Ghostwalkers (39 page)

“And for our generation? How many of us here will write our histories in the blood of those we conquer? Who among us has that greatness burning in their hearts? Who here will ascend to their throne on a stairway of corpses? Tell me, my brothers, who?”

A dozen swords instantly flashed from scabbards as every officer cried out his own name, bellowing loud enough to imprint their arrogance like a tattoo on the flesh of destiny. Every soldier echoed the name of his general. They crashed their rifle butts onto the hard ground and they all spoke with the thunderous voice of conquest.

Deray let it go on and on until fragments of crystal and rock fell like rain from the ceiling. Then he raised his hand. A simple gesture, palm out, at shoulder height. Silence crashed down around them.

Grey heard Looks Away very softly say, “By the Queen's perfumed knickers.”

The silence held for ten long seconds before Deray broke it.

“Ghost rock,” he said, putting the words onto the humid air. They seemed to hang there, burning. “Earth herself tore open her flesh and vomited it into our world. A stone, ugly and useless to the unenlightened. But to those with vision, to those who
dare
—?” He paused so that his next word would eclipse what he had already said. A simple word, filled with so much meaning. “Power.”

On the ground, Nolan Chesterfield whimpered.

“Since it was discovered, the wisest, the most devious of our engineers and scientists have labored to unlock its secrets, and much have they discovered. Much have we been able to accomplish. Weapons capable of mass destruction. Machines that will work day and night, and at speeds never before imagined. Warships that can sink any wooden fleet without risking the lives of their own crews. Mechanical wagons with cannons that can chase down mounted cavalry and grind them into the dirt.” He paused and repeated the word. “Power.”

He began walking again, circling the prisoners without looking at them.

“My brothers,” he continued, “you have come thousands of miles and traveled deep beneath the earth to join me on this propitious day. You have already seen many of the weapons that I am willing to share with you. The new generation of small arms that will let a few conquer many. As you travel home with your purchases, I will watch the news with interest as the houses of the weak fall to the guns of the mighty.”

Once more the generals and their soldiers bellowed, and once more the cavern shook.

And once more Deray held up his hand for the silence that fell immediately.

“Now I want to show you more. So. Much. More.” He spaced the words out. “Now I will show you the new age of warfare.” He held a hand theatrically to his ear. “Listen. Can you hear the future coming? Can you hear the gears of this world grind into a different gear? Can you hear it?”

They could all hear it.

Everyone there could hear it.

From beyond the gates came the machine sound Grey had heard earlier, and in the shadow he could see something move.

Some.

Thing.

It walked like a man.

Tall, on long legs, with its head held high.

But it was not a man.

No.

With clanking footsteps that struck the stone like artillery shells, it strode out from between the gates. The generals' mouths dropped open as something came out through those crystal gates. This was not a soldier, nor was it one of the ghost rock-suborned dinosaurs or pterosaurs, nor even one of the undead or a Harrowed. This was something much bigger, vastly more frightening. Thirty feet high. Gleaming. Steel and copper, bronze and platinum. Jewels the size of Grey's fists were set into its metal skin. Thick bundles of armored wire ran along its flanks and up into sockets on its neck. A massive chunk of ghost rock was half buried in its chest, and the stone seemed to throb, the white lines writhed and twisted. And the eyes …

Those terrible eyes.

They glowed with fire. Actual fire. Its head was a furnace for burning ghost rock, and when it threw wide its jaws, the screams of the tormented damned shook the pillars of Hell.

The generals—even those men who had witnessed the horrors of Deray's caverns—recoiled in abject horror as the metal giant raised his fists and clenched them together. The squeal of steel cut through the air.

The giant walked boldly forward and the soldiers broke ranks and fled. The bravest formed defensive groups around their officers. The brute clanked all the way across the field, and the prisoners fled in all directions and would have escaped had a few of Deray's own men not beat them back.

Aleksander Deray raised one thin hand, and the giant stopped.

Just like that. He stood behind Deray and slowly, slowly closed his mouth so that the screams of the damned inside the burning ghost rock were muted. Not gone, but quieter, as if even those in Hell hung on whatever the necromancer would do or say next.

Deray smiled. His lips peeled back from white teeth that looked too straight and too sharp to Grey.

“This,” he said softly, “is power.”

 

Chapter Sixty-Five

Grey leaned close and whispered in Looks Away's ear. “We have to get out of here right goddamn now.”

“And do
what
?”

“Warn people,” said Grey.

“Who?” retorted the Sioux. “The law in Lost Angels? They're every bit as corrupt as these bastards.”

“No,” said Grey, “I was thinking of warning people that could do something about this. The U.S. Army, for one. And maybe your people, too. You think Deray would hesitate for one second to march across the borders of the Sioux Nation?”

Looks Away chewed his lip and did not immediately answer.

On the plain, a general in the uniform of the Dutch army cleared his throat and nudged his horse a few steps forward. His men clustered around him, guns pointing at the metal man.

“My lord,” said the general, addressing Deray, “I have heard rumors of some fantastical constructs but never believed that they were real. Even with all of the wonders we have seen since the discovery of ghost rock. But … tell me, you have sold us many millions in weapons and equipment and now you show us this. What are we to think? Have you saved the best for last, or have you kept the best for yourself?”

Deray smiled. “A bit of both,” he said as he walked over and patted the steel giant on the shin, “and neither. Samson here is not for sale. Not yet, at least. He is a prototype. A one of a kind, the poor fellow. Quite alone in the world.”

“Then this is—what? An entertainment?”

“No, my friend,” said Deray. “Samson is a glimpse into the future. It will take years for me to build a legion of brothers for him. Years. During that time you and your fellow generals will conquer your lands. That will take time, even with my rifles and tanks.” He gave an elaborate shrug. “Let it take time. Revel in it. Bathe yourself in the blood of those too weak to defy you. Cleanse your lands of all who do not bend their knee to your will. If that takes years, then so be it. How much grander will be the stories that history will tell?”

The generals exchanged looks with each other. There were doubts there, and suspicion, Grey could see that, but after a few moments they all nodded. After all, they had their guns and their tanks.

“And when the wars are over?” asked an Italian general.

Deray smiled at him. It was not a nice smile. “Then, my brothers, you will need to defend what you have taken. And that is where Samson comes in. He and his brothers. They will be the police who will guard your borders and crush any who raise voices against you. By the time you have conquered your lands, the Iron Legion will be there to maintain control.”

The generals looked at the giant. Doubt was still written on their faces.

The Russian general said, “Show us. He is impressive, yes, but he is large. He is an easy target.”

“Is he?” asked Deray casually. “Is he indeed?”

He turned to his sergeant and snapped his fingers. The man hurried over and snapped off as crisp and professional a salute as Grey had ever seen. “Sir!”

“Arm the prisoners. Give them each a rifle. Make sure the guns are loaded.”

The sergeant saluted again and called for their corporals, who were apparently prepared for this. The foreign soldiers buzzed and shifted, their guns tracking the prisoners, while the prisoners looked confused and frightened.

Deray addressed them. “Listen to me,” he said in a loud, clear voice, “you are all in the employ of Nolan Chesterfield. Or you were. Some of you took my coin and yet answered to him, and for that I should feed you to the creatures in this cavern.”

The men trembled as the corporals handed them their rifles. Most of the men held the weapons away from themselves as if trying to gain distance from whatever was about to happen. One man refused to take a rifle and the sergeant drew a wooden truncheon and began beating the man, shouting at him to take the gun. Bleeding and on his knees, the wretch took it and clutched it to his chest, weeping over it.

“You each deserve to die, you know that,” continued Deray as if the beating had not happened. “And yet I will give you a single chance to live.”

The prisoners looked sharply at him now.

“Take those weapons. They are real and they are loaded. No tricks. Take them and use those guns to kill me. Do that and I promise you—I give you my word of honor—that you will be set free with no further harm and enough gold so that you can live like kings.”

The men stared at him, and then down at the guns in their hands.

“It's not a trick, I assure you,” said Deray as he raised his arms to the side so that he stood cruciform before them. “Kill me and earn your freedom. Kill me and live out your lives in luxury and excess with all the whores and whiskey that money will buy. Kill me and you are free. Do it. Do it now.”

Most of the men were too frightened to move. The gathered soldiers and their officers were clearly alarmed by this.

“Don't be a fool, man,” cried one of the generals.

But in that moment a single prisoner raised his rifle and fired. He was forty feet from Aleksander Deray, and he snapped off four lightning quick shots.

There was a blur and a fragment of a scream and then the air was filled with a red mist and pieces of torn flesh flew everywhere. The man with the rifle was gone. And in the spot where he stood was the clenched fist of Samson.

It had been that fast.

Too fast.

Inhuman, supernaturally fast. Nothing on earth could move that fast. It had to be a trick.

Had to be.

The other prisoners stared in abject, uncomprehending horror. Their faces and bodies were painted with blood and dripping bits of meat.

The generals stared slack-jawed, as horrified in their way as the prisoners were. The soldiers cried out and fell back.

Then Samson was among the prisoners.

He moved like greased lightning, swinging his fists, stamping with gigantic feet. The men fired at him and the bullets whanged off and whined high into the distance. One ricochet hit a Prussian soldier in the thigh and his comrades gunned the prisoner down.

That was the only man the giant did not kill.

One intrepid man dove away and tried to fire from the hip as he came out of a roll. The bullet missed Deray and punched a hole in the air above the place where Grey and Looks Away hid. A heartbeat later the man was gone, replaced by a crimson smear on the ground.

And then it was over.

All of the prisoners were dead.

Only one was whole—the one who had been shot. The others were pulped into red ruin.

Leaving a stunned audience.

And Nolan Chesterfield.

The man knelt there, drenched in the blood of the men he had hired, his eyes wild, screams piercing. He beat insanely at his own face, his mind broken.

The giant turned slightly toward Deray, but the necromancer shook his head. Instead he used two fingers to pluck a silver whistle from his waistcoat pocket. He put it between his lips and blew. The sound was all too familiar, and a moment later it was answered by a screech from above. Then all of the soldiers fell back in fear as a pteranodon swooped down out of the darkness and plucked Chesterfield away.

Not all of him.

Just his head.

The fat body knelt for a moment longer, blood geysering from the ragged stump of his neck. Then it fell slowly over, twitched once, and lay still.

Silence, profound and massive, dropped over the plain.

Then someone began clapping. It was the Prussian. He stood up in the stirrups and began pounding his hands together.

After a moment the other generals joined in.

The soldiers hooted and shouted.

Deray, his arms still held out to his sides, turned in a slow circle as everyone applauded. The cheers rose above the plain and threatened to tear down the heavens.

 

Chapter Sixty-Six

The demonstration of Deray's power seemed to be at an end. Grey and Looks Away ducked even lower as the generals dismounted and went over to shake hands with Deray. Servants in white brought trays of glasses and there were many toasts to conquest and success.