The vision faded, and Findo Gask found himself slumped on his knees on the cold concrete basement floor, rats skittering away in the dark, shadows again gone still, silence everywhere.
Not many demons were summoned, Findo Gask knew. Only the oldest and most experienced, the ones the Void depended on most. A gypsy morph was rare and dangerous. Formed of loose, wild magics come together in the ether, a morph had the potential of becoming a weapon of incredible power. How a Knight of the Word had managed to capture one was unimaginable. It must have taken an incredible stroke of luck. Whatever the case, the Knight’s luck was about to change.
Findo Gask left the basement and the projects and Chicago that night. One or two other demons would be dispatched by the Void as well. But Findo Gask knew he was the one who would have the best chance of succeeding.
In the beginning, tracking John Ross was not difficult. Every time the gypsy morph underwent a new transformation, which was sometimes hourly, it emitted a pulse of expended magic. Like a beacon, the pulses could be homed in on, leading a hunter to his target. But human behavior was complex, and John Ross would know he was being hunted and that the gypsy morph was giving them away. He would be evasive. He would not stand around waiting to be caught.
Findo Gask tracked John Ross for eighteen days before he found him. He read the pulse of the gypsy morph at each change and relied on his instincts to tell him what Ross would do. He found the Knight of the Word in Salt Lake City ten days before Christmas in a seedy hotel at the north edge of the downtown area. With five very tough, well-paid thugs in tow, he entered the empty lobby of the hotel on the night shift, walked up to the clerk, produced his fake U.S. marshal’s identification, and asked for the key to Ross’s room. The clerk, young and stupid and scared, handed it over without a word.
“There’s not gonna be no trouble, is there?” he asked.
Gask smiled reassuringly. “Tell me what Mr. Ross brought with him to his room,” he ordered.
The clerk stared at him dumbly, trying to figure out what was being asked of him. “I dunno. A duffel bag and a knapsack’s all. Came in off a bus.” He paused, thinking. “Oh, yeah, he’s got a ferret, too. Must be some sort of pet.”
Gask took the men up to the third floor where Ross was staying. One man would position himself at the elevator, one by the stairs, and the other three would go in after Ross. They had been told Ross was a dangerous man, a traitor and a spy. They were not to try to subdue him; they were to kill him. He would be armed, and he would kill them if they did not kill him first. They had been issued Clocks with silencers and sworn in as deputy U.S. marshals. They would face no adverse consequences for their actions. All were under the protection of the United States government. Everything they did was fully sanctioned.
A demon could persuade violent men of anything, and Findo Gask had no trouble with these. Kill John Ross, he emphasized, but under no circumstances harm the ferret. Leave the ferret to him.
Standing at the far end of the hall in the shadows, Findo Gask watched it all. The room key went into the lock smoothly, the door cracked open, the big man kicked out the chain, and the three primary assailants burst through the opening, their weapons firing—phfft, phfft, phfft. One heartbeat later, there was a brilliant flash of light, as if a thousand cameras had all gone off at once. The wall separating the room from the hallway shattered as the broken bodies of two of the assailants hurtled through it. The third assailant, he discovered later, was thrown through the window to the street.
Then John Ross came through the door in a crouch, his staff ablaze with magic, his knapsack slung over his shoulder, his duffel abandoned. For just an instant he looked in Findo Cask’s direction, but the demon remained in the shadows, holding himself perfectly still.