Warbound: Book Three of the Grimnoir Chronicles - eARC

by Larry Correia

  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

  Epilogue

  But down these mean streets must go a man who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an u
nusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it and certainly without saying it . . . I think he might seduce a duchess and I am quite sure he would never spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things.

  He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character or he would not know his job. He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as a man of his age talks—that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham. And a contempt for pettiness.

  The story is this man’s adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure . . . If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in.

  —Raymond Chandler,

  The Simple Art of Murder

  One Year Later

  He had woken up long before sunrise, kissed his still sleeping wife on the cheek, peeked in on their newborn son in his crib, and then left quietly. He’d heard the call. The time had come for them to go back to the world, which meant that it was going to be a busy day, but right now he just needed time to think.