Hard Magic (35 page)

But she wasn’t in charge . . .
Yet
.

One of the men appeared at her side. “Is the evidence planted?”

He nodded, obviously not liking taking orders from a woman, but the Chairman had personally put her in charge, so that was just too bad. “We have used the guards’ rifles to shoot the anarchists. Their manifesto was left at the entrance for all to see. Masaharu has painted their symbol on the doors using the blood of the technicians.”

“Excellent touch,” she answered. Framing militant Actives had been Madi’s idea. The Bolshevik-funded anarchists had been a constant, yet minor, thorn in the Americans’ side for decades, though they had never dared an operation of this immensity. A few known agitators had been easy enough to find in San Francisco. Once the news of their taking over a Peace Ray reached the wires, a violent response against all American Actives would be inevitable. The more pressure that was brought against Actives, the more dissension it would bring, the better it would be for the Imperium. She had to admit his plan was remarkable in its simplicity.

She checked her mirror. Her Traveler had exhausted his Power getting Madi, the other Iron Guard, and a blonde woman back to their trucks. She was disappointed to see that she had lost one of her fellow Shadow Guard. Travelers were irreplaceable. The Chairman would be displeased.

They would be out of the kill zone in a matter of minutes. “Charge the tower,” she ordered.

***

Sullivan had taken a beating, but he was still strong enough to carry both Delilah and Lance, one under each arm. Heinrich had Garrett, while Francis had thrown the surprisingly frail weight of John Moses Browning over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry.

Behind them, a butler’s limbs were torn off, one by one, and smoke from the destroyed Summoned obscured the first floor. Faye brought up the rear, carrying Browning’s shotgun. She blasted a rushing undead in the knee, then slammed the kitchen door shut just as it slid into the wood with a crash.

Heinrich took the lead, Garrett’s arm thrown over one shoulder, his shoes dragging limp, leaving blood splatter across the pale tiles. Heinrich kicked open a door and started down. Faye was stronger than she looked, and shoved a table against the door as the zombies crashed into it.

“
Schnell
! Hurry!” Heinrich shouted. Francis stumbled after them, his arms slick with blood. Browning wasn’t moving. Francis was so scared he could barely breathe.

***

Madi was in no shape to drive, so he sat in the passenger seat of the truck as the Shadow Guard took them up to their maximum speed of fifty miles an hour. He’d made Hiroyasu, that cowardly bag of piss, ride in the back. The handful of surviving men probably wouldn’t make it to the other truck in time, and that was if the undead didn’t lose it and pull them apart, but that was too bad. They hadn’t particularly impressed him, so no great loss. The Peace Ray would take care of the evidence. He could always recruit more.

The Grimnoir had managed to hurt him bad. Every one of his kanji was earning its keep now, forcing his heart to keep pumping, moving oxygen to his brain, and knitting together broken blood vessels. He was starving. Getting hurt always made him hungry.
I could really go for a good meatloaf and a cold Coca-Cola . . .

The Healer stirred, came awake, and screamed her heart out when she saw him. She started thrashing, which he found annoying, and the driver jerked the truck when she struck his face. So Madi reached over and knocked the hell out of her with the back of his hand. Her face struck the dash. “That’ll leave a mark,” he said. “Keep squealing in my ear and I’ll pop you a good one next time.”

She folded her arms tight and seemed to shrink into the seat, trying not to cry. “What are you going to do with me?”

“You’ll be lucky if it’s
with
you and not
to
you,” he snorted. “You can start earning your keep by fixing the hole in my heart. You got any Power left after that, I’ve got one lung full of blood.”

Her eyes grew defiant. “I’ll never help the likes of you.”

She had a spine. He could appreciate that. “Bitch, you heard of Unit 731?” That scared her. Everybody had heard about them. “Yeah . . . You know what those weirdos would give to have a Mender to experiment on? Especially a soft little thing like you . . .” He rubbed one hand down her bruised cheek and she flinched away. “So, unless you want them carving on you, you’ll do what I say.”

He gave her a second to think about it while he checked his watch. They should be clear of the blast. “Toshiko, light ’em up.”

“It will be done,” she responded from fifty miles away. “Accelerators are at full, but that’s barely seven percent of maximum. Lazy Americans can’t be bothered to even maintain their equipment. Firing in two minutes.”

“It’ll do,” he said.

“We are on our way out.” There was relief in her words.

He couldn’t blame her. The Imperium’s recent experiments into ray technology showed that the very air around a beam could kill or sicken you. Some sort of invisible poison got in the atmosphere and it would actually damage your cells. He’d once seen Unit 731 tie a bunch of prisoners to stakes at various distances along the path of a small beam, and they timed everyone to see how long it took them to die, either burned immediately or throwing their lungs up and dying covered in black blisters. It hadn’t been pretty. But he wasn’t worried about that now. He’d got himself a new pet Healer.

***

The stairs were steep. Sullivan’s big boots could barely find purchase on the narrow stones. The muscles in his arms were burning almost like the magical fire on top of his chest. He had Delilah clamped under one arm, and he hoped that she would hang on. She’d lost so much blood that he was terrified to even look at her. Lance was short, weighed a ton, and was completely unconscious, and therefore useless. His auto rifle was still banging back and forth on its sling against his back, but he was too worried about zombies following them down to drop it.

An electric-battery torch had been stashed at the top of the stairs, and all he could see was a narrow pale beam swinging back and forth ahead as Heinrich led them into the bowels of the earth. Delilah cried out in pain as he slipped and hit the damp wall. “It’ll be okay, baby. We’re gonna make it,” he whispered.

They kept going. Behind him someone tripped and cursed. They needed to stop and tend to the wounded. Keeping Delilah moving was a death sentence, just as surely as stopping and waiting for the Peace Ray to end them. They had to be a couple hundred feet under the ocean cliffs by now, and he didn’t know if that would be enough. “How much further?”

The rich kid, Francis, was a few feet away. “Almost there,” he gasped.

Not good enough.
If this ray had a fraction of the energy as the one they’d hit Berlin with, there wouldn’t be near enough dirt overhead to save them. They hadn’t called it the Peace Ray then. The Brits had christened it Tesla’s Sickle, but his boys weren’t poetic. They had simply called it the Death Ray. Kinetic energy had shattered everything around the impact zone and turned the Reichstag into a blackened pit, but it was the wave of carnage that had radiated out from it that had done the real killing. Sullivan had seen the bodies like broken charcoal statues frozen wherever they’d been when the destroying angel had come. One snap of light and a whole city had died.

The heat alone would be enough to steam them like lobsters in this tunnel. “Move faster!” Sullivan bellowed to nobody in particular.

There was a noise ahead, water crashing against stone, and behind, the hate-filled screams of the dead, and under his arm, a rasping breath as Delilah’s life slipped further away, and over everything came the crackling hum as the Peace Ray hit, light filled the universe, and for the first time in many years, Sullivan prayed for a miracle.

***

The Peace Ray discharged at fifteen minutes after two o’clock in the morning. It was not an impressive sight from Lick Hill, even if any of the crew had been alive to appreciate it. In fact, with the warning klaxons disabled by the Shadow Guard, the only sign of the impending destruction was a single match flicker of white as particles were hurled up a thousand-foot copper spiral to a terrible velocity and flung to the west.

The simple fused dynamite explosion at the base of the tower a moment later possessed not even the tiniest glimmer of the Peace Ray’s power, but it would leave a few steel girders twisted, delicate Cog-designed electronics shattered, and the costly weapon disabled.

But by the time that was done the Peace Ray had already struck the small coastal town of Mar Pacifica. Only the undead were walking at the impact point, their skeletons briefly visible through their flesh like a perfect X-ray frozen in time before being swept away in cleansing fire.

Even at only seven-percent power the flash was seen as far away as Sacramento.

Chapter 17

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

—William M. Jardine,

United States Secretary of Agriculture,

after the Magical Weather Alteration Board backfired and

resulted in record droughts across the Midwest,
1927

New York City, New York

Cornelius Gould Stuyvesant
awoke to grim news. One of his servants had roused him before dawn, jabbering on so excitedly that he’d been forced to pick up a lamp from his bedside and hurl it at the man to get him to slow down. The crash had startled his mistress awake.

“Mar Pacifica?” he’d asked. “Destroyed?”

“Completely
gone
,” his retainer had said, holding his handkerchief against the swelling lump on his forehead.

“Has there been any word from my family estate?” Technically, it wasn’t his anymore. His son had left it to his grandson in his will, and the willful, disobedient young man, who reminded Cornelius so much of himself at that age, would have nothing to do with him.

“No. The whole area was burned instantly. They say there are hundreds dead.”

It took him a moment to organize his thoughts around that. He could not possibly care less about hundreds dead when there was only
one
person that mattered in Mar Pacifica. He threw off the sheets. “Egads, man! Awake my staff. Awake my guards!” He’d lumbered out of his bedroom suite, screaming orders at his subordinates, temporarily forgetting his self-imposed quarantine. “Get my Healer! Call the President!”

His staff had quadrupled in number since his encounter with Harkeness, and he’d made all of them wear surgical masks. A sea of white masks watched him as he strode down the hall, ranting, still in his silk nightclothes. He’d risked his health, his good name, and his very life to curse the man that had brought division into his family. So soon after Pershing’s death, could it be possible that it had all been for nothing? Could his once favorite heir be dead? This was not what he’d intended, not what he’d intended at all.

He had to make haste for California. He had to see with his own eyes. It was a good thing that he had the world’s fastest airship at his disposal. “Fetch the
Tempest
!”

San Francisco, California

The Pale Horse
stood on the flat hotel roof, along with about two dozen others, watching the smoke rise from the south. It was a tall enough building that it afforded him a good view of the blackened horizon. The sunrise was hazy and the sky to the east was the color of dark wine.

“Unbelievable,” Isaiah muttered from his side.

“Believe it,” Harkeness answered with a heavy heart. “Let this strengthen your resolve, old friend.”

He had met his associate the previous day at the air station. Isaiah had a valid reason for being in the area, and with Pershing dead, Harkeness could not resist a visit himself. He had family in the area to call upon. The two had discussed their best options over a glass of wine late into the night. There was one final obstacle to overcome, but it was a decidedly difficult one, and one glass of wine had turned into several, and he’d retired, exhausted, far too late. Only a few hours later, a brilliant beam of light had pierced the curtains of his room. It had been so bright that at first he’d thought someone had discharged a pan of flash powder next to closed eyes. It had awakened the entire city.

And the dawn had brought this. A fog of ash hung over the land. Fires still burned in the distance. He could taste the smoke, and it filled his heart with a bitter regret. He had not intended it to be this way.

“What could it have been?” a fellow traveler asked another.

“Perhaps a comet fell to earth,” a stately older woman replied. “I’ve read of such things.”

“Balderdash,” said a man with thick whiskers. “It’s an act of war!”

“But who?” someone else sputtered.

“The Kaiser has come for his revenge, I tell you!” the man shouted.

There was very little panic. He’d come to marvel at how pragmatic Americans were. Harkeness did not join in the conversations of the other hotel guests. He recognized the work of a Peace Ray, and knew that there was only one within range. The sheer audacity of the operation impressed him. The fact that it had happened to destroy one of only twenty Grimnoir safe houses in the country narrowed down the list of culprits even further. He did not need to share his thoughts with Isaiah since he could tell that the man was Reading them anyway. He made no effort to disguise them. It was quicker that way.