Hard Magic: Book I of the Grimnoir Chronicles

. . . And on this momentous day, let us remember the brave sacrifice of Junior Assistant Third Engineer Harold Ernest Crozier of Southampton, who was lost after an ice collision on our maiden voyage. His natural magical gifts, combined with his great moral fortitude, enabled him to control the incoming waters before there was any other loss of life. He was a credit to the Active race. We shall now have a moment of silence for Engineer Crozier.

—Captain Edward J. Smith

of the RMS Titanic,

on its fifth anniversary cruise, 1917

Lick Hill, California

There were four guards manning the main gatehouse. Three were playing a game of poker, while the last was watching the clock, knowing that they were due to be relieved at two o’clock in the morning, and he was dying to get out of the stinking concrete shed and back into his bed. He cursed the slow clock, lit another cigarette, and went back to being miserable.

It was a joke. The entire assignment was a big, stupid joke. Nothing ever happened at Lick Hill. After the Great War showed the absolute war-ending power of the Peace Ray, every nation that could afford it built at least one. America had three along its west coast alone. The Peace Ray was a marvel of superscience. It fired a near instantaneous beam of absolute death as far as three hundred miles in a perfectly straight line. No army could invade a country with a Peace Ray. Everyone knew that Tesla had made war obsolete.

The towers were absurdly tall, and usually put on top of the highest land available. They were a line-of-sight weapon. The higher it was, the further it could engage targets. When the war had first ended, strings of observation dirigibles had been stationed all along the coast, ready to call in a warning and firing coordinates to the huge crews of operators at a moment’s notice. Hundreds of technicians were protected by thousands of soldiers. The sheer amount of electricity necessary to run the machine necessitated the building of huge power plants, but it was all necessary for national security.

The guards were well trained and issued the finest safety equipment. They had to be. A full-charge firing of the Peace Ray could actually turn the very air around the beam into poison. Only the bravest of soldiers were assigned to guard the most important weapon in the arsenal of freedom.

The Peace Ray was the key to assuring America’s safety in the dangerous new world.

Or so they had said in 1920 when they’d built the damn things, but over time, thousands of soldiers had turned into hundreds, and then into two understaffed platoons. Hundreds of technicians had turned into a skeleton crew of thirty. Budget cuts had taken away all but ten of their blimps. Half of those were in the shop, and the rest were expected to watch the coast from Canada to Mexico.

Their gas masks hadn’t been pulled out in years. The private wasn’t even sure where his was. The Army budget had been so deeply cut over the last three years that he wasn’t even sure if they had gas masks at all for the new guys. The power plants had mostly been diverted to feed the growing metropolis of San Francisco, and the last he’d heard from one of the techs, they were running at maybe fifteen percent of maximum power, but that wasn’t supposed to matter, because nobody knew that, and as long as the Peace Ray rose over the coast like a deadly futuristic sentinel, it would do its job as a deterrent, or at least that’s what the brass figured.

Guarding a Peace Ray was a crap job, but at least he had a job, the private thought ruefully, which was more than he could say for a lot of folks he knew. Times were tough, so three square meals and a bed in a barracks wasn’t that bad of a deal if you thought about it, but one-thirty in the morning was a lousy time to be thinking about it.

There was a tinkle of breaking glass and a grunt. He turned, expecting to see that one of his buddies had dropped their coffee mug, ready to give them some grief about the mess, but he paused, realizing that the spreading stain on the floor was too red to be coffee. Somebody was moving around his friends, who had all put their heads down on the table. “Who are you?” Then the stranger dressed in funny black pajamas and a mask came across the guard shack with a flash of steel and separated the private’s head cleanly from his neck.

Mar Pacifica, California

Something’s wrong . . .

Faye woke up with a start. She was breathing hard, sweating, and had kicked her blankets onto the floor. The house creaked a bit, as the wind from the ocean was strong tonight, but other than that, it was quiet. Everything looked normal. The room was dark, but she’d never had a problem seeing better than most folks at night. She’d always figured it was because of her grey eyes.

Something ain’t right. She knew to pay attention to her instincts. It was like when she Traveled. If she paid attention how she was supposed to, she just somehow knew when things were gonna be dangerous in the space she was about to fill. Faye got out of bed and pulled on a pair of pants under her baggy nightshirt. Some folks might think pants on a girl were scandalous, but frankly, she didn’t care what people thought, and if you were going to go sneaking around because something bad was in the air, pants made more sense.

She didn’t bother with shoes, as her soles were like saddle leather, but she did pick up the big .45 automatic that Mr. Browning had given her. He said that next time she needed to shoot somebody, this one would put a proper hole in them. Francis had told her that it was probably too powerful for a girl, but she’d been milking cows, and had a stronger grip than the city boy did, so what did he know?

The hallway was quiet. She padded down the thick carpet of the second floor balcony. There was nothing moving in the space below or on the stairs.

She used her Power to check her surroundings. Having had a lot of practice recently, she’d gotten even better at scouting before a jump, so good in fact, that it was like she could see everything in a big circle around her, not with her eyes, but inside her brain. The area around her had always been like a map in her head, and when she picked a spot to Travel into, she could focus more on that space, but she’d been Traveling so much lately, that she’d discovered that her head map had gotten bigger and clearer. It was almost like her thoughts could Travel on their own, and she didn’t even need to send her body to see what was going on. A big book Mr. Browning had, written by a Dr. Fort, had called her Power by the name of Teleportation, but even it hadn’t mentioned anything about being able to have a magic map in her head.

Faye checked her head map. It used to only stretch for about fifty feet in a circle wherever she was standing, but with practice, it now seemed to go about double that. It didn’t have a lot of detail, so she didn’t feel like she was invading anyone’s privacy, and besides, something was fishy tonight besides the ocean. Mr. Sullivan’s room was next to hers, but it was empty. Next was Delilah’s room, and she was surprised to find that both of them were asleep in the same bed. That was a little shocking to her since they weren’t married folk, so she kept going. She liked Delilah and just hoped Mr. Sullivan would make her happy.

Nobody was moving on the second floor, so she decided to Travel downstairs. Grandpa had always warned her not to Travel into a spot where she couldn’t see with her own eyes, but she’d been breaking a bunch of his rules lately. She appeared in the fancy dining room. There was something in the shadows behind the piano, but it turned out to just be a curtain moving a little in the breeze from an open window.

The map in her head didn’t show anything weird. Even the servants were perfectly still, sleeping standing up in their bare quarters. She didn’t know what they were, they sure as heck weren’t people, but darn if they couldn’t fix a mighty fine sandwich. Then at the very edge of her map, something twitched. She checked the spot in the living room, clear, and Traveled.

Her bare feet appeared an inch off the carpet, and she landed with the lightest thump. In the dark ahead of her was a shape, dressed entirely in black, crouched low, doing something to the magic carvings on the wood around the big glass windows. There was a scratching noise as the visitor flicked a knife back and forth.

Her first inclination was to just take Mr. Browning’s .45 and shoot the stranger in the back of the head, but she’d promised Lance that she’d try extra hard not to kill anybody else by accident, and she was afraid that this might just be another Grimnoir that she didn’t know. Lance had said that there were hundreds of them. “Can I help you?” Faye asked politely.

The person’s head whipped around. He was wearing a black mask under a hood. A pair of grey eyes seemed to glow in the dark, then they just disappeared.

Traveler!

Faye felt the air behind her move and she reacted on instinct, Traveling. She could almost feel the knife drive through the space she’d just occupied. She landed on the other side of the couch. The stranger’s hand snapped through the air and Faye jerked to the side just as something metal passed her face. A four sided metal razor embedded into the wall with a thunk. “Hey!” Faye shouted, then she disappeared just as the stranger threw another razor at her.

She landed on the second floor. She’d never been in Lance’s room before and almost managed to impale herself on the antlers from a stuffed elk. “Lance! Lance! Wake up!”

“Huh?” Lance immediately sat up in bed, his hand flying to a holstered revolver hanging from the bed post. “Faye?”

“There’s a Traveler and he’s trying to kill—” Her instincts warned her that something was coming and she threw herself back just as the stranger appeared, swinging a knife for her throat.

There was a terrible bloom of fire and the man crashed back into the wall. “Damn ninjas!” Lance bellowed as he fired five more rounds in rapid succession. Faye covered her ears. The stranger was still sliding down, leaving a trail of blood on the wallpaper as Lance sprang out of bed and turned on the electric lamp.

“You hurt?” he shouted as he dropped the empty revolver and picked up a lever-action rifle from the bedside. “I hate damn ninjas.” He worked the action. Faye realized that he was as hairy as the animals he controlled and buck naked to boot. She shrieked, pointing. Lance looked down, swore again, and covered himself with the rifle butt. “I sleep like this. Old camping habit . . . Never mind. Hell. Go get Browning,” he ordered.

Faye Traveled to Browning’s room and froze as the old man sat up in bed, aimed a shotgun right at her face, and pumped a round into the chamber. Faye screamed and Traveled off to the side. “It’s me!”

“I near blasted you, young lady.” Browning admonished as he lowered the shotgun. “Who’s shooting? What’s going on?”

The Grimnoir sure did wake up fast. At least he was wearing pajamas. “There was a Traveler, and he tried to stab me, but Lance shot him a bunch, and said he was a damn ninja!”

Browning just nodded, placed the shotgun on the bed beside him, did something with his Grimnoir ring, made a fist with his ring hand, and slammed it jarringly hard into his palm. “We are under attack,” he said.

WE ARE UNDER ATTACK.

He was already waking up from the sudden banging, but Sullivan rolled out of bed even faster as someone bellowed the words directly into his ears. “What?” he shouted.

Delilah was already up and moving, throwing her clothes on. “Gunfire.”

“Who was yelling?”

“What?”

Sullivan’s sleep-filled head realized that it had been Browning’s voice, but of course, Delilah didn’t have a Grimnoir ring, so she wouldn’t have heard. He had put Pershing’s ring on his pinky, the only one of his massive digits it would fit. “Never mind.” He grabbed the thick .45 from the nightstand.

There was enough light coming through the window that Sullivan could see her throwing her dress over her head in a terrible hurry. It reminded him of when he’d had to flee New Orleans just ahead of the law. Delilah looked at him, eyes wide. “Just like old times, huh?”

He drew back the slide of the automatic and let the oiled steel fly forward under spring pressure, chambering a round. “Yeah, just like old times.” Only I ain’t running this time.

* * *

Madi’s improved hearing easily picked up the gunshots. Three hundred yards away lights started coming on inside the house. The scout he’d sent to disable their alarm spells had failed, but it was a worthwhile sacrifice. He’d been surprised that his men had made it this close to the property before alerting the Grimmys, and he was thankful for the fog coming off the ocean. The Imperium men around him tensed, ready for action.

He’d gathered nearly thirty men for this operation, most of them were new recruits from San Francisco or Los Angeles, desperate suckers willing to risk their lives in exchange for gold or a touch of magic. He’d given them a big pep talk, a gun, and promises of the Chairman’s eternal gratitude. He figured they’d take terrible casualties, but they were expendable. He planned on letting the Grimnoir use up their Power on the chumps first so he wouldn’t endanger any of his more valuable assets. If any lived, that would prove they were strong, and therefore worthy of further training.

“Get ’em, boys,” he whispered.

To their credit, most of them didn’t hesitate. They rose from the bushes, some screaming as they charged the house, in a terrible impersonation of a proper Imperium battle cry, naively believing that the single kanji of vitality he and Yutaka had carved on them would make them bulletproof. It would make them tougher, but that wasn’t near the same thing. The smarter ones actually took the time to use cover and aim their guns at the lighted windows as they approached.

He turned to his second wave. He’d kept two Shadow Guards, both Travelers, for himself and sent the rest with Toshiko for the raid on the Peace Ray. He didn’t like splitting his forces, but he’d promised the Chairman something epic, and he always kept his promises. Now it looked like he was down to just one. He glared at the little Jap Traveler.

“Get in there. Find Pershing. I want him alive. Then report back.”

“Hai!” His black hood dipped in a quick bow and he disappeared.

Madi turned to Yutaka. “Send your scouts. I want that Tesla device.” His companion was already working, channeling his Power to Summon creatures. If it wasn’t for the possibility that Pershing had that device, he’d just use the Peace Ray to melt this whole peninsula into molten lava and save the men. If it wasn’t there, he’d pull back and then blast them. If he killed all the Grimmys first, he’d burn the place down the old-fashioned way, then have Toshiko use the Peace Ray on the Presidio and San Francisco. She had both sets of coordinates, just in case.

Another pair of Iron Guards had arrived that morning. He’d kept Hiroyasu, figuring that his particular scary-ass Power might come in handy, but he’d decided to send his partner along with the larger group attacking the Peace Ray. He didn’t trust that Shadow Guard dame to not fuck up his mission. Everyone knew the Iron Guard were the best of the best. Hell, he could probably take all of these Grimnoir by himself.

Except for Jake, he’s strong, like me . . . he caught himself thinking, and then quickly dismissed that as a weak thought. He still hadn’t decided what he was gonna do with him yet, but Madi found that he was kinda looking forward to the challenge. It had been awhile since he’d squared off against anyone he’d considered a challenge. They’d never been real tight. Jake had always been the know-it-all, always telling him that they weren’t no better than regular folks. He’d put up with Jake always defending the normals, and all he’d gotten for it was a mangled face.

Some little part in the back of his mind kept saying the idea of burning his brother with a Peace Ray should have been troubling, but the more he thought on it, he didn’t find that the idea of killing Jake upset him at all. In fact, Jake was the last vestige of his old, weak life. Taking him out would be like cutting that last chain that was keeping him down.

He checked his pocket watch. He’d enchanted the glass surface with a direct link to Toshiko. From the view he could tell they were eliminating the soldiers in complete silence. Beneath the glass he saw the ticking hands, and knew that they were well ahead of schedule.

“Impys in the treeline to the south. I took an owl over them!” Lance bellowed as he limped down the second floor balcony, now thankfully fully clothed, with bandoleers of ammunition crossing his torso. “Kill the lights.” Then he jerked back as the window across from him shattered. He calmly went to one knee to avoid any more stray rounds.

Someone turned the lights off as Faye crouched down next to Lance. The big man, Mr. Sullivan, came walking up behind her, surprisingly quiet, with an enormous funny looking rifle in his hands. He’d put on a brown canvas vest with lots of pockets, and had a huge backpack over one shoulder. It looked like it weighed a ton, but she had to remind herself that weight didn’t matter to someone like him. Delilah was right behind him, holding a short gun with a drum magazine on it.

“How many?” Sullivan asked, squinting into the patchy fog. Faye had to remind herself that most folks couldn’t see in the dark like she could.

“At least two dozen, maybe more,” Lance answered. He closed his eyes and took back control of the owl. “They’re charging.”

Sullivan just grunted in response, moved up next to the broken window, leaned around, and started shooting. The rifle was loud as he cranked off two or three rounds at a time, shell casings flying out right under his cheek. Lance popped up, shouldered his Winchester and fired. There were more gunshots coming from downstairs as the other Grimnoir piled it on.

Holes appeared in the walls around them. Plaster flew past Faye’s face as she crawled down the landing. Lance rolled away, swearing up a storm, as Sullivan calmly drew back, yanking a new magazine out of his vest. Delilah reached down, grabbed Faye by the back of her nightshirt and dragged her down the carpet like she was a naughty puppy. “Get behind something solid,” Delilah ordered as she hurled Faye down the hallway. “Now!”

She scrambled behind a marble statue of a fat man holding a blimp, but it exploded into dust and she yelped as the fragments pelted her. Faye crawled further down the hall, and fell through a doorway. Everything was breaking or shattering, and she decided that the second floor was definitely not the place to be.

Faye thought ahead, realized that the hundreds of glaring bits of danger were bullets, picked an empty spot, and appeared in the entryway. Mr. Browning and Mr. Garrett were both at the front door, shooting into the night. She got behind the piano.

“Out of the way!” Heinrich bellowed as he charged past her, green metal can in each hand. He dropped the cans next to a piece of furniture covered in a lace cloth and potted plants. The plants crashed to the floor as he ripped the cloth away, revealing a huge metal object on three legs. It was so big that at first Faye wondered why that mean German would be messing with a piece of farm equipment at a time like this, and then she realized that the huge thing was a gun. Francis caught up a second later, his rifle bouncing around on a sling over his back. He opened a cover on top of the big gun as Heinrich opened one of the metal cans and pulled out a linked belt of the biggest gleaming brass cartridges she’d ever seen.

A second later Francis yanked a huge handle back and forth and grabbed onto the spade grips on the back end. He swiveled it toward the window. The barrel was as big around as the pipes that fed the Vierras’ milk tank, and covered in a metal shroud with holes in it, and Faye instinctively knew to cover her ears. This was gonna be loud.

There was a brilliant strobe of fire coming from the front of the house and a sound like thunder. Madi cursed. His enhanced vision enabled him to see his men exploding into clouds of meat as the huge bullets passed right through the trees they were using for cover. The damned Grimnoir had a Ma Deuce. He’d thought about bringing a mortar, but he’d hesitated, worried that if the Tesla device was inside, he’d accidentally damage it. “Yutaka!” The other Iron Guard appeared instantly at his side. “Anything from your spirits?”

“No device yet,” he answered, grimacing as he concentrated on the invisible creatures he’d brought up from a lower plane. “The spirits say there are nine Grimnoir and a number of weak Summoned. The house is so covered in spells that it obscures their senses.”

“Shit . . .” Madi glanced at his watch. Toshiko was inside the Peace Ray control center, slaughtering everyone. No alarms yet . . . He still had time, but not enough to be dicking around. “Hiroyasu . . . get your ass up here.” The other Iron Guard approached deferentially. Madi didn’t like the reedy little man. He was physically weak. He’d only been able to sustain a few kanji brands, but the sheer menace of his Power made him a valuable weapon of the Imperium. “Do your thing.”

“I will need a few minutes,” he answered with that effeminate voice that just pissed Madi off even more.

“Make it quick.” He needed Hiroyasu’s Power now. He needed to throw something else at the Grimmys, and those damn Shadow Guards were nowhere to be seen, and he had to assume that the first one was probably dead. “Yutaka, call off your spirits. Bring out the Bull King.”

Yutaka let go of the lesser demons and turned all of his considerable Power to pulling up the greatest beast he could possibly Summon. Madi leaned back against the tree and lit a cigar. If the stupid Grimnoir wanted to play rough, he’d show them rough.

Sullivan stepped back from cover, eyes searching the mist-shrouded treeline through the ragged remains of the window slats. There was a muzzle flash. He raised the bullpup BAR, aimed at the spot and cranked off a burst. He moved to the side before they could return fire, heading for the next window. The house-shaking thunder coming from below told him that one of Browning’s M2 .50-caliber machine guns had been set up. From what he’d heard, they were awe-inspiring weapons, and the terrible mess it was making of the little forest was proof of that. Great plumes of dirt appeared wherever it hit, trees shattered into splinters, and men died.

The thunder stopped. The normal fire tapered off. He couldn’t see anything else moving in the woods, so he took the chance to reload. Someone downstairs, probably one of the younger ones, let out with a whooping cheer. “I think we put a hurtin’ on them.”Delilah appeared from around the corner, smoking Thompson in hand. She was nervous.

Lance peered over the windowsill. At some point his hat had been removed from his head by a bullet and blood was trickling down his scalp. “Hang on . . .” he closed his eyes, concentrating. “We killed a mess of them, rest are hunkered down. There’s a group hanging back behind cover . . . He’s Summoning something . . .”

“Aw hell . . .” Sullivan stepped back, leaned over what was left of the railing and shouted downstairs. “Demons incoming!”

“Not demons, just one.” Lance bolted up from the floor and started shoving more shells into his Winchester. “But it’s the biggest damn thing I’ve ever seen!”

There was a roar from the woods., so deep and powerful that Sullivan could feel it vibrate his back teeth. He thought back to the hoofprints and mighty claw mark in Utah and knew that if this was the same Summoner, then this was about to get real bad. He turned to Delilah. “Whatever happens, stay behind me.”

“Shut up, Jake,” she answered with false bravado. “I’ve seen these things before.”

He gripped the BAR harder and checked his Power. “Not like this you haven’t.”

A huge shadow moved in the shadowed woods, crashing through the trees. A few of the surviving attackers screamed as they struggled to get out of its way. A sliver of moonlight revealed something at least ten feet tall, blocky and misshapen, before it disappeared back into the fog. Delilah gasped in shock. It came out of the thicket then, driving itself forward with its hooves and too-long arms that ended in three eviscerating claws, snorting and shaking its bull-like head, tearing up chunks of turf, angry at being ripped from its home and knowing that it couldn’t go back until it fulfilled its master’s wishes. It stopped at the edge of the trees, pawing the ground and smelling the air, until its four red eyes, bright with licking fire, turned to stare right through them. The Greater Summoned opened its mouth and bellowed its fury, flaming spit spraying in a wide arc as it slammed its hooves down rhythmically and prepared to charge.

“I seen bigger,” Sullivan said.

The demon came at them.

The .50 opened up a second before the rest of them, a line of glowing tracers zipping past, but the demon launched itself high into the air, giant wings unfurling from its back as it rose. It sailed upward as the .50 tracked up, after, and finally into it, huge bullets striking and tearing off chunks of toughened flesh until the machine gun finally ran out of elevation. The demon seemed suspended for a split second, hanging before the moon, but it descended directly at them, roaring, streaming tendrils of smoke from where it had been hit.

It was heading right for the balcony and it would tear the house down around them when it hit. Sullivan could hear the wings snapping like a tattered sail as it neared the end of its ballistic arc, and he had an idea. Throwing the BAR over his shoulder, he grabbed his Power. Don’t fail me now. He ran toward the broken window, automatically doing the math.

“Jake!” Delilah screamed after him as he put his boot on the windowsill and launched himself into space.

Pull. Mass. Density. Velocity. His Power knew what to do. The demon’s eyes narrowed as it dove, claws thrown wide, seeking to rend his head from his body. Sullivan extended his hands just before impact and Spiked with all his might. Gravity suddenly multiplied twentyfold and swatted the demon from the sky, snapping its wings and pulling it straight down as if it had been grabbed by a great invisible hand.

Sullivan sailed past in midair as the creature jerked violently downward. He barely had time to use his Power before hitting the sidewalk. The concrete cracked as he struck and rolled away, physically unharmed, but with his Power scattered. He came right back to his feet, unslinging the BAR as he turned.

The demon had hit the fountain, crushing the blimp statue to bits. Water was squirting from broken pipes and nothing moved in the wreckage. Sullivan didn’t know if that sudden impact would have put a Greater Summoned down or not, so he approached cautiously.

But not cautiously enough. The demon exploded from the wreckage with lightning speed and backhanded him across the yard.

“Down!” Mr. Garrett shouted as several hundred pounds of gold-plated blimp statue were hurled through the front entrance of the Grimnoir house in a sparkling shower of glass and splinters. Mr. Browning went spinning across the tile on his back.

Francis cranked the huge machine gun around and mashed the butterfly trigger. It roared and spat a fireball from the muzzle the size of a fifty-gallon drum. Huge bullets tore into the fountain, raising a cloud of concrete dust.

The bull monster came out of the hole with water steaming from its burning hide. It jerked as the bullets hit, black smoke shooting from the wounds. It grabbed the pulverized statue of the fat man, raised it overhead and threw it too.

Time seemed to slow to nothing as Faye watched the broken statue spiral directly toward the machine gun. Francis was still shooting, silhouetted in the red flashes, as giant brass cases hit the floor and bounced away, and she knew that he was going to die there, smashed to pulp, trying to put the demon down to save the rest of them. She Traveled.

Landing dangerously close to Francis, she whacked her nose on his rifle’s stock, threw her arms around his waist just as the statue hit, and they were gone, landing ten feet to the side, as half the wall and the machine gun flew back into the grand piano in a terrible crash of hot steel and wood.

Francis was on top, squishing her into the carpet. His eyes were squeezed tightly shut. They opened slowly, surprised to be alive. “How—”

She didn’t know. She’d never Traveled with anything other than the clothes on her back before, let alone a whole ’nother person. She checked, but nothing seemed melted together like Grandpa had warned her could happen. “I didn’t know I could do that!” Faye exclaimed as she shoved him off into a pile of broken glass. She would have giggled except for the killer bull monster coming to get them. She wasn’t where she’d expected to land, and had only made it halfway, which made a kind of sense, since she was moving a lot more weight than normal.

A hoof came out of the crater and slammed deep into the pavement of the walkway. The demon, billowing smoke from a dozen wounds like a broken chimney, lowered its head and roared. It was coming for them. The Grimnoir kept shooting, but the smaller bullets didn’t even seem to hurt it. She didn’t know much about demons, but she figured when it ran out of smoke, it would be dead, but by the time that happened, it would probably have killed them all.

Something grey shimmered through the remains of the front porch, and Heinrich materialized right in front of the monster. He shouted something insulting in German. The demon turned its eyes toward him and growled. “Yes. Here I am. Come! Come and get me.”He shot it with a skinny-barreled pistol. A three-clawed hand swung and Heinrich turned blurry right before impact and it zipped through him. He ducked under the next attack, and rolled across the grass, his long coat flapping behind.

“What’s he doing?” Faye asked.

“Buying us time,” Francis answered as he pulled himself up.

Heinrich turned grey as the demon lowered its head, snorting in rage, and threw horns through him. The mean, but very brave, man appeared on the other side, grimacing from the strain. “What happens when he runs out of Power?”

“He dies.” Francis looked her right in the eyes, desperate. “Can you find its Summoner? If you can stop him, it’ll weaken that thing.”

Some of the others were moaning. Jane was moving between them like a white battlefield angel. Bullets were landing around them again as the remaining bad men renewed their attack. She turned to the woods, and knew that it would take a few jumps to find the man controlling the demon, and she would have to find him out there in the dark, surrounded by the same kind of men who’d killed Grandpa.

I’m not losing another family. She gripped Mr. Browning’s .45 tight in her callused palm, picked a spot as far away as she dared, and was gone.

His chest was burning.

Sullivan sat up with a grunt. His back was pressed into the end of a ditch, and it took him a second to realize that the trench had been dug by his body. He shook his head to clear it as he pushed loose from the dirt. His shirt had been ripped open, and the hexagram scar on his chest was hot to the touch. The new Power was streaming through his tissues, giving his already hardened body extra strength.

His Power was still recovering from the massive Spike, but he could feel it building along with his anger. He checked the BAR. The rugged weapon was unharmed, etchings of durability glowing slightly in the dark. He had landed close to the woods, and could hear voices around him in the night as the Imperium men cautiously approached the house. They were all around him, shapes in the fog. There was gunfire to his left as one of them opened up.

In the distance, the Greater Summoned was battling with Heinrich. Behind the spinning forms, the first floor of the Grimnoir house had been laid open like a disemboweled animal. Delilah leapt from the second floor, screaming, dark hair whipping in the moonlight, and landed next to the demon. She charged it, fists raised. It was going to rip her apart, and it was his fault. “Damn it,” he muttered, rising. Now I’m mad.

He came out of the trench, covered the short distance to the man shooting the submachine gun, raised the heavy BAR overhead, and shattered his skull. Before the body hit the ground, Sullivan had picked up the subgun, some weird Jap thing with the magazine sticking out the side, and raised it in one hand, looking for his next target. There were two more men crouched ahead of him, so he pulled the trigger, working it across them, bullets tearing into their backs as they jerked and twitched. The bolt flew forward, empty, and he hurled it into the darkness.

Shapes turned toward him, aware now that something terrible was in their midst. Sullivan shouldered the BAR and went to town.

Faye hit the ground running. She figured she might as well be moving while she checked her head map, since the place was covered in bad men with guns. But she didn’t need to worry, because off to one side, Mr. Sullivan was killing the ever-livin’ hell out of the Imperium men. They were dropping like alfalfa in front of a scythe.

If I was a demon Summoner, where would I hide? She scowled at the trees. The fog was wispy and moving, and it made it hard for even her grey eyes to see good.

“Kid!” A deep voice came from above. She looked up to the noise of beating wings, and instinctively ducked as an owl swooped past. “Hundred and twenty yards, due east!” Lance shouted through the bird. “Careful. There’s three of ’em!”

She could Travel that in a few hops. Back at the house, the demon roared its fury, and she knew she didn’t have much time.

Madi stalked back and forth, enraged. Several Grimnoir were tangling with the severely damaged Bull King. His goons were dropping like flies. The stinking unreliable Shadow Guards were still missing. And his watch was telling him that Toshiko was in position, and needed to get a target in the next few minutes before the Army pulled their heads out of their asses, realized they’d been attacked, and sent reinforcements to the Peace Ray. And he still didn’t know if the Tesla device was here or not. “Damn it, Hiroyasu, you better get your shit together or I swear on the Chairman’s eyes I’ll cut your balls off.”

The thin man was concentrating on his Power, sweat beading his brow. “One moment . . .”

Yutaka was focused on his demon. Madi stomped over to him, scowling. They should have been done by now. “This is fucking unacceptable,” he shouted as he drew the Beast from his shoulder holster. “I’ll take care of these Grimmy bastards myself.”

He flinched as Yutaka’s brains hit him in his good eye. The right side of his partner’s head had split open like a dropped melon. Yutaka opened his mouth, like he was trying to say something, but nothing came out except a trickle of blood as he fell to the ground.

Madi wiped his face with his coat sleeve. A skinny, grey-eyed girl was standing there, big .45 raised in one quivering hand. “You!” they said at the same time, and she cranked off several fast shots, and by the time he raised his gun, she was gone.

“Son of a bitch!” Madi bellowed, feeling the burn of the hot slugs embedded in his chest. It was that Portagee’s brat. “You Travelin’ whore!”

Hiroyasu was crouched low, afraid. Madi’s improved senses couldn’t pick her up. He knelt down and checked Yutaka, but half the contents of his head had already slid onto the damp grass. His partner had only been able to sustain a single kanji of vitality on his body, and that wasn’t near enough to withstand getting your skull emptied.

He’d lost an Iron Guard. He’d lost a brother. The Chairman was gonna be pissed.

There was a flash of movement to his side, and he raised his .50, thinking it was that little Traveler bitch coming back for more, but instead it was one of the Shadow Guard. The little man in black bowed deeply, noticing the dead Iron Guard. “Sir, I have bad news.”

“What now?” Madi spat.

“Our other Shadow Guard was lost to the Grimnoir. He was—”

“Frankly, I don’t give a shit. Did you find the device or not?”

“Not yet, Iron Guard. I will return.”

“Wait. You’re taking me with you. You want something done right, you gotta do it yourself.” He turned to where his remaining Iron Guard was cowering. The .45 bullet lodged in his lung was pissing him off. Madi grabbed Hiroyasu by the collar and hoisted the tiny Lazarus off the ground. “Listen up. Yutaka was twice the man you were. I’m going in there myself, and there damn well better be some gawdamned zombies doing some killin’ out here or I’m gonna come back and hurt you in ways you can’t even imagine. Got it?”

“Hai!”

Madi dropped him on his ass, put his hand on the Shadow Guard’s shoulder, and said, “Move it. I got murdering to attend to.” The two of them Traveled, disappearing into the darkness.

* * *

The Greater Summoned was confused, weakened. It stumbled as Delilah punched it in the chest with a crack that could be heard across the entire peninsula. It went to one knee, and Delilah immediately stepped up onto its leg, threw herself high, and crashed her elbow down between its four eyes. Fire billowed around her, scorching her dress.

The demon slashed at her stomach, but she was too quick, and only a thin trail of blood flew from her abdomen as she leapt back, landing on her hands and knees fifteen feet away. The demon rose, smoke billowing from wounds too numerous to count. It wobbled, disoriented, no longer being whipped on by its Summoner.

“Hey.” Sullivan reached up and tapped it on the shoulder. The demon turned and opened its mouth to roar at the new challenge. Jake calmly drove the muzzle of the BAR in between the flaming jaws and pulled the trigger. Smoke exploded from its eye sockets, nostrils, and ear holes as the .30-06 bullets ricocheted around inside its armored skull. He wrenched the gun free, raised his left hand, and Spiked gravity sideways.

The demon tumbled down the lawn. It rose, shaking, onto its claws and knees. Wasting no time, Delilah ran up its back, crouched between the crumpled wings and grabbed it by the horns. She surged her Power, screaming as every vein became visible in her straining arms, and wrenched the head violently back. Its neck snapped, and smoke shot like a broken steam line from its throat as flesh ripped. Delilah kept pulling, her teeth grinding together, as her Power drove her strength to Herculean levels.

The demon’s head tore free and she lurched back. The body seemed to deflate, smoke rising and oil dripping from the stump as it sank to the ground. Delilah raised the bull head over her like a trophy and shook it. “Take that, you magic cow son of a bitch!” She threw it over her shoulder as she appeared to shrink, her Power exhausted.

Sullivan stepped over the body. Heinrich was struggling to get up, splattered with blood and smoking oil, his grey coat in tatters, but he was grinning from ear to ear. “Damn fine work, my friends.”

“You okay?” Sullivan shouted at Delilah, concerned. She was panting, exhausted, filthy, and injured, but still gave him a broad smile and a wink. They’d done it. They’d survived. And Sullivan felt a huge weight lift from his chest. Then a man in black appeared at Delilah’s side and drove a sword deep into her guts.

“Jake?” Her eyes widened, one hand stretched imploringly toward Sullivan. She fell away in a flash of red as the ninja twisted and jerked the blade free. Sullivan screamed her name, bringing up the BAR, but the barrel was blocked by an open hand that hit like iron, and he was staring into the blank white eye of his older brother.