American Craftsmen (32 page)

Then, after a moon’s cycle, the horrible thing’s tongue began to vibrate. “You should not have kept me. You should destroy me immediately.”

“
Out demon!
” cried Abram, adding a quick “
in the name of Jesus
” afterwards.

“As I am not a demon, that will not work,” said Roderick. “But something more aggressive might.”

Abram thought a moment. “No.”

“It would not be murder. I am properly, by your beliefs, already dead by your hand.”

“No, I won’t do as you bid,” said Abram.

The continued life of Roderick’s head mocked Abram’s faith. Yet he wouldn’t destroy it. Abram made it tell him all the secrets that the Mortons themselves wanted to forget.

By the time Madeline arrived, Abram was ripe. She came to his door in a midnight storm, drawn by the oozing head. She wore a mix of funeral garb and mourning; whether she was the recently bereaved or the soon departed was uncertain. Her dark clothes failed to conceal a sickly self-starved body, always on the point of death.

Though she had different hair and eyes than the woman in the tomb, Abram recognized her instantly. Against his remaining principles, he did not strike her down on his doorstep. He could have killed a strong woman, but not a weak-seeming one.

Madeline sniffed the air like a Gideon. “He’s here. You should kill him.”

Abram drew his sword. “You’re a witch, and should not be suffered to live.”

She spread out her arms and bowed her head, exposing her long and narrow neck to whatever blow he cared to deliver.

Abram pointed the sword at her heart. But again, he declined to kill a Morton. Abram had the Endicott power of compulsion to the extreme. “
You will serve me.
”

She smiled, and kneeled before him. Serving him was her plan. Subversive subservience to power came naturally to her. And Abram, like many craftspeople, was fooled most easily by his own power. Such was the insidious way of the Left Hand.

With both of the twins in the house, Abram’s corruption was inevitable, if slow. Madeline had time.

Eventually, faith subverted, Abram turned to the craft of transmigration. He lived as long as he could in one body without binding himself so permanently to one flesh as Roderick had. He sat out the Civil War, claiming age and infirmity, though he was actually afraid of dying before perfecting his new skill.

Madeline roamed the battlefields, sometimes disguised as a male soldier, sometimes as a nurse, always a wolf in the butcher shop.

After the war and the sad victory of technology, poisonous mills, and Morton cunning, Abram took a new body while staging his physical death—that was all the Endicotts cared about. His family never looked for spirits, and the warnings of their dead went unheeded.

To hide and be forgotten, Madeline and Abram left the East and the other Families. They drifted through the high plains and lonely deserts of the West. They perfected combat skills against the odd Taoists that roamed with the Chinese workers. They mastered the manipulation of Colt revolvers. Spending more time in each body than Madeline, Abram learned to make his flesh impervious to all pain and most blows. To a lesser extent, he learned to impart this power to the flesh of those he temporarily possessed. In that land of sudden unpunished violence, Abram grew into a new certainty. If craft couldn’t stop the new technology, he would unite the two with more thoroughness than any Morton.

When they went west to learn more of death, each had been as powerful as any magus. Now, one of them could face off against a whole Family (except perhaps their own).

They took new bodies and returned east in time for the war against Spain. They wormed their way back into the craft militant, corrupting it as they guarded their immortality and Roderick, a growing fountainhead of power. The imperial overreach of the Left Hand oozed out into American craft and American might.

Without a permanent home, Roderick was difficult to control. The desperation of World War II opened a new door for the immortals. A massive five-sided building was being built to house all the war departments, including the craft militant in its secret center. Madeline and Abram convinced the Endicotts and others to shut the Mortons out of the planning. Without the Mortons and their experience of the Left-Hand ways, they easily insinuated themselves into the design of H-ring, leaving room at the center for the future Chimera.

After setting up Roderick under the Chimera cover, Abram and Madeline should have been happy ever after. They controlled Roderick, who fed off the living and kept the dead at a distance. They had ensured their own survival. Perhaps they could have remained a subtle poison in the craft militant forever.

Then, a year ago, Roderick cackled with glee and prophesized their doom at the hands of a Morton. This forced them to act. To be certain, they must hunt down the last of the Morton blood. To be safe, they must obliterate the House of Morton and its spiritual Furies. To get away with it, they must manipulate all of American craft.

Dale Morton was the obvious main threat. If young Morton had been killed on a mission, they would have arranged things at the House to simulate a Left-Hand breakout in order to mask their follow-up purge. But, with Dale’s survival and resignation, they changed their plan. When Dale let the Left Hand loose during the fight in the House, they could blame the subsequent craft killings on him.

Somewhere along the line, “mission creep” had set in, perhaps more so for Madeline than Abram. Now, nothing less would suffice for their safety than decapitating American craft by killing those most likely to resist, and seizing absolute control. With American craft united in their hands, the nation would follow.

*   *   *

They fucked, because Madeline left some memory and other human stuff behind with each copy, and sex helped bring some (not all) of it back. Her tendency to forget kept their passion (let’s call it love!) fresh. They fucked to Goth rock, because sometimes the dark-minded do exactly what you’d expect, even when they’ve been doing it for a couple centuries.

They fucked with the delicious urgency of unacknowledged fear. Madeline often thought of Roderick as she achieved a rolling series of climaxes. His prophecy had been clear: someone was coming who could kill her and Abram, someone was coming who could destroy Roderick and Chimera, killer and destroyer would be of the House of Morton. As a more definite consolation, the old Endicott would slay the younger, and Abram was the oldest Endicott around.

They fucked, and the puppet Hutchinson seemed to stare at them blankly. Or perhaps its eyes were on the monitor screens behind them, which showed the Chimera room and its airlock door. But if the puppet saw anything on those screens, it wasn’t telling.

*   *   *

Sex had opposite effects on these partners in high treason. The tightly wound soul of Abram relaxed; the thirsty soul of Madeline sobered.

Abram smiled as he efficiently donned his uniform. “This should be the last puppet show for the general. Another few days, and we won’t need him anymore.”

They dressed the marionette without the usual humiliations to its flesh—no time for games. Reports continued to feed in: a storm outside, minimal guards, the Left-Hand assault. Madeline fingered a jacket button. The unusual coincidence that they were both weakened and potentially distracted from Chimera troubled her. Time for uncharacteristic candor.

“Lately, my brother has been … incomplete,” she said. “His intelligence gaps are deliberate holes, just barely short of outright lies. He’s manipulating us toward some end. Some endgame?”

“A few more days and we’ll be safe,” said Abram.

“A few more days, and we’ll rule,” she agreed. “But what about the fledgling?”

“How could she be the threat?” asked Abram. “She wasn’t in the prophecy.”

“I think she was, folded in and unaccounted-for,” said Madeline.

“Chimera might be vulnerable to her talent,” said Abram. But he remembered his dreams of a dark woman offering him pomegranate seeds, signs of his mortality.

“We all might be,” she said. She knew in her borrowed bones that she was vulnerable. “What to do?”

“She has no experience handling large craft forces,” he said.

“So?”

“Burn the forest to hide our torch. She can’t hit what she can’t see.”

CHAPTER

TWENTY-TWO

We crossed the Beltway and District lines. My craft sight strobed; the force dizzied me with waves of brilliance and absence. We somehow managed not to puke.

On the Metrorail bridge over the Potomac, we saw the hypermassive thunderclouds that had stalled over Arlington, ascending from above the air force monument up into the wild blue yonder. Lightning struck all around the low silhouette of the Pentagon.

“That’s awful purty,” said Roman.

“It’s awfully close,” said Scherie.

“Shit,” I said. “I didn’t do all that. It’s shrunk the craft boundary.” I bent down and untied a shoelace, readying it for its role in the coming mission.

At the Pentagon stop, we exited the train with a mass of Washington commuters bound for the buses, and a smaller number of evening security and utilities workers walking toward the Pentagon entrance. At this hour, more were still leaving than arriving. Perhaps the storm was also having a side benefit. I wanted as few as possible coming to work.

We remained on the platform for a moment. “Wait here for Scherie,” I told my ghosts.

“Good-bye, boy,” said Grandpa. Dad said nothing.

We walked toward the escalator that would take us to the station turnstiles. But before we could exit the platform, I heard a familiar, insistent whisper. “
Greetings, once and future head of our House.
”

Left-Hand spirits. At least they explained the shrinking craft boundary. I turned back toward the tracks, as if waiting for the next train to arrive. Roman imitated me, but Scherie couldn’t help looking up at the cavernous ceiling, scanning defensively for the source of the evil voices that she could now hear.

I held a cell phone to my ear as cover for my side of the conversation. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“We have assisted your storm. We share your purpose.”

“I doubt it,” I said. “You’ve shrunk the defensive perimeter. And you’ve been playing into my enemy’s hands.”

“We have come for Chimera’s keepers. You will give your enemies to us.”

“You’ll do exactly what I say,” I said.

“
You have little power and less authority.
”

I nodded to my right. “You’ve met my girlfriend.”

The wind went out of their voices. “
Threatening family with a nuclear weapon. Real classy.
”

“OK,” I said, acknowledging their surrender. I had never heard them so colloquial, so ungothic. “If you’re in here, I can see you’re making progress against the building’s defenses. Hold off on your breakthrough—”

“
What?
”

“Please let me finish. Timing is everything. Hold off until I call for you. I’ll open the door for you, if I can.”

“Understood. A family reunion. We’ll see you inside.”

A family reunion?
My suspicion of Chimera grew.

I turned back toward the escalator, and Scherie and Roman followed through the turnstiles and up out of the station. My senses went into combat mode. The light tap of Scherie’s shoes kept constant time. Roman made no sound distinguishable from the noise of vents, breathing, and silence.
If her shoes stop, either she has found Chimera or disaster has found her.

I turned toward the Pentagon entrance, with its outdoor gatehouse and the checkpoint armor plates that looked like giant riot shields with small square windows. Just within the gatehouse and checkpoint, the craft barrier flickered blue like Cherenkov radiation. Beyond the checkpoint, nine ghosts stood guard in groups of three, two groups up front, one in reserve. Most manifested in CENTCOM’s desert BDUs from Cobra II or Enduring Freedom, still coherent with will and memory. They scanned the barrier, no doubt on alert against bits of Left-Hand shadow. I hadn’t counted on them. I hoped they were too occupied keeping out dead Mortons to worry about one live one.

My ID got me past the checkpoint, and I hit the craft barrier with my own power under tight wraps. The blue played across my body but didn’t slow me. Perhaps Roman’s craft or the Left-Hand assault helped. In the distance, I heard the low hum of Chimera’s red magic. Scherie would hear it too.

The living guards at the checkpoint looking at badges didn’t appear to notice me as anything exceptional from the Defense night workers filing in before or after. But the dead were seriously annoyed. The reserve group moved forward. A white-haired man with crutches, a peroxide-blond army nurse, an acne-scarred boy who must have lied about his age to join up—what Grandpa called a crossroads configuration, the standard craft guard formation. These spirit guards were in my face, barking claxon warnings. “Halt! The craft defenses will destroy you.”

I continued silently toward the Pentagon doors and the security gates within. If Scherie could just get a few yards closer, past the craft barrier, our mission might be done. But the old man waved his crutch in my face. “Corporal, report this breach to H-ring.”

“Belay that order.” Ignoring my instructions, my father manifested next to me, inside the boundary. “This is my son. He’s going after the thing downstairs.”

“Captain, we’re trying to save the damned fool’s life,” said the old man.

“He’ll take that chance,” said Dad.

“He’ll lose,” said the nurse.

I entered the doors and reached one of the automatic security gates, my spectral companions crowding around me. I ran my ID badge and tremendous power through the gate. With the help of my craft, the card chip circumvented the biometrics verification and sent an overwhelming message to the gate control:
I shall pass.
The light went green, the gate opened, I could enter. My card was hot to the touch, and probably useless. I’d throw more force against the gates when Scherie and Roman approached, if necessary.