Winters rage the superna.., p.1
Winter’s Rage (The Supernatural Activities Division Book 5), page 1
WINTER’S RAGE
THE SUPERNATURAL ACTIVITIES DIVISION
BOOK 5
WILLIAM STACEY
CONTENTS
The Story So Far
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Epilogue
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About the Author
Also by William Stacey
Copyright © 2025 by William Stacey
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Cover art by Jake @ J Caleb Design
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialog are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be considered as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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THE STORY SO FAR
Previously in Blood Coup
After the events of Marine Corps Magic, Wyatt struggles with guilt over killing Sita and the life-altering realization that he is now a mage. At Esme Winters’ estate, he learns a shocking truth: he is not an aquamancer, but a necromancer—heir to his father’s death magic, not his mother’s water-based power. Esme introduces him to the forbidden history of necromancy, including the 1902 Necromancer’s Blight, and prepares him for the path ahead. He is sent to Haiti to study under Lucien Baptiste, a powerful necromancer. There, Wyatt begins training and meets Lucien’s beautiful sister, Yveline, and their ill brother, Damien. Unknown to Wyatt, Damien is secretly in contact with Nathaniel Blackwood—Wyatt’s biological father—who has arranged a brutal test to determine Wyatt’s worth.
Meanwhile, in Puerto Rico, chaos erupts. The Midnight Court—a secretive community of modern vampires—splinters after Alba Mendoza, first daughter of the Imperator, kills her father and awakens the First Mother, a vampiric progenitor whose mortalis aura causes a deadly supernatural coma known as the sleeping sickness. Alba plans to weaponize the First Mother and spread the plague across the Americas. Isobel Mendoza, Alba’s sister, steals the Spiral, a powerful artifact that can control the creature, and flees into hiding.
Wyatt is forced to cut his training short when Chloe is sent to investigate the outbreak. Reunited in San Juan, they trace the illness to ghost activity across the city, eventually uncovering a secret Midnight Court crypt beneath the El Morro fortress. There, they are ambushed by vampiric creatures—and saved at the last moment by Isobel Mendoza, who reveals her identity and the scale of Alba’s plot.
With Division reinforcements arriving, they launch a sewer assault on the First Mother’s lair. They manage to sedate and capture the creature, but Alba’s forces strike back hard. During the chaotic ambush, Aspen Sweet and Egon Toft are killed, and Isobel surrenders to protect the others. Alba escapes with her, the Spiral, and the First Mother.
Wyatt gives chase through the storm on Rosie’s motorcycle. He disables their vehicle and follows the stolen transport to the airfield, where a final battle erupts aboard a C-17 cargo plane. During the fight, the containment unit slides off the ramp, dragging Alba to her death. As Wyatt tumbles out after it, facing his certain death, he has a sudden epiphany—he’s in love with Chloe. Isobel saves him with a parachute, and they survive the crash.
In the aftermath, Isobel returns to Europe to help rebuild what remains of the Midnight Court. Wyatt reunites with Chloe at the hospital, his feelings for her unresolved. Back at Division HQ, Wyatt adopts Aspen’s combat dog, Rhino, and demands that Sita’s remains be returned to her family. With Shanti now officially his, and Esme named the Division’s new assistant director, he and Chloe prepare to return to Arkham University—scarred, but not broken.
At the University of Puerto Rico, Damien Baptiste meets Nathaniel Blackwood, who releases La Llorona’s spirit and orders Damien to mentor Wyatt.
PROLOGUE
“What opposes unites, and the finest harmony is composed of things at variance.” Heraclitus, c. 500 B.C.
Southern Ontario Wilderness
Near the Canadian-US Border
Thursday, 15 December 2016
03:30 a.m.
Nothing lived near the sinkhole.
Not a bird in the sky, not a fox in the underbrush. Even the trees stood motionless, skeletal limbs coated in frost, brittle as old bones. The ground itself seemed to repel life, as though the earth remembered what had been buried here and wanted nothing to do with it.
William Lockhart stepped into the frozen desolation, his boots crunching through the crust of ice-covered snow. This deep in the Ontario wilderness, with no wind to stir the trees, the stillness felt unnatural. The air was sharp, biting. His breath curled in the moonlight before vanishing into the darkness.
Eighty-five years had passed since he’d last walked these haunted woods—since 1931, during the Great Depression—but the place was as lifeless now as it had been then. Time hadn’t softened the curse. If anything, it had deepened.
And he remembered it all too well.
Lockhart had been a younger man then, still growing into what he had become. Now, at 130, he moved with the confidence of a predator who had seen empires rise and fall. The only concession to time was the occasional twinge in his left knee—annoying but manageable. Death was a distant thing.
Not for him. Not yet.
In the darkness, one of the prisoners stumbled, plunging face-first into the deep snow and dragging the second man down with him—their wrists bound to the same rope. Lockhart sighed, suppressing the urge to make a meal of both and be done with it.
Wadsworth, his elderly manservant, yanked the rope hard, hauling the prisoners to their feet with a rough jerk. The younger one moaned; whether in fear or pain, Lockhart couldn’t tell—and didn’t particularly care.
The prisoners—clearly brothers, with the same thick brows and dark beards—wore heavy winter coats and hunting gear suited for the harsh Canadian wilderness. Sodden with snow and ice, their clothing offered little protection against the biting cold. Their wrists were bound tightly behind their backs, and bright red ball gags filled their mouths. Both had wide, terrified eyes that reminded him of cattle driven to slaughter—dumb and panicked, yet resigned to the blade awaiting them.
They should be so lucky.
“Onward, ever onward,” Lockhart said cheerfully as he stomped through the thick snow.
“Indeed, m’lord. Indeed,” Wadsworth agreed, yanking the men after him.
The four trudged through the snow-covered woods, their only light the moon and stars above. The snow lay pristine, undisturbed, as they pushed through the dense undergrowth. Every step echoed in the cold stillness, broken only by the soft, steady crunch of their boots.
The cold was biting and relentless, creeping into Lockhart’s bones despite his heavy coat. Tall and thin, he felt its cruelty more keenly than most. He’d never liked winter, especially in this forsaken wilderness. How anyone chose to live here was beyond him. He was a city boy and always would be. For him, there was London—and then there was everywhere else.
When the prisoners stumbled and fell a second time, Lockhart suppressed a sigh, closing his eyes and shaking his head. “For heaven’s sake, Wadsworth. We’ve not the time for this.”
“Yes, m’lord,” Wadsworth replied, yanking the prisoners so hard to their feet that they practically flew through the air, stumbling to stay upright.
“There’s a good chap,” Lockhart said approvingly.
“Yes, m’lord.”
His servant had already been an old man when he undertook the Rite of Ascendance and became Elevated, like Lockhart, so he looked every bit his age—stoop-shouldered, gaunt, with bulging, toad-like eyes, a large nose, and even larger ears. A thick wool cap, the kind the local hicks called a toque, covered his head. If you saw him on the street, you’d wonder why he wasn’t in a retirement home, but l ooks were deceiving. Besides, Wadsworth was loyal, and Lockhart loved him for it.
Nothing mattered more than loyalty.
As they pressed on through the snow, the forest around them grew denser. The trees were gnarled and twisted, their bare branches reaching out like skeletal fingers.
A few minutes later, they reached the entrance to the ravine. The ground dipped sharply, a snow-covered path winding down into a shadowy hollow beneath a canopy of ancient trees.
At the edge of the descent stood a totemic structure—rough, twisted branches lashed together with cracked leather strips, forming a crooked, human-like figure. Jagged antlers crowned its head, their points dulled by age and frost, and feathers hung limp from its limbs, faded to dull grays and browns. The whole thing sagged under the weight of time, its wood darkened and split, as though the forest had been slowly reclaiming it.
Lockhart paused, considering the totem. The last time he’d been here, many more of these structures had lined the path—warnings to hunters—but now only this solitary construct remained. The Algonquin people had forgotten this place, and that saddened him. The world had changed, but what lay hidden beneath had not—at least, he hoped it hadn’t. If the people forgot entirely, what would become of it? Would it cease to exist as well?
The thought was a sobering one.
He turned toward the ravine, scanning the darkness beyond the trees. The memory of this place was as sharp as the winter air, but now there was an added weight to it, as though the earth itself pressed down on them, the silence oppressive. He could feel it—the old power slumbering here, just beneath the surface. Kindred spirit or not, the entity was nothing like him. This was a much older magic than that of the Nekhen Guardians, as old as the land itself.
They descended into the ravine, the snow growing heavier and the path slick with ice. Only the steady crunch of their boots in the snow marked their slow progress.
At the bottom, the ravine plunged into a gaping sinkhole, its edges rimmed with frost-covered roots and jagged rocks. Snow piled unevenly around the entrance, as if the earth itself had tried to swallow it whole.
The sinkhole yawned into darkness, its depths opening into a cave where no light penetrated. The air here was colder, unnaturally sharp, as though the pit itself sucked the warmth from the world above. Trees clung to the edges, their bark dark and cracked, roots exposed and clawing toward the void like grasping fingers.
Lockhart stood at the edge, looking down into the black maw. The path into the sinkhole was narrow, slick with ice. Each step would be treacherous. Wadsworth paused beside him, silent, as the air hung heavy with the scent of cold stone and something more... something ancient.
“Will... will it be angry, m’lord? Is it safe?”
“Safe? No,” Lockhart whispered. “It is rage personified.” He glanced at the prisoners and smiled. “But it is also hunger.” Gripping Wadsworth’s bony shoulder, he squeezed it affectionately. “Come. Let us descend.”
Lockhart led the way, his steps careful as he navigated the ice-slick path. Behind him, the prisoners hesitated, eyes wide and fixed on the black maw of the sinkhole. When the first man tried to retreat, Wadsworth struck him down. The second prisoner whimpered and crumpled under the next blow.
Lockhart sighed. “Tonight, old chap.”
“Yes, m’lord,” Wadsworth replied. He gripped each man by an ankle and dragged them down the slope into the sinkhole. Their muffled groans and weak kicks were little more than an annoyance to the elderly servant.
At the bottom of the sinkhole, Lockhart paused and pulled a road flare from his coat. With a sharp hiss, it ignited, casting a harsh crimson glow over the icy cave entrance. Shadows leapt across the walls as he tossed the flare into the gaping mouth of the cave, its flickering light throwing the jagged walls into sharp, eerie relief.
Ice-coated walls shimmered, cracked and glistening like veins of glass, while frozen icicles clung to the ceiling, casting long, distorted shadows across the cave floor. There were no animal bones, no sign that any bear—or even a mouse—had ever dared to live here.
Lockhart stood at the entrance, watching the light dance over the jagged walls, feeling the oppressive weight of the place pressing down on him.
From the depths of the cave came a faint stirring—not a sound, but a presence, subtle yet insistent. It pressed against Lockhart’s mind, seeping through unseen crevices like icy tendrils, dragging with it a wave of hunger so vast it was suffocating.
He smiled. It was still here. The people of this land may have forgotten, but it endured.
“Hello,” he called out, his voice echoing off the cave walls.
No answer.
He hadn’t expected one. It hadn’t spoken to him the last time he was here, either. The entity didn’t speak to the living—not even to a kindred soul like Lockhart. But a gentleman was always polite. And Lockhart was nothing if not a gentleman.
“There,” Lockhart ordered, pointing inside the cave.
Wadsworth dragged the two terrified men, now bleeding from scrapes against the rocks, to the spot Lockhart had indicated, leaving them curled up on the icy cave floor.
“Bind their ankles,” Lockhart ordered. “Then cut their hands free.”
Wadsworth hurried to obey. With their hands free, the men pulled the ball gags from their mouths, spit dribbling down their beards.
“P-please,” the younger one, Isaac, stammered, his pale blue eyes wide with terror. Lean and wiry, barely past his teens, with sandy blond hair falling across his brow, he added, “Let us go. We won’t tell anyone—not even Caleb. Tomorrow... tomorrow is my birthday. I’ll… I’ll be 21.”
Lockhart fondly remembered his own 21st birthday. It had been in 1907, the year the Triple Entente was formed—a quiet prelude to the alliances that would one day plunge the world into the carnage of the First World War. An exciting time to be alive, full of possibility. “Well then, happy birthday, young chap,” he said.
“Save it,” Isaac’s older brother, Eli, said, glaring at Lockhart. “He ain’t gonna let us go. But Caleb’s gonna make him pay for it. You’re gonna die screaming, you British fairy.”
Eli was stockier than his brother, with thick shoulders and powerful hands. His dark brown hair and beard were matted and wild, giving him the look of a classic Canadian lumberjack—fitting, given the location. The man had the look of a killer. If Lockhart were a betting man—and he often was—he’d wager on Eli winning the contest. Not that the prize would be anything he’d want.
“We’re going to play a game,” Lockhart said, his voice smooth and dripping with condescension. “You inbred colonial savages.” He tossed a knife—a wickedly sharp hunting knife with a white-bone handle—between them.
Both brothers, still on their knees with their ankles bound, stared at the blade.
“Good toss, m’lord,” Wadsworth said approvingly.
“Thank you, Wadsworth. Here’s the game. It’s called ‘stay alive.’ Only one of you will walk out of this cave, but which one?”
Isaac’s eyes widened at the knife. “You want us to...”
“Precisely what I desire, young man,” Lockhart said, his tone playful. “Take the knife and kill your brother. Or perhaps your brother will end you. How delightfully thrilling.”
“You can go to hell,” Eli said. “Neither of us is doing that.”
“Not a chance,” Isaac agreed, nodding.
“Okay,” Lockhart said. “Then my manservant here is going to take an ear from each of you. If that doesn’t work, he’ll take the other ear, then your noses, maybe your lips. When he gets to your eyes, I guarantee one of you will go for the knife.”
“The hell we will!” Isaac yelled, his voice breaking.
And then Eli went for the knife.
Lockhart wasn’t even remotely surprised. He could always tell a killer.
The fight was over almost before Isaac could scream. Eli fell upon his younger brother, driving the blade into his heart and twisting it deep. He yanked the knife free and slashed through the bindings at his ankles.
Springing to his feet, he backed deeper into the cave, the blade raised defensively, his gaze flicking between Lockhart and Wadsworth.
Wadsworth glanced at Lockhart, one brow raised, an amused smile tugging at his lips. Lockhart shook his head.
