Tim Boothe was already on the pavement. He handed Taylor his heavy jacket. A north wind whipped down and chilled his face.

“Is he coming with us?” she asked.

“Can he?”

“That depends. How much do you trust him?”

“With my life.”

“Do you intend for him to know about the Centurion?”

“I’ll need him to,” Taylor replied.

She held out her hand to Boothe. “You may call me Sister Jillian. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr…”

“Timothy Boothe.”

Taylor observed the interaction. The man had been taken by her beauty. A stream of pride ran through him. I’ve known her longer than you’ve been alive, boy.

On the bridge beneath the trusses, the city lights glittered like distant stars but cast no light upon them. They were shadows.

“Look.” Sister Jillian pointed.

Below them sprawled the rail yard, inoperable for more than a century, near the encroaching waters of the Harlem River. Barrel fires burned within the encampments.

Taylor knew them well. He’d helped draft the law that allowed these asylum seekers to find a moment’s rest on American soil but go no farther. Most of them were fleeing conscription into the Federation of Eastern European Nations. They had arrived with hope-filled hearts for a new life in America away from a world besieged by war. But that was not to be. The brave and strong might mount an escape over the barricades of razor wire and the teeth of the German shepherds. If they managed to make it out, they could attempt to blend in with the climate refugees drifting the vast interstate highway system from ghetto to ghetto, swirling like a doomed constellation around the criminal gravity of Asiatown underworlds.

Those who cared to investigate would think that Taylor and his party had drafted an act of grace, but so few of this horde would ever see true American freedom. They would be left here with just enough provisions to avoid starvation, and then after a few years when people started to forget, they would be shipped, a few dozen at a time, to Newark International, loaded onto an unmarked plane in the dead of night, and flown back to Bucharest or Kyiv or a smattering of other hell holes to be de-boarded without ceremony into the same bombed-out insanity they had tried to escape.

Sister Jillian leaned on the cement wall and looked down on a cordial little camp. “Can you see it?” she asked.

Taylor peered down. A dozen people were sitting around a fire within a shanty of tents. He could barely hear the tin-tin of a radio playing music into the sky. Two boys kicked a soccer ball near the tracks. Someone stirred a pot of simmering soup over a bed of coals. The savory smell of meat and vegetables drifted on the cold breeze. A woman took up the tambourine and played a tam tam, tam tam. A man beside her squatted down and danced a jig, crossing his arms in front and kicking out his legs. Another off in the shadows drew a bow across a violin, pulling out a long, luxurious note, letting it hang expectantly, then shattering it into the frenetic tempo of the Sârba. A couple kissed and laughed at the spectacle. Another woman in a shawl began to sing. The boys laughed and played all the harder.

Taylor’s foot almost twitched. Almost, but not quite.

“I see only a family keeping warm by their fire—trying to enjoy the evening,” Boothe said. “It’s got to be miserable down there.”

“Now let me open your eyes,” said Sister Jillian.

She approached Taylor first. She put her lips on his and kissed him, slipping her cool tongue into his mouth. He felt the glacier form behind his eyes, as if his reserve of tears inside had frozen. Time stopped in her breath. He smelled the forest, thick with pine.

She withdrew and went to Boothe. “This is how we do it,” she said and kissed him in the same manner. He tried to pull back, but she held his head.

When they parted, she said, “Look harder and see.”

Taylor looked. The fire turned a sapphire green and started to rise up into the sky until it was a pillar higher than the bridge, higher than Titan Tower.

Boothe stepped back and stumbled as his eyes lifted.

This was it. This was what he’d waited more than thirty-five years to know again. The truth hidden from human eyes.

The camp was bathed in green light. Taylor was able to intuit that, by their magic, those refugees were impervious to the cold, as if cheating nature herself.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

One of the boys kicked the soccer ball and laughed aloud as it flew high into the air, where it burst into a bird of undulating fiery yellows and reds. It rained down dusty stars that sparked and faded before they hit the ground. The bird flapped its wings and shot up, circling the green pillar, then arching back down to the earth, where it became a ball again and bounced across the ground. The other boy cursed and took it into his hands.

The lovers were still locked lip to lip, unwilling to break their passion.

The woman with the tambourine, the woman who could sing, and the man who danced made a procession around the couple. The air sizzled violet with electrifying motion.

“It’s a wedding,” whispered Boothe. “My God, I’ve never seen—”

“She’s pulling from the Veil to consecrate this union,” said Sister Jillian. “They were lucky enough to find a dangling thread and thought they could get away with it. Our witches felt out their rustic magic two weeks ago. They’re naïve, believing the horrors of their homeland cannot be found here. Tonight, they learn there is no place on earth that can escape the scrutiny of the Den.”

The woman with the tambourine broke from the circle and ran around the perimeter of the entire camp. Where she had trod, the earth started to move. A glittering wall rose, thick and jagged. It looked as if the stones were inset with diamonds, and between those stones, the seething bodies of serpents ridged with thorns.

“Crafty old crone,” Sister Jillian said.

“Jesus,” said Boothe. “What is it?”

“A defense,” said Taylor. The boy was certainly getting an education.

The air smelled of smoke and sweet flowers that burned the eyes and choked the throat.

“I don’t understand,” said Boothe, mesmerized by the spectacle.

“Of course you don’t. John, how would you explain this to the uninitiated?” Sister Jillian asked.

John Taylor dredged his memory, trying to reach back to the events thirty-five years before to what he had seen—what he had done.

“Enchantment,” John said. “From hell or somewhere else, it does not matter. It is evil incarnate. That boy who hurt my Amy, he’s like them. Freaks. These creatures do not belong on this earth. What they do there, what you can see now, will bring devastation beyond reckoning. We must stop it.” His voice shook with a vibrato he never before possessed.

Tim’s eyes grew wide with fear.

“Listen,” Sister Jillian spoke.

The rumbling came from far away and got louder and louder until the very bridge was vibrating.

From the direction of First Avenue came the first motorcycle. No headlights, just a dark machine in the city night, a shadow against the cement. Then another followed. And another, and another. The engines screamed into their ears.

“Down, Senator!” shouted Boothe, gun already in hand.

“No!” shouted Sister Jillian above the din. “These are my hunters!”

John Taylor could not make out faces, for the riders all wore masks of snouts and snarling fangs. Then, as swiftly as they had emerged, they passed.

The wedding party below continued, unawares.

“Mr. Boothe, are you a keen shot?” asked Sister Jillian.

“The best, ma’am,” said Boothe.

“That woman by the fire. Do you see her?”

“I do.”

“I would like you to put a bullet right between her fucking eyes.”

“Sir?” Boothe looked at him, a frightful reluctance on his face.

“Do it,” he said. “Do it now.”

The briefest pause, then the bodyguard went to the Humvee and returned with a rifle featuring a large scope.

Sister Jillian observed, cold fire in her eyes, as he attached a suppressor to the barrel. The man took aim, still as a statue, a surgeon’s precision.

“There,” said Taylor. “You’ve got this.”

Boothe, his finger gracing the trigger, did not fire.

“Kill her!” shouted Sister Jillian.

“Sir?” he took his eye off the scope and looked to Taylor, ignoring the woman. “They haven’t done anything.” He shook his head. “Sir?”

Taylor felt his jaw clench uncontrollably. “Do it, goddamn it!”

“He reminds me of a frightened young captain many years ago,” said Sister Jillian.

Taylor wrenched the weapon from Boothe’s hands. “It should be me. I am the Hammer.” It had been a long time since he’d had cause to kill. It should be him. Tim would have his fill soon enough.

He took aim and planted the sharp crosshairs upon the woman’s brow. She had large dark eyes and wrinkled skin. A grandmother, the matriarch. He held his breath, the trigger an extension of his mind. And then she saw him, as if looking down the scope into his thoughts.

POP!

A spray of blood fine as smoke. The old woman crumpled to the ground like a heap of potatoes in her flowing skirts.

The new bride screamed. The pillar of fire fell back into the trash barrel. The dark wall of diamonds, thorns, and snakes evaporated into the night.

“The hunters,” said Sister Jillian.

Shadows leapt from between the rusted train cars and out of the abandoned buildings. One of the boys ran in the direction of the bridge, but he was thrown from his feet by a black form; it paused over him, ripping the life from his young body.

“Jesus. Jesus Christ,” breathed Boothe.

“And that is how you end an enchantment,” said Sister Jillian. “It’s a shame the job in Montana could not have been so neat.”

She walked back to her SUV. At the door, she said, “I’ll be seeing you, John.” Before it closed, she added, “Mr. Boothe, I look forward to the next time.”

***

John Taylor sat in the driver’s seat as the Humvee followed the grid.

The bodyguard was silent the entire ride to the airport, where the JTS jet was waiting to fly them back to Montana. His hands trembled like those of an old man.

Taylor took a flask out of the seat pocket, took a swig, then handed it to Boothe.

“Drink, kid. Drink deep.”

Boothe drank and coughed. He wiped his mouth and drank again.

“I… I just don’t know,” was all he said.

Tim was a magnificent bodyguard. In hand-to-hand combat or with weapons, he was unmatched. But he had never killed, nor had he seen anyone die so close and so gruesomely as this night.

“Gird yourself,” said Taylor finally. “Tonight was only the beginning.”

As they passed through the city, he remembered what Sister Jillian had shown him. What she had asked him to do and what he had done. The events in the rail yard, as horrific as they were, could not compare.

He felt the exhilaration and the breaking sweat. Her kiss was leaving him, but soon he would not need it. He understood clearly now the path ahead.