It was not something that a normal Heavy could do, but apparently Delilah didn't have the time to think through the philosophical implications. 'I've punched trains that were softer.' The Brute paused and shook her aching hand. 'You've learned some new tricks!'
'You too,' he answered, breathing hard. 'Too bad you took to murdering innocent people.'
'Innocent?' she sputtered, reaching down and grasping a wrought-iron bench and ripping its bolts out of the floor. 'You've got a weird take on innocent.' She swung the bench like a baseball bat and Sullivan barely had time to throw himself to the ground as it whistled past.
Sullivan rolled aside, finding himself staring up Delilah's dress as she brought one foot down to stamp him through the floor. Distracting as that was, he managed to focus, Spike, and Delilah suddenly fell up. 'Son of a b-' she shouted before crashing into the glass ceiling, twenty feet above. Sullivan held the pull for a moment, but he'd burned through too much of his reserve, too fast, and lost control. Gravity returned to normal, and Delilah fell in a cloud of broken glass, screaming to the ground.
She must have used her own Power, as she slammed into the floor hard enough to shatter the tiles in a six- foot circle, but immediately rose, unharmed but angry, dusting off her dress. She'd lost the fur stole and the fancy hat was stuck in the ceiling. Delilah picked at the shredded red dress in disgust. 'You know how much I paid for this thing? It's French!'
Sullivan was still on the floor. 'I hate France,' he said as he drew his Colt.45 from his belt.
'That's because last time you were there you were running alongside a tank,' Delilah said, slowly raising her hands. 'It isn't polite to shoot a lady.'
He snorted. 'You're no lady, and you're mostly bulletproof, but this place is surrounded by thirty bulls with choppers, and you ain't that bulletproof.' He swiped the thumb safety off and aimed at Delilah's chest. He could feel his Power scattered. It was going to take a moment to gather enough to use it again. Good thing he always packed a heater. 'So I guess you're coming with me.'
She tried to look innocent, and failed miserably. 'Come on, Jake, let me go, for old time's sake. I'll make it worth your trouble.'
'Tempting, but I've got the law outside. It's over.' For both of us.
'Yes, it is over,' the German stranger said, materializing as he placed the muzzle of a pistol against the back of Sullivan's head. 'The policemen will not be a problem. My crew made sure of that. Don't try anything stupid, Heavy. Magic is always slower than a bullet.'
The Spiker calmly raised his big.45, put the safety back on, and let it dangle from his trigger finger. 'I never did like you guys that could walk through walls. That don't hardly seem fair.'
'Life isn't fair, friend,' the stranger said. A wooden nightstick slammed brutally into Jake's skull, hard enough to knock any normal man senseless, and he flopped to the floor.
'Hit him again. He's got a real thick head,' Delilah suggested. The stranger complied. The last thing Sullivan saw was a torn red dress towering over him and a finger shaking disapprovingly.
Chapter 2
The learned gentlemen from the university have asked me if I relied on Einstein's General Theory of Relativity or if I used the simpler rules of Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation on the evening in question when I accidentally took Sheriff Johnson's life. Shit. I don't know. I just got angry and squished the fucker. But I've gotten better at running things and I promise not to do it no more.
– Jake Sullivan,
Parole Hearing, Rockville State Penitentiary, 1928 El Nido, California The old Portuguese farmer sighed in frustration, ankle-deep in cow shit, as a panicked Holstein ran past flinging shit in every direction with his adopted girl on top trying to ride the animal like a horse.
'Off the cow!' he bellowed, but it didn't matter anyway, because people rode horses instead of cows for a reason, and a thousand pounds of beef slipped and landed on its side in a great grunting heap. The girl Traveled at the last second to avoid getting hurt. She appeared next to him, still in forward motion, and her rubber boots slid through the muck until she stopped.
She was taller than he was now, so he had to stand on his tiptoes. He smacked her hard on the back of the head as he shouted in English. 'Mean to cows? You don't be mean to cows!'
'Sorry,' Faye said sheepishly. 'I wanted to see what would happen…'
The farmer just shook his head. He'd tried that himself once a long time ago, with similar results, but she didn't need to know that. 'You upset the cows. Upset cows don't give so much milk. No milk, no eat.' Times were hard, and they were paid by the hundred weight. There was a 1,000 gallon tank in the barn, and if it wasn't full when the milk truck came, then that meant less money from the creamery, and they would be eating cows to stay alive instead of milking them.
The cow got up and trotted away, shaking her head and snorting. Its ear tag told him it was Number 155, and she was a pain in the ass anyway. In the barn, she was a kicker, so it served her right. His hand still hurt from the evening milking when that cow had kicked him again.
'Sorry, Grandpa,' Faye said again. 'I was done putting grain out for the night and she was just looking at me like she was daring me to mess with her.' Everybody who worked in the barn had gotten a hoof to the hand by that particular boss cow at some point. 155 was particularly good at pissing on her own tail and then hitting you in the face with it when you were just squatting down to put the milking machine on her. She was an angry cow. '155's a bitch.'
He thumped her on the back of the head again. 'Ladies don't cuss.' He wanted to smile, but had to stay stern. 'So you Traveled and landed on her back?'
The girl shrugged. She had really grown the last few years. She didn't really fit in with the rest of the family, being so much taller, paler, skinnier, with hair that was always long, tangled, and the color of damp straw. Her Portuguese had gotten better than his English, she got dragged to a proper Catholic mass most Sundays, and she worked hard for a girl. So it was almost like she wasn't a damn Okie anymore, but she would certainly never pass for an Azorean Festa princess.
'Never told you not to. Told you to be careful,' he chided her. He had taught her everything he knew about magic. He'd taught her to Travel only to things that were in her line of sight, and how to use her instincts to avoid getting hurt by stray objects. He hated to admit it, but she was already better at it than he had ever been. She could go further, had a better feel for it, and could store more Power than any other grey eye he'd met, but she was still young, and therefore dumb.
'What if the cow moved and you got your foot stuck in it? I'd have a kid with one leg. You can't milk with one leg!'
'Sure I could. I'd get a stool with wheels.'
'But who'd want a cow with a foot growing out it?'
Faye thought about that problem for a second. 'The circus!'
He groaned. The girl's head just didn't work in the same direction as most folks. 'People like us got to be careful. One mistake…' he made a gagging noise and crossed his eyes. She giggled. She still giggled a lot.
She hadn't really talked much for the first few months. Faye had always been a strange one, reacting to things only she could see, with lots of strange looks and scowls, and when she talked she didn't make much sense, usually the first thing that popped into her head. The farmer never found out much about her life before, and frankly he didn't care to, but he knew it must have been lousy, even by miserable Okie standards.
His wife, Maria, may God rest her soul, had taken to the little Okie girl, and doted on her. When Maria had passed on that winter, Faye had watched the family mourn, and he thought that it was probably then that she had figured out she was one of them now. Once Faye decided she finally fit in, she'd been nothing but smiles and mischief ever since. She really brightened the farm up, and though the old farmer missed his wife every single day, the skinny little Okie girl had given him something to live for.
Faye was the best ten bucks he'd ever spent.
'Come on, girl. Let's feed the calves, then we can turn in,' he said, and the two of them climbed over the corral pipes and dropped down to the hard dirt of the yard. His knees were killing him but there was always more
