Hard Magic: Book I of the Grimnoir Chronicles

The Imperials have a war cry. Tennoheika Banzai. It means something about the emperor ruling for ten thousand years. The emperor is a puppet, but the soldiers meant it when they bellowed it at the tops of their lungs. Their Actives would often charge numerically superior, entrenched positions, with complete disregard for their own lives, confident in the rightness of their cause. Banzai!

—Captain John J. Pershing

Army Observation Report on the taking of Vladivostok, 1905

San Francisco, California

John Moses Browning was sitting up in bed. His chest still ached from the gunshot that had left him crushed and bruised, but he could certainly call his new, lightweight, woven-armor vest a success. He was getting far too old for this business. The UBF company Healer had stuck with his parting promise to Francis and had Mended him, but not nearly all the way, just enough to keep him from dying, the rotten weasel.

He had listened to Southunder’s message along with most of the Grimnoir in the world. He knew Southunder well, so he knew that the man spoke the truth. Many thought that he had been run out of the Society because of his rashness in dealing with the enemy, but Browning suspected it had been more because of his outspoken loyalty to Pershing’s cause to take the fight to the enemy, rather than to skulk in the shadows.

Something about that magic conversation had left him unsettled. He’d had a notebook in his pocket, as was his custom. It had been retained with his other things at the hospital, and he had sent for it. When the nurse had brought it, he had turned immediately to the last few pages, where he had carefully copied down the mad scribblings that Jake Sullivan had drawn on the mansion walls after his brief death.

He had never seen the Power represented as a single cohesive entity before, yet it made sense. His mind had always been attuned to making pieces fit together in perfect harmony, and this was no different. Given sufficient time, he had no doubt that a map could be made of where every single individual magical ability originated, and if that corresponding geometric shape could be drawn correctly, then those energies could be harnessed. It was exciting, but it would have to be a younger man’s work, because he had no doubt that it would take a lifetime, and he’d been living on borrowed time for too long now.

But it was for another reason he’d turned to Sullivan’s map. It was the interrelation of the various Powers. He’d long held suspicions that a sufficiently powerful Active could blur the borders between their own abilities into those areas that traditionally belonged to others. Sullivan was a perfect example of this, having moved beyond just altering gravity into the related fields of mass and density. If this new hypothesis was correct, then it was possible that with sufficient knowledge, any Active could do this, which was extremely exciting, but once again, not his purpose.

The Power’s complete body seemed to be two overlaid triangles. Sullivan’s drawing was two-dimensional, so that was all Browning had to work with. The bottom triangle was how the Power interacted with the physical world, the top triangle was how it interacted with the living world. The two combined into one great mass in the middle. Overall, it looked a bit like the Star of David. The physical triangle’s three points were gravity, electromagnetism, and nuclear forces; the governing laws of the universe. Each of the Active magics that influenced physical realities was connected to coordinates within those areas.

It was the top triangle that had been more mysterious to Sullivan. This one appeared to interact with life, with three points ending in the biological, the mental, and then into one that Sullivan had left as a question mark, but that Browning’s personal belief system logically attributed to the spiritual.

The coordinates in the middle were where Actives that seemed to overlap the two areas came from. Healers were such, near the middle, and Sullivan had gotten a good look at the geometric structures there that Browning had long erroneously thought of as stylized archaic letters. Healers operated in the realm between physical and electromagnetic. The other areas around that had also been mapped into their coherent pieces by Sullivan’s fevered hand, and the close cousin to the Healer was the Pale Horse. They inhabited bordering areas. Both bent the laws of biology and matter to their will. One for good, one for ill.

And if one were to reason that a sufficiently strong Active, such as a Heavy, could wander into fields such as mass and density, then why couldn’t he assume that a sufficiently strong Healer could wander slightly into the area of causing disease? Or even more important to the particular question haunting him . . . Could a sufficiently strong Pale Horse drift across the boundary and masquerade as a weak Healer?

They had never found the man that had cursed Pershing. Oh, how they’d looked. They’d torn the world apart, overturning every rock but they’d never found the Imperium villain. But what if they’d been looking in the wrong place all along?

Browning summoned a nurse and sent for a runner. Even under a different identity, he was still a man of great means and resources. When the errand boy arrived he requested for him to travel to a bank to a specific safety deposit box to retrieve something for him.

The boy returned an hour later and gave Browning a wrapped package. He tipped the boy generously, sent him on his way, and then removed the Colt M1911 from the box. He loaded it with a seven-round magazine of 230-grain, .45-caliber ammunition, all of which had been designed by his hand, put the safety on, and placed the gun beneath his pillow. Then he activated his ring and called for the nearest Grimnoir to come to his aid.

There were only two other Grimnoir in the area, both oath-bound to respond, and whichever one came, they had some explaining to do.

UBF Tempest

Francis was so nervous he could barely think. By hugging the clouds, they had gotten within half a mile of the Tokugawa. Both vessels headed due west, but the Tempest was traveling twice as fast. They would be attacking from above. The Marauder would be coming in from the left. Was that port? Whatever, south, he corrected himself. He had to try to remember to think in nautical terms. The other battleship was half a mile ahead of the flagship and they were trying to orient their approach so that the flagship blocked its shot.

“We’ve been spotted!” the driver shouted. “Searchlights.” And as soon as he said that, a perfect white beam flashed across the window bubble, highlighting the crew’s taut faces and clenched teeth.

“Weatherman, draw in the storm. Helm, full speed ahead!” Lance shouted. “Bounce this son of a bitch off their top deck if you have to, but get us down there now!”

Sparks rose from the still distant Tokugawa and Francis realized in an abstract way that those were giant tracer bullets heading right for them.

Faye was standing off to the side, shotgun over her shoulder, scowling, waiting for something. “You got it, Faye?” Lance asked quickly.

“Not yet . . . Almost . . .” She had her eyes closed.

“Wait, what are you doing?” Francis asked. “You’re not going to—”

“Got it.” Faye opened her grey eyes and disappeared.

By herself? “Damn it, Lance!” Francis shouted.

The front window shattered in a spray of glass. Sparks shot from the radio console as the tracers screamed past his head. Bullets puckered through the walls and the driver screamed in pain and lurched away from the controls. Foam from the torn seat blew around in the new wind like a snow flurry. Lance immediately shrugged into the chair and kept them on course. “It ain’t like she’s any safer here, kid,” he said.

Imperium flagship Tokugawa

Faye hit the deck ten feet from the gunners. They were so focused on the blimp heading their way that they never even saw her coming. She tucked the shotgun butt tight into her shoulder pocket and welded her cheek to the stock just like she’d been taught. She lined the gold bead at the end of the barrel with the soldier’s head and pulled the trigger.

The shotgun really kicked hard, and the muzzle rose, but she still saw his head pretty much pop open all over the place. The Browning shotgun was nice because you didn’t have to do anything but pull the trigger and it just kept cycling itself. She brought the gun back down and shot the other one in the back.

These men might look different, but they were exactly the same as the ones that had killed her Grandpa, and killing them made her feel good. Justified. There was another big cannon throwing those red sparkle bullets at her friends, so she Traveled over there to give those bad men a piece of her mind. She did that by landing six feet away from the two gunners, blasting them both to bits, and then turning and nailing a third one in the chest who was running up with another can of ammo. He hit the railing, flipped over the side, and a belt of cartridges spilled and rolled out nearly to her feet.

“Serves you right, jerks!” She shouted at no one in particular. That was it for the guns on the rear end, but there were more popping away on the other side, probably at the nice old pirate’s ship, so she pulled shells out of her bandoleer and started shoving them in the shotgun’s magazine tube.

The Tempest screamed by overhead, a giant grey mass that looked sort of like two footballs stuck together with wings. She craned her neck and saw that the loading ramp was already open and Heinrich was hanging out the back end firing a loud gun that seemed to shoot way too fast. She waved, checked her head map, and picked a spot right in the middle of the next gun emplacement.

Faye Traveled, landed between three surprised young men in black uniforms, realized one was wearing one of those grenade things on his belt, so she reached down, yanked the pin out of it like Mr. Browning had shown her to arm the explosive and Traveled. She reappeared, landing in a crouch, balanced effortlessly on a railing fifty feet away as the soldier panicked, trying to get the grenade out of his pouch, but then it blew up, and bits of sharp wire blew him in half and maimed his two buddies. That gun was quiet and she’d saved ammo! I’m pretty good at this.

When they had just been here to rescue Jane, her job had been simple—find her friend and get her out—but with the big evil superbomb about to go off, her mission had changed. It was time to cause some trouble. She liked this new mission a lot more.

FS Bulldog Marauder

“So is this the craziest thing you’ve ever done, or what?” Barns asked from the pilot’s seat of the streamlined Curtiss biplane.

Sullivan was balanced, holding onto the struts, leather straps anchoring him to the plane so he wouldn’t be torn off as soon as they dropped into the open sky. He thought about the question. He had done many things that would be considered crazy. Jumping from a moving airplane onto a moving dirigible thousands of feet above the ocean was probably near the top of the list.

The only thing under his boots was a narrow aluminum wing. Under that was nothing but darkness and lightning that seemed to go forever. When Sullivan didn’t answer, Barns just kept shouting. It was more like he read his lips over the thunder of the already moving propeller. “Don’t worry. Barns is my nickname, short for Barnstormer. Wesley ‘Barnstormer’ Dalton, best damn pilot you’ve ever seen.”

I really hope so, Sullivan thought.

Barns revved the engine, and the whole plane protested against the hooks holding it suspended to the dirigible. Now Sullivan was totally deaf. Barns pulled a tight black mask down to cover his face, and then put on a pair of round aviator’s goggles, making him look alien. Since Sullivan was dressed in the exact same manner, with a big black coat, mask, and goggles, they probably matched. Barns stuck out his fist and put his thumb up. Sullivan figured that the thumbs-up was some sort of aviation symbol, but from his reading of classical history, he couldn’t remember if that meant the gladiator lived or died. He’d find out in a minute.

Southunder was driving the Marauder right at the Tokugawa, trying to maneuver in a way that kept the more lightly armed flagship between them and the dreadnought. The Tempest was hitting the topside, so their pom-pom guns were pounding shell after one-pound explosive shell at the side engines. The more they could damage its mobility, the easier it would be to keep using it as a shield. Southunder was using his Power to drag the storm with them, wreaths of lightning crackled around their ship, and the only reason they hadn’t exploded yet was Lady Origami.

Sullivan wasn’t sure if he was going to be more scared out there riding on the wing of a biplane, or in here. A red light in the bay above them turned green, and Barns reached up and pulled a lever. The steel claw released and they dropped, screaming, into the night. He closed his eyes tight as his stomach fell through his pelvis and decided that he had his answer. This was definitely worse.

This was madness, but Sullivan was the most powerful Active on board, and this was the fastest way to get him to where he could do the most damage. The Curtiss Raptor was quick and the wet air made him feel like it was going to rip his skin off. He thought about increasing his density, but was terrified that might somehow mess with what Barns was doing, and that was the last thing he wanted to do.

They streaked across the sky, tracers crossed X’s ahead of them and Barns shoved the stick down hard. There was a small explosion next to one machine gun nest, and the pilot instinctively turned into that open space.

Something black zipped under them, and Sullivan didn’t realize it was a Jap fighter until it was past. Barns was whipping the Raptor back and forth, getting them closer, moving like magic between the bullets. The kid had to possess some kind of Power, because no normal human was capable of these kinds of reactions. The Lewis gun mounted over the engine fired, ballooning red right through the propeller as the interrupter gear kept them from destroying their own prop. There was a flash of sparks and a Jap fighter that Sullivan hadn’t even known was there burst into flames and fell from the sky. Barns pumped his fist in the air.

Then they were over the Tokugawa and it was as bright and wide as a city boulevard. Soldiers scurried about under them, shooting at them with small arms, and a hole appeared between Sullivan’s feet. Good as it’s gonna get. He uncinched the buckle and let the momentum tear him from the plane.

He fell like a stone, arms tucked tight against him, long black coat whipping in the wind, and though he was falling far enough to splatter him all over that blimp, he was just glad to get off that damn biplane. He Spiked, lessening the Earth’s pull. He spread his arms and legs to catch more resistance, until his momentum slowed. Concentrating hard, he waiting until he was close enough, then cut his magic, and dropped the rest of the way.

Already soaked to the bone, he landed on the metal roof of the superstructure, in a splash of collected water. Automatically opening his coat and unsecuring his bullpup auto rifle, he assessed the situation. On the opposite end of the Tokugawa the UBF ship was coming in hard. He ran the charging handle and raised the gun. Soldiers were running down the catwalk below him, ready to repel boarders. In all the confusion, nobody had seen him falling. They didn’t even know he was here, but he could fix that real quick.

Even though it made the gun longer, he’d screwed the Maxim sound silencer onto the end of the BAR’s muzzle. Rather than the slow roar he was used to, the gun sounded like a series of hissing cracks as he mowed down the Imperium troops. The men stopped, confused, unsure where the bullets were coming from. One of them turned and pointed at the black-clad figure in the goggles, but Sullivan calmly dropped him with a single .30-06 through the ribs.

But there were too many down there and more pouring outside every second. Gotta keep moving. It was time to take this fight out of the rain. There was a skylight ten feet away, so he ran over and jumped onto the glass as the soldiers below returned fire. He activated his Power as he hit and the roof beneath his feet shattered into a million gleaming shards.

Imperium flagship Tokugawa

“Iron Guard, we are under attack! Spotters confirm two airships incoming, one single hull, one small double.”

Madi walked across the red-lit command center. The captain did not speak. Technically the naval officer was in charge, but when the First Iron Guard was on deck, everyone addressed him instead. Madi listened for a moment, his magically augmented hearing discerning that the aft antiair batteries had opened up on something. They only had a handful of weapon stations up and running so far and those had been hastily installed with equipment brought over from the Kaga.

“Battle stations,” he ordered. The alarm klaxon sounded. “Tell the Kaga to nail them with their Death Ray.”

The radio operator chimed in. “Kaga reports no clear shot. They’re hiding behind us.” There was a slight tremor as an explosive shell struck their vessel. It was like an ant biting a horse.

“Tell them that’s what the fucking rudder is for and move until they can get one!” he bellowed. “Captain, you have the bridge. Kill these assholes.”

Madi moved quickly down the long hallway. He got into the elevator and cranked the down lever. He could still hear what was going on topside. One rear gun stopped, and then the next. The smaller machine gun positions on the outer hull were firing now. He picked up the vibration of an explosion and small arms-fire. “We’ve been boarded,” he muttered.

He stepped out of the elevator into the engineering section, which was midway down the center of the craft, sandwiched between the first and second hull. He walked down the wide metal catwalk with two heaving gas bags the size of buildings on either side. This section’s Torch saluted him as he passed. There were nine of that type of Active on the Tokugawa’s crew, three for each hull, so that there would always be at least one working each hull, twenty-four hours a day. It might seem like overkill, but Torches were one of the most common Actives, and no expense was too great to assure the Chairman’s security.

The Unit 731 weirdos were clustered in the main workshop, fiddling around with the Tesla device. It had all been screwed together, and he recognized most of it, since he’d been the one to personally secure the pieces. The blueprints he’d snapped Wild Bill Jones’ neck for were tacked to the wall. The bottom piece had come from Christiansen’s cabin after Yutaka’s Bull King had torn his guts out. The center came from that Traveling Portagee after he’d shot him with the Beast. One section was shiny and new, produced by the Cogs to make up for the small part that damn Traveling brat had kept. Only the top bit was unfamiliar, a round globe made of an unknown substance, crackling with purple electricity. The whole thing was only a foot long, which really wasn’t very impressive considering it could blow up whole countries.

“How much longer?” he barked.

The Cog leader, Shiro Ishii, bent his neck in submission. “We will need another twenty minutes. The design is extremely complex.”

“Well, we’ve been boarded by somebody, so get your shit together.” He moved to the phone and pulled up the mouthpiece. It took the switchboard a minute to connect him to the marine command. “This is Iron Guard Madi. I want a squad protecting the Cogs in engineering and whatever Iron Guard are available. Now.” He put the horn back in the cradle and folded his arms. He’d stick around here until the Marines showed up. Protecting the device came first. Then he’d go find those boarders and stomp the life out of them. The Chairman was more than capable of looking after himself.

He felt a prickling of his scalp. Madi wasn’t sure it had something to do with the extra sensitivity granted to him by his kanji, or maybe because they shared the same type of magic, or maybe it was just because they were of the same blood, but he just knew.

It was impossible. He was dead. He’d beaten him to a bloody pulp and left him to be cooked by the Peace Ray. The Chairman had promoted him to First for having the will to kill his own brother in service to the Imperium. His very existence was an insult, a mockery, a dishonor. He didn’t know how that little bastard had lived, but somehow he had, and he was here, on the Tokugawa, just to piss him off.

Jake was here.

The Tempest hit the top of the Imperium flagship so hard that they broke one of the landing skids. They bounced, the entire dirigible creaking as the skeleton bent, and then hit again. The top of the Tokugawa was mostly flat, like the deck of a traditional ship, with glass and aluminum superstructure rising all along the center. The shattered bubble of the UBF prototype skidded to a halt next to a two-story structure covered in antennas, some sort of rear control area for the back of the flagship. One of their wings crashed into the structure’s pylons and snapped.

Francis rose from where he’d been flung behind the captain’s seat. Not twenty feet away through what had once been the control room bubble, there were two Imperium men looking at him from a wide window in the building, apparently shocked by the sudden appearance of an American airship landing right on top of them. Francis waved, and one of them hesitantly waved back. He used his Power to slam their glass. It crashed in a sheet, which he then whipped up into a tornado of slicing bits, and blood splattered their walls. Don’t mess with a Mover.

“Everyone okay?” Francis shouted. There was coughing and some movement as the crew staggered up. Lance got out of the captain’s chair, dusting broken glass from his beard. “Crew! Keep her running. We’ll be back as fast as we can,” Francis shouted, picking up an Enfield rifle and heading for the ramp.

The Tempest’s boarding party had already debarked ahead of them. Francis came running down the ramp, but there wasn’t much to see. They’d landed on the very tail end of the Tokugawa, and he had to run around his own ship to see where they were going. He slipped and tumbled, since everything was slick with pounding rain, but he made it back up, and kept running.

Heinrich was in the lead. He’d picked up one of those new Solothurn 8mm attack rifles with the big curved magazine sticking out the side. It had a rate of fire so intense that it sounded like ripping cloth. Ahead of the Fade was the length of the Tokugawa’s top deck. It seemed to go on forever. The Tempest was absolutely tiny by comparison.

The UBF Brute had kicked in the door to the structure they’d crashed next to, and Francis followed him in. Except for the lacerated bodies from the men he’d telekinetically killed in the main room, the structure was clear. There was a ladder that led downward into the bowels of the ship between the three great hulls.

“If they need a workshop for that Tesla device, they’ll be in engineering. It is in the center of the ship.” Francis looked over and was surprised to see that the accountant, Mr. Chandler, had followed him and was holding a Thompson. “What? I was in the war, Canadian Army, Gordon Highlanders . . . UBF built this thing. I know how much every part of it cost and I took the tour.”

Heinrich appeared, walking right through the wall as he changed the magazine in his Solothurn. The barrel was white hot. “There are more coming. There’s little time.”

They had to find this thing and find it fast. “One team up. One team down.”

* * *

Faye was jumping around like a madwoman. She figured the best thing she could do was just keep moving, causing trouble, and besides, the longer she stayed in one place, the more likely she was to get shot. It was harder to aim at something that wasn’t there by the time you pulled the trigger.

Other Actives worried about running out of Power, but she didn’t. It just seemed to be there, the same as always. She appeared behind a soldier in a brown uniform, stuck her shotgun in his spine and pulled the trigger. She was Traveling so fast now that by the time the action cycled, the spent shell ejected two hundred yards away as she landed right in front of another soldier and tripped him so he fell down a ladder and broke his neck.

Her head map was filled with information. There were hundreds of people moving. Thousands of bullets. She had to stay in motion.

One second she was in the flagship inside a room filled with dirt and windows like they were gonna try and grow crops and then she was outside in the rain where she hit a man in the head with her shotgun butt and watched him flip over the railing and then she was in a narrow little room filled with red light and shooting steam and there was one man in a black uniform using his Power to keep the hydrogen from catching on fire so she just shot him in the neck and then she was up in a room with a bunch of radios so she shot all of those folks too and then she shot the radios for good measure until her shotgun was empty.

Whew . . . She paused to catch her breath as she pulled more buckshot off her bandoleer. Her Power might not run out, but she was getting tired and this was about the fifth time she’d emptied the stubby shotgun. The Browning was smoking hot and her shoulder was going to have a really nasty bruise. Faye brushed an errant strand of hair away from her eye. She still hadn’t seen anything that looked like her Grandpa’s Tesla device, but as soon as she did, she was gonna smash it real good. She couldn’t find it on her head map, because everything here was so filled with complicated mechanical devices that everything looked kind of the same.

Her head map warned her to move, so she did, not even knowing why, and a sword cleaved through the air where she’d been standing. There was a woman in front of her where there hadn’t been anybody a second ago. She was dressed all in tight black, had red hair spilling over her shoulders, and was way prettier than Faye, and strangest of all, she had grey eyes too! “Hey, you’re just like me!” she exclaimed.

The woman didn’t respond, she just whipped the sword around to take Faye’s head off, but Faye was too quick for that. The sword snaked chips from the wall and Faye appeared behind her. “Oh, so that’s how it is?” Faye said as she pulled up the shotgun. But the woman was just as quick as she was and the buckshot blew twelve holes in the wall instead of meat. Faye instinctively ducked as the sword stabbed over her shoulder.

She appeared in an empty access tunnel two stories below, put her back to the wall, and kept loading the shotgun. Could the redhead follow her? Faye had never tried to use her head map to keep track of another Traveler before, so she wasn’t sure. She realized her shirt was torn and blood was welling from her shoulder. The blade had been so sharp she hadn’t even felt the cut, but she sure did now.

The woman appeared at the other end of the tunnel. “You’re a slippery one,” she said, “but no one escapes Toshiko of the Shadow Guard.”

“Well, I’m Faye of the Grimnoir knights, and I wasn’t trying to escape,” Faye answered bravely. “I was just waiting for your slow ass to catch up.”

The woman screamed, raised her sword, and charged. Faye lifted the shotgun and fired as the woman Traveled, appearing just behind the passing buckshot, and swung, but only raised sparks off the grating as Faye disappeared.

Faye landed at the opposite end of the tunnel. The woman was too fast, but maybe she was like everybody else and her Power had to run out sometime, just like Delilah had taught her. “Hey, Toshiko! That ninja suit makes you look like a fat cow.”

The ninja raised her sword. Red light reflected down the razor steel.

It would be just like playing tag. “Catch me if you can, fat cow!” Faye taunted before Traveling as far as her map would take her.

Sullivan swung the barrel of the BAR around the corner and caught the lead crewman in the face. Cheek bone shattered, he stumbled back into his companions, and Sullivan followed, using his Power to tumble them down the hall into the far wall. These were in navy uniforms, so maybe they knew their way around this giant maze. He dropped the rifle, knowing the sling would catch it and hold it against his chest, as he drew his .45 and walked forward. He put one bullet into each head, but stopped at the last one. He grabbed the soldier by the throat with his left hand and picked him off the ground and slammed him against the wall.

He didn’t know if the Jap spoke English, so he kept it simple. Wherever his brother was, that’s where the Tesla device would be. “Where’s Madi?” The sailor started to jabber something. Sullivan lowered the .45 and shot him in the knee. The sailor screamed. “English! Do you speak it?”

“Madi! Madi!” The man pointed down, said a bunch of other words, but Madi was in there, and he kept pointing in a downward direction. That would do. Sullivan slammed the sailor’s skull into the metal bulkhead then dropped him. There was an interior stairwell around the next corner so he started down.

He paused at the next level, but then snapped back as a subgun barked, hitting the corner of the wall. Someone bellowed from behind the gun. “More ninjas!”

English? “Grimnoir?” he shouted.

“Sullivan? That you?”

“Yeah, don’t shoot,” he answered, coming around the corner. He’d forgotten about the black mask and goggles. He pulled them off and shoved them into his coat. Sure enough, it was the Grimnoir. Dan Garrett was in the lead, followed by Heinrich Koenig, a dark-haired stranger, and more people were coming up behind them out of the darkened passageway.

“One of yours?” the man with the Thompson asked.

“Proud to say yes on that one,” Dan answered. “Sullivan, have you seen Jane?” When Sullivan shook his head, Dan lowered his. “Damn it. I’ve got to find her.”

“Engineering is this way, I think,” said the man with the Thompson. “Come on.”

Heinrich grabbed Sullivan by his coat. “Listen to me, friend. There is something I must tell you. Something—”

“It can wait, Heinrich,” Sullivan answered.

“No, it can’t.” The woman’s voice came from the darkness of the hallway. She stepped forward into the dim light.

Sullivan blinked hard. “De-Delilah?” It couldn’t be, but he recognized her shape in the shadows, but something was different, something was wrong. “How?” Had the Healing magic worked after all? But why wasn’t she coming closer? He started to go to her, but Heinrich held on with all his might.

“Sullivan, please, I beg you. Listen to me.”

He shoved the Fade off and ran for her, his heart leaping. Delilah stepped out of the shadows and—

She was dead . . .

It was obvious. He’d seen thousands of zombies during the Great War. The unnatural fire in her eyes, the way her skin hung loose over her face. She was dressed in a formless UBF coverall, but black blood had congealed all around the hole in her abdomen from the wound that had killed her.

Delilah stopped right in front of him. “I’m sorry,” she cried, her voice trembling. Her skin was pale white, but blotted with black and purple bruises.

He encircled her in his arms. “It’s not your fault,” he whispered. “It’s mine. Oh, God, forgive me. Please forgive me.” Now that he was close, he could smell her. Her body was already decaying. “I didn’t know. I never would have left.”

“Jake. I’m gone. Let go of me. Please, let go.”

He did so, uncomfortably stepping away. He wanted to die. “What . . . What . . .”

“The Lazarus magic got me. I died while it was still in effect. I think it was a fight between your magic and his, but his was stronger.” She raised one hand and stroked his cheek, fingers hard and dry. “Heinrich was going to mercy kill me, but I told him who better to go on a suicide mission than somebody who was already dead?”

“Shhh . . .” he pleaded. “I’ll find a way. There has to be a way to fix this. The Power—”

“No . . .” she answered. “You can’t understand the pain, Jake. I’m using my Power just to keep it in check enough not to go crazy, and when I run out . . .” she sighed. “I won’t turn into one of those mindless monsters, out of their gourd with pain. This is a one-way trip for me, baby. You have to let me do this.”

“I can’t.”

“You can, because you’re the strongest and best man I’ve ever met. Do this for me, Jake. Let me go. Be happy. Promise me you’ll go on and live a long happy life, have lots of kids, and die of old age.” She leaned in and kissed him gently on the lips, cold as ice.

He started to cry. “I can’t.”

“You can, and you will, because that’s my dying wish, you selfish bastard.” Her blackened lips cracked into a smile. She took his hand in hers, placed it on the center of her chest, where there was no heartbeat, and he died inside. “Now come on. I deserve to go out with a bang.”

Heinrich was waiting for them, his hat down low, covering his eyes. “This way,” he said softly.

Faye had jumped a hundred and fifty-two times in the last four minutes, she’d counted, and that damn ninja cow bitch had stayed with her every step of the way.

The two of them appeared at the very tip of the Tokugawa where the three balloons came together. Lightning crashed and rain pounded, as the other battleship loomed right overhead like a big black shadow. A single white biplane screamed past being chased by ten black ones, all shooting, and the white biplane exploded in a ball of fire. The old pirate ship had been shot so many times that most of its gas had leaked out, and it was gradually crashing into the side of the flagship. Her head map told her that men were dying all around her and a strange magic energy was building in the center of the ship, which could only be coming from the big, evil, magic superbomb.

Faye was gasping for breath. She’d lost her shotgun after using it to club a passing officer in the face, not that it mattered, since she’d gone through all her shells by that point. She’d been counting Travels, but she’d lost track of how many people she’d killed, shot, stabbed, maimed, pushed overboard, set on fire, or blown up. She was armed now with a meat cleaver that she’d picked up in the kitchen. It was still dripping blood from where she’d taken off a sailor’s hand.

Toshiko had dogged her the whole time. The ninja was panting almost as hard as Faye was. Her magic kanji were burning so hot that the rain hitting her instantly exploded into steam. Faye had shot at her, but she was always one step ahead. She’d pulled the pins out of grenades and dropped them, hoping that Toshiko would Travel right into them, but she’d been too smart for that, and would always Travel outside the blast zone.

The ninja raised her sword in a salute. “You are the finest Traveler I’ve ever known,” Toshiko said simply.

“And you’re still a big mean cow,” Faye answered, not that she was being honest. Cows were wonderful creatures. Imperium assassins, not so much. “Ugly and mean.”

“Surely, you’re almost out of magic by now?” Toshiko hissed. “I have direct lines to the Power, granted by the Chairman and his finest wizards. You have none. You cannot possibly outlast me.”

Faye checked. She still felt the same as ever. Physically, she was bushed, but magically, she was fine. “I’m just getting warmed up.”

“Let’s finish this, child, so I can get to killing your friends . . .” Toshiko had an evil smile. “That gives me an idea. Let’s see if you can keep up with me this time?”

NO! Toshiko Traveled. Faye checked her head map. There.

The ninja was in the control room of the pirate ship. She yanked her sword out of the driver’s back in a spray of blood. The bald pirate captain was turning as she swung her sword at his face, but Faye crashed into her forearm. “No, you don’t!” Faye shouted in her ear. Toshiko grinned savagely as she Traveled out of Faye’s grasp.

Faye screamed as her clothing burst into flames. Some pirate woman had just set her on fire! “Not me, stupid!” she shrieked as she Traveled.

She caught Toshiko a short distance above, balancing on the slick top of the flaming pirate ship. The crashing rain dashed out the fire on her clothing. Her feet squished into the balloon fabric, once hard with gas, but now falling apart. They were about to hit the Tokugawa. Toshiko swung her sword, but Faye appeared behind her, trying to put the cleaver into her back. The two danced, steel swinging, both disappearing and reappearing so fast that Faye was only moving on unconscious instinct.

The ninja had been trained how to fight with a sword, and Faye hadn’t, and the steel drove through her calf. She screamed as she toppled, sliding down the edge of the balloon. Hydrogen fire was licking up to meet her. She had to outwit Toshiko somehow, something crazy. She Traveled as she entered the flames.

Faye hit the metal engine housing on all fours. The giant propeller was screaming only inches away, a huge black blur that would destroy her instantly. Maybe Toshiko’s head map wouldn’t be as accurate and—

The ninja appeared on the next engine over and waved. “Damn it!” Faye screamed in frustration. Toshiko mouthed something, but she couldn’t be heard over the roar of the propeller, but she just knew that she was going to go kill some of her friends. The Shadow Guard disappeared, but Faye was right behind her.

Lance was on the deck, hunkered down behind one corner, rainwater pouring off the edges of his big hat as he fired his Winchester at the approaching Imperium troops. Francis was off to the other side, smoothly working the bolt of his Enfield. “Look out!”Faye screamed.

But where was—and then she gasped as the sword hit her square in the small of the back. Faye rolled forward through the water. Toshiko stood over her, blade gleaming overhead, and the ninja was triumphant, knowing that she’d just struck a lethal blow.

“Faye!” Lance shouted, but Faye was already Traveling. She folded space and fell through, landing on her face in a puddle of water on top of the Tempest, only a few feet from where she’d taken her oath. Toshiko appeared, gloating. “You can’t run when you can’t feel your legs. I felt my wakizashi bite the bone . . . Pity. I have no doubt that if you were with us, you’d be the First amongst the Shadow Guard.”

Faye was coughing, lying on her back. She reached around behind her and found the little Iver Johnson .32, her faithful little companion that she’d bought in Merced for ten dollars, the same amount of money that Grandpa had bought her for. The mighty sword blow had nearly cut it in half. Once again, her life had been saved by ten bucks. “Oh, that wasn’t my spine, but you really messed up my gun.”

Toshiko finally lost it. She screamed in fury as Faye Traveled.

Faye appeared, falling in midair, right in front of the astonished Lance. “Shoot me!” Faye screamed.

To his credit, Lance Talon didn’t hesitate. He lifted the .351 Winchester and pulled the trigger.

Toshiko appeared behind her, still screaming, but according to the ninja’s map, the area had been clear, safe, and a tenth of a second before, it had been. Time seemed to slow to nothing as Faye’s head map recorded everything in the universe. The bullet traveled from the barrel, straight and true, and Faye only needed to fold space a tiny bit to get out of the way, and it was almost as if she could watch the bullet rotating as it passed through the air she’d inhabited, past Toshiko’s descending blade, and right into the Shadow Guard’s chest.

The bullet cleaved through her sternum, breaking and turning as it pulverized her heart, severed her spine, and flew out her back. The blood droplets and bone fragments seemed to hang suspended, intermingled between the raindrops, and then Faye reappeared off to the side. Time restarted. The ninja was looking at her, as if to say, how the hell had that happened, but then the lights went out. Lance hit Toshiko twice more as she fell, even though she was already dead.

“Told you so, cow . . .” Faye went to her knees, swooning from blood loss. She felt Francis’ strong hands on her, and the next thing she knew, she was in his arms, and he was carrying her away from the gunfire.