Hard Magic

Chapter 26

We have tried everything. Bullets bounce off. Bombs thrown under his carriage have turned it to splinters and killed the horses, but don't so much as muss the Chairman's hair. He does not sleep so we can't sneak up on him. He does not eat so we can't poison him. We've tried fire, ice, lightning, death magic, crushing gravity, bone shards, blood curses, all without effect. Decapitation might work, if you could come up with a blade sharp enough, but the finest steel simply dulls against his skin. Even if you were to wield this modern Excalibur the problem then would be that you can only touch Tokugawa if he lets you. He is all knowing, all seeing, moves faster than the wind, and can Travel in the blink of an eye. You don't touch the Chairman. The Chairman touches you, and as far as we've observed, that only happens when he's ripping the very soul from your body.

– Frank Baum, knight of the Grimnoir, testimony to the elders' council, 1911 San Francisco, California It was Kristopher Harkeness, elder of the Grimnoir, who responded to the call of his ring. The thin man came into the hospital room, locked the door behind him, and Browning wondered why he'd never seen it before. Plague lived in his flesh. This was an Angel of Death. This was the Pale Horse.

"You called?" Harkeness answered.

"I did." Browning pulled the Colt.45 out from under the blankets and leveled it at his fellow Grimnoir. "I'm surprised you came."

"I'm bound by a sacred oath. I had to come." He took a seat in one of the metal folding chairs next to the door. He did not look surprised to see the gun. "You are, after all, one of my brothers. Isn't that what the oath says? So I know you won't shoot me. I am still Grimnoir."

"I don't see a knight. I see a traitor."

Harkeness laughed. It was a hollow and joyless sound. "Allow me the chance to explain myself before you murder one of your fellows." His awkward accenting of random words grated on Browning's ears. He reached very slowly into his coat. "Mind if I smoke?"

"The man standing before the firing squad is always allowed one."

"Do I get a blindfold?"

"I'd prefer for you to see this coming, for I do believe you murdered John J. Pershing, and I would assume that even if they did not die by your hand, you are responsible for many other deaths."

The Pale Horse struck a match and lit his cigarette. He took a long drag and let it out in a cloud. "That would be correct. But not for the reasons you believe. You see, Mr. Browning, I am no traitor. I have accomplished that which has been considered impossible. I have accomplished the thing that has cost so many of our brothers' lives. I am the furthest thing from a traitor. I am a hero."

Browning decided to hear him out. Then he would shoot him in the heart. Imperium flagship Tokugawa Faye couldn't walk. Electrical shocks seemed to travel up her leg every time her foot touched the ground, but lucky for her, she didn't need to walk to Travel.

Time was short. Already the blue light was coming up out of the ocean. The magic jellyfish from the place with all the dreaming dead people was coming here, right now.

She appeared in the greenhouse where the surviving pirates had holed up. They were boxed in by two sets of Imperium marines, and they'd taken bad casualties. The woman that launched fire out of her hands was holding them back on one side, and the bald captain was shooting the soldiers that stuck their heads into the hallway, but they'd run out of bullets, fire, and luck before they'd run out of Imperium.

The Imperium didn't even see her arrive right behind them. They were too worried about the fireballs that kept squirting down the corridor. So she pulled the pins out of two grenades, then Traveled over to their friends on the other side, and did that to them too. She had appeared behind the pirates and had started talking before the soldiers had even exploded.

"Don't shoot!" Faye shouted. "I'm on your side." She glared at the fire lady. "And don't you dare set me on fire again or you'll be sorry." Several guns turned on her, but at least they were smart this time. There were several explosions, and then a moment later, more from the opposite corridor. "Okay, you're clear now."

The pirate captain used the lull to shove another magazine into his rifle. "Who're you?"

She waved her ring. "Sir Faye of the Grimnoir knights." She didn't know if she was technically a "sir", like the knights she'd seen in that one picture book, as none of the other Grimnoir ever called themselves "sir," but she thought Sir Faye had a nice ring to it, but then again she was a girl… She'd ask Lance. He'd know. "Never mind. You need to go down that way, up two flights of stairs, and then to the end of the boat. My friend Francis has a blimp waiting. You need to go now."

"What about the Geo-Tel?"

She rolled her eyes. "Oh, you people, always needing to know everything!" She was very frustrated. She didn't have time to explain this to every single person she had to go rescue. Why did people have to be so difficult? She grabbed the two closest pirates and Traveled. She dropped them at the rear end of the Tempest and then went back for more.

The captain must have figured she was a bad guy who had just evaporated his men or something, because he tried to shoot her, but she scooped him and a big fellow and dropped them with the others. Then she went back twice more. She was tempted to leave the fire lady. It'd serve her right for setting Faye on fire, but that was just the meanness talking, though Faye did leave her for last.

She found a young man next to a crashed biplane. It was sticking out the top of the tallest structure onboard. He'd crawled out, and was hiding behind one wing. He'd already used up all the ammo from the big machine gun he'd pulled off his plane, and was now shooting at Imperium with two fast-shooting pistols. His magic had something to do with changing how lucky stuff turned out, so he had shot bunches of them. She grabbed him by the back of the coat and dumped him with the other pirates, careful to point him out to sea, since bullets were still leaving his gun when they Traveled.

She found UBF people from the Tempest and scooped them up too.

Delilah was in the middle of a bridge in a place that was lit in red. She was curled up on her side, in terrible pain. Next to her was a big dead Iron Guard. She'd pulled his arm off and beat him to death with it.

Faye landed nearby. She used the rail to steady herself. "Delilah?"

Delilah looked up. Half her pretty face was gone and Faye could see her skull. "Leave me alone. I'm almost out of Power, then I won't be able to stand it."

"I'm sorry, Delilah. This whole place is about to explode."

She put her face down so that Faye could only see the pretty side and smiled. "Good."

She understood. "Bye, Delilah." Faye Traveled.

Heinrich and Mr. Garrett were being chased by a bunch of zombies. At least they were smart enough not to argue when she showed up, and they'd be smart enough to explain to the others what was going on, so that gave her an idea.

The three of them landed deep in the steaming guts of the Tokugawa. An Imperium Torch took two steps toward them but Mr. Garrett shot him twice in the chest and once in the forehead. The thing she wanted to show them was behind a big, wheezing, stinky machine. "Where are we?" Heinrich asked.

"Look at this!" Faye cringed as she limped and led them behind the machine. A really complicated design had been engraved into the wall. She didn't think the others' eyes could see what her grey ones could, but she could see the energy connected from the big, evil, magic superbomb right to these markings.

"What strange geometries," Garrett said, running his hands over them. He pulled them away as if he'd been shocked. "It's from the Rune Arcanium… It's a beacon! But that doesn't make any sense… I don't understand."

There wasn't time. "You'll figure it out!" She grabbed them both and took them up to the Tempest. There was a big crowd there now.

Mr. Garrett blinked in surprise, his hand still extended. He looked to Faye, biting his lip as the wheels turned. The entire night sky had turned a brilliant blue. Black storm clouds were boiling away around the energy. "The Geo-Tel!"

"About time somebody got it!" Faye shouted. "You're smart. You've got the words. I don't. Make them understand."

Mr. Garrett grabbed her by the arm. "I can't leave without Jane."

"I'll get her." She cried a little as her foot hit the ground. That's what she got for being in one place for too long. "Francis, are you ready yet?"

He came running, a metal pail in hand, filled to the brim with bits of metal and glass. "I did like you said."

"Good, listen, Mr. Garrett, tell Lance. He's smart too. Get in the air."

"We'll wait for you," Heinrich said.

"No! Get in the air." Since she was supposed to be the uneducated hick, it was frustrating how much slower everyone else's brain was. "We can catch up. But whoever put that mark down there didn't realize how smart the Chairman is. He'll figure out what's going on real soon if he hasn't already. I've got to stop him."

"From what?" Francis asked, confused. "Firing the Geo-Tel?"

"No! From shutting it off!" She grabbed Francis's shirt. "Let's go."

"What am I supposed to do with this junk?"

"You'll figure it out!"

Sullivan stood defiant in a vast puddle of blood, surrounded by deadly Iron Guards and the most dangerous man on Earth. Strong wind blew through the broken windows. The Geo-Tel was lighting the room in a stark cold blue, but it was no longer necessary, because the world outside had brightened considerably.

The Chairman stood. "It is done. A great man has been defeated. He will be missed. But the strongest survives."

"So that's what it comes down to? Survival of the fittest?"

The Chairman nodded. "As always. I would offer you a place in my service. It is my sincere belief that you could take more kanji upon you than even your brother. You could be the greatest wizard of all, perhaps come to rival even me. Together we could even defeat the ancient enemy, so that the Power could stay forever…" His face grew melancholy. "Yet, as I read your thoughts, you would fight me to the last."

Sullivan shrugged and spit half a tooth on the floor. "Whatever."

"You sum up so much philosophy in so few words. I wish that we could have been friends, Mr. Sullivan…" He walked over to the Geo-Tel, his bare feet crunching through the broken glass. "Would you at least watch the end of the old world and beginning of the new with me? I would very much like to share it with someone who can appreciate such things."

"You've got no right. No right at all to remake the world in your image. You're gonna kill millions."

"Millions is nothing. If only you could understand what is at stake… I thought you might, but I am disappointed." He was honestly saddened. Lonely. The Chairman watched the ocean. The night sky had turned an electric blue. The Iron Guards shifted nervously, all of them ready to kill Sullivan. "Interesting. When the pillar of fire appeared in Tunguska, did the air over Wardenclyffe also become so charged?"

"Unknown, Chairman," one of the Unit 731 Cogs answered. "The Geo-Tel is one end of the circuit, so perhaps. Our observers at Tesla's lab were murdered by the Grimnoir when they took the Geo-Tel, so we do not know."

"And the second time, when the Geo-Tel was almost fired, the sky over New York turned blue, but the Geo-Tel was close to the target geometry. It is possible that the sky is lightened both where the Power is provoked and where the Power is unleashed…" The Chairman nodded thoughtfully. "Yet, something feels… wrong. Has the energy gathered over the target in New York? Have we word from our spies in America?"

"No, Chairman," a different Cog responded. "I will prepare a mirror."

Okubo Tokugawa grasped his hands behind his back. Sullivan could tell he was using his Power to feel the surroundings, much like he did himself when the world faded into its component bits and their corresponding gravitational forces. The Chairman stepped away from the window. "I am too close to the device. It is disrupting my magic. I can't see anything."

"What do you wish us to do?" a Cog asked.

The sky had lightened even more. It was brighter than noon. The ocean below was glowing hideously. The Chairman scowled. "Shut it down," he ordered.

The Cog started to protest. "But Chairman, that could damage the sensitive-"

He held up one hand.

"Yes, Chairman," the Cog bowed, realizing that he'd gone too far in daring to disagree. He took a step toward the Geo-Tel, then froze, looking over Sullivan's shoulder. The Cog's mouth began to form a warning but then his head jerked violently to the side. Brains splattered the Chairman's simple robes.

Jane was holding up Sullivan's.45. The Chairman glanced over at the Healer. "I did not see that coming," he said as Jane shot him.

"Take that, you bastard!" She dumped the rest of the magazine into the grand leader of the Imperium. He appeared mildly amused as the bullets struck. Sullivan had nothing to lose. He surged forward as the Chairman raised his finger to blast Jane into oblivion. Three Iron Guards intercepted him, simultaneously buffeting his body with fire, ice, and electricity.

"Hey!" a voice cried from the other end of the great room. Every head turned, and Sullivan was surprised to see Faye and Francis. The girl hurled a bucket through the air, spilling tiny reflective bits behind it. Francis was concentrating hard. Sullivan instinctively threw himself to the ground.

The air hummed with movement as hundreds of fragments zipped through the room. Francis didn't just send them out. He whipped them back, using his Power to fling them at terrible speeds, around and again. Iron Guards screamed as bodies were pierced.

The Icebox at his right jerked as a piece of wire zipped through him and the Crackler at the left threw his hands to his neck to stop the spray of arterial blood. Then Sullivan was looking up into a pair of grey eyes as Faye dropped his missing BAR right into his lap. "This might help!" she shouted. "I'm gonna go protect the Geo-Tel!"

The crazy Traveler girl had gotten it backwards, but whatever. Sullivan rolled over and started shooting Iron Guards.

Faye landed right in front of the Chairman. Bits of shrapnel were flying around like crazy insects and the room was a really scary blue. The man she'd vowed to kill was there, brushing bullet fragments out of his hair. Francis was hitting him with all sorts of high speed projectiles but the Chairman didn't seem to notice. He held up one hand and every item in the room froze, then fell to the floor with a clatter.

"Now you-you are strong," the Chairman said. "Yet so unpredictable. Too unpredictable, and therefore you must die." His hands glowed like molten lava and he reached for her and somehow she knew that whatever spell he was using was going to rip the Power right out of her and pull her memories out of her head and yank her soul out of her body all so he could learn from it and then throw away the husk.

But he was right about one thing. She was unpredictable.

Faye grabbed the Chairman's glowing hands and felt a terrible surge of blood magic tear through her, but she only needed them for a second. Mr. Rawls had said that Travelers couldn't get close to the Chairman, unless he let them. She'd never done anything like this before, but she couldn't come up with any reason why it wouldn't work. Probably… She held on for dear life as terrible forces racked her body and Traveled.

She didn't go very far, just a little wrinkle in space. So she landed a mere five feet away, hopping on one foot, her injured leg bent. It worked! The Chairman was looking at her funny, not used to being surprised. She hadn't moved him, and he couldn't figure out what she'd just done, but then Faye held up the two cleanly severed hands. His eyes flickered down to the stumps his arms ended in, and realization dawned.

"Well, shoot! That worked real good," Faye squealed

The Chairman was flabbergasted, offended, and then the pain hit. From the look on his face, Faye figured that it had probably been a real long time since he'd experienced that. Blood came squirting out both stumps. The Chairman opened his mouth and let out the most terrible yell she'd ever heard.

"GIVE ME MY HANDS!" he screamed, and she felt the voice inside her head, like Mr. Garrett could do, only ten thousand times bigger, but unfocused because she figured that she'd just messed up his concentration real good. Jane had once told her that she could Mend darn near any injury, but she couldn't make limbs grow back. Only some lizards could do that, but she could reattach parts that had been cut off, provided she got them fast enough, and that gave Faye an idea. So she Traveled to someplace that she'd been to very recently.

The rear end of the Tokugawa looked different because of all the bright blue light this time, but the big engine was still humming merrily along and the big terrible scary propellers were flying so fast that they were just a black blur and it was really super loud. This should really make him mad, she thought as she tossed the Chairman's still-convulsing hands right into the propeller. They exploded into a red mist.

She reappeared right off to the Chairman's side and grabbed Jane. "What have you done?" he shrieked.

"Threw 'em in the propellers," she answered as she fled, and the Chairman blasted half the bottom of the airship into pieces where she'd been standing.

Jane screamed as they appeared on the Tempest's ramp. She was jumpy like that. Faye was glad to see that they'd done like she'd told them and taken off. Mr. Garrett cried out and swept Jane up in his arms and held her tight.

Faye Traveled back, knowing that the Chairman could Travel too, but for whatever reason, her head map seemed to still be working, while his was all jumbled up from being next to the big, evil, magic superbomb. It was probably because all she could do was Travel, where he could do about anything. It made sense that she'd learned to pay more attention, since she only had one tiny Power and he had so very many. Like who would be the better musician? The guy who tried to play a whole orchestra, or the girl who could only afford a banjo? It might not be pretty, but she could really play the hell out of that banjo!

She had to go fast. He didn't need hands to kill people, he could do it with his eyeballs or his brain or whatever else, and he was impossible to kill, except for one thing… Mr. Rawls had said that a direct hit from a Tesla weapon might do the trick, so she just needed to keep him distracted. She grabbed Francis next, since bunches of Iron Guards were trying to kill him. She was Traveling so fast now that she reached him before the bullets did.

There was no time for formality, so she dumped Francis in the center of the Tempest, and hurried back for Mr. Sullivan. He was the toughest, so he got to go last.

She had to hand it to Mr. Sullivan. He was stubborn. The fraction-of-a-second view her head map gave her when she hit showed three Iron Guards airborne, another one going out the window, and Sullivan was killing another with the big rifle extended in one hand while giving an Icebox a knuckle sandwich with his other hand. He'd made it to the Geo-Tel, and with a roar threw off the Iron Guards still clinging to him, raised his rifle to smash it, and she grabbed him by the back of the shirt and got them out of there as lightning from the Chairman's eyes consumed the Geo-Tel and the closest Iron Guards.

Mr. Sullivan brought down the big rifle and smashed the Tempest's already damaged radio board in half. He was still roaring, but it tapered off, as he realized that he wasn't where he thought he was. They were in the cockpit of the UBF dirigible, and the Tokugawa's back deck was visible below them through the broken window. A blue pillar had come up out of the ocean and was shooting into the sky, right through the Imperium flagship. "The device!" he turned to Faye. "You ditz! You moron! I almost had it!"

"Good thing I stopped you then," Faye said simply.

He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her hard. "Take me back," he ordered. His face was covered in splattered blood and he had the most desperate eyes she'd ever seen.

"Too late," she said. "The Chairman just blew it up, but he was too late. It's already clamped on. The Power is coming, no matter what. And if you don't let me go, it'll get us too."

He didn't get it. Sometimes she wished she was good with the fancy talk. "Take me back. Now." There was a lot of danger in his voice. Mr. Sullivan could be scary when he was angry.

"Listen, Mr. Sullivan. I already cut the Chairman's arms off, so if you want to keep yours, I'd suggest you take them off me, right quick."

Sullivan let go.

"That's better…"

He was looking around, realizing that she must have Traveled all these folks here. "Delilah?"

It was a sin to lie, but maybe it was worse to make this man hate himself even more than he already did. "Delilah was dead when I found her. Sorry." She turned away so she wouldn't have to see his reaction, because she didn't have time to feel sad. Lance was behind the driver's controls. "Better go fast, Lance. It's on its way."

"We're going as fast as we can," he shouted. The Tempest rocked as Imperium biplanes flew past, shooting them.

She hopped over to the broken window and looked out. The Power was coming up out of the Pacific, aimed straight at the strange carvings she'd found hidden in the Tokugawa, instead of America, or wherever the Chairman had thought he'd been shooting it at. The other Japanese battleship was coming around, burning its hydrogen to power the Peace Ray on its front end, and it was aimed right at them. She wasn't sure which Tesla thingy was gonna kill them first, but they sure as hell weren't going to make it on this slow thing.

Traveling sure does spoil you.

Sullivan had joined her at the window. The blue light reflected on his face and the wind was blowing his tattered clothing. "The Geo-Tel is locked onto the Tokugawa…"

"About time somebody got it."

"We'll die too," he said. "We're too close…" He didn't sound too broken up about that, but she figured that Mr. Sullivan had lived with death so long that he wasn't rightly ever scared of it. "Well, at least we're taking the Chairman with us."

Faye looked around at all the people on the bridge. They were her friends. She kept losing families, and then making new ones, and then losing those too. She was sick and tired of that. She was just starting to have fun. Mr. Garrett was holding Jane and telling her that everything was going to be okay. Lance, who'd taught her so much and been as patient as Grandpa, was concentrating on not getting shot down. Heinrich was there, and he'd turned out to not be near as mean as she'd figured, and Francis, she'd never kissed a boy before, so she figured that Francis was her beau now, so it didn't seem fair that they'd get exploded before they'd ever gone on a date.

There was a roar of unbelievable thunder as the sky turned to fire, rolling over the Tokugawa, searing the giant vessel into a black shadow of ash and scattering its molecules on the winds.

Her head map was all frazzled. The magic was heading their way. The ocean had boiled away in a big circle and energy was crackling up the beam. The wave would hit in just over half a second and she knew that the explosion would be really huge and they'd die, skeletons visible through their bodies before being consumed. This was way bigger than the Peace Ray and everything for hundreds of miles would just be gone.

A tenth of a second later she'd taken inventory of the entire Tempest. She'd Traveled with two people a bunch of times now. She'd figured out how to do that. It just took more Power. She'd gone further than her head map could see, and that had just taken more Power and enough luck not to get something fused into her body. So how hard could it be to fling an entire blimp and thousands of pounds of people several hundred miles away?

Another tenth of a second passed while she measured her Power. Just like always, it was all still there. It never seemed to get smaller, just bigger and bigger, unlike everybody else. It must like her best. They were in the air, so it was pretty unlikely that she'd get foreign objects stuck into anyone, but even if she did, it beat getting exploded. She wasn't sure if she should use it all up at one time, because she didn't want to go too far and end up putting them on the moon or something.

Better safe than sorry. So she decided to use it all, even though she understood that using that much magic very well might destroy her. Ahead of the expanding ball of fire, the concussion bent the air and touched the very tip of the Tempest. For the first time in her life, Sally Faye Vierra gathered up every single last bit of magic she had…

And Traveled.

One.

Last.

Time.