Hard Magic (22 page)

“We stick with the easy ones, and we practice the hell out of them before we’re allowed to do them on our own,” Garrett said. “The Imperium, though, they push the limits. They mark their servants, even ones that have no magic of their own. They’ll mark multiple words permanently on their Guards. It makes them into something else, something not human.”

The swordsman.
He’d been different. Not only was his Power something Sullivan had never seen before, it had been too strong. As they’d grappled, he’d felt the unnatural heat coming from under his shirt, like there had been something on fire against his skin. “Rokusaburo?”

“Normally we don’t try to take an Iron Guard unless we’ve got at least five-to-one odds, preferably more. We got lucky . . .” Daniel grunted as he stood up. “Come on, boys, we’ve got a long ride ahead of us.”

Mar Pacifica, California

The Imperium goon
was tied to a chair in the center of the empty storage room. As nicely equipped as the family estate was, it had not come with a proper dungeon, so they had to make do. A single naked light bulb hung directly over their prisoner’s head. Francis and Delilah were standing back in the shadows, watching. Lance was the most experienced at . . . well, everything, and was going to do the actual questioning.

Francis found himself praying that the man would roll over and talk quickly, because he didn’t have the stomach for violence. Sure, he’d killed his fair share of evil men. He’d even shot one of this particular fellow’s associates in the face with a P17 Enfield, but pulling the trigger or using his Power to bash someone’s head in during a battle was different than hurting someone who was completely at your mercy.

Remember the Imperium schools, Francis . . .
He curled his hands into fists and steadied himself for whatever would come next. He and his family and other important delegates had been given a guided tour of one of the premier facilities in Tokyo. As many bored young men tended to do, Francis had wandered off the approved path and gotten lost. He’d seen the parts of the school that weren’t shown to the outside world, and it had changed him for the rest of his life.
Never forget what they did to the children.
Anyone who supported the schools deserved whatever they got.

Lance limped up to the chair and pulled the burlap sack from their guest’s head. He glared at his captors with angry eyes, and surely would have started shouting if it wasn’t for the fact Delilah had taped his mouth shut. The spell of weakness was drawn on his forehead with ash from the old place, which seemed somehow appropriate.

“I’m sure you know who we are,” Lance said with his rough drawl. He produced a hunting knife from behind his back and quickly shoved it through the man’s shirt. He twitched and jerked away in sudden fear. The blade was so razor sharp that it sheared through the cloth like it was nothing, and Lance laid the man’s chest bare. A series of red scratches had been cut into the prisoner’s chest. Francis couldn’t read the Japanese version of spells, but he’d seen this one before, and knew that it granted increased vitality. It made the Imperium thugs harder to put down unless you got them right in the heart or the brain.

“And I sure as hell know who you work for . . .” Lance made a show of studying the marks. “I’m gonna ask you some questions. You’re gonna answer or you’re gonna regret it.”

Lance roughly pulled the pressure tape from the prisoner’s mouth. He screamed as the tape removed most of his moustache. “Grimmy bastards!”

“So you do know who I am. What’s your name?”

“Albert,” he spat. “Albert Rizzo.”

“Where you from, Albert Rizzo?”

“Montauk, New York.”

It never ceased to amaze Francis that Americans would join the Imperium cause, but from what he understood from the international society, it was the same in every nation. The Imperium recruited mostly from the poor classes. They usually picked Normals, gave them a taste of having their own magic, and put them to work. The smartest and most brutal were able to rise in the ranks, and the rest turned into cannon fodder in their never-ending war against the Grimnoir.

“Who do you answer to, Al?”

“I answer to the Chairman!”

Lance sighed and stabbed the knife into Albert’s arm. the man screamed. “You know what I mean.” The knife came out, the last inch dripping blood. “Unfortunately for you, your recruiter marked you with the kanji for health, which means that I can cut on you for
twice
as long as a regular man ’fore you croak. Plus I know all the places that hurt, but don’t have any arterial bleeding. See where I’m going with this?”

Albert growled at him. “Madi. He said his name was Mr. Madi.”

Francis twitched. He’d heard that name before. The man was a legend, even by Iron Guard standards.

“Big fella. Got one bad eye?” Lance asked.

“Yeah, that’s him.”

“Wait!”

Francis jerked toward the female cry.
Faye? What’s she doing in here?
She must have followed them down, but he hadn’t heard her.
She can teleport, idiot.
The girl walked into the circle of light and right up to the chair. Lance raised his hand that wasn’t holding a giant knife.

“You don’t want to see this, kid,” he said gently. “This ain’t for you.”

“Where’s the one-eyed man!” Faye shouted.

“Go to hell.”

Lance turned around and stabbed him in the thigh. Albert squealed. “See? Look what you made me do. My daddy fought Apaches, and he taught me every damn thing he learned from them when I was little. So don’t make me take a trip down memory lane, and answer the damned question.”

“I don’t know,” Albert said. “We work in little groups. They call us cells. They send telegrams when they need us for jobs. We don’t know how to reach nobody else. Especially the bosses. I swear. That crazy brunette done killed everybody else in my cell.”

Lance wiped his knife on Albert’s shirt before returning it to the sheath on his belt. “See, that wasn’t so hard now, was it? I didn’t even have to skin you or nothing.”

Albert started to cry. “You don’t get it, Grimmy. It don’t matter what you do to me. My brothers are gonna win in the end. The Chairman’s way is the only way. We need his leadership. Freedom is a lie. People are starving. There ain’t no jobs. The rich keep getting richer while we’re dying. The Chairman can fix everything. He’s just like Jesus!”

Lance rolled his eyes. “Damn useful idiots.”

“No! He’s not just magic. He works miracles. He’s the real second coming. He’s the new messiah, only this time he’s making the weak into the strong. His plan is to make man better, the perfection of humanity. People like you say that he’s taking away freedom, but he’s really just protecting us from our own bad choices. The Chairman will save us all. When he’s done, everyone will have Power. This isn’t just a movement, this is true religion. I see that look on your face, you think we’re crazy. Oh, you think you can stop us, but you’re wrong. I’ve seen Madi kill your stupid kind like it was nothing. You think you’re so powerful? You ain’t got nothing!”

Faye began to shake, but Francis didn’t think that it was because of what Lance had done. “Were you with the one-eyed man in El Nido?”

“Is that where that old Mexican lived with his stupid brat and his stupid cows? Yeah. His magic was supposed to be so rare and special and shit, but it was nothing compared to—” Albert’s eyes widened and he looked down in shock at the knife planted squarely in the center of his chest.

Francis jerked in surprise. Faye had Traveled directly behind Lance. She slowly took her hand away from the quivering knife. “He was Portuguese. And cows aren’t
stupid
!” she shouted. Albert tried to say something, but then his read rolled forward, limp. When Francis blinked again, Faye was gone.

“Aw hell . . .” Lance said, reaching around and realizing that Faye had relieved him of his hunting knife. “That ain’t good. A single kanji won’t save you from getting knifed in the heart.”

“Faye!” Francis shouted, realizing what had just happened. He ran for the stairs.

Delilah stepped into the light, grabbed the Imperium man by the hair and lifted his head. He was obviously dead. “You know, I like her. She’s a firecracker.”

***

Faye’s boots landed in the soft grass of the front lawn. Taking a few steps, she folded her arms around her chest and sunk down to her knees, sobbing.

That’s another promise broken. I said no more crying.

She was supposed to be tough now. She’d just killed one of the men who’d killed Grandpa. He deserved it. He deserved to die just as much as the one she’d gotten with the pitchfork. She’d taken Lance’s knife and she’d driven it right between his ribs and into his heart and killed him dead as meat. It served him right.

Then why am I so sad?

Her whole life had been hard. It never let up. She tried not to think about her first family. She had been routinely beaten for her weird grey eyes, just for being different, and her father had beaten her mother occasionally for spawning a demon. They’d kept her around though, because somebody who could steal food so good was okay, even if she’d been sired by the devil.

And even then she’d been happy. If everything was miserable, then as a little girl she’d decided that she’d be happy, just to spite them. Once she’d made that decision, nothing else mattered. She made up her own world in her head, one that wasn’t filled with hunger and terror, and she lived there instead. And then one day she found out that there was a place in the real world that was every bit as good as the fake one . . . and then she wasn’t alone anymore.

The one-eyed man had taken that away from her. That’s why she was crying, she decided. It wasn’t about the fact she’d just put a knife into a man’s chest, it was because he wasn’t the
right
man.

“Faye!”

She turned to see Francis running from the house.
Oh no.
She didn’t want him to see her like this. She sent her thoughts ahead. “Are you—?”

She landed on her knees at the top of a rock cliff, looking down into the crashing waves far below.

Grandpa had told her about crossing an ocean like this crammed into a tiny room on a steamship. He told her all sorts of stories about working hard, fishing, cutting up whales, about his first few cows, but he’d never bothered to teach her about any of this Grimnoir stuff. “Oh, Grandpa. You were probably scared to tell me. You knew about people like the one-eyed man, but I could have handled it. I’ll sure handle it now. You taught me a lot, and one of those things was to always finish any chore I start,” she told the ocean. “I promise.”

A seagull landed on the rocks next to her.

“Who you talking to?” Lance asked. His deep voice seemed strange coming from the goofy white bird.

“None of your business,” she snapped.

“Sounded like you were talking to the dead.” The seagull waddled up to the edge and looked over. “You gonna jump?”

Faye snorted. “That’s stupid . . .”

“Damn right it is . . . You know, nobody blames you for doing that, though next time ask me before you swipe my knife. I’m particular like that.”

She wiped her eyes. “Sorry.”

“If we had to apologize to everybody every time we screwed up around here, we sure wouldn’t get much done . . . How old are you anyway?”

“I don’t know,” she answered truthfully. “My first family said I didn’t deserve no birthdays, because I was the devil’s child.”

Squawk!
“What? That’s a bunch of bunk!”

“I figure I’m maybe sixteen or seventeen, give or take.”

The gull clucked. “Damn, that makes me feel old . . . Well, for what you’ve been through, you’re doing just fine for your age. You ain’t the first person ’round this place that’s got a need for revenge.”

“Do you need any revenge?”

“Well . . .” he seemed hesitant. “The Chairman destroyed everyone I loved and took my whole life away and part of my leg. What do you think?”

“I think I liked you better as a squirrel.”

Lance flapped his wings indignantly. “That’s not what I meant. You’re a strange kid, but I do agree. I’ve got a belly full of garbage and I smell like shit. You want to come back to the house? Francis is running around like a chicken with his head cut off looking for you. I think he’s worried.”

“Oh . . . he seems really nice.”

“He’s a good enough kid, but he’s had a sheltered life compared to people like us, so don’t hold that against him . . . He means well.”

“He’s nice looking.”

“Oh my hell.” Lance shook his narrow beak back and forth. “That boy’s been around the block . . . more than a few blocks I might add, and he’s at least four years older than you. Plus, I don’t want to have to snap his little twig neck for dishonoring you, okay? Let’s keep our minds on business for right now. Remember, evil empire trying to get a superweapon?”

“I want to help stop them, and I’m gonna kill the one-eyed man myself. I swear it.”

Lance was quiet for a long time, his head automatically cocking from side to side as he stared out to sea. “He’s in the big leagues, kid. You might as well say you’re gonna kill the Chairman while you’re at it.”

“He’s the one-eyed man’s boss? Fine. I swear I’ll kill him too then.”

Lance sighed.

“You’re really good at the
other
magic, aren’t you?” Faye asked. “You’ve got your animal Power, but you can write spells too. If you taught me what you know, then I could be more help.”

“It ain’t easy,” he said. “And it’s more than spells. Being Grimnoir means that you hold the line. It’s learning how to fight, how to tail somebody and be a good spy, how to shoot, all the tricks of the trade. It takes a lot of practice and hard work.”

“Well, if this Chairman is as tough as everybody says he is, we better get started if I’m gonna kill him anytime soon.”

The seagull laughed. “Delilah’s right. You are a firecracker. All right, I’ll teach you how to be a Grimnoir knight, but on one condition: no more murdering unless I say so, or you got a real good reason!”