost screeched.

  "Don't make me shoot you. Now, lead!" Sean said and pushed him forward.

  "What do you want me to do?" the paratrooper asked as Sean took off after the fleeing man.

  "Keep doing what you're doing, have somebody send some help up!"

  The guy in front of him kept glancing over his shoulder; obviously the sight of an eight-foot-tall werelion armed to the teeth was the only thing keeping the guy moving.

  Sean could smell and hear it before he got there.

  "Okay, you can leave. Keep your hands up and do as you're told so no one shoots you," Sean said. Coming around the corner, he saw a werewolf in tattered clothing using a broken chair and a flagpole with a ragged banner on it trying to keep the demon off him. The amount of destroyed furniture on the floor behind the betrayer demon showed how hard he'd been fighting, but the dozen or so office workers cowering behind the werewolf showed that he'd been at least partially successful, as there were no dead bodies.

  "Sean!" the werewolf said, looking relieved as Sean raised his gun and put several iron bullets into the djevel's head, blowing it to pieces, and causing it to drop.

  "Do I know you?" Sean asked, keeping an eye on the djevel as it slowly dissolved.

  "Tom Matthews, used to sit in on the president's meetings. I'm the guy your friend gave the laptop to."

  "Oh, right," Sean said with a wince.

  "Sorry about your friend. Steve told me all about it."

  "Un-huh. So what do you do here?"

  Tom sighed. "I thought I was in charge, but things have been squirrelly here the last few weeks, then suddenly one of my people tried to kill me, and after I broke his neck." Tom gestured at the still dissolving djevel. "The president is gonna have my balls."

  "Oh, I think you've got a lot more pressing worries than the president or your balls right now," Sean growled. "I'm here now, after all."

  Tom sighed. "Yeah, but the worst you can do is kill me, Sean. The president can bust me back down to clerk and send me to our station in the Outback. Gods, I hate Australia! Everything there wants to kill you."

  Sean rolled his eyes. At least the First wasn't here to hear this, or the laughter in his head would be insufferable.

  "How'd you know we had demon issues?"

  "I didn't," Sean growled, "but I knew you had traitor issues, and I'm going to go through all your employees until we've checked every last one of them. Karen Taite is in league with a magic user, using them to dominate other intelligence analysts, and to hide things the djevels are doing in the DEZ."

  "Oh, shit. Maybe I should ask you to kill me," Tom said with a heavy sigh, looking down at his feet. "The wife is gonna kill me when I get fired."

  "Tom, if you don't get a grip, I swear I'm going to rip your arms off and beat you like a two-dollar mule," Sean growled.

  Tom took a deep breath, nodded, and stood up. "You're right. Tell me what you want, and I'll get it done. Karen hasn't made it back here yet, not that I've been told. That's her boss over there, dead on the floor."

  "Well, that explains a few things. As for Karen, we picked her up 10 minutes ago. We've got her on ice until one of my mind mages can take her apart."

  "Right, let me find my badge," Tom said, looking around on the floor. Picking it up, he shifted, and Sean suddenly recognized him as he looked for a spot on his shredded shirt to clip his ID to.

  "Now let's go up to ops. I can address everyone over the intercoms, so they know to surrender," Tom told him. "Then I guess tell me what you want, and I'll make sure you get it."

  By the time the second wave showed, Tom and the lieutenant colonel in charge of the paratroopers had everyone cordoned off in several holding areas. Anyone who bitched got hit with a sleep spell, gagged, and hogtied.

  It was made clear to everyone that people were probably going to be hung, so they damn well better behave, because their boss wasn't in a good mood, and when Sean toured the area, more than a few of them got to see that Sean was also not in a good mood. The people in charge of the NSA back in Washington were all yelling at him, and it wasn't until he sent them pictures of the tar patch on the floor then asked if he needed to check out their other offices, as well, that they shut up.

  That didn't mean they weren't trying to make his life difficult; it just meant they weren't talking to him directly.

  "Sean, it's Roxy."

  "Hey, Hon," he said, keying the priority circuit on his radio that linked him back to base. "What's going on?"

  "Cali and Peg got back from Karen's apartment. It was boobytrapped, all right."

  "Anybody hurt?"

  "No. Cali and Sheila handled it. It wasn't a magical trap, either. Mostly it was set up to destroy her records and her laptop, but neither of those things were there. The guys out at Fort 88 have her on ice, and they have her car, as well. They've found her laptop and all her notes. I'm having all of it flown back here for analysis. What do you want me to do with Karen?"

  "We need someone to peel her like an egg, and the only person I trust to do that right now is Stewart." Sean sighed. "You know what, put Stew, Rachel, and April on an Osprey and send them here, ASAP. We can have the folks at 88 deliver her here. I've got a bunch of people I'm gonna need peeled, so I'll have him do the special cases. Also, send out whatever mind mages Vincent trusts, maybe call Arthur, Joseph, and Deanna and see if they got some magic users with decent mind domination spells and pack them out here, either in the same Osprey or a separate one."

  "Got it. Oh, speaking of Stewart, he needs to talk to you."

  "Great, put him on."

  "Sean?"

  "Hi, Stew. What's the story?"

  "Not good, Sean, not good at all. First, the good news. Dougherty hasn't been messed with mentally, other than he thought he'd just been sleeping with Jessie, but while he was doing that, Karen had been using his access to alter the intelligence reports coming into the NSA office there, as well as the Space Force's and the Air Force's before they were passed on to us. They were setting him up for the patsy, until things finally got discovered."

  "That's the good news? What's the bad news?"

  "They did a real number on Jessie. She's not as programmed as the four we saved from DC were, and whoever did it didn't erase anything, but they've had her sleeping with damn near every lycan on base, and a fair number off base, she could corner. Turned her into a regular party girl. Same for Susan, she was sleeping with anything with a pulse and pumping them for everything she could get.

  "I got my friends from Sac going through the ranks and finding out everyone they slept with. I think Chad's going to ask Adam to give a mass order for everyone who slept with either of them to come forward so we can get a full accounting."

  "Why'd they have them doing that?"

  "Karen was gathering tons of intelligence about our troop movements inside the DEZ, around the DEZ, and even inside our base, along with our daily routines, standing orders, security procedures. Everything the girls could soak up, they were documenting and turning over to Karen."

  "Shit. How did Chad react to that?"

  "Chad was pissed, Jack about had a meltdown, and the same for our other generals, as well as Oak. They're rewriting everything as we speak, and the order just went out that everyone has to change their routines for everything they do."

  "What else?" Sean asked with a sigh.

  "They programmed both girls to suicide if suspected. Nothing too extravagant, just take a toaster into the bathtub. I'm pretty sure I can fix Jessie, but it'll take a few weeks, maybe a month. Susan wasn't screwed up as badly; they didn't have her doing as much as Jessie was. Deep down, Jessie knew she was betraying her boss, so they had to do a lot of work on her. She also doesn't like sleeping with men."

  "You might want to ask Jolene for help with her. Any idea who did it?"

  "Not yet. They seemed to have covered their tracks well, but a lot of it is pretty sloppy. My step-father would have whipped my ass if I'd been as ham-fisted as this."

  "What about Dougherty?"

  "He should be okay in a few days. I already cleared everything out of his head."

  "Okay, tell him if he wants to stay, he gets infected. I think I'm done with having mundanes on our teams. Also, tell him not to take his medallion off when getting laid."

  "Got it."

  "Has Vince made any progress on finding out who our rogue magic user is?"

  "Not yet, but get this, they only used the mage with Dougherty the first time. After that, they had him keyed to respond to a magic item Karen would put over his head after they took his medallion off. Jessie'd give him a drink that would relax him, then she'd put the hood on his head, which enforced the idea that they were alone in the room while they were having sex.

  "Oh, and get this, Jessie would then think that the guy in the hood was her boss, so when questioned about her boss, she wouldn't even mention Karen. Rachel only figured that out because we already knew Karen was involved and we were able to ask the right questions."

  "That doesn't sound ham-fisted to me," Sean told him.

  "No, that part isn't, but I've heard about those items they put over his head. They're something teenagers make to play gags on mundanes."

  "Oh? You ever make one?" Sean asked.

  "Weeeelllll, a few of my friends and I may have convinced a few people that there was a sea monster living in Folsom Lake," Stewart said with a chuckle. "But my point is, it's a pretty simple thing to make. A more experienced magic user would have just triggered him with a couple of keywords or a gesture."

  "So we're not looking for someone very experienced here?"

  "Not with this kind of thing. No."

  Sean had a sudden thought. "Could this have been done by a djevel? Or someone possessed by a djevel?"

  "If the djevel knew magic? Sure, though it'd be harder if it was possessing someone, because mundanes don't have enough magic. Then of course there's the smell."

  Sean bit his lip as he thought about it. "Well, grab your gear. I told Rox to send you out here."

  "I heard we'll be on the next flight out. Okay if I have our flight go to Fort 88 and pick up Karen? I'd like to start in on her as soon as I can."

  "Why's that?"

  "I have a feeling she's been dominated, too. I mean, whoever did it wasn't subtle with their magic, so why not do her, too? I want to see if she's got a suicide switch as well, and what it is."

  "Sounds good. Use your own judgment, you're in charge."

  "Thanks, Sean!"

  Stewart passed the radio back to Roxy, who had nothing else for him, so he told her he loved her and signed off.

  "Hey, Sean."

  Sean looked up and saw Travis with his security team, though most of it was the girls this time.

  "How'd you get here?"

  "Hitched a ride with the second wave."

  "Ah, good. We need to search a few offices for bombs and the like. After that, maybe a few private residences."

  "Aren't you going to question any of the people here?"

  "Maybe the bosses, and not until after Stewart and a few more magic users get out here. For now, I'm going to let their boss handle it."

  "Is that wise?"

  "Seeing as he's a werewolf and I just gave him a bunch of orders, sure. Plus I know him already. He's definitely not messed up in this; he hasn't been here long enough."

  "Well, let's steal a few cars from the parking lot and we can get started."

  "Why steal when we can go into one of the holding pens and ask nicely?" Sean said with a big, wide, toothy grin.

  "Yeah, anyone seeing that look on your face will fork over their car, their wallet, and probably their first born!" Travis laughed.

  Grand Theft Satellite

  "So exactly how does this work?" Steve asked the goblin who was sitting across from him. He'd been filled in by Tisha that Sawyer was sending someone out to him to 'steal' one of the CIA's imaging satellites so they could use it to monitor the DEZ. Sean had bought into the idea completely and was currently tearing the NSA facility in Utah apart looking for djevels, as well as any other assholes there who'd incurred his wrath.

  As this couldn't be talked about on any sort of normal communications for fear of intercepts, Finn, who was apparently well versed in how spy satellites worked, had traveled here from—well, Steve didn't know, and he honestly didn't care.

  He just liked the idea of stealing a satellite.

  "The idea is actually pretty simple. You see, you communicate with these satellites by encrypting your message with a special key. That key is time sensitive…"

  "Time sensitive? What's that?"

  "It means the key changes constantly, so the satellite's clock and your clock have to be in sync, otherwise you can't command it, and you can't receive its messages, either."

  "Ah," Steve said with a nod, "sorry to interrupt."

  "That's okay," Finn said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "These aren't the kinds of things most folk deal with."

  "And you do?"

  "It's…sort of a hobby of mine. Ya' see, there are things we goblins don't want people to see, so we've had to figure out ways of dealing with those satellites, if one should, say, be in an inconvenient position. While dealing with that, I discovered a few things, and then learned a few more things. I mean, when it comes to secrets and security, there ain't nothing we goblins view as bein' more important. So I sorta got into it pretty deep."

  Steve nodded.

  "So, they have these encryption keys. But the problem is, the US here isn't the only country with one of those big honking computer facilities like the one your friend Sean has just taken out of operation. So eventually, your enemies might be able to decode your key, spoof your messages, and take over control of your satellite."

  "Which is what I assume we're going to do?"

  Finn snorted. "Oh, hells no! That's way too hard, and way too complicated. Besides, they change encryption every 32 days, which is about half the time they figure it would take someone to break the current encryption. No, this is much simpler. We make them believe someone's broken the code and taken over their satellite."

  "And that helps us how?"

  "Well, every satellite has a backup, hard-encoded encryption that overrides everything. They'll have to use it to get control of their satellite back."

  "And?"

  "There's only one copy in a safe at the CIA offices in Langley. They'll have to open the safe, take it out, and give it to the encoding team at their satellite control center so they can command the satellite to reset it's encryption to a new stream. When they do that, we relieve the person with that document of their burden, and then we have control of the satellite."

  "Won't they have other copies?"

  "They might, but I don't think so. But even if they do, I know something they don't!" Finn said and then suddenly cackled, reminding Steve of Sawyer.

  "And that is?"

  "If the satellite undergoes a complete power cycle, say we black it out for a moment and have it reboot everything onboard, the clock resets, as well. If we're the only one talking to it at that time, we can play all sorts of games with the clock's offset counter, which it uses to synchronize its time-code, and that means even if they have another copy, they can't encrypt a message the satellite will listen to, because their clocks have the wrong time!"