by Tom Doyle
CHAPTER
TWO
Major Michael Endicott gave the high castle a glance and thought of trivial injustice. Prague, beautiful bullshit Prague. Prague’s old-world occult irritated him. Every assignment turned noir here. Like foreign movies, Prague missions tended to end badly and absurdly.
Endicott played the gaping tourist and waited for his call. To his right and above loomed Prague Castle, locus of alchemy and occult practices until the Thirty Years’ War. The old European aristocracies had attempted to monopolize spiritual power in their realms, but the New World’s openness to new Families had helped to put an end to that. To Endicott’s left, a picturesque rabbit warren of streets and alleyways led back down to the town, every shadow potentially filled with Central European nasties who sought his demise. Further up the road stood the old monastery, site of tonight’s rendezvous.
Lovely Slavic women passed to and fro, irritating in their own way. A wife or girlfriend back home was overdue, but a Christian relationship took time, and in his position he couldn’t have any other kind. He had his doubts that God cared much about his sex life, but his superiors and family did.
In response to these insubordinate thoughts, his satphone finally rang—General Dad calling. Other branches of the military could afford to move family members to separate chains of command, but not spiritual ops. Endicott answered.
“Sir?”
“Sword, the target has moved up your rendezvous. You’ll proceed directly to the site. Operate under Moscow Rules.” This precaution meant nothing; in spiritual ops, almost anywhere overseas was hostile territory.
Endicott’s irritation got the best of him. “Sir, why am I here?”
To Endicott’s relief, his father seemed to view this question as legitimate. “Pentagon PRECOG wanted you in the desert, but that freakshow Sphinx vetoed it, and that Hutchinson woman concurred on the ground, so we’ve given you Casper’s milk run. Try not to screw it up.”
“Yes, sir.” Dad didn’t think much of Hutch and Langley’s Sphinx, but it was PRECOG’s Chimera that always gave Endicott a queasy feeling. An H-ring joke had it that the motto of Pentagon farsight was “We know, but we don’t care.”
The general’s voice lowered into a confidential, wily tone. “Remember to ask about the Left Hand and the Mortons.”
Lord, would he never cease on that? “Roger, sir. Wilco. Sword out.”
Left-Hand: the craft relativistic euphemism for “evil.” Endicott hated the word almost as much as the fact. In spiritual ops, evil was Evil.
Endicott strode up the cobbled road. He carried a long and narrow box that enlarged at one end, as if he were a professional pool player with a bridge cue slung over his shoulder. Perhaps he shouldn’t have bothered hiding his thirty-inch sword; in this town, carrying an archaic weapon with a decorated hilt wasn’t so unusual. Endicott’s weapon was the source of his code name. He bore the blade of the first American of his ancestral line.
Endicott was proud of his family, whatever its excesses, and Old John of Salem was the most excessive Endicott. John had used this sword in May 1628 to hack down Thomas Morton’s maypole and drive away his drunken followers. John had brandished this sword during the trial of Ann Hutchinson, ancestor of the colonel. In America’s first declaration of independence, John’s sword had sliced the red cross of Saint George the Dragon Slayer from every flag he could find.
Major Endicott could laugh at a man who had wanted veils for women. But Old John had been right about the things that mattered: faith, discipline, and freedom.
Old John took a distant second place in Endicott’s heart to his later ancestor, Abram. At the siege of the House of Morton, Abram had carried this sword. With it, he had defeated Roderick, leader of the Left-Hand Mortons, the man who had taken the name and guise of the Red Death. Abram had slain the greatest evil in the history of the Fighting Families. Just thinking of Abram gave Endicott an electric feeling of pride.
From generation to generation, the Endicotts had handed down this sword as the symbol of their Fighting Family’s commitment to military service. Other talents in other Families might forget their duty to country and either forego their spiritual gifts or use them only rarely and in secret from government practitioners, but Endicott could not imagine living without either his spiritual duty or practice.
He reached the entrance to the baroque monastery, now a tourist haven. A long line of stocky Germans chattered in soft gutturals at the entrance. Germans still had a way of annoying everyone in American spiritual ops. Dear God, was this Sphinx’s sense of humor? Send the Puritan to a Catholic monastery to meet an atheist with a bunch of Germans nearby. Endicott was tolerant, but he didn’t appreciate being laughed at.
Endicott’s target was Karel Macha, an aging Cold War leftover. Macha had double-dealt too many times, and any number of nationalities would still love to kill him. The Czech wanted to eyeball his contact before coming over.
Endicott didn’t ready any specific spells. He would rely on his strongest spiritual gift: the power of command. His Family had centuries of practice at telling others what to do. Unlike some other Families, his didn’t believe that God played dice with the universe. When Endicott prayed, he felt like a vessel for divine certainties, not skewed probabilities.
“In the name of Jesus, let me through.” Endicott gave commands in simple panglossic, another useful gift of the Spirit. Repeating this simple prayer, he was admitted to the limited tour area, then the caretakers-only area of the monastery library.
In the old library, Endicott’s nose itched. Despite preservation and cleaning efforts, the air was saturated with the dust of decaying books. Many rows of volumes were rebound in bland communist gray, contrasting with the rich dark woods of the shelving. A brief search and he found his goal: a not-terribly-secret passage led downstairs.
On the steep stairway, fancy stone gave way to brick and natural rock. The further belowground Endicott went the more the very air pulsed with hostility. He remembered what Abram Endicott had written about the House of Morton under the Left-Hand Roderick and Madeline, how he could feel its malice against him. This place was like that, a vessel for the chthonic power of those who dwelt here.
When Endicott reached the last stair, he found a source for the anger. An old man glared at Endicott, his head bald and choked with veins, his glasses almost bulletproof thick.
The man’s splotched face moved quickly from malice to surprise, and then added a dash of confused fear. Just traces of expression, but enough for Endicott to read.
“You are Casper?” asked the old man. What the hell? Who had given this guy code names?
“I’m your contact,” said Endicott.
The man nodded, smiling with his remaining cigarette-stained teeth. “Not Casper. OK. I am Macha.” He pointed to a dusty seat snagged from the antiques upstairs. “Please. We talk, then we go to USA.”
“Not quite.” Endicott placed his hands on the chair, but remained standing. “You’re old enough to know how this game goes. You tell me things that are worth my government’s time and resources, and you get a nice life in Florida or wherever you like. You tell me shit, you get shit. Understood?”
Macha nodded and didn’t smile.
“Good,” said Endicott. “Now you sit, and we’ll talk.”
Macha told his bio, and he didn’t mess up any of the details that Endicott already knew. He spilled about American spiritual ops that had gone bad, and gave the preliminaries on the real reasons they had gone bad. Though these were old files, it was interesting news, and might be worth the cost of making this man’s remaining years comfortable.
Endicott took pages of notes as Macha went on, describing Russian ops, East German ops, Czech ops, Russian ops again. Yes, the old man was talking enough, perhaps too much. He seemed to have forgotten his part in the negotiation—to hold something back until he was on U.S. soil.
Endicott wiped the sweat off his forehead. Macha’s yammering was giving him a headache. May
be that explained the feeling that the room’s hostility had grown. How could the old man stand it here?
Endicott didn’t have to take it anymore. “Enough!”
Macha smiled and stood up. “We are done? We go?”
Endicott wanted to say, Yes, let’s get the hell out of here, but realized he had one more question that, no matter how absurd, he was ordered to ask.
“Just one more thing. What do you know about the Left-Hand Mortons?”
“Left-Hand?” sputtered Macha. “Nothing. Absolute nothing.”
But Endicott was no longer listening. He stared at the door behind the old man. It glowed with the black light of very bad craft.
“What’s in the back?” asked Endicott, trying to keep his tone even.
“Not your business.”
“Yes, my business.” He pushed by Macha.
“I’m working for you,” said Macha. “USA! USA!”
The door was shut but not locked. In spiritual warfare, this was a bad sign—it meant that mundane protections were superfluous. But how bad could it be, Lord?
The back room was long and narrow, with two rows of benches running from end to end. The stench of chemicals familiar and strange made Endicott’s eyes water. On the benches nearest the door, body parts, mostly heads, some in jars, some not. Some desiccation, but no rot. No blood, not a drop. OK, pretty bad. But Endicott had seen death before. If Macha was a serial killer, it wouldn’t be the first time that Uncle Sam had sheltered a sociopath.
Further down the benches, the news got worse. Conventional formaldehyde gave way to alchemical vats, bubbling above gas jet flames and humming with craft. In the vats, attempts at homunculi. Not good, but their failure was comforting.
But what did these alchemical experiments have to do with the dead heads and limbs all around him? Lord, help me understand.
A sound like butterfly wings. The eyelids of the nearest head fluttered open. A groan came from mouths without vocal cords. Arms bent at their elbows, reaching for him.
In a flash, Endicott had his revelation. No, not dead, nor truly alive, these potential golems of flesh and bone. Macha was trying to assemble a deathless body with no soul, a prospective vehicle for another’s spirit. The Left Hand had always striven to defy death, but even Endicott’s father hadn’t dreamed that anyone could go so far.
“Abomination!”
With a few reflexive moves, Endicott’s sword was out of its box and in his hands. He forgot his mission, forgot himself, forgot everything except perhaps God. With main force and little method, he started destroying all things within reach.
Gnarled hands tried to restrain him; Endicott had forgotten Macha. The old man bellowed with surprising strength. “I do not care who fuck are you!”
Endicott wanted to toss Macha aside and get on with the Lord’s work, but he noticed that the man was no longer alone. Two young goons with semiautomatic pistols stood at the doorway.
Macha chuckled and coughed. “You leave now, maybe I let you live.”
Meanwhile, the undead limbs and heads were crawling and rolling toward Endicott, as if to smother him in their sheer mass. He was outgunned, outmanned. As for spirit, Macha didn’t have much personal juice, but the chamber’s black-light force seemed to flow through him. Endicott couldn’t take him in a straight-up duel of power.
But Endicott would not leave this room without ensuring its destruction. Even if Macha were telling the truth, Endicott couldn’t live knowing its evil continued.
Only one weapon left, the distinct spiritual strength in which the Endicotts exceeded all others. The power of command.
He prayed at Macha’s goons. “In the name of Jesus, I compel you. Shoot each other.”
Each goon turned toward the other, hands shaking, shooting, but shots flying wide. The old man’s voice rose to a shrill cry. “Stop it. Shoot him. Shoot the American!” The force of the place aided him; the goons stopped shooting at each other.
Now another commanding prayer, one which Endicott had no assurance of being answered. He prayed at the heads, hands, and feet. “In Christ’s name, attack these men.”
With unnatural speed, these soulless things somehow obeyed, crawling and rolling toward his three enemies, wrapping around their feet, biting at their ankles. But the goons’ hands had ceased to shake; soon, their wills would be their own.
Endicott had one more prayer, a completely silent one outside his usual expertise. Extinguish flame. The fires under the alchemical vats snuffed out. He prayed his enemies wouldn’t notice.
Endicott faced his enemies, sword out. One of the goons was slowly aiming toward Endicott; the other was still struggling. Both blocked his exit. The writhing arms and legs on the ground seemed less lively and affectionate.
The gas under the vats continued to hiss. Time to go.
Waving his sword, Endicott charged the goon with the better aim. If he got a shot off, show over. “Fall! Fall and…” Macha started to say something nasty; Endicott slashed at him with his sword as he plowed shoulder first into the goon. Macha dodged the blow; Endicott spun off the goon and tumbled onto the hard floor of the sitting room.
The old man screamed, “Die, die, die!”
Endicott suddenly felt slower, weaker. But such poorly planned craft could not stop him. In a second, he was up, and running for the stairs.
Endicott reached the stairway and raced up with grasping arm and pumping legs, sword gripped down at his side. The room tugged at him, wanting him to stay. “After him!” cried Macha.
The tramp of goons’ feet on stone echoed behind him. No more time. “In the name of God, flame on!”
The explosion rumbled through the stone. The concentrated gas acted as catalyst for other chemicals in the room, which added their destructive force in rumbling crescendo. A furnace of flame roiled up, impelled by alchemy and the dark spirit of the place, reaching for Endicott with the dying screams of his enemies. His clothes were on fire. He was on fire.
Oh God, out, out, out! He burst out of the passageway and rolled on the antique carpet, then lay there, exhausted. For these gifts I give thee thanks, Lord.
He prayed for healing, but that wasn’t his strong suit. His painful burns weren’t that severe. Just get me through the day, Lord. Caretakers and security men were running past. One stopped and shouted at him in Czech. Endicott grabbed his arm. “Take me to the American Embassy. Now.”
* * *
Endicott sat huddled in a safe room deep within the U.S. Embassy, still in charred and singed clothes, wrapped in a blanket. Feeling bad and absurd, feeling blistered and burned. The infirmary could wait; first, he had his duty. He cleared his thoughts and phoned the general.
“Sir, target was terminated. Termination was unavoidable. There’s significant mess for cleanup. Intel is … Intel is very significant, sir.”
Silence for a ten count. “Sir?”
“Never mind all that now, Sword. You can report to me in person. You’re needed back home, ASAP.”
“Sir?”
“Something is wrong with, um, Casper. We want you to monitor him.”
Casper. The captain he had helped restrain. Endicott’s sword hand itched at the name, and he didn’t know why. “I saw him at the airbase, sir.”
“Right. I expect your report on Prague tomorrow.” The general cleared his throat. “You should know that Casper is a Morton.”
“Understood, sir.” His father must have detected the pause in Endicott’s response and known the emotion it contained. But his response was certain. If his father of all people could give this order, Endicott could damn well obey it.
Containing his strong feelings completed Endicott’s exhaustion. Duty done for the moment, he let himself be cared for and wheeled onto a plane for Washington. Tomorrow he would just report the facts, but he knew what the general would say. The old Czech had been working with some serious Left-Hand craft, craft at a level that he did not fully comprehend and control, or Endicott would have been toast. Only one F
amily had ever achieved that dark height. The general would say that the Left-Hand Mortons were back. They were trying to make new bodies for their old corrupted souls.
And coincidentally, something was wrong with Captain Morton. Only, in spiritual ops, there were no coincidences.
All this was profoundly disturbing, like a move to DEFCON 2 on a sunny day. But what really stuck in Endicott’s craw (along with the monastery’s splinters) seemed trivial in comparison: why had PRECOG originally assigned the Prague job to a Morton? And why had Sphinx switched this job to an Endicott?
If all had gone well, a Morton would have been fine in Prague, perhaps even too cozy with the monastery’s Left-Hand abominations. But if all had gone as badly as it had? God had granted the Endicotts the strongest power of command, and it had taken all of Endicott’s compulsive power to get out of the monastery alive. If Casper had not played nice with those Left-Hand elements and had gotten into the same fight, he would have died down there.
The steady vibration of the plane was a lullaby. Endicott could not answer the riddle yet, not without knowing more, certainly not before sleep took him. But, within the limits of duty, he would answer it. And whatever the answer, someone would have to face divine wrath and Endicott power. So help me, God.
CHAPTER
THREE
I was in the desert again, fighting the sorcerer. “Break hand … move air … short sharp shock.” Then, I was running, trying to stop my men: “Cease fire! Cease fire! Goddamnit, cease fire!”
Kill them all.
I stopped yelling and blinked my eyes fully awake. Sunlight streamed into the rural bedroom. I felt cold and wet in a pool of my own night-terror sweat. I rolled off the firm mattress of the oak bed onto the thick shag floor and went to the bedroom door. I knocked. “I’m awake,” I said.
“No shit?” came the answer.
“Thanks for the sympathy.” But I actually appreciated the attendant’s nonchalance. I showered and dressed in my flannel shirt and new jeans with on-duty precision. That was more than I could say for the dining room staff—shirts untucked, shoes scuffed and muddied, symptoms of low discipline and morale. The staff was tired of this shit detail. I had been here too long.
