Hard Magic (37 page)

“Can you Fade with another person? I mean, can you take another body through solid objects with you?”

He was quiet for a moment. “I have done this before. It is very draining. I can only do it briefly, but it is just like taking the clothes on my back or a firearm, but the more mass I have to Fade, the faster it uses up my Power. If I run out while embedded in something . . . well, I’ve seen it happen to others. The matter becomes fused together. It is not pretty.”

She understood what Lance was thinking. “I can Travel with more than one person!” Faye clapped her hands with glee. She wasn’t exactly an expert at it, since she’d done it exactly once, and that had been in a moment of panic. “If I was all . . . fadey . . . I wouldn’t be worried about getting stuck in something when I Travel. I could go further than I could see, and not die!”

“What do you think?” Lance asked Heinrich.

“It makes sense,” he answered. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

Lance grunted. “Besides getting stuck together into a big lump of meat or maybe somehow screwing up and getting embedded in solid rock? I don’t know.” Lance said. “So it’s either drown Francis, let John suffocate in his own blood, or kill the two of you . . . I got to do the math here. It was a stupid idea. Forget it.”

There was a flicker as Heinrich thumbed his lighter. He held it close to her face. He was looking into her eyes, studying her. “Can you do this thing, Faye?”

“You didn’t trust me before. Do you trust me now?”

He shrugged. “There are easier ways to betray someone than a suicide trip through a cliff.” He grinned. “Poor Lance, trying to be responsible with such impulsive young people under his command. How much time will you need?”

“No,” Lance interrupted. “John wouldn’t want you to do this.”

“I can go super fast. I can probably do it in two, maybe three hops. So, figure five or six seconds.”

“I am good for double that,” Heinrich said. “You do not appear to weigh much.” He closed the lighter and then took her hands in his. “Please try not to kill us and do not let go.”

“No way. Too dangerous. That’s an order, damn it.”

“Lance, don’t be such a wet blanket.” She would have to push extra hard. When she’d Traveled with Francis, she’d gone a much shorter distance than she’d expected for the amount of push she’d given it. It was terrifying to think about Traveling into the unknown. “Ready?” Faye asked, but there was no need, as her body suddenly felt very tingly. It was like she was made out of fog. With a shock she realized she was sinking
into
the floor. It tickled.

Faye grabbed her Power, more than she ever had before, and was surprised how much there seemed to be there, just waiting for her to use.

“Sto—” Lance had begun to bellow but then everything around her and Heinrich was solid, like being buried in the ground, only they weren’t in the ground, the ground was
in
them. It was like her body was made of little tiny bits and Heinrich had spread those bits out wider, and the tiny bits that made up the ground were passing in between her bits. There was no air, no light. They were stuck in the cliff! Panic hit her like a club and she nearly let go of Heinrich and killed them both.

Go!
Her head map was useless, and she grabbed all that extra Power that she’d always been afraid to mess with and hurled them both straight up.

Too far!
She shrieked as they appeared in the sky, tumbling through the air, suddenly falling. The light was blinding and she blinked as they spun. Heinrich released his Power and she could feel that he was holding onto her hands so hard that she thought the bones would break. He was screaming something but the wind was rushing by too fast and all she could hear was it beating her ears.

She could barely see from all the sudden sunlight and the wind making her eyes water, but the ground was
way
down there. The earth curved in the distance and green and brown and blue and there was a charred black half-circle directly below that terminated against the ocean.

Have to get to ground.
When she came out the other side of a Travel, she was always going the same speed as she was going before, and she didn’t went to hit the ground and explode like an egg that had fallen out of a bird’s nest. Her hair hit her in the face as she focused and—

There.
She was staring up into the blue sky, Heinrich above her, his eyes impossibly wide, his mouth in a perfect
O
as he screamed. The rotation continued and the ground spun up to meet them.
TOO FAST!

She felt Heinrich’s Power shimmer down her arms. His body went grey and blurry and she sure hoped she looked the same. She squeezed her eyes shut as they impacted the ground, but there was no splat, no explosion of guts all over the place, and opened her eyes to blackness as they sunk through dirt. She felt like they were gradually slowing, like they were sinking through thick water.

The head map didn’t let her down this time.
Clear.
They were right beneath the surface, descending gradually, and she Traveled just as Heinrich’s Power gave out.

They flopped into a pile of hot ash and crackling branches.

The map showed that the world immediately around them had been scoured clean of life. Trees trunks were laid sideways, all of them cleanly pushed down by a single wave. Fires were still burning on the hillsides. Everything was black and nearly as scary as the place with the big magic jellyfish.

Heinrich groaned as he gradually let go of her hands. “Never never ever never again will I do anything like that ever again,” he said, sitting up, coughing as he inhaled a lungful of smoke. “Never!” He made it to his feet, managing a few steps before stumbling off balance and landing on his butt in a puff of soot. “Never!”

In the middle of the wasteland, Faye began to giggle.

Chapter 18

Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of magic as the blackest.

—Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, 1930

Mar Pacifica, California

Sullivan
did not know how much time had passed in the dark. Delilah’s body was cold next to him. Her blood coated him and had dried, sticky on his hands, clotted and pulling at his arm hair, but he would not leave her side. He only partly heard the others over the crash of the ocean. Someone had come to speak to him, but the words had been uncertain, his memory vague. Browning was coughing, dying. Dan was getting worse, but there was nothing he could do about it. He was useless.

Madi had been right. He was
weak
.

No longer distracted with trying to protect the others, his mind turned inward, focusing on his own pain. He’d broken super-hardened bones, torn flesh, bruised muscles, yet the magic design on his chest had managed to keep up. It had burned Power to keep him alive. Even now he could feel the hot itch as his body mended itself far faster than normal.

But why hadn’t it worked on Delilah?

He moved back and forth between wakefulness and fitful sleep. His dreams were terrible, and he relived Delilah’s wounding, over and over. He saw the assassin’s steel wrench out of her body, and he questioned what he could have done differently, what he could have done better. If only he’d been quicker, faster, stronger, smarter.
Anything
. If he’d been able to defeat the Greater Summoned faster, then she would never have come down to help, and he drifted off, hating himself for not accomplishing something that whole squads of Actives had failed at during the Great War.

He awoke once to the noise of chattering teeth and talking. Francis had tried to swim for it when the tide had gone out, only to find that more of the cave had collapsed toward the entrance and he couldn’t squeeze through. He’d nearly drowned, and surely would have if he’d gone earlier. There was some talk about Faye and Heinrich disappearing after trying something stupid, but he tuned it out and went back to his stupor. They were dead too, and that was probably his doing as well.

Damaged goods,
Delilah told him in his sleep.
You understood me, Jake. You were the only one.

Sullivan found himself walking along the top of a trench at Second Somme, the Power visible around him in the land where the dead went to dream. He knelt in the dirt and studied the mysterious being and the geometric patterns that made up its body. It eluded him. There was no way to bring her back. The Chairman was there, reclining on a throne made of barbwire and human bones. He did not mock Sullivan. He understood such pain.

Delilah was dead and it was his fault. The dreams told him that he deserved to die for his mistakes. He deserved to be the corpse, not her. The Chairman told him that ritual suicide was the appropriate response for such weakness, for such total failure. At one point he awoke with his pistol in hand, the safety off, the muzzle pressed against his temple.
No. Not like that. Never like that.
He unloaded the 1921 before putting it back in the holster.

You don’t even have the balls to do that right,
his brother’s voice whispered in his ear.

Delilah’s ghost came to him once. She didn’t speak. She just pointed at him, accusing him, and after a while it faded, but the afterimage swam on inside his eyelids. He’d not realized how much damage he had taken in the fight, he knew that he was hallucinating, but he could actually feel his skull mending from where Madi’s fists had left it cracked and his brain swollen.

They’d lain together—was it last night? The night before? Weeks? Just like back in New Orleans where he’d saved her from herself, until he’d thrown that all away for a moment of stupid charity trying to protect some kid he didn’t even know. There had been letters he’d written her from Rockville, but he’d never gotten a response. Not a single one. He didn’t know if he’d ever have worked up the courage to ask her why, but it didn’t matter now. She was lost forever. Dead in a cold black hole, her spirit surely stuck between hell and the Pacific Ocean.

Back in the land where the dead dreamed, he watched the Power. It had surely fed well when Delilah had died. The Power made a certain kind of sense. The day of the Second Somme it had feasted, growing fat, and he knew that with the deaths of all those strong Actives, thousands more of the children born on that terrible day in 1918 had been born with the gifts farmed from his dead friends and enemies. The new Actives, teenagers now—had it really been that long?—They too would increase their Power, until they died, and the cycle continued, until . . .

Until what? Until everyone in the world had magic?

He wondered where the Power had come from. It certainly had not been born on this world. The Chairman had said it came from someplace else.

“It was pursued,” the Chairman said from behind him. “Chased from the other place. We are its refuge. We are its hope.” Sullivan did not bother to turn. He knew that this was not another dream of a swollen and fevered brain. His enemy was actually speaking to him from the other side of the world. He was glad for the company.

“Why are you telling me this?” Sullivan asked.

“Because you impress me. Because there are very few people that I can discuss such things with who would understand, and these things I tell you will give you no advantage in your struggle against me.” The Chairman stopped beside him. Today he was dressed in an elaborate military uniform, resplendent with braids and medals and gold. The only thing that was not flashy was the well-used sword at his side. It was remarkably utilitarian. The Chairman saw Sullivan taking in the flash. “I was at a parade,” he explained. “As I was saying, it fled its old world, as it fled the one before that. You are correct, Mr. Sullivan. It feeds on us. It needs us, and we need it. We increase it, but as we grow dependent upon it, we must also defend it from the thing that preys upon it and has pursued it across the stars.”

“What’s it running from?”

The Chairman’s expression seemed sincere. “When the Enemy comes, you will know. The Power wants me to cleanse this world of weakness. Only the strong will be able to defeat the Enemy. If the world is not ready to stand before the Enemy, the Power will flee, and the Enemy will consume us all in its hunger, then the cycle will begin anew.”

He was in no mood for the Chairman’s bogus religion. “Sounds like a load of bunk . . . Why didn’t the healing spell work?”

“This, I will not tell you. You have chosen to stand in my way. It would be folly for me to help you become stronger.” Sullivan turned back to the Power. The mystery of his failure taunted him. The Chairman cleared his throat. “I will tell you this. When one is so very close to death, they have to
want
to come back. Perhaps your lady believed she would be happier in the next place.”

He nodded slightly. Every moment of Delilah’s life had been an uphill fight. From her drunken, abusive father; to her miserable poor upbringing; to a life on the streets; to petty crime, abandoned by everyone she’d ever loved . . . She’d had to fight for evey scrap that had fallen from life’s table. Maybe he was right. Maybe she’d gotten to the end and saw something on the other side that was better . . . She’d sure earned it. “Thank you, Chairman.”

The leader of the Imperium gave a slight bow. “You are welcome, Mr. Sullivan.”

He spat on the ground. “But I’m still gonna kill you. I swear to God Almighty, I will. I’ll kill you and every fool that follows you, including my own brother, for Delilah and every other decent person you’ve ever hurt.”

“I would expect no less. I look forward to our meeting.”

Sullivan awoke in the tiny sea cave. There was an excited commotion from the other side as a brilliant light scalded his eyes. Faye had returned somehow. His body ached from the damp, but his injuries were mostly healed. His head was clear for the first time. If he could not live for the future, he could live for revenge. He knew
exactly
what he had to do. If he lived long, there would be time for grief in the future, but now he had duty. He found Delilah’s face in the dark and kissed her gently on the cheek. “Goodbye, girl. I’m sorry I let you down.”