Hard Magic: Book I of the Grimnoir Chronicles

  “Like what the Imperium goons have?” Francis sputtered.

  “Something like that, only stronger,” Lance said slowly, cutting an intricate curve deep into Sullivan’s muscle. Dark red blood came welling out from behind the blade. “Except that pathetic scribble wouldn’t survive a bullet in the spine . . . Come on . . .”

  “Francis, get a mark of weakness on that girl before she wakes up,” Browning said. “I don’t want her Traveling out of here if she is a Shadow Guard.” He raised the vial, but hesitated, and bowed his head first. Francis realized he was saying a prayer. A second later Browning opened his eyes, and started carefully dripping the smoking liquid. Delilah had to turn her head away as it sizzled on the impacted skin like bacon.

  Francis looked for something to write with, couldn’t find anything, realized his hands were covered in Faye’s blood, and quickly drew the simple little mark of weakness on her forehead. All it should do was screw up her access to her magic. He didn’t feel right doing it, but he didn’t know what to think right then. This strange little girl had just murdered another person in front of him.

  Jane’s hands glowed pink around the bones, almost like she’d placed them on top of a brilliant spotlight. This was the most Power he’d ever seen her expend at once. A deformed 9mm bullet rose through the hole in Faye’s chest as the tissue closed up behind it. Francis could feel the heat from a foot away. Jane removed her hands from Faye’s head, and fell into the grass. “I got it beating,” Jane gasped. She struggled back to her knees, blonde hair covering her face, exhausted. “She’ll live.”

  “Jane, do you have anything left at all?” Browning asked.

  “Give me a sec,” she panted, crawling over. “It won’t be enough.”

  Browning frowned as he got to a difficult part. Sullivan’s blood was obscuring Lance’s cuts. “Wait until I tell you, then channel whatever you’ve got left into the dead center of this design. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir . . . You’d best hurry. Blood pressure is dropping. His heart will stop in ninety seconds.”

  Garrett returned with a thick leather book. “Page one hundred and twenty-three,” Browning said, and Garrett started flipping. Lance stared at the intricate picture, swore, and started cutting faster. Browning took one look, scowled, and said. “If any of you have faith, I’d suggest prayers for a steady hand.”

  “Miracle would be good too . . .” Lance said, “Ask for one of those.”

  ***

  Jake Sullivan was back in his cell at Rockville, wearing his issued black and whites, sitting on the end of his tiny bunk. The fifty-pound iron ball chained to his ankle was a familiar old friend. It had been a joke to a man with his magic, but rules were rules, and he’d worn it for six straight years.

  It was exactly the same. Every day was exactly the same. You sleep. You work. You get put back in your cage . . . but somehow Sullivan knew that today was different. Today he’d been a free man, but someone had shot him full of holes and murdered him.

  So, this is what hell looks like . . . Figures.

  There was a rattle as the eye slit on the steel door slid open. A pair of black eyes appeared. “Greetings.”

  “You the devil?” Sullivan asked.

  “Yes,” the voice answered. “You could say that.”

  Sullivan scowled as he got a better look through the slit. He hadn’t expected the devil to be Japanese. Those black eyes were set in a handsome, strong face, but they belonged to someone far older. They were the eyes of an ancient. “You’re the Chairman, aren’t you?”

  “I have many names. That one will do for this place . . . The land where the dead come to dream.”

  “What do you want?”

  The cell in Rockville was gone, and he was standing knee deep in mud made from ground dirt and blood, his Lewis gun smoking hot in his hands in the dead center of no-man’s-land. Coiled barbwire entangled thousands of mutilated corpses and the yellow cloud in front of the sunrise told him that the poison gas was coming again.

  “I’ve come to witness your failure,” the Chairman answered. Sullivan turned to see the Chairman walking on top of the liquid mud. He was average height, wearing a fine black suit with a red sash festooned with medals and ribbons draped over one shoulder. He paused to pet a rising zombie’s scabrous head as if it were a faithful pet. “I want to see you burn.”

  “Why?”

  “It brings me pleasure. Few things do these days. I always come to see when someone tries to touch the Power directly. The Grimnoir are trying to save your life as we speak.”

  The sensation of them mutilating and burning a spot on his chest seemed distant, somehow absent. “How do you know?”

  “I am closer to the Power than they are,” he said simply. “I know when someone tries to steal my birthright. Their smallest spells are beneath my notice, but now they try the most complicated of links in desperation, but they are as children, toying with the things of adults. They will fail, as they always do.” The Chairman paused, studying Sullivan. “Too bad . . . I can see that you are a man of character.”

  The Somme was gone, and they were in a familiar bar in New Orleans, another place where he’d tried to build a life, and failed. Sullivan stood over the splattered mess that had been Sheriff Johnson. The other patrons were fleeing or hiding. The negro serving boy that he’d saved from the Sheriff’s wrath was huddled in the corner, afraid of what he’d just seen Sullivan do. “He was gonna hurt you ’cause you’re an Active . . . Like me . . .” Sullivan tried to explain, but the little boy was too terrified of him to move. “It’s gonna be okay. I won’t hurt you . . .”

  “Here you have dispensed the same justice as I would have. Pathetic Normals, afraid of magic, afraid to bow to their betters.” The Chairman strolled around the bar and kicked what was left of the Sheriff’s skull across the plank floor with one polished shoe. “They chained you for this? This was a work of righteous fury. They should not have imprisoned you for destroying this vermin. They should have rewarded you. What do you owe such a world, such a failed system? Especially after all you had sacrificed for them.”

  He was back in France, in the final hours of Second Somme, the fiercest battle of the war. There were more Actives collected here on this day than any other point in history. Dirigibles and biplanes were exploding and dropping from the sky like a meteor shower. Lightning, fire, and ice danced back and forth, destroying like a reaper’s scythe. Men leapt impossibly high through the air, screaming down into their enemy as demons erupted from the ground in geysers of bone.

  “A great and terrible thing to behold. You thought that you could show the Normals the goodness of the Active race. That you could be their champions, their protectors, but instead you gave them this.” He waved his hand at the carnage. “You gave them fear. They did not see heroes, they saw savagery beyond comprehension, and understood that it was only a matter of time until their betters turned their glorious fury upon them. You are not men to the lesser Normals. You are but tools. Dangerous beasts of burden to be kept locked away until needed, nothing more.”

  Jake Sullivan held his little brother Jimmy as the blood pumped from the stumps where his legs had been and a dozen other lethal wounds. His other brother was trying to reach them. “Matty!” Sullivan shouted, unheard through the artillery shells exploding all around them. “Matty!” His older brother leapt through the shrapnel, heading for them, but a chunk of steel sheared cleanly through the right half of his face and he went down.

  Jimmy stretched out his hand as Matt Sullivan crawled the last few feet toward them. Matt’s right eye was nothing but a globe of blood. He grabbed his dying brother’s hand. “I’m here, Jimmy,” Matt gasped. “I got you.”

  Jimmy had been the simple one, the good one. “We’re gonna be okay . . . okay . . . Brothers are here. Nothing hurts us when we stick together. Right, Jakey? Right, Madi? Sullivans stick together . . . .” Then he was dead.

  “Your brother, Matthew, serves me now,” the Chairman said, wa
lking between the deadly shrapnel to kneel beside Sullivan’s only surviving blood. “He relived this same moment with me as well, and he came to understand how our race has been mistreated. I showed him the way of the strong. Under my tutelage, he has been born again, stronger than you can imagine, a champion of righteousness. Never again will he allow the weak to soil our world. He has become one of my finest Iron Guard. He has taken the name Madi in honor of the fallen.”

  Sullivan began to cry.

  “Serve me and I will help the Grimnoir’s feeble magic successfully link to the Power. You will soon join one brother or the other. Your decision.”

  The battlefield was frozen in time. In real life he’d gotten up from this trench, thrown Matty over his shoulder and carried him back to the lines. Then he’d gone back out and ended so many lives that he lost track. Fueled by rage, he’d reached parts of the Power that other Actives only dreamed of. He’d broken the wall between Powers, and had gone beyond being just a Heavy. In a fever driven by blood and hate, he’d killed and killed until he began to not just feel the Power, but to actually see it, until he could reach out and take it for himself.

  Sullivan looked up through the land of the dead ones’ dreams, and saw the Power itself, a great glowing world that filled the center of the real world. It was divided into sections, each one a geometric shape, all of them linked together into a seamless whole. He could tell that the spell markings he’d seen were just representations of those geometric shapes.

  “You can see it . . .” the Chairman said, following Sullivan’s gaze upward from the battlefield. “Fascinating. It has been so very long . . . I thought that I alone could behold its beauty.”

  There was a faint line leading from the center of his chest where his own Power connected to the great mass above. It linked directly to one point of a shape that Sullivan understood was where the Power interacted with the laws of gravitation. He followed the shape to other sections—mass, density, velocity—until they formed one tip of a triangle. He rose from the mud, coated in his brother’s blood, and knew.

  Thousands of other glowing connections linked the Somme to the magic above, each line attaching a different Active to a different geometric area of the Power, until the thing draped down over the real world like a cloud of Spanish moss made of pure crackling energy. Sullivan could see the triangle he’d been born linked to. His line led to the gravity point. The next point pertained to the realms of electromagnetism, while the final point represented nuclear forces far beyond his comprehension.

  There were other shapes inside the triangles, hundreds of them, each tied inexorably to the fabric of reality, all of them working together in a tight seamless mass. An artist’s interpretation of all the laws of the universe, only this art wasn’t imitating life, it was influencing it.

  “Magnificent, isn’t it?” the Chairman asked softly, standing at his side.

  Sullivan’s link was stronger, brighter, than almost all of the others at the Somme, and it was then that he realized that it wasn’t a one-way street. Energy wasn’t just coming down from the Power. It was also rising up in great clouds from the Actives that died. As they lived, exercising its energy, the energy grew, and when they died, a greater sum returned to its source. More links descended to the world, touching others, creating more Actives, increasing the cycle.

  It’s eating. That’s how it grows . . .

  “It’s alive, ain’t it?”

  The Chairman nodded. “Yes. It came here from somewhere else.” He saw that the Chairman’s link was the brightest of all, and it played about, choosing between several of the geometric patterns as he saw fit. “I was the very first it chose,” he said wistfully. “It learned about humanity through me.”

  “Why’s it here?”

  The Chairman smiled and held out his hand. “Follow me and I will show you, my child. It wants us to cleanse the world and make it pure.”

  Sullivan returned to the Power and knew that the Chairman lied. The Power wasn’t good or evil. It wasn’t God or Satan. It was a symbiotic parasite. It lived through them, and in return, they got magic. “You don’t get it,” he said. “You actually believe what you’re shovelin’.” Sullivan laughed in the face of the most powerful wizard in the world. “It doesn’t want anything, you idiot. You moron. You’ve killed millions . . . for this?”

  Then pain beyond anything he’d ever experienced tore through his ribs. He crashed into the mud next to his dead brother. A circle of fire ignited on his chest. This link was different, wrong, somehow misdirected, not to the Power, but to something else entirely, beyond what he could see. The Grimnoir trying to save his life had just failed.

  “I am afraid you have died,” the Chairman said sadly.

  ***

  “Heart’s stopped,” Jane said. She put her gentle hand on the big man’s brow. Her white bathing suit was stained with blood. Lance had blood up to his elbows. He and Browning were doing something to the big man’s chest.

  “It ain’t working!” Lance shouted. “The healing ain’t taking.”

  Faye was lying on her back, too weak to move. “I’m sorry . . . I thought he was—”

  “Shut up, Imperium bitch!” the man with glasses shouted, pointing a gun at her face. “We’ll deal with you in a second.”

  Her first instinct was to Travel, but something was burning on her forehead, and the magic inside her was all strange and fuzzy. Francis was looking down at her. “I’m sorry . . .” she whispered. “I was trying to help.”

  “Hush,” he said. His eyes were sad.

  She wished she could help. This was all her fault. It wasn’t Madi at all, though the big man looked exactly like him. Faye closed her eyes. If only she had a useful Power, like Jane, she could do something, or if she were smart like Lance or Mr. Browning. Instead all she could do was Travel. She’d never thought of it as a stupid thing before, but it was.

  She hadn’t prayed since Grandpa had died. Please, God. Don’t let this man die because of me. I’m so sorry. It was a mistake. I was only trying to save my friends. She concentrated as hard as she could, just like she was about to Travel and she needed to check to make sure the space was clear so she didn’t get killed by a bug lodged in her brain or something. Her mind spun, went ahead, and she saw the dead man and all her friends from above, but it wasn’t clear. Something was wrong. Something angry and red was stuck to the man’s chest, a bad piece of magic.

  Faye knew that she had to knock that bad magic out of the way so the good magic could work. She couldn’t Travel with her whole body, but she could use her brain.

  Sure, God. I figure I can do that. Thanks! Amen.

  ***

  Sullivan was fading away, turning into smoke on the wind exactly how the Summoned died on Earth. The red link was tearing him apart. It came from behind the Power . . . from whatever mysterious place the Power had fled from.

  “You should have come with me,” the Chairman said as he leaned on the side of the trench. The mud didn’t get on his suit. “Think of what we could have learned together—” He stopped, puzzled, as a brilliant light erupted through the mud at Sullivan’s side. “Remarkable.”

  It was the purest link to the Power that he’d seen yet. While the Chairman’s was bigger and broader, this one was just simple, and shot in a beam as straight as a Tesla cannon. It actually had an audible hum like a high voltage wire.

  Excuse me, mister. Sorry about shooting you and stuff. Then the failed design on Sullivan’s chest quit burning. The red link was severed. He gasped as his senses returned. I hope that helps.

  The Chairman was nodding in appreciation at the display of raw strength. “This has been a most interesting day. Unfortunately your body is already dead.”

  Come back with me, mister, please. Everybody is gonna be real mad if I murder you too. Follow me home, please.

  Sullivan scanned the Power. Time was short. There was his area of expertise, his triangle of gravitation. If he could follow that link, he could follow others
. He reached out with his mind, searching the dreaming dead of the battlefield. The Menders he’d carried Matty back to had been . . . there. Finding that clump of lines, he followed it up to a second shape. Their odd triangle connected primarily to laws concerning biology and two other unknown sides, and the Healers landed near the middle. The two triangles superimposed into a sort of hexagram and he memorized the shape.

  He found that purest line of Power and grabbed hold.

  “See you ’round, Chairman,” Sullivan said.

  “Farewell, Mr. Sullivan. I have enjoyed our most enlightening conversation. When we meet again, I will destroy you.”

  ***

  “He’s gone,” Jane pronounced.

  Browning slowly sank to the ground. The old man was totally spent from the effort. “We did our best . . .”

  Lance stood up with a pained grunt. He was covered in blood. “Wasn’t good enough. How! How can those Imperium bastards do this and not us!”

  Faye closed her eyes. She knew that she’d been able to touch the big man with her brain, but she didn’t know if he’d been able to follow her home. She hoped he had, because being a ghost here was sure to be a lot nicer than in that scary place with the mud and bodies and barbed wire, and the big glowing jellyfish thing in the sky. She knew what jellyfish looked like because Grandpa had once shown her a picture of one because it was called the Portuguese man-of-war, and he’d thought that any animal named after the Portuguese had to be pretty neat. That scary place was probably hell, and that’s where she was going because she had just murdered somebody, so she had probably better get used to that big jellyfish because she was going to spend the rest of eternity there.

  Delilah was crying her eyes out. This had to be the man she’d said she’d been close to. That made Faye feel extra sad, because she didn’t think Delilah had ever had very many people who loved her.

  The man who’d shot her came over, grabbed her roughly by the arm, and jerked her violently to her feet. He stuck his pistol hard into her face. “Start talking, Shadow Guard.” He was hurting her arm bad, but she knew she deserved it. Francis rose and grabbed the man with the goatee, but he just turned around and punched Francis right in the nose. Francis fell down, holding his face.