The Crimson Sky

by Joel Rosenberg

  “Eh?”

  Hosea turned in his chair and fumbled with the buttons of Ian’s shirt with his right hand, while his left hand dexterously eased inside, dry, gentle fingers probing in a strange rippling motion that didn’t feel at all clinical but still somehow evaluative.

  “Hmm … there is some tearing, but only of the muscle; that should heal.” The fingers probed harder, deeper, but the only pain Ian felt was the mild discomfort he would have felt anyway, if anybody had poked that hard at even undamaged tissue. “It seems to me that there’s some inflammation next to what an acupuncturist would call a chi point, and what Dr. Sherve would call a nerve cluster, I think.”

  He removed his hand and buttoned Ian’s shirt, the buttons and buttonholes aligning themselves instantly, as though leaping into place. If he hadn’t been watching closely, Ian would have sworn that the buttons started moving just before Hosea’s fingers touched them, but…

  But, no… it was just too easy to see magic everywhere, once you hung around with these people for a while. It wasn’t magic; it was just remarkable dexterity.

  Just…

  “I don’t like this,” Karin said, her lips drawn into a thin line that, for just a moment, made her look old and tired. She stood, and picked up the receiver of the wall phone; her slim fingers punched a number faster than Ian’s eyes could follow.

  “Bob? It’s Karin.” She smiled. “I figured you would; I don’t sleep that well alone either. No, she’s fine—a bit put out, but I think that Martha was born put out… yes, yes. No, that’s not it—no word, yet. I think we need a house call. Yes, yes—both of them. Hosea says that it’s not all that bad, but—yes, I know.” Her lips tightened. “And truth is that I need you to swear to Thorian that I didn’t talk him into it long before… yes. Half an hour is fine.”

  She hung up the phone and turned back to Ian. “He’ll be here in an hour. I’ll pack for you, but you’re not to even think about leaving until Bob Sherve gives you an okay.”

  Ian shrugged, then immediately regretted the motion. “I’ll wait for him to look me over,” he said. He clenched his right hand, the one that wore Harbard’s ring. I am not afraid. I am cautious, certainly, but I am not afraid. He concentrated on the thought, and then, as the ring pulsed once, twice, three times against his finger, he shook his head and wondered why he’d bothered with the ring again. It worked on other people—at least the few times he had used it, it had—but it didn’t seem to do anything for him.

  It wasn’t like he was scared or anything. Maybe he should be, but he wasn’t.

  “But that’s all; the sooner this is done, the better,” he found himself saying. There was a metaphor he had never had any use for, but he finally understood it: he did feel like a large weight had been lifted off of him.

  But going back? Again? If he kept doing this, sooner or later his luck would run out, and it was more likely sooner than later. It had been a close thing in Vandescard, and a closer thing in Falias.

  And this time…

  Screw it. He wasn’t scared, and it would be good to be in a place where he could wear Giantkiller openly, where he wasn’t just Ian Silverstein, a college dropout, but Ian Silver Stone, Killer of Giants—well, one fire giant, at least.

  And if that had been at least partly luck—and it had been—what of it?

  “You’ve become a hard-headed man, haven’t you?”

  A long time ago, Karin. “Well, yes.”

  Hosea smiled. “He comes from a long line of them. Trust me on this.”

  For a moment, Ian didn’t know how it would break.

  But then Karin smiled and reached out and touched his hand, and at least for the moment they were all friends again.

  Chapter Seven

  Day Time

  Jeff Bjerke looked over the prints in the snow with undisguised irritation.

  The trouble was, all they looked like was dog prints. A big dog, sure, but still just a dog. In the back of his mind there had been the idea—the crazy idea—that he might be able to enlist some local help. Maybe through an anonymous call to MPD. Get the locals looking for a wolf, and yes, that would cause some fuss and bother—but that would also get a lot more eyes looking for prints.

  Thorian Thorsen knelt down beside the clearest of the prints, the one Torrie had covered with an inverted cookie tin. “Can you make a cast of this?” he asked, although it wasn’t clear whether he was directing the question to Torrie or to Maggie.

  Torrie shrugged uncertainly, but Maggie nodded. “‘There’s a hobby shop just around the corner,” she said. “I can get us modeling cement, no problem—”

  Torrie raised an eyebrow. “Can I ask what for?” There was just the slightest dubious tone to his voice.

  His father let it slide. “Of course. I want to be sure, the next time we find some Son prints, that it’s from the same one.”

  “You think there might be more than one?”

  “I don’t know. But I’d like to. Would you not?”

  Jeff let his smile show. He had been afraid that in the city, Thorian Thorsen would be totally out of his element, and would be more trouble—other than in a fight, of course—than he was worth.

  It was sometimes good to be wrong. It hadn’t even occurred to Jeff that there might be more than one Son, but of course there could be.

  “So where do we go from here?” Torrie asked.

  “Yes,” Maggie said. “I’m missing a modern lit class right now, and—”

  Torrie held up a gloved hand, fingers spread wide, cutting her off. “No.”

  “Daytime? On campus?”

  Thorian Thorsen nodded. “Of course, Maggie; as you wish.”

  “But, Dad—”

  “Hush. Do you think one guard will be enough, or shall it be two?”

  Maggie frowned. “You’re going to stand outside my classes, like you’re the Secret Service or something?”

  Thorian Thorsen’s brow furrowed, but Torrie smiled. “You bet,” he said. “At least one of us. Me, I’m just going to skip classes and take incompletes if I have to, but if you don’t feel you can do the same, well, then, you can surely do it with Dad or me watching your back.”

  Thorian Thorsen shook his head. “It would be best to ask leave from your school. I think that attending classes would be unwise, but if you insist…” he spread his hands in surrender. “As you wish at it.”

  As she turned to glare at Torrie, the elder Thorsen let a smile show through his stony expression, just for a moment.

  “Well…” Maggie said. “If that’s my choice, I can take a few days off.”

  “If it was up to me,” Jeff said, “you and Torrie would hop in the front of the car and take turns driving, while Thorian and I sleep in the back. If the Sons are going to come for you, I’d like them to do it by popping out of the hole where I’ve got four men stationed with rifles, ready to blow their asses away, rather than anywhere else.”

  Shit, if he had his way, the whole Thorsen family plus a Christensen by the name of Maggie would be on the next plane to Honolulu. No, come to think of it, Jeff had a friend in Honolulu. Maybe Paris or Port Moresby or Nuku’alofa or something.

  But he wasn’t going to get his way, at least not on that. And there was something about the idea of these dogs driving one of his people out of town, out of the Midwest, that didn’t go down easy, not even in his mind.

  It was okay for a lot of the kids to move away from Hardwood. He’d given that some thought more than once, himself. Small-town life is not for everybody, not even for everybody who likes it, and certainly not for everybody who happens to be born and raised in a small town. But he just didn’t like the idea of the Sons forcing the Thorsens to flee, even if it made sense, and he liked even less the idea of bringing trouble home unnecessarily, and if he didn’t even like it, there was no way he could sell Minnie Hansen on it, or Bob Aarsted—although maybe Reverend Oppegaard could be persuaded of the wisdom. Give Dave that; he was flexible.

  But, shit: if you
couldn’t even get a consensus between your two ears, it was a foregone conclusion that you couldn’t persuade a room full of elders of it, so there was not much point in trying.

  “First thing we’ve got to figure out is what to do about you and Maggie.” And the second thing was for Jeff and Thorsen to get some sleep. Night came awfully early this time, of year, and if they were going to be any use in the dark, Jeff needed at least four, five hours of looking at his eyelids from the inside before then.

  “As in, whether we stay in town or not?” Torrie asked.

  There was no point in having an argument that you knew you weren’t going to win, unless you needed practice. “No, the question is where. Maggie have a roommate?”

  “Yes. She’s due back some time tonight.”

  Thorian Thorsen shook his head. “That wouldn’t be wise. Is there some way she could be kept away for a time?”

  Maggie thought about it for a moment. “How about trying the truth, or at least some of it? Torrie and you are here to help me refinish the built-in, which will save both of us some money, and what with the mess and all it would be easier on the lot of us if she stays over at her boyfriend’s for a few days.”

  Torrie nodded. “And as a thank-you for her absentee hospitality, we treat her and whats-his-name—”

  “Brian.”

  “—to dinner at, oh, Goodfellows or something.”

  She shook her head. “You can’t solve every problem with money, Torrie. That’d just make her suspicious. We’re doing her the favor, not the other way around.” On the back porch stood a small red plastic bucket, holding paint brushes soaking in turpentine.

  She stooped to pick up the glass bottle of turpentine next to the bucket. “I’ll sprinkle a little bit of this around her room, and if she decides to show up, she’ll get sick and go away.”

  Thorian Thorsen smiled like he had invented her. “Very good, Maggie.” He slapped his gloved hands together. “We have an errand to run, have we not?”

  It was getting cold standing around outside, and with Maggie dispatched to pick up some modeling cement, Thorian Thorsen in tow, Jeff followed Torrie up the stairs to Maggie’s apartment. A pot of coffee was just finishing dripping down into the Melitta, and after most of a night of road coffee—Karin Thorsen surely would have packed them a thermos if Thorian hadn’t insisted on rushing off—the smell was tantalizing beyond belief.

  “Does Maggie get the paper?”

  The question clearly caught Torrie by surprise. “You want her to advertise for a new roommate or something?”‘

  “No.” Jeff tried to keep his expression neutral as he met Torrie’s gaze, and he held it that way until Torrie looked away.

  Torrie was going to be a hard case. That was the trouble with growing up around the people you had to watch out for. The ones who were older could never quite get the image of you as a little kid out of their heads, and the ones who were your age, or even a few years younger like Torrie, weren’t used to taking direction—even when it was needed—from a peer.

  He’d probably have to get that clear sooner than later. But maybe it could wait until he looked at the newspaper that Torrie was unfolding on the spool table.

  Well, the mayor’s driver had tried to shoot out some poor fool’s tire, and all of the sports teams remaining wanted some money in return for not moving away. There had been a shooting in Phillips, and the homeless shelters were all full, but…

  “What are you looking for?” Torrie asked.

  Jeff tapped at the paper. “This.” He smiled. As a kid, like a lot of other kids, he’d wanted to be Sherlock Holmes. You didn’t get a lot of chances to do that. The strange thing that the dog did during the night.

  “The shooting in Phillips?”

  “No, it’s the story that’s not there. The dead men that the Son killed. Or the stories from surrounding farms about animals being taken by a wolf.” The Sons had stalked the Thorsens for at least a week before the Night of the Sons—and they’d killed a fair number of farm animals to feed on.

  But that had drawn a lot of attention, and it would draw even more attention this far south, where wolves hadn’t been spotted in, what? A hundred years? It wouldn’t take many kills to have the public all up in arms. One would probably do it. Two, for sure.

  Torrie nodded. “I’ve got it. So either he just got into town or…”

  “Or he’s taking his time, and trying to keep a very low profile.”

  Torrie’s brow furrowed. “But if he just came through a Hidden Way, how did he find Maggie’s apartment? Do you think there’s a Hidden Way out in her backyard?”

  “No.” That wouldn’t make sense.

  Or, at least, it didn’t make sense.

  Hosea said there were lots of them, but Jeff had the impression that meant maybe hundreds or thousands, but surely not enough that there would be one in every backyard. No matter how hard it was to make yourself notice a Hidden Way for the first time, somebody would have stumbled across it, or stumbled into it like Benjamin Bathurst probably had.

  Occam’s razor: “What I think—the only thing I can think of that makes sense—is that this is one of the group who captured your mother and Maggie, and who knows what all of you smell like.”

  Assuming he was right, and it wasn’t a terribly difficult assumption to make, the Son was looking for the Thorsens, and probably would return, sooner than later, to check for another familiar smell. It was a matter of luck that the Son had found Maggie first—and was a matter of more luck that he hadn’t followed her to Torrie.

  Quiet footsteps sounded outside the apartment, in the hallway.

  Jeff was out of his chair, with his hand on the butt of his pistol as the door creaked open. It was a silly thing, but he actually regularly practiced a fast draw, even though he’d never heard of a case where a small-town type like himself really needed to do anything of the sort, legends about Bill Jordan to the contrary.

  But it was only Maggie and Thorian Thorsen, each of them carrying a brown paper bag.

  Which was what he should have been expecting, anyway. The Sons wouldn’t use a key, any more than they would knock and wait to be invited in.

  There was just the hint of a smile at one corner of Thorian Thorsen’s lips. “We’ve brought breakfast, as well as the cement.” He set his bag down on the floor, and stripped off his gloves.

  The heady smell of garlicky meat made Jeff’s mouth water.

  “Geerhos?” Torrie asked. It took Jeff a moment to realize that he wasn’t talking in that Bersmal language that the Thorsens seemed to slip into and out of without knowing it but that he was talking about those Greek gyro sandwiches.

  Maggie smiled. “It was only a little bit out of our way,” she said. “And I know how you like them.”

  She probably knew how Torrie liked a lot of things.

  Jeff sighed to himself. It was only four years, but it felt like four centuries, since he was that young. But, hell, marriage had a way of taking some of the piss and vinegar out of you, and that was just the way that was.

  Not a bad deal, if you got to trade it in for Kathy. He didn’t have any complaints.

  “So,” Torrie said, “we start with breakfast, but where do we go after that?”

  Well, he didn’t much feel like mixing plaster or concrete or cement or whatever the fuck it was, and he could probably spot a wolf print just as well as Torrie, if not quite as well as his father.

  “I think I’ll go for a walk,” he said, “with one of you.” It wouldn’t take three of them to make a plaster-of-Paris cast. Here and now, as far as he was concerned, hunting rules applied, and Jeff had always been taught that you don’t hunt alone, unless the choice is between that and hunting with somebody you don’t trust.

  Of the three of them, he was most worried about Torrie not following his lead in an emergency—the elder Thorsen would defer to him in this strange territory, and Maggie seemed a sensible type, by all accounts.

  “Maggie?”

 
She turned toward him, jerkily.

  “Feel like going for a walk?” he asked.

  Torrie started to say something, but he stopped at a quick head shake from his father.

  “Sure.” She raised an eyebrow. “I don’t even mind skipping breakfast.”

  “Well, I do,” he said, reaching for the bag of gyros. “Breakfast is one of my four favorite meals of the day.”

  Once, when he was a kid, Jeff had found the perfect game trail. It was on the first day of deer season, and he was out with Dad, just the two of them. A long freeze had been topped by two, three inches of light, fluffy snow, which lay across fields and roads in the still air like a blanket just waiting to be disturbed.

  It had been absolutely wonderful. He had spotted a big set of tracks moving upwind, and the two of them had silently followed the big buck through fields and little stretches of woods, ever so often losing the tracks for just a moment in a thicket of brush, but picking up the trail momentarily. It was beautiful, and the feeling of the perfect trail hung bright and shining in his memory.

  This was nothing like that. The snow had been driven over and blown around, and while he and Maggie were able to pick up occasional prints down the alley, leading away to 31st Street, they lost the trail at the 31st Street sidewalk and weren’t able to pick it up again.

  Four blocks down, Jeff finally gave up. They weren’t going to find any more tracks, and there was no point in fooling themselves.

  “Well,” he said.

  “That’s a deep subject.”

  “What?”

  “A well. It’s a deep subject.” She slapped her mittened hands together. “It’s a joke: You know, a sort of funny thing that I say, and then we both laugh?”

  “Oh.” Except for the funny at the end part. Other than that, it surely was a joke.

  It took him a moment to realize that at 36th and Emerson, they were only a few blocks away from the house where Billy Olson lived—as opposed to Billy Olson’s House, which was across the street from where Jeff had grown up, just down the block from where he lived now, the house he bought for Kathy.