The Left-Hand Way Read online

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  To Beth, the heroine of my life

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For their help with this book and their support of American Craftsmen, I’m very grateful to numerous individuals, blogs, and groups, some of whom are listed below:

  Editor Claire Eddy, for making it even more fun to write this second book knowing that she would be the first reader of the finished manuscript. Thanks also to editorial assistant Bess Cozby.

  Agent Robert Thixton, for his perseverance on my behalf.

  Publicists Ardi Alspach and Wiley Saichek, for all their efforts to get the word out, and Stephanie Dray, who was generous with her own experience.

  Dominick Saponaro and Irene Gallo, for their work on the wonderful covers for the American Craftsmen series.

  The members of the Writers Group from Hell, who labored with me for a year on The Left-Hand Way in serial draft form.

  The awesome folks at the Washington Science Fiction Association and the Baltimore Science Fiction Society.

  Jim Freund, Fast Forward TV, the Libation Liberation Front, Jean Marie Ward, and Dungeon Crawlers Radio for their enthusiastic and knowledgeable interviews.

  My friends and family, whose support has been especially vital this past year, particularly Eric Robinson, Karen Chamberlain, Serena Viswanathan, my aunt Jane, my mom, and my brothers John and Bill.

  My sources. Like its predecessor, this book has too many fictional allusions to list all their sources here, but for some of its contemporary material, I’m especially grateful to the following nonfictional sources (and any errors remain my own):

  Top Gear, for sensory details regarding the Chunnel’s service tunnel; http://www.topgear.com/uk/photos/TG-drives-the-Channel-Tunnel-2012-11-09.

  Joseph Menn’s Fatal System Error (Public Affairs, 2010), for inspiration regarding Roman’s employment in Kiev.

  Moira Fitzgibbons, for a crucial bit of Latin.

  * * *

  Note: I’ve chosen to spell Babi Yar in its better known variant rather than the transliteration from the Ukrainian, Babyn Yar.

  CONCERNING CRAFTSMEN AND AMERICA’S SECRET HISTORY

  A craftsman or craftswoman is a magician soldier or psychic spy. Throughout American history, such practitioners have been serving their colonies or country and feuding with each other.

  The American craft leadership is divided between two clandestine locations: H-ring and the so-called Peepshow. H-ring commands the craft military service from far below the center of the Pentagon, while the Peepshow at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, engages in psychic farsight of events distant in space and time.

  Craftspeople may possess one or more of a wide variety of preternatural skills. The most common powers are associated with enhanced combat, but this may reflect the bias of covert use. A relatively common power not directly related to combat is the panglossic: the ability to speak in one language and yet be understood in multiple other languages. One group of craftspeople, the Gideons, specializes in tracking. Oddly, they’ve taken on some hound-like behaviors with their craft practice.

  Two mutually antagonistic families have played an unusually significant role in their country’s history: the Endicotts and the Mortons. Both families have been crucial to American military success since the Revolution. Endicott family members often have a strong power of command. Their heirloom is the sword of John Endicott of Salem, their first American ancestor.

  Since the founding of the first English settlements in Massachusetts, the Puritan Endicotts have opposed the nonbelieving Morton family, who descended from Thomas Morton of Merry Mount, but who later took up residence in Providence, Rhode Island, in their notorious, sentient House. The typical Morton family member can change the local weather and can see the sins of others as glowing letters radiating from their bodies. Like most of the Endicotts, the Right-Hand Mortons are dedicated to the service of their country and the moral use of their power. However, the Left-Hand Mortons (and the Left Hand generally) were obsessed with life extension by any means and power without compunction. Under the leadership of the twins Roderick and Madeline, the Left Hand worshipped otherworldly gods and engaged in psychic parasitism, possession, and mass killings of mundanes and other craftspeople. For his experiments on spiritual transmigration, Roderick would bury people alive, but only Madeline survived this test.

  Prior to the Civil War, an alliance of other families with the orthodox Mortons defeated the Left Hand. Abram Endicott dismembered Roderick with his family sword and took Roderick’s head as a trophy. But Roderick’s head did not die, causing Abram to experience a crisis of faith, and Madeline corrupted the vulnerable Abram to the Left-Hand way.

  Madeline and Abram used the Left-Hand way to live on in other bodies. By World War II, they had penetrated the craft military command and the Pentagon’s new H-ring, and they succeeded in placing Roderick’s undying head at the center of the Chimera machine, a fusion of digital and alchemical technology. In this synergistic combination, Roderick became the most powerful oracle in the world, but he remained Madeline and Abram’s imprisoned slave.

  With the assistance of Roderick’s craft and predictions, Abram and Madeline gained power and killed off potential rivals. Then Roderick made predictions about the threat that the remaining Morton family posed to Abram and Madeline, setting off the events told in American Craftsmen.

  In that history, Captain Dale Morton is the last craft-practicing scion of the Morton family. His father has died under mysterious circumstances, apparently insane, though his ghost appears rational. A dispute between the top oracle at Langley, code name Sphinx, and the Chimera machine leads to Dale’s assignment to kill a Persian sorcerer. This mission goes horribly wrong, and Dale is left cursed and weakened. Dale resigns from the service with the secret intention of finding the traitor within the craft who set him up. He suspects that the traitor is Sphinx.

  Thwarted in his attempt to stake out Sphinx, Dale meets an apparently mundane civilian, Scherezade “Scherie” Rezvani. The Mortons have the gift of often foreseeing their own deaths, and Dale dreams that he and Scherie are in mortal peril. He also learns that his enemies have apparently killed his mentor, Colonel Hutchinson. He plans a party in which he will attempt to trap his enemies, particularly Sphinx, and to aid Scherie to escape, even at the cost of his own life.

  Meanwhile, General Oliver C. Endicott assigns his son, Major Michael Endicott, to watch Dale for signs that he is turning toward his Left-Hand heritage. Shortly after hearing of Hutchinson’s supposed death, Major Endicott crashes Morton’s party, seeking to arrest him.

  At the party, Sphinx sacrifices herself to save Dale from his true enemies. Endicott and Dale encounter an int
ruder dressed in the same guise that Roderick used to wear: the shroud and masque of Poe’s Red Death. Endicott retreats, and Dale brings down the House of Morton on this supposed Red Death (later revealed to be a possessed Colonel Hutchinson).

  Scherie saves Dale from the wreckage of the House, and they escape to the Sanctuary, a hidden land for America’s lost things and the spirits of craft veterans. There, Dale summons Sphinx’s ghost and learns part of the truth about the Chimera machine: that it has some human spiritual component. Then, Dale and Scherie face off against a squad led by Sakakawea, who is really Madeline in her latest body. During this fight, Scherie discovers that she is a craftsperson too, with a strong ability to dispel any ghost or possessing spirit. She first used this power unconsciously in her childhood against the ghost of a deceased family friend who was psychically violating her. Rather than face Scherie’s power, Madeline flees her current body for another awaiting her in H-ring.

  Dale and Scherie decide to go to the Pentagon, where Scherie will attempt to exorcise Chimera. They are joined by Roman, a Ukrainian craftsperson who has been operating undercover as the Morton family fixer. With Roman’s stealth skills (and the hidden help of Roderick), Dale and Scherie are able to penetrate all the way to H-ring.

  Within H-ring, Roman disappears, but Scherie and Dale are joined by Major Endicott, who has discovered the true nature of Chimera and the presence of Madeline and Abram. A series of combats ensues, during which Abram kills Major Endicott’s father and Scherie dispels the spirits of the physically defeated Madeline and Abram. Madeline’s ghost is absorbed into the collective Left-Hand Morton spirits. Roderick pleads for release of his spirit as well, and Scherie appears to dispel it.

  Major Endicott’s father is buried in Arlington. He’s replaced at the head of countercraft ops (C-CRT) by General Calvin Attucks. Weakened by her possession, Colonel Hutchinson allows herself to die. Dale and Scherie marry, while Endicott still faces the difficulties of Christian craft dating. Scherie joins the craft service and hopes for a mission to Tehran. The Endicott-Morton feud comes to an end.

  Unknown to all of them, Roman has smuggled Roderick’s consciousness out of the United States to Ukraine, where Roman has arranged a new body to hold Roderick’s spirit.

  PROLOGUE

  THE COURT OF THE RED DEATH

  And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

  —Edgar Allan Poe

  In Pripyat, the first snow of the year fell early on the deserted city and on the steel arch that hung over the Sarcophagus covering the ruined Chernobyl power plant. The windless cold was appropriate for this urban tomb, but unseasonable for early autumn, and the below-freezing temperature and snow were confined to this small, desolate pocket of Ukraine.

  Seven Russian soldiers, five men and two women, arrived singly at the exclusion zone that enclosed the town, having entered the country in civilian dress by car, train, plane, bus, and boat. They were spetsnaz magi—special forces mages. One of them had been in Kiev for over a year; the Kremlin had kept him in place and ready for such occasions. Two had crossed through Belarus, whose Moscow-dominated craft authority had raised no fuss.

  Over and under their body armor, the seven wore the latest hiking gear, which was as well suited to their task as most uniforms. All of them claimed to be tourists visiting the ghost town, though the exclusion zone was closed for the day. The guardians of the exclusion zone were bribed to allow entry, or in one overzealous instance, temporarily subdued.

  The seven weren’t surprised that they had been allowed to get so close to their target. Moscow precog had been able to see high-probability paths for them that ran as far as Pripyat without interference from the Ukie Baba Yagas. Beyond that, their target stood across their timelines, and nothing was certain.

  Their weapons were necessarily a compromise, portability and concealment being greater priorities than for most operations, though two had brought rocket launchers, as bullets might not suffice. While they assembled the launchers for use, another mage waved a Geiger counter. They all wore radiation badges. The area was supposed to be safe for short stays, but it was also supposed to be free of hostile magi, and how their Left-Hand target might use the local low-level radiation was unclear. Was it just to provide cover, or did he actually derive some energy from it?

  They rendezvoused in the northwest corner of town. Pripyat’s great housing blocks still stood, ugly, for 1970s Soviet wasn’t much prettier than Stalinesque. Snowmelt dripped through the now skylit ceilings; first floors bore the brown high-water marks of flood damage. In the distance, the Sarcophagus surrounding the plant prophesied a self-inflicted apocalypse.

  With a quick look-over, the soldiers assessed one another with professional scrutiny and mutual respect. Seven of the best combat magi of the Russian Federation, all here for one man. They could scarcely believe the overkill. Though perhaps one of them was not truly elite: of the two women, the tall one code-named Vasilisa was unusually thin for a craft combat soldier. She was here for a psychological reason that none of them cared to dwell on: she resembled the American’s dead sister, Madeline.

  None of the spetsnaz had doubts about their leader, a highly decorated major with the cryptonym Ogin, whose great-grandfather had died holding the line outside of Moscow during the Great Patriotic War after months of delaying the enemy at every turn until nature could bring winter down on their heads. Ogin had fought against Chechen shamans, Chinese border crossers, and mystic Bond-wannabes from the West, and he was long overdue for a promotion. Ogin’s presence alone would have sent a clear message: the Russian craft authority had decided that the new power in Kiev was not tolerable.

  Ogin held a monocular to his eye and scanned from right to left, then down the road that provided a long, clear line of sight in the direction of the melted reactor’s tomb. He let out a disappointed breath. Though it was perhaps too much to expect that their target would come out into the open to engage them, it would not have been inconsistent with his profile or previous behavior.

  Would Roderick hide in the operational buildings of the plant? Ogin hoped not. Though they had chosen a minimally staffed day for this operation, innocent civilians still worked at the plant, maintaining and containing the reactors, and craft collateral damage did not play well in the Kremlin.

  On to the necessary thoroughness of professional soldiering. “You’ll commence the search pattern,” said Ogin. He reiterated their assignments and pointed out directions, but even as he did so, his orders were moot.

  From the direction of the ruined plant came a false sunrise of craft power, glowing radioactive red. Ogin raised his monocular again and saw a single man moving toward them along the prospekt between the ugly housing, not trying to hide or seek cover. He was as tall and straight as any tsar in procession. About him, motes winked brightly in the night vision, as if isotopes were losing their half-lives on cue. A gray shroud covered his body and legs, making his movement look like hovering. A mask gave him the gaunt face of a stiffened corpse with a rictal smile. His shroud and face were spotted with blood.

  It was the American they called the Red Death. For the first time in mortal memory, Roderick Morton was coming forth for battle.

  They would not attempt capture or negotiation. Ogin signaled, and the seven moved with incredible speed, with himself and four others taking positions that would attack the American from the west and drive him toward the river, and two flanking farther out to deflect an escape run. A full circle would have looked pretty, but avoiding a circular firing squad was more important. They found cover behind the carcasses of abandoned trucks and the brush gone wild. They had spells ready and, like a sports squad, some were more magically armed for defense, others for attack. They saved their spells; they would need them. First, though, they would employ their clear advantages in number and armament—simple physics always had its place.

  The cold eyes behind the Red Death’s mask followed their movements and gave no sign of co
ncern. Then, as if giving permission, Roderick nodded at Ogin.

  “Fire rifles,” ordered Ogin. The seven shot their automatic weapons at Roderick to soften up the target and test his abilities. This man, powerful as he was known to be, had never been known for field combat in the flesh.

  Some of the bullets curved away from the American, some ripped through his shroud, and some seemed to pass harmlessly through his body. But some shots must have been hitting the American with real force, because the impacts shook his frame, vibrating him like a drum. These hits were insufficient, for the American remained standing, always bringing himself back to attention. The explosive tips weren’t exploding inside him, and the armor piercers weren’t carving him up.

  So Ogin gave the next order, and his soldiers lobbed some hand grenades and fired the rocket grenades. Use of explosives was regarded as more dangerous in craft ops, because it was hard to have a good friendly fire protection chip when a near miss would still be close enough. But Ogin preferred that risk to the risks of direct contact with this target, or even physical proximity to him.

  Explosion after explosion shook the ground. Pieces of the pavement and clods of earth flew up and out in all directions. The smoke and dust obscured the view. “Hold fire.”

  Bits of the remaining glass in the broken windows of the buildings tinkled as they fell with the snow to the ground. The view cleared; the American was down. Ogin’s lieutenant stepped forward from the left flank. “Moving in on target.”

  Some instinct gripped Ogin’s heart. “Hold.” This gave him a moment to justify his snap judgment. First, the unseasonable snow was still falling, which indicated that the American’s craft might remain hard at work. Though the American was down, he appeared to be in one piece. And, like many of his Hollywood countrymen, this man was known for theatrical treachery.