The Left-Hand Way

by Tom Doyle

  “We’ve reached a modus vivendi with House in response to your threat.”

  “Which is?”

  “You intend to use House as you planned in our first lives. We will oppose you. But there is another way.”

  Oh, there were many other ways. But first, he’d try Rezvani’s trick, just to break the ice. “Please depart this world forever.”

  Madeline winced with pain, or at least annoyance, then stretched her hand out toward him. “Come with us!” she cried, and a black-lit darkness reached for his heart.

  Roderick dug in his psychic heels, and his spirit remained grounded, but the effort left him breathing hard. “Perhaps we should just chat some more.”

  “Oh, let’s!” she said.

  Roderick knew his alienist lore about encountering death. First denial and anger, now bargaining. “Beloved, I’m here to offer you life. I can give you a new body based on Morton DNA. You can return to your birthright: immortality.”

  She laughed in his face. “If we didn’t know you, we’d call that kind. But we know you absolutely, so your gift is eternal perdition. Even if you could undo Rezvani’s expulsion, and we don’t think you can, even if I, Madeline, could leave our consolidated form, I would never accept such a gift from you. So here’s our offer: drop dead.”

  “That’s not much of an offer.”

  “We’re very serious. You would become a hero-ancestor, like us. Oh, you wouldn’t stay here, of course; you’d have to find another Morton shrine to haunt. But you’d enjoy the afterlife of an ancestor-deity. We’ve received our descendants’ honor and fear, and now we’ve been giving them sharp-edged advice. I like them. We will still kill them in the fullness of time, but then we’ll all be together again. My death after so long a life made for a different spirit, much more powerful and capable of continued change. It will be this way for you as well.”

  No, this idyllic patter wouldn’t do; she must focus on him and him alone. The others were getting closer, and he needed to finish all business with his sister. “Maddie,” he declared, “you are no true deity or anything else. You’re a shadow creature, a two-dimensional version of a four-dimensional being.”

  “Do we seem so limited to you?” Red lightning flashed through her black-lit aura.

  Time for the final moves in a dance with death; time to give her the really bad news and keep her from interfering with his true plan. He had her complete attention; her wave function had collapsed to this place and time. Before acting, he couldn’t resist another taunt. “The living can do things you cannot. The living can bleed.”

  With the speed of a Western desperado, Roderick drew his knife and cut his perfect hand. Blood dripped. Madeline yelled with rage and the dark power ripped again at Roderick’s aura, but Roderick was already speaking the necessary words: “I bind you again to the lower chambers, and I bar the House from loosing you. I respectfully request this as the senior and rightful lord of the House of Morton and give great praise and thanks to the dark powers that make all our works possible.”

  As Roderick spoke, Madeline’s form dissolved again into a dark cyclonic cloud and, with a moan of horror, vanished into the earth. Roderick relished the moment, for he’d had nothing like it since his first life. “You’re back in your box,” he said, “and you’ll stay there until you’re a good girl.”

  In answer, a sound of a choked-off breath or a cut-off sob. Then, deep from the foundations of the House, Madeline spoke like the Earth itself. “You taught me never to give an enemy the courtesy of my intentions, but know this, Roderick Morton: amass what power you may, I shall see your life end, and there shall be no afterlife in this world for you.”

  One chilling threat deserved another, so Roderick said, “I’ll be back for you later, beloved,” and turned away from the House to face his oncoming guests. The candles were lit, the balloons were up, and it was finally time for everyone to jump out and say “surprise.”

  * * *

  Attucks led his small force down the leaf-strewn street toward the House of Morton. He and four others represented the best that each branch of the craft service had to offer. A Gale weatherman from WENA-CON, a black-ops Marion from SCOF, a Van Winkle from PRECOG, a Johnson from enhanced combat (ENCOM), and Attucks himself from C-CRT. Along with their specialty talents, each was also fully combat ready, and they had worked out a synergistic attack plan that stood some chance against Roderick. Perhaps his wife, Kat, should have represented PRECOG, but he hadn’t changed his mind on her joining this mission. And of course, the Mortons and Endicott weren’t here—that was half of what this mission, this attempt to draw Roderick into open battle, was about. In Langley’s farsight, Roderick only came alone to the House when the Mortons and Endicott had no probability of being here as well.

  Other soldiers of lesser craft would remain in position outside the House, weapons at ready, in order to either mop up the victory or report the defeat.

  Despite their desire to join immediately in the attack, Attucks had also kept the three craft civilians, Queen, Longhouse, and Alchemist, in reserve, hidden and undisclosed to his craft regulars. Eddy’s reports had indicated that an attack of just regulars would fail, but Attucks didn’t think the mere presence of the three civvies would make a difference. The force of those three had to be brought to bear at the right time.

  At the head of his four regulars, Attucks arrived at the foot of the steps that led up to the courtyard. Before signaling the charge, he briefly prayed that after so much time and sacrifice, Roderick would be there as predicted.

  * * *

  Roderick stood his ground as the five rushed up the garden stairs and through the gate, spells blazing. He was a Left-Hand object per se, and therefore beyond any protection of the laws against summary execution. From behind him, he felt cold hands reach into him for his spirit. The so-called orthodox Morton dead and Rezvani’s Persian ancestors had belatedly joined the fray. Dale’s father, Will, and grandfather Ben were leading this charge. Roderick resented that they hadn’t come forward to defend Madeline, though perhaps that had been a question of tactics as much as preference.

  Using the House’s own wards despite its hostility, he saw that other combatants waited in position outside, perhaps to slow him if he tried to run. Had these insects seen what he had done at Chernobyl? But they had worked out an interesting combat dynamic. The PRECOG woman was constantly calling out probabilities of Roderick’s next moves, the black-ops witch was trying to usurp his body’s Left-Hand nanites, the weatherman was defending his team from losing their air supply, and the enhanced combat colossus was working with Attucks to land blows physical and magical. They were not trying to use firearms on him—perhaps they were uncertain of their further precautions against his power of command.

  This would have been fascinating if his godhood didn’t await. Seeing that no one else was entering the combat, Roderick drew upon the power in this ground—this was still his home—and conceived a spell to freeze their bodies, to freeze their very blood, when the PRECOG woman said, “Now!” and she and the ENCOM soldier drew two concealed pistols.

  With sure instinct, Roderick changed his command, “Not Attucks!”

  The PRECOG and ENCOM fired their guns, and the black-ops witch and the weatherman fell dead to the ground. The look on Attucks’s face at this betrayal by his trusted comrades was almost worth the inconvenience. Roderick had guessed some treason within H-ring was planned, but he’d assumed that black ops would’ve been in the cabal and that the treason would’ve been more helpful to him in its execution. In any scenario, he could easily imagine what the orthodox would do; it was the would-be Left Handers who continually surprised him.

  He addressed his putative allies. “Did I request your help? Your presence? You could have turned as my worm within H-ring for years.” Also, the bastards had made him command without politeness. He would have made them use their unsecured weapons against themselves, but he had other plans for them and for their former commander.

&n
bsp; “Attucks,” said Roderick, “my cousin Joshua admired your family. He said your line was truly the greatest. Despite that, my plans do not include your death today.” Or at least they didn’t now. He wanted this incipient craft civil war to continue; therefore, all of those here needed to survive. “So please depart.”

  To Roderick’s wonder, Attucks did not move. Brow sweating, teeth clenched, he said, “The Attuckses obey no enemy.”

  Roderick had forgotten that detail. Sloppy. Then, in further evidence of his negligence, three other craftspeople came through the gate. From his visions in H-ring, he recognized them as survivors of the purge that he’d inspired in Abram and Madeline. These odds would completely ruin his civil war diversion.

  The New Orleans woman was a marvel of multicultural imagination in her spells, and the San Franciscan was shooting darts at him that would have melted his body if his flesh had been normal. As the Michigander attempted to close physically, he was calling down on him some very old craft, which, if Roderick hadn’t had the Morton lore, would have been very dangerous.

  So it was the Michigander who had to go. Fortunately for Roderick’s plans, the newcomers had made a crucial mistake, and they all focused on him instead of the easier targets of the PRECOG and the ENCOM.

  As if to point his accusing finger of craft, Roderick delivered a one-two combination of punches at the Michigander. “By coming here, you’ve broken our covenant,” he said. “Heart, please explode.” Roderick leapt into the air and delivered a flying kick into the man’s chest, then spun away, and not even bothering to check on his success, strode toward the gate, repelling everything thrown at him. He had left the already flagging Attucks, the New Orleans woman, and the San Franciscan against the traitors from PRECOG and ENCOM. Close enough odds to last awhile.

  As a farewell, Roderick commanded friend and foe alike: “Please do not follow. I’m done here, for now.” Then, at the courtyard gate, he paused. He should dispose of Dale Morton’s grandfather and father, lest they interfere again. “Ben and Will Morton, please depart this world forever!” But he did not sense their presence before his spell nor their disappearance after it. The cowards may have already left. No great loss.

  As the craftspeople turned on each other behind him, Roderick left his old home and its dust behind him. When he returned, it would be in radiant glory. Please do not disappoint me, Mr. Cushlee.

  * * *

  While Roderick moved through starry Providence, Mr. Cushlee the Renfield moved through the cold rain of D.C., his legs considerably improved, thank you much. He was a complete cipher of intent as the strategic defense beams passed through him. He repeated a benign-sounding mantra: he was in town to play a game of paintball. He worked a different stealth than the usual invisibility. His was a profound mundaneness, out-boring the dulling craft of the capital.

  Still, if someone had been watching, they would have seen each beam passing through him reveal something hidden in Mr. Cushlee’s features: squamous or skeletal, bestial or mechanical, but never something warm and empathetically human. But no one was watching Mr. Cushlee. Roderick was providing a great distraction. All of Langley’s Peepshow and Pentagon’s PRECOG focused to the north. They must be desperately afraid.

  Mr. Cushlee dressed in a suit and tie and a long trench coat that wasn’t nearly warm or dry enough against the weather. (He wouldn’t complain about the rain, though; in fact, it was right on schedule.) At home, he might play the mature chav, with East End accent and tracksuit and bling, but that was to distract people from looking further into his affairs. In this city, he spoke in that stage American that made him sound West-by-Midwest.

  He crossed Memorial Bridge and passed through some of the many Arlington ghosts, trying to hide his amusement that there were so many that death had undone. Death would undo many more if Roderick had his way, but Mr. Cushlee didn’t worry that his employer would destroy the world and the Renfields with it. Renfields never worried about the reductio ad absurdum of their employers’ plans. Nothing ever worked 100 percent, even when a Renfield was in charge.

  He snuck through the gate and onto the grounds of Arlington National Cemetery with ease, and he strolled toward its center. There, on the eastern side of the Memorial Amphitheater, was his objective: the Tomb of the Unknowns.

  He made his stealthy way toward the hedges to the south and west of the Tomb. The ceremonial guard paced his rounds of twenty-one steps and twenty-one-second pauses, but he did not spot Mr. Cushlee. The Renfield could just make out parts of the inscription on the Tomb’s west face: “HERE RESTS IN HONORED GLORY AN AMERICAN SOLDIER KNOWN BUT TO GOD.” His angle of fire would be sharp, but given his objective, that would be fine.

  The guard had turned and was now pacing solemnly away from Mr. Cushlee’s position. Slowly, like a tree unbending in a fading wind, Mr. Cushlee took out his gun, raised himself just above the hedge, and fired. A succession of paintballs splattered against the Tomb’s west panel, sounding little different than the splash of the hard rain that was now falling. The balls were filled with one of Roderick’s special recipes. The nanocraft liquid had a sort of insect hive intelligence, and it swarmed toward the carved letters.

  His job complete, the Renfield walked away. He would keep moving until he was home again. Since the cock-up of the Romanian job, the Renfields never hung around for the culmination of their masters’ schemes. Succeed or fail, the grandest schemes would always cause plenty of damage to nearby friend and foe alike.

  Not that it was his business, but the Renfield had a rough idea of what would happen next. The letters on the Tomb would become a series of interlocking circular indentations, illegible, and without meaning or power. The rain and the guard’s ritualized movement meant that by the time he observed the smoke and smell it would be far too late.

  To the mundanes, it would seem such a pointless bit of trivial destruction. They’d just recarve the letters. But they didn’t know the protection this memorial had provided. When war had begun to generate anonymous young corpses at an industrial rate, the risk had increased that some composite spirit like the Left-Hand dead of the House of Morton would form and grow. The Tomb’s blanket remembrance was a ward to keep a spontaneous Yasukuni from happening. It was an excess of caution—such ghostly death machines seldom happened spontaneously, and that any living American would want to create such a thing deliberately seemed ridiculous. As a result of Mr. Cushlee removing this forgotten linchpin of occult protection, Roderick would be able to summon the spirits of all the unknown dead of America’s wars, including the many Civil War unknowns memorialized elsewhere.

  By the time Mr. Cushlee reached Memorial Bridge again, the rain had completely stopped, right on schedule. Nice one, Roderick. As if the last trump had blown, the thousands of spirits of Arlington’s unknowns rose up into the clearing night sky.

  CHAPTER

  NINETEEN

  In all the rush of takeoff, we hadn’t actually heard any itinerary. Now, finally in U.S. airspace, I belatedly asked, “Are we going directly to Providence, or are we landing someplace else first?” But this got no response from the Gale except for some New Age–sounding crap about how knowledge of our destination would make us easier to track.

  “I’d like to see the double-blind study of that,” said Dale.

  “Amen,” said I.

  But soon, we felt the plane descend, and a little before touchdown, Scherie looked out the window and said, “Yep, it’s home.”

  “Not for me,” said Grace, eyes searching. “I don’t even have good spiritual sight here. Odd.”

  “Are you using stealth?” I asked. “You’re not showing up in spiritsight as a practitioner.” She shook her head. This lack of spiritual power in America wasn’t a good sign for our future happiness.

  When the plane stopped taxiing, the Gale practically pounded down the door, desperate to exit and light a cigarette despite her Nicorette binge.

  Cool air entered the plane. Winter was here.

  “So w
e go to the House,” I said.

  “Like Joshua and Abram,” said Dale. Then, perhaps remembering the long-term results of that siege, he added, “but not exactly.”

  We gathered our carry-ons and choice armaments and hustled off the plane. I had my sword, the needle-like sample of Roderick’s neural tissue, my .45, and not much else. The Gale was looking about the tarmac, pacing, nicotine buzzed and restless. “There’s supposed to be a couple of H-ring folks here. Tough ones, and guns, lots of guns.”

  “Doesn’t matter. We’ll make do with what we’ve got.”

  “Hold on a second,” said the Gale, raising up a hand. She stopped pacing and picked up her phone, which at that very moment started buzzing. A car motor dopplered closer; a black van swooped toward our landing area. “It’s my boss,” said the Gale. “I’m out of here.” With a race-walk step, she followed the colored line leading to the terminal.

  The van squealed to a stop. A cold wind blew, cutting deep. Alone, Eddy emerged, black trench coat flapping tightly in the wind. Either he’d foreseen that greeting us solo might keep things from escalating past harsh language, or he just didn’t care anymore. He stood relaxed, open to any blow we chose to give.

  “Well?” said Dale. “This had better be good.”

  Eddy nodded with the deliberation of someone who was otherwise very still. “You were all sacrificed to save the world.”

  “Oh,” said Dale. Eddy’s blunt math deflated him.

  But not Scherie. “You could have fucking told us. Or don’t you think we’ve fucking proven ourselves under fire?”

  “No,” said Eddy. “You couldn’t know. You had to be scattered around the globe as if by accident in order to bait Roderick to return early, before he gathered his full potential power. Then, those who survived long enough had to trigger events in Ukraine that would further motivate Roderick to depart Kiev prematurely, when we’d be ready for him.”

  The long explanation meant something was wrong; I had a hunch what it was. “All very clever,” I said. “So where’s Roderick now? Is he at the Mortons’ House?”