Genevieve put her arms around her sister and hugged her fiercely. “Don’t cry, Louise. Please don’t cry.” Her face puckered up. “I hate you,” she spat at Carmitha.

“I hope you are satisfied now, lady,” Titreano said curtly.

Carmitha stared at the two distraught sisters, Titreano’s hard, disgusted face, then dropped the reins and plunged her head into her hands. The shame was beyond belief.

Shit, taking out your own pathetic fear on a petrified sixteen-year-old girl who’d never hurt a living soul in her life. Who’d actually risked her own neck to warn me about the possessed in the farmhouse.

“Louise.” She extended an arm towards the still sobbing girl. “Oh, Louise, I’m so sorry. I never meant to say what I did. I’m so stupid, I never think.” At least she managed to stop herself from asking “forgive me.” Carry your own guilt, you selfish bitch, she told herself.

Titreano had put his own arm around Louise. It didn’t make any difference to the broken girl. “My baby,” Louise moaned between sobs. “They’ll kill my baby if they catch us.”

Titreano gently caught her hands. “You are . . . with child?”

“Yes!” Her sobbing became louder.

Genevieve gaped at her. “You’re pregnant?”

Louise nodded roughly, long hair flopping about.

“Oh.” A small smile twitched across Genevieve’s mouth. “I won’t tell anyone, I promise, Louise,” she said seriously.

Louise gulped loudly and looked at her sister. Then she was laughing through her tears, clutching Genevieve to her. Genevieve hugged her back.

Carmitha tried not to show her own surprise. A landowner girl like Louise, the highest of the high, pregnant and unmarried! I wonder who . . .

“Okay,” she said with slow determination. “That’s another reason to get you two girls off this island. The best yet.” The sisters were regarding her with immense distrust. Can’t blame them for that. She ploughed on: “I swear to you here and now, Titreano and I will make sure you get on the plane. Right, Titreano?”

“Indeed, yes,” he said gravely.

“Good.” Carmitha picked up the cob’s reins again and gave them a brisk flip. The horse resumed its interminable plodding pace.

One good act, she thought, a single piece of decency amid the holocaust of the last six hours. That baby was going to survive. Grandma, if you’re watching me, and if you can help the living in any way possible, now would be a good time.

And—the thought wouldn’t leave her alone—a boy who wasn’t intimidated by Grant Kavanagh, who’d dared to touch his precious daughter. A lot more than just touch, in fact. Foolhardy romantic, or a real hero prince?

Carmitha risked a quick glance at Louise. Either way, lucky girl.

•   •   •

The longbase van which nosed down into the third sub-level car park below City Hall had the stylized palm tree and electron orbit logo of the Tarosa Metamech Corp emblazoned on its sides. It drew up in a bay next to a service elevator. Six men and two women climbed out, all wearing the company’s dull red overalls. Three flatbed trolleys, piled high with crates and maintenance equipment, trundled down obediently out of the rear of the van.

One of the men walked over to the elevator and pulled a processor block out of his pocket. He typed something on the block’s surface, paused, then typed again, casting a nervous glance at his impassive workmates as they watched him.

The building management processor array accepted the coded instruction which the block had datavised, and the elevator doors hissed open.

Emmet Mordden couldn’t help the way his shoulders sagged in sheer relief as soon as the doors started to move. In his past life he’d suffered from a weak bladder, and it seemed as though he’d brought the condition with him to the body he now possessed. Certainly his guts were dangerously wobbly. Being in on the hard edge of operations always did that to him. He was strictly a background tech; until, of course, the day in 2535 when his syndicate boss got greedy, and sloppy with it. The police claimed afterwards that they’d given the gang an opportunity to surrender, but by then Emmet Mordden was past caring.

He shoved the processor block back into his overalls pocket while he brought out his palm-sized tool-kit. Interesting to see how technology had advanced in the intervening seventy-five years; the principles were the same, but circuitry and programs were considerably more sophisticated.

A key from the tool-kit opened the cover over the elevator’s small emergency manual control panel. He plugged an optical cable into the interface socket, and the processor block lit up with a simple display. The unit took eight seconds to decode the elevator monitor program commands and disable the alarm.

“We’re in,” he told the others, and unplugged the optical cable. The more basic the electronic equipment, the more chance it had of operating in proximity to possessed bodies. By reducing the processor block functions to an absolute minimum he’d found he could make it work, although he still fretted about the efficiency.

Al Capone slapped him on the shoulder as the rest of the work crew and the flatbeds squeezed into the elevator. “Good work there, Emmet. I’m proud of you, boy.”

Emmet gave a fragile grin of gratitude, and pressed the DOOR CLOSE button. He respected the resolve which Al had bestowed on the group of possessed. There had been so much bickering before about how to go about turning more bodies over for possession. It was as though they’d spent ninety per cent of their time arguing among themselves and jockeying for position. The only agreements they ever came to were grudgingly achieved.

Then Al had come along and explained as coolly as you like that he was taking charge now thank you very much. Somehow it didn’t surprise Emmet that a man who displayed such clarity of purpose and thought would have the greatest energistic strength. Two people had objected. And the little stick held so nonchalantly in Al Capone’s hand had grown to a full-sized baseball bat.

Nobody else had voiced any dissension after that. And the beauty of it was, the dissenters could hardly go running to the cops.

Emmet wasn’t sure which he feared the most, Al’s strength or his temper. But he was just a soldier who obeyed orders, and happy with it. If only Al hadn’t insisted he come with them this morning.

“Top floor,” Al said.

Emmet pressed the appropriate button. The elevator rose smoothly.

“Okay, guys, now remember with our strength we can always blast our way out if anything goes wrong,” Al said. “But this is our big chance to consolidate our hold over this town in one easy move. If we get rumbled, it’s gonna be tough from here on. So let’s try and stick to what we planned, right?”

“Absolutely, Al,” Bernhard Allsop said eagerly. “I’m with you all the way.”

Several of the others gave him barely disguised glances of contempt.

Al ignored them all, and smiled heartily. Je-zus, but this felt good; starting out with nothing again apart from his ambition. But this time he knew the moves to make in advance. The others in the group had filled him in on chunks of history from the last few centuries. The New California administration was a direct descendant of the old U.S. of A government. The feds. And Al had one or two old scores to settle with those bastards.

The elevator doors chimed gently as they opened on the one hundred and fiftieth floor. Dwight Salerno and Patricia Mangano were out first. They smiled at the three staff members who were in the corridor and killed them with a single coordinated blast of white fire. Smoking bodies hit the floor.

“We’re okay, they didn’t get out an alarm,” Emmet said, consulting his processor block.

“Get to it, people,” Al told his team proudly. This wasn’t the same as the times with his soldiers like Anselmi and Scalise back on Cicero’s streets. But these new guys had balls, and a cause. And it felt righteous to be a mover again.