Christiansen had picked his targets and fired short controlled bursts, just like Sullivan had been taught as a machine gunner in the First. There were six bodies between the cars and the front of the cabin, all in various states of destruction. A large blood trail through the soft dust showed Sullivan where another man had been plugged bad, but had somehow kept moving.
One car was abandoned, hole through the radiator, puddle underneath. Tracks showed where the other had turned around and left.
The walk had left Sullivan winded and his wounds aching, but he'd found the ambush spot. There were over a hundred shell casings, and since the Browning ejected straight down, they tended to collect in a pile. Deep pockmarks in the rock showed where the goons had returned fire.
It was the other set of tracks that appeared suddenly behind Christiansen's position that showed what happened next. The cloven hooves were massive, but the spacing told Sullivan that they came from a bipedal creature. He put his own considerable weight down in the dirt, and saw that in comparison the creature had been far heavier. Then the signs became confusing as the Summoned had descended on Christiansen. There was a claw mark scored into the rock where it had swung and missed. The three talons covered almost twice the space as Sullivan's big hand. The dried blood splatter told how it had ended.
So now Sullivan sat under a tree, pondering what it all meant, while Heinrich and Garrett were having their turn being questioned. They had arrived twenty minutes after the law. Someone had seen the smoke rising from the valley and called it in. As strangers in the tiny community they were automatic suspects. A few radio calls and a bit of investigation had confirmed that they'd arrived in Ogden too late to be the killers, but that didn't make them any less suspicious.
Garrett was doing the talking, which was for the best, since with a little gentle magic, Garrett could probably talk his way out of near anything. Sullivan figured that Dan would have been smooth even if he didn't have magic. The man sure didn't look like much, but he'd probably make one hell of a door to door salesman. Sullivan had taken a liking to him, despite having to constantly check his head to make sure that it wasn't the Mouth's magic talking. Heinrich was polite, but it was obvious that he personally didn't like Sullivan much. Jake was fine with that. He didn't really have any friends, and wasn't looking to start collecting them, either.
The two Grimnoir joined him under the tree a bit later. "Sheriff says we're free to go," Garrett said. "I guess that ol' Sven had a reputation in the local Danish community of having a lot of secrets in his past. They didn't seem too surprised to see him end up like this. What do you think happened?"
"One big-ass demon got him," Sullivan said. "Probably eight hundred pounds. Which means we're dealing with a Summoner like I ain't seen since the war."
"You can read sign?" Heinrich asked, surprised. "You struck me a city boy."
"I come from a place not much different than here. If we didn't kill it our own self, then we didn't get to eat. I moved to the city because that's where the work was."
Garrett squatted down next to him and pulled out a smoke. "Anything else?"
"Another one of them got shot real bad, lost most of his blood, but his tracks say that he walked around under his own power for a long time. Looks like a big old boy. Probably three hundred pounds and I bet he has to get his boots made special, like me. Plus he was shooting this." Sullivan reached into his pocket and pulled out the moon-clip. It consisted of six, fired, brass cases snapped into a sheet-metal circle. He tossed it toward Heinrich, who caught it easily and held it up to read the head stamp.
".50 RL? These are huge. This come out of a cannon?"
"Russian Long," Sullivan said. "Cossack cavalry had a limited run of them made for their war against the Japanese. Smith amp; Wesson filled the contract. Cossacks wanted something portable and short, but could still punch a Jap helmet at three hundred yards. The shells were clipped together so they could load easier from the back of a moving bear. Damn thing even has a shotgun barrel for when they were up close in the trees. Most powerful handgun in the world, made specifically for Brutes, because it was loaded so hot it could sprain the wrist of a normal man."
"Don't see those around very often," Garrett said.
"So this big boy with the big gun got hit a bunch of times, but kept moving. At first I thought he'd been killed from all the blood, then brought back as a damn filthy zombie."
Heinrich scowled. "You've got a real problem with zombies, don't you?"
"I only want to have to kill somebody once. Killing them twice seems like work. But the tracks aren't from a zombie. They shuffle, stumble, like their balance is all gone, and they don't take cover like this one did. So he got opened up, dumped most of his blood, and didn't worry about it. Either of you know what Power that could be?"
"There are other things besides natural Powers…" Heinrich suggested. "We've not had a chance to tell you about those yet. The Imperium has special soldiers. The Chairman picks them himself."
"They're called the Iron Guard," Garrett added. "They're all strong Actives to start with, but then he changes them."
"What do you mean changes?"
"There are two kinds of magic, Sullivan." Garrett explained. "Natural occurring Powers. One Power, one person. Everybody knows how that works."
He didn't correct him, though he personally knew Garrett was wrong. Sullivan figured he was good for at least a one and a half himself.
"Then there are spells, where with different tricks you can capture some of the Power and use it."
"The Power can be chained to certain signs and words," Heinrich said. "All Grimnoir learn a few, but we don't delve too deep. It's too dangerous. You screw up a chaining the Power to a word and bad things happen. Some of us are more talented than others."
"We stick with the easy ones, and we practice the hell out of them before we're allowed to do them on our own," Garrett said. "The Imperium, though, they push the limits. They mark their servants, even ones that have no magic of their own. They'll mark multiple words permanently on their Guards. It makes them into something else, something not human."
The swordsman. He'd been different. Not only was his Power something Sullivan had never seen before, it had been too strong. As they'd grappled, he'd felt the unnatural heat coming from under his shirt, like there had been something on fire against his skin. "Rokusaburo?"
"Normally we don't try to take an Iron Guard unless we've got at least five-to-one odds, preferably more. We got lucky…" Daniel grunted as he stood up. "Come on, boys, we've got a long ride ahead of us." Mar Pacifica, California The Imperium goon was tied to a chair in the center of the empty storage room. As nicely equipped as the family estate was, it had not come with a proper dungeon, so they had to make do. A single naked light bulb hung directly over their prisoner's head. Francis and Delilah were standing back in the shadows, watching. Lance was the most experienced at… well, everything, and was going to do the actual questioning.
Francis found himself praying that the man would roll over and talk quickly, because he didn't have the stomach for violence. Sure, he'd killed his fair share of evil men. He'd even shot one of this particular fellow's associates in the face with a P17 Enfield, but pulling the trigger or using his Power to bash someone's head in during a battle was different than hurting someone who was completely at your mercy.
Remember the Imperium schools, Francis… He curled his hands into fists and steadied himself for whatever would come next. He and his family and other important delegates had been given a guided tour of one of the premier facilities in Tokyo. As many bored young men tended to do, Francis had wandered off the approved path and gotten lost. He'd seen the parts of the school that weren't shown to the outside world, and it had changed him for the rest of his life. Never forget what they did to the children. Anyone who supported the schools deserved whatever they got.