by Tom Doyle
“Good,” said Lara, with sharper feeling than I’d heard before.
Scherie gave me a confirming nod. OK, assuming Scherie still wanted her along, we’d leave Lara alone for a bit. “I’ll order our deployment at the site.” I had a tough decision that I didn’t want to make, and maybe I wouldn’t have to.
We followed my father’s directions and reached a side road through the woods near Mount Weather. Grace passed a car parked on the roadside, slowed, and came back around.
Through the woods, I saw a glow like a hint of sunrise and the barest hint of black-lit footprints leading from the parked car into the false dawn. No one else seemed to notice. “This way,” I said.
I took the lead this time, Grace immediately behind me. The Mortons followed, and Lara trailed with unhurried robotic precision. Grace and I trotted through the woods, and other than the residue of Roderick’s footsteps I saw no hint of spiritual power, much less traps. In a short time I saw a large metal door opened within a rounded alcove in the side of the hill, like the house of a terminator hobbit.
I held up a hand and halted. “Keep back.” A stream of ectoplasm smeared against the night sky was funneling down into the open doorway. Ghosts flew by like the windblown damned of Dante’s Hell, as if the entryway were a spiritual vacuum and the ghosts were so much carpet dirt. Some of them were as my father had described: faded American soldiers. But others were Eastern European peasants, skeletally thin. As they passed through the wards against mundane and foreign intruders and into the heartbeat-pulsing glow of the entranceway, the ghosts sparked and their clothes changed from the faded blues, butternuts, and peasant earth tones to a tubercular bright red.
I spoke in a low voice, as if it would make any difference. “Scherie, is Roderick here?”
She narrowed her eyes in concentration at the bunker. “Motherfucker is in there all right, but this craft flow is all one way. He isn’t reaching for us.” She shut her eyes tight with apparent pain. “So many ghosts.”
No sign of Madeline and the Left-Hand Mortons, though. “Grace, are you seeing any of the spiritual activity?” I had ulterior motives for asking this question, motives that were going to make us both unhappy all too soon.
“No, nothing,” she said. “Still no spiritual power of any kind.”
Lara stared at the spirits, face no longer passive, but twitching. “Thief,” she said, then pointed at Scherie. “You. Tell them to go away.”
“She’s right,” I said. “We need a path cleared.”
Scherie screwed up her face and began barking out a series of curses so blasphemous that I feared for every soul that heard them. The stream paused. Scherie strode toward the dead, clearing a way into the tunnel for us. But the ghosts were not fleeing so fast and far as they usually did in her anathemic presence.
“OK, we’d better go in while we can.” I turned to Grace. No good way to say this. “But I’m asking you to do something out here.”
“What kind of bloody insane, patriarchal shite—”
“There are wards barring the way,” I said, “wards particularly attuned to the foreign and mundane. Sure, we could fight them, but it’ll take too long, and then what? The fight with Roderick could be purely spiritual. So I’m asking you to do something else. Something vital.”
Grace didn’t say anything, so I continued. “You need to stop anyone else from getting in here or doing anything to this bunker, whoever they are—Roderick’s allies, U.S. spiritual ops, mundane special forces—anyone. We need an hour, no more. You’ll need these.” I handed her the HK416 and some clips.
“You want me to fight your own government?” she said as she automatically took the assault weapon and handed the flechette rifle to me. She sounded skeptical, but at least interested.
“Sue me, but I’m a spiritual elitist, and right now, we’re the only active force on the map.” I spoke rapidly now, trying to convince her, since I couldn’t order her. “I don’t think Roderick is going to let any number of lower-level practitioners or mundane soldiers deliver a nuke or any other weapon that would actually inconvenience his plans. But that doesn’t mean we’ll succeed either. If you know we’ve failed, or if we don’t come out in an hour, get away from here if you can, and let whoever likes join the party inside. Get back to England, and try to rally a response there.”
“Right-o, but perhaps I shall get my power back, and then…”
I shook my head. “There’s something else you need to wait for. To battle Roderick, I’m going to call on my full spiritual power. If I survive, I expect I’ll be out of control. You’ll have to warn that damned Oikumene and the whole world. But if you get the shot, you’ll need to kill me. I think you’re the one person who’ll get me to hesitate long enough, and you’ll be able to do it.”
I went close to her and whispered, “Nothing says ‘I love you’ quite like killing your amok boyfriend.”
She embraced me fiercely with her free arm. “I can think of better ways.” She released me. “One hour. Go.”
The Mortons and I walked to the doorway. Lara stood still, her eyes ticking this way and that.
“Lara, we’re going in,” I said.
“Good-bye,” she said, and she folded her hand once in a single “wave.”
“We need your help to kill Roderick.”
Her neck palsied at this statement as if she were malfunctioning. “He is gone from Ukraine. I said I will not touch him again, never. I am not your weapon. I will not die for you.”
Not the words to tell someone who was probably going to die for the rest of the world shortly, joined by a couple of his friends. Whatever Scherie had to say for her, I was long ago done with this creepy practitioner. “Why the hell are you here then?”
“I am here for them.” She pointed at the Eastern European–looking spirits, caught in between the suction devil of the bunker and the deeply angry sea of Scherie’s craft.
Once again, I had no good response for this blank-faced enigma. “Fine, stay.” I handed her the flechette rifle, and I called to Grace, “You got this?”
“She won’t cause any problems,” said Grace, which was a succinct enough threat.
As the Mortons and I passed through the wards into the tunnel, Dale said, “You know, if the world doesn’t end, you’re going to be in real trouble.”
I gave him a grim smile, but for once his paradoxical reassurance only irritated me. Even with such a small chance of success, what I resented most was that the Oikumene might be proven right, and that they, or Grace, would have to put me down. And if Grace and I both survived, what the hell were we going to do, with America hostile to her craft, and me an international target? I had faith in God’s grace for the world, but, to my shame, I was still wondering about Grace’s love for me.
* * *
As Roderick lay in corpse-like stillness atop the wooden table, his mind was more active than ever before. Using his own magics and those laid down decades before in this place, he spun the countless spirits like an enormous vat of cotton candy, then tightened them as a spider draws an enveloping web around prey. Roderick’s flesh and mind became the crucible in which his dead were forged into a world-piercing spear. He fed off some of their energy to sustain himself and this process. Like the Left-Hand revenants or the Yasukuni machine, the ghosts’ identities dissolved and fused as he consumed them and they consumed each other.
They were still trying to take his spirit with them—he felt his astral form being pulled hard, like a bad tooth in his former flesh. This would only get worse when he opened the way to the dead world, but he was well anchored to this body.
Fewer ghosts were now streaming into his spiritual acid bath. Roderick didn’t need more spirits, but he hadn’t expected the stream to go dry so soon. What had happened?
First things first. His vortex of ectoplasm had congealed and hardened; the ghosts were sufficiently unified and shaped. Roderick began the true great working. Within this dimension, he channeled the force toward a secondary pr
ojection/TV wall of the conference room directly opposite the door, but the real blow was going in no speakable direction and against no palpable target.
He mouthed the final words. “I create this in sympathy with the Dead Worlds. I beseech you, please open the gate.”
With a blur of spinning motion and sparks of ectoplasm and aether, Roderick’s death machine sought to puncture the walls of the world. Drill, ye tarriers, drill.
Then, unmoving in the center of the bunker’s network of wards, Roderick felt vibrations along magical threads of intruders crossing the threshold. Against very long odds, his main opponents were here. He wished he could tell them how profoundly grateful he was. However short their survival, his glorious apotheosis would have witnesses.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
Our weapons at ready, the Mortons and I entered the tunnel. I took point, and we passed through an open airlock. The overwhelming power of command ran through the ground beneath my feet, as it had everywhere else. Here, it flowed through the red cardiac pulse of Roderick’s Left-Hand craft more like a kindred than an antithetical force. It only waited for an invitation. I had no reason to wait, as Roderick could hit us at any time. What words were proper? Was it blasphemous to invoke God for this unholy level of force? But I would not do anything of importance without prayer. “Lord, I accept this power to serve you. Help me stay on the true path. Amen.”
In an unseemly eager rush, the power ran through me. Hosanna in the highest. I felt like I could order the bunker to collapse on Roderick. So, I gave it a try. “In Heaven’s name, bury Roderick.” A brief vibration, but nothing. Good to know my limitations. Unlike the Chunnel or the train crash, this was not neutral ground for me to easily control, so I’d save my energy for Roderick’s presence.
Scherie was mumbling invective punctuated by the word “Roderick.” It pushed back on the bloody, evil craft. Dale did the same by maintaining a weather front in miniature around us, and a sickly sort of precipitation, a red rain, ran down it like water down an umbrella.
Dale said, “Scherie, can you force Roderick out?”
Scherie shook her head. “No. It’s like before in H-ring, only worse. He’s as slippery as a rabid otter. I may need direct contact. Shit, I may need to stick my fingers in his brain.”
We reached a branching in the tunnel and continued through an inner airlock, also open, into the bunker proper. The place had the dark Victorian-look of a furnished crypt. Roderick, perhaps with Abram and Madeline, must have stuck his hands into the design of this place. The alchemical tubing offered the rare glint of metal.
We had many doors to choose from, and each could lead to many rooms. “Scherie?” I asked.
Her throat moved like she was trying to swallow down her own bile. She pointed at the last door on the left. “His craft is coming from that direction.”
At that very moment, an inhuman scream of eternal rage and hunger came from behind the door, the sound scorching my ears and my very soul. My mind stopped, and I could not give an order. I knew in my bones that the sun would fail and this scream would go on burning, forever damned.
Scherie had covered her eyes with her hands, but she was the first to speak. “Goddamnit, it’s like a nuclear flash in there, and it’s just growing.”
Dale said, “You’re the expert, Mike, but that sounded like Hell itself.”
“No,” I said. “Hell is just.” I ran for the door. “Hurry!” Though I feared we were already far too late.
The heavy door was thumping, as if something tremendous were trying to escape it, but it was unlocked, which as ever was a bad sign. I swung it outward with a heave and a crash. A force like a hurricane blew against our very cells, stopping us for a moment, pushing the Mortons’ spiritual shields back against us until they hugged our skin like plastic.
On the wall straight in front of us, a small mote, like the micro lens of a camera, was radiating the impossible amount of power, maybe more than all the spiritual energy I’d ever seen in my life. Fortunately, only the overflow was working against us. The rest was flowing into a man’s body on the table, perpendicular to the blast. He had changed his appearance, but as Roman had said, he looked more like a Morton now. There before us, Roderick lay in a trance-like state, just as he had when Joshua and Abram had found him in the House of Morton two centuries before.
The instant I recognized Roderick, I shot at him, but despite my helpful prayers my bullets were swept away as soon as they left my .45. My eye, focused on him, could see the smallest of details. He was holding something in each hand, and something doll-like was under his arm. His fingers were shaking. Even entranced, he could work many spells at once. “Forward,” I yelled above the storm, “before he focuses everything on us!”
Lord, give me the strength to move. I strode slowly, like a man climbing a steep hill with far-spaced footholds, closer and closer to the table. Though bullets hadn’t worked, soon I’d be in sword range, and he had reason to fear that blade.
Another step forward. In Roderick’s right hand, two fingers tightened around a piece of cloth, and he mouthed some spell: Please stop.
Scherie called out, “Dale!” I didn’t even turn around. The only defense we had was a quick offense.
Another stumbling step forward. Jesus, this hurt like hell. In Roderick’s left hand, a finger moved ever so slightly over a bit of stone, and he mouthed another spell: Please come.
Scherie shouted her obscene dispellation at whatever Roderick had summoned. I slid another foot forward. A guttural sound in some foreign tongue behind me. Then Scherie yelling again, “Dale, no!” She said some horrible words of exorcism. Then the sound of martial blows exchanged, and the heavy door slammed behind me.
I wanted to turn and help, but that would only kill us all. It was almost a relief. For the moment, I wouldn’t have to worry about anybody else. This fight was just between me and Roderick. “Lord, just another step.” With all the strength in my legs and heart, I pushed forward.
I’d made it. I stood above Roderick’s entranced form. Here the repelling force abated, as all the nearby energy rushed into Roderick’s solar plexus. I raised my sword, and slashed down at the abomination’s throat. “In Jesus’s name, cut.”
Roderick’s right hand slashed up and grabbed the blade. The blade halted. His eyes were like scarlet fire. “Not this time, Puritan.” His left hand had discarded the stone and now gripped the arms and legs of a poppet dressed like a Puritan settler of Massachusetts Bay.
I prayed, “Please, God, cut him.” But my arms had no more strength, and Roderick was now fully awake.
* * *
After Endicott opened the door, Scherie heightened her craft and slogged forward toward that sisterfucker’s body. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she said through clenched teeth. She kept a lockstep pace with Dale. She had crawled blindly through most of that Pentagon assault. This was better.
Then some craft flashed from Roderick, and Dale stopped moving. “Dale!” she called. Something about his face reminded her of the time she first met him in front of her family’s restaurant, when that blood curse had him paralyzed.
No, not that again—surely he was well beyond it now. Careful to not be toppled backward by the craft storm, she moved to shake Dale out of it. She’d always been the solution to this problem before; just give her one moment.
But Roderick wasn’t giving moments today. His still form blasted another bolt of craft, and Scherie’s own personal hell was upon her in the form of an all-too-familiar ghoul, a white-haired Persian man with a mustache and an otherwise smooth face. This revenant of a former family friend had been the worst of those that had assaulted her young mind and had tried to take her body from her. She refused to remember his name. He floated toward her, leering with the false avuncularity of the pedophile, and Scherie was again a desperate, haunted little girl.
She tried again the craft she had unwittingly used as a girl: “Motherfucker, get the fuck out of this place and out of my life.”
But the ghoul merely flickered and darted around her, protected by the aegis of Roderick’s magic. She continued her obscene mantras. The ghoul circled her, moving in to touch her mind as he used to, and she, a United States officer and one of the most powerful mages on the planet, wanted to curl up and die.
She reached through the memory of childhood violation for more anger and more power to dispel this nightmare once and for all. Too late she realized her error—he had made her childlike again, and like a child, she had thought this was about herself. Instead, the ghost swung around her and slammed into the body of her husband. The ghoul had come for Dale.
Body still rigid, Dale’s mouth opened as if to yell, and then he spoke Farsi, not in the guttural of his curse, but in the polished cadences of the ghoul. “At last, you are mine!”
“Dale, no!” She reached out to make contact and expel his possessor. “Get the fuck out of him, you child-raping liar!” But the ghoul broke the paralysis of Dale’s body and swung his left fist into her shoulder, sending her reeling backward as the otherworldly craft pushed her back out the door. The ghoul pursued her into the corridor. With a slam of a mousetrap, the door to Roderick’s room swung shut, and a bolt clacked home.
Scherie dropped her rifle and pistol to the floor, as they weren’t the sort of blunt weapons that would be helpful just now. She faced the ghoul in a ready stance. The ghoul laughed at her, leveled his MP5, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. “Safety chip?” he said, as if seeing the words for the first time in Dale’s brain.
Even as he spoke, Scherie lashed out with a punch, again more for expelling touch than damage, but the ghoul bobbed and weaved, then brought the stock of his rifle around in an attempt to club her. He swung short as Scherie slid back, then dropped his rifle to the ground as well. “Yes, let’s touch,” he said. “Your man was weaker than you. Perhaps he could have blocked one of the gateways into his mind—that hick sorcerer’s curse or the voice of the Morton abominations—but not both at once. So here I am. And I must insist on my conjugal rights.”