Larry Correia: Warbound

She Traveled, appearing only a few inches behind the man and shouted, “Boo!”

Startled, the man turned toward her with lightning speed. Faye had figured he’d be some sort of physical Active in order to have made his way up here so easily, so she was ready. The gun turned in her direction, but she was already gone, appearing effortlessly now in front of him. Even if he was a mighty Brute, he was in a rather bad position, what with being so close to the side of a really tall building, and so Faye simply reached out and gave him a shove.

Arms windmilling, his dress shoes squeaked on the rain- and pigeon-shit-slick roof as he tried not to fall over the edge. He almost would have made it too, but the tiles cracked and gave under his heels, and, top-heavy, he started going over the edge. “Merde!”

She knew a similar word in Portuguese, since Grandpa had used it a lot on all things relating to dairy cows, and apparently the exclamation translated over in French.

Before he could fall, Faye reached out and snagged his skinny tie with her right hand and a gargoyle’s wing with her left, managing just enough of a grip to stop them both from tumbling to the street below. Of course, since she could Travel, only one of them would be going splat if she let go of that gargoyle.

“Whoa there, mister.” She loosened up on the tie for a split second, just to demonstrate who was in charge. She snagged it again and kept him from falling. He grabbed her arm with both hands, nearly crushing it, though she could tell he was holding back—he was probably a Brute. Only his toes were still touching the edge of the roof and even Faye was mostly hanging over open space. She hoped he spoke English. “Don’t do anything stupid. Let go of my arm.”

He shook his head, then spoke with a light French accent. “If I fall, we both fall.”

She’d been right to begin with. He was older, probably in his fifties, maybe sixties, but age was hard to tell with some folks. Eyes wide, the man looked first at the ground, then back at Faye, and then back at the ground. He was leaning back way too far to do much of anything except fall. A sufficiently skilled Brute might survive a fall like that, but it probably wouldn’t be much fun. He’d dropped his pistol in a vain attempt to grab the gargoyle. He looked forlornly at the gun sitting in the rain gutter. “I did not see you coming.”

“They never do.”

Faye realized that the old man was studying her face, specifically her odd grey eyes. All Travelers had grey eyes, and there weren’t very many Travelers. “You must be Sally Faye Vierra.”

“That’s me.”

He looked around. Faye. Ground. Gun. Then, realizing that he was in a very bad way, he settled on looking at Faye. “Please pull me up?”

“Maybe.” Faye answered, noting the black-and-gold Grimnoir ring on his gun hand. “Why’d you try to sneak up on me?”

After the initial shock of almost falling, the old fellow had regained his composure. “Why were you spying on us?”

That was a fair question, though she was rather disappointed that her spying skills weren’t turning out to be very good. “I’m looking for somebody in particular. He was a friend of Whisper’s.”

He was a distinguished-looking man, well dressed, despite the pigeon poop and new tears that he’d put into his clothing trying to sneak up on her. He probably would have been rather handsome in his youth. It was hard to tell if he had the commanding presence of a Grimnoir elder, since nobody really had much of a commanding presence when the only thing keeping them from falling off a roof was a little girl holding onto their tie. He was old enough to have fought the last Spellbound. “Are you Jacques Montand?”

“I am… You’ve come to kill me, then?”

Not really, but he didn’t need to know that yet. “I’m thinking it over.”

“So you know what you really are?”

“The Spellbound. Whisper told me before she died.”

“I see…” Jacques sighed. They both knew there wasn’t a whole lot he could do right then if Faye decided to just let go of the gargoyle. She could easily Travel to safety before hitting the ground and Jacques knew it. He slowly released the death grip on her arm. “I do not know everything she told you, but I would ask you to leave the other members of the Grimnoir leadership out of this. They voted to leave you alone. Our last instructions to Whisper were to observe you but to take no action. The majority of the elders thought that though you had been cursed, you yourself were innocent of any wrongdoing.”

“Uh huh… On this vote, how close was it?”

“Five against two.”

Well, she was even more popular than she expected. “How’d you vote?”

He looked her square in the eye as his shoes slipped a little further. “I understand more about the threat of the Spellbound than the others. I voted to have you eliminated immediately.”

“I didn’t ask for this!” Faye exclaimed. It would have been so easy to just let go of him. That big of a fall might’ve even killed a Brute as tough as Delilah or Toru. Then Faye could simply take Jacques’ link to the Power and make it her own. But then again, that was probably just the mean side talking. Faye had made a promise, and Faye always kept her promises. “I should drop you, jerk.”

“It was nothing personal. I have seen what the spell will eventually cause, and I have evidence which makes me believe this will happen again. I do not regret my decision.” He closed his eyes and waited for her to let go. “Do it. I am not afraid.”

Faye was impressed. The Frenchman had guts. “I didn’t come all this way to kill you, Jacques.” Faye pulled hard. It was enough to shift both of their centers of gravity back over the edge, and he stumbled forward onto more solid tile. It was also hard enough for the tie to choke the heck out of him, and he had to stop and adjust it before he could breathe a sigh of relief. Jacques stood there on trembling legs. He may have been a Brute, but he didn’t have near as much physical Power as some of the others Faye had met. By the time he opened his eyes, Faye was ten feet away, sitting on a gargoyle’s head, just in case he tried to do something stupid and heroic. “I came here so you could teach me.”

Rockville was just as ugly and godforsaken as he remembered it.

The Special Prisoners’ Wing was separate from the rest of the prison, and from the road it looked like one massive, windowless concrete cube. The ugly fortress sat in the middle of an open area that seemed unnecessarily big, but was that size to make sure that an escaping Fade would run out of Power or have to come up for air before he could reach the perimeter. Around the yard was a brick wall tall enough that even a Brute would have a hard time hopping it and thick enough that it would be tough to crash through. The wall was topped with concertina wire and had a guard tower on every corner. It had been said that the riflemen in those towers were all expert shots, and not of a hesitating nature. He’d never been in one of the towers, but he’d been told that, in addition to the thirty-caliber machine guns, they also had elephant rifles and even bazookas in case one of the tougher prisoners decided to take a stroll.

There had been two dozen escape attempts since the Special Prisoners’ Wing had been built. There had been only one success that anyone knew of. The rest had ended up back in their cells or in the facility’s crematorium.

Rockville was simply ugly. Rockville was a monument to ugliness. It served the ugly purpose of keeping dangerous criminal Actives away from the world. Its name served as a warning to any Active who thought about using magic to break the law. Rockville was a synonym for hard time. If any normal person ever passed by they would have to stop and gawk at the sheer ugly of the place. Good thing it was in the middle of nowhere.