Hard Magic (21 page)

—H.L. Mencken,

Editorial in the Baltimore Mercurium

about the Tennessee Magic-Monkey Trial,
1926

New York City, New York

Cornelius Gould Stuyvesant
was enjoying the view from the top of the Empire State Building’s super-dirigible dock. A mighty six-hundred-foot hybrid lifter was in the final moments of docking. Cables were coming out of the sky in great unfurling masses and his UBF employees were scurrying about securing the great beast. Two smaller dirigibles had been serviced in the last hour, and each one had been moved along with shocking efficiency.

The wind over the city was potent today, but with two full-time Weathermen dedicated to calming the skies, dirigibles would be able to dock safely on even the gustiest of days. There were two more Cracklers on staff to deal with the static electricity and lightning issues, and even a single underpaid Torch just in case there was a fire. This might not have been the largest United Blimp & Freight station, but it was certainly the crown jewel of innovation.

One of his retainers arrived, moving familiarly past his security man, and passed over the latest daily business summaries. There were two new orders from the British for small patrol craft and two complete air trains for Belgium, and they’d received the third installment payment for the Imperium’s diplomatic flagship vessel. Construction was complete and it was being taken for its test runs at the Michigan facility. If everything shook out to spec it could be shipped to Japan in a matter of days. He looked forward to the last payment, since the Japs always paid in gold bars, and he couldn’t care less if some of it had surely been melted down from Chinamen’s teeth.

A further note indicated that one of the admirals he was paying under the table at the Navy Department had confirmed that the general staff were very frightened of the new Japanese Kaga-class super-dirigibles, and would be ordering their own fleet upgrades in the next fiscal year.
Perfect.
“It’s a good day to be me,” he said aloud, then chuckled. Every day was a good day when you were the richest man in the world.

“Yes, Mr. Stuyvesant,” his bodyguard agreed. Cornelius couldn’t remember this one’s name, but he was a big Brute, and had come highly recommended.

“I wasn’t talking to you, idiot,” Cornelius snapped. The Brute nodded politely. It was best to keep such men in their proper place. Fighting dogs should always be kept on a leash. He made a few notes on the file and passed it back to his retainer, who then retreated from the balcony with ratlike swiftness.

Cornelius leaned on the balcony and savored his cigar. The dirigible was almost locked down. Who said that it was an economic depression? He was doing just fine.

“Hello, Mr. Stuyvesant.”

The voice had come from behind. Nobody was supposed to be out here except for him and his immediate entourage. Somebody was getting fired for this. He turned around, ready to bellow his fury, and stopped, surprised.

“Harkeness . . .”

The Pale Horse had returned. He was standing there, calm as death, in a pitch-black suit, a craggy shadow of a man. One bony hand was resting on his bodyguard’s shoulder, and the giant Brute collapsed to the deck, grey-faced and gasping for air. Harkeness removed his hand and stepped forward.

“Good evening, sir. I have come for that favor.”

Cornelius took an involuntary step back and crashed violently into the railing. “Don’t come any closer.”

Harkeness smiled with his yellowed teeth. “I’m a businessman, Mr. Stuyvesant. Why would I hurt you now? I’m just here to collect on our deal . . . You weren’t thinking of backing out now, were you?” His accent seemed to accentuate every wrong word. “That’d be rather upsetting.”

The bodyguard turned on his side and vomited blood in a great gushing mass. He convulsed violently, then was still. Cornelius screamed.

“Oh, sorry about that. I get carried away sometimes. You’re going to want to have a Torch clean that up. Perhaps throw down some peroxide as well. Now as I was saying—”

Cornelius thought fast. “He’s still alive! I don’t owe you anything until he’s dead. That was the deal.”

“Come now. We both know General Pershing is as good as dead. I’ve given him three years of terrible suffering, and I stand in awe of the man’s will. Anyone else would have eaten a bullet by now. I know that you know I speak the truth.”

“It hasn’t accomplished what I wanted,” Cornelius shouted. “I wanted results.”

“No. You wanted to fill the hole your son’s death left in your soul. You wanted to fill it with revenge, and you wanted the once-favored heir that had forsaken you to come crawling back to your fold, his pride broken. That did not occur, but that’s not my concern. You came to me for one thing, and one thing only: Death. Painful, lingering death.” Harkeness stepped forward, crowding Cornelius, until he could smell the tobacco on his breath. “Black Jack Pershing will be dead soon, but I need my favor
now
.”

Cornelius briefly contemplated throwing himself off the ledge, but he was too scared. His fear seemed to cause his own Power to flare, and he reached inside, gathered all his energy and threw it at Harkeness.

The Pale Horse was hit by the telekinetic wave, and his polished dress shoes slid across the marble and into the puddle of blood. Harkeness looked up in disbelief. “That’s it? That’s all you have?”

Cornelius tried again, but his Power was exhausted.

Harkness stepped forward, glaring down at his shoes in disgust. When he looked up again, his face was flushed with anger. “You think that Power is something you can mistreat your whole life and never respect, and then when in your time of need it will somehow rise to the occasion?” He covered the distance the feeble push had moved him in two steps and grabbed Cornelius by the lapels. “You have to earn Power, fool!”

Cornelius screamed when he saw the hands curled into claws next to his body. He could almost see the flesh crawling with disease. One narrow finger came up and stroked his lips with a yellow nail. His bladder let go. “Fine! Fine! Name it. Name your price, fiend! Please, just don’t hurt me. I beg you! I’ll give you anything.”

“I do not want anything more than our agreed-upon price.” Harkeness released him. “You will make a change to one of your client’s specifications and you will not inform them.” He removed an envelope from his jacket and shoved it between the buttons of Cornelius’s shirt. “You will follow the instructions on these blueprints exactly, down to the most precise measurement. These changes will be made under your direct supervision. It will be done in utmost secrecy.”

Cornelius slid down the balcony, curled his knees up to his chest, and whimpered in a puddle of his own urine.

“You’ve been touched by the Pale Horse. You’ve heard what’s happened to Pershing despite the constant ministrations of Healers. Failure to follow these plans exactly will result in you sharing his fate. I will know if you try to betray me. I am inside your skin now, Mr. Stuyvesant. Goodbye.”

When Cornelius finally looked up with tear-filled eyes, a set of bloody footprints were all that remained of the Pale Horse.

Tremonton, Utah

Sullivan sat under the shade
of a scraggly tree. The narrow box canyon was covered in the little trees, hardly more than sagebrush, and the grass was tall and yellow. The gentle hills were broken with occasional gashes of ancient stone. It was a beautiful spot in its own rugged way. He could see why the old Grimnoir had chosen this as his hiding spot.

The Box Elder County Sheriff’s Deputies were still combing through the wreckage of the cabin, but Sullivan pieced together what had happened after a few minutes of wandering around.

Two cars full of men had come up the dirt road. Sven Christiansen was no fool. He’d abandoned the structure, which was the obvious target, and headed up one of the hills. Despite Garrett saying that the old Dane was in his late sixties, he’d managed to lug a Browning 1919 and its tripod up there, and when the men in the cars had proven to be who he’d expected, he’d hosed them down.

Christiansen had picked his targets and fired short, controlled bursts, just like Sullivan had been taught as a machine gunner in the First. There were six bodies between the cars and the front of the cabin, all in various states of destruction. A large blood trail through the soft dust showed Sullivan where another man had been plugged bad, but had somehow kept moving.

One car was abandoned, hole through the radiator, puddle underneath. Tracks showed where the other had turned around and left.

The walk had left Sullivan winded and his wounds aching, but he’d found the ambush spot. There were over a hundred shell casings, and since the Browning ejected straight down, they tended to collect in a pile. Deep pockmarks in the rock showed where the goons had returned fire.

It was the other set of tracks that appeared suddenly behind Christiansen’s position that showed what happened next. The cloven hooves were massive, but the spacing told Sullivan that they came from a bipedal creature. He put his own considerable weight down in the dirt, and saw that in comparison the creature had been far heavier. Then the signs became confusing as the Summoned had descended on Christiansen. There was a claw mark scored into the rock where it had swung and missed. The three talons covered almost twice the space as Sullivan’s big hand. The dried blood splatter told how it had ended.

So now Sullivan sat under a tree, pondering what it all meant, while Heinrich and Garrett were having their turn being questioned. They had arrived twenty minutes after the law. Someone had seen the smoke rising from the valley and called it in. As strangers in the tiny community they were automatic suspects. A few radio calls and a bit of investigation had confirmed that they’d arrived in Ogden too late to be the killers, but that didn’t make them any less suspicious.

Garrett was doing the talking, which was for the best, since with a little gentle magic, Garrett could probably talk his way out of near anything. Sullivan figured that Dan would have been smooth even if he didn’t have magic. The man sure didn’t look like much, but he’d probably make one hell of a door-to-door salesman. Sullivan had taken a liking to him, despite having to constantly check his head to make sure that it wasn’t the Mouth’s magic talking. Heinrich was polite, but it was obvious that he personally didn’t like Sullivan much. Jake was fine with that. He didn’t really have any friends, and wasn’t looking to start collecting them, either.

The two Grimnoir joined him under the tree a bit later. “Sheriff says we’re free to go,” Garrett said. “I guess that ol’ Sven had a reputation in the local Danish community of having a lot of secrets in his past. They didn’t seem too surprised to see him end up like this. What do you think happened?”

“One big-ass demon got him,” Sullivan said. “Probably eight hundred pounds. Which means we’re dealing with a Summoner like I ain’t seen since the war.”

“You can read sign?” Heinrich asked, surprised. “You struck me as a city boy.”

“I come from a place not much different than here. If we didn’t kill it our own self, then we didn’t get to eat. I moved to the city because that’s where the work was.”

Garrett squatted down next to him and pulled out a smoke. “Anything else?”

“Another one of them got shot real bad, lost most of his blood, but his tracks say that he walked around under his own power for a long time. Looks like a big old boy. Probably three hundred pounds and I bet he has to get his boots made special, like me. Plus he was shooting this.” Sullivan reached into his pocket and pulled out the moon-clip. It consisted of six fired, brass cases snapped into a sheet-metal circle. He tossed it toward Heinrich, who caught it easily and held it up to read the head stamp.

“.50 RL? These are huge. This come out of a cannon?”

“Russian Long,” Sullivan said. “Cossack cavalry had a limited run of them made for their war against the Japanese. Smith & Wesson filled the contract. Cossacks wanted something portable and short, but could still punch a Jap helmet at three hundred yards. The shells were clipped together so they could load easier from the back of a moving bear. Damn thing even has a shotgun barrel for when they were up close in the trees. Most powerful handgun in the world, made specifically for Brutes, because it was loaded so hot it could sprain the wrist of a normal man.”

“Don’t see those around very often,” Garrett said.

“So this big boy with the big gun got hit a bunch of times, but kept moving. At first I thought he’d been killed from all the blood, then brought back as a damn filthy zombie.”

Heinrich scowled. “You’ve got a real problem with zombies, don’t you?”

“I only want to have to kill somebody once. Killing them twice seems like work. But the tracks aren’t from a zombie. They shuffle, stumble, like their balance is all gone, and they don’t take cover like this one did. So he got opened up, dumped most of his blood, and didn’t worry about it. Either of you know what Power that could be?”

“There are other things besides natural Powers . . .” Heinrich suggested. “We’ve not had a chance to tell you about those yet. The Imperium has special soldiers. The Chairman picks them himself.”

“They’re called the Iron Guard,” Garrett added. “They’re all strong Actives to start with, but then he changes them.”

“What do you mean
changes
?”

“There are two kinds of magic, Sullivan.” Garrett explained. “Natural occurring Powers. One Power, one person. Everybody knows how that works.”

He didn’t correct him, though he personally knew Garrett was wrong. Sullivan figured he was good for at least one and a half himself.

“Then there are spells, where with different tricks you can capture some of the Power and use it.”

“The Power can be chained to certain signs and words,” Heinrich said. “All Grimnoir learn a few, but we don’t delve too deep. It’s too dangerous. You screw up a chaining the Power to a word and
bad
things happen. Some of us are more talented than others.”