Spellbound: Book II of the Grimnoir Chronicles

  Where was he going with this? “I was.”

  “Do you believe you are worthy to defeat the Pathfinder?”

  “Doesn’t matter if I am or not, I have to try.”

  “Good answer.” The spiked club was placed on top of the backpack. “A wise answer. I know much of the Pathfinder. I am now the keeper of Master Hatori’s sacred firsthand knowledge of the way of the Dark Ocean.” The pistol belt was set down next.

  “That’s useful.”

  “That is why I have come here.” Toru removed the two swords, still in their sheaths. He put the smaller one down, but kept the longer one in both hands. “If you are worthy of my father’s legacy, then I will teach you how to find and destroy the beast. If you are unworthy, then I will kill you and do it myself.”

  “What happened to the rest of the Iron Guard taking care of it?”

  “My brothers have been led astray. I am afraid they will not understand until it is too late for us all.”

  “By the fake Chairman?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re on your own . . .” Sullivan was stunned. He’d never realized that an Iron Guard would or even could do something like disobey orders. “What’s to keep me from gunning you down where you stand?”

  “Your desire to defeat the Pathfinder.” Toru slowly drew the sword. It was nearly three feet of menacing razor steel. Sullivan had used one to cut a man in half once, and even with the BAR in hand, was wise enough to fear one in the hands of a trained Brute. “My father, the real Okubo Tokugawa, was wise beyond measure. Even in death, he would not have chosen to speak to you, among all of our many enemies, unless he thought you had the strength to do what was necessary. I have prayed for his guidance and the way has been shown to me. I am doing what I know my father would have me do. Do you see this blade?”

  “Kind of hard to miss.”

  “This katana represents what it means to be Iron Guard. It was presented to me when I proved worthy to bear the sacred kanji. This blade represents sacrifice and pain. It is my soul.” He twisted it back and forth, studying the reflections of the lamplight. Toru knelt and held the sword before him. “Yet the blade has become tarnished.” Sullivan could see that the steel was clearly without blemish. “It is stained, rusted, and chipped. This katana—” Toru had to choke back the emotion to continue. “It is flawed.”

  Sullivan slowly lowered the BAR.

  Toru took the hilt in his right and the sharpened end in his left. With a surge of Brute force he bent the sword. It bowed, resilient, but even the finest steel will break eventually.

  SNAP.

  The noise made Sullivan flinch.

  Toru placed the two pieces on the grass. Blood was streaming between the fingers of one hand. He bowed his head.

  “I am Iron Guard no longer . . . I, Toru, son of Okubo Tokugawa, pledge to help you defeat the Pathfinder. That is my mission. My father chose you. It is my obligation to him to assist you until this mission has been completed and the Pathfinder has been defeated. I will not help you against my people or my Imperium unless it is necessary to battle the Enemy. I will teach you the ways of Dark Ocean, then we will destroy the creature or die trying.”

  Sullivan didn’t know what to say. There was movement behind him and Hammer spoke softly. “He’s completely sincere.” She sounded awestruck.

  After several long seconds, Toru looked up from his broken sword. “Until I have fulfilled my father’s command, I am unworthy of an Iron Guard’s blade.”

  “And when the Pathfinder’s beaten?”

  “In the unlikely event we both live, we will tend to our unfinished business. We will fight. One will die. You helped kill my father, so we must; to do otherwise would be shameful. However, I will not let my hatred for you and your wretched ways deter me from my obligation.”

  That actually sounded pretty fair. “Then what?”

  “Then?” Toru obviously hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Should I win, I will then return to my people and commit seppuku as I have been ordered.” Sullivan tilted his head, confused at the word. “Suicide. When my mission is done, I must kill myself to cleanse my disgrace from my family. It is necessary.”

  He didn’t need Hammer’s Power to know that was the truth. That fact that he’d shown up here proved that Toru was a suicidal maniac. Sullivan could just hold the trigger down and hose the crazy bastard down with lead, throw the body in a ditch and call it a night. He wanted to do it so very badly. Instead, Sullivan took his finger off the trigger and put the safety on.

  This was no trick. The emotion on Toru’s face when he broke his sword in half wasn’t faked. This man had just turned his back on his entire life in order to keep a promise to a dead man. The Enemy was real, and in Toru he had someone who actually knew how to fight it.

  “You got a deal.”

  The former Iron Guard bowed deeply. Feeling awkward, Sullivan did the same. He looked up just in time to see Faye Vierra pop into existence right behind Toru. The Traveler was lifting a big revolver in one hand. With no time for finesse, Sullivan surged his Power and Spiked hard, bending gravity away just as Faye fired.

  Toru tumbled across the dead grass. Faye’s stray bullet shattered one of the farmhouse windows. She squeaked in surprise as gravity changed around her and she went flying through the air. Faye Traveled out of the effect and hit the ground right next to him. “Look out, Mr. Sullivan! They’ve got a Heavy!”

  He caught her by the arm before she could try to shoot at Toru again. “Cease fire.”

  “Iron Guard! Right there!” she shouted. Toru had caught his club as it had gone spinning by, and was standing in a fighting position with it raised overhead. Brutes were fast. Toru was red-faced and furious, but he wasn’t charging them. Yet.

  “Remember that one time when we first met and you murdered me by accident?” Sullivan asked gently.

  “Yeah?”

  “This is kind of like that. Faye, meet Toru.”

  “Oh . . . Whoops.” She lowered the revolver. “Gotcha. Sorry about that.” She looked over at Toru. “He seems really upset.”

  “You better pop on out of here until he cools off.” Faye gulped and Traveled away. Toru slowly lowered the club. “She gets a little excitable.”

  “Keep your kichiku ninja on a leash, Sullivan,” Toru spat.

  He shrugged. “With the rep you assholes have developed around here, we’ll be lucky if that’s not about the friendliest greeting you get. Put the meat tenderizer away. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

  Hammer

  Chapter 14

  Awake. Aware . . . Feeling every pain, every wound. Never healing. The poor bastards just can’t die. It’s no wonder they all go mad eventually. And the screaming coming from the trenches all night long . . . I wished they’d quit screaming. That was the worst part. Always with the screaming. Zombie Kraut sons-a-bitches. Damn the Kaiser’s eyes.

  —Unknown survivor

  of the First Volunteer Brigade (Active),

  Army report on the second battle of the Somme, 1918

  Miami, Florida

  AS WAS TO BE EXPECTED, the temperature inside the morgue was kept chilly. The room smelled of formaldehyde and detergents. The two knights followed the attendant down the wall of small metal doors. It was obvious right away which door they were looking for. It was the only one with a padlock on its latch. The attendant looked both ways to confirm that they were alone, then pulled out a ring of keys. A moment later, he slid out a table containing a sheet-draped corpse. Even with the sheet in place hiding the evidence, it was obvious that the body was in two pieces, with the lump of the head being just a bit too far from the remainder.

  Well done, Francis, John Moses Browning thought.

  The morgue attendant looked at them expectantly. “Well, gentlemen?”

  Donald Bryce removed his wallet from inside his suit jacket, pulled out five twenty-dollar silver certificates and handed them over. The attendant tried to pull them away, but Bryce wouldn’t let go o
f the money. He scowled at the attendant and waited.

  “Half now. Half when we’re finished,” Browning said.

  The attendant looked hurt. “Okay . . . You got fifteen minutes. That’s all I can promise. I don’t want to get fired for letting reporters in here. We’re under real strict orders.”

  “That’ll be sufficient,” Browning said as he nodded at his companion.

  Bryce relaxed his grip and the attendant snatched the money away. “Fifteen minutes. Take your pictures quick. Don’t fiddle with it,” he said, indicating the dead man. “The doctors can always tell.”

  The bag in Browning’s hand did in fact have a camera in it, but that was only in case any of the police officers or staff had bothered to check as they’d bribed their way in. No one had. Apparently they were not the first “newsmen” that had snuck illicit photographs of the assassin’s body. None of the pictures had shown up in a legitimate newspaper yet, since a decapitation would never make it past the censors, but it made for a very plausible story.

  The attendant hurried out of the room and locked the door behind him. Bryce pulled the sheet down to the corpse’s waist. The darkly intense knight was entirely too comfortable around the dead for Browning’s taste, but that was to be expected. One did not chose their particular Power, their Power chose them. So a man wielding a Power based in death would obviously be as at home with the dead as Browning was with metal and machines.

  “Can you tell if anyone else has tried this on him?” Browning asked.

  “No. It’s clean . . . Not surprising. Even when I was with the NYPD nobody wanted to know about what I did. They were just happy to close all those murder cases.” Bryce chuckled. “I’m a rare breed. Maybe a handful of us in the whole world.”

  There was an overhead lamp on a long arm. Browning brought it over and turned it on. The body had taken on a pallid, nearly blue shade. Incisions had been made to open the chest, and those lines cut directly through the intricate spell that had been carved there before. The neck ended in a jagged tear. The exposed flesh was the purple of old meat. The head was resting on its side, features limp. Giuseppe Zangara had been a plain man.

  “Best hurry.” Bryce casually took a handful of hair and hoisted the head from the table, so that the sunken face was pointing his way. It made Browning’s skin crawl. Bryce’s voice was raspy and cold. “No lungs to work with. Vocal cords, what’s left of them, are mangled. But if I channel enough Power through him I can make him understandable.”

  Browning had never worked with a Lazarus before. “How?”

  “Broadcasting. Sort of like how a Beastie can talk through an animal. The words are still there, even if the parts to make them aren’t. . . . But the way the spine’s been crushed and how much decay’s set in, he’ll be in extraordinary pain.”

  That afternoon had been spent surveying the scene where hundreds of innocent people had died. The fire department had been hosing down the streets to clean the dried blood. There was no compassion for one such as this. “Carry on, Mr. Bryce.”

  The other knight closed his eyes, concentrated, and exercised his Power. The air grew colder. It was as if the lights dimmed, but perhaps that was just a trick of the imagination. Browning did not know, but the Power of a Lazarus made him deeply uncomfortable. Browning looked toward the entrance. They were in the basement and door seemed solid. Good. There could be screaming.

  While Bryce worked his magic, Browning studied the intricate spell that had been bound to the assassin’s chest. It was far beyond anything he’d seen before, greater than anything the Society had ever discovered, more complex than any Soviet design, even better than the flowing Imperium kanji . . . This was a work of art. Even Browning, who had spent a lifetime studying such things, could only comprehend bits and pieces of it. Someone capable of creating a spell of such Power was very dangerous, indeed. They were tracking a worthy adversary.

  The spell also matched the sketch that they’d received from their source in Washington. That was good news. He’d been unsure if he could utilize that particular source, but this confirmed the infomant’s trustworthiness. That source should prove valuable.

  “Got him . . .” Bryce said simply, as if he’d just hooked a fish and was reeling it in, instead of the absolute horror of dragging a captive intelligence back from the spirit world. Intellectually, he knew it was unfair to judge a man’s character by what type of Active he was, but Mr. Bryce seemed to enjoy this entirely too much.

  This time Browning was certain that the lights did in fact flicker. Dead eyes opened, revealing milky orbs, and Zangara looked about in terror. The jaw unhinged as the zombie let out a terrible wail. It was a revolting sound.

  Bryce held the head so that Zangara could see his own body. “See that? Look familiar? Yeah, you’re dead. Get used to it.” Bryce spun the head around. “Welcome back to the world of the living, you rotten son of a bitch. The faster you answer our questions, the faster I’ll let you die again. Until I’m satisfied, I own you.” He turned the head back to face Browning.

  The eyes were blinking and twitching. The dead man seemed very frightened. A creaking hiss was their answer.

  Browning folded his arms and glared at the severed head. “You have some explaining to do, Mr. Zangara. We shall start from the beginning.”

  “It hurts.”

  Bryce swung the head back to face him. “You heard me the first time. Quit messing around. Sooner you talk, sooner the pain stops. Do not waste my time. Got it?”

  “Yessss.”

  “All yours.” Bryce swung Zangara’s head back around.

  “Who put that spell on your chest?”

  “The angel.”

  Browning was certain it was no angel that had bolstered the Power of this madman. “Did the angel have a name?”

  “No names. Only angel. So beautiful.”

  “Did the angel tell you to kill Roosevelt?”

  “Yes. Wanted to kill him before. The angel heard my dreams and made me strong enough to do it.”

  “What did the angel look like?”

  “So beautiful. Eyes made of light.”

  “Eyes?” Browning played a hunch. “Tell me about the eyes?”

  “Red light. Soooo pretty. Like Christmas lights. First there were two. Then it had four.”

  The two knights exchanged a glance. The angel had been a Summoned.

  “The angel carved the spell on your chest by itself or did someone help it?”

  “No! Only the angel!”

  Bryce took the head and smashed it against the metal table. Zangara screamed. “Don’t lie to me, zombie. Summoned aren’t smart enough draw spells.”

  “It was the angel. It talked to me. It knew me. It made me strong. There were no helpers, only the angel.”

  Bryce lifted the head again, but before he could smack it against the table, Browning held up one hand. “You heard the report from Oklahoma.”

  “The bastard that killed George . . .” Bryce muttered.

  “The most clever Summoned I’ve ever met was as intelligent as a good hunting dog.” Browning gestured at the complicated spell. “That is the work of a talented wizard.”

  “When did you get the spell?” Bryce shouted.

  “When? Time means nothing here . . .” Bryce whacked the head against the table again. “Day before. Day before killing time.”

  It was unknown how quickly Crow could travel in his demonic form, but he had been in Florida the same day in order to assault Francis at the police station. He very well could have been here the entire time. “Things are beginning to fall into place.”

  “We’re treading on dangerous ground here . . .” Bryce said slowly. “You know what this means?”

  “It means we’re in greater danger than expected. Another question, Mr. Zangara. Before your death, did you ever speak with a man named Crow, or did you ever speak with any government entity, especially the Office of the Coordinator of Information— OCI—or with anyone else about your desire to murder t
he president?”

  “No Crow. No office of things. No government run by filthy capitalists . . . Spoke to only one man.”

  “Tell me about the man you spoke to.”

  “The capitalist pigs had me arrested once. I lost my job because I was sick. I was mad. I threatened some of the capitalists. Said I would kill them. They said I was crazy. Wanted to lock me in crazy house. Doctor interviewed me. He knew about magic. I liked him. Told him truth. He told the capitalist judges I was not crazy. I was not danger to society.” It took Browning a moment to realize that the horrible grinding noise was the severed head laughing. “I told him everything. Friend agreed with me. He was good friend.”

  “What was your friend’s name?”

  “Doctor Bradford. Not kind of doctor that could fix my guts. Kind that fixed heads. Kind of doctor for crazy people. He was expert on crazy people with magic. Good thing I’m not crazy.” The head laughed again, and Browning had to resist the urge to draw his .45 and end its wretched existence.

  “Name ringing any bells?”

  “I’ve not heard of the man. If that’s his real name, we should be able to discover something about him. Do you have anything to ask?”

  “Got anything else you want to get off your chest?” Bryce asked the head, then he laughed when he realized he’d made a joke. “Heh . . . chest. I kill me sometimes. How about it, Giuseppe? I’m tempted to sneak your head out of here and keep you on my trophy wall. Thick skull like you, you could be up there screaming for years.” Browning sincerely hoped that Bryce did not have such a wall, but it was difficult to tell with a Lazarus, even one that was supposedly trying to only use their Power for good. “Either that or you’re about the right size for a football. . . . Help me out and I’ll let you get back to the big sleep.”

  “The angel will stop you. The angel is too strong for you.”

  Bryce put the head down on the table. “Eh, he’s done.”

  “Do not hurt my angel!” Zangara begged. Bryce shoved the tray back into the wall, and closed the door behind it. Zangara’s wails could be heard coming from inside. Bryce simply walked over to the sink and began washing his hands.