American Craftsmen by Tom Doyle

Author:Tom Doyle
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: A Tom Doherty Associates Book
Published: 2014-05-07T04:43:16.336000+00:00

CHAPTER

FOURTEEN

I sat up quick like a vampire, feeling good. Very good. Too good. I’d gotten the shit kicked out of me; I shouldn’t be going anywhere. The room was full of the dull glow of fading craft, a cosmic background radiation beeping its signal to anyone with the sense to look. The Bibles must be ringing out of their drawers throughout the hotel.

My wounds still felt stiff and sore. The craftwork had been too general to fully heal these specific hurts, yet too powerful to be ignored. The craftsman had probably worked from a distance, and didn’t want me truly healed, just marked for the hunt.

I whispered into Scherie’s ear. “Get up. We’re leaving.”

Scherie opened her eyes on darkness. “Five a.m. reveille?”

“Quiet,” I said. “No lights. We’ve been made.” I allowed myself the luxury of a doubt: perhaps she had not betrayed me to this bad Samaritan craftsman.

Scherie moved slowly. Events seemed to have caught up with her. I tried to calculate where my pursuers were, but there were too many variables: the time of the healing, the availability of backup to the individual who had painted me with craft sonar. Assuming the worst, we should already be dead. Most likely they had the motel staked out. If the one craftsman had found me, my ruse with the front desk wouldn’t delay the Gideon hounds. When they were confident of the ground, when they had claimed their territory with sigils and holy piss, they would break in on us. There would be three of them; against a craftsman, trackers always went in threes.

With unprofessional abandon, I peeked through the shade. In the dawn light, my car was just a hunk of mundane metal, plainly visible to all. Roman’s craft was all but gone. But that also meant that the car would draw no particular attention.

Bumppo with his curly golden hair stood next to the rear of the Porsche in front of room 128, speaking on his cell phone, looking about the motel, unhappy and concerned despite the professional poker face. Like a hound, he sniffed the air, and bared his teeth. The Porsche had served as bait, just as I had hoped.

Whoever had healed me hadn’t spoken to these trackers. The eventual result would be the same, however: the healing craft was a telltale of my survival. My luck had been that these Gideons were lazy, relying on a mundane witness and whiff of power instead of their deeper craft.

Bald Carson hauled bodies wrapped in blankets into the trunk of the Gideons’ black sedan. They had killed the people in 128 before they’d realized their mistake. Two civilians. I felt the pain, and then the anger. I had miscalculated the rules of engagement, and two innocents had paid for it. Whatever had happened there couldn’t have been a real fight. These trackers had come for an execution.

Where was the third, Sakakawea? Perhaps questioning the clerk with more thoroughness. Perhaps they had been in a hurry, and only two had come. Wishful thinking.

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