by Jim C. Hines
Not that my magic would have been effective. Meridiana’s incorporeal soldiers weren’t ghosts in the traditional sense, but beings of magic who had lost their sanity and sense of self long ago. Trying to fight them with spells was like using a squirt gun against a giant squid.
Ponce de Leon simply grinned. The winds around us grew stronger, pulling trash from the street and books from the apartment into a cyclone. “They feed on magic. Let’s see how much they can swallow.”
Under other circumstances, I would have loved to watch Ponce de Leon command the wind, but right now, I was more interested in not plummeting to my death.
“Incoming.” Lena drew one of her bokken and pointed it toward the roof.
A familiar angel loomed from the edge like a gargoyle, wings spread wide, sword in one hand.
Even if his bones were hollow as a bird’s, basic physics meant there should be no way for him to truly fly in this gravity and atmosphere. As was often the case, magic just chuckled and kicked physics in the balls, leaving it groaning and wondering what just happened.
The angel jumped from the roof and swooped toward us. Lena twisted to parry his first strike. The impact spun the umbrella like a merry-go-round.
I pried my right hand from the umbrella and reached for the shock-gun. I needed an angle that didn’t risk me shooting through a window and killing innocent people if I missed. “Can you get us below him?”
“Unfortunately, his maneuverability is better than ours,” said Gutenberg. We pulled to the left to dodge the next attack. We were halfway to the parking garage.
I heard a siren in the distance. Traffic below had stopped. Horns blared, and people shouted at us and at one another. All I cared about was the glorious rooftop ahead.
The angel curved around to block our way. He hovered in front of us, holding his sword in both hands. He didn’t need to take us down. He just needed to keep us here long enough for the rest of Meridiana’s brute squad to arrive.
We dipped lower. I adjusted my aim and fired. Lightning stabbed the air, only to dissipate into smoke when it reached the angel. He smiled.
“I see,” said Ponce de Leon. His cyclone slowed. “Perhaps if we try a less direct approach.”
I couldn’t tell what he did, but about five seconds later, a pigeon dive-bombed the angel. Its claws and beak left tiny red scratches on his face.
Gutenberg chuckled as two more pigeons attacked. Others followed, fluttering and pecking as if our attacker was a piñata stuffed with discarded fast food.
The angel fought back against the birds the best he could, but the pigeons were surprisingly difficult targets. For every one he grabbed, another pecked his fingers. His sword slipped away, and Ponce de Leon blasted it into oblivion before it could strike the ground.
“Dumpster?” said Gutenberg.
“Excellent choice.” Ponce de Leon twisted to point his cane at the street. A metal dumpster lurched into the air and tumbled end over end. The ghosts might have tried to intercept his magic, but by then, momentum had taken over. Pigeons fled in all directions, giving me a brief glimpse of one royally pissed-off angel wiping away blood, feathers, and pigeon crap. I don’t think he even saw the dumpster that slammed him into the building. Angel and dumpster dropped onto the street with a deafening clang.
We landed on the top level of the parking garage and immediately ducked behind a van.
Gutenberg watched the broken window of his apartment. “Nicola, Juan, find us transportation. My own vehicle is parked below my building, regrettably out of reach. Meridiana’s ghosts are still here, so be cautious and use as little magic as necessary. Lena, please go with them. I believe your strength might be useful.”
Leaving Nidhi and me to hide and wait. Not that I really wanted to confront whatever else Meridiana sent after us, but I hated feeling useless.
A resounding crack came from inside the broken window across the street, followed by a puff of dust and smoke. They had broken through the door. It felt like we had stepped out of that window an hour ago, but it couldn’t have been more than a minute or two.
In Jeneta’s body, Meridiana looked down at us, flanked by the gorgon from Rome—still wearing her burqa, thankfully—and an enormous, misshapen man with yellow skin.
Meridiana clutched her e-reader close to her body. I couldn’t make out her facial expression, but from here, she looked like any other kid. Right up until she reached into her e-reader and pulled out a writhing yellow serpent, which she hurled toward us. The snake lengthened and split again and again, until a swarm of indignant and presumably venomous serpents were raining down at us.
Gutenberg was ready with a book of his own. I backed away, wishing my gun had a wide-field setting.
Meridiana’s magic must have cushioned the snakes’ landing, because they immediately started hissing and slithering when they hit the ground. But they didn’t attack. To the last snake, they darted into the shadows, fleeing whatever Gutenberg was doing.
“The legend of Saint Patrick,” he said calmly, holding up his book. “If he can drive the serpents from Ireland, I can banish these from a parking garage. We’ll send an automaton into the sewers later to gather them up.”
Meridiana’s next assault created what looked like streams of silver glitter falling from the sky. She directed them not toward us, but to the onlookers below. It wasn’t until the screams began that I realized what it was.
“Burn them,” I shouted. “Don’t let it reach the ground!”
Gutenberg swapped books and launched a jet of flame, but the ghosts must have intercepted his assault. The fire sputtered and died before reaching its target: deadly spores known as Thread, from Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonrider series. Watching it fall from Earth’s sky was like reliving the first time I read Dragonflight, and the horror I felt at wave after wave of deadly Thread that consumed all organic life it touched.
“Give me d’Aurillac’s poem, and I’ll end this.” Meridiana’s words cut through the screams, as if she stood directly in front of us.
The quick beep of a horn announced the arrival of our ride.
“We can’t leave,” I said. “The Thread will start to burrow.” Most of the ground below was blacktop or sidewalk, but there were strips of green, grassy soil where Thread could thrive.
“We both know I’ll find you wherever you go,” Meridiana continued. “The only question is how many people you’ll sacrifice in the meantime.”
Gutenberg tucked his book away and pulled out his cell phone.
“I could summon Thread down upon Lena’s grove,” she said. “This is but one of a thousand plagues I can—”
Gutenberg tapped a button on his phone, and the apartment exploded.
DIET OF THE DAMNED
A popular new diet plan could soon put a stake through Jenny Craig’s heart.
Nutritionist Jamie Bergren of Los Angeles, California announced earlier this week that she will be launching her exclusive blood-based weight-loss program online. Doctor Bergren says she has been using this plan with select clients for years, with incredible results.
Her Web site features photographs of slender, attractive men and women drinking blood from wine glasses, but Bergren is quick to point out that human beings can’t survive on blood alone.
“Healthy arterial blood is used as a dietary supplement only,” she explained in a press release. “Every client’s needs are different, depending on weight, gender, physical activity, and other factors.”
How did she discover this unusual diet? That’s simple. According to Bergren, her father was a vampire.
“He was turned when I was eleven years old,” Bergren explains. “Before that, he had always been obese. He couldn’t play with me or my brother without getting out of breath. We watched him try one fad diet after another, but nothing worked.
“Within a year of becoming a vampire, he was down to a hundred and seventy pounds. The most significant change to his lifestyle, aside from having to avoid sunlight, was his diet.”<
br />
The California Department of Public Health is currently investigating Doctor Bergren’s practice, and has not yet issued a statement.
“You don’t know it, but you’ve seen several of my success stories in the movies and on television,” claimed Bergren. “They look better, and more importantly, they feel better. They’re healthier, happier, and, if I say so myself, hotter.”
Bergren’s Web site advises people not to begin the vampire diet on their own. Potential risks include blood-borne illnesses, iron overdose, dehydration, and more. “My clinic takes every precaution to guarantee the safety of donors, the cleanliness of the blood, and the health of the recipients.” A one-month trial will cost $250. Everyone who signs up will receive sealed packets of blood-based salad dressing, drink additives, and a flavored syrup said to go great with pancakes.
We want to know what you think. Visit our Facebook page to share your thoughts on this article.
SMOKE BILLOWED FROM THE shattered windows. People in the streets screamed and fled. Fire alarms buzzed through Gutenberg’s building, audible even over the ringing in my ears. Torn and burning books fell like confetti.
By the time I recovered from my shock, Gutenberg had resumed his assault on the Thread. He burned it from the sky, then turned his efforts to the street below.
“You killed her,” I whispered.
“Doubtful.” Gutenberg flicked his fingers, and a sweet-smelling rain began to fall on the wounded, healing the worst of their injuries. “I can’t imagine Meridiana would enter my domain without precautions, and even if her physical host was destroyed, her spirit remains bound within the sphere.”
“Her physical host? Jeneta Aboderin was—is—fourteen years old! She’s a kid, a victim.”
“You think I want to kill her? She was one of ours, Isaac. One of mine. But if you ask me to choose between the life of one girl and the safety of this world, I will make that choice. Be grateful you don’t have to.”
I understood the logic. I wanted to deck him anyway. It wasn’t just the choice he had made, but the coldness with which he made it. There had been no hesitation, no doubt. When I looked at him, I saw not the slightest trace of regret for what he had done.
I looked at the apartment. The interior had caught fire, and smoke continued to pour out the windows. If Jeneta and her monsters had survived, I couldn’t see them.
“If you want to save lives,” said Gutenberg, “the best thing you can do is finish that poem.”
Behind us, Lena stepped out of a red four-door Jeep with oversized mud tires. She looked at the three of us, then to the apartment beyond. Her jaw tightened.
“The ghosts remain, though they appear disorganized,” Ponce de Leon said from the driver’s seat. “We should be going.”
I told myself Gutenberg was right. Meridiana would have taken precautions. Jeneta was still alive.
“Interesting choice,” said Gutenberg as he joined us. He took the passenger’s seat.
“It looked like a fun car to drive,” said Ponce de Leon.
I stared out the window at the column of black smoke.
“Who buys a Jeep this size for Chicago traffic?” Ponce de Leon slid his fingertip along the top of the window, leaving tiny etched characters in the glass. They looked similar to some of the enchantments in my convertible.
“Is everyone all right?” asked Nidhi.
“For the moment.” Gutenberg went silent while Ponce de Leon paid the parking attendant. “We’ll be safer once we leave the city.”
Traffic made that an even slower process than usual, thanks to the damage we had caused. I split my attention between Smudge and the windows, waiting for the next monster to attack. People continued to pour out of the building, but they all appeared human from here. I wouldn’t say we had won this battle, but we hadn’t lost, and it looked like Gutenberg had disrupted Meridiana’s plans enough for us to get away.
“Isaac, can you work while we drive?” Gutenberg asked.
I nodded tightly and pulled my notes from my pocket. Setting the briefcase on my lap, I began to write.
We spent the next two days at a bed and breakfast outside of Green Bay. It was rather crowded for six, but the owners were friendly enough. More importantly, it was outside of the city and a far cry from the kind of accommodations anyone would expect two of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful magic-users to use.
The owners put us in the third-floor suite of their converted farmhouse. The old hayloft ceiling curved overhead, the naked timbers an odd contrast to the nineteenth-century wallpaper. The main window looked out on maple trees and fenced-in fields where sheep wandered about, grazing lazily or napping in the shade. Lena spent much of her time outside, sunbathing on the balcony or resting within the trees. At the moment, she and Nidhi were playing chess behind the barn while Smudge hunted grasshoppers.
The sleeping arrangements were, if anything, even more awkward than they had been in Gutenberg’s apartment. The owners lent us several extra cots, but there was little privacy. And it turned out that Nicola sang in her sleep.
During the day, Nicola and Gutenberg continued to coordinate with the other Regional Masters while I updated Gerbert d’Aurillac’s poem. Nidhi’s job, when she wasn’t with Lena, was to keep the rest of us from killing one another.
Between being driven from his own apartment and news of additional Porter casualties, Gutenberg was a magical time bomb searching for an excuse to explode. For Ponce de Leon, it was being stuck in the middle of nowhere that was slowly chipping away at his sanity. His latest complaint was the lack of “a single real Vietnamese restaurant.”
Personally, I preferred the B&B to the cramped, crowded feel of the city. If you had to stack people’s homes and workplaces on top of one another to make it all fit, you officially had too many people crammed into too little space.
I tried to ignore their griping. As much as I despised feeling helpless, how much worse was it for the two of them, who had spent so long at the top of the magical food chain?
Gutenberg slammed through the French doors from the balcony and announced, “The state of literacy in this world is shameful.”
“Waiting on your Potter fans?” Ponce de Leon sat in a rocking chair, reading Harry Potter and the Goblin’s Scepter. He had begun the book last night. Every reader helped build the book’s magic, after all.
I, on the other hand, had been forbidden from touching the book until I finished the damn poem, for fear—not entirely unjustified—that I would lose focus on my work.
Gutenberg waved his own copy in the air. “Twenty-three bookstores held surprise midnight release parties last night. The rest put the books out this morning when they opened. Tens of thousands of copies should be in people’s hands by now, but what are they doing?”
“Some people work on Tuesdays.” I wondered if Jennifer had officially fired me yet, or if she would wait to do it in person.
He ignored me, turning instead to what looked like a kind of miniature phonograph. An engraved brass disk began to spin, and Gutenberg peered at the marble-sized black jewel at the center of the disk. This was one of the tools he used to monitor his automatons, who were hunting without success for Meridiana and her army. “I assumed the other books would require an additional day or two, but the Rowling?”
“The fake Rowling.” Ponce de Leon picked up his smart phone from beside the chair. “You’ve done a marvelous job of blowing up the Internet today, Johannes. The lack of a decent signal makes it difficult to keep up with the fallout, but your readers may simply be too busy yelling at one another online to actually finish the book.”
Gutenberg grumbled something unintelligible and turned toward me. “Aren’t you done yet? You were supposed to have this worked out yesterday.”
“I had to adjust the spokes.” Only when I was rewriting my poem had I spotted another layer of meaning in the original work. The letters within the vertical spoke were decorated slightly differently than the rest, with additional horizon
tal strokes. After staring at it for three hours, I had finally recognized them as meridian lines. Each of the twelve horizontal lines in those letters extended to the left or right of the center spoke. Tracing the endpoints created an elongated figure eight. If the poem were laid out as a sundial, the shadow would fall on those marks at noon on the first day of each month. Which meant recalculating each one of the lines for our current latitude. “It will be done by dinnertime.”
“Assuming you haven’t missed anything else.”
“Give the boy a break, Johannes,” said Ponce de Leon. “Do you want it now, or do you want it right? You know he’s almost there. You can feel it as well as I can.”
I hunched my shoulders and continued working. Whatever magic simmered within the poem, I couldn’t feel it, nor would I be able to touch it once I finished. Gutenberg and Ponce de Leon would be the ones to infuse the text with their own magic and—if nothing went wrong—retrieve Meridiana’s prison.
The experience had given me eyestrain, a throbbing headache, and tremendous respect for Gerbert d’Aurillac’s mind. He had buried so much meaning within these lines. I wasn’t about to admit it to Gutenberg, but I was terrified I had overlooked something vital.
Gutenberg dragged a chair across the floor and sat down beside Ponce de Leon. They reminded me of grumpy cats sharing a sunbeam. Gutenberg glared at the book as if he could intimidate it into producing the scepter.
Ponce de Leon turned a page. “I enjoyed the scene where Harry consults the paintings of former headmasters. The description of the artwork was quite striking, and his interaction with Snape hit just the right balance of snark and grudging respect.”
Gutenberg grunted.
“The Quidditch scene dragged on a bit, though. And on page sixty-seven, you’ve got Neville going out alone to the forbidden forest, but then suddenly he’s with Ron and Luna. This is why you need proofreaders, Johannes.”