American Craftsmen (36 page)

Scherie pointed blindly toward the closed door. “That way. All violation all the time. Kill them extremely dead.”

Endicott and I left Scherie and Hutch together on the floor. I tried the door, and found it unlocked. I opened it. We saw the second room, and despite what we saw, Endicott and I entered. We felt the sterile wrong of the monitor screens, and the nightmare wrong of the body tanks. The tanks had room for two more.

“Prague,” said Endicott. “Worse than Prague.”

From far above, but closer than before, an opposing evil howled. The disapproval of the Left-Hand spirits sounded primal and sincere. But it wasn’t a question of trust.

“
Not yet
,” I said, to all the living and dead.

The two techs stood next to what looked like a field operating table with pillows and sheets. Abram had straightened, all signs of solar plexus pain gone. “Here you are, come to our place of power like cattle to the rendering.”

Abram and Madeline made talonlike mudras with their left hands. A screaming dagger thrust into my mind. It was like every other attempt in training and combat to possess me, except twice as strong and ten times as painful. But it was a quick eternity, and it failed.

I glanced at Endicott. He looked shaken, but himself.

“No surprise there,” said Madeline. “Now can we please kill them?”

“Hello, Aunt Madeline,” I said.

“Hello, Dale. You’ve grown up to be a very handsome young man.”

“You’ve had enough incest for a few more lifetimes, dear,” said Abram.

Madeline smiled indulgently. “Before we feed your energies to Roderick, with maybe a nibble for ourselves, I should confirm: wouldn’t you rather live and join us?”

“Thanks, no,” I said. Time for a bluff. “I should warn you: I can expel you from your bodies.”

Abram made a mudra with his left hand, and the craft wattage went up. From the other room, Scherie screamed, “Fuck fuck fuck!”

“I’ll call your bet,” said Abram. “Rezvani might try, if she could see our spirits.”

“Hmm,” considered Madeline. “How to dispose of you? We could have you fight each other.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, just kill us if you can,” said Endicott, charging at Madeline.

“I’m not Spartacus,” I agreed, as I advanced on Abram.

“Fuck!” Scherie still screamed next door. Probably not upset at missing the villains’ banter.

As with the Red Death before, Abram allowed me to rain blows on him as if to show that they didn’t affect him, and to drive me to despair. Abram felt even more solid, more adamantine than before. But parameters of his body also felt different. This meant something, but I didn’t have time to think.

Abram reached under the operating bed. “Look what I found.”

“My sword,” said Endicott, before Madeline’s nails missed his eyes and raked his cheek.

“
My
sword,” said Abram. He whirled it about with an air propeller’s speed.

I stepped back. I knew what I needed. With a kick, I freed an alloy tube (too short!) from one of the unfinished tanks. Catching it by my foot as it fell, I Hacky-Sacked it up, seized it in my left hand, and parried Abram’s downward slash.

Goddamn it, I hated archaic weapons.

I spun around and away from Abram, kicked another tube up from the ground, caught it in my right hand, and swung it wide into Abram’s side. Abram didn’t flinch, but he did back off a step as he hacked at my staves.

Not completely invulnerable then. But I couldn’t do much damage with my alchemical alloy. The second tube had length, but neither staff had an edge. And Abram’s strokes were denting the alloy with more than physical power.

I sought an opening to assist Endicott, but found none. Abram and Madeline had fought together long before we had been born; repetition had made their coordination seamless. But the matchups were right. Endicott, smaller than me, could match Madeline’s physical force, and Abram had made him run before.

Catching Abram’s next blow in a cross of metal, I said, “You’re going to pay for what you did to Hutch.”

“Idiot,” said Abram. “Punish yourself. I haven’t been in person within the House of Morton in a century. That was your precious possessed Hutch you were beating.”

Praise the infernal lord for Endicott arrogance. The old guy wanted to hurt me so much that he couldn’t help give away intel. If it was my beating that Hutch’s body was still suffering from, I had done real damage, but Hutch and her possessor hadn’t felt it at the time.

That’s motivation. With my metal staves, I continued to hammer away.

*   *   *

Endicott’s straightforward martial arts had trouble against a Taoist and a woman. He instinctively wanted to contain, not bludgeon.

“You have a problem fighting with girls, don’t you?” said Madeline.

“Yes,” said Endicott. Even now, he told the truth when the information wasn’t classified. Duty and religion required this woman’s death—what the hell was his problem?

“Very like your family. Let me resolve your dilemma and kill you.
Despair.
”

Endicott felt drained of life, meaning. Years spent in service of an ungrateful power, and how much worse it must be for Morton.

For Morton.
He wasn’t fighting alone. “
Of these, hope
,” said Endicott, swinging wide, but still swinging. “Despair is a sin against the Holy Spirit.”

She hit him with blows that made up in precision what they lacked in sheer force. “You don’t yet understand despair.”
Bam
, kick. “My brother has told us that the old Endicott will slay the young Endicott here in this room.” Kick, smack. “Abram will kill you, if I don’t first.”

She glowed with the heinous craft that she readied against him. Out of his league, but he had to fight longer and support Morton. Madeline made a raptor mudra with her left hand and pursed her lips to speak his death.

Then, in a corner of the room, a man stepped out of thin air.
No, Lord, not him.
“Dad, get the hell out of here!” His father might be a disciplined commander, but he was no longer a fighter.

His father gave the smallest shake of his head, and advanced on Madeline. Without turning her gaze, she crowed with laughter. “Oh shit, after five decades, here comes the old goat.”

“
Lord, break that long thin neck
,” said the general, running with a raised fist.

Madeline said nothing. Her leg struck backwards at a gymnast’s angle, and intercepted the oncoming general square in his chest. Endicott attacked at the same time, but she blocked his blows.

The general fell on his back. Rising painfully, he said, “
Tell me who you are.”

“Say please,” said Madeline, delivering a kick against his son, trying to work into the groin.

“I am Abram Endicott,” said the sword-wielding tech, moving closer. “And you’re a disgrace to my family name.”

Major Endicott called to Dale. “Keep him away.”

Dale stepped to work in between Abram and the others, but Abram increased the pace of his strikes against Dale’s parries. The general stared at Abram. Endicott remembered his own hesitation in the House of Morton; the family instinct affected the general too.

“Run, Dad. No shame in it.” As he spoke, Madeline landed a punch on his mouth. He spat blood and words. “He’s an Endicott with a hundred years on you.”

But the general must have heard something different than his son’s meaning. He smiled—small, tightlipped, bitter—and raised his fists. “Come for me, old Endicott.”

Abram took some grazing hits from Dale’s tubes but punched Dale back on his heels with his pommel. Madeline head-cocked the desperate Endicott back away from his father. The general screened Abram’s sword arm with his right and landed a series of jabs with his left against Abram’s nose. Unfazed, Abram flicked his sword into the air and caught it high with his right hand. With all his force, he brought the point down through the general’s chest. “
Die.
”

The general’s smile broadened as his heart exploded.

Endicott prayed.
Lord, have no mercy.
With rage that felt holy, he put his fists to work against Madeline’s defensive stance. “Now I understand despair. Do you?”

With a crackle of thunder, the Left-Hand spirits came.

*   *   *

In the moment of Abram’s distraction, I saw my opportunity. “
Come,
” I said. The Pentagon’s craft shield failed, and the Left-Hand spirits fell like rain into the room and rushed upon our enemy. But this time, they didn’t attack Abram’s spirit. With the sense of true predators, they went for Madeline. “
Join us
,” they cried. As Endicott pummeled her raised arms, the spirits swarmed about her and covered her in their dark glow, trying to penetrate the living flesh to gain the half-dead soul that hadn’t quite stuck yet.

“Good-bye, Auntie.” Parrying Abram with my short tube, I brought the long one around in an extended arc into the back of Madeline’s neck.

*   *   *

In the same instant, Endicott brought the heel of his hand up against Madeline’s forehead. “
Shatter her skull, Lord. Now.
”

But it wasn’t God’s power that he felt course through his hand. The Left Hand surged through his point of contact.

An abandoned doll, Madeline tumbled, hemorrhaging from her eyes, nose, ears, and mouth. She died again, gone in a black-light explosion of craft out of the room. But this time, Left-Hand souls swarmed in pursuit of her soul.

Abram pushed Dale to the ground. Endicott, disoriented from contact with corruption, only had time for one prayer:
Lord, give me three steps and miss
.

With the swift stroke of a matador, Abram ran Endicott through with his sword, then withdrew it to counter Dale’s charge. Blood bubbled out from Endicott’s stomach before he could contain it. Endicott’s prayer had succeeded in deflecting the blow to a gut wound—not instantly fatal, but fatal soon enough without help. He was no healer.

He sat down hard. Unholy irony, being killed with his own sword. “Worst week ever.”

Outside, the H-ring reinforcements were pounding at the OTM door. Idiots. Who the hell wanted to be here?

*   *   *

In the hazy fugue of her blind confusion, Scherie heard Hutch’s voice as she awoke. “My boys. Where are my goddamned boys? And who the hell are you?”

“Can’t see, can’t see, can’t see.”

Scherie felt the woman’s cool hand on her forehead. “I said,
‘Who are you?
’”

Scherie’s view went wide and blank for a second, then focused on the stern bandaged face in front of her. That face seemed to demand that she speak like a soldier. “Scherezade Rezvani, ma’am, reporting for duty. We need to kill some bad guys, ASAP.”

“We, ma’am?”

Scherie looked around. “Your touch cuts through the bullshit. I’ll need your help to see them.” Hutch said nothing. “I drove that fucking
thing
out of you,” insisted Scherie.

“Oh.” Hutch’s hand shook for a moment, then she extended it to Scherie. “Get up then.”

Scherie touched Hutch’s hand, but seeing the colonel’s battered state she stood up on her own. She pointed to the inner room. “That way.”

*   *   *

I went berserker on Abram. My outrage shocked me—when had Endicotts killing Endicotts become a cause for anger? Abram slashed his weapon around to face me, but only managed one strike for my two.

But Abram managed to make his one blow count. With a lightning kick, he slammed me back into one of the tanks. Spider-web cracks formed in the eldritch glass.

I raised my staves in defense, but to my surprise, Abram didn’t immediately try to run me through. Instead, he flexed and stretched his aging body, cracking the joints of bones that might have already been broken. Sobered, I considered my opponent’s temperament. A Left-Hand Morton would have exercised a pagan leisure in the pleasure of the kill, a Left-Hand Endicott would be more Calvinist and efficient. Abram seemed caught somewhere between.

Hurt and momentarily winded, I tested my opponent with words. “You don’t seem very concerned about Madeline.”

Abram studied his sword, gave it a few trial slashes, then flung back a taunt. “You think you can restore your house by stealing your ancestor back?”

The cranky paranoia of evil old men. “I think I’m going to kill you,” I said, stepping forward from the splintering glass. “Then I’m going to finish the job you should have done two centuries ago.”

Abram Endicott assumed the en garde position, and I settled into my native combat stance. On the screens, a shadow fell in a wave, obscuring for a moment each feed, and something blinked in the flow of the bloodred craft. Abram’s eyes cut from the screens to the outer room door. His face went gray, as if the true weight of his years had finally come home. Then he looked directly at me, as if a dog had just barked Shakespeare.

“I know an oracle when I hear it,” said Abram, in a windless voice. “Center control. Autodestruct—”

I leapt for Abram, who dodged without slowing his command. “—sequence. Fifteen-minute delay.”

“
Move air!
” Along with my spell, I delivered two quick staff blows and a kick at Abram’s chest and throat, trying to stop the next word.

“Begin,” croaked Abram.

Lights out, and the little emergency tracks came on in this room, leading away from the tanks with faint green glows. All the computers and screens were black, save one with a countdown clock.

Abram pivoted and hurdled on one arm over the operating bed. He ran into the corner where the general had entered, then through it in a pulse of ghoulish red.

“He’s gone toward Chimera.” Endicott, stirring, gripped his belly as if trying to hold blood and organs in.

“I have to go after him.” Staying here to help Endicott wasn’t an option. If Abram destroyed H-ring and escaped, no one would ever know the truth, and he and Madeline and Roderick might rise again.

Endicott opened his mouth, gulped down air. “Kill the…” He hesitated. “Revenge isn’t Christian.”

“Neither am I,” said I.

“Thanks,” said Endicott.

I leapt through the wall and into the red.