"Yes, they're . . ." There was a scream in the background. "Please hurry! They're coming . . ." The call cut off.

Lieutenant Doug Jones was chief investigator for the Lake County Sheriff's department. He had gotten that position, and his promotion from sergeant, when the sheriff and his ex-boss agreed that it was unlikely the ex-boss, who had been called up in the National Guard, was going to be coming back formore than a year. Right now he regretted the promotion.

Generally he was in charge of investigations into burglaries, fairly frequent, rapes, not too frequent, murders, infrequent and, most of all, drug dealing and drug running. Lake County was at the crossroads of several major highways and drugs flowed up from the south, coming from Miami and Tampa, and often were distributed or transferred or dealt in Lake County.

What he wasn't used to was investigating home invasions by demons.

He looked at the patch of . . . what did the forensic tech call it? Oh, yeah, "ichor" on the ground and shook his head.

"This truly sucks," he said, looking over at the first-in officer. "And you didn't see anything?"

"No, Lieutenant," the deputy said. "When I got here there were neighbors out in the street. Based on my information I went to the back of the house. The rear door had been busted in; it was on the floor of the kitchen. There were shotgun shells on the stairs and upstairs landing and a twelve gauge pump shotgun.

Blood patch on the landing, blood patch in the upstairs bedroom, wireless phone on the floor. And . . ."

He pointed at the patch of drying green stuff. "That on the stairs, the landing and a trail going out the door. Also blood mixed with it in places."

"So, what we have here, is demons coming out of nowhere, invading a house, killing or injuring two retirees, dragging them out of the house and . . ." He looked at the hummock of oak and cypress behind the house. It was much the same as dozens he had walked through before but at the moment it was a dark and ominous presence. "And dragging them off into the darkness. I really don't like that."

"Neither do I," the cop admitted, gulping. "After I did an initial survey I called in and requested backup and investigators, secured the area and waited for response."

"Must have been fun," Jones said. He looked over at the head of the SWAT team and gestured with his chin. Like most small departments the SWAT team was a secondary duty for regular deputies. And, also like most small departments, it was made up of guys who were willing to shell out for their own equipment rather than being picked for being SWAT potential. But the Lake County squad was pretty good, all things considered. Most of the deputies were good old boys who had grown up with a rifle in their hand and knew how to shoot. That might help.

"Hey, Van," he said to the SWAT commander. Lieutenant VanGelder was six feet six of muscle and bone and a crack shot. He'd gone to every training course the department would pay for and many that he paid for out of his own pocket. On the other hand, "fighting on the fringes of hell" wasn't one of the courses that was available. "I want to find out where the blood leads."

"Yep," VanGelder said. "I was just waiting for your okay; we're going to mess up any evidence going in."

"Well, I somehow don't think we're going to be standing any of the perpetrators up in court," the investigator said, wryly. "'Ma'am, do you recognize any of the demons that you saw on the night of the twenty-sixth in this lineup?'"

"Yeah," VanGelder said, waving at the rest of the team. "Okay, I'm going to take point. We'll follow the trail to wherever it goes." VanGelder pulled down his balaclava, put on his helmet and hefted his shotgun. He'd considered using an MP-5 but the shotgun just had more authority. You hit something with a shotgun and it stayed hit.

He followed the trail, it was as clear as day, into the hummock. It curved around the cypress and oak with some side trails, moving in a generally northerly direction. Then, as he cleared a section of dense undergrowth, he saw it. A large, shiny, mirror sitting in the middle of the small forest. It extended from right at ground level up to about ten feet and was perfectly circular. And the trail went right up to it and disappeared.

"Son of a bitch," one of the team muttered. "Hellmouth."

"What?" VanGelder asked, turning around.

"Hellmouth," Knapp repeated. Knapp was, by nearly a foot, the shortest guy on the team. The rest tended to be over six feet but Knapp was five foot two inches tall. On the other hand, not only was he hands down the best martial artist, he was really useful for second-story entry; when the team competed five of them would just grab him and throw him through a window. Now he was pulling back his balaclava and shaking his head. "It's like Hellmouth, sir. They're saying there's a gate to another world at that ball in Orlando. I bet anything this is another one. Those weren't demons; they were aliens."

"Alien Abduction in Lake County," one of the squad muttered. "I can just see the headlines now. Just fucking great."

"Okay," VanGelder said, keying his mike. "Dispatch, this is SWAT One. We have what looks to be a teleportation gate in back of the incident site on Jules Court. Perpetrators appear to have escaped through the gate." He paused and was unsure what the hell to say after that. Fall back on the oldest call in police history. "Officer requests backup."

4.

"Oh, this is so truly good," Glasser said.

"My thoughts exactly," Weaver agreed. McBain had already compared the ichor found at the site to the other two biologies and come up blank. All three appeared to come from different evolutionary backgrounds. "Any ideas? Other than digging in?"

A platoon of combat engineers was felling the hummock, violating numerous environmental regulations if anyone was interested at the moment, while a company of national guardsmen were attempting to dig in.

As in much of Florida the water table in the area was high.

"Find out what's on the other side," Glasser said.

"If they're hostile, and I have to admit that appears to be the case, that might not be too healthy,"

Weaver pointed out.

"Toss a couple of satchel charges through first, sir?" the command master chief said. Command Master Chief Miller was about six feet tall and just about as broad with a bald head and a wad of chew bulging out the left cheek. He pushed the wad across and then spat on the ground, never letting his M-4 carbine track away from the glittering mirror. "Then go in tactical, get a look around and get back out?" "What about blow-back through the gate?" Glasser asked.

"Well, the back side doesn't appear to be functional as a gate, sir," Miller answered. "I'd say we toss 'em, duck around back and hunker down, then go back around and through."

"Works for me," Glasser said. "Make it so. Oh, and Chief?"

"Yes, sir?"

"You are not the first guy through the gate."

"Yes, sir," Miller said, his face unreadable.

"Neither am I. But I am going to be on the team."

First the environment suits. The SEALs had been using them on the other side of the Orlando gate so much they were used to them now. Then the mask, then the hood, then the body armor. Then the air tank, then the ammo harness. Last of all the weapon and the helmet.

"Wish these face masks were ballistic protective," Glasser said as Weaver helped him get adjusted.

"Have fun," Weaver said.

"Don't I always?"

The five-man team had assembled by the gate, two of them swinging satchel charges in their hands. The satchel charge was a nylon bag filled with explosives. A timed fuse was connected to a detonator. Hit the timer, toss the bag and when the time's up big explosion.

"Just remember," Miller growled, over the radio. "Once you ignite the fuse, Mister Satchel Charge is not your friend.

Glasser, Miller and Sanson crouched behind the gate as the other two tossed the charges through and then ducked around with them. All five clamped their hands over their ears and then waited a moment.

There was a tremendous crash that was at the same time oddly muted. Then the team went in.

Each SEAL had a number and a mission. The point, Howse, would enter, scan left and right and then concentrate on forward. Number two, Woodard, would scan as he entered, then concentrate on left.

Three, Sanson, had right. Four, Command Master Chief Miller, had up and back. Five, Glasser, was in command.

They formed, fast, on the near side then, putting their left hand on left shoulder and holding their weapons out and down, went through the gate at a run.

This time there was no vertical discontinuity. The far side was at the same level as the world they had left. But it was an entirely different environment than either earth or the other, still unnamed, planet. They appeared to be in a large room, but the walls and floors seemed oddly organic. The light was low and either everything was green or the light was. It appeared to be vaguely oval but the most distant walls were beyond sight in the gloom. Glasser switched on his gun-light and swept the beam around the room. It was large enough that the light didn't hit the far wall or the ceiling. The gate was in the middle of it, apparently. The floor, at least,was green and the diffuse light seemed to be coming up from it and the walls. The spot where the satchel charges had hit was dark as if whatever generated the light had been damaged. That was all the time he had to look, though, when Howse screamed.

Something like a giant mosquito was attached to his neck and more were flying through the air. Sanson shot at one and missed, then Glasser realized they were in an untenable situation. This was a place for Raid and shotguns, not M-4s.

"Back, back!" he shouted, backing into the gate and out.

The chief grabbed Howse and threw him over his back then bolted out the door as the rest of the team filled the room with lead. Howse, however, was the only one hit as the mosquitoes stopped well away from the gate.

Howse was on the ground with a local paramedic bent over him when Glasser, who may have been last in but was also last out, came through the gate. The thing that looked like a mosquito on the far side was, in the decent light of a normal sky, anything but. It had long wings shot through with veins and was colored light green. But the body was nothing but a blocky box and there was no apparent head, thorax or legs. It was attached to Howse's neck, though, and pulsed oddly in the light.

"What's it doing?" Sanson asked, stepping back.

There were tendrils extending out of its body and, as they watched, they burrowed into the environment suit and, presumably, into Howse. Howse's face was distended, his tongue sticking out, and he appeared to be dead.

"Okay, we have a real biological hazard, here," Weaver said. "Get him in a body bag. He needs to be in a level four biocontainment room, stat."

"He needs a hospital," Glasser objected.

"He looks pretty dead to me," Weaver said. "And I'd rather that we not contaminate the whole world with whatever that is. We need a way to stop them, for that matter, if they come through the gate."

"They stopped short," Miller said, walking over to the ambulance and coming back with a body bag.

"Sanson, help me get him zipped."

"What the hell do we do?" Glasser said, shaking his head. "If those 'demons' come back, we can shoot them. But those things . . . they're too small. Too quick. Maybe with shotguns."

"Big cans of bug-spray," Woodard said as the chief and the seaman slid the late SEAL into a body bag and hastily zipped it over the flier. "One of those sprayer trucks."

"We don't know that bug spray will kill them," Weaver pointed out. "But we can catch them if they come through. We need to get some of those light-weight nets for catching birds over this gate. Those things don't, apparently, have any way to cut. What do they call them? Gossamer nets or something."

"Where?" Glasser asked. "University of Florida will probably be closest," Weaver said, shrugging. "In the meantime . . ."

"Down!" Sanson yelled, triggering his M-4 into the first of the things through the gate.

Weaver understood why the, apparently late, Mrs. Edderbrook had called them demons. The thing stood about a meter and a half at the shoulder and was quadripedal. It had small eyes that were overshadowed by heavy bone ridges and more bone ridges graced its chest and back. The head, which was about the size of a dog's, ended in a beak like a bird of prey. The color was overall green with a mottling of an ugly purple. It had talons on front and rear legs. It had spikes sticking out of its shoulders and chest and a collar of them around its short neck. And it was fast.

The first of the things through the gate caught Woodard by the leg and threw him to the ground, worrying at the leg like a terrier, the beak crunching effortlessly through flesh with a brittle crack as it severed the bone. But there was more than one; they seemed to be pouring through the gate in a limitless stream.

Weaver took one look and decided that this was clearly not a place for a physicist. He turned tail and headed for the building line of entrenchments, hoping like hell that none of whatever those things were caught him and that he wouldn't get killed in the crossfire. Already the national guardsmen had opened fire and he heard bullets fly by as he sprinted for the lines. He also heard screams behind him and hoped like hell that the SEALs had had the sense to beat feet.

"Sanson, Miller," Glasser shouted, dropping to one knee and opening fire on the beast that had Woodard by the leg. "On me!"

The three of them formed a triangle, firing at the beasts as they piled through the gate. They would have been overrun in a second if it hadn't been for the National Guard, though. The guardsmen had kept all of their machine guns, both the platoon level MG-240s and Squad Automatic Weapons (SAWs) pointed at the gate and manned. So when the first of the beasts came through all they had to do was flick them off safe and open fire.

The result was a madhouse as six MG-240s and fifteen SAWs filled the gateway with lead. The beasts were heavily armored but enough rounds pouring into them killed them and they started to mound up in the gate, green ichor splashing in a wide circle, as the SEAL team backed away. As soon as they were clear of the immediate threat, and it was apparent that the infantry was piling up the enemy, the three turned their back on the gate and ran for the entrenchments.

Weaver was waving from a hole behind the main defenses and they made a beeline for him, passing between a shallow hasty fighting position where one of the national guardsman lay, firing careful bursts from an M-16A2 and crying, and a slightly deeper position where a SAW gunner was laying down three- and five-round bursts between what sounded like half-mad cackles.

Glasser, Miller and Sanson dove into the largish hole head-first, then the three SEALs turned around and began adding their own fire to the din.

Sanson drew a bead on one of the things and fired carefully, watching the placement of his shot. When they had first been retreating it had been a matter of laying down fire as fast as possible and he wasn't sure but he thought most of it was bouncing of the damned things. Sure enough, when he shot one in the head it didn't even seem to notice it. The things had overlapping scaly plates as well as the bone underneath. More shots in its side seemed to be effective, though, punching through the scales in a flash of green ichor. He wasn't sure whether it would have been a killing shot because even as he fired one of the MG-240s hit it and it went down. The ambulance that had supplied the body bag for Howse was inthe way of fire from one side of the semicircle of national guardsmen and the things were trying to use it for cover. But the other side of the positions covered the dead ground and they were filling up the space with bodies of the things.

However, they were clearly spreading out from the gate, despite the fire.

"We need more firepower," Glasser shouted through his mask.

Even as he said it mortar rounds started dropping in the clearing around the gate. The mortars, however, didn't kill the things unless they dropped right on them and the shrapnel from the mortars didn't seem to affect them at all.

Weaver heard a truck engine revving behind them and turned around to see one of the support trucks, a big five ton, pull up behind the entrenchments. There was a big machine gun in a circular mount on the top and it started hammering away, adding its fire to that of the company.

"Ma Deuce," Glasser said, sighting carefully and firing a short burst. "Fifty caliber. And it's doing a job, too."

The big machine gun's bullets weren't stopped by the armor of the monsters. Head, chest, side, legs, the massive rounds punched right through. The gunner knew what he was doing, too, working his way from the outside in, pushing back the tidal wave of monsters until they were hemmed in around the gate again.

But then he stopped firing.

"Has to change barrels," Glasser said when he saw Weaver flinch. "You want a weapon?"

"I wouldn't know how to use one," Weaver admitted. "But I'll be glad to learn if we get out of this."

"I need to go find the company commander," Glasser said. "Miller, Sanson, stay on the doctor. If it goes to shit, get him out." With that he stood up and sprinted off behind the line.

"What did it look like on the other side?" Weaver asked.

"Like being in a big, green, stomach," Miller responded. He had pulled off his mask and now had a chew in again. "I think it was the inside of some big organism. Big. The room we were in was at least a hundred meters long."

"Shit," Sanson said, dropping out his magazine and slapping in a new one.

The reason for his exclamation was clear. A new type of creature was pouring through the gate. These were bipedal and large but otherwise similar in general appearance to the earlier attackers. The big difference was in their armament. The tops of their beaks appeared to be hollow and as Weaver watched they stitched the line of defenders with projectiles. Two of them concentrated on the big machine gun, which had been gotten back into action, and the two man crew was riddled with the projectiles, their blood splashing all over the truck, which was still painted in desert camouflage.

The beasts were, also, heavily armored and seemed to shrug off most of the rounds coming their way.

Only the heavy rounds of the MG-240s seemed able to penetrate their armor and the things were now concentrating on taking out the machine guns one by one.

"Joy," Weaver said, turning over and pulling out his cell phone. He noticed that a news crew had set upbehind the line of firing. Alien invasion, live. Joy.

He pulled out his PDA and found the number he had been given then dialed it.

"White House, National Security Advisor's office."

"This is Doctor William Weaver," he said. "I'd like to speak to the NSA if she's available."

"I'm sorry, Doctor, she's in a meeting at the moment," the operator said. "Is that firing I hear?"

"Yes," he replied. "You might want to get a message to her that we're being invaded by aliens and the National Guard company trying to hold them off is about to be overrun. It should be on CNN by now.

That was really all I called to say, anyway. Thanks. Bye." With that he cut the connection.