Warbound: Book Three of the Grimnoir Chronicles (41 page)

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“The safe house is burning,” Lady Origami shouted to be heard over the engines. “I can feel it.”

“Hell,” Sullivan muttered, but there was nothing they could do about it yet. She could sense it with her magic, but the rest of them were able to see the growing orange glow against the night sky a moment later. There was nothing they could do. Barns was driving the boat hard, and they were launching over the top of each wave and crashing back down, casting a huge plume of water into the air behind them. The patrol boat was fast, but it wasn’t going to be fast enough.

They rounded a bend in the river. The safe house came into view on the other side of the docks. The whole upper half was wreathed in flames, and there were shapes moving along all of the cobbled together walkways surrounding it. Giant shadows created by other patrol boats’ spotlights showed that the shadows were cast by soldiers carrying rifles. There were at least three other patrol boats between them and the fire. Barns reached for the throttle to slow their approach.

“Hold on,” Sullivan ordered. They were running dark. The spotlights were off. “The Japs will think we’re one of them until they get close.”

Barns took a deep breath. “If you say so.”

Zhao put his hand on Barn’s shoulder and pointed through the windscreen. “Head for that freighter.”

“The rusty, listing one?”

“Yes. It has been stuck in the mud for years. If any of our friends escaped through the flooded lower floors, the path out will take them under the docks to the side of that freighter.”

The other patrol boats hadn’t turned the spotlights on them yet.
Come on.
Sullivan could only pray that some of the knights had made it out. As swarming with Imperium as this place was, if they didn’t get out fast, they never would. One of the patrol boats must have spotted them because a spotlight swung their way, skipping across the water. Once they were made, there wasn’t much they could do against that many riflemen along the shore. They’d have to leave the survivors and make a run for it.
Damn it.

Suddenly the whole top half of the apartment building exploded in a blue flash.

“What the
hell
?” Barns shouted.

Debris flew in every direction. One particularly large fireball shot out the side of the buildingwith kicking legs and windmilling arms. It was a huge, armored figure, wreathed entirely in blue flames.

“Toru . . .”

The flaming, armored Iron Guard crashed through another building with a terrible racket. A split second later their apartment building made an even worse noise as the upper floors collapsed into the lower, pancaking the whole thing down in a gigantic inferno. A huge cloud of smoke and dust welled outward across the docks.

At least the other patrol boat wasn’t looking at them anymore.

“Head for that freighter,” Sullivan said. “This is our only shot.” Dozens of Imperium troops were already converging on the spot Toru had landed in. That building had caught fire as well. There wasn’t a damn thing they could do for Toru now. If he’d even lived through that explosion, and the fall hadn’t finished him off, then the fire or the Imperium troops would.

Barns killed the engine and let them drift toward the freighter.

“They’ll be coming out over there,” Zhao pointed at a spot in the black muck beneath the crumbling stone.

“Keep your eyes peeled,” Sullivan told the others, as he walked toward the back of the patrol boat.

The Imperium copper was there, shackled to the rail with his own handcuffs. Sullivan didn’t know how to read the Japanese police rank insignia, but this one had been wearing the fanciest uniform, and that usually meant they were in charge. Sullivan pulled the rag out of his mouth, and the Jap gasped for breath. Sullivan knelt next to him. “I’m gonna make this quick. How many safe houses did you hit?”

“Go to hell, Grimnoir.”

Sullivan reached up and broke the cop’s pinky finger. “Try again.”

The Jap grimaced but did not speak or cry out.

Zhao had joined him. The kid seemed totally unmoved by the Imperium man’s plight. Many of his men had been in that safe house. If anything, Zhao would have even less mercy. “Do you want me to freeze him?”

“I got this.” Sullivan pried loose the next finger and broke it too.

“Gah.” The cop ground his teeth together.

Sullivan broke another.

“Three. We knew of three hideouts.”

Shit.
Sullivan looked at Zhao. There were only four in total. This was bad.

“Who sold us out?” Zhao demanded.

Sullivan took up the next finger.

“A fat brute. Pang.”

Zhao gasped. “No. You lie.”

“It is not the first time. He has been an informant for years.”

“I’ll kill him,” Zhao snarled.

“He is already dead. Master Hayate was disgusted by his disloyalty. Fat Pang is dead, like you soon will be.”

Barns gave a sharp, attention-grabbing whistle. “Got somebody swimming.” He whistled again. “Hey! Over here. Ori, grab that life preserver.”

Sullivan breathed a sigh of relief. At least somebody had made it. The other boats were distracted by the destruction, so they might still be able to get out of here.

“I demand to be released. I am Major Matsuoka of the
Tokubetsu Koto Keisatsu.
My men will—”

“Wait. Your name is
Matsuoka?
” Zhao asked slowly. Sullivan shuddered. It was like all the natural warmth had just been sucked from the air. “Major Matsuoka?”

“Yes. I am the commander of the Second Sector Garrison. You will free me or face terrible consequences.”

Sullivan could feel the sudden Power draw in the air. “You’re the one who had my mother and father tortured.” It dropped ten degrees in an instant. “You’re the one who ordered their execution.” The air got colder. “You’re the one who had their bodies . . .”
colder.
“hung on a bridge for the whole city to see.”

So very cold.

Matsuoka began shaking uncontrollably.

There was a sphere of terrible, piercing, life-sucking cold, and it was directed at the secret policeman. Matsuoka’s skin was turning blue. “You put up a sign. You called them traitors. Enemies of the people, it said. The sign encouraged everyone to throw rocks at the bodies. And people did, because that is what traitors deserve . . .”

Sullivan was shivering. The policeman’s skin was starting to pucker and crystalize. He thought about just pulling the Webley and putting a bullet into the man. It didn’t make tactical sense to waste Zhao’s valuable Power, simply because they might be needing every bit they could scrape up if they got spotted and had to fight their way out, but then again, sometimes you just had to get your personal business out of the way. He looked to Zhao. “Don’t let him start screaming, because I don’t want the attention.”

“Do not worry.” Zhao’s brows were knit in concentration. “He won’t.”

The policeman looked to Sullivan, eyes pleading, but only steam was coming out of his open mouth. Blood turned to slush and froze in his veins. Then the water in his eyes turned to ice and his eyeballs cracked.

“All yours, kid.” Sullivan walked away.

The air was considerably warmer at the front of the boat, but Sullivan remained chilled to the bone. He counted four heads bobbing on the water, all of them holding onto a life preserver or each other as Barns hauled them in. Sullivan took hold of the rope too and dragged them in faster. It was three men from the
Traveler
and one of Zhao’s men. The first one pulled into the boat was young Mike Willis. He’d been shot and had one hand pressed to his side. Blood was coming from between his fingers.

“Where’s everybody else?” Sullivan asked.

“We’re it,” the knight gasped. “Five of us made it to the bottom. Mottl got stuck in the tunnel and drowned . . . I couldn’t pull him out in time. There wasn’t anybody behind us.”

“Lance?”

He shook his head. “Just me, Genesse, Simmons, and Yip.”

“Hell . . .” Sullivan looked to the giant funeral pyre, but there was no hope to be found there. The smoke was stinging his eyes.

There was a crack at the back of the boat as Zhao kicked the superchilled handcuffs and the chain snapped in two, then a splash as the frozen policeman rolled into the river.

They’d have to regroup. Figure out how bad they’d been hit . . . But he feared the answer.
Was there any coming back from this?
“Barns, get us out of here.”

Art to come

Toru explosion

Chapter 17

If I only had to fight one enemy, this war would already be won. Instead I have the Kaiser’s zombies and wizards on one front and your wife and her blasted devil monk on the other. I do not care how strong his magic or how true his prophecies. He is a malignant growth on the Motherland and if you do not remove him then I will find someone who will. You are aware of what the men with the black rings would do if they learned of his abominable experiments.

—General Aleksei Rybakov,

Personal correspondence to Tsar Nicholas II.
1916

Somewhere in Eastern Europe

Zachary
had not written the man’s name under his picture. He’d only given him a title.
The Black Monk.

Faye knew nothing about the Black Monk, nothing at all.

Except that she was supposed to kill him.

He hadn’t been hard to find. She didn’t really know her way around, she didn’t even speak the language, but luckily for her, one of the many pictures of this event had showed a road sign with the names of two towns and the distance between them. It had taken a lot of Traveling in constant short hops, and then sleeping overnight like a hobo on a train that was heading east, and then a lot more Traveling the next day too to get there. She hadn’t asked Jacques for directions, because frankly, she didn’t really want him involved. Did Jacques or the Grimnoir even know who the Black Monk was? Did it matter?

Her magic was burning bright. Her head map was showing her a larger area. She’d been in the building when Zachary had climbed into the furnace, so she suspected that she’d stolen his connection to the Power too. Magically, she was fine, but physically and emotionally, she was a mess. She was tired, hungry, and still smelled like Dead City. Faye knew she probably looked a little crazy, with crazy-person hair that had bits of plants and burlap stuck in it, but that’s what she got for sleeping on a train like a hobo.

She was all by herself. And knowing what she knew now, that was probably for the best. Jacques had said the Spellbound couldn’t have friends, but even he didn’t realize just how dangerous she could become to everyone. There was a job that only she could do, and anyone around her might get consumed in the process.

Faye had spent so much of her life surrounded by people, with a huge family crammed into one tiny shack, but she’d spent most of those years living another life inside her own head. She hadn’t minded the idea of being lonely back then so much. Heck, she might have welcomed the idea. It wasn’t until finding Grandpa and the years in California, and then the Grimnoir knights after, that Faye had found she didn’t like being by herself. She liked people. She liked them a lot. But she didn’t want to destroy them even more.

Alone.
It was for the best, Faye told herself, even though the idea of maybe never seeing Francis again made her heart ache.

The road sign looked exactly like the one in Zachary’s picture. She’d found the name of a town on a map at the train station and had been heading in that direction ever since. She didn’t know how much ground she’d covered over several hundred Travels. She wasn’t even sure what country she was in. There was a valley past that sign, and there was a village in that valley. She could see the white church steeple from here. The bell was ringing . . . It simply wouldn’t do to kill the Black Monk in front of his congregation, so Faye sat down by the road sign and waited.

It could all have been an elaborate plot. Trick the poor naïve Okie girl, make her think all sorts of craziness was afoot, and then give her a picture of a man you wanted murdered and let her do it for you . . . Except Faye knew that wasn’t it at all. There were plenty of easier ways to kill a man than to bring a Traveler across the whole world and trick them with zombies to do it for you. That was just stupid.

Plus, Faye could feel
it
. The Enemy was there, just outside of the world, and she could feel it pushing to get in. She’d felt it before, but hardly anybody had believed her. The Enemy was closer now. That was undeniable. And on the other side of
it
was her Power, that seemingly endless river of magic, but beyond that was the Spellbound curse, and the curse wanted to be used. The Power wanted her to do the job that Sivaram had been too weak to do. Somehow the Black Monk was part of that.

Faye got tired of waiting and got tired of smelling like Dead City and tired of knowing she looked like a crazy person, so she found an isolated stream to bathe in. The water was freezing cold, but it was worth it to scrub the dust of Dead City off of her skin. Bathing gave her a chance to shiver, but more importantly, a chance to slow down and think.

She was flying fast and blind, getting into things over her head. She didn’t know why the Power wanted her to kill this man, but it did. What about all her promises to remain good? Was she about to prove Jacques right? The Power wanted this to happen. Every one of the Zachary’s pictures of the event turned out the same, with her killing the Black Monk.

Regardless of fortune tellers or the wishes of big magical space jellyfish, Faye wasn’t a slave to magic and she wasn’t a slave to some zombie’s pictures. She’d make up her own mind . . .

And as soon as she thought about that, she knew it was a lie. If she really wanted to make a stand, why even come here to begin with? Why confront the Black Monk at all? Why not just keep on Travelling down the road? Shanghai was where she was really needed.

Except deep down inside she knew she wasn’t ready to face the Enemy yet.

She dried off in the sun, put on clean clothes, and checked the .45 Mr. Browning had given her and the big knife Lance had made for her, before popping into the village, being extra careful to appear in a place where nobody would see her. It was easy enough to do, since her head map told her almost everybody was inside the church. She picked a house where no one was home, popped inside, and ate some of their thick-crusted bread and strong-flavored cheese. Really, it was more of a hut than a house. Having grown up dirt poor and hungry, she knew how important that bread and cheese might be for humble folks like this. She felt bad for eating their food, but she made sure to leave a bunch of extra money in the pantry she’d taken the food from. It wasn’t Russian money, but she figured it might still do them some good.