It had been a decade since he’d read The Divine Comedy, and even then, he’d only skimmed it for the sake of morbid curiosity. He was an operator, not a scholar, after all, but this word came to him like a taunt as he climbed his own mountain, chasing the devil’s wrath. He shook off the weirdly prophetic and distracting thought and whipped his weapon around the bend to scan for threats. A middle-aged woman dropped her shopping bag and screamed as she came nose to muzzle with Jed’s gun.

He met her terrified, wide-eyed gaze and, finding no glowing irises, sidestepped to scan behind her.

Clear, the SEAL announced in his head.

He turned up the alley just in time to see the Dark One disappear into what looked like an open courtyard one block away. With a growl of frustration, Jed took off in pursuit yet again, having fallen farther behind. He dug deep, pushing himself to the edge of hypoxia as his lungs heaved to satisfy his body’s desperate call for oxygen from the thin, highland air. As he closed in on the entrance to the courtyard, the fleeing Dark One abruptly stopped and turned around to face him. The demon soldier’s eyes flashed once—beckoning Jed to battle—from where he stood in the middle of a green space marked by a handful of trees and park benches.

This time, instead of pausing to clear his corners, Jed abandoned caution for expediency and charged into the courtyard at full tilt. As he emerged from the alley, he noted a white delivery van idling on his left with the headlights off. He cleared the van’s front bumper in a flash, but in his peripheral vision he saw it pull forward and block access to the alley behind him. Two other vans, one at his ten o’clock and another at his two o’clock, executed similar maneuvers, blocking what he realized were all exits from the courtyard. The rabbit he thought he’d been chasing had turned out to be a fox instead, and now he was the one who’d gotten caught in a snare.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, he thought as he surveyed the courtyard. They baited me and I fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

Doors opened and multiple hooded figures stepped out of the three vans and began to converge on him from right, left, and behind. Jed’s already-elevated pulse rate ticked up a notch as the direness of his situation sank in. He wasn’t kitted up—which meant no body armor, no rifle, no comms—and he’d run away from his backup without telling them where he was going. Performing a slow, methodical 360-degree scan over his weapon, he took a head count:

Three . . . four, five . . . three more makes eight . . . plus the ringleader.

Nine versus one.

Wonderful.

The figure standing in the courtyard pulled back his hood, revealing his face.