Hard Magic: Book I of the Grimnoir Chronicles-ARC

by Larry Correia

  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 a
nd 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.”