American Craftsmen (28 page)

“Ow!” Roman’s gun dropped.
Chink!
With help from Endicott’s arms, his cuffs snapped. Endicott turned and drew his weapon. “Gotcha!”

But Roman hadn’t stayed put. He was gone. Endicott focused hard, hard enough nearly to see the details of the bridge, but no trace of the Ukrainian.

“Lord, give me strength.” Endicott sat down hard, exhausted. He thought through the encounter from a couple of angles, but it came out the same each time: Roman had just wanted his attention. “I’m not stupid, you know! Shit. All this dancing around, just to get a simple message across? Next time, send an e-mail.”

Lord, give me strength.
He felt the Spirit renew him. For all his skepticism about the Sanctuary, this ground did feel holy. Right. Late or not, and despite Roman’s message, he had to check out the scene of the combat or crime. He got back to his feet, and made his way slowly across the bridge.
Lord, please help me.

From the other end of the bridge, a man came running at him, screaming.
Not helpful, Lord.
Endicott tried to assume a combat stance, but on the bridge everything felt too uncertain. He held out his automatic. He’d seen the screamer before—must be countercraft muscle. “Freeze, soldier.” The screamer didn’t even slow down.

Endicott had a split second to make his decision. He lowered his gun, and stood to the side. The screamer ran past. Shooting a panicked man wasn’t going to get any answers; Endicott would find him later.

Endicott stepped off the bridge into the Sanctuary proper. Immediately, demonic spirits assailed him in the guise of a perfectly familiar elderly couple in their rural Sunday best.
Very unhelpful, Lord.
“
Get thee behind me, Satan!”

“Michael Gabriel Endicott,” said the male spirit, “is that any way to speak to your grandmother?”

“Liar,” said Endicott. “You’re not really Grandpa.
In the name of Jesus, get out!
”

“Tut-tut, little Mikey,” said his grandma. “You might be able to get away with that talk in your house, but not here.”

Endicott shook his head. The damned spirits were right—the expulsions they used to keep clean the family estate didn’t work here. “It’s official,” said Endicott. “This is a top-ten day. Look, I don’t know what you want, but I’m doing the Lord’s work, so could you please leave me alone?”

“Polite,” said his grandpa. “That’s better. But we want to help you, so just you listen for a minute.”

“How can you help me?” said Endicott. “You’re, um…”

“Quite dead,” said his grandpa. “And yes, we’re just as embarrassed as you are about having to manifest in this vulgar way.”

“You’re thinking of poor King Saul, aren’t you?” said his grandma. “Don’t worry, Mikey, it’s not one of those.”

So much for e-mail. “What’s the message?” said Endicott.

“Well,” said his grandma, “since we passed away, we’ve had no one living to talk to, so we’ve been looking for Abram Endicott.”

“Abram was a great man,” said his grandpa.

“We wanted to chat about the Civil War,” said his grandma, “and those nasty Mortons.”

The Left Hand again. Maybe this would be helpful. “What did he say?”

“He didn’t say anything, Michael,” said his grandpa. “He’s not here.”

Endicott shook his head, unable to hide his disappointed disgust. “So he’s gone on to his reward. You should do the same.”

“It’s not like that, dear,” said his grandma. “I think you know that. Maybe part of us has gone on, but this part is like a phonograph record. It remains here awhile for everyone. And we do mean everyone.”

“So where is he then?” asked Endicott.

“We don’t know,” said his grandpa, “but we have a feeling—”

“A bit more than a feeling,” said his grandma.

“—that it’s important for you to find out.”

A chill went down his spine, like when a farseer gave him an assignment. No, these weren’t farseers, these were bad bits of theology. Still, it couldn’t hurt to know what happened to old Abram, once he was done with this Morton goose chase. “OK. That’s fair enough. I’ll find out.”

The two spirits looked at each other doubtfully. “We hate to be formal with family,” said his grandma.

“It’s not that we don’t trust you,” said his grandpa.

“But could you swear it, sweetie?” said his grandma.

“On my honor as an officer,” said Endicott. “I swear it.”

“Thank you,” said his grandpa. “Find out soon, Michael. As much as we miss you, we can wait to see you again.”

“And give your father our love,” said his grandma.

“But don’t mention us,” said his grandpa.

And the spirits were gone. Well, that wasn’t so awful. Endicott could see why the Mortons and their like might spend too much time chatting with such revenants. But whatever the theology, the past was passed. The present held enough challenges.

*   *   *

I bound the Appalachian’s chest wound so that it no longer made that horrible sucking sound. She would be dead soon, leaving the Sanctuary without a guardian. This place couldn’t fail, and I couldn’t protect it. “Scherie, you need to help her.”

“I can’t…”

“You did it before,” I said. “You’re the one who healed me in Pennsylvania. You didn’t even touch me.”

“I’m, I’m very tired.”

“Try. I’ll help.”

My father had written that “the problem of fighting alongside those you love is that you both ask and give more than you would otherwise, perhaps more than you should. You violate simple duty in excessive zeal.”

So this was love.

We kneeled next to the Appalachian. “You’ll need to focus.”

“Can’t think,” she said.

“Take my hand,” I said. I had never been much at healing; no Morton ever had been. But I was long on imagination. “Think of the chest wound as the enemy.”

“The enemy,” she repeated blankly.

“Think of the wound as the Red Death.”

“You.” She stared at the wound, rage in her eyes. “You.” She drew in a deep breath. “
Get out of her, you motherfucking killer, now!
”

“
Now
,” I repeated, my heart open to whatever Scherie needed to take.

This time, the explosion burst slower, like replay footage of an atomic blast. Energy seared the Appalachian’s chest. Her lung found new purchase. She screamed. Scherie wailed. I panted like a racehorse, heart ready to burst.

The craft light extinguished, and the Appalachian fell silent. Scherie collapsed. I felt myself doing the same. Fine. For a while, we’d all be unconscious on the hallowed ground, and I would be next to the woman I loved. With my last waking thought, I wondered whether she felt the same or not, and, even after a day of fighting the living and the dead, I was a bit terrified of either answer.

*   *   *

When Scherie and I awoke, we carried the groaning Appalachian back to her cabin and placed her in bed. We ate quietly. Then I cleaned and readied our weapons, while Scherie stared at herself in an oval standing mirror.

Ol’ Red had threatened the craftsmen from the best Families. They would be the ones who would not be told what to do, those who could and would resist government abrogation of the covenant. The Families would suspect government black ops; the government would fear a Left-Hand conspiracy led by the renegade Mortons. My enemy would continue outrages against all, stoking the distrust. The covenant between craft and country would break. My enemy would use this wedge to gain unchallenged hegemony over U.S. craft power, and with that, over all of America.

I would respond to this threat as I had trained: kill those responsible. Fortunately for me, they were mostly in one place.

I slid an automatic back together with a click, then put it aside. “Can we talk now?”

Scherie didn’t move. “Change me back.”

“What?”

“Change me back,” repeated Scherie. “I helped you, now I want to go home. I want to be normal.”

“I didn’t do anything to you,” I said. “You always had a little craft. Now, it’s more.”

“West Point sensitivity training,” rasped the Appalachian, sitting up against her pillow. “We’d all like to be normal sometimes, shug, even him.”

“You shouldn’t move,” I said.

“Ugh. Healers make the worst patients,” said the Appalachian, lowering herself with a grimace. “You going somewhere?”

I didn’t look up from my weapons. “I think it’s time I go to Washington and straighten this out.”

“I understand,” said the Appalachian, nodding slowly. “You do that. She should stay here. She can help me git back on my feet. I can train her. She’ll survive.”

“She can’t stay here,” I said. This was the waiting room. If I failed, everything here would be lost. “She needs to get out of the country.”

“I’m not leaving the country,” said Scherie.

“She’s not leaving,” said the Appalachian. “She’s an American craftsperson now.”

Two ghosts manifested. My dad and Grandpa, the men I remembered and not the laconic soldiers of Valhalla, were back. Ghosts were echoes, and those men of Elysium were different echoes. “One got away,” said Grandpa. “The one at the bridge.” That made sense: he was farthest from me and the heart of the Sanctuary. “Not that he’ll be much trouble, with that nightmare in his head.”

Scherie spun around and pointed at me. “
The truth.
What are you going to do in Washington?”

I sighed. “That won’t work on me.”

“No,” she said, “craft or no craft, this time you have to tell me. Now, I’m one of you.”

The Appalachian nodded. I closed my eyes with discomfort. How to tell her this most intimate of things that seldom needed saying to a fellow soldier? I could only explain the circumstances.

“I need to enter the Pentagon and shut down Chimera.”

“I see,” said Scherie, her pitch rising like an untethered balloon. “Once again you’re going to try to kill yourself.”

“I’m going to do what I have to,” I said. “If you were a soldier, I wouldn’t have to explain.”

“Fuck that noise, soldier.” Scherie was in my face, drill-sergeant spitting mad. “I have seen combat. I have killed. If you were a better soldier, you’d have a better plan.”

I calmly repeated the words of my father. “In craft, sometimes waiting for a plan is a kind of cop-out. Craft is a kind of faith in the necessary.”

My father frowned. The Appalachian said, “I’ve seen some very bad outcomes.”

“Those were other worlds,” I said. Multiple universes were like angels on irritating pins to me—an academic exercise at best, more often a dangerous distraction. “What you saw wasn’t after all this.”

“What I saw didn’t have her,” said the Appalachian. “The minute she leaves here, they’ll hunt her down with everything they have. You’ve seen her in action. No ghost, no possessing spirit can resist her.”

No possessing spirit
. I turned to Scherie. “You went berserker at that possessing magus. You recognized him. Who is it?”

She shook her head. “Another childhood dream, nightmare. Don’t remember much. He was the bogeyman, always coming to get me. But that one went away. This one is someone different, but the same evil.”

I mined another vein. “Grandpa, you said out there that the squad leader looked familiar. Who did she look like?”

Grandpa chuckled dryly. “Sorry, that wasn’t quite the same fella as me. Tell me
what
she looked like, and maybe I can tell you who she resembled.”

“She was tall, very pale, very thin, and very strong.”

“Oh,” said Grandpa, smile gone. “Well, most of the Left-Hand Mortons used to look that way.”

“This woman wasn’t a Morton though. Looked Scottish or Irish.”

“So maybe it’s a common bit of aesthetics for the sinister,” suggested Grandpa, without enthusiasm. “I’m tired. I think I’m going to R.I.P. for a little.” He faded out.

Scherie didn’t wait for him to disappear. “That Saka woman, she had a choice. She tried to shoot me. Why me?”

“She was more than a little sociopathic,” I said. “Maybe she just figured that killing you would cause the most hurt.”

“And then die herself,” continued Scherie. “Why did she want to die?”

“The alternative must have been worse,” said the Appalachian, with a grunt.

“What the hell does that mean?” I asked.

“Who was Sakakawea?” said the Appalachian.

“A Gideon, I think,” I said.

“No, not her day job,” said the Appalachian. “The bitch knew my name. For once, I approve of your fixation on Families. Find out who she was, and maybe the rest makes sense.”

“Yeah, sure.” Having expected nothing better, I nodded, but my mind chewed on other words bubbling up from my hindbrain.
The hero is the one the bad guys want to kill the most. Maybe this is the part of the story where I realize I’m not the hero.

As an oracle, this was enough. All the separate pieces came together, and I saw where my place had to be. I looked Scherie right in the eyes. Her beautiful, powerful eyes. “You’re coming with me.”

“You can’t just use her as your weapon,” said the Appalachian.

Scherie shook her head. “He’s just stating a fact, not an order.”

“No more orders,” I agreed.

Dad chimed in. “It’s too many missions, saving us from Chimera, getting this fledgling started.”

“It’s the same mission,” I said. “This has been the mission from the beginning.”

“I know,” said Dad, and he vanished.

*   *   *

Endicott looked about him. Spent craft hung over the Sanctuary’s rolling fields like glowing fog; fried ectoplasm smelled like ozone. Corporeal remains lay in the distance, but Endicott couldn’t identify them from here. No survivors visible, but smoke rose from one of the small buildings ahead. He’d go there.

A high-priority buzz threatened to shake his pants off. He opened his phone. Not an e-mail, but a text.

CHIMERA: Stop. Do NOT take another step.

Bullcrap. Chimera had never sent a message outside of channels before. Endicott took a step, then stopped.

CHIMERA: I don’t have time for cute, Major.

Impossible. But who else could farsee into the Sanctuary? Endicott started working his thumbs.