The necromancer got back up.
“What?” McCracken aligned the sights again and gave the necromancer a second barrage, emptying the rest of the belt into him. Bullets pulped his flesh and splintered his bones; once again the boy went down, having been perforated through every major organ including his brain. Maybe McCracken had just missed the first time—and with the fifty-cal, of all guns! After the war, he’d have to get back on the range and . . .
Again the necromancer stood up, covered in blood, but whole.
McCracken swore under his breath. “You’re not getting the message, are you?”
He fed another belt into the tray, pulled the handle and fired. This time the necromancer was prepared; he took off running in a zigzag formation, waving his arms about and shouting out defensive spells in Saxon, spells that had nothing to do with necromancy. McCracken’s bullets ricocheted off of invisible shields, and at the same time, the necromancer’s wounds simply disappeared, knitting into whole flesh like it was nothing.
McCracken’s finger relaxed on the trigger and he lifted his gaze to peer over the barrel, stunned. Whatever this boy was, he couldn’t be just a necromancer. This was new territory. Not even the greatest known sangromancers could heal so fast, while simultaneously erecting shield charms like that. It just couldn’t be done—there was too much concentration and precision involved, especially for one so young! Where had this mage gotten such power?
The pause in his firing allowed thralls to push back against the recruits. Jolting back into action, McCracken pivoted the machine gun through a different opening and fired at a swarm of skeletons that had congregated on the south side of the house. He put down six or seven before they scattered like vermin, no doubt under the necromancer’s direct command. McCracken emptied the second belt and was feeding in a third when out of the corner of his eye he saw Brian and Peter lead a contingent of recruits onto the roof of the barracks. Some of them carried rifles and were sharp-shooting the thralls in their throats. Each skeleton that they hit ended up falling to the ground, motionless, all traces of red light gone.
Across the front lawn, a slender figure staggered out from behind a wide tree. The necromancer! McCracken saw the movement out of the corner of one eye and in an instant he trained the machine gun on him. The necromancer thrashed about on the grass, grabbing at his own throat in obvious pain. McCracken’s memories came back, reciting tidbits of knowledge from books read decades ago on the subject of magical balance. Powerful magic demanded a price from the user; necromancy brought life to the dead by borrowing it from someone else. In this case it was the necromancer himself.
McCracken shot the necromancer’s thigh and knee; his femur exploded, and five nearby thralls fell as he recalled the necessary life force to speed-heal from his injuries. To slow him down, McCracken kept his finger on the trigger, spewing lead until the barrel thermometer screamed for him to stop. Swearing, McCracken let off and fanned smoke out of the air with a handkerchief, watching the necromancer to see if he got up.
He was distracted, and didn’t notice cluster of thralls scaling the mansion walls. One of them skittered up the angled roof and launched itself at McCracken, its bony fingers extended like daggers. McCracken saw it and feinted at the last moment, then made a fist and threw a pile-driver punch into its skull so hard that the brittle bone shattered. Its red light went out and McCracken quickly heaved the motionless skeleton back outside, only to be greeted by a second wave, some of them recently turned.
Brilliant strategy; surround him on all sides and turn the high ground into a death trap.
“Not today,” he growled. Ignoring the mercury bubble, he got back under the shoulder harness, pivoted the gun and angled the sights to follow the roof’s slope. Two quick bursts swept the thralls off the tiles, sending a cascade of bones to bury the next wave.
He didn’t have time for this! McCracken looked back to the tree; the necromancer lay sprawled on the lawn, healing from a headshot that one of the recruits had inflicted on him. There had to be a breaking point, right? Magic had to be consciously controlled, so if they destroyed the brain, how could he heal? Unless death magic played by some other rules?
“Clearly I haven’t shot you enough,” McCracken said. He barely heard his own words through the earmuffs. Checking to be sure that he still had ammo, he opened fire yet again as the necromancer tried to stand up. Each bullet hit its target . . .
. . .and passed right through.
What?
The necromancer actually turned his head and smiled right at him. His body remained whole; no rent flesh, no spraying blood. Like he wasn’t even there.
Exactly like that.
Hellfire and damnation, he knew psychomancy too?
The mental illusion of the necromancer faded away, leaving a violently torn-up section of lawn where the technomancers had vainly concentrated their fire, all for nothing. The real necromancer’s voice boomed in the darkness, though where he was, none could tell.
“I was wondering how long it would take you to figure that out!”
Chills ran down McCracken’s spine a flood of thralls engulfed the roof from every direction, having drawn near while he was focused on the psychomantic illusion. Their moved like overlarge spiders, agile, fast, their eyes full with that awful glow. Ever the strategist, McCracken realized a horrible truth: if they turned him, if that necromancer added him to their ranks, he’d take everything McCracken knew about the army. The war would be over instantly.
This time, forever.
McCracken angled the gun to sweep again, but the thralls expected this and spread out. He destroyed a paltry few compared to the tidal wave surging upward; still he cleared them off and swiveled the gun in a tight circle, cupola walls be damned, firing at anything that moved. The belt ran dry, and the gun clicked on empty, echoing the noise of the incoming hostiles.
Dusk had fallen. McCracken cast his eyes about in the dark, looking for the next belt, but he couldn’t get it into the tray; the thralls closed in, anxious to please their master.
This was it. McCracken looked across the yard at Peter, who waved his arms frantically overhead. Come, Dad, he seemed to say. Other recruits tried to sharp-shoot the thralls, but there were too many. McCracken shook his head as the first skeleton came within arm’s length. He knocked it aside. Another took its place. Then another. And another. The next thing he knew, his revolver was in his hand, the cylinder empty, with six downed thralls clogging the cupola. It wasn’t nearly enough.
So this was how he would go out.
Setting his jaw, McCracken discarded the pistol and signaled Peter to execute a full-scale retreat. His eldest son froze with fear, and McCracken wished he could reach out to him, to lend him courage for what he was about to witness . . . but he had already done all he could to prepare his son for the horrors of war. Be brave, Peter.
The thralls closed in. Several bony fingers stabbed through his thick clothes and penetrated his skin. The fiery prick of necromancy seared his flesh, but they were too late: McCracken drew a grenade out of the stock, pressed it to his chest, and pulled the pin.
“I’m coming home, Edith,” he whispered, and released the grenade’s spoon.
His final thought was a single line from his studies those years ago: a necromancer could only steal knowledge from a brain that was intact.
*
Once it was clear that the skeletons’ goal was to surround the mansion, it only made sense to get out while they still could. Amelia knew what Dad would do: man the gun in the cupola and lay waste to the enemy.
However, when fighting magic, one couldn’t rely on a single plan to win the day. If the skeletons overran the recruits, Dad would be trapped up there with no way out. Meanwhile Calvin was semi-lucid, murmuring incoherently about a pain in his chest.
She knew of one way to solve both problems. While the skeletons were still out front, she would leave through the back, get into the woods, and get Dad’s mimic. It had a medical kit aboar
d for Calvin, and its thrusters could hover over a fixed object—perfect for extracting Dad. Even if Calvin could only control himself for a minute, he could man the weapons. While everyone else fought, she would provide a retreat option.
Amelia half dragged, half pushed Calvin into the woods, stifling the overwhelming fear that came with hearing so much gunfire. If they were still shooting, they weren’t winning. Then, amidst all of the reports of black powder and lead, one roaring explosion dwarfed the rest. It was so loud that Amelia couldn’t help but look back to see a giant cloud billowing out of the house, big enough to engulf the cupola and half the roofline.
No.
Maybe . . . maybe he’d set a trap? He had grenades up there, didn’t he?
“Amelia . . .” Calvin moaned.
She didn’t trust herself to speak. Had Mom been afraid like this? On all of those missions with Jack Badgett, had she felt this kind of fear? The despair, the powerlessness that came with being on the losing side?
What would she have done?
One thing at a time, Amy.
Yes. One thing at a time. She said a quick prayer for Dad, threw an arm around Calvin, and continued onward. A minute later—two, tops—they reached the natural enclosure that concealed the mimic.
It was a unique model, based on a wyvern—sleek, fast, and heavily armed. It was also big, with a passenger bay and a cockpit, so they would be fully enclosed. She helped Calvin up the rear ramp, closed the hatch and led him to the copilot’s chair where she strapped him in.
“We have to get as many of the others as we can. I don’t know where Dad is, but my brothers will be at the barracks with the recruits,” she said, flipping switches and rushing through the pre-flight steps. She’d practiced this countless times when Dad wasn’t around, but she’d only ever gone through the motions. Hopefully she’d been doing it right.
“No . . . no . . .” Calvin muttered.
“Please Calvin, can you man the guns? I’ll fly, you shoot.”
“No use . . . undead. Waste of rounds,” he said.
She disengaged the foreguns and armed the flamethrowers. “Then use these, and don’t hit the barracks.”
The wyvern ascended over of the trees. So far, so good. She kept the jump-jets on and eased the boosters forward, turning the flaps to rotate in a slow portside circle. The mansion shifted into view, its walls dark with skeletons. The roof still burned. Not far off, her brothers stood on the barracks, no longer shooting back. Some recruits hurled grenades, but most everyone else had their daggers in hand as the skeletons surrounded the structure.
“Calvin! Come on!” Amelia pleaded.
With great effort, Calvin reached for the controls. She talked him through it as she flew; flamethrowers required no marksmanship, and the controls had stabilizers to steady the sweep. When she had them in range, Calvin spouted a stream of liquid fire at a clique of thralls near the stables. He worked the handles this way and that, laying down sloppy lines of fire on the grass. Amelia was about to ask what he was doing, but then it became clear: he’d created a path from the barracks into the woods, lined with fire, separating the skeletons from the technomancers.
“Brilliant,” she breathed.
“Damn it, aaaaargh!” Calvin relinquished the controls and threw his head back against the seat, arching his spine and tearing at his shirt.
“Calvin!”
“Take . . . it out . . .” he panted.
Keeping one eye on the escaping recruits, Amelia reached over and pulled his shirt open.
Oh no.
The last time she’d seen that device, it was just a blueprint, a twisted invention of Eustice Hamilton. How had Calvin gotten one
in his heart?
The spasm ended. Catching his breath, Calvin clamped his hands over the device like he wanted to tear it out but couldn’t bring himself to do it. Amelia released his shirt and rotated the wyvern to bring the cupola into view, hoping against hope for some sign of her father.
Her hope died when she saw that the fire had eaten its way down through the second floor of the mansion. Smoke blackened the whitewashed walls and gushed out of open windows. Heaps of motionless skeletons lay at the base of each wall, their red lights gone. Of two things she was certain: Dad had been up there when it happened.
And he hadn’t gotten out.
The smoldering mansion blurred as tears filled her eyes.
Gone, like Mom.
Out on the front lawn, a young man—a boy, even—climbed atop one of the boulders and watched the last of his skeletal army dance at the edges of the flames, unable to pursue the fleeing recruits into the woods. Peter and Brian would be with those recruits. They would survive, for a while at least. Under the guidance of her brothers, they’d probably even make it to the shark mimic, or to one of the nearest outposts. She was just about to bring the wyvern around and fly after them when Calvin screamed, coughed up blood, and fainted atop the console.
“Calvin? Calvin!”
No response.
The others would have to get by; Calvin needed her now, or that thing would kill him.
And she wouldn’t lose him too.
*
Godfrey quickly learned the risks of abusing his power. Spreading his life force across the thralls was like drawing water from a cask and distributing it among so many cups, only the cask was his soul. Whatever the technomancers killed, that was one more cup that he couldn’t return to the cask, and he was running dangerously low on power. Breathing deep to slow his frantic heart, he shut his eyes and sensed his remaining thralls, recalling the power back to him. Scores of skeletal bodies fainted on the spot, and when he had it back, he was surprised at how much he had lost.
What effect would that have in the long term? He didn’t know. Perhaps it would shorten his life, or else make him easier to kill. Worse yet, there could be eternal complications, made all the more daunting because of what he didn’t know. Of the many skills he’d mastered at Ipswich School, he had never learned much about necromancy. He needed to change that, and fast.
He surveyed the damage around him. The last of the technomancers disappeared into the trees, their shadows dancing in the firelight. That didn’t concern him. What concerned him was the giant metal wyvern machine, not as large as the Youngstown dragon but still respectable. In his weakened state, Godfrey could barely detect Calvin Adler close by. Then the connection faded.
Bugger all. From a tactical standpoint he had won this battle, yet Adler once again eluded him. The urge to keep hunting him ate at Godfrey, and he hated to admit that in his present state, he was too weak to do so. The mimic fled into the darkness, beyond his reach. There would be another chance later, though.
For now, he would tend to the spoils of war. Using Birty’s wand, he traced a circle of runes in the dirt, and when he finished, he plunged the wand into the center of it, driving it several inches down.
“Acwencan!”
It took a few minutes, but the fire died out, reduced to smoldering charcoals. Birty’s wand burned up in the process, but Godfrey wasn’t worried about it. He would get another wand.
Right now he wanted to see what else there was to learn about these duffers. Wobbling on unsteady legs, he walked to the house.
CHAPTER 19
When she could wait no longer, Amelia brought the mimic down at a place on the map called Huntley Meadows. The mud and soft grass helped to lessen the shock of a hard landing, and the outriggers dug three short trenches as they brought the mimic to a halt. The feet might be stuck, but she didn’t care. Though she’d flown fast, they hadn’t gone far. Calvin now lay screaming on the floor, rocking from side to side.
Amelia sprang out of the chair and opened a cabinet in the back where Dad kept the toolbox. She hauled it back to Calvin, and fished around inside for a screwdriver and a pair of pointed pliers. Once she had them, she took two fistfuls of Calvin’s shirt and
ripped it wide open.
“Move your hands!”
H
e couldn’t, so she had to force them apart and pin them to his sides. With no other recourse, she straddled his torso to hold him still. He arched his back again, eyes shut, lips peeled back, and teeth clenched. Spittle and sweat seemed to fly from everywhere on his face, and his breath was ragged. Stifling a whimper, Amelia bit her lip and pressed the flat head of the screwdriver into a slot on the side of the dial. Calvin twitched, and the movement caused another hook to rip his skin—half of them were out now, and the dial was dangerously loose. Dark red blood filled the wound.
“Calvin, you have to hold still!”
“I! CAN’T!” He struggled to free his hands, and she squeezed her legs tighter to keep his arms down. Mercy, but he was strong! She couldn’t do this for long.
There was no time left—this thing was killing him, sparking audibly every few seconds. Uttering another silent prayer, she went to work with the screwdriver and the pliers. Behind the clockwork face of the device would be a master pin that was supposed to defuse the thing. The drawing she’d seen must have been for a previous version though, because when she popped the face off, this device had no such pin. If she’d had another minute, she might have made sense of it, but with Calvin on the brink of death, she could only think of one other thing.
She grabbed a second set of pliers, took one in each hand, and held them above the heads of the nails in his heart.
“Calvin . . . I love you, okay?” She clamped the pliers into place.
“AAARGH!”
One. She breathed in deeply and held it.
Two. Her lungs held her own thundering heart steady.
Three!
She pulled. Every last inch of steel came out, dragging thick blood and slime behind it.
Calvin’s howl stung her ears. As the nails came free, the device fired its failsafe mechanism, pumping the last of its positive charge through one nail and using the other as a negative pole. A small crack of lightning shot between the two tips, shocking her hands and filling the air with a terrible odor. She yelped and dropped everything; the tools clanged against the metal floor.
Suicide Run (Engines of Liberty Book 2) Page 15
