TCD

Huge swaths of the high plains still lay under snow that first fell in November of ’42, but it was a dry cold and the roads were clear. From the air Headwater looked like an abstract map drawn in fine black ink on paper bleached an unearthly white.

The victim was found by a man in his eighties named Tashunka. He was older than the town of Headwater, a mere boy of the People when the Golden Gift came to Wanica in that final hunt. The biggest animal he ever killed was a coyote baited with a rabbit he caught in another trap. Tashunka almost didn’t see the girl. Her body was dangling at a roadside attraction that had always bored him. On a map somewhere one line terminated on another. Three states came together at this place, but even when there was no snow Tashunka had never seen any lines.

What caught his eye was not so much that the dead girl was naked but how her head and arms drooped back, and how her feet didn’t touch the ground, as though she were nailed to an invisible cross. So he backed up his truck and parked in the little tri-state corral. There were two other set of tire tracks in the snow and two sets of footprints which became a tangled net near the body.

Tashunka tried to be careful in his approach to leave the site clean for the sheriff. He could see no movement of the girl’s chest and no condensation from her mouth. The dead girl was too pale to be one of the People. Of a certainty she had part of the White Wing of the Church of Green Dome. Her ponytail gave that away. And Tashunka wept with frustration that he could not do the simple kindness of closing her frozen eyes staring out upon eternity.

Tashunka recognized the dead girl at last: Kimberly Zinter. Then he wept more deeply, knowing why she was murdered and guessing who the killer must be. Of a certainty the unhappy union of the Red Wing and White Wing of the Church was finished. He retraced his steps to the truck.

An hour later Tashunka returned with Sheriff Roddy Walker to the little fenced-off area nigh to the road. The tri-state marker was a wooden beam embedded in the ground, one foot square with a sloping top, and Kimberly’s back rested on this, held fast by frozen blood. The sheriff told deputy Bill to start snapping pictures while deputy Bob followed Roddy around with a notepad and took down a running commentary.

“I need to steal your sole with my camera, Chief,” Bill said, so “lay it out there.”

Tashunka smiled weakly at the joke and lifted one leg as best he could. Bill got a photo of the bottom of both the old Indian’s boots to make sure they could differentiate his footprints from that of the perps. Then Tashunka was left behind as Bill methodically photographed his way to the girl’s body.

Roddy and Bob followed in his wake while ld Tashunka watched from the road.

When the sheriff and his deputies completely surveyed and documented the murder scene they all pitched in, lifted Kimberly free of the survey marker, and laid her gently on a foldaway stretcher that sheriff Walker had brought with him. Tashunka was surprised to hear the sheriff shout an oath. Roddy has read the plaque that Kim’s body was covering and realized they were at the exact place some surveyor decided the corners of two states ran flush against the border of a third.

At a stroke that made the case Federal.

Then they walked the body out of there, pausing a moment for Tashunka to get another close look at it.

“This was Kimberly Zinter,” he told them, and he put his fingers on her face just long enough to melt the eyelids so he could close them. “I’ve seen her at Temple.”

The sheriff dug around in the glove box of his truck and came back with a manila folder containing a photo, which he compared to the dead girl’s blood-streaked face.

“The gentleman is right, boys. This was the local girl the FBI was looking for. One of the two, anyway.”

He noted how the girl wore a headdress that was similar to one that some of the Kuwapi townspeople often wore. It was a lattice of beads adorning two sharp white horns.

After the deputies carefully loaded the body of the girl in the canopy of the department’s green 1940 Dodge half-ton truck, Bob said, “So this wasn’t gonna be our case from the gitgo, even if she wasn’t lying dead spread out over three states. What do we do now, sheriff?”

“We’re going to do our job ’til somebody says different, Bob. Go back to the marker and start walking around it in a spiral that grows four feet wider on every turn. Try and find something that could be the murder weapon. Looks to me like that would probably be a knife.”

Tashunka said, “I remember when you were just a boy, sheriff, and I remember when you left us. None of your men are Greendomites. You might not be up on Church politics and they can’t help you. I don’t know who did this terrible thing to the girl but I can tell you why.”

But inactivity had cooled the sweat under Roddy’s coat and he shivered in the face of a stiff wind from the frozen plains. “This is not the place, Tashunka,” he said, “This body must go to our little hospital. But if you meet me at the station in an hour I will listen to what you have to say about this.”

After that Sheriff Roddy drove deputy Bill and the body around the large hill near the crime scene which was named Green Dome. It was almost five thousand feet above sea level, but only eight hundred feet above the town of Headwater, and it was never green at all in January.

“I just can’t win, Bill,” Roddy lamented. “Half the male population of Headwater between 18 and 45 is off killing Japs and Krauts and Eye- talians. Things were getting real quiet around here. Then the FBI sets up shop and stay all summer. Now I got my first homicide.”

They passed the stretch of national grasslands where the Bureau parked their trailer but there were no lights on, no smoke from a wood stove.

Bill said, “The FBI was here last summer but now people are saying they saw some G-men back in town, staking out the bus station and ask- ing people of they’ve seen our victim and another girl named Sofie Krause. Those girls were in federal custody somewhere for half of last year, but apparently they’ve escaped and made the FBI look … hell, they are incompetent.”

“But they wouldn’t kill the girl for doing that, if your thoughts are trending on those lines, Bill.”

Roddy drove around the northern slopes of Green Dome and Headwater came into view, the biggest town for a hundred miles around. The population was down to a thousand, now, owing to the war.

Bill asked, “What do you want me to do after we give the body to Dr. Wahkan?”

“Develop the film and file it,’ Roddy told his deputy. “Then get back to the scene and help Bob look for the murder weapon. I didn’t see prints leading away from the marker so I figure the perpetrator either tossed it away or kept it. To know what he chose would be a good thing for me to know.”

The town’s sole doctor was known as Wahkan to the People, but the whites called him Plenty Practice. No one had ever died under his knife, but even a local legend such as Doctor Wahkan could not call back the dead.

“Kim Zinter,” he said when he saw the bloody corpse. “Heartbreaking.” Dr. Wahkan donned a pair of rubber gloves. “I have never carried out this protocol for you, Sheriff, and for your father I have only done so five times. I last saw this girl last spring. And I also saw the other girl, the one named Sofie Krause. They both had the same symptoms.”

“Symptoms?”

Dr. Wahkan pulled Kim’s headdress away, but the two white horns remained in place. Holding out the jewelry, he said, “I know you’ve seen this before.”

Roddy nodded. “It’s a Kuwapi thing.”

Wahkan reached down to grabbed one on the horns on Kimberly’s head and he shook it, which caused her whole head to shake as well. “They wear the jewelry to cover up the fact that these horns are real.”

“I’ll be damned,” Roddy said. “I never guessed!”

Dr, Wahkan lifted Kim’s hair away so the sheriff could see how the skin of her scalp lay where the horns emerged from her skull.

“We call this the Change,” the doctor told him. “Naturally both girls were alarmed when it started to happen to them, but they were actually quite safe. The Change is known among the Kuwapi people. It spreads by sexual contact, but some are born with it. I told Kim and Sofie it had been present among some members of the Red Wing for a human lifetime and more, but they wouldn’t listen to me. Then I tried to explain it to their mothers, but they insisted on a second opinion. Now Headwater is infested with outsiders.”

“Headwater is a good place, Doctor, but my hand is forced simply by where the killer chose to leave the body. Kim was draped across three states. I must report the crime to the very outsiders who have made things not so good here over the last few months, and I’m not best pleased. So help me learn who did this to her, and why. I never knew the horns were real until you showed me just now, so I don’t think anyone else suspected, and I can’t believe she was killed just for wearing Red Wing jewelry.”

--

523 For years the Adanite army blocked and garrisoned all the roads leading to Salem from the north, south, and east. Salem lay on an island within a large lake fed by meltwater from a place where the northern and southern sheets of ice came together as one.

524 When the people of the city yet mourned the passing of Melchiyahu, the father of King Melchizedek, Michael spoke in council of the movements of the Adanite army he had discerned from the avatar of Elyon. “The forces now moving in the field are five times again what came against Salem before.”

525 “Five, or half, or a hundred times greater,” said Melchizedek, “so long as I reign as king over this city, none shall face the enemy in the field.”

525 “My lord,” said Lilith, “we have ships enough to carry all the people of the city away.”

526 “But where would they go, Lil? There’s a hundred small coves scattered around the Sea of Aramel where clans of fisherfolk barely survive from what little they catch and what lesser still they trade. The vale of the Dashok is too rock to grow crops.”

527 “Even so Your Majesty,” said Michael, “I beg you to release to me one seaworthy craft, at least. I would send spies to the very source of the river Dashok. Samael maintains a fortress in an ice cave there and supplies it by fold-door. It blocks any escape to the west. Samael has me at a disadvantage. he knows precisely where the cave lies on the surface of Kemen and I do not.”

528 “If my brother the king is willing," said Lilith, "Azarael and Jael would be perfect for the job. They’re ghosts. They could travel light and live off whatever supplies they find in the cave.”

529 “Then they shall have their barque,” said King Melchizedek, “and what provender they need.”

530 In the weeks that followed the Adanite forces closed in upon Salem until the city, which was an island that lay half a league offshore, was entirely isolated.

531 As the sarim Azarael and Jael of the Fallen Angels slinked their way through the ice tunnels far to the west of Salem only three of Samael’s soldiers ever discovered them. Their bodies were left to be discovered in such a way that their deaths could be explained as entirely accidental.

532 The two yen found the location of the enemy’s main storeroom of meat and grain. Not even Elyon knew the exact position of that space where it sat under the ice, but she knew the position of Lilith’s headband, the one capable of casting a bright light, at all times.

533 Azarael left the artifact inside a container near the center of the ice cave in such a way that it would not likely be discovered and moved, even if the storeroom were actively being drawn down, which to her eyes it was not.

534 After that she and Jael moved some distance away. They moved far down one of the tunnels radiating from the central space like wheel spokes, there to remain until such a time as they detected, as Michael put it using what he warned was extreme understatement, a disturbance. “This is not a suicide mission,” he had explained.

535 They would never starve amid the bounty of stores but it was always cold. Fortunately they had a good remedy that never seemed to get tiresome. In the cozy little rat’s nest they made for themselves Jael slipped nude between fur blankets and purred to Azarael to come to har.

536 Melchizedek considered abdicating the throne, but no one believed Samael would seat Princess Lilith on the throne to succeed him, and a successor more to the liking of Samael was unthinkable to everyone who was now dwelling in Salem. Yet a siege would be even worse.

537 He said, “Beloved sister, the time has come for the Fallen Angels to quit Salem or renounce the sword for so long as they dwell within the city walls.”

538 Lilith replied, “My brother and lord, this is a bitter edict. Raphaela and my fighting yen have already sworn their hand shall ever cleave to the sword.”

539 “And where shall they go, Lil?”

540 “Sire,” Michael said, “I propose to call together a council of royals with the aim of uniting all Kemen against Samael. I will fly Leliel to safety in Anshar but Lilith and Raphaela will lead the Fallen Angels to Rumbek. King Metatron boasts he will welcome any refugees departing from what he terms ‘the unlovely lands ruled by Samael’.

541 So steadfast is this enmity that I plan to commit Queen Aurra and King Uriel to the council before I even meet with the Larund king. I thank you, King Melchizedek for your years of service to me in the other world. I have made far greater demands on you than you ever did of me.”

542 “There has been a spring in this city,’ said Melchizedek. ‘It has lasted far longer and tasted far sweeter than anyone dared to dream. But if winter must now come to Salem, Michael, may the flowering we have known also take root outside of the lands trampled by House Gerash.”

543 “Will you reconsider accepting my offer, that your sister may not be parted from you forever?”

544 “It is tempting, yet as the centuries wore on I think would become alien to the living, like a stone smuggled into a nest of eggs.” The King saw how Lilith grew supremely unhappy at these words.

545 “Then Sire, think on the refined cruelty of the Eyes of Keter, and what you may suffer should you fall into their hands. Your sister accepted the Change and not even the pains of childbirth made her blench. At the very least you could die at the moment of your own choosing.”

546 Melchizedek said, “I have no fear of that. Every moment that I remain alive in their captivity Samael will fear I will be snatched out of his hands by my sister. No, Michael, my end will be quick.”

547 Melchizedek saw how Lilith was allowing her tears to flow freely. He was moved to drop the airs of a king, step down from the dais, and embrace her one final time as any brother would the sister he loved. He said, “I regret the years I had to admire you only in my thoughts.”

548 Lilith could find no words other than to merely sob, “Oh, Deck, this parting is bitter. Bitter!”

549 Melchizedek held her gently apart and said, “Michael told me Leliel is the firstborn of the B’nei Elohim. The Children of the Gods! How fortunate you are, Lil!”

550 Then like the shadow of a cloud passing over the white sun the King saw how they were inflicting torment upon themselves as cruel as anything devised by the Eyes of Keter by letting the necessary parting linger too long.

551 At his command Melchizedek was arrayed in his finest raiment, and he donned a jeweled cloak. Then he led his weeping subjects to the lower levels of the city, and Princess Lilith longed to follow, but Michael gently stayed har, and together with Leliel they went another way.

552 Two hours later a lone craft neared a dark shore thronged with the enemy after making a nighttime crossing from Salem, but no darts flew, since it was yet too dark to see the identity of the boatyang.

553 The living avatar of Samael passed through the ranks to properly receive the visitor. Suddenly night became day as the avatar of Chokhmah rose over the walls of Salem on a pillar of flame.

554 Samael was not distracted as the other yeng were. he recognized Melchizedek and ordered weapons free. As the Cherub foresaw he perished quickly in a storm of arrows.

555 In the sky the avatar’s light diminished as it bent to the north and picked up speed, becoming lesser in light than the orange cold sun that reigned over the night, then finally no brigher than an ordinary star as it raced out of sight. Never again would Salem know a ruling monarch.

--

The town of Headwater, true to its name, sat at the source of the Squaw River. Paved road ended there, as did the railroad. There were no hotels. West, north, and south of the town was nothing but empty grasslands. No one from outside of town ever spent the night in Head- water because no one ever passed through. The Bureau had to crane off a trailer just to have a place for its agents to sleep.

The Church of Green Dome had steadily lost adherents since peaking in 1917 but there were still many congregations scattered across America and even a few in Europe. When families of the deceased came to Head- water for the Last Rite often the only place for them to stay was the Temple itself.

The C Wing had six modest rooms which were offered to visiting fami- lies for their brief stay of a day or two. Klaus Hansen had never giv- en them much thought. As far as he knew or cared the beds made them- selves, so when he arrived at the temple with Paul Bergin in tow he was startled to find Dory and Gabriel cleaning the rooms.

“What is this?” he demanded.

“It went with the position of Extraordinary Lay Minister of the Last Rite,” Gabriel replied. “Somebody has to get the rooms ready, and now I guess the Deacon does it.”

“Then what’s she doing here?”

“Cousin Dory is pitching in.”

“I’m reclaiming Sundays for the White Wing. I only want Red Wingers to be here on Wednesdays.”

Dory and Gabriel, being Red Wingers both, made as though to leave, but Klaus said, “Not you, boy.”

“I’ll pick you up at five, cuz,” said Dory on her way out.

When sha was out of earshot, Klaus asked, “How’s your back?”

“The same as last time, sir.”

“Last time? You’ve been flogged before?”

Gabriel nodded hez head. “Lotsa times, sir. The fellas I run around with, we whip each other every now and then just to see how much we can take. And they’re not just love taps, let me tell you.”

“Where’s the Golden Gift?”

“It’s right here in the Temple, sir, just as we agreed.”

“How do I know that’s true?”

“This is the Temple of Green Dome, sir. Liars have no part in the life to come.”

“Show it to me.”

“Sir, Mike told me to only bring it out at need.”

“Who’s Mike?”

“Michael, sir. As in the original Michael.”

“Nevermind. Fuck Mike. You need to show it to me.”

Gabriel unlocked a supply room similar to the one downstairs in the temple basement. A red butter cookie tin sat on a shelf. It was empty but Gabriel needed the can for his trick. When che reached outside of the universe it always looked like somebody chopped hez hand off with an ax, which would need explaining. Gabriel produced the relic. To Hansen’s eyes it looked like che pulled it out of the tin.

“How do I know that’s not just something you whipped up in metal shop and painted gold? Make this box disappear for me.”

Paul Bergin set down a cardboard box he was carrying.

“What’s in the box, sir?”

“Old clothes and shoes. Never mind what’s in the box, just make it disappear with your alleged relic.”

Gabriel squeezed the Artifact. The hissing shifted down in pitch as the black rip in reality grew, drinking in the light and air of the room. Hez ponytail tossed in the growing breeze as he lapped up the box into nothingness. He tried not to damage the floor but it was unavoidable.

Neither Klaus Hansen nor Paul Bergin had never been so close to the Golden Gift in operation and they were entranced by the sheer other- worldliness of it. Gabriel was amazed at hez self-restraint for not slicing the men in half where they stood.

“Alright, Gabriel,” said Hansen when the thrill of the Golden Gift wore off, “put it back in the can and lock this room back up.”

Gabriel gave a very convincing performance of putting the Artifact away. A clever slight-of-hand never entered the mind of Klaus.

When it was done Klaus told hem to hand over the key and the look on his face seemed to dare hem to show even a twinge of insubordination, but he got nothing. “Who else has a key?”

“Paul does, sir,” replied Gabriel. “He never returned it after he quit.”

“I never quit,” Bergin said.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Hansen said. “Your wife is dead.”

“Oh, I know, sir.”

“What do you mean, you know? You don’t seem too cut up over it.”

“Cut up. I get it, sir.”

“The last thing I need from you is your mouth, boy.”

“She predicted it would happen, sir,” Gabriel said. “Besides, our Lord himself said, ‘He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and whosever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”

“Do you know what I believe, son? I believe the death of your wife makes me the Prophet of the Church, and I believe that in turn makes Paul the Apostle. We’ll be in the office making it official in the founder’s Green Book. And I believe you still have some rooms to clean.”

--

556 When the Fallen Angels forced the entrance of the ice cache the commander, Bezaliel, ordered a retreat to the central chamber while dealing out fire.

557 There his troops made a stand that seemed impossible to break. As Lilith’s forces emerged from one tunnel or another he shifted soldiers to meet the threats when they appeared. Lilith found it impossible to attack the core simultaneously from more than a handful of tunnels since the cross tunnels were few and the enemy knew them well.

558 Raphaela spied a drop of water rolling down Lilith’s cheek, and her lieutenant was shocked at first, then she steeled harself up to rebuke her Queen. It was one thing to feel despair during a battle, it was quite another to allow that despair to be visible to underlings.

559 But a large drop of water landed square on Raphaela’s head. she looked up to see many such drops were falling from the dimly-illuminated ceiling of ice far overhead. The drops became a true rain.

560 The ceiling began to glow with a light of its own and a deep thunder grew. Lilith ordered the Fallen Angels to disengage and fall back in the tunnel. The ceiling of the ice cave glowed orange before exploding, with the more fortunate Adanite defenders killed by house-sized chunks of ice and the less fortunate ones boiling alive.

561 The avatar of Elyon drilled into the chamber of ice with all six engines skewed, spouting fusion fire from the heart of Sol and turning the water to steam. The water boiled away and the bodies of the yeng were crisped by the raw flame until even their ashes were scattered away.

562 Lilith and her lieutenants walked to the ragged end of several tunnels trying to comprehend the chaos of the scene below. The avatar fell silent. Far across the chamber at another tunnel stood Azarael and Jael, both quite safe.

563 The applause of the two yen echoed across the now quiet space. Lilith dropped to the lowest level and spoke to the inert avatar. “Michael, if Leliel is in there with you, you’re dead. And if you left her alone in Anshar where Keter or Daat can get at her by fold-door you’re twice as dead!”

564 The avatar of Chokhmah began to shrink before her eyes until it was a white faceless figure with a head, arms, and legs. It said, “Do give me some credit, Lil.”

565 Lilith had quite forgotten that Chokhmah could fly her avatar perfectly well without Michael inside. Elyon marched out of the Adanite supply cache with every footfall sounding like an avalanche.

--

Tashunka waited outside the sheriff’s office long past when Roddy said he’d meet him, trying to stay warm inside his running truck. Roddy apologized for the delay and invited the old fellow to come indoors for some fresh coffee. “Doctor Wahkan had some interesting things to say,” the sheriff told him.

Tashunka followed Walker inside and sat shivering in his seat until the coffee was ready. “And what of the three stupid boys who took a bullwhip to a plains Indian and didn’t think he’d have friends who could do something far worse in retaliation?”

“The three stupid boys were still there looking perfectly miserable until they laid eyes on the dead girl. That seemed to make their whole day. Would that Headwater had a bigger hospital. They wouldn’t tell me what was so funny. I figure you’re about to tell me.”

Tashunka leaned back in his seat nursing the coffee. His eyes landed on a photograph of the elder Sheriff Walker, now deceased. Two years already? “Everyone greatly respected your father, Roddy, both White Wing and Red Wing alike. I was there at his Final Rite.”

Roddy flushed with sudden anger, but it was not directed at the old Indian. “And I, his only son, trained to replace him, was not permit- ted to be there at his precious Rite because I don’t believe in fairy tales about angels and sun gods and killing relics and I made the mis- take of letting everybody know that.”

“Sheriff, if you allow your heart to grow black then you will take everything I tell you as coming from the left hand of the damned. What you call the ‘killing relic’ sets the Church of Green Dome apart from all other faith assemblies. It is evidence of divinity which can be seen.”

Roddy glared at him while he took another sip of coffee, then lowered his eyes. Soon he was calm again and said, “You are absolutely right, Tashunka, and I know how important the relic is in the life of your Church. So let us call it by its right name, the Golden Gift.”

“You know Mark Lange was the first Prophet of the Church, and Wanica was his Apostle. When Wanica died, Prophet Lange chose Peter Two- feathers to replace him. Then Lange himself died, making Twofeathers the Prophet, and he in turn chose Klaus Hansen to be the Apostle, though he was very reluctant to do so. Years intervened before he was pressured to name Hansen.”

Roddy nodded. “Yes, I know authority in the Church moves from White to Red Wing and back, over and over so long as heaven and Earth last. That was the theory, anyway. It worked like a charm until the day the authority actually moved to the Red side and the White side didn’t much like it.”

Tashunka said, “Red and White wings swap power but the Golden Gift stays in the Red Wing. God gave it to Chief Wanica, who gave it in turn to Twofeathers. Hansen says the Apostle should have it. Twofeath- ers thought it would quiet things to personally give it up, but he gave it to Gabriel Shybear.”

“Gabriel Shybear. That explains how he got his whipping. And he said his house and the Temple had been ransacked too. They must have been trying to beat the Golden Gift out of him. Oh, it’s a good thing I never embraced the faith of the Green Dome Church as my own, Tashunka. It’s much too violent for me.’

“It gets better,” Tashunka said. “Twofeathers said he was setting aside the rule that Greendomites can only marry their cousins, in just one instance, so that Gabriel could marry Kim Zinter. When they heard that the Apostle, Klaus Hansen, and half the Bunners stood up and walked out of the Temple.”

Roddy smiled at Tashunka’s use of the word ‘Bunners’. By strict canon law all Greendomites had to wear their hair in a ponytail, even the men, but in the White Wing this ponytail was done up in a bun, even for the men. He shuddered at how close he had come to being a Bunner.

But even people who had nothing to do with the Church knew about their biggest hobby horse. For a time the Mormons had polygamy. The Greendo- mites have mandatory cousin marriage. Roddy knew a deep current of racism ran among the Bunners but the requirement for consanguineous marriages had kept a firm lid on it. Kim Zinter was fourth generation White Wing at least, she’d have no kin among the Red Wing. Her marriage and any subsequent children would have blown the door wide open.

As though he could read Roddy’s mind, Tashunka said, “Hansen would see this marriage between Gabriel and Kim as a horrible disease infecting the body of the Church. Their children would have marriageable cousins in both wings and it would just grow worse from there.”

“So now I have a possible motive,” the sheriff said.

Deputies Bill and Bob rushed in just then and threw a Cellophane bag on the sheriff’s desk containing the murder weapon. “We found it,” Bob said, “Just like you guessed, Sheriff, not more than throwing distance from the body.”

The blade was thin and flexible, nothing more than a steak knife per- haps.

Roddy picked up the bag and frowned with disappointment. “This game isn’t as fun when the other side isn’t even trying to win. Not a run- of-the-mill Sears Roebuck kitchen knife: no, something handmade, some- thing an admirer would make special just for the Church Apostle.’

Next came a duty Sheriff Walker found to be every bit as distasteful as his father described, the five times he had to do it. Roddy recal- led the recent death of Erik Zinter and he yearned to dodge the responsibility to notify Clara Zinter of the discovery of her daugh- ter’s body. How does one break it to a newly-widowed woman that her family has now been entirely wiped off the face of the earth?

The young woman who answered the door was not Clara Zinter. Her hair was a rich, dark red. She had eyes that were a light, icy green, striking for being so rare. She also had a pretty face but she was a little too chubby even for a time before film actresses and models made being skinny sexy.

“Are you…?” Roddy was looking at the spitting image of the deceased, Kimberly Zinter, standing in the doorway, patiently waiting for him to speak. He pulled out his file to be sure. Identical. He was not aware that Kim had a twin sister. “Is Mrs. Clara Zinter at home?”

“Mother isnt here anymore,” the young lady said, “I swapped places with her. Mom’s with her own folks in Pennsylvania. You’re Sheriff Walker, right? I’m Robyn. Do you want to come in? I’m sure you have questions and it will be better than standing here in the doorway.”

Roddy took off his hat and accepted her offer. The hardwood floors were covered with throw-rugs. He could smell the light odor of a gas furnace. A radio was playing “Ive Got a Gal in Kalamazoo” by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra, and Robyn turned it down.

“Please, Robyn, if you could turn the radio entirely off. Its hardly appropriate for what I must tell you.”

The girl complied, and invited the sheriff to be seated. He did so and got the overall impression that the Zinter family was firmly in the middle-class. Not destitute by any means, but not ostentatious either.

A small coffee table lay between them. Robyn smoothed out her plaid dress and Roddy saw that she wore bobby socks and saddle shoes. “You were about to tell me that you found the body of my sister,” Robyn said, “and that she had been brutally murdered.”

On one level Roddy felt relief. His duty to notify the next-of-kin had been mooted. But Robyn had stated things she should not know. “You dont seem to be too upset about it,” Roddy said, taking a small note- book and pen out of his jacket liner. The sympathetic bearer of bad news was a detective again. “When did you know your sister was dead, Miss Zinter? Did an old Indian fellow pay you a visit today?”

“Just Robyn, please,” she said. “One name. Robyn. Not Miss Zinter. No- body else has visited me today. I find it difficult to say how I knew she had died. If I speak it will be the truth, but then you would believe me to be insane.”

Roddy said, ‘Robyn, this is a murder investigation so I exhort you to hold to that thought, that whatever you tell me must always be the truth. Now, as for believing you are insane, I’m already having trouble with your attitude toward the news of your twin sister’s murder.”

Robyn asked the sheriff whether he had heard stories about identical twins who seem to have a link that defies any explanation. Perhaps stories about twins who were separated at birth. They never met, yet they led lives with coincidence piled upon coincidence, with the same type of job, and even the same type of spouse.

“Robyn, are you saying you and Kim had some kind of radio in your head that let you know what was happening to the other? If that’s what you- ‘re trying to tell me, young lady, I wouldn’t believe you were insane. I would run you in to the station for further questioning, for knowing material facts about this case with no plausible explanation why.”

But Robyn was shaking her head. “That’s not what I’m trying to tell you, Sheriff.”

She stood up and walked over to her record collection, where she pulled a ten inch 78 RPM record from its sleeve. Holding it up for Roddy she said, “Let’s do this by analogy. This is Kim. And in every instant of time, a copy is made of her. By the time shes seventeen Kim is quite a stack of records. But something happens to her that she can’t explain. Maybe she starts skipping. Her friend Sofie is another stack of records who starts skipping too. The music store says nothing is wrong with them. But Kim’s mother is a stickler for high fidelity and she won’t take that for an answer. She quits her job at the music store and takes Kim to Lusk for a second opinion, and she convinces Sofie’s parents to do the same. Soon after, both re- cord stacks are in impound. There’s six months of tests but nobody figures out why Kim and Sofie skip. The girls realize they’re never getting out of quaran- tine, so they escape, but that’s another story. Kim Zinter changes her label and becomes Robyn. Sofie Krause changes her label to Hunky. And soon Hunky is back with Doriel, and Robyn is back with Gabriel. Robyn and Gabriel want to get hitched, and the Prophet says he can swing it. But the Apostle says: ‘Will no one rid me of this troublesome platter? So the Deacon takes a kitchen knife to her. Now enter an otherworldly giant named Mike. Seven and a half feet tall! Somehow he reaches back into that stack of records named Robyn and pulls out a disk from after the Deacon stole it, but before he broke it, and starts a new stack.”

Robyn fell silent and stared placidly at Roddy.

Finally he said, ‘You win, Robyn. People as growing stacks of records? Thats too batshit crazy to take you downtown or lock you up. The Deacon did it, you say? Paul Bergin?”

She nodded yes.

“You didn’t give me enough probable cause to even check him out.”

Robyn said, “My sister was killed with a knife from Bergin’s kitchen, one with a distinctive handle.”

Roddy held his face immobile and said, “Possibly.”

“Tomorrow is trash day. If you dig in his garbage can you’ll find the whole set. You wont even need a search warrant since he has already thrown it out.”

“Now that I can use,” Roddy said. “Kim’s body was found on the tri- state marker, which makes it a federal case. Whoever killed her did that on purpose. That’s why I’m trying to break this case before the FBI gets here, on the principle that you never give a perp what he wants.”

--

566 After a number of days the Adanite expedition-in-force, having seen the ruins of the garrison, emerged from the ice and the underlying hills to reach the flats of Magodon, where like numbers of Brown Beards stood across the path of their advance.

567 Two soldiers of the House of Larund advanced alone under flag of truce. Samael and Belial wore no emblems of rank. Their raiment was that of common footsoldiers, and no banners flew over them, yet the envoys from the Larund side galloped toward the Seraphim without error.

568 Then Samael saw one herald was Lilith herself, to his admiration. The other wore a brass helmet but when he drew nearer Samael identified hym as he Ophan Barachiel. Both he and Lilith dismounted and sank to both knees, bowing deeply before Samael and Belial with their hands open.

569 She said, “My Lord Samael, Elyon is willing to give you that which you most desire.”

570 Samael said, “You have not the wit to comprehend what it was I crave most.”

571 Lilith said, “Indeed, the courtship of elohim is beyond reckoning, yet Elyon has put me in something of the role of a chaperone. You must please me to please her. Send the army of Adan back to the land of the Black Beards, and come not again save by leave of the rightful king.”

572 “Impossible, dear Lilith. I never relinquish one scrap where my forces make footfall. This all in Kemen know.”

573 Lilith turned to her companion. “What say you to this, Prince Barachiel? As touching oaths the elohim are never faithless like angels or men can be. Lord Samael’s resolve never to retreat from conquered land would also hold his army here just as firmly once his word is given.”

574 Barachiel said, “This land is of small worth. My father would be full willing, I deem, to give it in exchange for the word of a Seraph that no Adanite boots would ever cross west. And if that Seraph’s word ever proved false that precedent, too, would be worth the land.”

575 Queen Lilith reached into her raiment and struck up the killing relic. she dug a deep trench in the stony ground between her and the Adanites and said, “My Lord Samael, sight north and south along this line. Henceforth no soldier of Adan shall march west of this line. ”

576 Samael said, “So too shall it be a fence barring yourself and the Fallen Angels. You, and your daughter after you, shall be queen in name only, with no city to rule.”

577 Lilith uttered words formally sealing the bargain.

578 “Are you now sufficiently pleased, Your Majesty, that we may proceed to the other thing?”

579 She said, “Even if King Metatron ratifies our bargain there remains the matter of Demonstroke.”

580 “Yes, there remains the matter of Demonstroke,” said Samael as he reached over his shoulder to draw the blade strapped to his back in a leather sheath, the diamond sword known as Dragonthorn. “In Kemen, Your Majesty, there always remains the matter of Demonstroke.”

--

Mark Felt had been with the Bureau just one year but the quality of his reports filtering back to Washington had brought him to the notice of the Director, J. Edgar Hoover. On the eve of Special Agent Felt’s transfer to DC Hoover telephoned him personally.

Felt tried to maintain a respectful tone with the Director but he knew he was in for disappointment. The San Antonio field office was deemed a punishment detail where agents were sent to be toughened up, and it was particularly hard on agents who were married.

When it came it was every bit as bad as he thought it would be. Felt’s transfer to Washington to work on counter-espionage was put on hold until he solved a simple homicide smack in the middle of the country. Hoover took this one personally; and so, natch, the FBI did as well.

“You’ll be coordinating with Special Agent in Charge Clyde Tolson on this one,” Hoover said. “Do you know him?”

Felt could only answer that he knew Tolson was the SAC at a division of the Bureau known only as DECON, but none of his associates knew what the initials meant.

“In Clyde’s pretty little head,” Hoover said with a nervous chuckle, “DECON stands for Domestic Enemies Containment, Observation, and Neutralization. But to me, you, the other agents and most important of all, Congress, Tolson heads up the Special Projects section.”

“I understand sir,” said Felt. “But what if, by some misfortune, my work runs at cross-purposes to those of SAiC Tolson? Which case takes precedence?”

Hoover said Felt had the upper hand. He was to mesh with Tolson where practical but Felt’s reports were to go directly to DC. “Also you will have the complete cooperation of the local law enforcement community, such as it is. Not even Tolson has that. But bear in mind that Headwater is a small town at the ragged edge of nowhere. You will be shocked to find it lacking in most basic amenities.”

Hoover wrapped up with a few more details, saying Agent Felt this and Agent Felt that. In twenty years Mark Felt would draw close enough to J. Edgar that he would just be called ‘Felt’ but he’d never be on a first-name basis like ‘Clyde’ and that would suit him fine.

Felt did win one important concession. He received permission to draw a Bureau sedan so his wife Audrey could proceed to DC as originally planned while he took his own car north through most of Texas and three other states to fix this burr under the Director’s saddle.

--

581 Samael made the diamond sword Dragonthorn to dart this way and that, and soon Demonstroke was seen in the sky. As he drew nearer the armies drew apart, leaving only Barachiel, Lilith, Samael, and Belial standing at the new border.

582 The dragon circled to the north and lined up on the border. Even Samael backed away from the line, and the others found it prudent to follow his cue.

583 Lilith was fascinated by the grace of the landing. The wings of Demonstroke spread to their full extent and he sank. The dragon’s hind legs touched first, then he tipped forward to run on all fours. Demonstroke came to a stop and sank to the ground directly between the four nobles exactly on the trench Lilith had carved.

584 She saw that the beast did not belch smoke or even seem to breathe. With the beast so inert, Lilith’s curiosity overcame her caution and she advanced to touch the creature’s hide. she found its scales did not merely resemble metal, they were metal.

585 Samael said, “Come, Queen Lilith. Let us have an audience with King Uriel and so complete our bargain.”

586 Lilith watched Samael seat himself forward of a horn on the dragon’s back. Further, Lilith saw that Samael, who was patting his thighs, expected her to sit in turn forward of hym and behind a shorter horn. she sighed and took the indicated position, knowing it was the only way to be done of her errand for Michael.

587 Demonstroke sprang to life. Lilith was not dismayed by the sensation of sudden rapid flight. she had flown much higher and faster many times within the avatar of Chokhmah.

588 Far below she saw Prince Barachiel turn west to ride to his father and say he had given away the eastern hinterlands of Magodon. she also saw the Adanite force dispersing at the command of Belial to garrison their new province against invaders who would never come.

589 Demonstroke’s head bent back over them on its long neck and fire spewed out in a jet that propelled the dragon into the sky, pushing Lilith against Samael, and he in turn against the bony ridge at the place where the serpentine neck joined to the rest of his body.

590 The dragon rose until the air became almost too thin for Lilith to breathe. Then Demonstroke’s head bent forward again. He extended his wings and with gentle flaps the beast extended his glide as the waste- lands of Magodon rose to meet them underneath.

591 Then, when the tops of trees native to Kemen nearly brushed the belly of Demonstroke, he bent his head back again and let loose another long jet of flame. They chased the sun out over the sea and Lilith lost count of the cycles.

592 As westering Rigilkent sank below the horizon they glided down to one of the many scattered campfires visible on Sealiah. A party of Brown Beards were preparing to sup around their fire on the moors in the north of the isle when Demonstroke appeared and scattered them all away in abject terror.

593 When the dragon came to a stop, Samael slid off to check what was cooking, and he seemed pleased.

594 Lilith joined hym after pissing behind the beast’s bulk and found supper was a good beef stew made all the more delicious by her near starvation. she smiled and said, “Will your pet have some? Of course not, with only pulleys and ropes inside!”

595 “What a clever yen to have guessed Demonstroke is mechanical. Tell me, Queen Lilith, did you imagine any living thing could maintain such a hot fire within itself?”

596 Lilith shrugged. “At least Elyon’s avatar has provision to ride comfortably inside.”

597 Samael said, “Demonstroke has a different purpose than Chokhmah’s toy and was not designed to carry anyone. Were this Elyon’s avatar and had scattered Larund yeng to steal their food, the Brown Beards would already be returning. Not so with a dragon.”

598 Lilith took a deep swig from a wineskin no one would try to reclaim by reason of the nearby monster. “By the gods you have thought of everything, Lord Samael! But when we leave the beast with Uriel what is the qualifying stipulation? With thee there is always at least one.”

599 “I will tell the king that Demonstroke is controlled only by Dragonthorn, which is true, and that Dragonthorn must only be touched by a virgin female or it will grow brittle, and that is not true now but it will be true by the time we reach Jelaket in the land of Sastrom.”

600 “I knew it would be something like that. Do you know, Lord, that Michael calls you Ha-Satan?”

601 “Ha-Satan? The Accuser?” Samael considered it, then he shrugged and said it was fair. “I am allowing world-dwellers, collectively, to build the case they are not the Students. You are not the first world-dwellers we have known. There were others, yet they would not heed our wisdom. We watched them drive themselves to extinction. The true Students will accept our teachings.”

--

One summer head up the Big Muddy to St. Louis and hang a left. Now you’re on the Missouri, the longest river in North America. Go upriver past Sioux City, Iowa and hang a left again on the Niobrara River. Head west until you’re walking in a dry river bed. You missed it. Back up.

The Squaw River is a shorter tributary of the Niobrara, yet it has a year-round flow despite winding across the most arid grasslands of the high plains. Bison used to reliably congregate at the edge of the Squaw River to drink, and the hunters of The People knew it.

On a ridge above Headwater is a pillar of rock carved by wind to look like an Indian woman carrying a papoose in her papoose, hence the name Squaw River. Just west of town the river bends around the south and west flanks of Green Dome and pours from an underground cistern.

Headwater is where the river begins, but it’s also where the railroad and pavement ends. Other than a few dirt roads and old wagon tracks, the land north, west and south of town is literally the biggest void in the lower forty-eight states. Headwater has nothing for tourists, even when it wasn’t wartime and there were tourists to be had. The view from the top of Green Dome was out over thirty-five miles of nothing. If you were from out of town you were there to get hitched and your extended family put you up.

Special Agent Mark Felt drove to the strip of land where Hoover told him the FBI had dropped a trailer. It was unoccupied. Felt let himself in using a spare key he had obtained from the Wichita field office.

The kitchen was still a kitchen, but the living room was a workspace. He checked the trailer’s two bedrooms and saw they contained two cots apiece. So the trailer could sleep four agents.

Before anyone else arrived he shat, showered, and shaved to make himself presentable once again after two days and two nights on the road.

When he was finished Felt was still alone in the trailer, so he helped himself to files stacked on the desks. One of them, with brittle yellowed paper that Felt instinctively handled with great care, was a report on the final days of Fort Price.

The report contained pages from the commanding officer’s journal and testimony of the six surviving soldiers, including one who had been captured and maimed. Felt stopped reading the Fort Price file when he heard the sound of a vehicle’s tires crunching up to the FBI trailer.

Felt had already met Clyde Tolson at the handshaking ceremony the previous year when Hoover inspected his graduating class but this fellow wasn’t he. When the agent came in Felt thought the man looked more movie gangster than g-man, investigatee more than investigator, and somewhat later he learned he was one of the very few liberal Democrats to be accepted into the Bureau. “Are you William Mark Felt?” the newcomer asked.

Felt, who had been sitting ramrod straight in his chair, now stood ramrod straight on his feet and extended his hand. ‘Just Mark Felt, please.’ And the newcomer remarked on their mutual good fortune, as he was Bill Sullivan, and two Williams would have been confusing.

Sullivan approached the desk to see what Felt had been reading, amused by Mark’s body language which seemed to dare him to say something derogatory about the presumption. “Ah yes, Cowboys and Indians,” he said when he saw the material a bit closer. “How far did you get?”

“The Indians dropped a couple cows,” Felt replied, “and the Cowboys dropped a couple Indians. If you hadn’t shown up, Bill, I’m sure I would have plowed my way through to the part where the US Army lost their fort. A lifetime ago. Is this one of Tolson’s special projects?”

“DECON,” Sullivan said. “Domestic Enemies Containment, Observation, and Neutralization. I’m sure the Director told you this was Special Projects but my advice to you is to play along with Special Agent in Charge Tolson on this. At least until you break the murder case.”

Felt silently absorbed this and nodded once, clearly accepting the advice. He donned his overcoat and said, “Where is Tolson, by the way? I’ve only just arrived from the San Antonio office and the Director gave me almost nothing in the way of a briefing before I departed.”

“Tolson is waiting for you at what qualifies for a hospital in this tiny hamlet,” Sullivan said. “It’s practically a one-room log cabin. He’s with Dr. Ian Trochmann. I’ll take you there, but I won’t be staying. I’m still looking for a fugitive, one Sofie Krause.”

As Sullivan drove Mark Felt to the hospital to take over the investigation Felt said, “You got me wondering why Tolson gives a damn about the Army losing a fort way back when.”

Sullivan shrugged, because the report was incomplete and he truly didn’t know. “I guess it was like the little brother to Custer’s Last Stand. One thing that really strikes me about the Indian wars was how the Indians gave as well as they got. We only beat them with numbers.”

“Numbers, time, and the fact that they weren’t really as blood-thirsty as people make them out to be. Did you ever hear of something they did called ‘counting coup’? No? It was the wartime equivalent of touch football. They went to war like we go to ball games.”

At Headwater’s only hospital a plump nurse in her fifties wheeled out a shivering boy with bandaged stumps where his feet should have been. She was followed by Deputies Bill and Bob wheeling out one boy apiece, each with identical injuries.

Sullivan led Felt up the walkway and made the first introductions. “Felt, this is nurse Ella Fader, and in the wheelchair is young Scott Hilling. Ella, this is FBI Special Agent Mark Felt.”

Felt couldn’t help grinning at her name. She shook her head to warn him off.

After that Sullivan introduced Deputy Bob Lurz pushing Johnny Sunkel, and Deputy Bill Holsinger pushing Larry Porter. Felt wondered aloud why they were being rolled out to see the snow.

Deputy Bob said, “Agent Clyde Tolson was of the mind they needed fresh air for about an hour.”

Felt remarked on the similarity of their injuries.

Agent Sullivan said, ‘The Indians here used to believe if they could make a captive scream his shade would be their servant in the afterlife. Some still remember. Not quite the touch football you mentioned earlier. There was a young Indian fellow in this little clinic a few days ago who was flogged. Goes by the name of Gabriel Shybear. I think these three boys did it, and I think Gabriel’s friends worked them over with knives as payback. But nobody is talking. Nobody wants to name names.”

“Oh, there you are Felt,” SAIC Clyde Tolson said when they arrived. Felt remembered his oblong face and searing gaze from last year at Quantico when he inspected the graduating class 15 with Director Hoover.

The sheriff was also there and Sullivan made the introduction, “Special Agent Mark Felt, this is Sheriff Roddy Walker.”

Mark decided to hit the ground running. As he shook Roddy’s hand he looked at his watch and said, “Sheriff, it’s quarter of four and I am assuming responsibility for this investigation. The Bureau expects your full cooperation and coercion is never my preference.”

“Special Agent Felt, this department will pull out every stop to cooperate with your investigation. But I just wonder, why start now? A few years ago there was another murder over the state line. My father reported it up to the Bureau but he was told to handle it locally.”

Felt said, “I don’t know the particulars of your father’s case. In this one the deceased is already involved in a DECON investigation by Special Agent in Charge Tolson, and whoever perpetrated the crime arranged her corpse in a way that deliberately goaded the Director.”

Tolson appeared pleased by Felt’s can-do attitude and that he didn’t need to be reminded of his preferred term for the Special Projects section. He suspected Sullivan was instrumental there.

Sheriff Roddy introduced another man, still wearing scrubs, as Dr. Wahkan. And still another man was also donning scrubs. He was introduced as Dr. Ian Trochmann, part of Tolson’s DECON project, preparing to perform the autopsy all over again for the federal side of the house. Roddy said he didn’t think there would be much of the girl left after that.

Dr. Wahkan removed his gloves in a careful, clever way that avoided any contact with his skin and started to remove his overgarment, knowing that he was finished. He began, ‘The deceased was a Caucasian female. The deceased is known from her appearance to be one Kimberly Anne Zinter of Headwater, seventeen years of age, high school student and a vocalist in the church choir. Fingerprints were taken.”

Looking at the sheriff he also said, “The next-of-kin have been notified. The deceased has been dead for approximately eighteen hours with little evident decay as she was discovered outdoors in sub-freezing weather. I counted thirteen deep knife wounds to the chest. Six of these wounds pierced the heart and were the proximate cause of death. The actual cause of death was exsanguination, or in layman’s terms, the deceased bled out. The size of each wound suggests something larger than a pocket knife but smaller than a hunting knife.”

“Please get to the good part, Doctor,” said Tolson, visibly agitated.

Dr. Wahkan sighed and got to it. ‘Protruding through the scalp in the top of the head of the deceased are two small structures of white bone and cartilage resembling horns.”

Roddy Walker paced over to Kim’s body and took a look at the bone cup himself, once again, and feigned surprise. And once again he said, ‘I’ll be damned.’

Tolson regretted that Sheriff Walker couldn’t be sliced out of the loop like the deputies and the nurse had been. “Have you ever seen the like before, Doctor Wahkan?”

Wahkan said, ‘Last May this girl’s mother brought her to me. Her friend Sofie came in too, accompanied by both parents. The skin was not broken at the time. The girls only had two bumps on their heads. Their folks didn’t like what I said so they went to another doctor in a neighboring state for a second opinion.”

“What did you tell them, Doc?” Tolson asked. ‘That it was just a tick bite? Did you even take X-rays? We both know you did not. That leads me to believe you have seen these horns before, perhaps many times before. Doctor Wahkan, is that, in fact, the case?”

After considering his reply, Doctor Wahkan said, “If I answer one way, I’m lying to a federal agent, which is a crime. And if I answer another way, I’m breaking doctor-patient confidentiality. So you will understand my position when I don’t speak of this to you at all.”

“You should be more worried about losing your license to practice medicine after failing to help me shut down what could very well be an infectious outbreak.”

“Special Agent Tolson,” growled Wahkan, “if you truly believed the girl was contagious you wouldn’t even be in the same building with her body.”

To this Clyde had nothing more to say. Dr. Trochmann flashed a raised eyebrow and wry smile at Tolson, as if to say, He’s got you.

“Excuse me, sir,” said Felt, “but do you think this girl’s horns or bone cysts or whatever it is will have any bearing on the murder investigation?”

“The horns and how the girl got them is part of a DECON investigation in Headwater. Her murder complicates things somewhat. It becomes a Bureau case, but we’re not currently set up to carry it out. So I put in a call to the Director, and here you are. There is another young lady with the same symptons, a Miss Krause, and I presume she’s still alive and hiding somewhere in this very, very small town. So, Special Agent Sullivan, I thank you for fetching Special Agent Felt, but you know what, and you know when.”

“I do indeed, sir,” said Sullivan. He put on his gray fedora, tipping it to the sheriff, the two doctors, and Felt as he made his farewell.

The DECON doctor took up an electric reciprocating saw and began to separate Kim’s head from her body, heedless of the storm of blood and gristle that he unleashed or the loud objections of Wahkan.

Sheriff Walker found a sudden need to be outside and Sullivan followed him. On the way out they heard Dr. Wahkan said, “Agent Tolson, my prayer is that you find whatever you are looking for quickly, and never again return to Headwater. Not even uncivilized men treat their dead in this manner.”

A few moments later Dr. Wahkan howled an objection that could be heard even outside the clinic. Sheriff Walker heard Special Agent Mark Felt’s stomach growl and guessed the man might not have eaten since breakfast. He invited Felt to dine out. Felt heartily agreed, so long as the sheriff remembered not to talk about the case in the restaurant.

--

602 Jelaket was the keystone of Kemen, a seaport and the first step in the staircase of the Wall of God. The city was the gatehouse for all goods moving east and west and grew fat on the duties levied thereon in commerce interrupted only by war or, just once, by Demonstroke himself.

603 Many of the people of Jelaket remembered when the monster came last, and they were not happy memories. When Samael landed in the large outer courtyard of the castle of King Uriel, near the stables, he was most unwelcome, but a flying dragon need never knock.

604 Watching from the ramparts, King Uriel saw hez archers assemble in a wary circle around the beast as the two riders dismounted. One che recognized as the Seraph Samael, but the other, a yan arrayed for war, che knew not. They conversed with hez guard, and one ran inside.

605 Uriel reached a silent count of nearly fifty before the soldier appeared. “Your Majesty, Lord Samael has arrived, and with hym is Queen Lilith of Salem. she says they have flown upon Demonstroke from the frontier between Magodon and Adan and crave audience with the king.”

606 Uriel said, “And shall I treat with foreign nobility while their living engine of war skulks within the walls of my castle like a blade over my neck?”

607 “Your Majesty, Lord Samael swore the beast would not move one whit, nor even so much as breath, so long as he and the queen remain your guests.”

608 Uriel knew Samael always coated his menace with honey. Che said, “Attend to our visitors’ needs and seat them in the smaller council chamber. Send to notify the First Minister. Uriel knew the dragon must portend some deep form of humiliation that he would rather keep private.

609 At a casual first glance, First Minister Makassar Bronzesaber might have been mistaken for the king of the Red Beards, and Uriel merely his son. As a human male, for instance, Makassar really had a red beard, while the actual king, a jen, could not even manage a sparse down.

610 Lilith and Samael stood up when they entered, but Uriel said to them, “I beg you, esteemed ones, be seated once more. I do not relish observing all the correct formalities here. For one thing, Queen Lilith, your claim to be a cherub hast outrun any news from Salem.”

611 Makassar remained standing at the king’s side as though interposing between Uriel and Samael, and he was armed with a sword. Samael glanced at it. Uriel glanced at Samael glancing at it.

612 Che said, “Forgive the perceived affront, great ones, that Minister Makassar is girded for violence, but he tells that me you, at least, Lord Samael, bear a weapon, and would not lay it aside.”

613 Deliberately, with a stately pace that gave no hint of the violence feared by the king’s minister, Samael brought the diamond blade into view and laid it on the table with the hilt toward the king. he said, “Dragonthorn is not really a weapon but rather a talisman, Your Majesty. It has powerful spells to act as invisible reins upon Demonstroke.”

614 “Then tell me, Lord Samael, what does your dragon, and this blade, bewitched or no, have to do with me or any of the House of Bellon?”

615 “Your Majesty, if you are pleased to listen,” put in Lilith, “my father Melchiyahu lies dead. Samael took the natural death of my father as the signal to rekindle an Adanite family squabble and moved on Salem. My brother King Melchizedek suffered a decidedly unnatural death and I fled.

616 Yet I knew with his dragon alone Samael could lay waste to every city and town outside of Adan. Naturally the question of what to do with Demonstroke arose as we parleyed. In the proposed bargain, Your Majesty, the Dragonthorn blade is to be kept here in your safekeeping.”

617 “More specifically,” Samael put in, ‘I propose the blade should go into the keeping of a human female of the House of Bellon. She must be one who has never known man nor jen nor lan. She must remain pure for all the days she possesses Dragonthorn, or it will shatter.”

618 “And only once more,” said the king, “I ask why do you lay this burden upon the Red Beards?”

619 Samael said, “When I brought humans into Kemen from the other world I have ever played the natural philosopher, mixing potions to see what happens. Will one maid child break the glassware?”

620 Lilith spoke quickly to fill the sudden awkward silence as King Uriel fumed. “The Lord Samael made an unfortunate jest, Your Majesty. All of Kemen knows you to be a good and wise king. Who better to keep the dragon out of play than a consecrated virgin in your own court?”

621 “It is equally unfortunate,” said Uriel, ‘that I am in no mood for threats, even when explained away as weak jests. Take your talisman, Lord Samael, and make your offer to another.”

622 After Uriel had uttered hez decision the blade began to glow. Blue and white the weapon shone, until it became so bright that Uriel, Makassar, and Lilith shielded their eyes. Samael simply looked away.

623 When the glow faded once more Samael said, “Behold, the deed is done. Dragonthorn will shatter of its own accord without a damsel’s touch, and that soon. Nothing will then restrain Demonstroke from carrying out the purpose I instilled in him when he was first created, which was to relentlessly seek out and extinguish the life of every world-dweller in Kemen, no matter how long it takes. And he will begin killing here in Sastrom.”

624 “Your orders, my liege Lord?” asked the First Minister, and the king saw Makassar’s hand gripping the hilt of his sword beneath his tunic.

625 “Hold!” Uriel barked. Then in the ensuing silence the king sighed. This was the humiliation the king had expected. Che caught the glance of Lilith and asked, “Did you know?”

626 “Only a broad outline of what Lord Samael wanted to do, Your Majesty. Not this detail.”

627 Cherub Uriel looked into the eyes of Samael then and saw the matter was clearly nothing even Queen Lilith could describe as a joke. Che stood up. “Makassar, send for food and wine and see to our noble guests. A grievous errand has fallen to me and I must be about it.”

628 Lilith knew all along that only the king’s own daughter could safeguard the dragon. Samael had conditioned it upon her celibacy, and Uriel, for as long che reigned, could control that absolutely.

629 Seeing the diamond blade lying on the table and knowing Lord Samael had given it complete power over the dragon, a deception suggested itself to Uriel as a way to lighten the lifetime burden that was about to be laid upon Dafla.

630 Che said, “Behold the Dragonthorn, daughter. Take up the sword and none shall have the power to deny your least whim, save in the one matter of which we spoke. With the blade in hand the beast must obey you. All my subjects must obey you. If you so choose, even I must obey you, as well as Queen Lilith, and Lord Samael.”

631 Makassar, Lilith, and Samael immediately discerned what the Bellon king was doing, and none dared to contradict hym. Samael smiled broadly at how Uriel had just set hez daughter on the path to her own destruction and che had no inkling that che had done so.

632 Then the king’s daughter did take up the sword, unleashing another light show that impressed everyone present save Samael, who worked it, and Lilith, the wife and first disciple of Michael, who knew all sorcery to be mere showmanship like the gentle ruse Uriel was carrying out with Dafla.

633 Samael said, “I commend you, King Uriel! Demonstroke is now bound by chains that may only be broken by an act of human will. Furthermore, you have the means to travel anywhere in Kemen in mere days that would otherwise take a year or more. And none now dare assail you.”

634 King Uriel said, “Yes, Lord Samael, I considered that when I weighed laying this yoke upon Dafla, that it should be made lighter with a dragon at her beck and call. I need not see you again peddling arms of Adanite craftsyeng and making off with the gold of my treasury.”

635 Dafla took this cue and decided to test the power of the Dragonthorn blade. She pointed the tip at Lord Samael and said, ‘Leave at once, you, on foot if you must, and never return!” She pointed the tip at Lilith as well. “You must leave as well, for your part in upsetting my father!”

636 “Indeed.” Lilith stood up, reached inside her breastplate, removed a fragment of parchment, and handed it to Samael. she said, “I do not understand any of the symbols written here, but Michael said you would know what they mean and take this to be our next destination.”

637 Samael read the parchment and summoned a fold-door, the one bit of sorcery that even Lilith could not put down as a simple trick. she and Samael were enveloped by an insubstantial dome that showed forth a land free of snow, roaring with the dim sound of Mt. Anshar in eruption.

638 Lilith bowed to the king and said, “Farewell, Your Majesty! In the name of Elyon may good fortune be with you and all who look to you.” Then with a loud noise that frightened Dafla to tears they were gone, leaving only a familiar but unnecessary crater in the floor that was Samael’s calling card.

--

Roddy decided on Bea’s Chicken Inn only five blocks east of the hospital. Headwater wasn’t a very large town. Roddy took him over in the half-ton truck and along the way Felt invited him to spill what he had uncovered up to that point.

Roddy said, “We have what is very likely the murder weapon, and it has fingerprints. We have many photographs of the scene with tire and boot marks in snow. That house coming up is the home of the deceased. I made contact with her twin sister there, one Robyn Zinter, who is not a resident of Headwater. She already knew Kim was dead and described circumstances of that death. I didn’t bring her in because I knew this was going to be the Bureau’s case from the gitgo, and also because some of the things she said were pretty crazy.”

“After we eat I want you to bring this Robyn Zinter in for questioning at the station. Let me talk to her. Let’s see how crazy she is then.”

Bea’s Chicken Inn was kitty-corner to Robyn’s house. When Roddy pulled into the parking lot he gave Felt one more item from the case. “I wanted to let you know we have a lead on the owner of the murder weapon. My deputies will move tomorrow unless you call it off.”

“Why would I do that?”

“The source of the lead was the aforementioned Miss Robyn Zinter. But the lead is too good to risk passing up.”

“Do you think she’s indulging in misdirection, sheriff?”

“I can’t figure her out at all. She expresses zero sorrow for her sister. None. If I understood her correctly, Agent Felt, this Robyn is not choked up over her sister’s death because she thinks she’s somehow a copy of her sister made just before she was murdered. She’s intelli- gent and sweet but half the things that come out of her mouth make no sense at all.”

“I can’t wait to meet her,” he said. “But first, Bea’s Chicken Inn, you say? Did you know I haven’t had a bite since early this morning in Witchita?”

“Then you’re in luck, Agent Felt, homestyle fried chicken is Bea’s forte. When I heard you were coming I thought I would put Headwater’s best foot forward.”

When they went inside and were seated Roddy remarked that the place was much less busy that it used to be on weeknights. “Coal was the mainstay of the town and that’s drying up.”

Felt said, “I heard wartime meat rationing will start in a month or two.”

Roddy nodded. “Places like this won’t close up, but they’ll have to collect ration cards from customers and put them all together to get resupplied. I suppose it’ll be even less crowded then.” He shrugged. “Tell me about yourself, Agent Felt. Why did you choose the FBI?”

“I have a law degree,’ Felt said, ‘and I was leaning toward the intersection of business and government, but the war intervened. In wartime our country becomes, temporarily, a military dictatorship with all hands on deck. So as with your coal miners here my work dried up.”

“Your education was not criminal law?”

“Well, make no mistake, I was immersed in criminal law at Quantico. But the crimes that draw my attention don’t happen in towns like Headwater. I want to go after spies.”

The waitress came to take their order. She took the menus but left the two silver half-dollar coins that had been on the table when the men were seated.

“The people who ate at this table before us were from the Red Wing of the Church,” Roddy said confidently.

“How do you know?”

He gestured at the two coins. “Those half-dollars. 1942. The mint mark should be D for Denver, but they’ll both be O be- cause the die was worn and nobody caught it in time.

Mark Felt looked at both coins and confirmed that Roddy’s guess was true. “How strange. But what’s the connection to the Red Wing?”

“There’s a fellow I know here who runs a pawn shop, he brought these to my attention. Normally a mint mark of O would make these collectible. This fellow looked into it and found out the Denver Mint had struck about a hundred of these flawed fifty-cent pieces before their quality control spotted the problem and halted the run. But there are many more than a hundred of them circulating here in Headwater. Everywhere you go in Headwater you’ll see them, always from the Red Wing, usually retirees living on social security, this old fellow gets a tube for his radio at the hardware store and leaves some half-dollars, that old ady gets her hair done and leaves another stack.”

“Do you think somebody in Headwater is actually counterfeiting coins?”

“If they are, Agent Felt, I really don’t see how they would profit by it. If you melt a silver half-dollar down all you get is a half-dollar’s worth of raw silver bullion.

“But Pawn Shop Guy says the little O under ‘In God We Trust’ makes it collectible.”

“Sure, if there was only a hundred of them. There’s probably a hundred thousand of them now and they’re breeding. I chalk it down to one of the many unexplained things about this town.”

“Just before we met I was reading about Chief Wanica and a boy named Tashunka who somehow fought off a half-dozen armed men.”

Roddy was tempted to tell Felt the same Tashunka found the deceased, but that would break Felt’s rule: it was germaine to the case.

The waitress arrived with their food. The sheriff withheld his reply until after they were served. Then he said, “My guess is Special Agent in Charge Tolson is running that particular mystery to ground. But I don’t want to break your rule and talk about active cases while we’re eating.”

They stopped conversing and ate while Mark Felt expressed his appreciation for the food with grunts and eyebrow gestures. After a time Roddy asked, “How many spies have you caught, Agent Felt?”

“None so far,” Mark admitted. “I’ve only been with the Bureau for one year. Half of ’42 was spent at the Academy and in DC, and for the rest of the year I was in Texas in hot field offices doing little more than interviewing references people had listed when they applied for government jobs. Hardly the exciting life of a g-man that I envisioned.”

“How’s the pay?”

“About sixty a week.”

“Not shabby at all, Special Agent Felt.”

“What is shabby is having to pick up and move every few months. My wife Audrey and I were in the middle of another move to DC so I could catch spies like I wanted, but I got diverted here.”

“How long have you been married?”

“Just four years, Sheriff Walker. The Director moves agents around for no better reason than to ‘toughen them up’ as he puts it, and he will never understand the toll it takes on the families of those agents. But somehow my beautiful girl still puts up with me.”