“I practiced.”
“And I bet Babe Ruth practiced too, but only a Brute could hit two hundred homers. You’re no ordinary Active, kid. Come with me and all your questions will be answered. This whole thing is bigger than you and me, or your friends, or your Society. Sure, I’m a bad man, but I work for the good guys. You fight me, you’re fighting against your country. Come on, Faye.”
“My friends are innocent.”
“Sure they are. Come with me then and help clear their names. I don’t want to fight. I’m asking real nice here.”
Faye stopped. “You should have thought of that before you beat up my boyfriend.”
“You know what? Fuck it.” Crow’s teeth looked slightly sharp in the flickering light. “I was hoping you’d fight. I’m curious to see if you’re as good as everybody made you out to be.” He moved in a flash. The table came flipping end over end at her. It smashed against the wall as Faye Traveled to the side. Crow charged her, but Faye immediately appeared behind him. She pulled out the Colt .45, racked the slide, then raised it and pointed it at Crow’s back.
“I’ve never shot a policeman before. You better leave before I start.”
He looked back over his shoulder with an evil grin. “That’s the spirit.” Crow whirled toward her and Faye instinctively fired. The gun bucked in her hand. He kept coming, so she fired twice more, then Traveled back to where she’d started from. Crow passed right through where she’d been standing and crashed hard into the wall. He slid down and collapsed onto the floor, hands pressed against his chest.
Damn it! She really hadn’t wanted to shoot any policemen. She was a terrible fugitive. Faye kept the pistol on him and shouted, “I warned you!”
“You killed me . . .” Crow’s head fell forward. The hat covered his eyes.
George Bolander came hurtling down the stairs with a revolver in one hand and an oil lamp in the other. “What happened?” He saw Crow on the ground and aimed his gun at the man. “You all right, Faye?”
“That’s the government man, Crow,” Faye explained as Whisper and Ian ran down the stairs. Ian was shirtless and Whisper had on a blue silk robe with pretty flower designs on it. Both of them had handguns too. “He attacked me. I had to shoot him.”
The four knights watched Crow’s still form for a moment.
“Well, Ian, you wanted to take the fight to the other side,” George said. “Looks like you’re getting your wish.”
A particularly nasty gust of wind shook the house. “Was he alone?” Whisper asked.
“Far as I can tell,” Faye answered.
“There’s something wrong here. This just feels . . . odd.” Ian walked over, keeping his pistol trained on Crow the entire time, and kicked the G-man hard in the leg with one bare foot. There was no response. He moved Crow’s hand away from the bullet wound. In the shadows it seemed almost as if the hole was smoking. “What the hell?”
“What’s wrong?” George asked.
“I can feel it with my Power.” Ian squatted down next to the body and used the muzzle of his pistol to lift the brim of Crow’s hat, revealing four brightly glowing red eyes in a horizontal line across his face.
The G-man shoved Ian across the room so hard that the knight bounced off the far wall. Crow practically flew to his feet. “Just fooling with you.”
Faye had four shots left in her pistol and she cranked them off so fast that they sounded like a machine gun. Whisper and George weren’t too far behind. Crow was riddled with bullets and he jerked as they hit. Then it was quiet and the guns were empty. Crow was still standing, smoke drifting from the bullet holes. He slowly raised his glowing eyes and smiled at her. Now his teeth were definitely sharp, like rows of bone needles. Faye yelped and rummaged through her pockets for her other magazine. “Nice try, Grimmys. Now let’s see if you’re ready to play in the majors.”
Crow moved incredibly fast and knocked George to the ground. The oil lantern shattered on the floor. Flames quickly spread across the wood. The oil hit Faye’s feet and she Traveled back a split second ahead of the fire.
Whisper dropped her empty pistol and stretched her hands toward the flames. The circle of fire suddenly contracted tighter and tighter, until it was a ball of solid heat. She whipped one hand toward Crow. The oily ball of fire followed the trajectory and streaked right into his chest. There was a terrible flash and Crow was hurled into the living room.
Faye got her spare magazine into the pistol, yanked back the slide and let it slingshot forward, then Traveled after Crow. She landed behind a thick couch, raised her gun, and . . . Crow was gone.
“Watch out. He’s really fast!” Faye shouted. “George?”
“I’m fine,” George answered with just a hint of pain. “Ian?”
“He’s a Summoned!”
That was impossible. Summoned were stupid. Crow was a person. But those eyes . . . They’d looked just like the terrible Bull King that they’d fought in Mar Pacifica. The only way they’d been able to beat the Bull King was because she had tracked down and killed its Summoner. Faye checked her head map. Where was—There!
The rooms of the first floor formed a ring around the main stairwell. Crow had circled back around and was coming through the kitchen and heading for her friends in the dining room. Moving like a freight train, he kicked the door into splinters and streaked toward Whisper. Faye appeared and swept her out of the way an instant before impact. Crow’s momentum destroyed the next wall. Immediately, he turned with a roar, looking too big, twisted and inhuman. His clothing was stretching and tearing as he grew. No . . . that wasn’t fabric. That was skin. Crow came out of the wall and roared with a noise that couldn’t possibly come out of a human being.
George raised his hands. Blue light seemed to pour from his eyes, before it streaked down his arms and erupted from his fingertips. A blinding arc of electricity crashed into Crow. The noise was deafening. Thick black liquid sprayed out of Crow’s chest and across the room, burning and smoking. Faye cried out as some hit her arm and sizzled.
The demon was hurled back, but kept thrashing and pushing against the energy. After several seconds of the Crackler’s fury, George gasped and stumbled, dizzy. Crow took a step back toward them. His body was charred to ash and billowing smoke. “Not too shabby,” he said around a mouthful of needle teeth.
“You shoulda been fried!” George bellowed.
“There’s nothing worse than a nigger with magic.” Crow seemed to shimmer as his body continued to change. “Time to learn your place, boy.” His feet scorched the floor as he strode toward George.
“He’s a Greater Summoned!” Ian grabbed George by the arm. “He’s too strong. Up the stairs! Go! Go!” Ian fired his pistol repeatedly as George and Whisper ran past him.
Good idea! They were trying to funnel Crow so he wouldn’t have room to maneuver, but he was too fast. They wouldn’t make it. She needed to distract Crow away from her slower friends. “Hey!” Faye appeared directly behind the demon, shoved her pistol into his back and fired twice. He threw a backhand at her, but Faye appeared directly in front of him, extended her pistol and shot Crow squarely through the brain.
The blast of smoke from the wound blinded her. He lashed out and Faye gasped as a terrible burn crossed her stomach. Crow lifted one hand and showed her his newly formed claws. “Try to keep up, Toots.”
She Traveled out of his sight and landed in the kitchen. The distraction had given her friends a moment, but it had cost her. Wincing, Faye lifted her blouse and discovered a mean cut dripping blood. “Darn it!” But like Mr. Sullivan always said, if it wasn’t squirting then it wasn’t a big deal. Faye grabbed the biggest kitchen knife she could out of a wooden block with one hand and a cast iron frying pan in her other. Now she was mad.
Faye appeared in the dining room. The curtains were on fire and the place was filling with smoke, natural and demon both. Crow was trying to push his way up the stairs, but was being simultaneously blasted with arcs of electricity and a stream of bill
owing fire. Whisper and George could only hold that kind of Power for so long and it gradually tapered off to nothing. Crow began climbing the stairs.
“Hey, stupid!” Faye shouted.
Crow slowly turned to look at her. At some point he had become seven feet tall and ram’s horns were sprouting out the side of his head. He was charred like a piece of meat forgotten on a campfire spit. His skin was flaking off in gigantic burned chunks. Smoke was bleeding from dozens of holes. His voice had become deeper, the kind of voice you only hear in your nightmares. “You should have come along quietly, Faye. Your friends wouldn’t have had to die.”
She held up the butcher knife and frying pan. “Only person dying around here tonight is you!” She screamed and leapt. Crow surged toward her. Faye disappeared at the last second, came around, and clubbed him in one horn with the frying pan. The knife went through one of his gigantic legs. Faye Traveled back, breathing hard, but Crow was already following her. Crap! He’s faster than Delilah!
Faye moved through the house, popping in and out as quick as her head map could determine it was safe. Crow followed her, swinging madly with fingers that had turned into black sickle claws. She continued to Travel in, striking and stabbing wildly, then getting out at the last second. The knife was slick with demon’s ink. Her eyes and lungs stung. The house was wreathed in flames. Five jumps. Six jumps. Crow was still right behind. Seven. Eight. Nine.
She was getting tired. Her Power was flickering.
Crow followed her into the living room. He picked up one of the couches and hurled it at her. She barely had time to move before it shattered the window and flew into the night. The wind came howling in and brought the choking dust with it. Faye’s head map screamed danger everywhere. Grit struck her in the eyes. The dust particles were too big to Travel in! Upstairs!
The demon lifted his hands to his four eyes as the dust blinded him as well. Desperate, Faye leapt and landed at his feet. Shoes had been replaced with enormous goat’s hooves. Lifting the knife, Faye screamed, and then drove the knife down as hard as she could through the hoof, pinning it to the floor. Crow emitted a horrific shriek and lifted his other foot to smash her through the boards, but Faye was already gone.
She hit the carpet on the second floor landing. The dust was billowing up the stairs, chasing her. Soon there would be nowhere safe for her to Travel. The neighboring houses were in range, but she wasn’t about to abandon her friends. Below, Crow continued his demonic roar. Whisper was at the top of the stairs, moving her hands back and forth, gathering the fire roaring through the first floor together into another solid ball. The violent wind whipped her black hair around her head in a halo. George appeared, shoving a heavy dresser in front of Whisper to serve as a last-ditch barricade. Ian was sitting on the floor, looking calm as could be.
“What’re you doing?”
Ian barely opened one eye a crack. “Calling in reinforcements.”
“Poop.” Faye checked her head map. The old lady was still sound asleep in her room. Faye couldn’t just let some nice grandma get burned to death. This was going to take too much Power, but she had to do it. Faye popped into her room, took the woman by her arm, then picked a spot that seemed nice two houses down.
Faye appeared in the living room of a very surprised family. They had all been watching out their window the exploding, electrical light show coming from the flaming boardinghouse, and they screamed when they saw her. “Hey! Take care of her, would ya?” The father had been stuffing shells from a cardboard box into an old pump shotgun, but he yelped and dropped it when she scared him near to death. “Mind if I borrow this? Thanks!” Faye grabbed the shotgun and the box of buckshot, concentrated, and Traveled back.
She picked the furthest room from the stairs and barely beat the flooding dust. It stung her skin, but a moment later and it would have been inside her skin. Faye loaded the old Winchester the rest of the way as she walked down the hall. Her eyes were watering and she could barely breathe as poison smoke burned her lungs.
Crow was on fire and rumbling up the stairs. Whisper was continually whipping flames into the demon, over and over, her robe torn open and snapping in the wind around her. “Burn, demon!” The only reason they could breathe at all was that Whisper’s magical skill was so great that she was causing the smoke to be funneled away from them. The black air coming from Crow’s wounds was darker than the natural smoke roiling around him.
Faye leaned around Whisper, shouldered the shotgun and let Crow have it right in the face. The buckshot messed him up far worse than the pistol bullets. It kicked her good as she fed him four more rounds, but then the Winchester was empty and she was fumbling to reload from the box. Whisper fell back, Power exhausted, and George took her place.
Lightning crackled between his fingers. His eyes were pools of flashing blue. All of Faye’s hair stood up. “This place is coming down. Get them outside, Faye. Now!”
“You can’t stop him by yourself,” she cried.
“Do it!”
Faye did as she was told. With Whisper’s Power done, the smoke and dust was too much to bear. She couldn’t breathe. Her head was spinning. She fell and the shotgun shells spilled down the carpet. The entire house shook and groaned as beams snapped. Faye crawled for the next room; she could at least breathe a little on the floor. She could feel Whisper behind her but couldn’t see anything. She crashed into something soft. Ian. He seemed to be in a daze as she pulled him along.
The three of them fell into the bedroom.
“George?” Whisper asked.
There was an awful roar behind them and the crash of thunder. Blue light flickered through the smoke.
“Reinforcements?” Faye asked.
Ian was coughing. “On the way.”
Faye made it to the window. It wouldn’t open. Of course, everything was caulked shut because of the storm. She used the shotgun butt to smash the glass out. There were shingles below them. “Get outside!” Whisper went through the window and disappeared into the dust. She turned back and ran into Ian. “I’m going back for George.”
“Can you Travel him?”
“Can’t. Dust.”
“You’ll die!” he shouted.
“Probably.” She started to push past, but Ian suddenly threw his weight against her. “Wait! Ian, no!” The next thing she knew he had used his weight advantage to shove her to the window, then he hoisted her up and through. Faye rolled outside and landed on her shoulder on the shingles. Ian was visible for one last moment in the blue light above, a look of determination on his face, and then he was gone. “No!”
“Faye!” Whisper called. Faye looked down to see Whisper standing in the yard. It wasn’t too far to jump. The entire house shook violently and more timbers burst. Sparks swam past her as Faye kicked her legs over the edge and let herself drop. Whisper tried to catch her but they both ended up hitting the dirt hard. “Come on. Hurry.” Whisper grabbed her by the hand and pulled her along.
They made it out into the road. Crow’s demonic wail could be heard even over the wind. Behind them the house rumbled as half of it collapsed. Faye screamed in frustration. George and Ian were going to die and there was nothing she could do.
“What is that?” Whisper pointed at something gigantic moving through the fire. At first Faye thought that it was Crow, but unless he had changed even more drastically than before, this was something entirely different. The thing glowed with a calm pale light, but then it disappeared behind the flaming timbers. “It cannot be.”
“What?”
Whisper grabbed her hand and held it tight.
The pale light reappeared, this time coming through the front door. It had the red eyes of a Summoned, and was just as fearsome as Crow or the Bull King, only different, and Faye knew that this was what they spoke of when they said that a Summoned could appear as an angel.
It was eight feet tall and broad. Except for four small eyes, its features were formless and soft. Its hands were simple and far too large. Its t
orso was disproportionately bigger than its stubby legs. It was carrying a burden in each hand. One of them coughed.
Ian and George! Faye squealed with delight.
The mighty Summoned dropped the knights at the edge of the yard, then turned back toward the flames just as the house fell down with a awful crash. A cyclone of fiery debris was sucked up into the sky. Faye ran up, grabbed the first body and started dragging him away. She couldn’t even tell who it was because he was so filthy with soot.
The roof of the boardinghouse hit the ground last, coming to rest almost perfectly level as if the house had merely sunk evenly into the ground below. Faye felt a twinge of hope. Surely, Crow couldn’t have survived that. No matter how great of a demon he was, that had to have—
A bubble formed in the roof. One claw ruptured through the shingles. Crow shoved his way through and clambered into the open. He was twisted and broken, but somehow still alive. “I’m not done with you yet, little girl.” Crow freed himself and leapt through the debris to land in the yard.
Ian’s pale Summoned stood, blocking its way. The two huge things faced each other for a moment. Crow cocked his horned head to the side. He was obviously weakened, parts of his body withering and deflating as the unnatural smoke that served as Summoned’s blood was spilled. The pale Summoned was an unknown quantity. It did not move.
Flashlights and lanterns bobbed around the street. People had been drawn toward the commotion. Faye could only imagine what they were thinking as they saw the two titanic Summoned facing each other through the storm.
Crow ran toward Ian’s Summoned. They collided. The pale thing’s elephantlike feet slid back through the dirt as Crow struck furiously. Then the pale fists began to fall, striking with monotonous thunder, each one hitting like a piece of construction equipment.