by Tom Doyle
Seeing my discouragement, my mother gave me another hug. “You may become something else, but knowing about it in advance won’t do you any good. But I should tell you, though I have not read the Book of Life, I see that your soul is ready, and Heaven now is a pretty sure thing. Given your current path, it may not be so certain for you later, despite the many sufferings you’ll endure. So, what are you going to do?”
That was easy, like a trick question in Sunday school. I smiled and, seeing that I got it, Mom smiled back, full of love and pride in her good son.
“Lord,” I said. “Thy will be done.”
In a flash of God’s light, the world went dark again.
* * *
I came to consciousness with the worst headache in the history of the world, unless someone else had ever recovered from a mortal blow to the skull. Hoping to find something else to think about, I opened my eye. Eye, singular. My view of the world was like I was staring through a monocular. So that much of my embarrassing near-death experience was true.
My view was also fuzzy, but what I saw was perfect. Grace was kneeling over me and looking up at the sky. Without warning, her hands pressed hard against my chest.
“Ugh!” I said.
In one quick motion, Grace stood up and pulled her flechette pistol on me. Her face had blanched. “His eye is open!”
“I look that bad?” I asked.
Dale came running. “Tell me his sins,” said Grace.
Filled with shock and some dismay, Dale’s eyes glanced at me, then rolled up toward the sky. “Oh, it’s Mike in there all right. I’d know that huge capital P for Pride with any Endicott. Though there appear to be some new little letters…”
“Thanks, Morton, I know what they are.” The mocking bastard sounded a little choked up. I sat up, and the world went wobbly.
“Whoa, take it easy,” said Dale, and Grace was at my side again, trying to lower me down. Dale pointed to his own eye. “There are snaky things here; they’re still knitting your head back together.”
“I’m OK,” I said, pressing against Grace’s hands to stay up. I could feel the movement in my flesh where my missing eye had been. I looked around, and saw some splatter which appeared to include some bits of skull and brain—mine. “Messy,” said Lara, and she bent down and touched some of it with her right index fingernail. A bit of tissue and her fingernail dissolved, and Lara nodded in seeming satisfaction. Weird. I briefly wondered if my personality would be changed due to this brain damage. Then I decided that my life had been changing so fast that it might be hard to tell.
“Where’s the shooter?” I asked.
Scherie appeared. “You’re back! Alive!”
Maybe, but my patience was DOA. “Lieutenant, where is the shooter?”
“We’ve got him in the car, sir,” said Scherie. “He helped me when I first got here, in Kiev, and set me up with the car and weapons, but he must have tracked us. He’s Oikumene. I think they want you dead.”
“His sins look very Nuremberg,” said Dale, with contempt.
“OK, let’s get away from this mess,” I said.
“You’re in no shape,” said Grace
“I’m in fine shape,” I said. “I have it on the best authority.”
“God?” asked Grace.
“My mom,” I quipped.
“You saw your mother?” she asked. But I’d run out of words for the moment, so, tentatively at first, with Grace under my arm for support, I walked to the car.
Ivan lay in the back of the SUV, hogtied. He glared at me with two baleful, healthy eyes. This earnest-looking young man had just tried to kill me, and had succeeded for a few minutes. I was spitting furious at this Oikumene, though I couldn’t show it. I wouldn’t kill a captive without reason, but for some reason I didn’t even want to kill him. I just wanted to shake some sense into the idiot.
Instead, Grace opened the car door and helped me tumble down into the backseat. I was tired and still a little regretful of my miraculous return to this world. Grace sat next to me and the Mortons sat in the front. Scherie started the car, and I finally dared to look at myself in the SUV’s rearview mirror. Scherie’s healing, the Left-Hand serum, and my own new power had fleshed, seared, and scarred over my right eye socket and nearby skull, but it was a horror to look at. I touched a finger to the damage, and felt the still-tacky blood and the slight groove that remained running from the socket to my temple. Sad that it had to occur now, when I had just met Grace, but that was the way these things happened. An attractive woman like her wouldn’t want a monster hanging around.
I buried my heart deep; if I had life and time enough later, I’d bring it out then. Even a monster had certain standards, so I would have to get my face properly cleaned and covered. First, business. I checked the rear compartment to find Ivan still staring up at me. I smiled and said, “The adults need to talk now, boy. Ivan, in God’s name, take a nap.”
Ivan’s annoying eyes instantly shut and his breathing slowed. “Where are we going?” I asked.
“The airport,” said Dale. “We need to get back to the States.”
“A commercial flight won’t be fast enough,” I said. “Roderick knew we were coming. He’s ahead of us by hours. We’ll need something supersonic to keep up. That means military.”
“I could steal something,” said Grace.
“I could call in another Russian favor,” said Dale.
“I bet Ivan has a sympathetic object for communication with Delphi,” said Scherie. “I could shake down the Oikumene, threaten them for some transport, though we couldn’t trust it.”
Too much time. Unless a supersonic jet large enough for all of us was ready to go, any plan to get it would still take too much time.
“Just a second,” I said. God, my head hurt, but I had to think. “Dale, you’ve been cryptic long enough. What’s Roderick going to do in America, and what’s it got to do with that damned Yasukuni doomsday machine?”
“It’s something my father was working on,” said Dale. “Before he died, he was asking questions at the Yasukuni Shrine. He asked the dead where magic comes from.”
“A child’s question,” said Grace, “and a very dangerous one.”
“They told me the usual stuff,” said Dale, “plus one other thing that I’d never heard before: magic can come from dead worlds, where nothing remains except for things like that Yasukuni monstrosity on a global scale. I think Roderick wants to open a door to one of those dead worlds and tap into that tremendous power. I think he wants to be a Left-Hand god incarnate.”
“Why America?”
“My best guess?” said Dale. “There’s one place where the Left Hand tried for decades to crack into what they called another dimension, a realm of one of their gods. They didn’t have many dead to work with on this end, but they were very powerful, very evil dead. I think Roderick is going back to the House of Morton.”
“OK,” I said. Mortons were always obsessed about the House, but that wasn’t the immediate problem. “Tell me what I’m missing. Roderick arranged our recent misfortunes to draw us out, to perhaps kill us but definitely delay us, until we were on the other side of the world from his real plan—to get into your empty House.”
“That’s about it,” said Dale.
“Can’t be,” I said. “Because it wasn’t just Roderick. Couldn’t have been. Attucks personally gave me an assignment for which, as Grace has gently pointed out, I was particularly ill-suited. Dale, coincidentally C-CRT lets you go off and investigate your father’s past in a country that’s halfway around the world. Scherie, the one person Roderick might actually fear, is left dangling out in Istanbul. Istanbul! Grace, I don’t know if MI13 was in on this, but does anyone think that Langley or PRECOG completely missed something on this scale? No fricken way. Our own people were involved in this, and I want to know why.”
Just then, Scherie’s phone in the glove compartment blasted full volume. “Roderick?” I asked. Before we could find out, the radio began
to speak to us.
* * *
For the first time as a fully embodied being, Roderick was flying. As a Morton weatherman, he had manipulated the air to elevate himself for a few seconds and had even glided for a short distance, but this was true flight, thirty thousand feet up in a jet. Though his mostly disembodied self had been on a plane for his journey to Kiev from America, he hadn’t been in any condition to enjoy the view. It was exciting, though he felt a queasiness that no amount of craft seemed to quite remove. Ah, the joys of the technological sublime. Every mundane yokel who could afford the ticket was given this god’s-eye view, little knowing that a true god didn’t see the world like this at all.
He was somewhat distracted by the task of operating the meat puppet he’d left in Kiev via long distance. It was doing a very good job of killing Ukrainian craftsmen. He wondered how long that lesser vessel would last.
Roderick deplaned at London Heathrow with his two carry-ons, which included a small but very important briefcase containing a yellow sheaf of wheat he had reaped himself from a Ukrainian field. The case also held a glass tube, some filled paintballs, and other seemingly innocuous materials for godhood and destruction. Regarding the wheat, Roderick wasn’t much for whole grains, but he wasn’t one of the hungry. The Heathrow stop was convenient, as he had a fellow traveler to meet for the next leg to America.
Roderick recognized his flight companion in the airline’s exclusive lounge. The fixer was as lean and pale as a male Madeline, but only average height. But of course, this dubious servant would not recognize Roderick, as Roderick no longer looked the heroic Slav. He had put on another body that used more Morton phenotype with its Morton DNA. This seemed natural, as he was going home. However, he did not resemble his original nineteenth-century form, when he had sacrificed every physical attribute in a pursuit of his goal. Nor had he kept the weak chin and other unattractive recessive traits (from this distance in time, he could finally acknowledge that Left-Hand inbreeding had been a bad idea). Now he wore the appearance of a healthy Morton. Though he had despised Joshua Morton more than any other being, living or dead, he found that he didn’t mind a slight physical resemblance.
Roderick approached his hired servant, who went by the name of Mr. Cushlee but whose real family name was Renfield. Every Family might have a Left Hand, but some Families like the Renfields had nothing but Left Hand. In orthodox circles, the Renfields couldn’t ever use their own name, not since that Stoker bastard had advertised it to the world for what it was.
Cushlee was sitting in a lonely corner of the lounge in one of its many broad leather chairs. Roderick took the chair next to him, separated by a shaded reading lamp. Roderick and Cushlee had arranged some nonsense about recognition signals, but Roderick wasn’t in a patient mood. “You might have killed at least one of them for me.”
“Well, a fine day to you, sir. Next time, give me some rules of engagement that make bloody sense and perhaps I will.”
The man smiled, seemingly proud of his horrible teeth. Roderick pursed his lips in surprise, though he should have expected this tone. Despite the slavish reputation they got from Stoker, the Renfields dealt sharply with their powerful clients—payment in advance, and no refunds ever. Still, Roderick had a reputation of his own to uphold. “You know what I could do to you, even here, and yet you speak to me that way?”
“If you think my death will get you a refund, forget it.”
Roderick considered carrying out his threat against Cushlee for failing to kill Endicott and Marlow and for this lack of respect. But Cushlee had otherwise carried out Roderick’s orders exactly, and someone who could follow precise instructions was surprisingly hard to find and absolutely necessary for Roderick’s plan.
Decisions, decisions. As if putting a thumb to the scales, Cushlee said, “I’ve brought you something extra,” and nodded over toward the viewing window at what appeared to be an extremely old man wearing dark glasses, a hat, and a scarf, as if attempting to show as little bare flesh as possible. A cane rested against his neighboring seat.
“My plans are at their most sensitive stage, and you bring me that?” Roderick said. But that old man had been the one they called the Don. Roderick should not have cared, but he couldn’t help being pleased.
Cushlee shrugged. “There’s been a bleeding war going on in MI13 since Marlow sent that bloody confession. He’s been hiding from the orthos and trailing me like a whining puppy, saying he’d speak to you or report us all to the Crown.”
Better and better. “Very well,” said Roderick. “Let’s get this over with.”
Cushlee stood up slowly. “Still healing from that Endicott’s pigsticker.”
“I understand completely,” said Roderick. They walked over to the seated, motionless figure. A fragile orchid decorated the table next to him. Beyond the viewing window, flights departed.
“Thank you for meeting with me,” said the Don, in a voice like the faint scurryings of rats. “I have served your interests well. I could serve them still.”
“Oh, you are indeed priceless,” said Roderick. He frankly stared at the remains of the Don, admiring his work. Even during his captivity, Roderick had used the same coded signals that had eventually freed him to begin spreading the Left-Hand knowledge to a chosen few. That long campaign had led to this: the total corruption in body and soul of the last scion of the House of Dee.
Up close and using craft, Roderick could see how much of the Don had been hollowed out with the loss of his alchemical serum. Plastic-like integuments varying from translucent to transparent covered some, but not all, of the remaining natural bones and muscle and the unnatural connective webs that strained to hold the remnant together. The brain that this academic spy had been so proud of was also dissolving away. A cutaway of his skull would show the same hollow pockets as the surface flesh, where neural tissue had dried and gone to dust. If Rezvani were here, would she be able to expel Dee’s spirit as a thing already dead?
Even in this state, the man wasn’t begging. Roderick was delighted. It was costing this man so much to preserve this insignificant scrap of dignity.
As if he thought he should exchange this broken gift, Cushlee turned to Roderick, “Sir, would you like me to handle this?”
Alive enough to this threat, the Don said, “I have taken certain precautions.” Yes, he had. But he had used the phone and computers, even though he of all people should have known better.
“So have I,” said Roderick. “Please be still.”
A Dee should have been able to resist this command, but much of this hollowed man belonged more to Roderick than to its nominal owner. Only Dee’s eyes, still his own, desperately tracked Roderick’s movements, pleading for succor. But without another word, Roderick and Cushlee returned to their former sitting area. Then, in a faint whisper that no one but Cushlee could have heard, Roderick said, “Please go away.”
Like a raptured Jedi knight, the form of the old man crumbled, leaving only a pile of clothes. Well, clothes, and some nasty fleshy bits for the investigators to sort out.
Roderick strode away with Cushlee even as two lounge attendants approached the Don’s chair and reacted to his disappearance. “Oh, dear,” said Roderick. “Another strange incident for the craft militant to explain.” Besides that, this death would make those dependent on his craft all the more desperate to please him. But he and Cushlee had a plane to catch.
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
On the SUV’s radio, Eddy Edwards was playing DJ just for us. “I can’t do this for long. Someone please pick up your phone.”
I nodded at Scherie, who answered the phone she had left in the glove compartment and put it on speaker mode. “Talk to us, Eddy,” I said.
“My farseers tell me it’s at least eighty percent that you’ve figured out that your scattering away from home was not an accident and not just due to Roderick’s manipulation.”
“Ah, hell, Eddy, I thought you cared,” said Dale, with a malice I had
n’t heard from him since my first visit to his House.
“By the way, Roderick’s listening,” said Scherie, adding “you far-fucking idiot” under her breath.
“We’re seventy percent certain,” said Eddy, “that Roderick needed Ukrainian technical support for his global eavesdropping capability, and we’re absolutely certain that if that’s not true, we lose anyway.”
He let that sink in¸ then continued as we were approaching a traffic circle. “We have a plane waiting for you at the airport—not Boryspil, but the other one, Zhuliany, so turn to the right now!”
“Do it,” I said. Instead of going three-quarters of the way around the circle and onto the bridge over the Dnieper River, Scherie made the right turn toward the other, smaller international airport.
“Call this number for further instructions,” continued Eddy. He reeled off some digits. “All will be explained. But please understand that it was done for the good of the country and to save at least some of your lives.”
Some of your lives. He hadn’t seen that we’d all make it, more or less. Or maybe our losses were still to come.
“We’ll be there,” I said. Eddy’s plane fit our plans, but I wasn’t any happier about this news than the Mortons. If he hadn’t rescued us from the Pentagon, Eddy would be on an old-fashioned Family vengeance list.
After the call, Grace asked, “Who was that?”
“Langley,” I said.
Grace gestured back at Ivan. “What do we do with him?”
“Can you keep him out of sight?” I asked.
Instead of speaking Latin, she turned and covered Ivan with the beige carpet-like cover that had hidden the weapons. “It’s been a long day,” she said.
In response to some unsaid plan or desire regarding Ivan’s fate, Scherie said, “He won’t follow us. They’ll get someone else from wherever we go.”
That seemed right, and besides, I had another use for the chickenshit asshole.
While Dale reprogrammed the GPS, I called the number Eddy had given us and got more specific directions to the FBO area of the airport. Scherie drove up to a security fence gate, which opened for us without question, and then we proceeded right onto the tarmac and waited as our jet taxied up. Langley had thrown money and clout around to smooth our way. Eddy had already filed our flight plan and had amended the passenger manifest.