Hard Magic (20 page)

“Any word yet from Garrett?” Lance asked.

“His train should be arriving in Ogden now,” Browning said. “My home town actually. I do miss it. I’d love to see it again before I die.”

“Why can’t you visit?” Faye asked.

The old man paused, muffin halfway to his mouth. “Well, my dear, as far as the world is concerned, I died of a heart attack a few years ago while in Belgium. If our enemies knew that I was Grimnoir, they would go after my family. That is how they operate. That is a sad byproduct of our mission. Now I use my knowledge to help protect those in need of our aid.”

Faye scowled. His name sounded familiar from the radio. “You’re famous, aren’t you?”

Lance grunted a laugh. “Half the world’s guns have his name on the patent. Except mine, because John Moses never bothered to make a revolver.”

“I’m a simple inventor,” Browning answered modestly. “I designed a few firearms. Nothing important.”

“Semiautos jam . . .” Lance muttered, obviously trying to get a rise out of him.

“Mine don’t,” the older man responded with a gentle smile.

Faye decided she liked Mr. Browning. He seemed like a very nice man.

“I’ll drink to that, my deceased friend.” Lance raised his glass. It seemed a little early to Faye to be drinking that much whiskey, but the others seemed used to Lance. “According to the papers, I died in a sudden fire. But I suppose by definition, fire is
sudden
if it kills you.”

“What were you before?”

“Big game hunter, adventurer, automobile racing driver, explorer . . .” Lance paused to think. “Cow puncher, spent a year as a coal miner, let’s see . . . come from a long line of cowboys, great-great grandpa was a pirate.” That sounded farfetched to Faye, but then again, when they’d first met, Lance had been a talking squirrel. She was willing to go with it.

Faye turned to the remaining three. Jane was reading a book again and apparently wasn’t even listening to the conversation. She always seemed to be reading something. Delilah hadn’t spoken yet either, she was sullenly stabbing at her food with a fork. Francis looked up.

“Well, if we’re telling our stories, I’m still alive. Everybody knows I’ve got magic, but they don’t realize how much, but most folks think I’m a sort of fop that gets by on his family name and attends lots of parties. I play it dumb.”

“Really?” Lance raised one bushy eyebrow. “How ever do you pull that off?”

“I . . .” Francis frowned. “Never mind.”

Faye glanced at Delilah. The dark-haired lady was about the prettiest woman she’d ever seen. “I bet you were a movie star.”

Delilah started to laugh. “Oh, come on . . . Wait . . . you’re serious?”

“Yes,” Faye said. “You’re very beautiful.”

Delilah just stared, surprised, green eyes blinking rapidly. “Why yes. Yes, I am. And yeah, that’s paid a few bills for me, but probably not in the way you’re thinking, little girl.”

Mr. Browning coughed politely.

“Oh, don’t get all huffy,
Moses
,” Delilah said coldly. “I won’t talk about it in
polite
company.” She stood up and tossed the napkin on her plate. “I’m not hungry.” She walked from the room without another word.

“What did I say?” Faye asked.

“Ms. Jones has had a difficult life,” Browning said. “Her father was one of us . . .
once
. I’m afraid that sometimes the Society does what it thinks is best in the big picture, but it misses the suffering of the individual . . . never mind. I apologize.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Lance said. “John here is our moral compass, but he can be a little disapproving of certain vices.” He downed the rest of his whiskey in one gulp. “Ahhh . . . That’s good stuff. I’ll grab Delilah and we’ll have a little talk with the prisoner. Socking him in the head will cheer her up.” Lance left as well.

Jane spoke without looking up from her book. “I’ve been Grimnoir my whole life, and my parents, and my grandparents before that. They were some of the first founders. I was born into this. I don’t have to pretend to be dead, because I’ve never gotten to really be alive.” She turned the page. “You have to actually exist first, you know.”

“That’s . . . that’s kind of sad,” Faye said.

“Eh . . .” Jane shrugged. “You get used to it. This is all I’ve ever done, so I can’t complain. I’m a Mender after all, that’s my God-given gift, and I’ve got no shortage of injured people this way. My friends have left things behind to do this. I never had to, and even if I did, I’d still do it anyway. I’m just glad that I never had to make that choice.”

Faye understood. ”I don’t really have anything either. I guess if my Grandpa was still alive, I’d still be there, with him, happy. Now? I think it’s awful nice of you folks to let me stay here for a spell.” Faye didn’t know what she was going to do next. She was still figuring out what had happened, as secret societies and Tesla superweapons were a bit over her head, but General Pershing had said that she was welcome to stay with them as long as she wanted.

“Leaving things behind is tough.” Jane placed a bookmark to hold her page then finally set her book down. “You haven’t met my boyfriend yet. That’s how it was for him. He was a radio star. Had his own show on the American Broadcasting Network and everything, best voice in the world, people used to say. He read the news, he was half the voices on the detective shows. Everyone loved him, and then one day they didn’t anymore. They hated him.”

“What happened?”

“People found out he had Power, that he could influence people with his words, get inside their heads. They pretty much ran him out on a rail. It ruined his life.” Jane sniffed and reopened her book. “Poor Dan.”

“Don’t be hasty. Young Mr. Garrett turned out to be one of our finest operatives,” Browning suggested as he rose. “He would never have met you either, my dear, if he’d continued in the radio business, and I don’t believe he would have it any other way.” Jane blushed. “Now, if you will excuse me, I do have some business to conduct.”

***

His eyes fluttered, open enough so that he could see who was at his bedside. He made out the scarecrow form and shiny baldness, decided that it was John Moses Browning, and closed his eyes again because any light was particularly painful today.

“Yes, John?” Pershing whispered. “Did Garrett recover the device?”

“We’ve not heard anything yet,” Browning replied.

“I see . . .” That meant that there was another reason for the visit, and Pershing already knew what it was. Browning was his second-in- command, one of his oldest surviving friends, a deeply honorable man, and keeping the truth from him was more painful than the cancers eating his bones.

Browning sighed. “I’m concerned, Jack.”

“The Chairman’s trying to reassemble a weapon that blew a thousand-mile hole in Siberia,” he laughed, but it came out as a painful wheezing noise. “I’m a touch concerned, myself.”

“That Cog, Einstein, figured that it was such a release of Power that it would have been felt in other realities. Concern is an understatement, but we both already know that . . .” Browning paused. “That’s not why I’m here. I’m a little worried about your recent recruiting.”

Pershing would have nodded if he could have. “Please, continue.”

“In the past we have always thoroughly checked people out before we revealed ourselves to them. That’s always been the Grimnoir way. That’s the only reason we’ve stayed alive as long as we have. The Chairman’s spies are everywhere, and if we brought one of them into our ranks, it would destroy us.”

Pershing knew that Browning was utterly correct. It was the single biggest reason he could no longer even trust his own government or even the Army that he’d helped build. The Imperium’s tendrils were deep into everything. “Our numbers are too few. We’ve lost so many good men. If we do not increase our numbers, we will fail.”

“I agree, but first it was Delilah Jones. We barely knew anything about her, except that her father was a bitter, miserable crank of a man, who would surely have drunk himself to death if the Imperium hadn’t found him first . . . and she herself is of questionable character, a criminal even.”

“We’ve recruited criminals before, John. They can go places that others can’t. You’re just offended because she was a New Orleans whore.”

Browning sighed. “No need to be vulgar, but yes.”

“She did what she had to do to survive. When she discovered her Power, she turned to more lucrative crime.”

“You say that like it’s a good thing. And this Heavy you have running around with Garrett and Heinrich. He’s a murderer.”

Pershing couldn’t deny that. “And a war hero.” He knew that if Browning found out the other reason he’d recruited Sullivan, he’d surely think that the Pale Horse’s curse had finally driven him mad. “It balances.”

“Well, we should just take a trip up to Rockville and clean the place out then . . . Either one of them could have been co-opted by the Imperium. We’ve not investigated either as we normally would.”

“We can’t spare the manpower to investigate anyone.” The American Grimnoir had borne the brunt of the secret war against the Imperium. The international leadership had their own fights, as the Imperium was active in virtually ever corner of the globe, but it seemed to him that all the tough jobs had been assigned to his people, and the Americans had paid for it in blood.
As usual.

“And now you’re letting this young lady, Ms. Sally Faye Vierra, stay here. Do you plan on giving her the oath as well?”

“Oh, please don’t tell me you think that little thing is an Imperium spy?”

He snorted. “Unless the Imperium has found a magic kanji for channeling the Power of irresistible cuteness, no, of course not. She’s a wonderful child, but she’s only a child. Consorting with us has put her in danger.”

“I’ve led men into battle that were younger,” Pershing responded.

“Those were men.” Most of the knights of the Grimnoir were male, most of their female members served in a support or intelligence fashion. Brutes, like Delilah, were historically an exception for reasons so obvious that even the harshest misogynist had to agree. “You want to start sending women into this meat grinder? Are we that desperate?”

“Look around. We’ve taken seventy percent casualties over the last decade. We can’t protect the honor of the fairer sex if our entire nation is in slavery under the Chairman’s heel.”

“It’s not right.”

Pershing gave a noncommittal grunt. “She’s a girl, but she’s also a Traveler. We both know how rare those are. Think of the possibilities. Look what the Imperium has accomplished with their Travelers.”

Pershing couldn’t see, but he knew Browning well enough to know that he would be shaking his head sadly. “You would turn that little girl into our own personal Shadow Guard?”

The Imperium had a few pure-Active units that they knew of, the warrior Iron Guard, the experimental Unit 731, and the Shadow Guard assassins. They were often referred to by their common name, ninja, and the Grimnoir had lost many to their poisoned blades over the years. “We’re better than them, but we’ll do whatever must be done to win. Our way of life, our freedom, depends on it.”

“That’s the same thing you said to Traveling Joe twenty years ago, if you recall. And he walked away and never looked back. He’d rather be a farmer than another murderer in the night. At least there’s honor in milking cows.” There was a rustle of cloth as Browning got up from the chair.

Pershing had caused quite the stir when he’d been the first Grimnoir leader to invite coloreds into the Society. He doubted anyone would be surprised should he start drafting children. “Fine. We’ll give the young lady a home and a proper education, Lord knows she needs one, and I won’t ask her to do anything, but mark my words, her nature is such that she’ll want to give some payback to those Imperial bastards.”

“And to think that I’d come up here worried that you were losing your judgment. Rather, it turns out you’re as ruthless a man as ever.”

“I have a history of winning wars, John. That’s why I was given this job.”

The door closed and he was alone in the dark. Browning was right to question his wisdom. It did seem foolhardy on its face, but he had his own reasons for bringing in these new people. It was time for some fresh blood.

He no longer knew whom he could trust.

In 1908 he’d led a small team on a suicide mission. The Tunguska Event had been a mere test-firing of Tesla’s Geo-Tel. If the Peace Ray was a scalpel, the Geo-Tel was a battle-ax. Only by the grace of God had they succeeded just as the blue pillar was starting to form over the East Coast and the Power itself was rising from the bowels of the Earth. The knights of New York had succeeded only by the narrowest of margins.

He’d been so enraged that if they’d had the ability, Pershing would have turned it around and fired it at Tokyo. With that being an impossibility, he’d wanted the thing destroyed, but the international Grimnoir leadership had vetoed that, in the hope that someday they might be able to utilize it themselves. He’d broken up the device and given it to the surviving members of his team to keep safe. Only the inner circle of the Society knew who had the pieces.

But now those men were dying one by one, which meant that someone had betrayed them. He alone knew where the final piece was, but did not dare tell any of his people. He needed outsiders.

The bedroom door flew open with a bang. “It’s Garrett!” Lance shouted. There was a bustle of movement and the nervous voices of at least three people as the focal circle was activated. Of course, Pershing hadn’t felt the contact. His fingers had become so arthritic that his Grimnoir ring couldn’t be worn anymore.

The flash of white light could be seen through his eyelids, but he didn’t complain. He was as anxious for the news as everyone else.

Garrett’s voice came through a moment later.

“Christiansen is dead. The device is gone.”

Chapter 10

It was nearly eleven o’clock at night—an immensely late hour for those latitudes—but the whole town was still gathered in the Gatlinburg courthouse yard, listening to the disputes of theologians. The Scopes trial had brought them in from all directions. There was a friar wearing a sandwich sign announcing that he was the Bible champion of the world. There was a Seventh-Day Adventist arguing that Clarence Darrow was the beast with seven heads and ten horns described in Revelation XIII, and that the end of the world was at hand. A charlatan magician was escorted from the premises for pulling a rabbit from a hat, while nearby a fundamentalist of the Merlin-Baptists pontificated on the epistles of St. Paul while shooting lightning from his eyes and none dared interrupt that sermon. There was the eloquent Dr. T.T. Martin, of Blue Mountain, Mississippi, who had come to town with a truckload of torches (the wooden, not the human kind) and hymn books to put Darwin in his place. There was a singing brother bellowing apocalyptic hymns. There was William Jennings Bryan, followed everywhere by a gaping crowd. It was better than the circus.