Warbound: Book Three of the Grimnoir Chronicles (26 page)

Apparently there were different kinds of zombie crazy.

“I’m Faye. What’s your name?”

“Field Marshal . . .” His voice was a hissing wheeze. The zombie tilted his head to the side. “I do not remember . . . What are you doing in my study? American, no? Have you brought the new draft of the armistice treaty? Are you with Pershing’s expeditionary unit?”

In a sense, yes, her and Mr. black Jack went way back, but she didn’t want to complicate matters. “I’m not in the army or nothing. I’m here looking for somebody. Maybe you can give me directions?”

The zombie general, or whatever he was, gave her a bow with a flourish. His bones creaked ominously. “Of course, young lady. How may I be of assistance?”

“I’m looking for a man who lives around here somewhere. His name is Zachary.”

“Zachary, you say? I do not know this man, I think . . . Did you see my medals? How they gleam?”

“They’re very nice. The man I’m looking for can tell the future.”

“Ah, the Fortune Teller. Yes. I know of him. He moved to the top floor of the Fenstermacher building down the street.”

“Really? Which one is that?”

“It is not far from here. It is the one the Kaiser had a radio tower built on top of . . . I went there once. All of the notable members of high society in Berlin did. An actual Fortune Teller. How marvelous, I thought. I wished to know if there was any chance the Kaiser’s forces could turn this run of bad luck . . . Alas, there was not.”

“Thank you, Field Marshal. You’ve been a big help.”

The zombie sounded very sad. “Not so many of us visit the Fortune Teller anymore.”

“Why’s that?”

“I think he is a charlatan. Our fortunes were all the same. I do not remember mine exactly.” His dried features seemed to scrunch up in confusion. “It was very . . . depressing.” He shuffled around to his table and picked up his empty bottle. “Please, please don’t go. Stay and have a drink.” He poured an imaginary drink into the dry glass. “I could use some company for a bit.”

She was rather impatient to go, but she felt bad for the old dead soldier. She took the proffered empty glass. “Okay, but just one.”

One imaginary drink had turned into five, and then ten, and the field marshal had told her stories about where every one of his medals had come from, and then he’d talked about his lovely wife, and their twin babies, who were probably her age by now, but the undead didn’t seem to have a real good grasp on time. It was funny how that worked out, but it wasn’t like imaginary booze was going to befuddle her or the empty bottle was going to run out of anything except for dust, so Faye had sat their pretending to sip air while an old zombie held a conversation.

It was the least she could do for the good advice, and she figured an hour spent like that had probably saved her ten times that long searching the city, assuming the field marshal had given her the right address, of course. She’d made her apologies, said she had other commitments, and Traveled through the ceiling.

Faye had to dodge between two groups of particularly aggressive undead who seemed to be having a turf war over the main boulevard, and then she nearly got her head blown off when it turned out one of them still had a working rifle and was a fairly good shot with it. That neighborhood turned out to be a real pain since there were other snipers up on the roofs, so it forced her back through the building interiors and torn-up streets. A sleeper had scratched her boot with his bony fingers and a few minutes later a different one had ripped a chunk of fabric from her blouse. That one had made her angry enough that she’d shot it a few times with the old Mauser pistol, just to make a point, but the gunfire had merely drawn more attention, so she’d had to Travel fast.

She reached the Fenstermacher building. It had probably been a big factory of some kind before it had started falling apart. The radio tower the field marshal had told her about had rusted badly and was leaning over. The next time there was a strong wind, it would probably end up in the street, and she supposed any zombies that got squished underneath it would just be stuck and angry forever.

Faye picked a spot in what appeared to be a large, empty room. So far, avoiding corners seemed to be the safest method. She popped into existence, dropped softly to the floor, and looked around for any dusty lumps that could be angry dead folks.
Clear.
At least there was quite a bit of sunshine for once. Then she realized that her gentle landing hadn’t disturbed any dust, because the floor had been swept.

“Hello? Zachary?” But she knew right away she’d found the right place, because pinned to the nearest wall was a sheet of paper with a picture drawn on it, a quick and simple ink drawing like you’d see in the pulp magazines.

The word
Spellbound
had been scrawled across the top.

The picture was of her.

It was a good likeness, not like looking in a mirror or anything, but she could easily tell it was supposed to be her. That was nice. Nobody had ever drawn her portrait before.

There were more pictures pinned up, lots and lots of them. The drawings were of people mostly, but also places, and things, and machines, and events, and demons, and even stuff she didn’t recognize. There were hundreds of them, and when she took a few steps, she realized that all of the other walls in the room, from floor to ceiling, had paper stuck on them too.

Faye whistled. “That sure is something.”

She showed up as the subject often, probably more than anybody else, but she recognized many of her friends; Francis, Mr. Sullivan, Mr. Garrett, Lance, Delilah, Jane, Black Jack Pershing; there was Heinrich hitting a demon with a pickax, and even Mr. Browning showing off some new gun. Then there were her enemies, the Chairman screaming at her to give back his hands, and Isaiah Rawls and Mr. Harkeness plotting away, and Mr. Crow both as a man and as a demon, and Mr. Madi fighting on the
Tokugawa
. Then there were people who were sometimes both, like the one of Toru beating somebody’s head in with his spiky club, and J. Edgar Hoover bossing folks around.

It went on and on, so
many
faces. So many scenes from her life. Some of the papers were yellowed and crispy with age, like they’d been drawn years ago, but they showed recent events, like Mr. Bolander calling down the Oklahoma lightning, or Faye’s fight with Toshiko the ninja girl, or Whisper right before she ended her life in Washington D.C.

She froze at one that showed Madi standing over the fallen form of her grandpa, massive revolver pointing down to finish him off, and then at another of haystacks burning while a poor, scared, injured girl hid under a cow trough to carve a beetle out of her foot.

Then there was page after page after page of folks she just plain didn’t know and places she’d never seen. Thousands of them, and it wasn’t like they were sorted into groups. One person she recognized would be squished onto a wall among dozens she didn’t. The only reason she could take it all in so quick was because it only took her a fraction of a second to scan over each one, record them with her grey eyes, and sort them out with her head map. There was a stranger who could create sucking black wounds in the world like the thing that had eaten Mason Island, and a mechanical man that looked just like a real man, and an old samurai with a big shadow living inside his head.

Were these all things that had actually happened?
No . . .
There was one of her and Francis, holding hands up on a tall bridge, but she didn’t recognize the moment. There was a fancy UBF dirigible going up in flames over some foreign city with Captain Southunder still bravely manning the controls. A Peace Ray firing and a skyline she recognized as New York crumbling into ashes. Mr. Sullivan and Toru about to duel to the death on a rocky beach. A little boy crying as he was carried away by a monster without skin, while behind them a whole city was getting cleaned out of people, skinless monsters picking them like fruit.

The details weren’t always right. Like the artist had only seen part of the picture and then guessed the rest, or maybe he only caught a quick glimpse and then had to recreate them from memory, but they were close enough to know that Zachary’s magic was real.

“Hello, Faye.”

It was rare somebody could sneak up on her, but she was awfully preoccupied. “Zachary?”

“What’s left of me.” He came around the corner. Dead, but in much better shape than anyone else she’d seen in the city. It made sense, she supposed, since he hadn’t been dead near as long. If it had been darker, she might’ve even mistook him for an alive person. He’d probably stayed out of the weather. “I’ve been expecting you.”

Faye nodded. “I guess you can’t really surprise somebody who can see the future.”

“Sure you can. I don’t see every little thing.” The skin of his face was drooping and grey. There were holes in his cheeks where you could see white teeth. If he’d had hair when he was alive, you couldn’t tell because all the skin on the top of his head was gone and it was just a white skull dome. His clothing was frayed and torn, but far cleaner than anyone else’s around here except for the field marshal’s. His eyes, still clear and intelligent, swept across the room. “Saw you coming though. Saw that for a long time. What do you think of the gallery?”

“It’s nice, I suppose.”

Zachary shuffled in with a bad limp. “It wasn’t always like this.” His voice was raspy and dry, but he still sounded like an American. “Back before I got killed, my Power was weak. Just sporadic looks into what might happen. I could only see little bits and pieces once in a while. It wasn’t like I could actually tell the future . . . You heard of déjà vu?”

Faye nodded. It was the sort of thing that Francis had read about in a magazine and thought was amusing enough to share with her. “Like you feel like you’d seen some things before?”

“My magic was sort of like that, but a little better. Happened often enough when I was a kid that I started drawing the pictures that would come into my head. That way I could prove later I wasn’t making things up. Took years to sort of get it straight, but even at my best I’d get some things right, lots of things wrong, wasn’t much better than guessing. No wonder the Society never paid much heed to what I had to say. I was about as useful as flipping a coin. See, back then I didn’t realize that the Power sees things different than we do, and sometimes it was showing me things that could be.”

“I’ve talked to the Power. It’s sorta weird like that.”

“Wasn’t until after I croaked that it really started clicking. Believe it or not, death is handy for some things. When your choices are focus on the pain or focus on your Power, you get pretty good at focusing on your Power.” He made a sad noise, but then Faye realized he was laughing, so she laughed with him. “Now I can’t shut it off. It’s all there, all of it, all the time, from all over the world, and maybe even some other worlds that don’t exist quite yet. Things that are, will be, might be, doesn’t matter, the Power just keeps on shoving it into my head and I keep putting it down on paper.”

“You’re a good drawer.”

“Thanks.” He gestured absently at the walls and she realized he was wearing gloves. He must have caught her staring. “The gloves? Yeah, I don’t like to leave bits of me on the paper. All that effort, my hands are getting worn out. I can barely hold a pen anymore. It really hurts.”

“But you have to keep drawing?”

“Same way you have to keep Traveling. You can’t even imagine what life would be like without being able to Travel, can you?”

“No.” That would be horrific. Horrific and
slow
. “It’s sorta who I am.”

“This is different, but kind of the same. You ever have a toothache, Faye?”

“Sure.”

Zachary nodded. “Being dead’s like a toothache. Only for your whole body. Forever. You ever been real hungry, so starving that you’d eat anything?” She’d already seen that he’d drawn the shack in Oklahoma, so he already had the answer. “Being dead’s worse, only you can’t ever stop that hunger. And that gnaws at you. It gnaws at your soul.” He touched his head absently with his glove, and some more skin fell away from the top of his skull. “I gotta keep drawing. Keep listening. Otherwise, that toothache will gnaw right through the rest of me and I wouldn’t be me anymore. I’d just be the hunger, like the rest of this town.”

That reminded her. “Jacques sent a package for you.” She pulled the satchel around and opened it up. It was filled with packages of typing paper and ink bottles and pens, and then she understood why it had been so heavy.

“Thoughtful of him, but never mind that. Don’t need them no more . . . My work is done. See, I only needed to stick around long enough to talk to you. This was all for you, Faye.”

“For me?”

“The Power wanted you to have it. I know why Jacques sent you. Last time we’d spoke was before the Power really started talking to me. See, I think I had too much humanity in the way before to really listen good, to really see the possibilities. Jacques figured I’d show you destroying the world, because that was what I’d shown him before.”

“Do I? Do I really destroy the world?”

“More often than not. There are lots of worlds and lots of Fayes, so that was just the most likely outcome. Not the only one.”

Now she was really confused.

His foot made a horrible sound as it dragged along the floor, and then Faye noticed that there were crumpled up balls of paper scattered about underfoot. She hadn’t paid them any mind before. She picked one up and uncrinkled it. This picture showed her, only older, and much scarier, her features all twisted up, and she was killing lots of people with all manner of magic, fire, and ice, and lightning, and from the looks on their faces, they weren’t bad people at all, just innocent folks, women and kids even . . .

“See what I mean? And that one isn’t the worst. Not even
close.”

She crumpled it back up and tossed it down. “You hide the bad ones.”

“Sometimes. Sometimes they scared me so bad that I tossed them right out the window, watched them float down. I saw too many good ones, so I know your heart, Faye. I prefer to think of what can be, not the worst-case scenario. Now Jacques, he has to think about the worst. Poor Jacques. I never saw your face back when I was alive. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to, you know? Power didn’t want me to see. You got no idea how many pictures I’ve got here of him, agonizing over some hard decision, staring off into space, trying to decide what to do.”