Warbound: Book Three of the Grimnoir Chronicles - eARC

  The Power had kept him alive for a reason . . . It required a champion.

  He recognized Hattori by the sound of the young man’s footsteps upon the rocks. “You may approach.” Okubo did not open his eyes, but he could feel the new sun on his red-stained face. Okubo was already scanning the skilled mind reader’s thoughts, a feat that he had not been capable of even a few hours before. “No, Hattori. I do not need food or drink, nor do I need rest.” In fact, Okubo was fairly certain that he would never need any of those things again. He was the greatest protector the Power had ever had. He understood now that as a reward for this victory, the Power had rendered him functionally immortal.

  “Very well, my Lord.” Hattori joined him on the rock overlooking the battlefield. Okubo could sense Hattori’s well-earned pride. “After all that . . . We did it. We won.”

  “Temporarily.”

  “But . . . We slaughtered their army. The Pathfinder died by your own hand!” Hattori’s questioning tone could be taken as disrespectful, but Okubo understood and forgave his subordinate. No warrior wished to be stripped of their glory after such a battle.

  “There will be another, and should we win, surely more after that. I think I know our Enemy better now. This creature was far stronger than the last, and as the greater Enemy’s hunger grows, so will the desperation of the Pathfinders it sends forth.”

  “I do not understand, my Lord.”

  Of course he didn’t. How could he? He was not in direct contact with the Power like Okubo. He knew now that it would continue to escalate, each new Pathfinder being greater than the last, as the Enemy grew hungrier, until either it found the Power, or it starved. Things had become clear. Because of this victory, the Power would grant Okubo even greater access to its magic, allowing him to become far stronger. Even this very minute he could feel new areas, new spells, new geometries opening up to his mind. The Power now knew that Okubo was its best chance for survival, and it wound entrust him with all of its secrets. There would be no limits set upon him any longer. The Power would allow him to take whatever he wanted, whatever he needed, to ensure their mutual survival.

  Such magical ability would be vital. Dark Ocean would need to succeed every time. A Pathfinder would only need to be successful once.

  No. Okubo needed something greater than a small brotherhood of warriors for the next time. He would need a mighty army. No. He would need an empire . . .

  Nippon was rotting from the inside, hollowed by weakness, led by the corrupt. There was no one there strong enough to oppose his will. With Dark Ocean by his side and fueled by the Power’s favor, he could conquer and build the army he needed to ensure Man’s survival. But why stop there? Why conquer only Nippon? Why not the entire world?

  Nippon would be first, but only a united world would be sufficient to defeat the Enemy once and for all. “It is time to reclaim my name.”

  “I do not understand,” Hattori said again, sounding exhausted.

  “I am the only one who can truly understand.” Okubo opened his eyes and looked to the east, toward his homeland. “But that is all that matters.”

  Chapter 1

  It was not so many years after magic first manifested in this world that the first members of the society gathered. We were to be a shield against injustice. We were motivated by righteousness. We become Grimnoir in order to become heroes, to sacrifice our lives in the pursuit of a higher cause, to defend the defenseless . . . I’ve found that means attending a lot of funerals.

  —Toyotomi Makoto,

  knight of the Grimnoir,

  testimony to the elders’ council, 1908

  Paris, France

  1933

  Faye thought that Whisper’s funeral was very nice. Even though it was a rainy afternoon, there was a huge turnout, which was still to be expected since Whisper had been such a friendly girl. It made sense that she’d been popular. There had to be a hundred people down there all dressed in black. Faye hoped that when she died, she’d have a funeral this nice too, with all sorts of people coming from all over to say pleasant things about her before they stuck her in the ground. Dwelling on that thought gave Faye a touch of melancholy, since her friends probably already did think she was dead, blown to bits along with the God of Demons in Washington, D.C. Only Francis knew that Faye was still alive, and she was counting on him to keep her secret.

  For all she knew, they’d already held her funeral and she’d missed it. Hopefully it had been well attended.

  She couldn’t make out the carving from this far away with the spyglass, but the tombstone would have the name Colleen Giraudoux carved on it. Nobody Faye knew had ever called her Colleen, it had always been Whisper. It had been months since Whisper had died, but she’d died far across the Atlantic Ocean, and Washington had been in a terrible state at the time, what with a big chunk of it being ruined or set on fire. Sadly, there had also been a lot of other bodies to sort out, so Whisper’s corpse had been stacked in one of the overflowing morgues along with thousands of others for weeks before Ian Wright had identified her and had her remains shipped back to her home in France for a proper burial like Whisper would’ve wanted.

  Faye had made a solemn promise to Whisper right before she’d died. So Faye had crossed the ocean, stowed away with the coffin in order to make sure that promise was fulfilled. The long journey across the sea had given Faye time to ponder on what Whisper’s sacrifice had meant. Whisper had taken her own life in order to save the city from the big demon’s rampage. Whisper had given up her magic in order to make Faye’s stronger.

  Faye was special, even by Active standards. She had known that for quite some time now. Her connection to the Power seemed positively endless when compared to anybody else. Blessed with what she figured was the best kind of magic ever, she was maybe the strongest Active around, especially after she’d managed to kill the Chairman and he wasn’t competition anymore. Everybody had said that Okubo Tokugawa had been the strongest in the world, but she’d shown him. Greatest wizard ever, I don’t think so. Faye snorted as she thought about it. The Chairman wasn’t so tough after she’d Traveled his hands off.

  Faye was unique. The problem was thats he had never realized just how come she was that way, and why her magical abilities had grown so quickly, but Whisper had told her the secret. A long time ago, a terrible spell had been created, one that stole people’s connection to the Power as they died. The man the spell had been bound to gobbled up more and more magic until it had made him crazy. They called him the Spellbound, and he had done some horrible things to make his magic better. The Grimnoir had finally killed him, only the terrible spell hadn’t died along with its creator. It had simply moved on and found a new home.

  For some reason, it had picked her. She really wished that it hadn’t.

  Faye was the new Spellbound. There was no way she could have known it at the time, but it was the spell that had enabled her to defeat the Chairman and save the Tempest, just as it was the spell that had let her defeat the big super-demon Mr. Crow had turned into. It seemed like she’d inherited a gift, but Whisper had made it sound like a curse. The fella that had created the spell had started out as a good man with noble intentions, but the more he used it, the more evil he’d turned.

  The Grimnoir elders were so scared of what a new Spellbound might do that they’d been ready to murder her. It probably didn’t help that they already thought she was kind of crazy anyway, so she figured she was already halfway there in their eyes. They’d even secretly sent Whisper to keep an eye on her and to kill her if she turned bad. Instead, Whisper had made Faye promise to stay good, and then shot herself in the heart to save a city.

  Faye had held a bunch of very complicated one-sided conversations with Whisper’s coffin on the trip over. Now they were lowering that coffin into the ground, and Faye had hidden herself several stories up on the rooftop of a fancy old church between some very ugly gargoyles. She was studying the mourners through a spyglass, trying to decide which one of them wa
s supposed to become her teacher.

  Jacques Montand was the expert on the Spellbound, and Whisper had asked her to seek him out. Jacques was one of the Grimnoir elders, one of the seven leaders of their secret society. Faye was proud to be a member, a knight as they called themselves, since they did a whole lot of good heroic stuff, but she did object to the part about preemptively murdering her just in case she decided to turn evil. That made it sorely tempting to teach them all a lesson . . .

  Faye refocused on watching the funeral. Those kinds of murderous thoughts were probably the evil sort that she should be trying to avoid. It was hard not to think that way, though, because she was just so very talented when it came to killing folks. She’d borrowed the spyglass from the ship she’d stowed away on. She moved her focus from face to face around the coffin, studying each one, trying to figure out who was the secret magical warrior who had trained Whisper to be a Grimnoir knight, and which ones where just friends from Whisper’s normal, not-secret life. It was hard to tell, especially with all of those darn umbrellas. Plus, on half of the people, she could only see the backs of their heads, but Faye didn’t dare go down there. She had to stay hidden. The only way this was going to work was if the elders still thought she was dead.

  Which did raise another question. What if, after she talked to Jacques, he decided to rat her out to the other elders? Then she’d either have to kill him to keep him from blabbing, or let the same folks who’d sent Whisper to kill her know that they needed to try again harder. She knew which one made more sense, but that sure seemed to go against her promise to Whisper to stay good, and she really didn’t want to get into the habit of murdering other good guys, even if it was in self-defense.

  This sure is complicated.

  Being picked to be one of Grimnoir elders didn’t mean you were old, just that you were supposed to be wise; but Jacques had to be older. Old enough to have beat the last Spellbound when Faye was still a baby, but there were several grey-haired men in that crowd. Faye knew from meeting a couple of the others that the elders were crafty and tended to keep a lot of protection around, which was understandable since the Imperium, the Soviets, and who knew who else was always gunning for them. So she tried looking for people who looked like bodyguards. There were a few tough-looking fellows, but for all she knew, they were just some of Whisper’s multitude of boyfriends. And besides, in Grimnoir circles, you didn’t have to be a side of beef like Jake Sullivan or Lance Talon to be dangerous. Faye, being skinny and unremarkably plain, was a perfect example of that.

  One nice thing about her particular Power was that she was able to see the world around her so much better than everyone else. It was basically like a big map inside her head. It wasn’t like Faye could see through walls with her eyeballs, but she instinctively knew perfectly well what was on the other side of those walls. For example, this big church, or cathedral, she supposed it should be called, had fifteen people moving around inside of it, and she could even get a feel of what was in the first level of tunnels beneath it. Rats and bones mostly. She could sense danger or any objects large enough to hurt her if she should Travel into them.

  Faye hadn’t known too many other Travelers in her life, as they were the rarest of the rare. Grandpa hadn’t known how to do the trick with the head map like she could, none of the Grimnoir books knew anything about it either, and the few Imperium Travelers’ she’d met, well, they’d been too busy trying to kill each other to talk about how their Powers worked.

  Her head map could sense life, and she could pick out magic. If she tried really hard, she could even sort of trace the individual links back to the Power. Faye concentrated, drew in the width of her head map, and focused on the people at the grave site. Sure enough, there was magic in that crowd, several different kinds in fact. And a few the Actives had connections to the Power that were quite strong.

  Was this how the last Spellbound turned evil? Since he was a Traveler too, did he have a head map of his own that could show him who had Power and who didn’t? And was that what tempted him to kill folks and steal it? Though Faye could sort of understand the appeal of gaining even more magic, the thought sickened her.

  She had to pause to wipe the raindrops off the lens. The spyglass blew up the faces of the magical folks, and she studied each one. It was easy to pick out the Grimnoir. Sure, they were sad, just like everybody else. The difference was that they all shared this same look of resignation, like they’d been to way too many funerals already. She supposed that was to be expected, since members of the society were getting themselves killed all the time. Those had to be Whisper’s fellow knights.

  The spring rain shower was annoying, and you can’t exactly sneak around spying on folks while carrying an umbrella. Plus the rain had softened up the years of pigeon poop on the roof so everything was slick and her traveling dress was a mess. Come on, Jacques . . . Which one are you?

  Faye had focused her head map so intently on the mourners that she hadn’t even sensed the danger until it was almost on top of her. There was somebody else on the roof!

  She hadn’t heard him approach, which was saying something since the top of the cathedral was slick as a milk-barn floor and anything you could stand on was at an obnoxious angle. She’d simply Traveled up this vantage point, but the newcomer was climbing up the tiles behind her and slinking along around a gargoyle. He’d scaled the side of the cathedral and wasn’t even breathing hard. If it hadn’t been for her head map, he would easily have been able to creep right up next to her.

  Well, this mysterious fellow had picked the wrong girl to try and sneak up on. She carefully collapsed the stolen—borrowed—spyglass and stuck it into a pocket so as not to accidentally scratch it. Faye picked out a narrow ledge just to the side of where the stranger had crawled onto the roof. Her head map confirmed that it was safe to Travel there. Rain drops were soft and easily pushed aside by her passage, so she focused on the spot and Traveled.

  Faye appeared out of thin air and landed easily on the ledge. She didn’t even need to put out one hand to correct her balance. Faye was rightfully proud of her Traveling skills. The science types had taken to calling her form of magic with the much fancier name of Teleportation, but she still preferred to think of it as Traveling. That name had been good enough for her adopted grandpa, Traveling Joe, God rest his soul, so it was good enough for her.

  The climber was still focused on her last position. Faye studied him for a moment. It was hard to tell since he was all crouched over behind a gargoyle, but he seemed to be a tall, thick fella, gone soft around the middle. He must have lost his hat on the climb, because all men wear hats, and he didn’t have one on. It was hard to tell his age, because though he looked old, he wasn’t moving like an old fella. He was magic all right, she just couldn’t tell what kind yet. His hair was stark white, thin, and plastered to his head by the rain. He was wearing what appeared to be a nice, dark-colored suit, but it was now smeared grey because of the stupid pigeons. Well, serves him right for skulking around like an Imperium ninja.

  Still unaware of Faye’s new position, he collected himself, reached inside his suit coat and came out with a small black pistol. Faye had a gun too, though hers was a much bigger .45 automatic, but she figured she wouldn’t even need it. She watched, bemused, as the stranger rose from behind the gargoyle and pointed his pistol at nothing.

  She Traveled, appearing only a few inches behind the man and shouted, “Boo!”

  Startled, the man turned toward her with lightning speed. Faye had figured he’d be some sort of physical Active in order to have made his way up here so easily, so she was ready. The gun turned in her direction, but she was already gone, appearing effortlessly now in front of him. Even if he was a mighty Brute, he was in a rather bad position, what with being so close to the side of a really tall building, and so Faye simply reached out and gave him a shove.

  Arms windmilling, his dress shoes squeaked on the rain- and pigeon-shit-slick roof as he tried not to fall over the e
dge. He almost would have made it too, but the tiles cracked and gave under his heels, and, top-heavy, he started going over the edge. “Merde!”

  She knew a similar word in Portuguese, since Grandpa had used it a lot on all things relating to dairy cows, and apparently the exclamation translated over in French.

  Before he could fall, Faye reached out and snagged his skinny tie with her right hand and a gargoyle’s wing with her left, managing just enough of a grip to stop them both from tumbling to the street below. Of course, since she could Travel, only one of them would be going splat if she let go of that gargoyle.

  “Whoa there, mister.” She loosened up on the tie for a split second, just to demonstrate who was in charge. She snagged it again and kept him from falling. He grabbed her arm with both hands, nearly crushing it, though she could tell he was holding back—he was probably a Brute. Only his toes were still touching the edge of the roof and even Faye was mostly hanging over open space.She hoped he spoke English. “Don’t do anything stupid. Let go of my arm.”

  He shook his head, then spoke with a light French accent. “If I fall, we both fall.”

  She’d been right to begin with. He was older, probably in his fifties, maybe sixties, but age was hard to tell with some folks. Eyes wide, the man looked first at the ground, then back at Faye, and then back at the ground. He was leaning back way too far to do much of anything except fall. A sufficiently skilled Brute might survive a fall like that, but it probably wouldn’t be much fun. He’d dropped his pistol in a vain attempt to grab the gargoyle. He looked forlornly at the gun sitting in the rain gutter. “I did not see you coming.”

  “They never do.”

  Faye realized that the old man was studying her face, specifically her odd grey eyes. All Travelers had grey eyes, and there weren’t very many Travelers. “You must be Sally Faye Vierra.”