by Tom Doyle
“Hutch?” But I knew that this was someone else.
The Appalachian’s teeth mashed against her own tongue as the newcomer spoke. “Colonel Hutchinson is permanently out. No need to leave a message. You’ll be able to speak directly to her soon.”
The Appalachian had ceased to act as a willing medium. She was possessed. “Leave her,” I said, testing the opposition.
The thing in the Appalachian laughed, a horrid croak of forced air. “Always so rude, even in our family home.”
“This isn’t Roderick,” I said, “so knock off the impersonation.”
“Oh, so certain!” said the Red Death. “But who else could master such magics besides the great Roderick? You’ve learned too much. Here comes a chopper to chop off your head!”
Yes, who else could master such magics? But I had my own question. “What have you done to Hutch?”
“Not enough, apparently,” said Red. “But I’m so glad we could talk again.”
Against all my instincts, I tried reason. “Whoever you are, I know you’re American. Can’t we come to a deal?”
“Certainly,” said Red. “I need you dead. After that, whatever you’d like.”
“Me dead, and all the craft Families,” I said.
“Just their best,” said Red. “Magi aren’t what they used to be. It won’t hurt too much. Like the time we Mortons killed those Endicotts…”
Mortons killing Endicotts? Only someone like Major Endicott would think I’d enjoy this blather. Time was running out. For once, the villain’s monologue was keeping the good guys preoccupied, when we should be escaping.
“Get out,” I said, putting more force into my craft.
“But we have so much to discuss.”
Dale, come forth, I thought, and the spirit world faded into darkness, and strength came back into my limbs.
I grasped the Appalachian’s shoulders. Umph. She gave a punch to my solar plexus. The blow only irritated; the puppet’s strings must not be completely in enemy hands. I picked her up and threw her over a shoulder. I turned one-eighty degrees and strode through the dark toward the main shaft. In a few steps I saw the light at the end of tunnel. I hoped it wasn’t that other light, the one with Dad and Grandpa at the end of it.
“Die, you Morton cockroach, die!” The Appalachian’s body struggled and punched weakly at my back. “You’re staying here forever, Morton. An eternity of pain, while we rule your precious land.”
Not even pretending anymore to be a Morton himself. Whoever was in there was speaking directly from the subconscious. His conscious mind must be busy.
As if in answer to this thought, the warmth of another’s craft flowed around me. To possess someone and work craft through her—in another context, I would have admired the sheer power and skill. I braced for some magical blow, but instead saw an auric glow that shot up through the earth like a flare and heard a rising tone of music that sounded like “I’m ready!”
* * *
“What are we waiting for, ma’am?” said the grunt.
“Shut up or I’ll have your tongue,” said Sakakawea.
Though the grunt should have taken this threat literally, it was sufficient that he and his fellow soldiers took it seriously. They remained at attention, quiet.
Good, thought Sakakawea. She fell back into a focused trance. At the bridge, she stood in front of her new companions, trying to see through the Sanctuary’s illusion to whatever signal her commander might send. What seemed a long hour to her reinforcements seemed to her, in her altered state, several eternities, several hells of waiting.
A beam of craft ripped up to the sky, a pure tone sounded the attack. Sakakawea’s heart leapt into ecstasy. He was here, and she was joining him in battle. “Follow me,” she said, and she dashed over the suddenly visible bridge.
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
I dragged the Appalachian as close as I dared to the main shaft. Red might attempt to drag both me and the Appalachian’s body to our deaths. No going up the ladder like this.
As I summoned the focus for another attempt at expulsion, Red continued to punch and kick, but with less enthusiasm. The craft signal must have tired him out. “Die, you vermin. Die now.”
“Is that you?” Scherie was calling from the mine entrance.
“Stay away!” I yelled.
“Die, less than a woman,” said Red, using a panglossic—it must sound worse in Farsi.
“You,” said Scherie. She was already scuttling down the ladder. A piece of rung broke and ricocheted down the shaft. “You,” she said again, entering the gallery.
“Don’t come near her!” I warned.
Scherie didn’t stop. She rushed at me and grabbed the Appalachian and shook her as I struggled against them both. Scherie’s rage echoed down though the depths of the mine. “Get out of her, you fucking ghoul rapist.”
The ground beneath Scherie’s feet glowed; the air imploded silently toward her. Fiat lux. A blinding grenade of craft exploded from her hands. I fell to my knees, and the Appalachian rolled to the ground.
For a moment, I forgot training. But only for a moment. Triage. First, I examined the Appalachian. Stunned, but very much alive, and no sign of Red. That was the good news.
The bad news stood in front of me, panting with the effort of an exorcism that I myself couldn’t achieve. I tried a theory: maybe the Sanctuary had used Scherie as a vehicle for its own craft. But I was tired of fooling myself.
I stood up and faced Scherie. I had to get to her before she recovered. “The truth,” I commanded. “I’ll know if you’re lying. What lineage are you? Who do you work for?”
Scherie was staring at her hands. “I don’t know … I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I heard it, Scherie. I saw it.” I realized I was in a combat stance. I stood down. “I’m not going to hurt you. But no mundane could have made it this far.”
“Right, this has all been my idea.” Her hands were trembling now. I reached for them. She whipped them back. “Keep away from me, goddamn it.”
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I repeated.
“You idiot.” Tears rolled down her cheeks as she looked from the Appalachian to my face. “I’m not thinking of me.”
“Ouch,” said the Appalachian, sitting up even as Scherie was sinking against the gallery wall. “My head feels like unfiltered shit and moonshine.”
“We’ve got a situation here,” I said.
“They teach you to talk that way in the military?” asked the Appalachian.
I pointed at Scherie, who held her face in her shaking hands. “She’s a craftsperson, but she won’t tell me her Family or who she works for.”
“You and your lineages. Fool.” The Appalachian spat. “She doesn’t know.”
I stared at the Appalachian. Shit, I’m still tripping. “What the hell do you mean?”
“She doesn’t … Shh. They’re here. Git the fuck back down the mine. Now.”
* * *
Sakakawea had little difficulty finding the shaft. The residue of her commander’s possessive presence drew her, then unfamiliar power burst out from the mine. She sighed with disappointment at her beloved’s absence. Perhaps Morton had killed the Appalachian to expel him—a worthy outcome. One way or another, that hag was out of commission.
She sniffed the mine air. “Mmm, Morton.” He was still down there. Joy.
“Let’s blow this gash to hell,” she said. An advantage to working in the Sanctuary was that they could make as much of a noisy mess as they liked. Ritual genitalia-form spaces appalled her with their crassness; she’d blow up the Washington Monument too if they’d let her.
Her grunts had brought plenty of toys. “Toss some grenades down the main and emergency shafts, then immediately set that building-buster at the entrance and detonate.” Poetic. She knew too well that Mortons obsessively feared live burial.
“Now move it,” she said aloud, but to herself she said, Chimera, come. She felt t
he unnatural power wash over her and this abomination of preservation, just as the grenades dropped down the shafts.
* * *
I heard the warning clang, clunk, clang, and rattle of explosives against metal behind me as we helped the Appalachian scramble down the gallery, helmet lanterns faintly illuminating our way. My reflexes heard the noises first.
“Hit the dirt!” I said. But I had already pulled them down.
The mine vibrated once, twice, but nothing else. Just the grenades that time. I anticipated what would follow—if they had one big explosive charge, it wouldn’t be long coming. “Up, and move it.” I started counting, one, two, three …
On ten, “Down!”
The concussive wave blasted over us with its narrowly channeled force. Small stones rained on our backs; a cascade of rock rolled closer, closer … stopped. A slower wave of billowing dust passed over us like fog. I coughed and peered through the dust, only to confront the Morton dread of living entombment.
The shaft, the way we had come in, had ceased to exist.
“No way out,” said Scherie.
I looked at the Appalachian.
“Ye of shitty faith.” She pointed at a gap in the mine wall a yard ahead of us. “I’d never lead you into a box canyon.”
The gap, a ventilation shaft, doubled as a miners’ emergency escape route. Scherie moved toward it.
“Not this one,” said the Appalachian. “The next one.”
Scherie and I bent to help her, but she shivered us off. “Thanks, but I’ve got my wind back.”
We went deeper. Near the end of the gallery, we found the second shaft leading up and down. “Stay down or go up?” asked the Appalachian.
Fighting in pitch dark was old craft sport, but I would fight with unease in such a closed space, and if a Gideon came down, the enemy would have the nocturnal advantage. A Gideon also wouldn’t leave while my craft scent remained, so we would have to fight eventually. Sooner and aboveground would be better.
“We go up,” I said, feeling my weariness as I spoke. “But after a quick recharge.”
“Tactics, Mr. West Point?” asked the Appalachian.
I snorted, but it was a damned good question. I had a new weapon at hand named Scherezade Rezvani, but didn’t know what she could do, or whether she’d go off in my face.
“Wait.” As if answering my question, Scherie held up her palm. “Can you feel that?”
“What?” I said.
“It’s everywhere,” said Scherie. “So much … power? Like the thing that had her, but different.”
I looked for the power, but had trouble finding it for its pervasiveness. The mine spun for a second; I caught myself before falling. Déjà vu, motherfucker. This felt like the death magic that had been aimed at me. The power flowed not with the syncopated rhythm of a heartbeat, but with the merciless precision of a digital clock. No, the power wasn’t mechanical, but something more fleshy on a digitally forced march.
Scherie nodded at me, as if seeing me for the first time. “It’s like you.” She was right; the magic had a Morton feel, hidden beneath whatever commanding craft forced it on.
Scherie shuddered. “I’m going to tell it to leave now.”
The Appalachian gripped her wrist. “Not yet.”
“Why not?” said Scherie. “It’s horrible. It’s very, very wrong.”
“Tactics,” I said. “They don’t know what you can do yet. Neither do we. You strike now, you give them time for a counterstrike. Wait until we’re ready to take advantage of the surprise.”
Scherie jumped back as Grandpa and Dad manifested in combat uniform. “Having fun yet?” asked Dad.
“Shut your lip,” said Grandpa.
I stepped closer to Scherie. The light from my lantern lit her face like a ritual mask. “So, what can you do?”
“I don’t know,” said Scherie.
“She doesn’t,” said the Appalachian.
“How can she not know?” I shook my head. We were back to where we started.
“Honey,” said the Appalachian, turning up the maternal a bit strong, “when you were little, did you ever see anything funny, as in strange?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary,” said Scherie.
“Uh huh.” The Appalachian seemed to be interested in something on the floor of the mine.
“You know, imaginary friends,” said Scherie.
“Imaginary,” repeated the Appalachian, tracing her finger on the wall. “That’s ordinary enough. What were they like?”
“They were uncles and aunts and other people I hadn’t seen before.” The Appalachian didn’t respond, so Scherie continued. “Some of them weren’t very nice.”
“Not so friendly,” said the Appalachian. “What did you do?”
“I told mother. Mama smiled and told me that all I had to do was tell the ghosts to go away, and they would. And they did.”
“And they never came back,” said the Appalachian.
“No,” said Scherie. “Would they come back, if I asked?”
“Interesting idea,” said the Appalachian. “Probably not the time to find out. Anyhow, seems obvious why you haven’t noticed your talent until now.”
“Which is?” asked Scherie.
I interrupted. “I’ve been a blind fool.” She had been the obvious source of the massive healing at the motel, in the very same room, yet I had missed it. “How the hell did she get below my radar?”
“I’m right here, you know,” said Scherie.
The Appalachian laughed. “We’ve all been blind fools, but not the way you’re thinking. Any fool could’ve seen what’s happening, ’cept for the fledgling camouflage. That’s how a new craftsperson survives long enough to defend her or himself. Surely, someone told you about the birds and the bees. Surely, someone taught you how a Family is born.”
Grandpa and Dad looked at each other doubtfully.
“Forget that for now,” I said. I looked at Scherie. She had left things out of her story, enormous things of anger and loss. “Back to tactics. We go up. Then what?”
Scherie said, “We go for the bridge.”
The Appalachian sighed. “I can’t leave. Not now, not even for a bit.”
“They’ll expect us to go that way anyway,” I said. But I had another reason not to run, a sudden certainty. I didn’t think much of my own farsight, but this oracle felt right: if the third Gideon, Sakakawea, was there, she had to die.
Die. The fossilized plant life of two hundred million years pressed down on my head, trying to turn me to coal. I thrust my hands out to keep the walls away.
“What’s wrong?” asked Scherie.
“I’m a little … claustrophobic.”
The Appalachian made an impolite cough. Grandpa piped in. “The technical term is taphephobia. Fear of being buried alive. A family affliction.”
“Thanks for sharing,” I said, trying to distract Scherie from such lines of thought. I gave a hard stare at Grandpa and Dad, but they met my gaze with surprising substance. I tried to look through them, and could not. Like the other dead here, they were as opaque as life.
“How long until the dead have their next battle of the republic?” I asked.
The Appalachian bared her teeth at me. “You want to manipulate Valhalla. That’s dangerous. Worse, it’s wrong. The dead are resting here. They’re not your weapons.”
“You know that those men and women out there would die all over again for what we’re trying to do,” I said.
“Some of them,” said the Appalachian.
“You could tell them what to do,” I said.
“You know they don’t talk,” said the Appalachian.
“They were aware of us yesterday,” said Scherie “They tried to kill us.”
“Right,” said the Appalachian. “Too many of ’em hate it here. They’ll be as eager to join in their own destruction as they were when alive. This is not a peaceable kingdom, a city on a hill. This is an Alamo in a civil war.”
“J
ust talk to them,” I said.
“Even if they hear me, only a few will listen.” She thumbed at Scherie. “Maybe the fledgling might say a word.”
“Maybe,” I said, reluctantly. That would be shooting blind. “In any case, we’ll use them for cover.” That meant we’d have to blend in. None of the armies looked like they were wearing my synthetic outdoor gear. I took off my expensive jacket, rolled up the sleeves of my shirt, and ripped my pants. The others imitated me without question.
With my last rip, I had my plan. “So here’s how we destroy them.”
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
With the patience of a true predator, Sakakawea had not moved since the explosion. She knew better than most the difficulty of killing a magus. Her commander’s Red Death puppet had escaped a worse trap at the Morton estate. She herself had been buried … no good remembering that.
Sakakawea sniffed. A Morton still lived, and the guardian of this place still lived. Hard to say where below, but it didn’t matter. If Morton managed to see daylight again, she would have overwhelming force to finish him off.
She gave orders to her living task force. “Kill the man on sight, if you can. Bag the women and bring them to me. Ignore the historical holograms.” They didn’t question her reasons for thinking the targets alive; they didn’t have more logic than sense. She sent one of her men to cover the bridge, enough to slow her quarry down if they fled.
She gave orders to the sympathetic revenants, the “historical holograms” of H-ring speak. She spoke with the dead glibly—metempsychosis was good for that. Psychosis without the metem was good for the talking, but not the listening. She spoke to the departed dark sides of the Families and to all who had in life tried to tear America apart. She spoke to those men without a country who had said, “Damn the United States! I wish I may never hear of the United States again!”
Some of the dead remembered reasons to hate Dale Morton; one of them was from that botched business in the desert. Sergeant Zanol would join her reserve guard; like the others, he was not celebrity evil, just an efficient killer.
