home during his final years… and yet it had been a complete stranger who had been there at the end. 'He's Madi's brother, but I don't see you getting all suspicious of him.'
'I don't trust him either… I barely trust you and we've worked together for years.' Heinrich's smile was apologetic. 'I'm very sorry about your nose,' he said. 'I shouldn't have struck you.'
Francis sniffed. Jane had fixed it, but it still hurt. 'She's not a Shadow Guard. You know. Black Jack said so.' It didn't seem right to invoke the General's name to win an argument, but he had, and Francis was going to be damned if his suspicious friend was going to cast doubts on anything that Black Jack had said from his death bed. 'So lay off her.'
Heinrich looked at him, raising his eyebrows. 'Francis Stuyvesant… mein Gott. Have you taken a liking to that grey-eyed lunatic?'
'That's… that's absurd. Go to hell, Koenig,' Francis said as he rose from the bench. He wasn't in the mood. 'I'm going to go and get completely drunk.'
'I'm sorry, Jane,' Daniel Garrett said as his fiancee cried. 'You did everything you could. Nobody blames you.'
Jane blew her nose and wiped her bloodshot eyes. 'It's my fault, Dan. I should have been able to save him.' She pulled her knees up to her chest and rocked back and forth. 'Why? Why couldn't I be strong enough?'
Her pain was killing him inside. Dan put his arm over her shoulder, pulled her close, cursing his own inadequacies. He knew that all he had to do was reach for his Power. Just a little push… the tiniest of pushes… He could tell the woman he loved that it wasn't her fault, that she'd done everything she could, that no Healer could stop a Pale Horse, and with his Power to influence minds, she would believe whatever words came out of his mouth.
Even if it was the truth, it would also be wrong, so he didn't do it.
'I love you, Jane,' he said softly. He was careful not to even touch his Power as he spoke. He had no right. 'It wasn't your fault. You did the best you could…'
'You're not trying to Influence me, are you?' she asked, almost, but not quite, laughing through the tears.
'Of course not,' he answered as he brushed some stray hairs away from her eyes. 'You already know how much crap I get for being a Mouth getting married to a babe like you. Everyone in the world thinks the only way somebody like you would end up with an ugly mug like me is because I've got you hypnotized…' he said it as a joke to cheer her up, but they both knew it was partially true, and it hurt him every single time. He smiled. 'It sure isn't because I'm rich.'
Jane hugged him close, her fingernails digging into the back of his neck. 'When you can see everyone's insides all the time, we're all ugly… and squishy.' They both had a laugh, then Jane began weeping again, and Dan did all that he thought an honorable husband-to-be should do, and gave her his shoulder to cry on.
Finally, she spoke. 'I can't bear it. It's just too much hurt. I can fix physical hurt, but I can't do anything about this kind. I need to be strong. The others need me. Dan… I want you to tell me I did my best. I need to believe it.'
He nodded, and pushed his Power hard. 'It wasn't your fault.' His words resonated like biblical truth.
'Thank you…'
Sullivan found Delilah standing at the edge of the ocean, staring out toward the setting sun. Her dress was whipping around her in the wind, and he could see her figure as the sun shone through the fabric.
'You're a tough one to find,' he said.
'Who said I wanted to be found?' she said without turning around.
Sullivan paused, all the practiced words failing him once again. They always worked in his head, but turned to garbage when he tried to form them in his mouth. Instead he just said, 'I came to say I'm sorry.'
'For trying to arrest me? For bouncing me off a roof? For being ready to shoot me down for the coppers because you just took their word that I was a mad-dog killer? Or for before that? For when you ran away and left me alone in New Orleans? Maybe even for just being a lousy jerk…'
'… Yes…'
She finally turned around, placed her hands on her hips and gave him that same dangerous smirk. 'You're leaving again, aren't you?'
She was so pretty that it struck his heart like a bullet. 'There's something I got to do.'
'Take me with you.'
'It'll be too dangerous.'
'I'm a Brute, remember?'
Sullivan didn't respond. He didn't know what to say. She had the Power to pull a man's head off with her bare hands and anything short of a high-powered rifle would bounce off her skin. She was tough as nails and worth ten men in a fight… but she'd always be that same scared girl that he'd found abused and mistreated in Louisiana. He'd put her back together while she'd helped him heal from the nightmare of the war, a pair of survivors who'd started to cobble together a life. But then he'd gone away. Prison had changed him, leaving him hard and uncaring, and it had been easy to believe that she'd become just as jaded while they'd been apart. But he'd been wrong, and here she was, the same girl, only with a harder shell, and she deserved so much better than a lug like him who had already proven he couldn't protect her. There was no way he could live with her death on his hands. That was one thing that he wasn't strong enough for. He just wasn't eloquent enough to explain all that.
'You're doing this for Pershing? I know what it is, you know. It's the same reason he brought me here, only once he Read me, I think he decided I wasn't good enough… But by then, he was stuck with me…' She turned back to the Pacific. 'Story of my life… Damaged goods. Nobody wants me.'
Without hesitation, he moved forward and encircled her in his arms, crushing her tight against him, suddenly afraid to let her go. He whispered low in her ear. 'I do.'
They were two irreparably flawed people. Together they almost made a whole person, and he figured that might just be enough. She leaned her head back into his chest and he held her there for a long time.
Chapter 15
… And on this momentous day, let us remember the brave sacrifice of Junior Assistant Third Engineer Harold Ernest Crozier of Southampton, who was lost after an ice collision on our maiden voyage. His natural magical gifts, combined with his great moral fortitude, enabled him to control the incoming waters before there was any other loss of life. He was a credit to the Active race. We shall now have a moment of silence for Engineer Crozier.
– Captain Edward J. Smith of the RMS Titanic, on its fifth anniversary cruise, 1917 Lick Hill, California There were four guards manning the main gatehouse. Three were playing a game of poker, while the last was watching the clock, knowing that they were due to be relieved at two o'clock in the morning, and he was dying to get out of the stinking concrete shed and back into his bed. He cursed the slow clock, lit another cigarette, and went back to being miserable.
It was a joke. The entire assignment was a big, stupid joke. Nothing ever happened at Lick Hill. After the Great War showed the absolute war-ending power of the Peace Ray, every nation that could afford it built at least one. America had three along its west coast alone. The Peace Ray was a marvel of superscience. It fired a near instantaneous beam of absolute death as far as three hundred miles in a perfectly straight line. No army could invade a country with a Peace Ray. Everyone knew that Tesla had made war obsolete.
The towers were absurdly tall, and usually put on top of the highest land available. They were a line-of-sight weapon. The higher it was, the further it could engage targets. When the war had first ended, strings of observation dirigibles had been stationed all along the coast, ready to call in a warning and firing coordinates to the huge crews of operators at a moment's notice. Hundreds of technicians were protected by thousands of soldiers. The sheer amount of electricity necessary to run the machine necessitated the building of huge power plants, but it was all necessary for national security.
The guards were well trained and issued the finest safety equipment. They had to be. A full-charge firing of the Peace Ray could actually turn the very air around the beam into poison. Only the bravest of soldiers were assigned to guard the most important weapon in the arsenal of freedom.
