I think almost no one can make a solid living with 99 cent ebooks because you have to have huge volume for that. When I sold 6,500 ebooks in June 2010, that was around $2,300. Well, most people can’t live on that, especially after you take out Uncle Sam’s cut. — Zoe Winters

This is what bothers me. The Between Heaven and Hell trilogy — which comprises the first halfish of the Unification Chronicles, so this is already complicated — is somewhat genre-bending. Here’s the elevator pitch for the first book, Revelation:

When Daniel Cho sees a dead man walk away from a car wreck, he becomes the catalyst for a final battle between angels and demons.

What genre does that sound like? If you picked “science fiction,” you’d be right, only you didn’t pick that, did you? As the story develops, it turns out the angels and demons are really humans with a purely technological basis for immortality, and over the millenia they’ve inspired our myths of gods, angels and demons. In book five of the series, we’ll find out how and why they became immortal in the first place, and what that means about humanity and our place in the galaxy. But to start out, this book seems like urban fantasy or horror. We only find out it’s really science fiction later.

This genre ambiguity means the niche for people who want to read my books is on the smaller side. I will never pull down numbers like Amanda Hocking because paranormal romance just isn’t what I write. I have to accept that my niche is finite, even with the ebook market expansion accelerating.

And given that, 99 cents is troubling. A sale at 99 cents makes me only 1/6, or 16.7%, of what I make at $2.99. Hocking, Locke and others like them can get away with that because their pool of potential customers is so much larger. But if I want to make a living at this, 99 cents can only be an occasional promotional price. $2.99 or even $3.99 has to be the default.

A year from now, when the entire Between Heaven and Hell trilogy is available, plus two stand alone novels and my novella “Do Over!”, I’d have to sell about 500 copies of each book a month to sustain myself. Even that seems high to me, although I’m probably underestimating the size of the overall ebook market by several decimal points. Those will slide down the long tail over time, and be replaced by new books as I keep writing. As long as I stay around 3,000 copies overall a month, I can make my living as a writer. In theory, that’s sustainable.

At 99 cents each, on the other hand, I’d have to sell 13,000 copies a month to make the same amount of money. 13,000 new readers every month, 12 months a year. That’s more than the population of the whole town where I went to high school. Every month. In my niche, I just don’t see how that’s possible.

I’ve seen claims that standardizing on $1 is inevitable for ebooks, and their math is compelling. And while I’m not one of those who frets that $1 is “devaluing” the book, I can’t deny that under the current royalty conditions, $1 doesn’t work for me.

(If Amazon extends the 70% royalty to 99 cents and I’d only have to sell 6,000 copies a month, well, that’s a horse of a different color.)

In my case, the question was the central question of Crusade. The question behind everything that happens, that sets up the new world order in Jihad. A simple question, really.

How do you overthrow governing structures—from two proxies removed—while preserving corporate wealth?

The angels have spent the last hundred years or so consolidating their power in corporations. They, or their human agents, have controlling interests in just about everything. They are multinational, directing the flow of wealth around the globe with no restrictions or borders. And it gives them the control over the humans they need. Want to weed out the weak? Own insurance companies and direct them not to cover people with pre-existing conditions.

But even so, money is issued by governments, right? So how would they continue to function if the governments of the world crumbled beneath them? They would need to keep those governments in place—under control by lobbyists, but in place—to provide the foundation on which their empire was built, right? I just couldn’t come up with a good reason for them to let the demons have the chaos they strove for. It seemed counterproductive.

I thought it was going to drive me nuts. Then I realized the problem was that I wasn’t giving myself the chance to think about it. There is a movement afoot to bring back boredom, to deliberately insert downtime back into our lives. We’re learning that mental stimulation every moment of your conscious life doesn’t allow you to process what you know, to synthesize information into new ideas. As half the IT department for a medium size company, my job is to solve problems all day long. I don’t have time to think about my story at work. And when I’m not working, I’m reading on my Kindle, listening to podcasts, watching TV—only socially, I assure you—or yeah, trying to write. I wasn’t giving my mind time to think.

Then, driving home without listening to a podcast or audiobook or the digital voice of my Kindle, letting my mind mull it over—and over and over—it finally hit me. And as it does so often with me, the answer came in the form of math, an equation.

Money is power, they say. Therefore, power is money.

The wealth the angels possess isn’t in the form of dollars or euros or yuen. Their wealth, the wealth of their corporate proxies, is in the resources they control. And those resources will be crucial to staving off the dark age the demons are almost allowed to throw us into. Yes, governments will crumble. Civil order will fail, briefly. But then, before any permanent damage is done, Blackwater will restore order. Halliburton will rebuild. Citigroup will provide the means for commerce to resume.

The new world will look much like the old one, but sleeker, more streamlined. The corporations will be in direct control, rather than having to work through the inefficient proxies of “democratic governments.” Multinational corporations will have rid themselves of what had become an annoying parasite, and had the opportunity to sweep away smaller competitors that still relied on that parasite to function.

And really, they’ll point out, what has really changed? The same people—or angels—are making the decisions now that made the decisions before. Now they just don’t have to go through the theater of “asking permission.”

So now the only question remaining is the detail of how they manage to play this intricate game of chess from two generations removed. The angels aren’t causing the downfall of world governments directly. They’re manipulating the demons, who are in turn manipulating the power-hungry and easily led. I already have a working model of what that would look like in the modern American Tea Party, a supposedly “grass roots” movement that is funded and subtly guided by billionaires.

The scary part is how plausible it is. How easily multinational corporations could simply do without nation states. Good thing we don’t have to worry about that in real life, right?

I started off NaNo this year on a slow pace, and it never really got any faster. And with each passing day, I felt more and more pressure to catch up. I was also putting in full, mentally draining days at work (I’m half the IT department for a regional HVAC distributor) and was spending all my off hours time at write ins. It was wearing me down, and it showed. In particular, I started developing small illnesses and injuries that in the past have been warning signs that I’m pushing myself too hard.

And then it hit me. I don’t need to do this. I’ve started NaNoWriMo four times now, and “won” twice. I know I can do it. I also know I don’t have to.

A lot of professional authors like the idea of NaNoWriMo but don’t participate themselves because writing a novel is what they already do every day. And it finally dawned on me that this applies to me as well. When I’m done with Crusade, my editor and I are going to tackle getting Revelation ready to post on the various ebookstores (Amazon, iTunes, B&N, etc.). Then I’m going to write Jihad, the third book in the Between Heaven and Hell trilogy. Then I’m going to edit Crusade. And so on. I’m going to be writing every day, or nearly so, all year round. So why kill myself to meet an arbitrary deadline I’ve already proven I can beat?

So best of luck to all of you still trying to beat NaNoWriMo this year, especially those of you who have never won it. I’m going to plod along at my own speed.

Daniel hefted his weapon for th enext engagement and wondered if he was going crazy. Constructed of high-dnsisty plastic, the weapon looked liike a giant super soaker. It was black, matte finish, and without its payload would f be far hlighter than the submachine guns they’d normally used. The reservoir was filled with high mlar hydroclhoric acid. It should be enough to dissolve a demon faster than he could regenerate. Aor so the stheory went.

They were in a van this time, not a choopper. Dante had been released from the hospital wand was following their moviement s from base. He’d be in constant radio contact with thism, and was able to see from their helpment mounted cameras and gps where they were and what they were doing. More importantly, he’d be able to see what was behind them as well by tapping into security camers bfrom nearby ATMs and businesses. Daniel wasn’t sure that was strictly legal, but Uriel assured them there would be no adverse consequences, everything was taken care of.

Well, everything ecxcept Rufariel. Their target was still out there, and they were making a second try for him in as many weeks. This time the strike would be in daylight, and they should have the advantage. Rufariel had been potted in (neighborhood) a largely abandoned commercial district hit hard by the recession. It was a common place for San Francisco’s street gangs to do business„ and word was Rufariel was taking a weapons shipment from overseas.

Jack was in the back of the van with im, and they were both wearing their standard black combat fatiqgues, along with acid-resistant gloves just in case the giant qswirt guns started to leak. Jack didn’t seem any more sanguine about their choice of weapons dhan Daniel did, but was the best shot they had. Sandy was driving, and would also be backing them up with a flamethorwer in case they needed to make a quick retraeat.

Coming up on our target, gentlemen, Dsandy sasid from the front of thevan. Get reeady to hit it.

Jack to his position next to the door and Daniel formed up behind him. They’d practiced this part, and should be able to disperse cleanly. If Sandy did his job right, They’d have a clear shot at Rufariel right wasy and would be able to pin him down under streams of acid . The whole engagement should last a minute, maybe too.

Asusming everything went as planned. And Daniel was sure it wouldn’t No battle plan ever survived contact with the enemy.

Here we go!” Sandy said, Pop the door!

Jack flung the door open and They saw Rufariel oalready running away from a crate next to the hare hosue they’d pulled up alongside. Thwo twentysomething in gan colors ran the toher way

Shit! HJack said. Go go go!

Daniel burst out of the van after Jack and they both chased the fleeing demon. So much for catching him by surpriseand getting him in a tidy crossfire, Daniel thought. Rufariel was running full tilt between buildings, and was extending the gap between them. He wasn’t carrying three gallons of hyudrochloric acid, and was fsater than an agverage humand to begin with.

Daniel heard Dante’s void in his ear. Sandy, we’re blown, circle the van north by three blocks and try to cut him off.

Roger that, Sandy said, cool as ever in battle. He only seemed to get excided then they weren’t fighting.

As they ran, Jack tried a shot with the squuirt gun. The shot went wide and started chewing a hole in a Dumpster. Shit! he said.

Hold your fire until you get closer, Dante said. You’re out of range anyway. Those things are only good for thirty feet. Think pistol ranges, not rifles.

Jack didn’t reply, but instead put on more speed. .

Rufariel came up to a cainlink fence and had to climb over He made it in three strides, but it allowed Jack to get a lot closer. He ffired at the fence reather than climbing it and ran through the gap where the acid severed the links. Daniel saw smal sizzles of drops of acid on Jack’s fatigues, but Jack didn’t seem to notice. Daniel ran through the fence and turned a cornder to see Jack nail Rufariel with a shot of acid. The demon screamedreversed direction, chrarging right at Jack. Jack fired again, opening up a hole in RRufariel’s chestjust before the demon shoulder checked him to the ground and vaulted over Daniel.

Get him! Jack said, and Daniel ran after the demon, heard in Sandy in the van pull up onbehind him, in the direcdtion Rufariel had been going.

Well, shit, Sandy said.

Daniel kept up the pursuit, hearing Jack get up and start running behind him. Rufariel had opened up another lead, and Daniel was doing everything he could to make up ground when the demon jukes into a warehouse.

In there! Daniel said and ran to follow.. The warehouse was full of crates and containers, so it wasn’t abandoned, but it was wlcearly long term storage. The owners couldn’t have been there recently. He saw Rufariel turn between some crates, and fired his acid gun. The shot missed, and started burning into the congtrrete floor.

Where is he? Jack said.

Up there, Daniel pointed with the barrel of the gun. He ducked to the left.

I’ve got eyes on all the exits, Dante said. He can’t get out of the buidling without me seeing.

Jack motioned for Daniel to follow the way the demon ran while he looped around the crates. Daniel nodded, thinking they might just get their crossfire anyway.

Daniel crept along the crates, keeping his gun pinnated in front of him. He heard shuffling, and what sounded like wheezing. Even in the height of pursuit, he didn’t notice the demon even breathing hard. It didn’t make sense.

Daniel swung around the corner and everything fell into place. Rufariel was there, holding a homeless woman and her child in front of him. They’d clearly been squatting int he warehouse, and now they were human shields.

He heard Jack to his left, but couldn’t see him around the crates. “Let them go, Rufariel.”

“Or what?” the demon asked, a hint of Cockney in his accent. “You’ll squirt me to death? Seems to me these fine folk are all that stops you.”

The kid was about thirteen, a boy. He looked more concerned for his mom than scared for himself. The mother was terrified. “It’s okay, ma’am,” Daniels said. “We’re goign to get you out of this.”

“Bullocks. You’re the reason she’s in it. Take your toys and go home, or I’ll do the kid like I did your pal the other night.”

Daniel felt a renewed surge of anger, but didn’t raise to the bait. He kept his gun at the ready, but not pointed directly at the hostages.

In his peripheral vision, he saw Jack drop his weapon, letting it sling at his side. He drew his pistol, a 10mm just like this old FBI issue.

“Ah, ah,” Rufariel said, adjusting the kid to be more in Jack’s line of fire. “You don’t want ot perforate the lad here, do you?”

“YOu’re not walking out of this warehouse, Rufariel. Not now, not ever.”

The woman tried to interject. “Please, we don’t have anythin–”

“Shut up,” Rufariel said, tightening his grip. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s the sound oa of cattle crying.

Daniel slung his acid gun and pulled out his own sidearm, a nine millimeter berretta. He eased into a Weaver stance just like Jack had tought him and waited to see and opening. He and Jack were at right angles to Rufariel, and it was clearly difficult for the demon to keep both squirming hostages at optimum angles. He was so focused on his task that he didn’t notice Sandy sneaking up behind him.

Daniel did his level best to keep his eyes squarely on Rufariel, not give the demon any sign that there was anything at all to look at over his shoulder. A quick glance at Jack told him that Jack was back to the acid gun.

“So,” Rufariel said. “it’s a bit fo a standoff, is it then?”

“There’s nowhere for you to go, Rufariel.”

“Mate, I’ve lived a hundred of your lifetimes. I’m not stupid.” Shifting his grip on the boy to pin him between Rufariel and his mother, the demon freed a hand, drew a pistol and took a shot behind him at Sandy.

Sandy answered with a gout of flame from his flamethrower and then everything seemed to Daniel to happen at once.

The fire caught both the demon and the mother. The boy ducked out of the way, and as soon as he did, Jack opened fire with acid. Most of it hit the demon, but a few drops landed on the boy’s face and neck, dropping him immediately scrreaming. The mother had dropped as well, and Daniel dropped his weapon to snag a moving blanket off one of the crates to drape over her. Another gout of flame singed the back of his helmet as Sandy opened up again. Daniel rolled the mother in the blanket until he was sure the fire was out, then crawled to the boy.

The kid had serious acid burns on his left cheek and the back of his neck, as well as minor burns through the filthy sweatshirt he wore. The boy was wimpring in pain. Daniel broke out a water bottle to wash off the acid as best he could, and tried to drow out the sounds of combat behind him as he dressed the boy’s wounds.

When Daniel turned and looked back to the battle, it was over. Rufariel had been reduced by fire and acid to a bubbling, smoaking heap.

Daniel keyed his mic. Dante, vector in medevac. We’ve got two civilian casualties.

“Ambulance is already en route, Daniel,” Dante said over the radios. “Called them and the cops as soon as I saw the hostages.”

Sure enough, Daniel could hear distant sirens getting closer. They won. He tried to triage the woman’s burns as best he could while the cops and EMTs swarmed into the building. Jack gave them whatever code phrase Uriel had set up to keep them from getting arrested, and Daniel helped load the woman and boy onto stretchers and wheel them to the ambulance.

One down, thousands to go.

• Team fights demon with acid-loaded squirt guns, injure bystanders. Daniel questions his actions, place on the team.

“Is everything prepared?” Phillips asked.

“Of course, sir,” John said. “The press releases will go out the minute you start your speech, and the networks have been advised to tie into the Senate chamber. You will have full media coverage.”

Phillips straightened his tie in his office mirror. He’d only told the committee heads that he’d be introducing a new bill today, but hadn’t told them any specifics. He wanted their reactions on camera to be genuine.

“And they’re still droning on about San Francisco?”

“Yes sir. A stroke of divine fortune, that.”

Phillips smiled. “Well, for us, anyway.” He hadn’t planned for there to be an altercation with a demon spilling over into civilian casualties, but he wished he had. Such a thing had happened earlier in the day, and the networks were doing their standard trick of hovering around where something significant begun and ended before they got there. Well, now they’d have even more to talk about.

This was why he’d been dodging that girl Richardson from Fox News. He didn’t want to even risk tipping her off to what he was planning. He’d considered it, as she was the one who’d broken the demon story to begin with, but he wanted this moment to be his. No leaks. He’d be happy to talk to her tomoorrow, of course.

“It’s time, sir,” John said.

Phillips walked out of his office and down the long corridor to the Senate chamber of the Capitol building. The other senators and various aides were filing through the metal detectors. Phillips nodded to the building security as he filed through and walked down the aisle to take his seat.

The first few orders of Senate business had little interest for him, and he tried to hold his attention and not fidget. A big part, he knew, of pulling this off was maintaining his composure and gravitas.

Finally, he heard what he’d been waiting for. “I will now yield the floor to my distinguished collegue from Texas, Timothy Phillips.”

“Thank you,” Phillips said, his deep baritone echoing through the Senate Chamber.

“In over two hundred years of history, our nation has faced time and again trials and tribulations. We have faced warring nations, the threat of terrorism, even fought to maintain the union itself. But we have never faced a threat like the one I propose we address today.

“Many of you have heard, of course, about the demons. I use that word only with great deliberation, because I know how trite it sounds to sophisticated, twenty first century ears. We have been told our whole lives that those that believe in such things are superstitious. That demons are a metaphor for the evil in humanity. That may be.

“But they are also a very real threat to every American alive today. They taint our entire recorded history with interference at best, control at worse. They are called demons because we have no other word for them. They are immortal, not human, and they walk among us today.”

It was a credit to the traditions of the Senate that the other ninety eight senators in the room didn’t start to boo him off the podium. He saw open disdain on many faces.

“I can see by your reactions that you don’t believe me. You have all heard of why Senator Barnaby resigned. Yet many of you have told me, in private, that you believe that to be a smoke screen, a way to capitalize on the paranoia de jeure and avoid having to use the ridiculous code phrase “spend more time with his family” that we’ve all heard so many times when someone is forced to leave public office.

“My fellow Senators, I was there. I saw him for what he was, and he was not human. And yet he sat here among us, literally making the laws of this great nation. How many times before has this happened? How many times have nations gone to war because an immortal put the wrong idea in the right head? How many human lives have been lost in the service of their agenda?

“I know extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and I am prepared to provide that in due time. But first, let me propose what we can do to address this threat.

“You have all just received a draft of my proposed legislation. It is short, simple and to the point, as must be all such weighty matters. The Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, the original American Constitution were all single sheets of paper, not hefty tomes of thousands of pages no one ever actually reads. For something this momentous, we require simple, plain spoken planning and swift action.

“I propose the Congress temporarily suspends the first ten amendments to the Constitution of the United States, commonly known as the Bill of Rights. In particular, we cannot now afford the first, fourth, fifth and eighth amendments. We must be able to track down these inhuman monsters among us by any means necessary, lest we never be free.

“We talk a good game in this town about freedom. We pretend that it is our most sacred value. But I put to you that we have never been free. We have never been able to govern ourselves without interference. Every law we have passed, every treaty we have signed is suspect. Did we do it because it was the right thing to do, or because we were pawns on a chessboard?

“So I say to you now to stand with me and defend the freedom we wax so poetically about. Stand with me and fight the demonic meddling in human affairs.Take our country, our world, back from these twisted, sadistic overlords!

“Many of you are thinking, ‘Even if Phillips is right, we can’t just suspend the Bill of Rights. It’s unconstitutional.’ And yes, it is. But we can pass the law anyway, and President Cruz can sign it into law. The ACLU or some other similarly misguided organization will sue to overturn it, and those suits will be appealed by the losing side all the way up to the Supreme Court.

“And this, my fellow Americans, is where it gets interesting. I have spoken about this with Chief Justice Robertson. And he has assured me that the high court will defer hearings on the case until such time as the threat has been eliminated. Eventually, yes, the law will be overturned as unconstitutional, as it must be. But in the meantime, we can do what has to be done.”

Phillips stepped out from behind the podium and approached the desks of the Senators, noting that the CSPAN and major network cameras were tracking with him. He continued, his booming voice carrying even without the microphone.

“And now, my fellow Americans, the proof I mentioned earlier. I would like to direct everyone’s attention to Senator Cushing of West Virginia.”

Cushing, a forty-something man with average features and an Appalaichan drawl, leaned back in his chair. “What do you need from me, Tim?”

Without a word, without another sound, Phillips reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a slim handgun made of non-metallic composites. He aimed at Cushing’s head and fired.

The back of Cushing’s skull sprayed out over the desk behind him as he dropped to the floor. Phillips dropped the gun and held his arms above his head.

“Keep the cameras on Cushing!” he shouted over the din. “Watch Cushing! Watch what happens!”

As Capitol police grabbed Phillips’s arms and cuffed his hands behind his back, Phillips kept his eyes locked on the man he’d shot. As he watched, the bone started reuniting itself together over a cranial cavity filled with inflating brain matter.

“Oh my God!” someone screamed. “Look!”

Phillips stood stock still as they watched the hair regrow out of Cushing’s rebuilt scalp. The corpse suddenly drew in a loud gasp of breath, and started to rise.

“This is my proof!” Phillips shouted over the cries and screams. “They walk among us! They must be stopped!”

The cameras cut away before the former Senator of West Virginia started fighting his way through the Capitol police.

• Phillips introduces new legislation that extends the PATRIOT act even further, effectively repealing the Bill of Rights until the Demonic Threat can be eradicated. Immediately after proposing the legislation, phillips pulls out a non-metal pistol and shoots another senator. He shouts to keep the cameras on the victim, who immediately starts to regenerate.

Daniel stood in front of one of the oldest homes in Los Angeles, a victorian mansion on a hill. It wasn’t subtle, but he was geting the impression that wasn’t the angels style. He reached out and rang the bell.

“Can we help you?” came a voice from somewhere inside.

“I’m here to see Uriel,” Daniel said.

“I’m afraid there’s no one here by that name,” the voice said.

Daniel checked the address again. This was definitely the place, and the gate had opened to admit his car. “I think there is,” he said. “Go get him.”

“One moment please,” the voice said.

Daniel waited, and was about to give up and walk back to his car when the door opened. The archangel Uriel stood in the doorway, dressed in an impeccible designer suit. The tie alone probably cost more than Daniel’s car.

“Daniel, so sorry to make you wait. I’m afriad my staff doesn’t yet know to allow you entry. Most people, as I’m sure you understand, don’t ask for me by my tryue name.” The tall blond angel took a step back. “Please, come in.”

Daniel walked into a den of opulence. The paintings on the walls were as good as any museum pieces, and Daniel was sure they were originals. The furniture was all victorian era antique, and he was sure they were originals too. Nothing but the best. Uriel directed him to a pair of wingback arm chairs and directed him to sit.

Before Daniel could start talking, a servant dressed in a formal uniform came out and laid a traditional silver tea setting in front of them, then poured a cup for fDaniel and Uriel. The angel said nothing until the servant retreated.

Picking up his tea, Uriel said, “I’m afraid I have a weakness for the British Empire. It was a good time for us.” He sipped discretely.

Daniel didn’t touch his tea. “Uriel, we almost lost Dante last night.”

“Yes, I read Jack’s report. Dante was fortunate to have a surgeon of your skill near at hand.”

“He shouldn’t have needed me,” Daniel said. “Did you know that an electromagnetic pulse wouldn’t disrupt the nanites that make you and the demons immortal?”

“Why, Daniel, I’m hurt that you would ask. Of course I didn’t. I wouldn’t have supplied it to you if I had. You well understand that such technology didn’t even exist until recently, so we’ve never had any exposure to it. The idea was Dante’s, and it was sound.

“Understand, Daniel, that we don’t know much more about what makes us immortal than you do. We don’t remember our origins any ore than humans remember being bordn. We’ve simply always been. Only recently, with the help of you, Suaan and the rest, have we discovered that there is a technological, sicentific reason why we don’t die, don’t get sick, heal so quickly. We didn’t know before.”

“But,” Daniel said, “You’ve been at war with the demons for millennisa. You’ve fought them. Surely something had to work? You’ve had so much time for trial and error, and nothing?”

“Nothing you’d be able to use,” Uriel said. “In all of history, since before humans starting recording the years, only a handful of us have ever died. And never in combat. The only thing I’ve ever seen inkill an immoprtal is complete annihilation. Lighting worked once, intense fire. There really isn’t anything else. If there were, believe I would have told you.”

ADaniel sait and looked around, at the priceless funrnitionag, sworking of art. So much wealth, power, and to not have the one thing they needed.

“Waht about acid?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Uriel said. “It’s possible, if the acid is strong enough to sidissolve the demon faster than it can regenrate. But it’s never been tried.”

“It’s something to think about, ” Daniel said. “But something else has been eating at me. ”

“And what would that be, Daniel?”

“Fighting them one by one is doomed to fialure. You know that, right?”

“I’m not folloiwng you, I’m afraid.”

“We will never know for sure we got them all, right? No matter how long we hunt them.”

We can be reasonably sure, Uriel said.

There has to be a better way. Do they aver gather in a single location.

If they ever did, I doubt they would anymore. WThey know they’re being uhunted now. Congretgating would just be inviting attack.

Look in to it, will you” Daniel said as she stood. We need every break we can get.

By all means, Deaniel.

Susan checked her email and pounded the desk in frustration. Nothing. still. She’d been trying to get a response from Senator Phillips’s office for a week, and wasn’t getting anywhere. They weren’t even responding to her emails. It was infuriating.

Phi9llips was making a name forhim himself on the basis of her reporting, but he woudln’t return ouhher calls. She had one more ace up her sleave, though.

• Daniel pumps Uriel for ideas on how to kill a demon, doesn’t get much
• Susan tries to get an interview with Phillips, fails.

“Quite a crowd, sir,” said John, his most trusted aide. Tougher than he looked, John always reminded Phillips of that British egghead from the talking ape movies back in the seventies. He liked those.

“Indeed,” Phillips agreed with his rich baritone that sounded so good in campaign ads. Phillips was a barrel of a man with a ruddy complexion and round features that fit the macho Texas expectation. He was bigger than life, or so he made people believe. In his experience, the more people believed, rather than thought for themselves, the better it was for him.

The event organizer came over and nodded to him, to see if he was ready. To stand out in front of all that money? He was born ready.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the organizer said at the podium, amplifying his reedy voice through the hall, “please welcome Senator Timothy Phillips!”

Phillips strode out on the stage to applause, nodding to prominent donors in the crowd. He took his place behind the podium and grabbed the sides with two strong hands. When the applause died down, he began.

“My friends, we’re here today to address the most dire threat this nation has ever seen. As many of you have seen in the media, we have been overrun. Humanity is not, has never been, free. We have been mere pawns. I refer to the dmeonic meance. Many of you may not believe in the immortal threat. I didn’t either, at first.

“But friends, I have seen the evidence. Here in our own home state of Texas, I have seen fiends that cannot be killed. I have seen it with my own yees and seen the desctruction ytyah can cado.

“But friends, I have seen the proof with my own iees. Mayny o f you know that my esteemed , well formerly esteemed collegegue Senator Barnaby has resigned from cgovernment service. I cN tell you way,hwhy. I can tell you what I have seen with my own eyes.

“:Shortly after the story broke on the internet, Barnaby started ascting strange. I hadn’t take a look at the rosters of alledged demons, of course, because I paid it no more mind that you have. I didn’t know that Barnaby was listed on that roster as Fariel, a demon last known by that name in Old testament times. One day men dressed in black combat fatiqgues showed up and asked Barnaby to step aside. He refused. They tried to arrest him. At first, I ewent to his aide, eve3n tough he was a mamber of the other oparty, as I would for any senate college. I was pushed aside before I could intervene.

And then I awsw something I will take to my grave. The men shot Barnaby, right in the checst with automatic weapons. Instead of foalling and dieing, Barnaby smiled at them. He charged at the men and by frmy frindends I swear this is true began tearing them apart with his bare hands. I aasaw him rip the hiead from the shoulders of one man before punching his fist tyhrough the checdt of another. It was carnagive I had never seen before and wish never to see again.

after he finished destroying the assoutlyt team, Barnaby left, walking out of the Capitol building under his own consiederable power. He never returned. and workd came out the next day that he had chosen to resign to “spend more time with his family.”

Friends, this creature had no family. This was an immortal monster, so thouroughly insinuatedinto into our midst that I’d worked with him for years and never suspected he was anything but a congenial man from Oregon.

Since thien, I have watched, and learned. There are thousands of these demons. Whether or not they are indeed the basis for Biblical demons is still open for speculation, but I can tell you without a doubt that they exist, that they cannot be killed, that they are not human and that they are manipulating us for their own nefarious ends.

They are among us even now. The fact that most don’t yet believe only serves them. They could be anyone. Your partnes, members of your boards. Your suppliers, your customers. They might be on municipal committees with you, might play golf at your club. And the whole time, they’re watching you. Learning how to control you.

I don’t need to reimdn you that this is America. This is the land of the free, or so we thought. Our most cherished ideal has qalways been that we were free to decide our own destiny. Now I have learned that this was never true. HWe were never free.

Btut friends, we can be. I am committed to hunting downand exxposing the demons for that they are. i am committed to returning humanity to our own sovreignty. To willing back that most basic right, for which so many thought they died.

But I need your help. Barnaby wasn’t the only immortal in Congress, and he was certainly not the only immortal in Washington. So many of the them work on K street today, plying their trade of influencing our laws, our society. I need your help to bring tyhe ytruth to light.

You are each, of course, wielcome to coall me directly and discuss this matter, but you can also donate to my website, listed on the folders inf front of you. I’ve also included a portable drive for your computers that conytains the deataabase of demonic identities. Please believe me when I say this is the most important call to action you have ever received. It is time to take our country back. To take our society back. Thank you.”

Phillips walked off the state to thundrous applause.

Jack sat his his office, staring at reports on his computer.

Theyt were set up in a commercial office space Uriel had producured for hem. It wasn’t much, but it was more than enough to store their geara and serve as a base of operations for four men. On his screen, he read online discussions from the Crusdade. Reports from other automnomous teams like his of victoryes, and all too often, defeats.

Last night with Dante had been lucky, by the averages. Most teams had lost at eleast one member already, some had been completely wiped out. And Jack was starting to wonder if Daniel had a point. Why were they really doing this?

After Baghdad, Jack had been running on autopilot. He saw the demons as just another threat. Just one more enemy to fight. The FBI was compromised, so he could do it himself. It seemed easy, seemed right. He, Sandy, Dante and Daniel made a good team. Each had fought the demons already, each brought a necessary mission specialty to the team. It should have worked.

But last night was different. And Jack thought he knew why. Because this time, they weren’t simply fighting for their lives, fighting to escape. This time they had gone looking for toruble and found it.

Dante and Daniel weren’t professional soldiers and the training he and Sandy had put them threeough hadn’t changed that much. Yes, they were more fit, yues they had experience with firearms, but they wern’t solidiers. Not really.

Well, that wasn’t rure. They hadn’t been soldiers ytwenty four hours before, but they damn sure were now. They’d seen combat, and in Dante’s case, padid the price. Jack blamed himself for not keeping an eye ont he kid. He new better, new that both he and Daniel would need a steady hand in their first action. He should have been there. He should have planned the assualt better. He should have done a lot of things.

Dante was still in the hospital, but had been upgraded to stable condition. He would be able to keep the leg, but he wouldn’t be able to walk on it for a few months. Jack didn’t know if he would even come back to the team when he got out. His particular mission contriubtion would be easiest to do remotely, and he might actually even be more useful if he wasn’t in the battle itself, but rather informing it from the outside looking in. Something else Jack should have thought of.

This wasn’t like Iraq. If anything, his team was the insurgent force now. The demons were everywhere, and Daniel had a point. Going aftr them one by would take decades. Was that really the best way to approach this? It had seemed like the only way when he got back from Iraq. But now, he didn’t know. It was all he knew how to do. In the army, and then in the FBI, he hunted bad guys. It was all he had ever done, ever wanted to do. And the demons were bad guys like no other.

So why wasn’t this clearer? Why did he feel so damn helpless? He’d lost men in combat before. It always tore him up, but this was different, somehow. This time he wasn’t sure the mission was even the right mission. One up side to the Crusade being a leaderless movement only bankrolled by the angels was that there was no hierarchical command and control for hte demons to disrupt. But the down side was that there was no one calling the shots, either. They were on their own, left to their own devices. Their own judgment. And Jack wasn’t sure he trusted his.

He closed the laptop and left the office. He had another mission to plan, but today wasn’t the day to do it.

*Jack and Sandy discuss the mission

Jack sat in their office, a nondescript commercial space Uriel profied for them. He was going over reports from the field from other Crusaders, news of victories, and all too often, defeats. Last night’s incident with Dante wasn’t atypical. In fact, most teams had already lost at least one member. Some had been wiped out entirely.

Sandy walked in the office, having finished going over their gear in the garage. “What’s the work, Jack?”

Jack leaned byak in his chair. It’s not good, Sandy. Dante’s lucky to be alive.

Sandy leaned against the end of Jack’s desk. “But is is alive, right?”

“Yeah, I jugt got off the phone with the hostpial, He’ll be okay, he’s been upgraded to spable contidion. They said he’ll be available ? ready for discharge in about a week. He won’t be able to walk without cruchtes for months, probbly. Depends on how he does in phsyical therapy.”

“So, good news, then.”

Sandy, we were all lukcy to get out of there alive last night. Sandy and grrr. Dante and Daniel aren’t soliders. You and I swhould have paired up with them, kept a steay hand on them. They weren’t ready for combat.”

“Bullshit, Jack. We trained them well. You know that.”

“Well, but you know it’s not the same. They were green.”

“There’ not anymore,” Sandy said.

“It’s different for us, Sandy. We were officers in the US army. We searved in Iraq. We knew going in what it wazs like to get shot at.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, Jack, but Daniel and Dante had fought demons before. Daniel killed one. With your help. I’ve seen the video.”

It wasn’t the same, fihgting for our lives. Last night we went looking for toruble and it found us.”

Thi s is why you didn’t last in Iraq, you know.”

“Excuse me?”

“Jack, you have to let things go. Every time you lose someone, you flog yourself about it. War, as you might have noticed, is hell. Casualties are part of the job. Could we have done better last night? Sure. We can always do better. But Dante sin’t dead, Jack. He survived to fight anoyther day, and so did wel. We learned some good lessons liast ngith too. We know an EMP doesn’t do squat to disable the nianites and we learned that fire sure as hell drives them off. We need to focus on that. MOve foreward.”

“It atake the safety of my men seriously.”

“Jack, Dante ain’t your man. We’re all wequeals here and we’re all here by our won choice. Dante knew what he was walking into last night. He thought he was ready. We thought he was ready. Take the win and move on.”

“:last night wasn’t a win, Sandy. Rufariel is still out there.”

“He’s screcytra crispy now, though.”

“By now, no he’s not. He’s back to just being immoprtal and pissed off. Daniel said something intertested iat the hospital last night.”

Daniel was more out of his head than you are.”

“Jack ignored the jab. “Daniel asked me what we were really doing, why were wer doing this. And you know what,? I dind’t haven an anderwr. Fighting these things one by one will take decades, generations. We’ll lose thougsands , maybe millions of people. And we’ll never really know for sure we got them all.”

I could say the same thing about terrorists, Jack. And we fought them. Is this really any different than Iraq? Afghanistan?

There has to be a better way, Jack said. Three has to be a way to make a difference. Right now we’re not doing it.

We’re learning, Jack. It’s early int he game.

dammit, Sandy, this isn’t a game. We’re doing a lot better than most teams, did you know that? We haven’t lost anyone yet.

We had to train up two scivilians. We started late.

Are you saying you expect to uselose someone?

Don’t you? ack, are you hearing a damn workd I say? This is war! We are going to lose people. You , me, daniel, none of us is immunte. But the fight is worth fighting. So we do it.

I don’t know if it’s worth fighting like this.

Like what?

One at a time. We’re flailing aorund in the dark here. We don’t even have a reliable way to kill them yet.

Jack, it ain’t lik,e they’re all huddled to gether somwhere. We have to fight them one at time. That’s wehere they are. As for how to kill them, Dante’s emp idea was a good wayone. We all thought it made sense. It didn’t work. So we come up with antyoher idea. And onoythere. Eventually, we’ll find something that works. And wehen we do, we tell the others. Isn’t that the point of this?This whole network?

Maybe, Jack said. But we better come up with something quick. We can’t afford to keep taking it in the shorts.

Sandy clapped Jack on the shoulder. “Chear up, Jack. We’ll get ‘em.” Sandy walkede out of the office, and jack just stared at his comptuer, at the logs of war they were already losing.

I’ve learned a few things. Or learned them again, since after I learned them I realized these are things I already knew but had forgotten that I knew so that when I learned them again it was like learning them for the first time only it wasn’t. (and know you know what the inside of my head is like when I’m drafting)

Feel free to revise the outline as you go

Part of my problem was that–as they always do–my characters surprised me and started veering away from the outline as they came up with better, more inventive ways to accomplish what I needed them to do. Daniel is much more thoughtful and proactive than I expected, Susan is more ambitious and driven, Phillips is more… Phillips-y. As I got closer and closer to chapter 6 in the outline, “Disruptions,” my subconscious kept throwing on the breaks, usually by way of enforced narcolepsy as soon as I opened my world processozzzzzzzz… Yeah, like that.

It finally sank in on me that the reason I was so hesitant to write “Disruptions” was that because of the actions and attitudes already conveyed in the book, that chapter was no longer necessary. The book actually works better with it entirely cut out. I cut it, tinkered with act 2 a bit, which is coming up even faster now, and I’m back on track. I can type without falling asleep.

But not without closing my eyes, because…

Type blind for maximum speed

The other trick I rediscovered is that I can write roughly double the words in a given span of time if I don’t sweat readability. On my PC, I engage the “flow mode” in WriteMonkey, which disables the backspace and delete keys, forcing me to keep typing no matter what. On my iPhone with my Bluetooth keyboard, I just turn the phone over so I can’t see the screen. In either case, I keep typing and don’t worry about typos. If I know I screwed up a word, I just tap the spacebar and keep going.

This is part of the reason why I haven’t posted chapters 3–5 yet. They’re borderline unreadable unless you’re me and know what I meant. But it’s close enough so that I’ll know what I’m doing when it comes time for revision. Speaking of which…

No revising (or wire hangers)

This one may be more germane to me than most NaNo novellers since I’m dumb enough to post my first drafts for the world to see. But another drag on my productivity was unease with my mess of a manuscript and the need to fix it before I go on. Say it with me: Bad Jeff! No biscuit! It is what it is, and if it’s unreadable, it’s a first draft and it’s supposed to be unreadable. Keep writing. At this point in the process, you not only have permission to suck, but it’s practically expected.

That said I’ll be posting chapters 3–5 later. Some scenes are incomplete, some need to be rewritten from the ground up, some of them are pretty good if you ignore the typos. But they got me to 13,000, and that’s the important part.

Jack looked out the windscreen of the Blackhawk as the buildings of San Francisco sped below them in darkness. He was glad Daniel was finally getting a chance to find some closure over what happened to his family, but he hoped the guy would be able to focus on the mission. Rufariel was ruthless, even for a demon. Jack had known the FBI team that had tried to take him out. Well, he knew them by reputation. They were pros. None of them made it home.

Fortunately, his team had an ace in the hole. The machine was bolted to the floor of the Blackhawk between the cockpit and where Daniel and Dante sat. It looked like a large industrial turbine and Jack had no idea how much it had cost. But if Dante’s theory about the nanotechnology that made the immortals immortal worked, it would even the odds considerably.

“30 seconds to LZ,” Sandy drawled over the intercom system in their headsets. Through the noise cancelation that protected their hearing from the rotors, he sounded like he was calling up from the bottom of a deep well. “Hang on to your butts.”

“Dante,” Jack called. “Be ready to flip the switch the second we land. We have to catch him while he’s still in range.”

“Yes sir,” Dante said. The hacker had toughened considerably since leaving his job as an FBI tech analyst, but he was still in the habit of addressing Jack as a superior, even though everyone on the team were nominally equals.

“Gonna need you to step up, Jack,” Sandy said, still sounding like he was on a lazy fishing boat. Jack had been Bob “Sandy” Sandarski’s commanding officer in Iraq, and he knew that the hairier the situation, the more relaxed Sandy seemed to be. The operative word was “seemed.” Men had different ways of coping with the stress of battle, and Sandy’s extreme calm was not uncommon.

“Don’t wait for me,” Jack said. He prepared for an emergency shutdown of the chopper’s systems. They’d have only a few seconds, and he didn’t want to ruin their ride.

“Five,” Sandy said. “Four, three, two, touchdown, the crowd goes wild.” The chopper dropped hard on the roof of a warehouse, and Jack and Sandy were both madly flipping switches and shutting down everything they could as fast as they could.

“Do it, Dante!” Jack said.

From behind him, Jack heard a sharp electric hum and then a WHUMP as the lights went out for blocks around.

Jack was already out of the chopper. “Go! Go! Go!”

The men ran across the roof in a well-drilled line, their weapons ready. Jack fired a round into the door of the rooftop stairwell and kicked it open. They descended into darkness lit only by the Maglites strapped the the barrels of their H&K submachineguns.

Inside, they fanned out. The warehouse was filled with cargo containers, some stacked four high. The target could be between or even inside any one of them. They were on a narrow metal catwalk that ringed the warehouse floor below.

“You know the drill, people,” Jack said. “Look for movement, any sign that he—”

Jack was cut off by the report of a rifle and a bullet pranging off a pipe not six inches from his helmet. “Down!” he shouted. The men dropped prone on the catwalk.

“Anyone see the muzzle flash?” Jack asked.

“Negative,” Sandy said. “Must have it suppressed.” He sounded like he was relaying a baseball score for teams he didn’t particularly care about.

“Shit,” Jack said. They weren’t off to the best start, already pinned down by an as yet unseen enemy. Still, he’d had worse.

He reached into the front pocket of his fatigues and pulled out two flash-bang grenades. “Fire in the hole,” he said, his voice echoing off the containers and warehouse walls. So much for subtlety, he thought.

He pulled the pins and flung the grenades in opposite directions. They’d just about hit the floor of the warehouse when they went off, loud cracks of sound and blinding white phosphorous.

Sandy followed his lead and dropped flares, casting the warehouse in a flickering yellow-green glow. Wasn’t as good as night vision, but it would do.

Jack started to get up when another shot pranged over his head, followed almost immediately by a rifle crack that echoed back and forth until it was impossible to determine where it had come from. “Dammit!”

Rufariel was smart, far smarter than Asemiel, the demon they’d killed in the summer. He had been, as it turned out, a relatively low-level functionary, and had been undone as much by his own overconfidence as anything Jack or Daniel had done. Now demons had the benefit of warning, of knowing that humans could actually kill them if they got lucky. It had already happened a few times, crusaders in Italy, Africa and Korea. Rufariel hadn’t gotten this far by being stupid.

“Spread out,” Jack said. “Try to surround him before we descend to ground level. And hold on tight.” The rest of the team nodded, intuiting what he had in mind, and began belly-crawling along the catwalk.

Jack pulled another two grenades out of his fatigues. These weren’t flash-bangs, though. He pulled the pin on the first one and flung it straight out, letting it fall roughly in the middle of the warehouse. It disappeared behind the cargo containers and detonated with a deafening thunderclap. The containers shook and a mixture of dust and smoke billowed out the narrow metal canyon.

Jack readied his rifle and squinted through the haze. He was looking for any sign of movement, anything that might be Rufariel trying to get away from the heat and concussion of the blast. He saw nothing.

Take two, then, he thought. He checked to see where the team was. Sandy, Daniel… and there was Dante. They all had set up near long metal ladders in the corners of the building that led from the catwalk down to the floor. He made eye contact with each of them in turn, then held up the second grenade. They nodded.

He pulled the pin and flung it out a bit farther, trying to drop it down into the next row out from the one he’d hit. The grenade bounced and skidded across the top of the container and detonated just as it veered out over the edge, maybe forty feet above the floor. The explosion wasn’t as buffered by the containers this time and Jack was flattened down to the catwalk by the overpressure.

He craned his head over the catwalk and tried to see any sign of movement below. The flares were starting to sputter, and would have to be replaced. He was reaching for his last grenade, another flash-bang, when he saw just a hint of movement.

Directly below him.

Jack rolled to the side just as the automatic fire strafed the catwalk where he’d been. He saw a glimpse of a figure running in the smoke under the catwalk, hugging the wall of the warehouse.

“I’ve got him!” Jack shouted. “He’s here!” Granted, he couldn’t even hear himself over the echoes of gunfire and the ringing still in his ears. He pulled himself up to a crouch, and duckwalked across the catwalk in pursuit. Ahead of him, he saw Sandy converging on the same corner. He glanced quickly over his shoulder, just to verify that Daniel and Dante were already on their way down to the floor to cut off the demon’s escape route. This was going better than expected.

Sandy fired a quick burst down the ladder, then started to descend, carefully and with his weapon trained and ready to return fire if necessary. Jack had him covered, but could no longer see the demon. Something further into the warehouse had caught fire, and the smoke was obscuring his vision.

Sandy reached the bottom of the ladder, and swept around him in a Weaver stance modified for the snub-nosed MP-5 they used, front hand holding the vertical grip of the weapon in front of his trigger hand. He did a complete 360, but didn’t fire. He looked up at Jack and shrugged.

Jack had just started down the ladder himself when he heard bursts of weaponfire on the other side of the warehouse.

Daniel heard the shots, almost deafeningly close, but didn’t see the shooter. It sounded like one of their H&K’s, but he couldn’t be sure it was Dante. He crept slowly along a row of containers, his vision flickering in an out with the dying flares. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a flare, struck it against his leg and tossed it high overhead, looking away from the green arc of light until it landed. Unfortunately, it didn’t do much more than illuminate the smoke.

He was just nearing the corner when he heard Dante shout, “I’ve got him!” and fire off a quick burst from his MP-5. Daniel ran forward and saw Dante crouched behind a wooden crate. The hacker popped up and fired again.

Daniel tracked to where Dante was firing and saw the demon Rufariel, wearing simple work clothes rather than the designer suits Asemiel had favored. The bullets from Dante’s gun raked up the body of the demon, and Daniel added his own pair of three-round bursts right to the demon’s center mass. Rufariel fell over backward from the kick.

Dante jumped out from behind the crate. “We got him!” he shouted. Daniel was about to tell him to get back behind cover when he heard the demon’s voice behind him.

“My turn.”

Daniel dove behind the cargo container as Rufariel sprayed automatic fire first at him, then back towards Dante. Daniel saw Dante duck back behind the crate.

The demon smiled. He aimed at the crate and opened fire. The bullets tore through the wood and Dante cried out before he fell screaming to the ground.

Daniel returned fire towards the demon, tried to cross to Dante, was who was wailing in pain. The demon held his ground and fired a burst at Daniel, who was forced to retreat to the cover of the steel cargo container, sturdier cover than Dante’s wooden crate.

He heard a whoosh and saw a bright flash of orange light over the sickly green flares. He peaked out and saw that Sandy had hit Rufariel with the miniaturized flamethrower he kept strapped to his back. The demon screamed and retreated, but didn’t fall.

“Tend to Dante, doc, I got this,” Sandy said, with a bit less than his usual drawl.

Daniel darted over to Dante. “It’s okay. I’m here, we’re going to get you patched up.” He started checking Dante for injuries, but it only took an instant to see where the biggest trouble was. A sizeable pool of blood had already spread on the dirty concrete floor under Dante’s left leg.

“Hurts…” Dante said between clenched teeth. Even in the yellow-green glow from the flares, he looked noticeably pale. Already going into shock, Daniel thought. Not good.

He pushed Dante back as gently as time allowed and straightened the leg, which set off another round of screaming. “Stay with me, Dante,” Daniel said, and reached in his pack. He pulled out a small nylon bag which he unzipped to reveal basic surgical tools. He first grabbed a single-use injector and pressed it to Dante’s neck.

Pfft. The morphine went into Dante’s carotid artery. It didn’t seem to make much difference, but that was what Daniel had to work with.

He grabbed some shears and sliced open the leg of Dante’s fatigues with a quick, well-practiced motion. The bullet hole pierced cleanly through the upper thigh, through and through. So on the upside, no slug to dig out. But blood was spurting out of both sides with every beat of Dante’s heart. Red, oxygen-rich arterial blood.

Shit, Daniel thought. Nicked the femoral artery. He didn’t have much time. Dante had a hole in one of the largest arteries in the body, and would bleed out in minutes if Daniel couldn’t stop it.

Daniel reached for a retractor, the steel teeth gleaming green. “This is gonna hurt, buddy,” he said to Dante. He got an inarticulate moan in return. Daniel jammed the retractor into the wound and spread it, opening a channel down to the artery. Dante screamed and pounded the concrete with his fists.

Daniel peered into the wound, wishing he had some ligation to clear the blood out of the way. It looked worse than he thought. The artery wasn’t nicked at all, it was severed and had retracted up the leg. There was no way to get to in the field. “Shit shit shit…” Daniel said as he reached for a tourniquet.

He wrapped the band around Dante’s upper thigh, hip to crotch. It didn’t fit, the damage was too far up the leg. He tightened it down anyway, which slowed, but didn’t stop the blood flow. Dante passed out, so at least he didn’t have to deal with a thrashing patient.

Making sure the retractor was secure, he reached for (tong thingy) and reached into the wound. He heard Jack’s voice behind him, but couldn’t tell what he was saying, and both Jack and Sandy had seen enough battlefield triage to know not to interrupt the medic with stupid questions like, “Is he going to make it?” They knew asking those questions vastly increased the chance of a “no.”

Trying to follow the warmth of the blood, Daniel pushed the (thingy) further up Dante’s leg as he grabbed a clamp with his other hand. There it is, he thought, feeling the end of the gushing tube. Slippery bastard…

He got a grip on the end of the artery and pulled. Even unconscious, Dante moaned. The pain had to be unthinkable. He almost lost it, tightened his grip, and finally fished out the artery into the open. He clamped it shut, which both stopped the major bleed and kept the artery from retracting up the leg again. Hands dripping blood, Daniel grabbed his sutures and a needle. Another minute, and he had the artery sewn shut, good enough to move him to a proper ER, anyway.

He quickly checked for other wounds, but miraculously, only the one bullet managed to hit Dante through the crate. He’d been lucky, all things considered.

Still on his knees, Daniel said, “We’ve got to get him to a hospital. Now.”

“Ambulance is already en route,” Jack said.

“And Rufariel?”

“He got away. The EMP didn’t work. He was still immortal when we hit him.”

“So all of this was for nothing,” Daniel said. He slumped, still knealing in Dante’s blood as the sirens approached.

Half an hour later, Jack stood with Daniel and Sandy in the waiting room of the ER. Dante had been wheeled in for surgery, but they thought they’d be able to save the leg. So far, that was the only good news of the evening.

All three of them were quiet. The two war vets knew anything they said would be trite, and Daniel was lost in his own thoughts. Jack felt for the guy, but was also immensely proud of him. He’d saved Dante’s life back there. He knew Daniel had been a gifted trauma surgeon until a mistake cost a woman and her unborn child their lives and him his job. And Jack had seen firsthand on several occasions how Daniel carried himself in a fight against immortals. He knew the kid would do great, but what he couldn’t predict was how he’d take such an intense setback.

And they hadn’t even lost Dante. Battlefield medics had to be prepared to lose patients. You couldn’t save them all. He’d seen this in some medics in Iraq. Generally speaking, combat docs had one of two looks about them. Steely eyed confidence because they knew they were the best at their jobs and saved the lives of their comrades, or a glassy, thousand yard stare because they’d seen too many of their own die under their hands. Daniel seemed to be tipping to the latter.

“Daniel,” Jack put his hand on Daniel’s shoulder.

“Not now, Jack!” Daniel shook it off and stormed outside. Jack followed.

“Daniel, you saved him. Dante’s going to be okay.” Jack said, keeping his distance, but making it clear he wasn’t going away, either.

Daniel spun to face him. “What if he didn’t? He almost bled out, Jack. They had to replace over half his blood volume on the way here. Another few seconds, even, and—”

“And nothing. You saved him. You did your job.”

“And what is that job, Jack? We’ve been playing G.I. Fucking Joe for three months, while those things have been running around free, and the first time we try to take one down, he almost kills one of us. What the hell are we doing, Jack?”

“The EMP didn’t work as we expected—”

“That’s a fucking understatement.”

“—but that’s okay. We know not to waste any more time trying to attack the nanites themselves. We’ve just learned one more way not to make a light bulb. Trial and error is part of this job.”

“Except that when we fall on the ‘error’ side someone almost gets killed. We don’t have time to fuck around like this, Jack, and we definitely can’t afford to spare the bodies.”

“Dante’s still with us, Daniel. He can do most of his job outside direct combat anyway—”

“Were you even there, tonight, man? Rufariel could have slaughtered all four of us and then gone to get a burger. We didn’t even slow him down. He was toying with Dante, Jack. I saw it. He was having fun. If the demon had really wanted us all dead, we’d be just like your buddies in the FBI.”

Jack said nothing. The comment stung, but Daniel was right. It could have been much, much worse. Instead Jack stood there in the cold night wind, and waited for Daniel to get the rant out of his system.

“This is fucking stupid,” Daniel said. “Trying to kill the demons one by one, in direct combat, what the hell were we thinking?”

Jack didn’t respond.

“No, really, Jack, I’m asking. What were we thinking? We’d narrowly avoiding getting killed by Asemiel, several times over, and since then we’ve learned he was the fucking Barney Fife of demons. How in hell did we ever believe that we could take on demons playing their A game?”

“Because we don’t have a choice, Daniel. If you have a better idea, I’d love to hear it. But until you come up with one, fighting them one on one is all we can do. We try, we take our chances, be as smart about it as possible, and learn from our mistakes. No one has ever, in recorded history, fought them directly before. We’re the first. So we have to learn as we go.”

“And get people killed.” Jack noticed that Daniel still had Dante’s blood all over him. We need to have changes of clothes handy, he thought.

“Yeah, Daniel. Sometimes we will get people killed. Sometimes innocents, sometimes one of us. But that’s the price we pay.”

“There has got to be another way.”

Jack was reaching the edge of his patience, but hadn’t gone over yet. Every newbie went through this. To Daniel’s credit, they usually threw up too, after their first real action, but Jack figured Daniel got past that part when he’d been an ER doc.

“Daniel, this is the only way we have. And I don’t need to tell you how vital our job is. You know why we’re here. What’s at stake. You know better than anyone. Without the demons, your family would still be alive and you’d still be trying to be invisible in D. C.”

“Fuck you, Jack. They make you do a psych rotation, you know. I know what you’re doing better than you do. Want me to explain how that kind of manipulation works on a neurological level?”

“If it will get you past this and back on track, sure. Go right ahead.”

“So that’s it? You want to just go right back to work in the morning like this didn’t happen? Like Dante didn’t almost die?”

“No,” Jack said. “I want us to go back to work tomorrow morning like Dante didn’t die. Because he didn’t. He’s still alive, and that’s thanks to you. But if you can’t get past this, if you can’t put a close call—and that’s all this was—aside and do the job, then maybe we can’t use you. You’re a gifted medic and a good fighter, and no one has more experience with immortals than you, but we need your head in the game.”

“I’ll see you in the morning, Jack,” Daniel said, and stalked away into the night.

Ahem.

The good news is that what I’m writing is surprising me with how good it is. I’ll let you be the judge as soon as I get chapter 2 finished, of course, but this is coming out much better than what I had in my head. So if the really good stuff comes slower than the average stuff, I’ll take that.

Anywhoosle, my friend Robin, who has always been uneasy with Susan Richardson’s character, sent me an interesting article yesterday and said it reminded her of Susan. To summarize, it postulates that a big reason female Tea Party candidates like Sharon Angle, Christine O’Donnel and yes, even the original Mama Grizzly herself, Sarah Palin have lost is that there is an inherent contradiction between what they say and who they are.

The main problem with Mama Grizzly candidates is that they present a contradiction, laying claim to feminism while denouncing most feminist ideals. Sarah Palin, with her peculiar genius, created the term Mama Grizzly to rationalize this contradiction. The Mama Grizzly could be ambitious without being feminist, could be fierce without being threatening, because her feminist means are in service of anti-feminist ends.

And that really does sum up the Susan that has always existed in my head. I’ve missed the mark several times now, off on either side, trying to pin down her mix of Christian conservativism and journalistic ambition. But this drives home that my mistake with Susan was only looking at her character within each book rather than over the whole trilogy. From that larger perspective her character just pops. She initially helps Daniel and escapes the FBI with him because she’s after the story. If need be, she can just claim later she was a hostage. After the motel room in Arlington, she’s scared, but more determined than ever to get the story. Balancing her ambition against her fear works all the way through killing Asemiel.

But when she meets Uriel, we start to see her religion reassert itself. Especially if Uriel pulls her aside and asks her to document the trip to Iraq. The Joan of Arc bit starts here, slowly building through the third act of Revelation and all of Crusade. She’s the chosen of God to bring the message of the angels to humanity. By the time we start Jihad she’s totally bought into this, and it will take something spectacular from Daniel to make her see the truth.

Basically, I’ve finally reconciled, in my mind anyway, how she can be a sucker for the angels and still be a tough as nails reporter.

And speaking of the angels, something occurred to me about them, as well. The angels have spent the last few centuries accumulating absolutely massive wealth and corporate power. I pointed out to Josh the other day that while it pretends to be a grass-roots movement, the modern Tea Party is funded by a relatively small handful of billionaires. And in the UC universe, the angels own the billionaires.

So while the angels are funding paramilitary squads of demon hunters like Team Jack, they’re also, way, way behind the scenes, driving the “grass-roots” people’s revolt that Phillips taps into. One of the things I’ve always thought was a silly defense of the second amendment is that we need guns to protect against a tyrannical federal government. It’s silly because even if you have fully automatic machine guns, they have tanks. And bombers. And nukes. They win.

But what if it wasn’t the federal government versus millions of “Joe the Plumber“s? What if it was really the federal government versus the private sector. The National Guard versus Blackwater. Then it starts to look like a real fight. And that’s what we have in Crusade. When the time comes for the demons’s ultimate victory of chaos over order, they never stop to think where where the chaotic pawns got all that artillery.

Until it’s too late, that is. When the angels, in brand new and gleaming white powered armor similar to but not the same as the armor all the immortals had possessed milennia ago, descend into Hell and start slaughtering demons, Gabriel is going to point that out to Lucifer. Where did you think all this came from? And then, in mirror to John telling Phillips that his services were no longer required before snapping the senator’s neck, Gabriel will tell Lucifer that his services are no longer required, that the angels can take it from here.

The politics and motivations in this book are complex, but if I can pull it off, it’ll be a better book than Revelation.

That’s what I could have used yesterday. For some reason, I just couldn’t focus. I slept through the “writing hour” from six to seven AM, and never got time to settle in at the office. I dropped by Panera after work to write with my editor and her minion, and managed to eke out a bit over 600 words, but the whole day felt like I was thinking through jelly. And not in a good way.

I need 2,000 words today to stay on the NaNoWriMo pace of 5,000 words total. 3k will get me back to my own planned pace of 2k per day. I got up earlyish this morning (only one snooze) but spent most of the time fighting with my desktop PC rather than writing. So I have to squeeze out what I can at the office (while taking care of my users) and really burn through the write in tonight.

Lesson: Write when you can, because you may not be able to write later.