The Pale Horse was hit by the telekinetic wave, and his polished dress shoes slid across the marble and into the puddle of blood. Harkeness looked up in disbelief. 'That's it? That's all you have?'
Cornelius tried again, but his Power was exhausted.
Harkness stepped forward, glaring down at his shoes in disgust. When he looked up again, his face was flushed, with anger. 'You think that Power is something you can mistreat your whole life and never respect, and then when in your time of need it will somehow rise to the occasion?' He covered the distance the feeble push had moved him in two steps and grabbed Cornelius by the lapels. 'You have to earn Power, fool!'
Cornelius screamed when he saw the hands curled into claws next to his body. He could almost see the flesh crawling with disease. One narrow finger came up and stroked his lips with a yellow nail. His bladder let go. 'Fine! Fine! Name it. Name your price, fiend! Please, just don't hurt me. I beg you! I'll give you anything.'
'I do not want anything more than our agreed upon price.' Harkeness released him. 'You will make a change to one of your client's specifications and you will not inform them.' He removed an envelope from his jacket and shoved it between the buttons of Cornelius's shirt. 'You will follow the instructions on these blueprints exactly, down to the most precise measurement. These changes will be made under your direct supervision. It will be done in utmost secrecy.'
Cornelius slid down the balcony, curled his knees up to his chest, and whimpered in a puddle of his own urine.
'You've been touched by the Pale Horse. You've heard what's happened to Pershing despite the constant ministrations of Healers. Failure to follow these plans exactly will result in you sharing his fate. I will know if you try to betray me. I am inside your skin now, Mr. Stuyvesant. Good bye.'
When Cornelius finally looked up with tear-filled eyes, a set of bloody footprints were all that remained of the Pale Horse. Tremonton, Utah Sullivan sat under the shade of a scraggly tree. The narrow box canyon was covered in the little trees, hardly more than sagebrush, and the grass was tall and yellow. The gentle hills were broken with occasional gashes of ancient stone. It was a beautiful spot in its own rugged way. He could see why the old Grimnoir had chosen this as his hiding spot.
The Box Elder County Sheriff's Deputies were still combing through the wreckage of the cabin, but Sullivan pieced together what had happened after a few minutes of wandering around.
Two cars full of men had come up the dirt road. Sven Christiansen was no fool. He'd abandoned the structure, which was the obvious target, and headed up one of the hills. Despite Garrett saying that the old Dane was in his late sixties, he'd managed to lug a Browning 1919 and its tripod up there, and when the men in the cars had proven to be who he'd expected, he'd hosed them down.
Christiansen had picked his targets and fired short controlled bursts, just like Sullivan had been taught as a machine gunner in the First. There were six bodies between the cars and the front of the cabin, all in various states of destruction. A large blood trail through the soft dust showed Sullivan where another man had been plugged bad, but had somehow kept moving.
One car was abandoned, hole through the radiator, puddle underneath. Tracks showed where the other had turned around and left.
The walk had left Sullivan winded and his wounds aching, but he'd found the ambush spot. There were over a hundred shell casings, and since the Browning ejected straight down, they tended to collect in a pile. Deep pockmarks in the rock showed where the goons had returned fire.
It was the other set of tracks that appeared suddenly behind Christiansen's position that showed what happened next. The cloven hooves were massive, but the spacing told Sullivan that they came from a bipedal creature. He put his own considerable weight down in the dirt, and saw that in comparison the creature had been far heavier. Then the signs became confusing as the Summoned had descended on Christiansen. There was a claw mark scored into the rock where it had swung and missed. The three talons covered almost twice the space as Sullivan's big hand. The dried blood splatter told how it had ended.
So now Sullivan sat under a tree, pondering what it all meant, while Heinrich and Garrett were having their turn being questioned. They had arrived twenty minutes after the law. Someone had seen the smoke rising from the valley and called it in. As strangers in the tiny community they were automatic suspects. A few radio calls and a bit of investigation had confirmed that they'd arrived in Ogden too late to be the killers, but that didn't make them any less suspicious.
Garrett was doing the talking, which was for the best, since with a little gentle magic, Garrett could probably talk his way out of near anything. Sullivan figured that Dan would have been smooth even if he didn't have magic. The man sure didn't look like much, but he'd probably make one hell of a door to door salesman. Sullivan had taken a liking to him, despite having to constantly check his head to make sure that it wasn't the Mouth's magic talking. Heinrich was polite, but it was obvious that he personally didn't like Sullivan much. Jake was fine with that. He didn't really have any friends, and wasn't looking to start collecting them, either.
The two Grimnoir joined him under the tree a bit later. 'Sheriff says we're free to go,' Garrett said. 'I guess that ol' Sven had a reputation in the local Danish community of having a lot of secrets in his past. They didn't seem too surprised to see him end up like this. What do you think happened?'
'One big-ass demon got him,' Sullivan said. 'Probably eight hundred pounds. Which means we're dealing with a Summoner like I ain't seen since the war.'
'You can read sign?' Heinrich asked, surprised. 'You struck me a city boy.'
'I come from a place not much different than here. If we didn't kill it our own self, then we didn't get to eat. I moved to the city because that's where the work was.'
Garrett squatted down next to him and pulled out a smoke. 'Anything else?'
'Another one of them got shot real bad, lost most of his blood, but his tracks say that he walked around under his own power for a long time. Looks like a big old boy. Probably three hundred pounds and I bet he has to get his boots made special, like me. Plus he was shooting this.' Sullivan reached into his pocket and pulled out the moon-clip. It consisted of six, fired, brass cases snapped into a sheet-metal circle. He tossed it toward Heinrich, who caught it easily and held it up to read the head stamp.
'.50 RL? These are huge. This come out of a cannon?'
'Russian Long,' Sullivan said. 'Cossack cavalry had a limited run of them made for their war against the Japanese. Smith amp; Wesson filled the contract. Cossacks wanted something portable and short, but could still punch a Jap helmet at three hundred yards. The shells were clipped together so they could load easier from the back of a moving bear. Damn thing even has a shotgun barrel for when they were up close in the trees. Most powerful handgun in the world, made specifically for Brutes, because it was loaded so hot it could sprain the wrist of a normal man.'
'Don't see those around very often,' Garrett said.
'So this big boy with the big gun got hit a bunch of times, but kept moving. At first I thought he'd been killed from all the blood, then brought back as a damn filthy zombie.'
Heinrich scowled. 'You've got a real problem with zombies, don't you?'
'I only want to have to kill somebody once. Killing them twice seems like work. But the tracks aren't from a zombie. They shuffle, stumble, like their balance is all gone, and they don't take cover like this one did. So he got opened up, dumped most of his blood, and didn't worry about it. Either of you know what Power that could be?'
'There are other things besides natural Powers…' Heinrich suggested. 'We've not had a chance to tell you about those yet. The Imperium has special soldiers. The Chairman picks them himself.'
'They're called the Iron Guard,' Garrett added. 'They're all strong Actives to start with, but then he changes them.'
'What do you mean changes?'
'There are two kinds of magic, Sullivan.' Garrett explained. 'Natural occurring Powers. One Power, one person. Everybody knows how that works.'
He didn't correct him, though he personally knew Garrett was wrong. Sullivan figured he was good for at least a one and a half himself.
'Then there are spells, where with different tricks you can capture some of the Power and use it.'
'The Power can be chained to certain signs and words,' Heinrich said. 'All Grimnoir learn a few, but we don't delve too deep. It's too dangerous. You screw up a chaining the Power to a word and bad things happen. Some of us are more talented than others.'
