Legacy(52)

Chapter 22




Peshtigo, Wisconsin

October 8, 1871



The wind was a low, chill whip around Erich Winter’s face. It hurt, numbly though, and paled in comparison to the other pains that filled his body. It was not supposed to be like this, he thought, looking at the scorched flesh on his right arm as he dragged a faltering leg behind him. He limped, the pain in his right thigh a searing, continuous agony as he stumbled forward, the flesh blackened down that side of his body. He had run as far as he could, keeping low across the grain field, toward the town of Peshtigo. It wasn’t logical and he knew it, but the instinct was there nonetheless, the need to run toward people when in danger. Not that any of them could save me. Not from that. Not from him.

He fell, gasping, to his knees, dodging the long, dried grass that had curled up, near dead from the summer’s drought. It couldn’t hurt him, not really, but every stroke against his burnt flesh added to the pain. This will take time to heal. Time I hope I have.

He had lived for thousands of years and had not done so by stupidly engaging in fights with his own kind. He crawled now, the sand sticking to his exposed, burnt flesh, and it felt like every grain was a knife, picking at him. I have never even seen a meta capable of doing what was just done to me. It is simply impossible. No one can have that kind of power ...

His fingers clenched at a weed that had survived the dry summer and he stopped his desperate crawl. Will I be like this weed? If he comes for me ... I cannot endure, cannot fight ...

Winter began to crawl again, the smell of his charred skin filling his nostrils, his strength fading as he pulled himself along, hand over hand. He tried to spark the power to encase himself in ice. Protection. I need protection. There was little humidity in the air to work with, but still he struggled on. Concentrate. Feel the freeze. Look for the faint strands of moisture, pull them to you, make them yours. Bring on the ice. They dangled before him like little strings but far off in the distance, and his reach was not long enough to gather them to him. The pain blotted them out, pushed them away, and his eyes fluttered shut as he tried to will the screaming agony out of his mind. He tried again and failed, collapsing in the dirt, his cracked lips feeling and tasting the dry soil. I have failed. Perhaps if I wait here, he will not find me—

“This is really quite sad,” came the voice, dispelling his hopes. “I’ve been sitting up here watching you.” The voice carried a hint of an English accent, and as Winter rolled over, he looked up at a man hanging ten feet in the sky above him, wearing trousers and a cloak that wouldn’t have been out of place in metropolitan Chicago.

“You have defeated me,” Winter said quietly, as he felt blood run out of his nose and settle on his lip. It didn’t freeze, which was cause for alarm in and of itself. How can I be so weak? Admitting defeat like a coward. He paused and realized the truth. I would admit worse and beg for my life if it would cause him to spare it.

“Oh, I know that,” the man said, continuing to hover, floating in the air. “You really shouldn’t try and shake down visitors to your little town, especially when you don’t know who they are.”

Winter felt the lack of cold, and his teeth chattered from it. “I am the patron of these towns. Their people—”

“Are your people, yes, I heard you say it when we met on the road,” the man said, staring at his hand with bored disinterest. “I’ve seen this sort of thing before, where you old gods stake a claim to an area where descendants of your original worshippers settled and run a protection racket on any metahuman who tries to cross it.” He smiled. “Didn’t work out so well for the last folks that tried it on me, either.” He shrugged. “Of course, that was in Mongolia, so I doubt anyone will hear about it for a good long time, but this ...” He looked around, into the fields off in the distance, and Winter saw his eyes alight on the smoke in the distance. “Brushfires?” he asked, as though his train of thought had been halted.

Winter nodded. “It has been a dry summer, bereft of rain.”

“And here comes autumn, settling in,” the man said, still hovering, eyes fixed on the smoke. He looked down at Winter. “I’m going to have to teach you a further lesson. Not necessarily because you need it—though all you old gods need it—but because I have a reputation to maintain. Or restore, I suppose, in this case. I’ve been gone for a long time from western civilization, from the world of our kind, and I think everyone’s just about forgotten me.” He chuckled. “You wouldn’t think so, as long-lived as we are, but it happens. Events fade into the near distance, and we’re left living our lives as day-to-day as any of these short-lived humans.”