American Craftsmen (21 page)

She was only a normal person, but she could hope and pray. As a child, she had told her ghosts to leave, and they had. As sleep finally claimed her, she wished with all her heart that Dale’s injuries would go away.
Yeah, injuries, get the fuck out of here.
Her heart glowed warm with the thought.

*   *   *

The general had summoned Michael Endicott to his office at the point of the C-CRT triangle. It was as bare of family monuments as of sunlight. Instead, wall-to-wall screens acted as windows: some video, some comp-interactive, and one twenty-four-hour live feed from Chimera.

Endicott stood at attention, despite exhaustion that would have crippled another man. He was sick at heart, haunted by the mask of the Red Death. At the critical moment, he, a man who had faced death for years without flinching, had fled. He didn’t know what he had feared; all he could remember was the mask, and the dread of what might be beneath it.

But if Endicott was hoping for a dressing down from his father, he was disappointed. The usually stony general paced, hands punctuating each sentence. “Morton sacrificed himself to let the Left Hand out! He gave them one of your men to possess, and someone else for an incarnation, maybe even of Roderick himself. But it doesn’t matter which of them is embodied. They’ll all be taking revenge, killing Family members wherever they can find them. Will the Families listen, will they cooperate on security? Feh.”

“Sir,” said Endicott. “I don’t think Morton is dead. Or at least he made it out of the house alive. We found no, um,
recent
bodies. He may still be working with that thing.”

“No corpus? Doesn’t necessarily signify,” said the general. “In these black transactions, mutually assured destruction happens. They devour their own. And the Peepshow can’t see him.”

Endicott shook his head. “We can’t trust their intel, sir. The Peepshow’s involved somehow. Sphinx was there.”

“The Sphinx is dead,” said the general. “Chimera is certain of that much.”

As if aware of being invoked, the feed from Chimera chimed a mellifluous alarm. “Go ahead and look,” said the general. “It’s about your business, unless there’s another high-priority screw-up in the craft world.”

A lengthy text report headed “SPACTAD” appeared on the Chimera screen. The connection to the Mortons wasn’t immediately obvious. A bunch of Bibles had gone off in an obscure corner of Pennsylvania.

“Unauthorized craft,” said the general. “Looks like heavy-duty healing.”

“He was beat up pretty bad,” said Endicott.

Chimera’s report leapt from the Bibles to Dale Morton without explanation of the connection. I
F
M
ORTON IS ALIVE AND LEFT ALONE, THERE IS A HIGH PROBABILITY THAT HE WILL LEAVE THE COUNTRY WITHOUT INCIDENT.
S
ECOND HIGHEST PROBABILITY IS THAT HE WILL BE ARRESTED BY ROUTINE CRAFT SECURITY.
T
HIRD HIGHEST PROBABILITY IS THAT HE WILL BE DEAD.

“Problem solved,” said the general.

“But if he killed—”

“Problem solved,” repeated the general.

“We’ve haven’t had a renegade of his power in a hundred years,” said Endicott. “And that thing that’s chasing him, that was like something out of the bad old days. We can’t let them play hide-and-seek across the mundane country.”

The general reflected only a moment. “Morton isn’t the worst problem. That Left-Hand thing is. If it chases him for a while, that gives us more time. If it catches him, no great loss. You are ordered not to search for Dale Morton. Under any circumstances. Is that clear?”

“But we’ve got—”

“Is that clear?” repeated the general.

“Yessir.”

“And see to your uniform, soldier. It’s in disgraceful condition.”

“Yessir.”

“Joking, of course,” said the general. “Seriously, let other people worry about Dale Morton. You’ve got real work to do.” Someone knocked and an almost somnambulant young woman entered the general’s office to fuss with the feed from Chimera. The older tech was probably still recovering from whatever Morton force had knocked him out in the van. “I want a briefing on how we’re going to respond to the Left-Hand Morton threat, ASAP.”

Endicott returned to his office and stared at his sword. His grandfather had told him that its greatest attribute was to cut through bullshit. Right now, he was knee deep in it, and rising. The advantage of coming from a self-righteous family was the long tradition of suspicion of others. The suspicion was often excessive (witness Salem), and too often justified.

What gnawed deepest at Endicott was Morton himself. Sphinx had given Morton the mission that, instead of killing him as Endicott’s would have, had nearly destroyed his mind and irrevocably broken his career. Endicott’s Prague mission, which would have been Morton’s, had come from Chimera. Endicott couldn’t see the score in this turf war between Sphinx and Chimera. Maybe Chimera had meant for Morton to go down fighting, but there would have been a reason. Not the mess they had now.

Was Dale driven by anger against the other Families? The Endicotts didn’t talk to ancestors because it went against the Bible. If an Endicott ancestor approached Michael, he told it to get up or out. If the spirit persisted, it was probably diabolic. Michael didn’t worry about whether the reasons for this doctrine were correct, because the results spoke for themselves. Endicotts lived in the present, not the past. Much of the darker past was just a sick joke to Michael. So Morton’s rage about the past stunned Endicott. Morton hated him for being an Endicott. The problem with talking to supposed ancestors was that old wrongs were never forgotten.

So, Morton brutally murdered Hutch, turned Endicott’s advance man into a zombie, directed that zombie to kill Sphinx, all in the name of centuries-old hatreds, and that was just prelude to a campaign of deceit and vengeance against all the Families. A tidy story—pity it didn’t work, particularly the last bit. Endicott hadn’t seen petty anger in Dale’s last fight. The Mortons were great deceivers, but Endicott couldn’t believe that he had mistaken the look in Dale’s eyes. The man had been ready, willing, and almost relieved to die; if he was still alive, it was through no fault of his own.

Bottom line: whatever Dale Morton had in mind, even if it was self-sacrifice for guilt over Hutch, it was sincere.

What if someone in the chain of command—Chimera, spiritual brass, even (God forbid) the general himself—was playing Michael for their own agenda? No, not his father, though that didn’t mean the general was any more free of manipulation. The uncompromising morality of the Endicotts sometimes made them easy marks, but they were Hell’s own wrath when they found themselves played.

Endicott needed fewer variables and more answers. The right person needed to pay for Hutch’s death. He needed Morton found and captured. If Morton was alive, that other thing, that Red Death, wouldn’t be far away. The Red Death dressed like someone who would have gleefully killed Hutch.

Endicott hesitated only for a ten-count, a family ritual since Abram to take the emotion out of decision, to avoid old John’s excesses. On a crypto-and-craft secured line, he called his Gideon trackers: Bumppo, Carson, and Sakakawea. They were on alert, fresh from finding some of Hutch’s bloody pieces hidden in the woods of Rock Creek Park. Oh, they’d confirm the ID in the lab, but a Gideon’s nose was hard to fool.

The general’s orders were precise, but so was Endicott’s authority. “You are to find Scherezade Rezvani,” said Endicott. “Her last location was in Pennsylvania; I’m transmitting the GPS now. You will monitor for any signs of unauthorized craft activity in her vicinity. In fact, you may be able to find her through unauthorized craft activity. You will arrest any practitioner of unauthorized craft and you will bring them to me. The practitioner may be extremely skilled, magus level. But you will capture him alive, even at risk to yourselves.”

“Yessir,” barked the Gideons on speakerphone. Then Sakakawea said, “Sir, how old is this intel?”

“Within the quarter hour.”

“We’re at McGuire Air Force Base, sir. We could take them this morning.”

“Outstanding,” said Endicott. Even in a world of manifest spiritual power, this sort of uncanniness impressed him. “If you hustle, you can be there at dawn. Go.”

CHAPTER

FOURTEEN

I sat up quick like a vampire, feeling good. Very good. Too good. I’d gotten the shit kicked out of me; I shouldn’t be going anywhere. The room was full of the dull glow of fading craft, a cosmic background radiation beeping its signal to anyone with the sense to look. The Bibles must be ringing out of their drawers throughout the hotel.

My wounds still felt stiff and sore. The craftwork had been too general to fully heal these specific hurts, yet too powerful to be ignored. The craftsman had probably worked from a distance, and didn’t want me truly healed, just marked for the hunt.

I whispered into Scherie’s ear. “Get up. We’re leaving.”

Scherie opened her eyes on darkness. “Five a.m. reveille?”

“Quiet,” I said. “No lights. We’ve been made.” I allowed myself the luxury of a doubt: perhaps she had not betrayed me to this bad Samaritan craftsman.

Scherie moved slowly. Events seemed to have caught up with her. I tried to calculate where my pursuers were, but there were too many variables: the time of the healing, the availability of backup to the individual who had painted me with craft sonar. Assuming the worst, we should already be dead. Most likely they had the motel staked out. If the one craftsman had found me, my ruse with the front desk wouldn’t delay the Gideon hounds. When they were confident of the ground, when they had claimed their territory with sigils and holy piss, they would break in on us. There would be three of them; against a craftsman, trackers always went in threes.

With unprofessional abandon, I peeked through the shade. In the dawn light, my car was just a hunk of mundane metal, plainly visible to all. Roman’s craft was all but gone. But that also meant that the car would draw no particular attention.

Bumppo with his curly golden hair stood next to the rear of the Porsche in front of room 128, speaking on his cell phone, looking about the motel, unhappy and concerned despite the professional poker face. Like a hound, he sniffed the air, and bared his teeth. The Porsche had served as bait, just as I had hoped.

Whoever had healed me hadn’t spoken to these trackers. The eventual result would be the same, however: the healing craft was a telltale of my survival. My luck had been that these Gideons were lazy, relying on a mundane witness and whiff of power instead of their deeper craft.

Bald Carson hauled bodies wrapped in blankets into the trunk of the Gideons’ black sedan. They had killed the people in 128 before they’d realized their mistake. Two civilians. I felt the pain, and then the anger. I had miscalculated the rules of engagement, and two innocents had paid for it. Whatever had happened there couldn’t have been a real fight. These trackers had come for an execution.

Where was the third, Sakakawea? Perhaps questioning the clerk with more thoroughness. Perhaps they had been in a hurry, and only two had come. Wishful thinking. I couldn’t appear in the sights of all three at once. At best, one at a time. Maybe I could handle two. Three would get me.

“You need rest, a hospital,” whispered Scherie.

“I’ll be in the morgue if we don’t move.” I nodded at Scherie’s automatic. “You ready to use that thing?”

She nodded back.

“Good,” I said. “Take cover behind the bed. I’m going to open that door and dash toward reception. That’s going to draw them and their fire.” Scherie started to protest, but I held up a finger. “I need you to count a slow twenty, then come out. Use the car for cover. You should hit them right on their rear flank. Ready?”

I hoped she wasn’t. I hoped she’d hesitate and be captured alive.

Outside, Carson had forced the bodies into the trunk with practiced ungentleness. Finished with packing, he started toward reception, but Bumppo held up an arm to gesture him to stop. He’d caught some scent. Carson joined in the sniffing.

It was now or nice funeral.

With a gun in each hand and a bit of craft speed, I flung open the door and sprinted for daylight. Shooting down would be easier.
Up
, I thought. I leapt into the air, Peter Pan with no faith, guns blazing.

Oh, I presented such a nice target. But they shot with their silencers first, which fucked nicely with their aim. Before they could bring their craft to bear on me, I hit Carson with a gut shot. He staggered behind the cover of the Porsche, fully occupied with his own bleeding as I came back to earth. Five seconds.

Bumppo was faster. “
Heavy
,” he said. My legs went to slow-motion lead.
Snap!
His bullet made a hard ugly slap into my left shoulder. I fell forward, and the gun in my left hand went skittering along the sidewalk. I struggled to bring around my right arm with my remaining weapon, the Colt. “
That gun is too heavy
,” said Bumppo. And it was. I panted, “
Up, up, up,
” but I couldn’t move the gun. No craft left.

For the second time in twelve hours, I fell into the fascination of crippled prey. Bumppo came forward like a pale rider of the apocalypse, in no hurry for the end. Too slow, too close to room 108. If Scherie came out on twenty, he’d still catch her in his peripheral vision. “Dale Morton, I presume?” he said. Twenty. “I thought you should know. An Endicott ordered your death.”

He held the gun just feet from my face. No sign of Scherie. Good. She might live. Then Bumppo’s head twitched over in response to movement in my room. Scherie stood in the doorway, gun ready.
Freeze, freeze, freeze,
I thought, desperately seeking some last edge over the Gideon, but finding nothing left in myself to give. I was dead. Scherie was dead.

Bumppo didn’t freeze. But he was very, very slow. He took a full count to bring his gun around to meet the new threat. Way fucking too long.

Scherie didn’t go for the high probability gut or chest. She caught Bumppo’s golden head as it whipped about toward her. She caught him right between the eyes, and blew out the back of his tow-headed skull.