Hard Magic (17 page)

She had not come all this way to be turned back now. “You listen here. I need to talk to Black somebody, my Grandpa said so.” Faye reached into her voluminous skirt and pulled out the little Tesla device. “I think this has something to do with it.” She held it out, and Lance took it, scowling as he read the plate. “My Grandpa was murdered by men looking for this, and I’m not going anywhere until I find out why.”

“Aww . . . this ain’t good. Not good at all.” Lance hesitated, like he was going to keep the device, but then he shook his head and passed it back. He looked at Francis. “I hope this ain’t what I think it is. Keep an eye on her. Don’t let her snoop in anything.” Then he limped away, grumbling.

“He’s grouchy,” Faye said when Lance was gone.

“You’d probably like to freshen up,” Francis suggested.

***

When she returned from the washroom, Francis was waiting with a sandwich on a plate. “I had the cook make this for you,” he said.

“You have
servants
?”

“Well, of course, this was one of my father’s estates,” he answered proudly. “The Society has been using it since the old headquarters was destroyed.”

She took the sandwich. “It must be nice to be rich. Servants
and
indoor plumbing.”

“I . . . well . . .” he stammered. “I wasn’t meaning to brag. But yes, I suppose it is rather nice. Please, sit down.” He gestured toward a nearby table.

The interior of the home was amazing. Electric lights were on every wall. “This is the nicest dining room I’ve ever seen,” Faye said, settling into a padded chair.

“Well . . . actually, this is where the help eats. The dining room is back there . . .” he drifted off, uncomfortable. “Sorry, bragging again.”

For some reason his embarrassment made Faye smile. She liked this Francis. She ate her sandwich. It was good.

Lance returned a minute later. “Here’s the deal, you seem like an all right kid, Faye, but we deal with some . . . strange types, and there’s more than a few folks who’d want nothing more than to see him dead. In fact, the predicament we’re in now is because I didn’t do my job a few years ago, and somehow somebody got through and put a curse on him. It ain’t nothing personal, but I’ll be needing to hold onto your little gun, and if you try to use any magic on the General, I
will
kill you. Do you understand?”

“No need to be impolite,” Francis said.

“I once saw a six-year-old slash a man’s throat with spikes that came shooting out his fingers,” Lance pointed out.

“Fine,” Faye said, removing the Iver Johnson from her pocket and passing it over to Francis. “I want that back. It cost ten whole dollars.”

They left the kitchen area, through some sort of service room, past a workshop full of machines, out into a giant foyer, then up a flight of stairs. Lance’s limp was more pronounced going up the stairs, almost like one leg was shorter than the other.

“What happened to your leg?” Faye asked.

“I left part of it in a demon’s stomach,” he responded without turning around.

Francis leaned forward and whispered in her ear. “You can’t get a Healing if too much time’s passed. If it’s healed on its own wrong, it’ll stay that way. A surgeon tried to fix it later by cutting out all the poisoned bone. He’s
sensitive
about it.”

He heard. “Shut up, Francis.”

“You can control animals?”

“Sorta . . .”

Faye smiled. “That would be the best Power
ever
back on the farm. No cow would ever kick me in the hands again! What was that mark you put on that man’s head? What’s with the funny writing on the gate and in the house?”

“Magic spells. Do you ever get tired of asking questions?”

Faye thought about that for a second. “No. Where are we?”

Lance sighed as they reached the top of the stairs. He knocked politely before entering the first room. A beautiful blonde woman, wearing a white sundress, was sitting in a chair, reading a thick book. “Hey, Jane.”

She looked Faye over as she stood. “Oh, honey, what happened? You’ve got a hole in your foot! And something bit your hand! You should have called me and I would have come down . . . Imagine, making the poor thing walk up here with a hole in her heel.”

“How’d you know?” Faye asked, but was ignored.

“She didn’t tell me nothing about foot problems,” Lance said defensively. “Damn, woman. How was I supposed to know?”

“Is she
okay
?” Jane asked, looking to Francis for confirmation. “She must be since you brought her up here.”

“She didn’t burst into flames when we crossed the barrier, did she?” Francis said, pointing back at the doorway. There were more of the curious letters carved into the wood.

“Hold still,” Jane ordered as she set her hands on Faye’s shoulders. Jane’s hands were extremely warm, so warm that Faye could feel the heat through the coarse fabric of her traveling dress. Then her hands were ice cold, and now Faye was hot, like she was burning with fever. She wobbled for a moment, dizzy, as the flash of warmth passed.

“What just happened?”

“The hole in your foot will be closed by supper,” Jane answered. “I just gave you a little help is all.”

Faye’s thumb felt puffy. She held it up and the punctures from the squirrel bite were now just purple indentations.
An actual Healer!
Only millionaires had Healers. Faye felt lightheaded. “I can’t afford to pay you . . .”

“Oh, honey, you’ve been listening to too many radio programs,” Jane clucked reprovingly, picked up her book, and returned to her chair. “Don’t keep the General up too long. He’s having a bad day.”

“It’s about to get worse,” Lance muttered.

Western Colorado

The dining car
was nearly empty. Sullivan grunted politely as the waiter dropped off his third thick steak, then he went to town, carving the beef into huge triangles and hungrily gulping them down. “Oh . . . yeah . . . that’s better,” he mumbled. To him, magic was almost like physical exercise, and running his Power dry always left him exhausted and famished.

Heinrich Koenig and Daniel Garrett watched how much he consumed in amazement. The bookish Garrett pulled out a pack of smokes and offered them to his companions. The German turned him down, but Sullivan never turned down anything free, took one, and stuck it behind his ear for later.

They had procured clothing for Sullivan at the last stop. He would have to get it tailored later, as no one made clothing sufficient to fit his shoulders and arms, but Sullivan was forced to admit that this was now the nicest suit that he owned. The bandages were thick and itchy under his new white shirt. Once Dr. Rosenstein had decided that Sullivan wasn’t going to die on him, he had gotten off in Denver to catch a flight back to his practice.

“So, about this job . . . I’m listening.”

Garrett lit up his smoke and leaned back in the booth. “So, Sullivan, where do you think magic comes from?”

“Well, that’s an odd question,” Sullivan answered, still chewing. “The best scientists in the world don’t know that. How should I? I’m just a po’ dumb ol’ Heavy, Mr. Garrett.” His voice dripped sarcasm like the rare steak dripped juice.

“Call me Dan, and we both know you know more than you let on.”

Sullivan wiped his mouth on a napkin. “The first documented case of Powers occurred in 1849, a Chinaman in California who could bend steel rails with his hands. Newspaper attention brought in some scientists, and the rest is history. Dr. Spengler’s research indicates that there may have been isolated individuals in rural communities as early as the late 1830s, but those were usually hushed up or run off by the superstitious. Dr. Kelser from the University of Berlin claimed to have proof of one in 1818, but I think his methodology was flawed . . . and he was a quack.”

“You know your history,” Heinrich said.

“I read a book once.” In reality, his tiny apartment was filled with them, and he’d visited every university library he could. He could devour a thick book faster than most educated men could get through the daily paper, and he never forgot any of it. People tended to equate well-spoken with well-read, but that was a mistake with Jake Sullivan. “It didn’t even have pictures.”

Garrett smiled. “You evaded my question rather nicely. Do you know where magic comes from?”

“I can only guess,” Sullivan answered. “Some folks say it’s hereditary, but you can have two parents with Powers, and there’s no guarantee their kids get anything. You have lots of cases where the same Power seems to run in a family. Those eugenicist assholes have been tinkering with that for generations, trying to breed Powers, and they’ve still got nothing. Rumor is that the Japs are heavy into this, even doing some scary medical procedures to the people they conquer to try and make more Actives.”

“I can tell you that the Soviets are doing it as well,” Heinrich said. “I’ve seen things with my own eyes that you would not believe. Cog science creating terrors beyond your wildest imaginings.”

“Disgusting,” Sullivan agreed.

“So you don’t like eugenics?” Garrett was curious.

“We’re people. Not horses.”

“Agreed,” Heinrich said, taking a drink from his coffee. “There was a movement back home that espoused that sort of thing. Luckily, their crazy leader, some washed-up painter, got the firing squad. Good riddance.”

“So if it isn’t from . . .” Garrett paused, trying to think of the proper word.

“Mendelian genetics,” Sullivan said, pointing his fork at Heinrich. “Your people produced some clever monks.”

“Actually, he was Austrian,” Heinrich replied.

“Close enough.”

“So if it isn’t
genetics
, you’re saying that it must come from God?”

Sullivan shrugged. “Beats me. I don’t get real religious in my line of work. Sure, I believe in God, but I don’t think magic is his gift to man to make the world a better place, or any of that Father Coughlin radio show nonsense. If it was a gift from God, I think he’d be a little more picky in who he gave it to. I doubt God gave the Kaiser the ability to trap the spirits of men inside bodies that should have died ten times over, until they went crazy with a taste for human flesh, damned Teutonic zombies.” Sullivan looked over at Heinrich. “No offense.”

“None taken.” Heinrich gave a long sigh. His tone indicated that he had some familiarity with the Kaiser’s necromancy. “Please, do not discuss
them
.”

“Magic has revealed Hell is a place, so perhaps magic can come from both God and the Devil . . .”

Sullivan frowned. Garrett was fishing now, testing him. He concentrated, but couldn’t sense any intrusion into his mind. The Mouth was just getting a feel for his beliefs, not trying to influence him, so Sullivan answered truthfully. “Finders and Summoners have the Power to bring in beings from other worlds to do their bidding, and just because the easiest one to get to happens to look a lot like what we think of as Hell, doesn’t mean that it is. I’ve dealt with demons. Both sides were using them in the war, but they were basically really smart monkeys. The Summoned aren’t bright enough to be the fallen angels from the Bible.”

“Very good,” Garrett said, letting out a puff of smoke. “The personal beliefs of the Summoner tend to influence the form that the Summoned appear in, and they’re not bright enough to tell us about their home. Since ones conjured by westerners tend to look like devils or angels, people tend to make assumptions. So, do you at least have a theory as to where Power comes from?”

Sullivan chewed his last bite of steak, thinking. “Oh, I do. Don’t mean I’m right, or that I can prove it. I think magic is a force. I don’t know from where. I don’t know if it is alive, or if it’s intelligent, but it picks people here and attaches itself to them. I can’t make heads or tails out of why it picks who it does, but some of us can touch a little piece of it, some more than others, and we can use that little bit to do something to influence the physical world. What we can do depends entirely on what little bit of the Power we can personally reach.”

The other two shared a surprised look. “Not bad . . .” Heinrich said. “You come up with this on your own?”

“Yep.” Sullivan didn’t add that he’d figured out a whole lot more than that. As far as he knew, he was the only person who’d put together how a few different Powers were related, and how he’d been able to stretch his into the adjoining areas a tiny bit. But that was his secret. It was time for the Grimnoir men to share some of theirs. “Funny, I’ve been doing all the eating
and
the talking, and I still ain’t got no more answers.”

“What if I told you that
we
know the real history of magic?”

“I wasn’t born in Missouri, but I’d say show me, Dan.”

Mar Pacifica, California

Francis stayed
in the back of the room. He’d known General Pershing for most of his life. He was almost like a second father, especially since he’d done a much better job being an example of manhood than Francis’s real father, and it pained him deeply to see the General in his current state. His body seemed to deteriorate a little more every day since he’d been cursed by the mysterious Pale Horse. Jane exhausted her Powers on a daily basis fixing all of the new health problems, and even she had to admit that at this point, Black Jack was living off of sheer determination alone.

If they could just figure out who it was that had cursed their leader, then the Grimnoir would kill the wretched Pale Horse and break the spell. They all suspected that it must have happened during the Imperium’s attack against their old headquarters. The General had fallen ill shortly after. A Pale Horse had to touch his victim to bind the curse, so it must have been during the chaos of the battle. They’d done everything they could over the last few years to track down the Imperium’s agents, but even after assassinating every one they could lay their hands on, they still hadn’t found their Pale Horse.

The General’s hands were so paper-thin that sunlight could be seen through his skin. It was hard to believe that those were the same hands that had taught him how to throw a ball, how to ride a horse, how to shoot a gun.
It won’t be much longer now
, Francis thought, then hated himself for thinking it.