by Jim C. Hines
Witnesses claim to have seen two youths fleeing the scene immediately after the fire began. The police have no suspects in custody, but say they are following up on several leads, including a number of threatening letters delivered to the store in recent days.
“There have always been people who see ‘New Age’ and immediately think of witches and incense and weed, but it’s getting worse,” said Annette Botke, a University of Michigan sophomore and employee at Drumming Goddess. “Our sidewalk sign was vandalized twice last week. One commenter on our Web site said people like us should be burned at the stake.”
The fire department was unable to save the twenty-year-old store. The area is cordoned off for safety, and the site will be bulldozed later this week. The stores to either side, an antiques shop and an Indian restaurant, sustained minor damage, but should reopen soon.
Padfoot, the store cat, was found huddling beneath a car in a nearby parking lot. He was checked out and found to be in perfect health. Padfoot is staying with a friend until he can be reunited with his owner.
I FOUND LENA IN the backyard, pulling up the poison ivy vines that had begun to encroach from the edge of the woods. She yanked them from the dirt bare-handed, unaffected by the oils that would have transformed me into a miserable mass of red, itchy bumps and blisters.
Most days during the week, she would have been out doing odd landscaping jobs or volunteering around town, but lately she had been spending more time near her grove. She brightened when she saw me, and then her gaze moved to Mahefa. She grabbed a wood-handled rake and walked toward us.
I wondered if Mahefa had any idea how quickly Lena could grow that handle into a spear, or how many bones she could break with it. A part of me hoped he’d get the chance to find out.
“You’re home early.” Lena kissed me, careful to keep her oil-covered hands away from my skin. “What’s wrong?”
“This is Mahefa Issoufaly. Jeff said he could help us to speak with Gerbert d’Aurillac.”
She frowned and looked at my arm. I didn’t try to hide the Band-Aid near the elbow. There was almost no bruising. He had hit the vein on the first try. The remaining warmth evaporated from Lena’s expression.
“He’s not a vampire,” I said. “He’s . . . you could probably call him a hematophile.”
“You make it sound like a medical condition,” Mahefa complained. “Blood magic is just as real and valid an art as your libriomancy.”
“You let him drink your blood?” Lena’s fingertips pressed into the rake’s handle like it was clay. “And then you brought him here.”
“His price for helping was a sample of my blood.” I rubbed my arm. I should have said no. Should have told him to go to hell the second he said Lena’s name. Let Jeff find someone else who could help us. “And yours.”
She took a step back. “I see.”
“You don’t have to say yes.”
“What’s wrong, Isaac?” Mahefa asked. “You’ll share your dryad with your friend Doctor Shah, but not with me?”
“She’s not—”
“Not what?” He circled Lena, studying her up and down. “She’s certainly not human. Isn’t this why she was created? For men like you and me?”
Forget saving the world; right now I wanted my magic back so I could turn this loathsome man into a cockroach and drop him in a cage with Smudge. But since I couldn’t do magic, I settled for punching him in the nose.
He staggered back, eyes watering. Blood dripped from his nostrils. He snarled and started forward, only to find the sharpened tip of the rake handle barring his way.
“I told you I would ask her,” I said. “I didn’t say anything about letting you come to my home and insult the woman I love. You have until the count of five to get off my property.”
“If you want to speak to your dead man, you’ll let me sample your woman’s blood.”
“If you want to join my dead man, you’ll keep standing there.” I folded my arms. “One.”
“Wait,” said Lena. “Isaac, tell me why you need to do this.”
“Jeneta—”
“The Porters know about Meridiana and Jeneta,” she interrupted. “You’re not the only person in the world clever enough to make the connection to a dead pope. Why do you need to be the one to go chasing answers?”
It was arrogant as hell to believe I could succeed where the Porters had failed. But then, being one of the few who could use magic to rewrite the universe tended to reinforce both ego and arrogance.
The problem was that I wasn’t just risking my life. If I died, who and what Lena was could be lost as well. We hoped the book Bi Wei had given her would help to stabilize her identity, to end her dependence on her lovers, but we had no way of knowing it would work.
There were hundreds of Porters, all better prepared to protect themselves against magic. Was I truly the best person to find Jeneta, or was that the twin brain weasels of guilt and depression pulling my strings?
Why not simply stop? Let the Porters worry about Meridiana. Focus on my job at the library. Visit the cemetery and finally pay my respects to those who had died the month before.
I couldn’t do it. I had been suspended from the field for two years after Mackinac Island, forbidden from using magic except in emergencies, but I had still been a part of that world. I had touched the magic of books every day. I had clung to the hope of returning to the Porters as a field agent or researcher. From the moment I discovered magic, I had been unable to imagine a life without it. “Because this is who . . . this is what I am.”
Lena turned to Mahefa. “Fine. How do we know you’ll keep your word?”
“I’ve never cheated a customer,” Mahefa said indignantly. He held a handkerchief to his nose to slow the bleeding. “It’s bad for business. I will procure what Isaac needs. When he goes to his friend’s final resting place, he’ll be able to have his little chat.”
Lena nodded. “You can have my blood, but not until Jeneta is safe.”
Air hissed through Mahefa’s teeth. “Given that Isaac is very likely to end up dead, I’m afraid—”
Lena stabbed the end of the rake through the edge of Mahefa’s leather shoe, pinning him to the earth. He reached for her, and she casually thumped him in the face with the other end.
“And you drink it in front of me,” Lena continued as if nothing had happened. “I’m not risking you magically cloning yourself a dryad, or whatever else you might want to do with my blood.”
He chuckled. “A counteroffer, then. I take your blood when Jeneta is safe, or when Isaac gets himself killed, whichever comes first. I promise I’ll do nothing to facilitate the latter possibility.”
“Good. Because if you do, I’ll take an acorn from my tree, ram it down your throat, and start it growing. Do we understand one another?”
He lowered the bloody handkerchief. His tongue cleaned the remaining blood from his upper lip. “We do.”
Lena yanked the handle free and gripped his hand, sealing the deal. From the look on his face, she squeezed quite a bit harder than necessary.
“I’ll meet you out front, Isaac. Don’t take too long.” Mahefa whistled as he strolled away.
“I’m sorry,” I said as soon as he was gone. “He wouldn’t accept anything else.”
Lena didn’t look at me. “Promise me you’ll give me an hour’s notice before he comes to take my blood.”
“I will.”
“Good. I’ll wait until then to finish pulling up the poison ivy. The work is relaxing, and my skin soaks up the oils like aloe.” She glanced over her shoulder, giving me a crooked smile that didn’t touch her eyes. “I can even absorb it into my bloodstream.”
Mahefa insisted we take his car, a freshly-waxed black BMW that smelled like antiseptic and Chinese food. He also strongly advised against taking Smudge. On the other hand, he hadn’t objected at all to my bringing my shock-gun along. If anything, he seemed amused, which made me nervous.
I studied him more closely as we drove. I co
uldn’t be certain, but I thought the blackening of his lips and fingers was a form of magical charring. With my magic locked, I shouldn’t have been able to see it. How much power had burned through his blood to leave visible damage?
His veins were swollen. One mapped a dark, jagged line down the side of his forehead. Others bulged along his arms and the backs of his hands.
He swerved around curves at speeds I wouldn’t have attempted without magic, finally pulling off near the old railroad bridge about five miles south of town. He parked in the grass and popped the trunk. “Time for favor number three. You’re going to help me break into a satellite.”
We climbed out, and Mahefa pulled a pair of metallic silver suits from the trunk. My mouth went dry.
“Relax, it’s not a CIA spy satellite or anything like that. Nothing to tie you up in any ethical conundrums. Just your everyday illegal vampire-built space junk.”
“When you said this thing would be passing over the Midwest, I assumed we’d be meeting it at an airport somewhere.”
He chuckled. “The only way to override one of these things from the ground is to fight our way into the Chernobyl vampire nest and take over their system. I don’t think either one of us are up for that.” He tossed me one of the suits. “Put this on.”
I held the ridiculously flimsy fabric. A deflated transparent bubble topped the one-piece jumpsuit. “What the hell is it?”
“Some old sci-fi writer’s idea of what a futuristic space suit would look like. I bought them off a libriomancer in the early eighties. They hold twelve hours of compressed air, and there’s a radio unit in the collar.”
I couldn’t process the idea of going into space in a thirty-year-old magic spacesuit, so I tried to focus my thoughts elsewhere. “Are you saying the vampires have their own satellite?”
“More than one. This is blood bank number six, out of ten that I know about. I’ve been wanting to get into this one for years.”
Ten blood banks in orbit, and the Porters had no idea. What else had we—had they missed? And why satellites? The cold of space would provide cheap, effective refrigeration, but as far as food storage went, it was ridiculously impractical. You couldn’t just fly into orbit every time you wanted a snack. What a satellite did provide was secrecy and security. “They’re storing samples.”
“Very good. They’ve built up a library of blood from every known species and hybrid of vampire. It’s all treated with glycerol to preserve the cells, which does nasty things to the flavor, but it’s worth it.”
And we were going to steal from them. To break into a blood bank. In orbit. Wearing tinfoil jumpsuits. “All right, next question.”
“Why do I need you?” Mahefa guessed.
“I was going to ask how the hell we’re supposed to reach this satellite, since I didn’t see a rocket ship in your back seat. But sure, let’s start with that.”
“The damn vampires put a bomb in my head last year. I get within a hundred meters of one of their vaults, and boom.” He pantomimed the explosion.
“Sounds unpleasant.” It also sounded similar to what I had done to Ted Boyer a few years back. I wondered if they had used the same hardware. “So you need someone who can get inside and loot the satellite without getting atomized in the process.”
He shoved a pair of fire extinguishers into a beat-up canvas backpack. A coil of nylon rope followed, along with an oversized metal thermos. He zipped the whole thing up, then grabbed a laminated index card from his rear pocket. He handed me the card and an empty cooler. “I got my hands on a copy of their cataloguing system. This card lists the samples you’ll need. One of these will let you talk to your dead pope. Bring them all back, and I’ll tell you which one.”
“Wait, let me talk to him?”
Mahefa paused. “Is that a problem?”
“I’m not a Ramanga. I can’t use blood magic.”
“Which is why I’ll be prepping your drink, cutting it with a bit of my own. Your body is used to channeling magic, so it shouldn’t burn your guts out or anything like that.”
“This is vampire blood we’re talking about. What if I drink it and then burst into flames the first time the sun hits me?”
“This particular strain shouldn’t turn you,” he assured me. “You might have a nasty migraine for a few hours, but that’s all. If you’re scared, trick someone else into taking it. I’m sure Lena would drink it if you told her to, yes?”
Gutenberg’s spell had locked my magic, but that shouldn’t interfere with the effects of the blood. Euphemia had demonstrated quite well that magic could still affect me.
“It goes without saying that if you tell anyone about this, I’ll rip out your throat.” Mahefa clapped me on the back. “Go ahead and put on your suit. Don’t seal it yet, though. Sealing the helmet starts the airflow, and there’s no need to waste oxygen.”
Flying—heights in general, really—ranked right up with do-it-yourself root canals on my list of things I’d rather avoid. Maybe Lena had been right. Let the Porters find a way to speak with the dead. Once they dug up the pope’s secrets, they could hunt Meridiana.
Assuming they took my vision seriously enough to pursue it. And what would they do to Jeneta if they found her? Gutenberg had done his best to destroy the students of Bi Sheng, and Meridiana was a far greater threat. They would kill Jeneta without a second thought.
It might come to that, if I couldn’t save her. If I couldn’t pry Meridiana out of her mind. But I intended to make damn sure that was a last resort.
I sat down on the hillside and pulled the suit over my legs. Following Mahefa’s lead, I didn’t worry about removing my shoes. The material felt like heavy satin. It clung to my jeans, outlining every fold and wrinkle. A pair of thin silver canisters on the back presumably held my air. There were no gauges to verify whether they were full.
Mahefa was already sealing the front of his suit, using a zipper-like tab that left no visible seam. The plastic bubble hung down behind him like a sweatshirt hood. These suits were far simpler and more maneuverable than anything NASA had. I imagined most astronauts would kill for something like this . . . assuming they worked.
Mahefa opened a second cooler in the back of the car and pulled out a plastic packet of blood, the kind of thing you might find hanging from an IV stand in a hospital. He jabbed a metal straw into the top and sucked it down like a child’s juice box.
I started to seal my suit, then changed my mind. This thing had no built-in plumbing, and I had no idea how long our flight would be. I hiked to the base of the bridge to relieve myself. When I finished, I glanced back to make sure Mahefa wasn’t paying attention, then tucked my shock-gun into the bag, along with the laminated list.
He tossed the empty pouch onto the ground, strapped on an oversized harness, and slammed the BMW’s trunk shut. “You ready?”
I thought about Jeneta, about the hate and hunger I had sensed from Meridiana and her minions, and about my friends and neighbors who had died without understanding why. With a sigh, I stepped into the harness.
Mahefa might be an ass, but he was all business as he cinched the straps around my chest, shoulders, and thighs. Heavy steel rings locked us together like tandem skydivers, my back to his front. I resisted the urge to seal my helmet to block the foulness of his breath. “How long does the blood last?”
“Depends. The stuff I downed should be enough to get us there and back. The kind you’ll be stealing will give you several hours of talking to the dead.” He wrapped his arms around my chest. “Relax. Flying is as easy as falling, only backward.”
Before I could stammer a response, he jumped hard enough to make me bite my tongue. I spat blood and gripped his arms, trying to stop the pressure of the harness from cutting off the circulation to my legs. I had no clue how fast we were accelerating. The average human being passed out around five gees, and I could feel the blood in my body draining downward. I clenched my muscles and tried to hold on.
“It will take a few minutes
to escape the atmosphere,” he shouted. “I’ll let you know when to seal your helmet.”
For as long as I could remember, I’d had nightmares about tumbling out of airplanes, off cliff sides, or over the edge of the Mackinac Bridge. This was worse. I was falling away from the Earth, significantly faster than terminal velocity. The wind dried my eyes and tore the breath from my mouth.
Already the air was getting colder. When I looked down, I could make out the outlines of the Great Lakes, the mitten and rabbit shapes of Michigan’s lower and upper peninsulas. My neck cramped, and my jaw was clenched so tightly I expected my teeth to shatter.
“If you need to puke, do it before you close your helmet,” Mahefa yelled.
The Earth’s curve was clearly visible, which would have been awe-inspiring if I had been looking at a photograph from the safety of my desk. Shadows stained my vision, congealing from the edges. Passing out might be a blessing, but I had no faith that Mahefa would bother to seal my helmet.
We were through the upper clouds now. The sun was brighter, and when I wrenched my head up, I could just begin to make out the stars overhead.
Mahefa let go.
I shouted and clawed at his arms as the harness took my full weight. My fingers were numb, little more than useless stubs.
“Helmet,” he yelled, his voice tinny.
I fumbled to pull the clear bubble over my head. After three attempts, Mahefa snatched it from between us and yanked it into place. He grabbed a tab at the collar and pulled it around my neck. I heard hissing, and the bubble expanded, filling with cold, stale air.
The plastic wasn’t as clear as I had thought, or perhaps it was designed to polarize in direct sunlight. The world below took on a smoky tint.
“Radio check.” Mahefa’s words crackled through a speaker by my neck. “You done screaming yet?”
My suit bulged outward. Rings of stiffer fabric kept it from bubbling too much. I looked like a shiny Michelin Man. I forced myself to breathe slowly. “Yah. Starting to hate you a lot, though.”