by Tom Doyle
“Morton, what are you doing?” Endicott must have remembered my threat about the House.
Sphinx looked at her watch. “Right on schedule. Must be a fascist. They’re such clockheads.” She giggled. “Clock. Head.”
Stunned, I said nothing. Large chunks of my reality were blinking out. The craft forces around me became a checkerboard of uncertain absences in the ground, the walls, the House, the sky. Between the gaps, the protests of the Left Hand interspliced like helicopter blades. A juggernaut of force closed in on me, and I was going blind.
“What the hell was I thinking?” I said.
“I spy with my little eye something that begins with D,” said Sphinx.
Endicott was chest to chest with Eddy. He shouted at me, “You treasonous motherfucker, stop this.” So much for Christian sentiment.
The blind spot had moved into my immediate vision. It circled me, the people, the courtyard, became an alternating blur. They could come right up to me and kill me.
Time to retreat. “It’s after me,” I said. “Stay away from the House.”
As if to punctuate the point, a crash. Ward gargoyles from the roof shattered to the left and right of the doorway. I stepped away from the Peepshow and Endicott standoff.
Too late. Halfway to the door, I froze. Death surrounded me, and I couldn’t move my legs. I felt the bond with my enemy tightening, could sense my opponent’s focus, even as my bond with the House and the Left Hand severed. Endicott was shouting from miles away. The hair stood up on the back of my neck. Somewhere close, a rifle sight sought my skull.
No, not until I inflict casualties to protect the Families and country that I love, whatever they feel about me. Not until Scherie was farther away from here. With all my will, I stepped back toward the House and into the death of my choosing.
Too slow, too slow. I felt the rifle sight move with me, felt the tension on the trigger, the joy of my hunter, the odd ecstasy of being prey. Hailing my grandfather and my ancestors, I said, “I’m coming.”
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
Sphinx moved faster than my thought. She left shrimp stranded in midair and took me in a twirl with a ballerina’s grace. One hand found mine, the other found the chakra of my lower spine, like she was dancing lead, like she was completing a circuit. She ripped me into her fast-forward world.
I felt a lightness that was more sex than combat. No, I wouldn’t let this happen. “Get the fuck down, nut job.”
“That’s my boy.” Sphinx smiled, the fool with the sane punch line. Like a speed freak, she enunciated an order to her Peepshow goons: “Protect. Casper.”
A screech of psychic feedback froze me as Sphinx’s command echoed shock from my brain to my enemy’s to the blind force pulling a trigger. Too late. With an eldritch blast, the rifle fired.
The craft-guided shot came in like a heart-seeking missile on a spiral path of untraceable origin. The bullet made a little pock sound as it passed between Sphinx’s ribs. The accompanying craft sizzled like black static, ensuring death. My heart, tied to hers, felt the pain. Sphinx’s grip on me tightened spasmodically, then released. “Hunh. Chimera. Go now.” The heart sync broke; Sphinx’s soul exploded in blinding craft, bolts of sunshine in the gathered gloom.
She was gone. The end had no magic. I slowed back into the world.
Flashing guns greeted me; their barrels scanned like raptors, searching for the sniper in all directions. Over Sphinx’s slumped shoulders, I searched too, and felt nothing. A nervous young Peepshow held his weapon close to my head, his grip way too sweaty-tight. Sphinx’s order or not, this boy was going to kill me.
“Don’t shoot him, screen them!” yelled Eddy. Relieved to be under command, the Peepshow goons faced outwards and sandwiched Sphinx and me in our last tangle. I lowered Sphinx down to the ground. Her blood pooled onto the paving stones and into Morton earth.
Thunder without lightning, and scattered rain dropped into the blood. Eddy backed away from Endicott, gun drawn. Endicott was whispering into his transmitter, and his men formed a belated, moving circle around the Peepshows. Unconcerned with the sniper, they appeared to be looking for a clean line of fire on me, and not finding one.
Eddy bent to confirm Sphinx’s death. “This wasn’t part of the plan.”
No, I thought, this was part of some plan, just not mine or Eddy’s. Grandpa glared at me with a young man’s rage. “I’m glad we won’t have long to think about this. I’ll be inside with the others.” And he disappeared.
Formal shoes clattered on wet stone; the remaining guests finally realized that any benefits of further intel were outweighed by implication in this muddy mess. The Americans had left at the first sign of unpleasantness. Now the foreigners ran, not walked, through the courtyard gate, like bulls pursued by butchers.
My brain caught up to my strange and sad reprieve. Sphinx had made a blood sacrifice and shattered the death-seeking magic. But even shattered, such magic was a threat. My former death flew about in too many shards to repel, infecting those around me with a tendency to kill me.
They needed little urging. The Peepshow and Endicott’s men were yelling at each other, a confused cacophony of “Stand down,” “Let us through,” and “Give him up”—“Stand us up!” Classic alpha-male standoff. With his discreet talent for compulsion, Endicott yelled with more focus at Eddy: “Stand down, or we will shoot.”
“Resist,” I said, but Eddy’s left eye twitched with Endicott’s compulsion. Then Eddy responded through clenched teeth: “You won’t shoot him through us.” Being Peepshow had its advantages.
Endicott ignored the rebuttal. “Dale Morton, you’re under arrest. These misguided bureaucrats don’t have jurisdiction here. You’ll either come with me now, or you’re resisting arrest. Do I have to explain that to you?”
I didn’t need explanations. I needed to get inside the House. If Endicott wanted to come inside with me, all the better. “Can I get some things?” I asked.
“No,” said Endicott.
Oh well, worth a shot. I tried Eddy. “We need to get inside my house.”
Eddy’s face was taut with stricken anger. “I don’t think so. I think we’ll protect you at Langley, and I think you and I are going to have a nice long chat.”
Endicott must have sensed his opening. “Tell him how you did it, Morton. How you killed Sphinx. How you butchered Hutch.”
I felt new waves of craft arcing like ICBMs toward me. “We won’t get one hundred yards from here. We need—”
“Nobody’s going anywhere!” Frothing at the mouth, Chuck hurdled onto the food table and waved a stick around in some crude parody of kendo. The rain-slicked stick flew out of his hands. He jumped down and scrambled for his stick, leapt up into a sloppy martial arts stance, then scrambled for a weapon again. The act would have been hysterical, except that it threatened to get people killed.
“Get the fuck out of here, Chuck,” I said, “or I’ll shoot you myself.”
But we were out of time. One of the Peepshows screening me doubled over. Blood streamed from his eyes. Almost in answer, one of Endicott’s men tried to bash in his own skull with his gun.
“Eddy, get me inside,” I said.
Thunder and a crash of glass. A dark figure spun down from the third-floor balcony and hit the flat stones of the courtyard with bone-breaking thud. Shit, a new problem. But it wasn’t. With impossible steadiness, the figure stood up. With rare horror, I recognized him.
It was M. He moved, but no aura. M wasn’t alive. It was a meat puppet. I had been played. I had sealed my House, but death had penetrated my little party. That I hadn’t believed that such legendary power still existed was no excuse. I had killed M and upgraded their weapon.
M’s dead eyes searched the rain-brushed courtyard with what would have been confusion in the living. Its left arm hung at its side, limp and deflated. Its right hand gripped a strange-looking rifle.
Endicott pointed his gun at M. “Drop the weapon. Now.”
> With dead slowness, M raised the rifle. The weapon was a device out of Bosch—a gore-covered mixture of metal components held in a stock of human skeleton. The barrel had been hidden in M’s flesh; the rest was M’s flesh, self-cannibalized. Its bullets were bits of metal-capped bone. That M could fight while alive was itself a miracle of craft.
The rain poured, and nothing came clean. This looked like Left-Hand Morton work.
“Find cover!” I yelled.
Endicott stood straight and fired. He hit M’s right arm, both legs, and finally the chest. M spun around like a tangled marionette, but didn’t fall. As M slowed, it fired at one of Endicott’s men, and maybe nicked a bit of suit. Even confused, this was deep craft. Some of the puppet strings may have been broken by Sphinx’s sacrifice, but that made M dangerous to everyone instead of just me.
M’s rifle swerved like a compass needle, stopping on another of Endicott’s men.
“Take cover!” ordered Endicott.
But, like a hypnotized deer, Endicott’s man was too slow, and M’s shot found his leg. “I’m hit, I’m hit,” he called.
“Shit!” said Chuck, scurrying for the gate. Sensing the motion, M’s rifle swerved Chuck’s direction.
“Over here,” I yelled. The thing fired anyway. Chuck screamed, but kept moving. Then M turned slowly toward me.
“Not the plan,” said shell-shocked Eddy. “‘Zombies are a funny myth,’ she said.”
Clutching my remote, I felt for the Left-Hand spirits in the House, searching for rebels. None had slipped my reins; this monster couldn’t be their doing. “Get me in the House,” I said, “before it shoots us all. But slowly. Don’t attract its attention.”
“On three,” said Eddy. “One, two…”
As if we were slowly boarding a helicopter en masse, we moved in a crouch toward the door. Slowly, but too fast. In a blink, M’s rifle wheeled and found the blinded Peepshow being tugged along by Eddy. Another crack like dried bone, and the Peepshow was down with a fatal head shot.
“Goddamned monster!” said Eddy. But he joined the rest of us in the House. Meantime, Endicott’s men had taken positions behind the bars and the buffet tables. M stared blankly at the House, like a child considering a difficult problem in subtraction.
“What the fuck do we do now?” asked Eddy.
“Who the hell is your friend, Morton?” yelled Endicott. For a magus, Endicott was a shitty liar—he recognized this corpse. But he seemed a little scared to see it moving.
“He used to be an assassin,” I said. “I killed him.”
“Not very well,” said Endicott. “You’d better unplug him, or you’ll have a nightcap in Hell.”
“Get it through your Puritan skull: he’s not my zombie. The way he’s shooting, he’s probably yours.” But given the shock and horror that Endicott was buttoning down, this was unlikely.
Endicott must have lost interest in the debate. “Hey Peepshow. Hand Morton over, and maybe we’ll let you retire.”
A standoff. This government gang fight was getting in the way of the main event: drawing my still-hidden enemy into the House. With the enemy’s magic scattered, did he have enough mojo to follow me inside?
With the sudden flash and thunder of a light bulb filled with gasoline, the spirit keystone in the door arch exploded. The House groaned along its crack. A Peepshow howled, hands over bleeding ears, his smoking headset on the ground. Question answered.
Eddy’s hand gripped my shoulder a bit harder than necessary. “I said, what the fuck do we do now?”
Sins of evil intent flashed their letters across Eddy’s chest; my enemy’s malice was taking deeper root in Eddy’s hindbrain. “We don’t do anything,” I said. “You get out through the back and report to Langley what’s happening here.”
“Can’t do that,” said Eddy. “Orders.”
“You were ordered to protect me,” I said. “If you stay here, that’s not going to happen, is it? Somehow, you’re going to get me killed.”
“What I can see,” said Eddy, “that’s going to happen anyway.”
Outside, Endicott’s unit was taking carnival shots at the spinning, staggering M. Large chunks of flesh had been blown off it, but more force than I had ever seen held the zombie together, patching the necessary bits and letting the cosmetics go to gory hell. The zombie returned fire, keeping Endicott & Co. from rushing it.
More and more, this zombie looked like the dangerous craft of the Left-Hand Mortons, but with far more power. To push this many natural laws, my enemy had to be very close. Good.
“Anyone who comes in this house after me … isn’t going to be a problem,” I said. “But I won’t be able to protect your people. You’ll need to get back here, in force, to clean up this mess. Now go.”
Eddy made hand signs to his deafened subordinate, and the three remaining Peepshows scuttled for the back of the House.
For the next few minutes of my plan, I could use a gun. I reached into the never-used umbrella stand, popped the false bottom, and pulled out the surprisingly massive Colt and a shoulder holster that I had placed there. Outstanding.
M seemed to be regaining its focus on the House, but it was taking too long. I called to it: “Yoo-hoo, zombie. In here.”
M’s dead eyes riveted on my voice. It fired blindly toward Endicott again, just for perversity’s sake. Then, it took off in a crippled galvanic sprint toward me.
I crouched, ready to grapple with this corpse. But five strides away, M veered left and plunged through the large curved window into the parlor. Shit, didn’t this meat puppet ever use the door? M rolled out of my view, leaving a trail of broken glass and bloody rainwater. Whatever force still impelled M must be trying to flank me.
“It’s obeying Morton’s instructions,” said Endicott. “Let’s get them both.”
“Goddamnit, I told you…” But Endicott’s men advanced like weaving snakes on the door. I backed off, looking over my shoulders for M. “Keep your distance,” I said. “The House isn’t safe.”
“Ha. You’ve already played that trick,” said Endicott. “Keep going.”
I fired a shot from my cannon over their heads, just to slow them. It was hard to resist a blood-drenched stopper when the susurrant pulse of the House whispered for more, more, more.
My shot was answered by the sound of distant sirens. Endicott wouldn’t be able to keep this scenario contained forever.
I retreated into the long central hallway, peering into each small New England room for M. The House was a maze of stairwells, dumbwaiters, and crawl spaces. The corpse could be crawling anywhere.
“Hijo de puta!” Metal and ceramics crashed in the kitchen. Despite the warning, some workers must have straggled in the kitchen—perhaps more agents trying to watch the show. They fled now, and I knew where M was.
Meanwhile, Endicott’s team had entered, alternating between the right and left rooms and securing the foyer. I ducked into the hidden priest hole midway down the central hall. I didn’t need to see the intruders; the House vibrated with each living trespass. But M was only another shadow to the House.
One of Endicott’s flunkies called out: “Mr. Morton, will you please just come with us?”
“Stow that, Corporal,” said Endicott, hostile to this attempt to return the situation to normal. “Get Morton out of here, off his ground.”
I tucked my gun into its holster and pulled out my remote. The cult of presence in craft was for those of little faith. My craft would obey my commands, like the soldier obeyed the centurion. I said “Disable,” and pressed “02” on my remote.
“Disable” echoed through the stereo system. Every gun in the House glowed red, and Endicott’s men dropped the suddenly burning metal from their hands. “Disable.” And their headsets let out a terminal screech of feedback, though nothing so harsh as what my enemy had done to the Peepshow.
“Sir,” Flunky Two called out, “we have to abort.”
“Negative,” said Endicott. “He’s disarmed too. Are
n’t you, Morton?”
The prick was right: the House-wide spell left me disarmed as well. I could live with that; I only wanted to incapacitate Endicott’s team, but Endicott might want to shoot me dead.
“I’ll be here when you flush him out,” said Endicott. “Until then, keep the chatter to a minimum.”
Good, Endicott would hang back. I couldn’t take on three at once, if one of them was Endicott. I could handle two. These grunts had weight and height on me, and were prepared for possible craft action. But none of them had trained as much as I had, even in the crib, for days like today.
One at a time would be better still. The House would help with that. I reached out with my senses. Flunky One, working his way round my left through the parlor, would be the quickest to take down.
On the library and study side, doors slammed closed, confining the larger grunt and compartmentalizing the combat for a few crucial moments. In the hallway, the clock slid forward and its pendulum, like a toy version of Poe’s, smashed out, threatening to slice Endicott unless he kept back. I dashed out from the priest hole into the parlor. There, the thing behind the yellow wallpaper pulsed ominously to distract Flunky One. Even as my opponent pivoted round, I charged into him. My Native American martial arts used the grunt’s strength against him, even the strength of his bones. Break. Crackle. Snap! The best nonfatal injury for encouraging retreat was a broken arm. Or two.
“I’m not done with you,” said Flunky One, defying pain to keep me engaged.
“I’m done with you.” As I left the room, the House took over. The busts, pottery, and silver flew off their pedestals and tables in attack, the small bookcases teetered and fell, herding the broken-armed grunt back to the window. The sheer malice of the Left-Hand spirits warned him to exit now, or be consumed.
Racing across the hallway, I saw that Endicott remained occupied. From seeming thin air, Endicott had pulled out his sword by its overly decorated hilt and charged the clock. Just like an Endicott to be killing time during battle.
