Warbound (The Grimnoir Chronicles Book 3)

Take the case of courage. No quality has ever so much addled the brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages. Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. “He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,” is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice. He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine.

—G.K. Chesterton,

Orthodoxy, 1908

Drew Town, New Jersey

“Well, this has certainly been an exciting way to pass the evening,” Hammer said.

“Palling around with us last time must have spoiled you,” Jane answered. “It can’t all be Iron Guards and superdemons, now can it?”

Hammer got comfy. “Wake me when your something happens.”

They were taking turns watching the orderly streets of Drew Town through a pair of binoculars. The large number of electric lamps and their position on a rise above the populated part of town made the watching easy. Monotonous, but easy. Francis felt like they were well hidden, but since nobody was looking for them, it didn’t particularly matter.

The town was growing fast. The construction crews were working around the clock. They could clearly hear the machinery running from their current position. More families had moved in since their last visit, so there were probably several hundred people living there now. Francis moved the binoculars across the streets, but it was quiet. Hopefully the elder’s warning had been a false alarm. So then tomorrow he’d just be exhausted as he went about his day’s business of being raked over Roosevelt’s malicious coals.

“I see something moving on the first street,” Dan said. “Glass them, Francis.”

Francis turned the binoculars toward the entrance of the town. Six men were walking down the sidewalk. They had come from the administration building. “I’ve got a fellow in a suit and what looks like some construction workers and some security guards. Hang on . . . That’s the architect. Mr. Drew himself. They’re walking up to a house.”

“Little late for an inspection, isn’t it?” Hammer asked as she got up.

All four of them were looking over the edge now. It was the first activity they’d had in hours. “Hey, check out Fourth and C streets,” Jane said.

The binoculars shifted. The orderly grid of streets made picking targets easy. This was much farther away, so he had to adjust the focus. A car had parked and four men had gotten out. They broke into pairs and began walking up the driveways to two different houses. Francis shifted back to the architect’s group. They’d also broken into pairs, and were moving to three separate homes. It seemed rather coordinated and downright eerie. “What the hell is going on down there?” They didn’t knock. Didn’t need to. They had master keys. Of course they did. They’d built the place. Simultaneously, like they were communicating somehow, even though they didn’t appear to be saying a word, they entered the homes. “They’re breaking into people’s houses.”

“Those are all occupied,” Dan said. “That’s our Heavy’s street.”

Jane came up alongside him, so he handed her the binoculars. Francis was getting a really bad feeling about this.

A few seconds later the men began leaving, still in pairs. They moved quicker now, running across the lawns and jumping fences. Jane gasped as she tracked them through the magnification. “Those are not men!”

“What?”

“I can see people’s insides. Those are not people. Everything is wrong. Their skin is a shell!”

“Shit!” Francis pulled his rifle around. So much for this being a false alarm. “Get down there!”

The front door of one of the invaded houses flew open. A child in a pink nightgown ran outside. He couldn’t hear her from here, but he could tell she was screaming. She made it out into the street before one of the men appeared highlighted in the doorway. He came down the steps, wearing a white security-guard shirt splattered red. He lifted his head, like he was testing the air. He caught the scent and took off after the girl, running on all fours.

It was too far to use his Power. The safety was off. The butt of the Enfield met his shoulder and Francis welded his cheek to the stock. The scope picked up what little light there was, but there wasn’t much. The wire crosshairs were grey blurs. His finger went to the trigger as he exhaled.

The little girl fell in the road. The man, thing, whatever, was on her in an instant.

The scope filled with pink. Francis lifted it. Found white. And pulled the trigger.

“Got him!” Dan shouted.

Francis worked the bolt. The little girl got up and ran again. The security guard had fallen, but he was already getting back up. As soon as the little girl was clear, Dan lit him up with the BAR. Thud Thud Thud Thud. It almost felt slow and rhythmic as Dan ripped the man apart.

That should wake everybody up.

Other men were coming out of the homes, dripping Active blood. Some of them had lost bits of their skin in various altercations with the residents, but they didn’t seem to care. They methodically turned toward the next house in line. Francis had four more shots, and he cranked them off, hitting every time, but only managing to drop one of the men. They simply seemed to shrug off the impacts, focused entirely on their next target.

The people of Drew Town were being slaughtered.

Francis was up and running down the hill without even realizing it. Jane and Hammer were already halfway down.

The elders had warned every knight in the world . . . And Francis realized that meant this was happening everywhere.

Stuttgart, Germany

Fires could be seen through the office window and police sirens could be heard in the distance. Jacques Montand hung his head in shame. “I have failed you, the society, and all of mankind. My willful blindness allowed this crisis to come about. I accept full responsibility for my failures.”

The other elders were quiet. Two of them were present in the darkened room, and the other four were attending through communications spells. Their last member was missing in action. It was dire news which had brought them together. The secret Enemy seemed to be attacking all across the world simultaneously.

“Jacques . . .” began the British elder. “How could you have known?”

“That the girl was picked to save mankind? That Sivaram was merely a trial run for our ultimate weapon of self defense? I could not have known. I could only assume the worst, but I should have not let that blind me to the true evil. Faye and Sullivan tried to warn us. By hiding what I did know, and by keeping Faye’s continued existence a secret, I have placed us all into terrible jeopardy. As I have said, I accept full responsibility for my failures, and accept any punishments which the society deems fit. If I am to die to atone for this, so be it.”

“That will have to wait,” said the American. “We need everyone we can get. Hang yourself later for all I care, but right now we’ve got a crisis of unknown proportions brewing in every corner of the world. These creatures are killing innocent men, women, and children.”

“We’ve been dispatching our knights as we hear of outbreaks, and trying to alert the local authorities wherever possible,” said the German elder. “As soon as we are done here I will be joining my men in the street fighting.”

“My boss is a stubborn man,” the American said. “But I think I’ve convinced Roosevelt to see the light. The military has been called up. We’ve responded as best we can to each outbreak of violence, but we don’t even know where or how many there are.”

“I do.”

Jacques and Klaus turned in surprise.

Faye Vierra walked into the light. She was covered in blood, her eyes were wild, and she held a pistol in one hand. It was locked open empty, but she casually dropped the spent magazine on the carpet, pulled a new one from her clothing, slammed it home, and dropped the slide. She smelled of smoke and death.

They were scared of her. Nobody spoke.

“I’ve been fighting them all over the world for the last hour, picking whichever spot is the closest to opening the door. I stopped a bunch. I don’t know how many I’ve killed . . .” Faye rubbed her face with her free hand, but all that did was smear the blood around. “I came here because I’ve got a minute before the next door is built. I can’t fight a war by myself. I need help.”

Jacques spoke for all of them. “Whatever the society can do, we are here.”

“One of y’all is a Reader. I can taste it.” Faye glanced across them. The German elder raised his hand. “Okay, pay attention. I’m gonna show you a map of the world in your head.” Faye spied something in the corner. A decorative globe floated over and landed on the table between the elders. She was using more than one kind of Power! “Then you’re going to mark down all the places that need help, then you’re going to do your best to make sure help gets sent to all those places. Russia was real bad off, what with Stalin’s gulags, but that’s where I just came from.” She shivered. “It’s still bad, but they’ll hold for a bit. I felt it when the main Pathfinder died, and that’ll slow it some, but its babies are still working. The Imperium’s up in arms, killing everybody, and they’re even using their secret agents to help in countries they ain’t even supposed to be in. But there’s places we can get that they can’t. Ready?”

Klaus nodded. Then he screamed and clutched his temples. “Mein Gott!”

“Yeah . . . Sorry about that.” Faye apologized. “No time to be gentle. Now get help to those folks that need it. This is the most important thing the Society has ever done.”

Klaus took the globe, removed a pen from his pocket, and began making X marks around the world.

Suddenly, the Spellbound jerked in surprise. She closed her eyes for a moment, as if concentrating. “Oh no . . . Didn’t see that coming . . . Nobody saw that one coming.”

“What is wrong, Faye?” Jacques asked.

“The Pathfinder’s been steering leaders and important people toward sticking Actives all in one place to make its job easy, but it’s had one out-of-the-way place all ready for a real long time, and it just got there and ate everybody. I’ve got to go. I’m the only thing left in its way.”

“Good luck, Faye,” Jacques said. “And I am sorry.”

“Don’t worry, Jacques. I keep my promises.”

Billings, Montana

The Special Prisoners Wing of Rockville State Penitentiary was where they put the most dangerous criminal Actives in America. This was the place Jake Sullivan had served six years of hard time. There had been nearly a thousand Active prisoners housed in this one facility.

Faye arrived just as the last of those prisoners was dragged from their cells to have their magic devoured. The whole thing had happened so fast. There had only been a few skinless men hidden there among the guards, but they had overwhelmed and replaced all of the others in a matter of minutes, and then the prisoners had been easy pickings.

That was more than enough magic to open the door.

Faye landed in the middle of the depopulated prison.

Part of the Pathfinder was waiting for her. It was wearing the body of the warden, whom it had just killed a few minutes before. That made Faye sad, since Mr. Sullivan had spoken of the warden as a kindly man who had let him read books.

“I told you I was everywhere.” The biggest, smartest part of the Pathfinder had just been destroyed in Shanghai, but the Pathfinder was like a weed, and pulling up part of it wouldn’t kill it all, and the roots would just keep on growing. “You are too late. The rest of us have been called. We are coming.”

“It don’t matter,” Faye answered. “I intend to kill you all.”

“Other intelligences have said that before you, but all have failed. You are not special. You do not comprehend how long this cycle has gone on. The prey chooses new intelligences and we consume them. The cycle repeats. The prey chooses new intelligences and we consume them. The cycle is eternal. The prey chooses new intelligences and we consume them. You will not be the last.”

“You’re wrong.” Tens of thousands had died around her tonight, and their connections to the Power now temporarily belonged to her. She could no longer describe her Power in terms like a river, or a stream, or any other sort of quantifiable thing. Faye’s Power simply was the Power. It was trusting her not to fail. It was tired of running. “I am the last one.”

The Pathfinder’s puppet looked toward the night sky. It had been daytime in Shanghai. There was a blank spot where there weren’t any stars at all. The circle was growing. It was an opening to someplace else.

“The prey will run as it always has. It will abandon you. You will become weak and you will be consumed. That is the cycle. You are an abomination. You are an intelligence which has copied our methods. You consume the prey as well. You have taken that which is rightfully ours. You will not be allowed to become us.”

She was tired of listening to it, so Faye lifted the .45 and shot the Pathfinder in the face. The night was quiet. That was more like it.

The big Enemy was on the way. It was being drawn here, to Rockville, and once it landed, there wasn’t a thing that anybody in the world would be able to do about it.

Faye ran through all of the possible uses of the Power she’d seen so far. She could pick any one of the connections she’d stolen, and then refold hers to utilize that section of the Power, but as she thought through them, she couldn’t think of any which would actually make a dent in the Enemy. She could think of maybe one type of magic she knew of which maybe could work, but she had no idea how to use it. The Power was a complicated critter all right, and there were tons of parts, some of which rarely managed to connect to a human being, and maybe some of those might work, but Faye had no idea how to connect to those sections herself. She couldn’t fold herself a new connection to a specific part of the Power if she hadn’t seen it before.

The hole in the stars was growing. The universe on the other side was a different color which human eyes had never seen before and which human brains didn’t have a word for. It was far out in space, but everybody in the northern hemisphere could see it now. She didn’t have much time.

One of the Iron Guards who had died around her in Shanghai had been a Reader, so she’d stolen his Power. She hadn’t tried it yet, but it was worth a shot. Faye knew of only two people who had ever seen this particular spell’s geometry. One of them had a brain that was a constant weird jumble of information, faster maybe than anybody else’s brain except for hers, so Faye didn’t know if she’d be able to pull anything out of that head at all, especially since she’d never practiced Reading. The other brain wasn’t nearly as fast, but she liked it a whole lot better, plus intruding on it didn’t seem nearly as offensive as intruding on a stranger’s brain. Faye opened up her head map, burning through several lifetimes’ worth of Power to reach all the way to New Jersey.

Francis was busy beating a skinless man over the head with the butt of his rifle. They were in a construction site of some kind, and there were lots of people running around fighting the monsters. She was pleased to see that Francis had managed to kill a bunch of the Pathfinder’s puppets all by himself by throwing bricks and rocks at them with his Power. She shot that skinless man in the brain, not that she didn’t think Francis could handle it himself, but rather because she was in a hurry.

“Thanks.” He flicked the slime off the end of his rifle and then looked to see who’d helped him. “Faye?” He only gawked at her disheveled and bloodstained appearance for a second before rushing over and sweeping her into his arms. He kissed her on the lips, and wonderful as that was, she really had to get back to saving the world.

She was going to shove him, but she decided the world could wait a few more seconds after all . . . Okay, back to business. She pulled her face away. “Francis, I need you to listen.”

“What’re you doing here? I haven’t heard from you in months! I thought you might be dead!”

“Francis, concentrate,” Faye ordered. She snapped her fingers for emphasis.

“Okay.” A skinless man was running at them, but Francis floated a pipe up from the ground and hurled it like a spear with his Power. It impaled the creature through the ribs and sent it flying back. “Okay, I’m listening. What’s up?” She pointed at the sky. Francis looked up and noticed the expanding hole in the universe. “Sweet merciful Jesus! What is that?”

“The Enemy’s coming. I need you to think real hard and remember that spell you made that ate Mason Island.”

“The black hole? Browning said that came from a Power called a Nixie. But what—”

“Don’t matter. Just think of the shape in your head. I’ve never done this before, so remember as hard as you can.”

Francis closed his eyes and his brow furrowed.

Faye had never read minds before, so she figured she’d throw a few extra Actives’ worth of Power onto this one just in case.

And then she nearly knocked herself cold. It was like a sucker punch to the head.

Faye didn’t just read that spell clear as day, she read all of the memories attached to it, the frustration and anger at trying to make it work, the brutal fight for freedom, the near-death experience, and then the overwhelming feelings as he was reunited with her, and then the incredible sadness while reading her letter because he really did love her. She couldn’t help herself, she read the surface, and the layer beneath, and the layer beneath, all of the hopes, and strengths, and weaknesses, and frailties, and insecurities, and screw ups, and moments of greatness, and everything in between. She learned every single thing there was to know about who Francis Cornelius Stuyvesant really was and the man that he could hope to be, and most of all, she learned that he truly wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.

She snapped back to reality. Francis swooned and nearly lost it. She had to catch him by the arm to hold him up. She’d Read him so hard it had made his nose bleed. “What did you just do?”

“Oh, Francis.” Faye held him tight. “If I didn’t have a reason not to turn evil and destroy the world before, I surely do now.”

“What?”

“I’ll try to come back, I promise.” Hesitantly, she let go, and stepped back into Montana.

The prison yard was still quiet. The spotlights cast ghostly shadows. She’d only have once chance. The Enemy was coming from one reality and heading straight for this one, only she never intended to let it land. Instead, she’d send it someplace else. Nobody knew where the black hole went. She’d only gotten the barest glimpses as she’d tossed Crow inside. It was a terrible realm of endless darkness and cold.

Yet, the god of demons had been strong enough to crawl out of it. Even though it didn’t have a body, the Enemy was infinitely stronger, which told Faye she needed to make this spell that much bigger. That last hole had been big enough to suck in Mason Island. This one would be big enough to swallow Montana. But if she set that off here at the surface, it would kill hundreds of thousands, maybe millions if the calculations in her head map were even the tiniest bit off . . .

Did that matter? Kill a million, save billions. That was easy math. Plus she’d just absorb all those millions’ Power. It wasn’t like it would go to waste, and she’d still save everybody else in the world from the Enemy. She’d be a hero. The whole world would love her.

Faye shook her head. Those thoughts were dangerous. She needed to get up there where the world could be safe from the dangerous spell. She had to get up in the Enemy’s face. And that meant she probably wasn’t coming back.

So be it. Sometimes heroes didn’t get to come back.

Her head map helped her with the calculations. She was going to have to channel multiple forms of Power at the same time, something not even the Chairman had done before. She could switch between them really quick, but that wouldn’t be good enough. It needed to be several at once or nothing. Failure meant instantaneous death.

She concentrated on the magic of a Fade, imagining herself to be as insubstantial as Heinrich. That would help keep her from being pulled in by the hole’s gravity. Then she channeled the opposite type of magic, that of the Heavy, and imagined that she had as much control over those forces as Mr. Sullivan. Between those two types of magic, she might have a chance to get out. Then she gathered up the vitality of a Brute like Delilah, and knowing that her body would begin taking damage immediately, she asked for the Healing Power of a mighty Healer like Jane. She’d need to keep her body from freezing instantly, so she thought of the energetic magic of the Torch, like Whisper or Lady Origami, and the Crackler magic of Mr. Bolander. And for one last touch, she thought of Barn’s magic, because a little Luck never hurt.

Faye was so scared she couldn’t hardly breathe. So first she folded her connection to be like the Mouth’s Power, imagined she was clever like Mr. Garrett, and said out loud. “I’m gonna be fine. I’m really good at this. The Power picked me for a reason.” And then she immediately felt better.

She said a little prayer in her head, looked up at the monster eating the sky, and Traveled like she never had before.

Nothingness.

And then a billion stars.

It was terrifying. The world was thousands of miles below. The Enemy was before her.

Faye’s head map was screaming in confusion, so she shoved it aside. Her physical magic flared, stronger than any Brute. Her tissues hardened into an impenetrable shield, but even then her skin began to die and the fluids in her body wanted to boil into nothing. She became denser than any Massive. The Healer’s magic went to work. The molecules of her own body which were burning off were energized by the magic of the Torch to form a sort of barrier between her and the nothing.

The Enemy was coming closer, incomprehensible and hungry. It knew the Power had been found, and it had been waiting a very long time for this moment. It wasn’t clever at all, at least not in any way Faye could ever understand. The Pathfinder had been clever because it had been living with humans for so long that it had grown smart. All the Enemy understood was the cycle of eating and chasing. It had been anchored to a point in Montana and nothing would turn it away. The cycle was everything.

Faye was about to break it.

She folded her connection to the Power, over and over, in all manner of convoluted designs. Her mind was working faster than any other living being was capable of, and she knew that was why the Power had picked this poor Okie girl from a dirt-floored shack to be its champion. It was all for this one perfect moment.

Faye created the spell. A hole appeared in space. The other side of the hole was the real nothing. This side was paradise in comparison. The rift grew.

Not fast enough. The Enemy was too big. She needed to block it off entirely. She needed to make a new door, just as big as the hole the Enemy had made, big enough to completely shield the world. She needed the Enemy to be absolutely consumed by the nothing place, and it could never be allowed to escape. Faye gathered up all of her stolen magic, the composite Power of tens of thousands of dead souls, and she shoved it hard against the new spell.

It tore a mighty rift in the universe.

The tear opened with a flash that could be seen from Earth. It expanded fast. Too fast. It tried to pull her in, so hard that she couldn’t even Travel out of it. Faye called upon the gravitational mastery of the Heavy to pull herself away and when that didn’t work, the Fade ability to make herself insubstantial. But this rift was so terrible that it was sucking in light.

The Enemy continued onward, oblivious, toward its feast.

Only the trail it was following went through Faye’s rift. The black hole which had consumed Mason Island had been tiny in comparison. This one was hundreds of miles across.

Too late, the Enemy realized it was a trap. The portal from its reality fed directly into the infinite nothing. Faye understood where the black hole went now. This was where the Power would go if it died.

It was Hell.

Faye knew she was about to die too, but it was all worth it to feel the great Enemy’s surprise before it was sucked into the eternal void.

So long, sucker.

She managed to stay just ahead of the rift. It reached its maximum size, which was good, because if it had gotten any bigger it probably would’ve eaten the whole world, and then she would’ve felt really stupid, and then it went snapping back.

It dragged her along on the ragged edge of nothing, and the smaller it got, the harsher the pull became. Faye was burning every form of magic she could think of, but her Power was spent, all of the Spellbound curse’s stolen magic had been used. She would not be able to Travel out of this one.

It sure had been an adventure.

And then the Power spoke to her. Not with words, but it was there, watching, feeling her pain and her anguish and her sadness and her hope and it truly marveled at this bizarre species it had bonded itself to.

It was thankful, for the great cycle had been broken. Mankind had accomplished what no other species had ever done before.

So the Power offered her a choice.

It was an easy decision.

Drew Town, New Jersey

Francis was prone on top of the water tank as he took careful aim. The skinless men were incredibly fast when they were sprinting, so he lead this one like he was shooting a jack rabbit. Francis pulled the trigger, and the Enfield barked. The skinless man spilled forward and crashed into the hole that had been dug for a foundation. “Got it!” He worked the bolt and watched for more targets, but that seemed to be all of them. Since these things seemed so damned hard to kill, Francis noticed that there was a cement mixer still running next to the hole, so he focused his Power, pulled the lever, and caused the liquid cement to run down and bury the creature. That ought to do it.

“We okay?” Pemberly Hammer called out.

Jane came out from behind the car she’d been using for cover, still holding her favorite Tommy gun. “I think so.”

Dan joined his wife. “I believe that’s the last of them.”

They’d been fighting for an hour. The town had come alive. Most had run. Many had fought. A whole lot had died. And then the dead had gotten back up, shed their skin, and joined in. He’d burned through most of his ammo and nearly all his Power, but for now, it was quiet.

Francis climbed down the water tank’s ladder, made it three-quarters of the way, slipped on a rung, and fell the rest of the way. He landed on his ass in a mud puddle. Francis got up, cursing, and quickly inspected his rifle to make sure he hadn’t plugged the muzzle. “I didn’t see anything else, but keep your eyes peeled.”

“There are so many wounded. I can feel them all around us,” Jane said. “I’ve got to help them.”

“I’ll go with you,” Dan said. “The police are here now, but I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

“Oh, Dan, you are so chivalrous.”

There were lights and sirens coming up the road toward the “planned community.” Francis walked over and leaned on the hood of a car. “Hell of a night, Hammer. Just promise me you’re going to go back and tell your boss he’s an idiot.”

“Not a problem.” Hammer joined him. “Did you see that weird light in the sky? What do you think that was?”

He studied the night. It looked like an aurora borealis. “Faye . . . doing Faye stuff.”

“How do you know?”

“Just a hunch.” And when she’d read his mind so hard it felt like he’d woken up from a three-day bender, a little bit of her thoughts had jumped lanes, and as the thoughts had settled down, he’d come to understand what was really at stake. Lots of men liked to say their girl was the most important girl in the world . . . his really was.

“Do you think she’s okay?”

“I know she is.”

Hammer nodded. She could tell Francis was telling the truth. “I’ve got to go fill in the law. There might be more of those things out there.” She held out her hand, not in any sissy ladylike fashion either, but like she meant business. Francis shook it. “Thanks for being such a paranoid jerk.”

“And thank you for being such an obstinate nag.”

“Anytime.” She grinned at him and then went down to meet the arriving cars.

Francis looked back up at the weirdly lit sky. “Come on, Faye . . .”

There was a sudden CRACK. The noise was deafening. It was like lightning had just struck next to him. Something hit the ground hard and he flinched away.

He spun, raising the rifle, but stopped when he saw who it was. “Faye!” She was standing there, surrounded by a brilliant halo of pure, crackling Power. It burned his eyes like looking at a welder. He had to raise his hands to shield his face. “Faye!”

The magic flickered and then disappeared. The light was gone. His ears were ringing.

She gave him a weak little smile. “It offered me a choice . . .” And then she fell to her knees.

Francis rushed to her side. She looked like she was about to topple over. He caught her just in time. “What’s wrong? What choice?”

Her eyes were closed, her head was rolling weakly on her neck. “The Power. It offered me everything. I could have the whole world. I could control it, run it, all to keep the Power safe for forever.”

He held her tight. She was shaking so hard. “Okay, Faye. I’ve got you. It’ll be okay.”

“All mine. Whatever I wanted. So no more bad guys, no more wars, or hate, because I said so. No more Chairmen or Madis or Crows. Never again.” She was nearly incoherent with exhaustion. “All of them. Stopped. But to do that, I’d always need to be so strong . . . I’d always need more. So I’d take what I wanted, because I’d need to. That’s how I’d tell myself it was okay. But that’s how the evil always starts. Nobody would be safe, not even you.”

She wasn’t making any sense. Francis realized they were kneeling in the puddle. He pulled her to dry ground and carefully laid her down with her back against the car tire. He brushed the matted, bloody hair from her face. The blood didn’t seem to be hers, but he couldn’t really tell, there was so much of it. “Jane! Jane, I need a Healer!”

“I could have done that. I would have done it before. But Zachary showed me what would have happened eventually if I had. It would always be too tempting. It said I could be a god here, Francis. That ain’t right. Not like that. No one person should have that much Power. If only it was just the curse, but I had to choose between what I love and who I love.” Faye opened her eyes. “So I gave it up. All that extra magic, I just gave it up. I chose to be me.”

He was staring into Faye’s blue eyes.

Art to come

War Faye