And still, Madi kept getting closer, teeth ground together behind his destroyed lips, tears of blood leaking from his ruined eye. Sullivan stood his ground, feeling the pressure as Madi hammered him back. One of the bodyguards fell screaming out a broken window. Madi finally reached him and backhanded him across the face. It was the blow of the mightiest Iron Guard, and it shattered Sullivan's teeth and wrenched his neck around.
Sullivan landed on his back ten feet away. He started sliding away on his rear, crawling on his elbows, pushing himself back with his feet. Madi walked forward, following him, ready to finish it once and for all. They continued for several feet, Sullivan grasping along, desperate, while Madi took his time strolling after him, savoring the moment. Finally, Sullivan stopped, raised his trembling hands, and looked up at the killer towering over him.
"Why the sad face?" Madi asked sarcastically.
"Not sad," he spat around his broken teeth. "This is what I look like when I'm concentrating…" He cut his Power.
Madi's eye flicked up, realizing what was happening just as the katana dropped from where Sullivan had been holding it against the ceiling. The blade fell, the tanto tip piercing through Madi's skull, through his brain, down his throat, until it pierced his heart in two. Overloaded, the healing kanji exploded with the light of a bonfire.
Sullivan surged off the floor and grasped the hilt protruding from the top of Madi's head. He pulled his brother's face in close and whispered, "You're right. You always were the strongest." Madi's good eye was twitching madly in its socket, trying to focus. His hands came up, curled into useless, spasming claws. He was trying to say something, but the only thing coming from his mouth was foaming blood and a gacking noise. "But I'm the smart one, remember?"
With a roar, Sullivan pulled the blade toward him. The razor steel cut through the rest of Madi's skull, appearing right between his eyes, then through his nose and teeth. He wrenched the sword all the way out, opening him from top to belly button, and Madi's organs spilled out in a gushing heap. Somehow, he was still standing, the front of his head split in two. One side was the face of a human, while the other was the shredded white-eyed face of a monster.
No amount of healing magic could fix that. Sullivan raised his hand, palm open, and activated his Power.
"So long, Matty."
Gravity changed direction and Madi plunged across the room, through the window, and out into the night.
Chapter 26
We have tried everything. Bullets bounce off. Bombs thrown under his carriage have turned it to splinters and killed the horses, but don't so much as muss the Chairman's hair. He does not sleep so we can't sneak up on him. He does not eat so we can't poison him. We've tried fire, ice, lightning, death magic, crushing gravity, bone shards, blood curses, all without effect. Decapitation might work, if you could come up with a blade sharp enough, but the finest steel simply dulls against his skin. Even if you were to wield this modern Excalibur the problem then would be that you can only touch Tokugawa if he lets you. He is all knowing, all seeing, moves faster than the wind, and can Travel in the blink of an eye. You don't touch the Chairman. The Chairman touches you, and as far as we've observed, that only happens when he's ripping the very soul from your body.
– Frank Baum, knight of the Grimnoir, testimony to the elders' council, 1911 San Francisco, California It was Kristopher Harkeness, elder of the Grimnoir, who responded to the call of his ring. The thin man came into the hospital room, locked the door behind him, and Browning wondered why he'd never seen it before. Plague lived in his flesh. This was an Angel of Death. This was the Pale Horse.
"You called?" Harkeness answered.
"I did." Browning pulled the Colt.45 out from under the blankets and leveled it at his fellow Grimnoir. "I'm surprised you came."
"I'm bound by a sacred oath. I had to come." He took a seat in one of the metal folding chairs next to the door. He did not look surprised to see the gun. "You are, after all, one of my brothers. Isn't that what the oath says? So I know you won't shoot me. I am still Grimnoir."
"I don't see a knight. I see a traitor."
Harkeness laughed. It was a hollow and joyless sound. "Allow me the chance to explain myself before you murder one of your fellows." His awkward accenting of random words grated on Browning's ears. He reached very slowly into his coat. "Mind if I smoke?"
"The man standing before the firing squad is always allowed one."
"Do I get a blindfold?"
"I'd prefer for you to see this coming, for I do believe you murdered John J. Pershing, and I would assume that even if they did not die by your hand, you are responsible for many other deaths."
The Pale Horse struck a match and lit his cigarette. He took a long drag and let it out in a cloud. "That would be correct. But not for the reasons you believe. You see, Mr. Browning, I am no traitor. I have accomplished that which has been considered impossible. I have accomplished the thing that has cost so many of our brothers' lives. I am the furthest thing from a traitor. I am a hero."
Browning decided to hear him out. Then he would shoot him in the heart. Imperium flagship Tokugawa Faye couldn't walk. Electrical shocks seemed to travel up her leg every time her foot touched the ground, but lucky for her, she didn't need to walk to Travel.
Time was short. Already the blue light was coming up out of the ocean. The magic jellyfish from the place with all the dreaming dead people was coming here, right now.
She appeared in the greenhouse where the surviving pirates had holed up. They were boxed in by two sets of Imperium marines, and they'd taken bad casualties. The woman that launched fire out of her hands was holding them back on one side, and the bald captain was shooting the soldiers that stuck their heads into the hallway, but they'd run out of bullets, fire, and luck before they'd run out of Imperium.
The Imperium didn't even see her arrive right behind them. They were too worried about the fireballs that kept squirting down the corridor. So she pulled the pins out of two grenades, then Traveled over to their friends on the other side, and did that to them too. She had appeared behind the pirates and had started talking before the soldiers had even exploded.
"Don't shoot!" Faye shouted. "I'm on your side." She glared at the fire lady. "And don't you dare set me on fire again or you'll be sorry." Several guns turned on her, but at least they were smart this time. There were several explosions, and then a moment later, more from the opposite corridor. "Okay, you're clear now."
The pirate captain used the lull to shove another magazine into his rifle. "Who're you?"
She waved her ring. "Sir Faye of the Grimnoir knights." She didn't know if she was technically a "sir", like the knights she'd seen in that one picture book, as none of the other Grimnoir ever called themselves "sir," but she thought Sir Faye had a nice ring to it, but then again she was a girl… She'd ask Lance. He'd know. "Never mind. You need to go down that way, up two flights of stairs, and then to the end of the boat. My friend Francis has a blimp waiting. You need to go now."
"What about the Geo-Tel?"
She rolled her eyes. "Oh, you people, always needing to know everything!" She was very frustrated. She didn't have time to explain this to every single person she had to go rescue. Why did people have to be so difficult? She grabbed the two closest pirates and Traveled. She dropped them at the rear end of the Tempest and then went back for more.
The captain must have figured she was a bad guy who had just evaporated his men or something, because he tried to shoot her, but she scooped him and a big fellow and dropped them with the others. Then she went back twice more. She was tempted to leave the fire lady. It'd serve her right for setting Faye on fire, but that was just the meanness talking, though Faye did leave her for last.