Starting over...

…is never easy.

The band of ORC’s that arrived in the Bat Cave was a tired, wounded, ragged bunch of shell-shocked survivors. The assault by El Diablito’s forces and An’girasii allies had come as a total surprise. Every ORC safe house, stronghold and academy across the United States had been hit in some way on the same night. All told, hundreds ORC members and students had been slain; dozens more were badly injured or missing.

By the time the final tally of escapees and survivors was taken—several days later—fewer than three hundred full fledged members and associates of the ORC’s survived that deadly night. The last census prior to that deadly night had put the membership rolls at just over a thousand members and associates. Forty of those survivors came with me to the Bat Cave.

After a close inspection by Cerrydwen, Ravyn or myself, I created a portal of Shadow that established a link between El Diablito’s dark tower in the Shadowland and another place of relative darkness—the entrance hall to the Bat Cave.

The hall was actually a natural cavern that had been worked on and expanded extensively by the military in the early part of the Cold War. The hall was easily wide and smooth enough for two vans to pass in opposite directions and long enough to hold a whole caravan of vehicles—in fact several aging but otherwise non-descript vehicles were parked along one of the walls facing the opposite direction. They were facing a set of heavy metal blast doors that opened to the outside world. I knew from Drake though that those doors were concealed from casual observation by what appeared to be a storage facility for salt for local highways.

Looking ahead, our way into the Bat Cave itself was barred by a smaller, but equally formidable set of steel doors that were secured both by lock and key and by a combination key pad set bear the handle of the left door.

Between the keys Drake had sent to Ravyn and the combination codes that I had memorized, we were able to open the doors to the incredible refuge that Drake and John Red Bear had secretly spent nearly four decades creating.

Beyond that sealed door was a decommissioned underground military base that was easily large enough to house several hundred people. The facility was comprised of several sections. It was also fully stocked with food and water. But the true bounty of the Bat Cave was found deep inside, beyond the living quarters. The Command Center was a fully operational, if slightly outdated control room full of computers and communications equipment. The Inner Sanctum was even more amazing as it included a vault that held the hundreds of weapons and other items of power that Drake had taken or acquired through his existence.

The Frau, Ravyn and Herne quickly took control of situation.

The Frau immediately drafted most of the able-bodied folks and began to set up a sick ward in one of the larger rooms in the dormitory part of the complex. She gently clucked out her orders to those that could carry them out while she coddled those who were still too shocked to act independently just yet. Moira, though wounded herself, helped out.

Ravyn, Cerrydwen and Zenny Al Farhan had set up shop inside the vault as they began to identify and catalog the surprising large cache of weapons and items that Drake had amassed.

Herne, the Professor, and the pretty gal from the San Diego Circle, Alana Danae, began the process of firing up the computers and communications equipment in the Command Center. Between Herne’s intimate knowledge of the military, the Professor’s computer tech skills and Alana’s expertise in software and network systems, they had the place humming to life in no time.

As everyone else set down to the task of getting the Bat Cave up and running, I finally had time to search out my ex-wife Katherine and our daughter, Jasmine. Katherine was sporting an improvised sling for her left arm, which had been broken in the initial struggle at the Coop, but she was still one of the people helping the Frau to tend to others. Jasmine appeared to be physically unharmed, but her nerves had been badly shaken.
I had come up from behind Jasmine and touched her gently on the shoulder. “Jazz, are you alright?”

She flinched at my touch, but whirled around for a fierce hug when she heard my voice. “Dad!” She was sobbing. “I was so scared!”

“I know, honey. I wish you never had to experience that.” I put my hand on the bottom of her chin to get her to look into my eyes. “Did anyone hurt you?”

She swallowed hard, her gaze glazing over as she looked through me rather than at me. “I…I…think I killed someone, Dad, with my…my…magick.”

“Was it someone who was trying to harm you?”

She nodded. “One of those shape-shifter things grabbed me from behind, it looked like Mom at first, but it just didn’t feel right. The eyes didn’t look right, so when it tried to take me away from the others, I pushed it away. I saw it’s face change for just a moment. I was so scared. When it grabbed for me again, I just sort of felt the magick flow through me. I killed it with a blast of lightning from my hand.” She was looking down at her right hand. Her fingertips were still blackened by soot. “I just did what Mistress Fyre had taught me to do.”

I nodded and pulled her close in another hug. “It’s alright, Jazz. Those things aren’t really people. They’re monsters. That thing would have probably taken you away and stolen your memories before killing you. You did the right thing.”

Katherine stood watching me console our daughter. She gave me a tight little smile and small nod of approval before giving me that look that she had always given when she wanted to talk, in private.

I disengaged from Jasmine and pointed her towards where the Frau was. “Jazz, do you think that you can go see if the Frau needs any help? Sometimes you just need to stay busy to keep from thinking of nasty things like the attack for awhile. We’ll have more time to talk later.” I gave her a pat on the shoulder. “I’m sure Ravyn will be very proud that you were able to summon and control that kind of energy.”

As Jasmine shuffled off to go help the Frau, Katherine and I took a small walk back out into the large area where we had first come in, the garage area.

“Thanks, Jason, Jasmine needed that from you.”

I nodded. “It was the least that I could do. Has anyone heard from Kenny?”

Her face tightened up. This was why she wanted to talk to me. “No. He was away at school. I don’t know if he is safe or not. Can you try to find him?”

I nodded. “As soon as I can make sure this place as safe as it seems and Herne and Ravyn give me the all clear signal, I’ll go check on him. I think he’ll be safe enough at that school since it didn’t have anything to do with the ORC’s.”

Katherine didn’t look very reassured. “I don’t know, Jason, the Professor teaches there and I know that Kenny often stays at his house when the Prof is away. He could be in all sorts of danger.”

I reached out and grabbed her healthy hand, giving it a quick squeeze. “I’m worried too. If he’s in danger or has been harmed in any way, I will find out and get him to safety. You can count on that.”

She squeezed my hand hard. “I know, Jason. I have faith in you. I better go see if my help is needed inside.” She released my hand and went back to the infirmary.

I made my way back to the Command Center.

Herne looked up from a monitor as I walked into the room. The previously quiet room was not a hub of beeping, buzzing, and chattering activity.

“Rusty, come check this out. This stuff looks vintage but it was top of the line equipment not that long ago.”

I walked over to stand behind him. The monitor was an older clunker, with a resolution level that would’ve given me a headache if I had actually had any optical nerves left to be irritated.

Despite its age and its low level of resolution, it was clearly accessing the internet. Herne had pulled up a newswire service.

“It looks like there is a strong PR campaign going on to characterize the ORC’s as some sort of New Age death cult. All of the news agencies have picked up on the various attacks, although the attacks aren’t being depicted as attacks at all, but as some sort of suicide pact.” He looked up at me. “They’ve got to have agents in the government and maybe even the Bureau to have tied all of this up so neatly so quickly.”

The Professor sat at another workstation with his own unique laptop that had somehow survived our bizarre journey. Alana was standing behind him, a look of concern on her face.

Jim looked up form his computer. “They’ve acted very quickly to shut down all of our corporate accounts as well—none of my attempts to access any of them have been successful.”

That reminded me of something else Drake had given me. I pulled out a small notebook that Drake had used to record several account numbers and passwords for the off-shore accounts that he had held in reserve. I held it out towards Jim. “Try looking up these accounts. I think you will find that we’ll have the financial resources to put up one hell of a fight.”

He nodded and took the notebook.

Within minutes, he had logged into the first of the accounts. He whistled in appreciation. “Yeah, there’s more money in this account alone than the ORC’s have ever had in all of our other accounts. It’s a Swiss account too, so we will have absolute privacy with what we do with it. I can make this work quite well.”

I watched as Herne bounced from website to website checking out all of the stories about the attacks. El Diablito and his allies had done a very thorough job of destroying and discrediting the ORC’s.

Ravyn and Zenny soon joined us, notebook in hand. They had heard some of the news already from Herne before. Ravyn’s face was quite grim.

“Rusty, we’ll need to have an executive council meeting as soon as the Frau has seen to the last of the wounded. We’re going to need to take stock of who’s here and what resources we have at our disposal. I think we’ll want to gather as many of our members and associates to us as possible, but we’ll have to screen anyone we bring back to ensure that we aren’t bringing any Doppelgangers or other spies back to our little haven here. I’m afraid we’re going to be working long and hard over the next few days to take full stock of what’s left of the ORC’s and what can be salvaged.”

Herne nodded. “We also need to come up with a plan of action. We need to show these bastards that while they’ve won this battle, they’re going to have a long, hard war on their hands.”

There was no disagreement with Herne’s statement.