Sleepy Hollow: Children of the Revolution (5 page)

She spoke with a honeyed voice, and spoke with the accent that was common to the Gypsies of Rall’s native land. “Do you doubt our master?”

“Never.” Rall said the word emphatically. “Shall we begin?”

“Of course.” Serilda removed her cloak, revealing herself to be wearing a simple white shift, with apparently nothing under it.

Rall immediately averted his eyes.

“Do not be a fool,” she said with contempt as she pulled the shift over her head, revealing her naked body to him whether he wanted to see it or not. “And do not let false morality interfere with the great work we do.” She pulled off each of her boots, revealing bare feet.

“There is nothing foolish about—”

She walked right up to him, forcing him to observe
her nakedness directly. “Your priests tell you that the human body is unclean and must remain covered.” She smiled nastily. “Those same priests tell you that if you believe in their absurd deity you will live blessed lives. But we both know that they are wrong about that, do we not?”

“Of course,” Rall said tightly.

“Then why believe them about this?” She smiled. “Perhaps I should have you strip off your clothes as well.”

“That is not necessary for the ritual.” Rall knew that the spell would have a transformative effect on Serilda. Her clothing might interfere with that. For him, however, there was no reason to disrobe, and several reasons not to, the chill in the air being primary among them.

With a derisive laugh, she turned on her bare heels and walked to the center of the sigil that was written on the floor.

“Shall we begin?”

Rall let out a long breath. Serilda spoke the truth, of course. He had violated every other tenet of faith that he was raised with back home in Hesse, so why be bound by the nudity taboo?

He held out his hands and began chanting the spell. The language was one that hadn’t been spoken on earth with any regularity for millennia, though his father told him once that there were creatures who spoke it conversationally before they were banished to the nether-realms of hell.

The tongue was guttural, even by the standards of the German Rall usually spoke. He wasn’t sure what the words meant, though in general he knew that they were terms of summoning.

When he was done, he knew that Serilda would be consumed with dark power that would then be unleashed on the enemies of Moloch. And woe to the foolish rebels who stood in her path.

As he recited the spell, though, he grew frustrated. Nothing was happening. He spoke the nonsense words, Serilda stood in the center of the sigil, and yet nothing changed.

But then he got to the last word of the spell and the furniture started to shake, the glasses on the sideboard began to rattle, and a hot, fetid wind swirled within the sitting room.

Serilda held up her hands. “Come to me, Abaddon! Join your power to mine that we may bring glorious chaos into this world that imprisoned you! Your will be done!”

Another gust of hot wind that smelled like the breath of a rabid dog shoved into Rall’s chest, and he stumbled backward. Regaining his footing, he saw Serilda’s skin darken and thicken, turning into something that looked like leather. Her black eyes now glowed yellow, her fingers curled into claws, her teeth sharpened into fangs. The strands of her brown hair slowly transmogrified into serpents, reminding Rall of a portrait of Medusa he once saw back home on a Greek vase.

Her arms still upraised, she cackled a mad laugh that echoed throughout the sitting room and chilled Rall to his very bones.

And then there was a flash of light, and Rall felt the heat of a hellish flame bake his face. He held up his arms to shield his eyes from the glow, and suddenly he wished he
had
disrobed, as sweat beaded on his brow and he felt so hot in his long red wool coat that it was as if he’d been transported back to Hesse at the height of midsummer.

It might have been a moment later, it might have been hours, Rall couldn’t tell, but when he finally lowered his arms, the light and the heat were gone. He once again felt the winter chill that even the stone of the house and the fireplace couldn’t keep at bay.

Of Serilda, there was no sign. All he heard were the echoes of her laughter.

Turning to look to the window, he saw that it was already morning. The ritual felt as if it were but the work of a few minutes, but hours had passed.

Piel ran into the sitting room unbidden and cried, “The rebels have taken the main streets of the town!”

Again Rall was denied a proper rebuke of Piel. “What do you mean?”

“The rebels’ general, the man Washington, he has come across Baron de la Warr’s river in the night and attacked the Pennington Road outpost after dawn!”

Rall stared at his adjutant for a moment, then shook his head. “Have the regiment form up at the lower end of King Street. Washington and that collection of untrained merchants he calls an army will not take Trenton this day!”

He reached into his waistcoat pocket and finally read the note Piel had given him earlier. With a rueful shake of his head, he saw that it was a warning that Washington’s forces would arrive in Trenton imminently.

THE COLD AIR
searing his lungs as he rode his white horse, General George Washington led his troops into Trenton. They had faced even less resistance than expected. He had hoped to gain the element of surprise with a predawn attack, but the icy river proved more difficult to pass than he’d hoped. Instead of arriving on the New Jersey side of de la Warr’s river at midnight, they didn’t arrive until three o’clock, and Generals Cadwallader and Ewing were unable to join them due to the inclement weather.

Under other circumstances, he might have waited until the generals could join him, but he had no time to lose. He
had
to take Trenton. It wasn’t just for the reason he gave to the Continental Congress. It was true that, after being expelled from New York, the Continental Army desperately needed a victory before the new year and the enlistments ended.

But salvaging the morale of his troops was sadly
secondary to the reason why he had chosen Trenton as his target after his retreat from Fort Lee: he had to prevent the Hessian Rall from summoning Abaddon. The night of the full moon would be the ideal time for Abaddon’s power to be joined with a person, resulting in a half-human creature of enormous power, and enormous evil. According to the intelligence he’d received, the human in question was a witch named Serilda, who ruled over a coven.

When he rode into Trenton the morning of St. Stephen’s Day, he knew he was too late. The smell of burning sulfur was one he knew well as the residue of sorcery. Abaddon had already been summoned.

The Hessians who had held Trenton were retreating. Washington saw a man on a horse riding away from him. The man wore the insignia of a lieutenant colonel, and he deduced that this must be Johann Rall, who was one of Moloch’s thralls, just as his father had been. Washington took aim with his musket and fired at Rall. The ball struck the enemy, but his horse continued down the thoroughfare away from Washington. He was one of many Hessians running away, and soon Rall’s form was lost to his sight.

Quietly he muttered an oath: “May you not live to see the chaos you have unleashed today, Hessian.”

Tugging on the reins of his own horse, Washington continued to lead his troops to a victory that was not nearly so great as he had hoped.

JANUARY 2014

THE ISSUE FOR
Abbie Mills was always what to order.

In the squad room, it had always been easy. After years of arguments and pissing and moaning every time people had to work late, or there was a big lunch order because everyone was in the office because of paperwork or whatever other reason, Corbin had set up a system. If the cops in HQ wanted to do a big takeout order, where they ordered from depended on the day of the week. Monday and Thursday was pizza, Tuesday and Friday was deli, Wednesday and Saturday was Chinese, and Sunday was Japanese, which was more expensive, but if they were working Sunday, everyone was getting time-and-a-half anyhow, so they could afford it.

One of the things Abbie admired about Captain Irving was that he kept to the “takeout calendar.”
Unfortunately, working with Crane had made it kind of difficult to keep to it.

The biggest stumbling block was the food itself. Crane had never had any manner of Asian cuisine in his life, and pizza as modern Americans knew it didn’t really exist in Crane’s time. The deli provided the only food he even came close to recognizing.

Eventually, he came around to pizza and Chinese, though it usually was accompanied by a Crane Pompous Rant (patent pending).

Tonight, after finding precious little online and even less in Corbin’s files on the subject of the Congressional Cross, Mills decided to order a pizza for the simple reason that it was Thursday and they both were hungry.

“You are aware,” Crane said after she got off the phone with Salvatore’s, “that this bastardized derivation of Greek flatbread only
exists
because of European expansion to this hemisphere. The tomato derives from the Andes Mountains region and was exported to Europe.”

Abbie grinned. “Says the man who’s never had white pizza.”

“Be that as it may, I am boggled by the claim that this is Italian cuisine. I have dined in the region, and there was nothing at all akin to this pizza. As I said, it is far more of a Greek dish.”

“Then what could be more in keeping with the spirit of the United States? An Italian variation on a Greek dish made with a South American vegetable
by Russian immigrants, delivered to a black woman.”

That got Crane to frown. “ ‘Salvatore’ does not strike me as a name of Slavic origin.”

“It isn’t, but he didn’t think people would go to a pizza place called Vladimir’s.”

Crane actually smiled at that, and took a short bow. “I concede the point, Lieutenant.” As always, he pronounced her rank like “left tenant,” which she had thought pretentious at first, but now had come to really enjoy the sound of.

The door to the armory opened and the captain walked in, holding a large pizza box. “Must be Thursday,” he said dryly.

Staring at Irving in surprise, Crane said, “I was unaware, Captain, that you had taken on additional employment delivering foodstuffs.”

Abbie chuckled. “Yeah, I didn’t think the budget cuts were
that
bad.”

“You two are hilarious.” Irving put the pizza down on the table next to Abbie’s laptop, which she quickly closed. “What’s the latest from the wacky world of Moloch and his demonic orchestra? Oh, and you owe me fifteen bucks for the pizza.”

Grabbing for her purse, Abbie pulled out a ten and a five and handed them over to Irving. Meanwhile, Crane filled him in on the vision from his wife.

“Wait
—what
was the medal called that you got?”

“I didn’t ‘get’ it,” Crane said tartly. “I was merely
awarded it. Had I actually ‘gotten’ it, I might be more able to fulfill whatever purpose Katrina had in mind with her warning.”

Abbie closed her eyes and sighed. She respected Crane a great deal, and he’d become more than a friend over these past few months of craziness, but there were times when she really wanted to just haul off and belt him in the mouth. As she opened the box to the lovely aroma of tomato sauce and melted mozzarella, she actually answered the captain’s question: “The Congressional Cross.”

“Was it one of ten that were issued by the Continental Congress?”

“Yes.” Crane sounded surprised. “Are you aware of them? We’ve had a difficult time locating specifics, and I’m afraid that I was not present when my own medal was awarded. I was given a certificate via messenger informing me that the Congress had favored me with the award.”

“I am aware of them, but only just today.”

The captain then told them about his trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art with his daughter. Abbie was grateful for the independent confirmation that Willett and that asshole van Brunt had received crosses, though she would’ve preferred that Irving had learned who else had them.

“I don’t like this,” Irving said. “The same
day
that your mostly dead wife tells you to find your medal, I find out that two of them are missing from their display case.”

Abbie frowned. “You don’t think they’re out for cleaning?”

“I did until five minutes ago.”

Crane turned to Abbie with a raised eyebrow. “Coincidence seems to be the order of the day with us, Lieutenant.”

Irving shook his head. “I don’t believe in coincidence.”

“I do,” Abbie said. “Coincidences happen all the time. I haven’t gone a week on the job without seeing all kinds of coincidences. But I don’t
trust
coincidences.”

Crane walked over to the pizza box to retrieve a slice. Abbie was pleased to see that this was his first time picking up a slice without losing any cheese off the top, nor having long strings of mozzarella tethering his slice to the rest of the pie. It was that kind of little adjustment that had impressed Abbie about Crane more than the bigger changes he’d gone through to fit into life in modern times. His ability to learn quickly was probably the main thing keeping him alive.