work to do on a dairy farm. She hopped down with the effortless grace of a young woman instead of a clumsy kid. He hated to admit that she was growing up. Even some of the local Portuguese boys from the other families had started sniffing around, but so far he'd kept them at bay with a stern glance and his reputation.
'Grandpa, can I tell you something?' After the first year she had started calling him Grandpa instead of Mr. Vierra. He'd never minded.
'What, girl? You gonna fess up to scaring more cows?'
She didn't giggle for once. That got his attention, because she was hardly ever serious. There were always random thoughts spinning in that girl's head, but it was rare when she shared. 'It's about my magic. Something don't make sense to me.' He waited for it. None of it really made sense to him. He'd just learned to control it by instinct. Most of the others like them weren't so lucky. 'You taught me to feel ahead before I Travel…'
'And you always do, right?'
'Of course,' she said defensively. 'But lately, it's been more than feeling. If I try real hard, it's like, I don't know, like I can see the space before I get there. I don't know. I don't have the words to explain it good. It only happens if I try real hard.'
The old farmer nodded thoughtfully. According to everything he had learned over decades of practice, that was impossible. You didn't see until your eyes actually got there. A Traveler could get a sense of wrongness if he was about to jump into a bad place, and that could save your life, but you couldn't actually see anything until you arrived. 'I don't know how magic works, just that it does. I teach you what I know, don't mean you can't learn more than me.'
Faye seemed perplexed by that. 'Why is it that some of us can do some kinds of magic, but only some of us, and we can only do one kind? If we got one magic, why can't we get more?'
He knew that she was wrong. There was at least one person out there with more than one Power, but she was too young to have to know about him. 'That's how God wants it, I guess.'
'What if magic was something that could be learned, and we're not just born with? What if regular people could learn it, like from books or a school or something?'
This train of thought made him uncomfortable. Faye assumed what most people did, that there was only one kind of magic, but he knew that there was the other kind. The old kind, the bad kind. He grunted. 'Less talk, more work. Come on. Calves are hungry.'
Faye sighed. 'They're always hungry.' Springfield, Illinois 'Sullivan! Are you okay?'
He blinked against the brilliant light. His head was throbbing, pulsing like somebody was running a blacksmith's forge inside his brain. 'Ohhh… that Fade cooled me good,' he muttered, pulling himself up. Cowley was kneeling at his side, blood leaking from his nose. Sullivan wasn't the only one the Fade had worked over.
The Spiker mashed one big hand against the side of his head, and it came away stained red. He'd really gotten belted. Sullivan knew that he should have been out for a lot longer, but he'd spent a lot of time using his Powers to toughen his body. It wasnlike there was much else to do inside an eight-by-ten windowless cell all day. 'Which way did they go?' He picked his fedora up and tugged it down tight on his head.
Cowley pointed up.
The blimp. Sullivan got to his feet. 'How's Purvis?'
'I'll live,' the senior agent grumbled from off to the side, his left arm hanging at a very unnatural angle. 'Everybody's alive, but they're hurt bad. I don't know where the locals are. They should have come running when they heard shooting. They've got a gang of Actives, Sullivan. There are more of them that went up there. A Mover bounced the boys I left on the door. There was another girl, who knows what she does?'
Sullivan stood. His head hurt, but everything seemed to be attached. No bones were sticking out, and he wasn't squirting blood, so he'd been worse. He checked his Power. It had automatically returned and he could feel the weight in his chest. He had about half of what he'd started the night with. There was a sudden clank as the docking clamps were retracted from the dirigible. 'Take care of your men, Melvin. I'm going after them.'
'There are at least three Actives,' Purvis warned.
'That's suicide,' Cowley said, grimacing as he picked up his tommy gun. 'I'm coming with you.'
That kind of bravery would probably get the agent killed someday, but Sullivan could respect it. 'Fine, let's go.' His.45 was on the ground and he returned it to the leather holster on his belt.
'The car won't come down from the top. They probably wrecked the controls,' Cowley said. 'And the door to the next stairwell landing is steel, and it's been sorta… twisted. It's stuck. I already tried- Wait, Jake, what are you doing?'
Sullivan stepped into the elevator shaft. There was no ladder and the interior of the shaft was made up of a grating that would be extremely difficult to climb. The Spiker paused long enough to pull a pair of leather gloves from his coat and put them on before grabbing the swaying cable in the center. It was extremely greasy and he looked with distaste at the mess it was making to his best shirt. Money was tight. 'Don't try to keep up.'
He reached inside and used some Power. It always took less energy to affect his own body than others. Perhaps it was just a question of range, but either way, it didn't take much Power to make gravity shrink away to nothingness around his person. Sullivan reached high and pulled, launching himself up the cable, hand over hand, almost flying up the whipping strand. Within seconds he had left the first floor behind.
'Wow… and I get a lighter,' Cowley muttered from below.
Why am I doing this? Sullivan wondered, but he already knew his answer. He had a few certain principles, and one of those was that when he started something, he finished it.
The bottom of the elevator car was black with grime and collected petroleum sludge. Sullivan almost collided into the soft mass, so great was the speed of his ascent. He held onto the cable with one hand and dangled, looking for the trapdoor. He found it, but had magically deprived himself of the weight to push it open. He concentrated on the trap's iron hinges. It took a great deal of effort to channel his Power in two separate directions at once, to make himself lighter, but to make the door heavier than its hinges could bear.
Good thing he'd done nothing but practice for six years…
'Sam! Get out of the way!' he shouted. He had no idea if the Bureau of Investigation agent was actually crazy enough, or physically fit enough to follow him this way, but it was worth the effort to yell. 'Incoming!'
The trapdoor, now drawn toward the Earth as if it weighed five hundred pounds, tore free and toppled down the shaft. Sullivan reached out with his Power, just in case, and lessened the pull on the trapdoor so it fluttered down with the energy of a broken kite. The length of the reach overcame his concentration, and for a brief moment, Sullivan slipped. He barely held onto the greasy cable as he returned instantly to his natural weight. Sliding, almost losing it, he managed to shove one hand through the open trap. Grasping the edge, he pulled himself through onto the elevator's carpeted floor with a grunt.
The shaft terminated inside a glass enclosure. UBF signs encouraged mothers to secure their children while on the platform. Sullivan crawled forward, glancing around the darkened enclosure. Rain was streaking the glass and lightning crashed. Three UBF employees and the last of the passengers were standing there, gawking at the dirigible beginning to rise just outside the windows. Delilah was getting away.
'Hey!' he shouted. 'Can you clamp it down from here?'
'Are you crazy? You want them to stay?' an older man in a blue UBF captain's uniform shouted. 'That's my bird they're glauming out there, and even I don't want to mess with those freaks! He bent the door with his brain, son!'
Sullivan swore as he tried the door to the platform. The metal frame had been twisted and distorted somehow. It was like what Cowley had said had happened in the stairs. He didn't even know what kind of Power that was, and if it was the Mover, then it was from an Active far stronger than anybody he'd met before.
That gave him an idea. The dirigible companies were employing lightning directors now, and their safety records had gone way up as a result, but he'd also seen what an offensive weapon they could be during the war. 'Who's the Crackler?' Sullivan asked. on!'
One of the younger UBF employees stepped forward. Sullivan kicked himself. It should have been obvious. His coverall had a big yellow lightning bolt sewn on it. 'We prefer being called Edisons,' the young man said stiffly.
'Whatever floats your boat, pal. Can you blast them out of the sky?'
'It doesn't work like that,' he said quickly. The others looked at him suspiciously. Even if he could, he wasn't going to admit it in front of people who could get him fired. 'Of course I can't.'
'It was worth a try.' The dirigible was rising, loose cables whipping about it in the wind. 'Cover your ears,' Sullivan ordered as he drew his 1911 Colt. There was no way he could heed his own advice and his ears stung from
