Warbound: Book Three of the Grimnoir Chronicles (22 page)

Faye had never thought of the Power that way, and it made her a little uncomfortable. “I’m gonna stick with Jesus, thanks.”

“I ask you, Faye, what happens to us if the Power decides to take this experiment to the next stage? What happens if you, the second generation of this spell, continue to further its goals?”

“I don’t—”

“It will create more like you, probably many more. And they will steal magic from anyone who is weaker than they are. At least the Chairman is an orderly form of destruction. This other path is one of utter chaos. We can contend against the enemy with understandable goals, but it is nearly impossible to fight one that exists only to cause chaos. Now do you understand why I voted the way that I did?”

Maybe.
Yes
, but Faye still didn’t like that one bit. Anybody else who voted to kill her would have to deal with her veto power, which would probably consist of a round of 12-gauge buckshot to their face. “And what if you’re wrong, and the Power is right? I told y’all what the Chairman said about the Enemy coming to eat the Power. I can feel it myself once in a while, like a big weight hanging over us all. Maybe the Power was trying to save both us and it.”

“So we should tolerate a known risk in order to protect against a risk that may not even exist? The Chairman was the king of lies. Why should I expect him to be any more truthful in death than when he was in life? You wish to risk this because it is your life which is at stake. You are biased. Perhaps you can control the Spellbound curse, perhaps not. That still remains to be seen. You have been in this world for such a short time. Those letters you read from Sivaram span over thirty years. It took decades to wear him down and turn him into the monster that he became.”

“But I won’t do that.”

“And why would you not? Strength of character? Love for your fellow man?” Jacques gave a bitter laugh. “Sivaram loved his family and his people with all of his heart, but the curse wore him down eventually. It cut him to the soul, stole his humanity, and soon everyone around him, especially those with magic, were in danger. They were mere vessels holding the Power he sought . . . And he took that Power, oh, did he take
so very many
lives.”

“I’d never do anything to hurt my friends!” but even as the words left her mouth, she felt the sting of doubt.

“The Spellbound does not get to have
friends
, or family, or comrades, or lovers. The Spellbound is alone. The Spellbound is a
force
. Sivaram started out as a pacifist and a scholar and look where he wound up. You have been known to us for only a short time, but already look how many other Actives you have killed.”

“And every one of them deserved, it too.” Faye snapped. “You can think I’m dangerous all you want, but I’m also the best we’ve got. If it hadn’t been for me, the Chairman would still be around. If it hadn’t been for me, Washington D.C. would’ve gotten squished by a demon. You think I’m dangerous, Jacques? Well, so is a gun.” She gestured rudely at his coat. Of course, she hadn’t bothered to check, but she assumed he had one on, as any properly attired gentlemen should. “Being dangerous is their job. Ain’t much call for one that’s not dangerous, now is there?”

Jacques looked her square in the eye. “Look out the window.”

Faye did, and it nearly took her breath away. The beautiful farmland they had been passing through was gone, and now as far as her eye could see was nothing but a swath of sick, grey dirt. An odd, uncomfortable feeling settled into the pit of her stomach. “What is this?”

“This was part of the battlefield left over from the battle which you have heard referred to as Second Somme. A geographic misnomer, to be sure, but that is the name which has stuck.”

Of course Faye had heard of Second Somme. She’d even seen a glimpse of it, since that was the personal hell which Mr. Sullivan had consigned himself to after she’d shot him in the heart. “It’s lifeless.”

“Worse than Oklahoma was?”

“Yeah. That was a drought. Sure it was a drought caused by magic, but this is different.” Faye shivered. There wasn’t even a breeze that could blow a tumbleweed across that grey bit of hell. Not that a tumbleweed could’ve grown there, either.

“It has been a generation, but look at it still. This land was defiled by magic, utterly ruined. The eastern half of my country was a muddy wasteland of trenches and barbed wire as far as the eye could see, but all of that, other than the occasional unexploded artillery shell that some poor farmer still occasionally turns over with a plow, has gone back to normal. This place, it never has, and never will. Too much magical energy was used here. Too much Active blood was spilled. The land was
changed.
”

She could feel the cold in her bones. There weren’t even buzzards, and the only thing close to plant life were broken, petrified tree stumps that had been that way since she’d been a baby. “It’s just dead, ain’t it?”

“Not quite. There are horrors which roam the wastes. A few living things were changed, warped. That much magic usage always has consequences. It twists the very fabric of our bodies. Even breathing this dust will make you sick. It is best to pass through here quickly.”

Faye had thought she’d seen ugly before. The blackened circle that had been Mar Pacifica had been ugly, but it had been a fresh wound. This was an old scar a scrar that had never fully healed.

“You have not seen real war, Faye. You have seen skirmishes. This is what happens when magic truly goes to war against magic. You have not seen the utter savagery that comes from something of this magnitude. Second Somme was one of the largest battles in history, and it was the greatest loss of Active lives ever. Day after day they killed each other, magic being flung back and forth like nothing you could possibly imagine. The laws of physics were broken. Men became something more, and sometimes something less, and afterwards the land was so blighted that we could not even stay long enough to bury the dead without growing ill. We gathered what we could, and most of the rest were left to sink into the mud.”

“I’ve heard it was real bad.”

“If it had not been for General Roosevelt sacrificing his American Volunteers, then my country would have been conquered by the Kaiser’s undead hordes. It was only through a combination of luck, courage, and tenacity that this line held. Oh, how the Power must have grown fat on us.” Jacques sounded tired. Bitter and tired. “It must have been a feast.”

In the distance, Faye could see hills with living plants on them, so thankfully the battleground didn’t go on forever. All scars had to end somewhere. “You were here?”

Jacques was staring out the window. “For part of it, but I was drawn away when I received word of the Spellbound’s whereabouts. I missed the final offensive because I was a few miles away hunting Sivaram. He had been difficult to track during the war. With all of that death to choose from, there had been little need for him to strike out on his own, so this opportunity could not be missed. I was not alone. Knights from both sides deserted in order to assist me. All of us put aside our war in order to stop the greater danger. I was the only survivor, so perhaps in some sad way, Sivaram saved my life.”

“Because you missed this?”

“Yes. We caught him minutes after he had murdered Whisper’s entire family. She had no one else, so I took her in and raised her as my own.” Jacques wiped his eyes. “I loved her very much.”

“I didn’t know all that,” Faye said.

“All you need to know is that it is only because of Whisper you are still alive. You see that, Faye? If you are wrong, if the Power decides that the Spellbound is the next step in its relationship with mankind, then it will be Active against Active, killing and taking, no better than animals. It will reduce us to predator and prey.” Jacques glared out the window at the tainted wasteland. “If you are wrong, then
that
is our future.”

Chapter 9

No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human breast and seeks to wrestle with them can expect to come through the struggle unscathed.

—Sigmund Freud,

From
Interview with a Reader:

An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria,
1905.

Wannsee, Germany

The Berlin Wall
was much taller than she’d expected. She had heard of the great wall which had been erected around Dead City to keep the zombies inside; everyone with access to a radio had heard stories about it at some point, but maybe it was because she’d spent those years on the Vierras’ dairy farm that she’d always figured it would have been more like the sort of fences they used to keep cows in than an actual giant wall made out of stone. If she’d thought that through, she would’ve realized how naïve she’d been. After all, cows and zombies were very different in temperament.

“So the man you want me to talk to is inside
there?”

“That is correct, Faye,” Jacques said.

Was he trying to get her killed on purpose? Faye had dealt with the undead before, so she knew how dangerous they could be. Was Jacques trying to get rid of the Spellbound again? Skip another elder’s vote, send her on a wild-goose chase into one of the most dangerous places in the world, and just let the ravenous zombies get her instead? It made a sick sort of sense. “Are you crazy?”

Jacques chuckled. “Can anyone who has lived for this long in this field truly be sane? I think not.”

The train station was on the outskirts of the city which had once been known as Berlin. It, like most of the wall’s surroundings, seemed grey and worn. Faye had always assumed that Heinrich always wore grey simply because he was a Fade and it helped him blend in everywhere. Now she wondered if he always wore grey because that was the only color he had seen growing up. Maybe grey was just his favorite color?

She hadn’t spoken out loud, but Jacques knew what she was thinking. “The people on the outskirts of Dead City do not use bright colors. Should any of the undead make it over the walls, those who still have eyes are attracted to bright colors, just as those who can still hear are attracted to noise.”

Now that he mentioned it, Faye realized it was abnormally quiet here. Obviously there had been the noise of the train engine, but after it had rolled out, the city was oddly silent. The porter who had carried their bags had spoken in muted tones. There was no loud announce-ments, no music playing anywhere, no loud conversations from the locals. It was like being in the shadow of the dead sucked all the life right out of a place. The grey stone walls loomed over the town, so she supposed it would be hard for anyone to forget. “That’s too bad.”

“Most of the undead have gone so mad that they are not capable of rational thought. Should some get out, which I have been told is not too uncommon an occurrence, it is better to let them wander aimlessly for a time rather than to have them hone in immediately on the living. It gives the tower guards more time to spot them.”

“What about the ones that are still smart?”

“Thankfully for us and them, there are not so many of those left anymore. If an undead who has retained his reasoning truly feels the need to escape into the world of the living, heaven help us all. Hunting down the occasional wrathful undead who escapes these walls is a specialty of our German Grimnoir brethren.”

The feeling in the air was not that different from the fields of Second Somme. This was a place where magical energy had torn a hole in the world and left a gaping wound. She had been in Mar Pacifica, and had survived the Peace Ray impact there—a hit which had been a tiny fraction of the size of this one—but when she’d come out of the ground, Mar Pacifica had felt different. Everything had still been smoking and burning. It hadn’t had time to turn grey and dead yet. She hadn’t been back to Mar Pacifica to find out what it looked like now, but in her gut she knew it would be another dead, blighted place forever . . . And it had been so pretty once.

“I can’t believe we’re going in there.”

“We? I plan on renting rooms for the night and enjoying a warm meal. In the morning,
you
are going in there and I will stay in my room and enjoy a good book. If you are not back in twenty-four hours, then I will simply assume you are gone, board another train, and head back to Paris.”

“That’s awfully yellow of you.”

“Says the girl who can teleport to the portly old man with bad knees who could not outrun the slowest of shamblers. I was only a Brute of medium talent in my prime. Now, I would be consumed in minutes.”

She knew he was exaggerating. He’d still managed to climb a cathedral just fine. “Oh, come on, Jacques. Even zombies don’t eat that fast, and there’s plenty of extra helpings on you.”

He looked offended and tried to suck in his gut.

If he was going to send her into Dead City to get murdered, she didn’t feel any particular reason to be polite about it. “I’m sick and tired of you not telling me anything and keeping secrets. You need to spit it out right now. Who is it I’m supposed to talk to here and why? It better be a good answer or I’m leaving.”

“Feel free; you came to me, remember?” She could have simply Traveled away and never looked back, but she didn’t, and they both knew why. Faye did not want to end up a homicidal madman like the last Spellbound. Faye put her hands on her hips and waited.

“Very well then. The man you are looking for inside those walls was once a knight of the Grimnoir. His name is Zachary. He assisted me in my original investigation of the Spellbound. If anyone can answer the questions regarding your curse and if you are doomed to follow in the footsteps of Sivaram, it is he.”

She looked in disbelief at the walls, and then back at Jacques. No livung person would be caught dead in there. “He’s a zombie . . .”

Jacques nodded. “Sadly, yes. Several years ago we were battling some Soviet agents in Hungary. Zachary was killed while under the effects of a Lazarus’ curse, so he came back from the dead.”

Faye winced as she remembered poor Delilah. “I’m familiar.”

“When the pain became too much to bear, and he felt he was becoming a danger to those around him, he banished himself here. Zachary possesses an extremely rare type of magic, one which the forces of evil would go to great lengths to secure for themselves if they realized it truly existed. His Power was one of our best kept secrets, and very few knights knew of him. Zachary came here to live in solitude and secrecy. Since then, he has still offered his knowledge willingly to the society when asked, but no one has spoken to him in quite some time.”