Fiddleback Trilogy 3 - Evil Triumphant Read online

  "They were too stupid to live. They followed you, did your dirty work, so they died." Crowley held up his left hand with the index finger pointing up. "And just so you know, I'm doing this solo — I'm no one's tool."

  Heinrich laughed heartily, but a bit too long. "No? I think you are. I would guess, for example, that you believe in the fiction of the Holocaust?"

  "I'm not a moron to be tricked into denying history." Crowley shook his head but never took his eyes off the Aryan leader. "The Nazis killed Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Slavs, gays and any communists they could get their hands on. Stalin did that and more. Mao's Cultural Revolution, Democratic Kampuchea, Kurds in Iraq and the slaughter of innocents in Latin America — all of these are historical facts. You can debate numbers and quibble about methods, but no one denies the results of the sort of hatred you preach. The ignorance and bigotry you promulgate kills people."

  Heinrich smiled. "This from a man who has just murdered over a dozen people."

  "No, Heinrich, you don't get me that way. You're the moral equivalent of a bacillus. You are intellectual Black Death, but there is no immunity to you. You have to be eradicated, and I'm here to do the job."

  Heinrich gained his feet in one smooth motion. "Do you know anything of aikido, Mr. Crowley?"

  "This has some bearing on our discussion?"

  "It does." He bowed slightly. "A master of aikido, such as I am, cannot be shot with a gun. Even as you think about pulling the trigger, I will see you visualize a bullet in your brain, and I will dodge."

  Crowley raised an eyebrow. "Betting your life on this, I take it?"

  "No, your life, actually." The Aryan smiled coldly." I just want you to understand how I am going to be able to cross the room and kill you."

  Crowley snapped a quick shot off at Heinrich. The Aryan slipped to the side as the bullet whizzed past and ripped into the wall padding amid a cloud of feathers.

  "Ten steps, Crowley, now nine." Heinrich feinted right, then cut diagonally forward to the left. "Eight."

  Crowley popped another shot at him, but Heinrich sprang out of the way and into a cartwheel that carried him wide to the left.

  "Give it up, Crowley. You're as good as dead."

  "Am I?" The occultist's eyes narrowed. "You know what they say, Heinrich. For evil to triumph, all that is required is for good men to do nothing. Do you know that statement's corollary?"

  The Aryan side slipped forward another step. "You'll tell me, of course."

  "The triumph of good requires good men make sure that evil men do nothing." Crowley let the gun track Heinrich, then he punched the trigger. "That's what I'm here for."

  The bullet blasted Heinrich's left kneecap to bone splinters before it continued on, shredding ligaments, mutilating cartilage and all but severing his leg. Screaming frantically, the Aryan leader fell back on the mats. He clutched at his knee with bloody fingers, desperately trying to deny what had happened.

  He stared up in wide-eyed terror as Crowley walked slowly toward him. "That's impossible. You couldn't have shot me. I saw nothing."

  "That's right, little man, you saw nothing. You saw bullets before because I let you see them." Crowley smiled cruelly. "You intruded at my sufferance, and now you suffer."

  Heinrich pushed off with his right foot and clawed at the padding to pull himself away from Crowley. "It won't matter. There are others. They will come back here. They hunt you down. You can't win."

  "I've already won, Heinrich. If there are others, I will destroy them, and no one will mourn your passing or theirs." The occultist stepped around the bloody streak on the padding and stabbed the gun's muzzle to Heinrich's forehead. "No one cares if you live, Heinrich, so now you have to die."

  He stroked the trigger once.

  Heinrich lay staring dead-eyed at the ceiling, his head surrounded by a black halo of blood. A tiny rivulet wormed its way out of the hole in his forehead. It flowed down to the bridge of his nose, then split in two and slowly filled both eyes with blood. When those shallow basins brimmed over, the dark fluid ran like tears down both sides of Heinrich's face.

  As Crowley looked down at the small man's twisted body, he decided Heinrich had been right about at least one thing in his life. There were other Warriors — stupid, homicidal bigots — who would return. They would find their dead comrades. They would swear vengeance. And, if they ever learned who had hunted down their friends, they would come after him.

  Crowley smiled. He knew that crew would need a big clue to figure out the identity of the culprit. He decided he'd give it to them.

  He slipped a new clip into the Ingram.

  He sat down to wait.

  Will filled a Styrofoam cup with what passed for coffee in Turquoise. He skirted a knot of men sitting in a circle in the center of the mess tent and found a folding chair that looked strong enough to support his weight. The second he sat down, the sharp legs of the chair dug into the earth and started to tip, but he righted himself without spilling a drop. Shifting the chair around to more solid ground, he sat back and put his tired feet up on a table.

  He blew on the coffee for a second, then carefully sipped it. it tasted better than it had the day before, or at least seemed to taste better. He put it down to a real improvement instead of just wishful thinking, as a couple of the workmen had actually volunteered to take responsibility for things like coffee and meals. The daily influx of supplies usually brought with it some surprises that made living in the blue wilderness an enjoyable, if stressful, adventure.

  Will had been amazed by the intricate and elaborate charade Jytte had set up in conjunction with the Japanese. She had argued, quite rightly he thought, that the workers were not going to function well if they believed they were being sent out and away from Earth to another dimension that could prove dangerous. The dimensional travel aspect just made things too weird, and that could have caused mass defections and unrest in the work camps.

  To avoid that, the workers were introduced into Turquoise through a three-step process that worked exceedingly well. From Phoenix the workers were flown in a jet to Japan. With the exception of a few workers who had been in the armed forces, it was the first plane ride for the workers, and it took very little persuasion to get them to avail themselves of anti-motion-sickness drugs. The systemic sedatives they were given kept their stomachs under control and dulled their senses until they functioned on a level just higher than that of a lobotomized zombie.

  Once they reached Japan, they were shipped in buses from the airport to the Galbro Center. Under the pretense of a physical examination and inoculations, they were drugged again and shipped to Turquoise through the dimensional gateway located at the center. Barely conscious when they arrived, Will, Tadd Farber and others in the know got them to the temporary buildings erected by the IDC ninjas.

  The third step involved the workers' acclimatization to Turquoise. For most it was not difficult, because the change of scenery made the place fascinating. The generally cooler temperature and abundance of plant life — albeit blue — seemed to have a calming effect on the workers. Very few of them knew enough in the way of astronomy, botany or biology to tell they were not on Earth, and those expressing concerns were soon argued into complacency by self-proclaimed experts in whatever subject happened to be being discussed.

  Everyone had gotten used to their new, temporary home. Most assumed they were somewhere in southeast Asia, and Borneo had recently been offered as a site. Will knew the night-music of birds and insects in the jungle was unlike any heard on Earth, but the Eclipsers had no frame of reference from which to draw that sort of conclusion. In absence of fact, they made up their own reality and felt more secure in it than they would have if they knew the truth.

  Will found himself slowly beginning to offer evidence that backed their explanations for things, because it kept a peace in the camp. The hardest thing for him to accept was that the blue foliage, when it started to die, turned green, then degenerated into a slime. One of the men suggested th
e bluish tint meant the plants were better suited to the cold, since everyone knew people's lips became blue in the cold. The green things turned to slime because they got too hot and just melted. While that explanation twisted logic into a Klein pretzel, Will saw that it made a basic sense and agreed to it to bolster the self-esteem of the man who had suggested it.

  Tadd Farber entered the tent and slapped a couple of men on the shoulder. He laughed at a joke, then got himself some coffee and came over to join Will. "Long day, eh, Will?"

  The Native American nodded. "Long, yes, but you seem to be holding up well."

  Tadd smiled proudly and straightened his shoulders. Will had seen Tadd grow stronger with the responsibility thrust upon him. The workers seemed to regard Tadd as an informal supervisor and often shared little problems with him. Because of Bat's apparent respect for Tadd, the other toughs patrolling the camp deferred to Tadd, and that made it easier for Tadd to keep some sort of order within the worker camp.

  "I'm just burning off energy I've been hoarding for years." Tadd slapped his paunch. "More cases of beer went into this than I care to remember, but 10 days here is sweating it out of me. We're ahead of schedule on setting up windmills and might maintain this pace if the phantom masons can stay ahead of us."

  Will nodded as Tadd lowered his voice. In conjunction with Vetha, a number of creatures that Jytte had called Plutonians had been brought to Turquoise to do heavy lifting work. About the size of a Caterpillar tractor, and looking like an ant built by the same firm that manufactured armadillos, the Plutonians had incredible strength and actually seemed possessed of a basic intelligence. With Vetha giving them simple directions, they were capable of excavating and positioning over a dozen huge rock plinths on hillside terraces, then raising dolmen on them to provide the height needed for the windmill mechanism. Will had seen them the evening they cleared the space for the encampment, and he'd not slept well for the next two nights.

  One of the men from the circle looked over at Tadd. "Hey, boss, you figure the phantom masons are out there tonight?"

  Tadd shook his head. "How many times I gotta tell ya, Bill, them's fairies on steroids. You leave a bowl of milk out for them, and they do your work."

  Will laughed lightly to bolster Tadd's joke. From the first, the biggest discipline problem they had encountered was the desire of the workers to go out and watch the dolmen going up in place. The lack of tractor marks around the work site, the lack of engine noise and the occasional breeze carrying some heavy and almost noxious scents from the work area became a mystery the men wanted to solve. Tadd had told all of them that the Japanese were in charge of that portion of the project, hence the lack of interaction, but a few brave souls had made attempts to see what really went on at night.

  The Native American looked over the lip of his cup and studied the men in the circle. Two are missing. The fat one — Kent — and the kid from Iowa. He grabbed Tadd's shoulder. "Kent and Billy Kaufman aren't here."

  Tadd set his cup of coffee down and swore. "Aw, shit, Mooney, you're not here gaslighting me while the Kent and Bill show tries to get a glimpse of the Japs, are you?" He stood and shook his head. "Not only will the security guys we got beat the hell out of them if they find them, but the Japanese have their cyberninja dudes out there. You guys stay here. Will, come with me and we'll see if we can find the Hardy Boys before they get into trouble."

  Will dumped his coffee in a plastic trash bin as he followed Tadd out of the tent. "You find Bat and get his people to secure the perimeter. I'll tell Hal about these two, and he can warn the ninjas." Tadd nodded and cut off toward Bat's tent while Will shot off in the opposite direction. Dead center in clearing he found the mobile home that served as the command center for the beachhead. He vaulted the wooden steps in one leap and pulled the door open.

  "Sorry to burst in, Hal, but we have two guys..." Will hesitated when he saw Hal Garrett was not alone and nodded to both the Yidam and Crowley's shadowform. "Two guys went into the jungle to try to see the 'phantom masons' at work. You need to alert..."

  "...the Japanese." Hal reached for a walkie-talkie. "They'll find them, don't worry."

  A hoarse male scream cut through the cool night air. Will turned and leaped off the stairs, then started to run north in the direction of the jungle and the windmills beyond. The Yidam caught up with him in two steps and Crowley came up right behind, though he seemed to be favoring his right leg. "I don't know what it could be — there's been nothing large and predatory we've found the jungle yet."

  "Could be as little as someone having fallen and broken a leg."

  Will heard Crowley's words, but he knew neither of them believed it. They broke through the broad-leafed undergrowth and stepped into an alien world. The night-music had stopped with the scream, reducing the jungle to a static scene of long shadows and deceptive vistas. Unconsciously, Will began to downplay his reliance on sight and started to concentrate on sound, smell and intangible, extra-sensory impressions.

  Crowley and the Yidam moved off toward his left. Will realized they were on the correct track toward the injured man. Making as little noise as possible as he moved through the jungle, Will could hear moans and a sibilant sound that he took to be the whispered reassurances of the second man to his fallen partner. The Native American knew he should head for them and offer assistance, but something else pulled at him and directed him deeper into the jungle.

  At one time Will would have denied what he was feeling. As he stalked through the jungle, he felt less himself than he did a vessel that an animal spirit could inhabit. As opposed to being a trespasser in the pristine, primal world of Turquoise, Will felt a part of the natural order in this place. The second he realized that, it also occurred to him that what he was tracking was something that was utterly alien to Turquoise.

  As he expanded his senses, the proto-dimension of Turquoise became alive for him. He could feel his fellow humans and sensed the fear oozing out of them. From the north, he caught the hunting-searching intensity of the Japanese as they closed on the scream. From the Yidam, he got a sense of foreignness, and more so the Plutonians and Vetha out at the windmill site. That he got no indication of Crowley did bother him for a moment, but by then the Yidam had reached the pain locus he took to be Billy or Kent, so he assumed Crowley's impressions were masked in the agony maelstrom.

  He drifted more to the right, closing on his quarry. He did not know what it was, but he could tell it was different and wrong. He felt it was the rough equivalent of a mechanical dog among a litter of puppies. It was the right size and shape, but just had an artificial, constructed feel to it. Will latched on to its manufactured aspect and headed directly for it.

  He found himself almost on top of it before he realized how close he had gotten. The creature's small size had deceived him into thinking it was actually a bit more distant than it was. The creature's head oriented toward him, and Will felt a thrill run through him as the creature's mouth opened in a silent scream, it bounced back, leaping out of his way, and smashed into a thick-boled tree.

  Part of Will realized he was unarmed except for a knife, but another part of him drew the blackened-steel Corvo knife without hesitation. He came forward, feinting once with the blade, then pulling back as the creature struck at him. Will hissed as he felt talons rake his forearm, but instinctively he knew it was nothing more than a flesh-wound.

  The Native American lunged forward and slashed the knife's curved blade over the creature's torso. A thin line opened on its chest and began to ooze black, but Will caught no terror from the creature. Instead of fleeing as it had before, the beast cut to the right, then slammed a bony fist into Will's ribs.

  The punch carried with it enough strength to lift the young man from his feet and deposit him in the brush about a dozen feet away. Will landed on his back and let his momentum carry him on a somersault through the undergrowth. He came back up, then ducked to the right, as if by instinct, to avoid the creature's hurtling body. It missed with its fl
ying tackle, and Will turned to face it in a small clearing.

  Will felt a curious detachment. He saw himself circling this short, slender and armored beast like a coyote searching for a porcupine's soft spot. He realized the creature had struck at him defensively, hoping to scare him or hurt him enough to prevent pursuit. It wanted to escape him, not kill him.

  Fearsome though it was, he knew it was not really meant for combat. The big eyes, large ears and inclination to run first told Will the creature was not a predator. This realization fed back on the mechanical nature of it, and the Native American suddenly understood its purpose in being in Turquoise.

  He also knew that discovery of its purpose meant he had to kill it. To do that he had to become a predator, so, without a thought, he abandoned himself to the spirits his grandfather had taught him about all his life.

  The fragment of human consciousness that remained in his skull accepted that the spirit that chose him was Raven. He flipped the hook-bladed knife over in his right hand until it mirrored a raven's curved beak, then came in at the creature. He feinted a slash with the blade, then kicked the creature square in the chest as it pulled away from the blade. A hop-step forward and another kick later, Will sent the creature sprawling.