Spellbound: Book II of the Grimnoir Chronicles

  One last Travel put her onto the roof of a tall building. Francis was dangling from the edge. He called out for her to help, but she moved like molasses. As Francis’ fingers slipped from the edge, a massive black shape climbed over the side of the skyscraper. It towered over her. The demon was a hundred feet tall, made of smoke and death, and it tore Francis from the ledge and flung him down before it came for her.

  Faye woke up screaming.

  She was in a car. It was dark out.

  “Calm down. It was just a nightmare.” Whisper was driving fast, squinting against the oncoming headlights. “Everything is fine.”

  It took Faye a moment to remember where she was and how she’d gotten there. No. Things are not fine at all. She cracked her neck. Her head had been hanging at a weird angle while she’d been sleeping. Her lungs and eyes hurt, and she was glad that it was too dark to see where the Summoned’s blood had burned her. It throbbed with a dull ache.

  There was an awful cough from the backseat. Faye looked over to see Ian stretched out. “Is he going to be all right?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered truthfully. “I think he has some injuries we can’t see. He’s been getting worse. If I take him to a hospital, we will doubtlessly be arrested. I have good news, though.”

  “Huh?” Faye was still dizzy and it was hard to think. Something to do with the demon oil she’d breathed. It was messing with her head.

  “Your friend the Healer is on the way. We’re going to meet her in Knoxville.”

  Jane? She can fix anything. “Is that far?”

  “You have been asleep for a very long time. We’ll be there soon. Don’t worry.”

  Faye nodded and rested her head back against the window. She’d been slipping in and out. The last thing she could remember it had been daytime and Whisper had said they’d been in Arkansas. “Are you okay?”

  “Tired . . . I’ll be fine.”

  Faye looked over again. Whisper was still wearing her torn nightgown. Of course, all of their luggage had burned in the fire. She caught Faye looking and smiled. “Yes. I look quite the mess. I’ve gotten some odd looks when we’ve stopped for gas, but luckily the attendants have all been boys. I flirt with them for a minute, say a few nice things, make an excuse about coming from a wild bonfire party, and that’s either so scandalous or so exciting that they don’t even notice you two.”

  “What are you going to do if it’s a girl that fills up our gas?”

  Whisper winked. “That is not an issue. I can flirt with girls too if necessary.”

  “Huh?” Faye didn’t get it. French people were weird.

  “Never mind that. Do you feel well enough to talk? I need to talk or I won’t be able to stay awake.”

  Faye just grunted. She felt like she’d been run over by an angry Holstein. She was running a fever and her brain was working slower than normal, which probably put her around regular person speed. She didn’t know how they could stand being so sluggish.

  “How does your magic feel?”

  What an odd question. “Why?”

  “Well . . . You’re a fugitive. If we come across a police roadblock I need to know what our options are.”

  That made sense. Faye checked her Power. It was there, and feeling surprisingly strong. It must have recharged better than her body. Wait a second . . . Faye checked her head map. It stretched much further than anticipated. Twice as far as it had when she’d been bouncing around fighting the demon. “It’s . . . it’s better. More like before.”

  Whisper looked temporarily distressed, but then tried to laugh it off. “Like when you Traveled the Tempest, because if you could have just taken us directly to Knoxville and saved me this horrendous trip I would have appreciated knowing that ten hours ago.”

  “No.” Faye stopped to cough. “Not that much. But it’s better than yesterday by a bunch.” It was more like how she’d been before Madi had blown up Francis’ house with the Peace Ray. It was like she’d first started growing stronger when Grandpa had gotten shot, and it had just kept growing and growing all the way until she’d gone toe to toe against the Chairman. Then she’d used it all up doing something that should have been impossible.

  “You are stronger, but do you feel different?”

  “Whisper, you sound scared. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing . . . I . . . I am just concerned for you is all.”

  “I’m just tired.” She’d been weaker after the Tokugawa fight, and though she’d gotten better again with practice, she hadn’t come close to the energy she’d been able to muster before. Why now? That was really strange. Would the stronger connection to the Power stick around again, or would she lose it like last time?

  If she hadn’t been so darn tired and out of it, she probably would’ve pondered on that particular mystery for a while. Instead she drifted off and was snoring in a few minutes.

  She didn’t hear Whisper mutter to herself, “I wish that I had been wrong.”

  Bell Farm, Virginia

  THEY MADE IT HOME LATE. Home, being a dilapidated farmhouse just itching to fall down, was a relative term, but it was a place to lay his weary head. Sullivan was tired. Playing mental games against somebody like J. Edgar Hoover was more tiring than breaking rocks. Plus, his body still ached from the fight with the Imperium Brute. Magical Mending could fix the wound, but the pain managed to stick around.

  They parked the truck in the barn and walked to the house. Sullivan felt it first. The wartime instincts never really went away. The woods were too quiet. “We’re being watched,” he whispered. Dan started to turn his head. “Play it cool.” The other knight pretended to relax, but he kept one hand close to his piece.

  Sullivan exercised his Power to feel the world around him. The metal bits were so much denser than their surroundings that they stuck out like beacons. Fifteen yards. One person in the bushes. Armed.

  The noise of a revolver being cocked was very distinctive. After that came a woman’s voice. “Don’t move.”

  He didn’t need to move to bend the hell out of gravity, so Sullivan prepared to Spike their new guest halfway across Virginia.

  “Easy, Sullivan. I just want to talk.”

  “Hammer . . .”

  Dan had one hand on his pistol. “Who?”

  “The lady who served me up to the OCI on a plate.”

  She came walking out of the shadows, gun trained on them. “I didn’t know it was a setup. I was just supposed to get you to answer the phone. I didn’t know they meant to kill you.”

  “I’m more inclined to believe folks who aren’t pointing heaters at me.”

  “I’m just being careful. You’ve got a reputation for tossing people around.”

  Sullivan scanned the trees. The range that he could check with his Power was limited. She could have an army out there. “You alone?”

  “Just me and Mr. Colt here.”

  “That’s stupid.”

  “Only if I was here to fight, which I’m not. I’ll put this down, but give me your word that you won’t use magic on me first or start anything unless it is self-defense.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Promise.”

  That was an odd request. Sullivan looked at Dan, who just shrugged. “Okay. Fine. I promise I won’t attack you unless you attack me.”

  “No tricks. Just hear me out. Then we part ways.”

  “Agreed.”

  “You’re telling the truth.” Hammer lowered the revolver. “You have no idea how refreshing that is.”

  “This your fake redhead, Jake?” Dan asked, the subtle edge of magic in his words. “Because I’ve got to say, she might’ve bragged to you about how good she was at finding folks, but she sure didn’t exaggerate her talents. You certainly didn’t exaggerate about her being pretty either. She’s just as lovely in person. Very nice to meet you.”

  “Save the flattery for a chump, Mouth. Your Power won’t work on me.”

  Dan smiled. “Can’t blame a man for trying.” br />
  “You here to arrest me?” Sullivan asked. “Because I’ve really got more important things to worry about right now.”

  “Originally, I was. Now, I’m probably going to regret this. Hell, never mind, I know I’m going to regret this.” Hammer paused. “I’m here to help you.”

  This woman was trouble. Sullivan shook his head. “No thanks. Got all the help I need.”

  “You know a man by the name of Heinrich Koenig?”

  “What about him?” Dan asked, positively dripping suspicion over the use of his dead friend’s name.

  “He’s being held captive by the OCI, until they get tired of him. Then they’ll execute him even though they know he’s innocent, which is frankly an idea I find bothersome.”

  “Impossible! Heinrich . . .” Dan looked to Sullivan. “Francis never got to see his body.” Then he grinned as he latched onto some hope. “I knew that stubborn son of a gun wouldn’t die that easy!” Dan went to unlock the door.

  “So, you boys ready to talk yet? You know you want to.”

  It might be an elaborate trick, but he was always a sucker for a mystery, and Hammer knew that about him. Sullivan gestured to the door of the farmhouse. “Come in.”

  Hammer followed. “Not to be rude or anything, but you got anything to eat in here? I’ve been hiding in the bushes all afternoon, and spying is terribly famishing work.”

  As they entered the house, Dan had already positioned himself off to the side, .45 in hand. He cracked the slide over the top of her head, hard enough to lay her out. Hammer hit the floor and her gun slid away.

  “Damn it, Dan.” Sullivan looked down at the dazed woman. “What’d you do that for?”

  “You gave your word, not mine.” Dan opened Hammer’s coat and discovered a gun belt. He removed another revolver and set it aside. “I don’t know what her Power is, but I can tell it’s something crafty. I bounced right off of her. Definitely a mental-type Active from what you said before, and she’s just oozing Power. If she’s going to start playing mind control or something, I want the deck stacked in our favor first.”

  It wasn’t a bad idea at all. “That’s reasonable. I just hope you didn’t hit her too hard.”

  “That was a love tap. I was a perfect gentlemen. It’ll just leave a goose egg.”

  Hammer was cursing them. She rolled over and put her hands on her head. “Oh, you filthy rotten—” Then she got really nasty.

  “Lady’s got a mouth on her. You believe that stuff about Heinrich?”

  “Not really.”

  “Think it’s a trap?”

  “More than likely,” Sullivan agreed.

  “Help me tie her up?”

  “Well, I said I’d play nice. So you do it. I’ll get dinner started.”

  Dinner consisted of opening a few cans of vegetables and one that was filled with a congealed meatlike substance, mixing them together in a pot, and heating it all on the stove until it was hot enough to distract them from the taste. Sullivan never claimed to be a very good cook.

  Hammer was tied to a chair with some baling wire that Dan had found in the barn. In the spirit of fairness, Dan had just tied her ankles and one wrist to the chair, leaving her left hand free so that she could still eat. After sampling the noxious sludge Sullivan had prepared, she’d said that they weren’t doing her any favors.

  “Being the fat one, you must be Dan Garrett. So, Mr. Garrett, you like hitting women?”

  “Far from it. I work in an environment where it isn’t terribly uncommon to have the supposedly weaker sex bend steel beams with their bare hands. I treat all of my threats equally. Hell, I’m practically a suffragist.”

  She poked at the baling wire with her free hand. “This isn’t necessary.”

  “Nothing personal,” Dan explained, “but a lot of very powerful people are trying to kill us right about now, so we can’t be too careful.”

  “So you buffaloed me,” Hammer muttered. “You’re a real class act.”

  “If it’s any consolation, my wife will Mend that bump when she gets back . . . Unless of course, she decides not to because you were rudely pointing a gun at her husband.”

  “And if I’d just walked up and been friendly as can be?”

  “You’d probably still be tied to that chair, but wouldn’t have the headache.”

  Sullivan chuckled. “First time I met Dan, I got tossed off a blimp. So in comparison, you got off easy.”

  Hammer glared at him. “You’re a bastard.”

  “So I been told. Start talking.”

  She did. Hammer told them about being recruited to find him because she was a Justice. That piqued Sullivan’s scholarly interest, since he’d never actually had a confirmation that such Actives were real. Hopefully, if they ended up on speaking terms after this he’d have to interview her for his notes. She insisted that she’d been as surprised as he was about how the OCI had tried to shoot him, and how afterward she’d then been recruited by Crow.

  “Why, after seeing what a shyster bunch they were, did you go along with that?”

  “None of your damn business.”

  Dan started to ask another question, but Sullivan held up one hand. He’d been forced to chose between working for J. Edgar Hoover or staying in Rockville. It wouldn’t surprise him in the least to see G-men using dirt on another Active to get their job done. Blackmail, threats, whatever, it was one more reason to tread extra carefully around Hammer. “It don’t matter. Go on.”

  She told them a bit about how her Power worked, how she could follow someone and know which path they’d taken, and how that had led her to the ambassador’s mansion.

  “Lucky that Brute didn’t eat you for breakfast.”

  “Are you kidding? Toru was polite compared to you two. That’s a sad state of affairs when the Imperium are the hospitable ones of the bunch.”

  “Oh, they’re all sorts of polite, until he found out you had a rare Power and kidnapped you for Unit 731 to experiment on.” Dan sounded bitter, the memory of Madi taking Jane still fresh in his mind.

  “I didn’t say I wanted to start palling around with them. After that I tracked you into the country. Then Crow appeared out of thin air. I still haven’t figured out how he does that.”

  “Near as we can figure, he’s a Summoner that possesses demons, like a Beastie controls animals.” Which was a fascinating concept, one that he’d never heard of before, or even considered possible. It was too bad he was probably going to have to kill Crow, because he would love to know how he’d accomplished such a feat.

  Hammer appeared deep in thought. “That makes sense. He’s like a big bag of lies, and when I get a glimpse of the truth, it’s been too . . .”

  “Weird?” Dan suggested.

  “Alien. I’ve only talked to him a few times now, but each time it’s like talking to a different person.”

  Sullivan’s guess was that was the different demons he was wearing. He’d have to update his notes on Actives, preferably after they’d put Crow in the ground. Whatever the hell he was, he was a danger first and foremost. “How’d he find you?”

  “They carved a spell onto my car. I found it and wrecked it.”

  Sullivan got up and went to the kitchen window. The woods were still and dark. “That could’ve been a decoy. There might be another.”

  “Yeah, so I ditched that car and boosted a different one.”

  He closed the curtain. “That’s not very nice.”

  “You stole my new Ford!” Hammer sputtered.

  “I left it someplace it would be found.”

  “On its roof!”

  Dan laughed at him. Sullivan folded his arms defensively and scowled at Dan. “It was on its wheels when I left it. My apologies. I’ll make it up to you and get you another. Those Hyperions are pricey though. It might take me awhile.”

  “I can’t believe it.” She shook her head. “You’re telling the truth. You’re a real piece of work, aren’t you, Sullivan? Every lawman in the country has your pict
ure on the wall and you’re worried about how you’re going to replace my car. We’ve got more important things to worry about.”

  “So it’s we now?” Dan asked. “Lady, I don’t trust you as far as Jake could throw you. Why should I start now?”

  She told them about the recording of Heinrich and Crow’s admission that he had proof, and how both were at OCI headquarters. That sounded a little too convenient for Sullivan. Yet, as Hammer talked, he studied her. She was tough, and she had an attitude about her, but if this was a trap it wasn’t her creation. Hammer seemed sincere . . . but then again, she’d played him like a fool the very first time they’d met. When she was done, she looked him square in the eye, and asked, “You believe me now?”

  “I believed you were a redhead. Look where that got me.”

  “That was business.” Hammer glowered at him. “It got you some exercise and a chance to talk to a ghost. Admit it, you’d do it again.”

  She had him there. “All right. If you want me to trust you, why the change of heart?”

  “It isn’t enough that I don’t want to see an innocent man hang? I’m putting myself in jeopardy by even talking to you! What do you think he’s going to do to me when Crow finds out? I’m risking my life. Isn’t that good enough?”

  Sullivan shook his head.

  “Fine . . .” Hammer hesitated. “Tell me about your rings.”

  Dan covered his with his off hand. “What about them?”

  “My father had a lot of respect for the men that wore those.”

  “He was Grimnoir?” Sullivan asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Hammer?” Dan leaned forward. “Married or maiden name?”

  “Born with it. I’m single . . .” she answered. Sullivan looked at her funny. “What?”

  “I was just going to say I could see why.” Hammer made an amusing face when she was angry. “You’re kind of pushy.”

  Dan paid them no mind. “You’re a Texan?” Hammer nodded. “I’ve got an ear for accents. Was your father Lee Hammer?”

  “You knew him?” Without another word, Dan stood up, pushed down Hammer’s free hand and twisted it down with wire. He then took Sullivan by the arm and guided him out of the kitchen. “Wait! What do you know?”