Hard Magic: Book I of the Grimnoir Chronicles

My cavalry unit was camped eighty-two kilometers south of the Podkamennaya Basin that morning. Despite driving the Green Cossack army back for nearly three months, the Nipponese troops had withdrawn earlier in the week. Their retreat was unexpected, but a welcome chance for us to regroup, tend to our wounds, and fatten our fighting bears on the local reindeer herds. We discovered the reason for the Imperials’ retreat around breakfast. A blue light appeared in the northern sky, rising from the horizon as a pillar, until it disappeared into the clouds. Scouts estimated the disturbance was near the position of our main infantry encampments. Kapitan Kurgan had a pocket watch. He said the disturbance started at exactly 7:00. Flocks of birds and large numbers of forest animals retreated past our camp in the direction opposite the light. At 7:05 the light had grown so bright that it was as if there was a second sun. Then the noise came, like the sound of artillery. The earth shook. All of us were knocked to the ground. The sky split in two and the light turned to fire. The fire grew until the entire north was fire and it came toward us. The hot wind came after the thunder, snapping down all the trees of the forest and flinging our tents. The temperature increased until it was unbearable. Our clothing caught fire and our bears went mad from the pain, turning on their Controllers and rending them. I was thrown approximately two hundred meters into the river. The water boiled. That is all that I recall.

—Leytenant D. Vasiliev’s animated corpse.

Testimony to the Tsar’s Investigative Council

on the Tunguska Event, 1908

Ogden, Utah

He’d gotten hurt pretty bad back at the cabin, though he was a lot better off than the hired thugs they’d brought with them. Thanks to the Chairman’s gifts, his body would be back up and running in no time. The goons would still be dead. Madi shook his head and went back to stuffing his guts back in. The old Grimnoir had turned out to be one hell of a fighter, but Madi had got ten of what he’d been after. He always did.

“Hold still,” his companion ordered in Japanese. Yutaka was the only other survivor of their morning’s work, and the Iron Guard was up to his elbows in Madi’s blood. He ran the needle back and forth expertly, holding the muscle together with thick cord. The healing kanji etched in scar tissue on Madi’s back had kept him alive despite being disemboweled for over an hour now, and the overtaxed Words of Power were burning as hot as the day he’d first been branded. “This is slippery.”

“It don’t have to be pretty,” Madi grunted. The stitches just needed to hold everything in the right place until he could heal up in a few hours. He should have been incoherent with pain, but the more kanji he’d had burned onto him, the stronger he became. Since he was also the first white man to have the honor of being an Iron Guard, the fact that he was the only one of them strong enough to bear over a dozen kanji pissed the other slant-eyed bastards off to no end. “Hurry up. I don’t want to look all busted up when we report in.”

The heat from the kanji was making him sweat. He had them carved into his back, chest, legs, and arms. The downside of so many brands was that he couldn’t really feel anything anymore. Madi had taken to hurting himself just for fun. He’d actually enjoyed getting shot on this mission. The brief pain had reminded him that he could still feel anything at all. It had taken forever to drive back to the hotel from the Grimmy’s podunk town, and he’d relished the suffering every mile of the way.

Once Yutaka had him closed up, the Summoner prepared a circle, so they could confirm the success of their mission. This was no normal circle either, and Yutaka was having to draw the most intricate of magical kanji in special ink made from human blood and demon smoke on the floor. Telegrams and radio could be monitored, even the best codes could be broken, but nobody could eavesdrop on this communication, plus it did have another added benefit. Madi washed up and put on some clean clothes so he could be presentable.

Twenty minutes later he stood in front of a glowing blob floating in the center of the hotel room. The surface rippled like water, finally solidifying into a view that Madi recognized as the Imperial Council Chambers. Madi marveled at the clarity of the link; it was almost like looking through a door into another room of a house. He had to admit that Yutaka was an artist. Madi’s personal gifts tended to be more direct.

Madi was taken by surprise by who appeared in the rift. It was the Emperor’s chief advisor, Lord Tokugawa himself, Chairman of the Imperial Council, and de-facto leader of the Imperium. Madi and Yutaka bowed with the utmost respect. Madi had not expected the big boss, and felt a little giddy from the excitement. It was late in the evening in Tokyo, but everyone knew that the Chairman never slept.

The Chairman appeared to be a man in the physical prime of his life, but the word around the Council was that he looked exactly the same when he first arrived at the Japanese Court forty years ago. It was rumored that he did not eat or drink either, but that he was sustained on Power alone. He was regal, handsome, distinguished, with jet black hair, wearing a western suit tonight, but with the red sash badge of his office around his waist. Madi had personally seen the Chairman’s displeasure cause his enemies to weep blood. He’d seen the Chairman heal the incurable, kill the unkillable, break the laws of physics, and warp the fabric of reality with his mind.

Madi only respected one thing, and that was strength. You were either weak or strong. Whoever was the strongest was therefore the best, and no one could be stronger than the Chairman. He’d never believed in his father’s god, only in the Power. The strongest wouldn’t preach about mercy, peace, forgiveness, or any of that bullshit. That was all sissy talk for the weak to pretend that they still mattered. The Chairman was force. He was going to inherit the world, crush the meek, and Madi planned on being at his side when he did.

The Chairman was all business. “It is done?”

“Yes, Chairman,” Madi answered enthusiastically. Yutaka stepped forward, deferentially, and passed the parcel containing the device through the rift. It flickered, but Yutaka’s spell was perfect, and the package landed softly at the Chairman’s feet. No living thing could pass through a fold in space except for the wretched Travelers, but a master magician could send through small bits of matter, and Yutaka was certainly a master.

“Very good, Iron Guard,” he said, and Madi felt his chest swell with pride. He bowed again.

Another figure scurried into the bottom of the rift, retrieving the package. Madi recognized one of the Cogs from Unit 731, the Chairman’s special science group. Even after all of the things that Madi had done, those weirdoes still gave him the creeps. They’d been the ones to modify his body into the perfect killing machine he was today, and that had been years ago. Their work had come a long way since. He’d seen the camps in Manchuria, the experiments they were doing to the people they’d enslaved, and the things they were turning Actives into.

The Chairman must despise weakness as much as Madi did.

“Our spies should be giving us the position of the final piece shortly. You will return to California immediately. Await further instructions.” Madi didn’t know who was feeding them information from the Grimnoir, but he didn’t need to know. Madi was a weapon that just needed to be pointed in the right direction.

Sullivan stepped gingerly from the train platform. He was running his Power just a bit, easing gravity’s pull, and that made walking much more comfortable. His injuries weren’t life threatening at this point, but the last thing he needed to do was push it, rip something open, and start bleeding all over the place.

Heinrich was procuring them transport to the little town that Sven Christiansen lived in. Garrett was helping to make sure Sullivan didn’t tumble down the ramp. He paused to catch his breath and to admire the scenery. The mountains were huge and brown.

He felt a strange sensation a moment later, something odd, but familiar. Sullivan paused, scanning the crowd, but couldn’t see anything out of place. The whistle blew and the North American Pullman began to chug away.

“Sullivan? You all right?” Garrett asked.

It was like . . . he wasn’t sure, just instincts kicking in, as if he were walking the deep woods, and everything had gotten too quiet, like there was a dangerous predator hidden somewhere in the trees. The sensation faded.

He shook his head. “Naw . . . . I’m fine. Let’s go.”

* * *

Madi watched the station out the private train car window, scowling. The hair on his arms had just stood up.

“What is it?” Yutaka asked, suspicious.

“I don’t know . . .” Then he saw the broad-shouldered fella standing at the end of the ramp next to a short, dumpy man in glasses. “It can’t be . . .” he muttered, placing one hand on the warm glass. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

Jake.

Yutaka stood up and moved to the window, trying to figure out what was going on. “Trouble?”

“You have no idea . . .” Madi muttered. There was no way it was a coincidence, damn Lenny Torrio for ever talking to him to begin with. If he hadn’t already killed Torrio, he’d kill him again, and make it hurt more this time. Madi despised weakness and worshipped strength, but Jake was something different, one of the strong who felt the need to protect the weak, and that made him dangerous. “Summon a demon. Have it follow the big man.”

Mar Pacifica, California

They ate breakfast in what Francis called the nice dining room. Faye thought that it was a little ridiculous to have a chandelier that obviously cost more than her Grandpa’s farm, but she did have to admit that it was very sparkly. The food consisted of a bunch of items that she’d never seen before with names that sounded vaguely European.

General Pershing was in his room. Apparently he no longer ever left his bed, not that it mattered, since the Healer, Jane, said that his stomach couldn’t handle solid food anyway. Other than that, everyone else that she’d met so far was gathered around one end of the enormous table, and there were enough seats remaining for another twenty people.

“My father liked to entertain,” Francis explained, when he saw her looking down the empty expanse. “We used to have some grand parties here when I was a child. More marmalade?”

She didn’t know what that was, nor did she know what to do with all of the extra forks and spoons on each side of her plate, and it was really odd that servants kept bringing more plates, when she could just as easily served herself. Breakfast at the Vierras had consisted of one big pot of something dropped in the middle of the table, and all the milk they could drink of course, and then everybody helped themselves until they were stuffed. Breakfast in her old life had happened sporadically. Actually, all the other meals had been kind of like that, too. She’d spent a lot of time hungry.

Most of the others had the same gold and black ring. Francis had asked her not to wear hers yet. Apparently there was some sort of oath you were supposed to take before you could wear one. She noticed that Delilah didn’t have one either.

“Any word yet from Garrett?” Lance asked.

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

“Why can’t you visit?” Faye asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What were you before?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Browning coughed politely.

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

“What did I say?” Faye asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What happened?”

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It’s not right.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He no longer knew whom he could trust.

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

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

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

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

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

Garrett’s voice came through a moment later.

“Christiansen is dead. The device is gone.”