Back in the Preserve, and later in Chicago, he had learned that on occasion he could summon up a talent, an ability to drain off, absorb the abilities of others. Not always, it was hit-or-miss, as was virtually everything on this loony tunes planet since the advent of the Megillah.
But when it worked…brother, hold on to your hat.
So when Herman Goldman lip-locked that Empress of toothy grays and not-so-amusing windup toys, he had utterly no delusions that he was Tom Cruise or Antonio Banderas.
He wasn’t trying to get into her pants, he was trying to get into her powers.
And in that moment of intense, electric contact, he’d definitely felt as if something were being transferred. (He had also felt, absurdly, ashamedly, that he was betraying Magritte in this act, but he pushed this aside, submerged it; beyond anything, this was in service to her, to her memory.)
Now it was time to see how well he’d done….
The harpy wind was banging a metal sign on the side of the road back and forth into its crossbeam, causing it to warble eerily like a demented musical saw. Goldie extended a hand out toward it and thought, Stop that.
It did absolutely nothing.
Under the pale starlight and dipping moon, he then tried similarly to animate a tractor, then a harvester, then-more modestly-the ragged remains of a scarecrow (whose purpose, he supposed, had originally been more rustically ornamental than practical).
Gutter ball.
It was a humbling experience.
All right, then, power deux. Portals, and the opening thereof…
He already possessed the ability to resummon one recently cracked by another, more skillful practitioner, or to create a transport between two sacred points, like the Adena burial mounds and Olentangy Indian Caverns.
But peering off to the black horizon where the moon was just now setting, Goldie realized he was damn short of practitioner or sacred site at this given moment.
Nothing but grass and dirt and air.
“Oh, what the hell.” He made a broad round motion with his hand at the empty, cold air. “Open,” he said.
And damned if it didn’t.
The door in the air glowed purple along its periphery of mute flame, and a vista beyond showed daylight.
Herman Goldman stepped through, to see what he could see.
It turned out to be Albany, New York.
He stepped back into Iowa, then made holes to San Simeon, and Dubuque, and Alberta, Canada.
But, as the Bitch Queen had said of the warp and woof of her own special abilities, he found he couldn’t summon portals to a location across the sea, or anywhere near the place to the west the dark siren call of the Source summoned him.
They would still have to find another way there.
And there might well be any number of other limitations, hiccups in his range and reliability.
Even so, he felt sure this borrowed-all right, stolen-gift would come in mighty handy.
The sound of horses whinnying behind him turned him around.
Cal stood with Colleen and Doc and the others from camp, all packed up and ready for bear. He saw his friends had let those who had sustained the roughest handling back at the mall ride the horses. Only one of their team members was missing, the grunter Inigo, and it felt right somehow that he was not among them; perhaps at last he had returned to the track Goldie had shunted him from earlier this evening.
“We’re pulling up stakes,” Cal said. “Heading back to Atherton. You game?”
He was indeed.
The town would be the same, wrapped in the chaos he alone could sense.
But better the Devil you know than the one you don’t. And Herman Goldman had known the Devil, that carrion eater, that deliverer of chaos, when the scarlet gent had paid a call on him in grad school. And then again, if more subtly, when the Change had come, and when it had taken Magritte from him.
He would let the chaos that engulfed the town engulf him now. He wanted it, as he wanted other chaoses, other destructions that beckoned to him down the far road of the future.
With his new power humming in his veins like myriad voices along a telephone wire, Herman Goldman felt utterly sure he would get exactly what he wanted.
Just before the sun rose, as their party neared the slope that led down into Atherton, Doc Lysenko spied the bulk of the dead dragon that lay silhouetted amid the singed grasses.
He grew thoughtful and said to Cal, “I would very much like that brought into town, to where I might perform an autopsy.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Cal responded, and moved off to speak with Jeff Arcott.
In the end, it took Arcott sending out a flatbed with a full work crew to hoist the carcass and transport it to town, to the hospital morgue where Doc awaited it with gleaming knives.
And while Doc’s tender ministrations ultimately proved more butchery than autopsy, no one could deny that the dragon turned out considerably more useful in death than he had ever been in life.
TWENTY-FOUR
The horses were shrieking, to begin with.
Mama Diamond spoke to them low in their own tongue, coaxing, reassuring.
“It’s not real, Fine Stallion. It’s not real, Brave Mare….”
Just the same as you’d calm a child, waking screaming from a bad dream. Only this was a nightmare that went on and on, and you were in it right along with them.
The only difference being that Mama Diamond could see it was an illusion, nothing to be scared of-at least, as far as she was concerned.
But to a horse held in its snare, or a man…
Even a man made of metal as hard-forged as Larry Shango.
He sat atop Cope, and Mama Diamond atop Marsh, as they rode down the gentle slope of valley into the college town of Atherton, Iowa. Glancing over at him in the moonlight, Mama Diamond could see from the set of his jaw and the shining grimness in his eyes that it was taking all he had not to be screaming, too. Frosty breath blew from his nostrils like steam off a locomotive, as he kept his mouth clamped tight.
Mama Diamond thought of the quiet efficiency with which Shango had wielded his hammer against the wolves around his campfire, the way he’d used fist and boot and knee to lay waste to the men who’d had the arrogance and naivete to rise up against him in that nameless town far behind them on their road east.
What you see ahead of you doesn’t just summon up old, bad dreams, my friend. Mama Diamond felt sure the nightmares it stirred in Shango’s memory were all too real, rivers of blood he’d waded through on this broad continent or another, bound by unwavering commands that brooked no direction but forward. And she felt equally certain he had been as silent then as now.
Not a man to complain, no matter how grueling the journey, how much it shredded one’s soul, tore at body and mind and heart. Mama Diamond thought back on the few words Shango had said when telling her of his ordeal in the Badlands trying to reach the Source Project.
Not an easy trip. And fifty-three miles from it…I was turned away. Not a word more, nothing of his feelings, nor what he’d suffered alone under the gaze of those granite spires.
Was he thinking of that time now, of the nameless horrors the Storm had thrown against him?
Whether he was or not, Mama Diamond knew Shango needed no soothing words, no comforting tone. He was a man on a track, headed in one direction…no matter how vile the smell or appalling the sight, how real or unreal the monsters.
Mama Diamond smiled then, a flinty smile, and nudged Marsh forward. She realized that just as she spoke the language of wolf and horse and cat, she spoke Shango’s language, too.