Unbound

by Jim C. Hines

  “Meridiana knows of the Porter archive beneath the fort,” said Bi Wei.

  “The whole world knows, thanks to your letter.” Nicola didn’t sound angry, but then, she rarely did.

  “Michilimackinac has Porter magic protecting it,” I said. “Along with the spells left there by French traders. It’s only a day’s drive.” Before I could say more, Smudge scurried to the top of his cage, bits of brightly-colored sugar melted to his mandibles. I lowered a hand to check his temperature. “Wherever we’re going, we should leave now. The fire-spider just went to yellow alert.”

  Lena moved to the window and peeked through the curtains. “Nothing out here.”

  Nobody spoke as we gathered our things. I tucked my notes into the briefcase and checked my shock-gun. Nicola pressed her earbuds into place. Lena sharpened her wooden blades.

  Ponce de Leon’s knuckles were white around his cane. He waited impatiently at the door, as if he couldn’t wait to confront Meridiana. Bi Wei was right behind him, sorting through books in her leather handbag.

  We were checked out of the hotel within five minutes. I scanned the parking lot, searching for whatever was worrying Smudge. Waves of red fire rippled over his back.

  “We should switch vehicles,” said Nidhi. “Preferably to something that isn’t stolen.”

  “Nobody will notice us.” Ponce de Leon gestured toward the Jeep. “I saw to that in Chicago. The police will see us, but the memories will slip away like ice melting through their fingers. I use the same spell on my own cars. I prefer not to worry about speeding tickets when I drive.”

  Bi Wei slowed. “That truck . . .”

  A U-Haul truck sat beside our Jeep. Through the window, I made out the silhouette of a man. I checked Smudge, whose flames jumped higher, confirming my wariness.

  “It wasn’t there earlier this morning,” said Lena.

  The door opened, and the driver climbed out. He wore a dark green trench coat, and a black baseball cap shielded his face, but the skin of his neck sparkled where the sun touched it, marking him as Sanguinarius Meyerii.

  Sparklers were tough to beat, even with magic. On any other day, I’d have braced myself for a fight that would almost certainly have ended with me broken and bleeding on the pavement. But I was surrounded by some of the most powerful people I knew, and after bracing myself to face Meridiana, a vampire was such a relief I laughed out loud.

  He scowled and pounded the side of the truck. The back slid open. Three more people emerged, all muffled against the sun.

  “This won’t take long,” said the driver. “We just want the blood-thief.”

  I raised my hand and smiled. “That would be me. How did you find us?”

  “We heard about your little adventure in Rome, so we reviewed the videos and photos online. When we spotted Mahefa in the background, we decided to pay him a visit. He told us everything . . . after a little persuasion. He had some of your blood left, which he handed over to us.”

  I checked the other three vampires, wondering which one had tasted my blood and used it to track me down. It was an unusual gift among vampires, but not unheard of.

  They spread out as they approached. Nidhi tapped my shoulder and pointed to the roof of the hotel, where two more vampires waited. When they saw us looking, they flew down behind us. One landed on the roof of a Mini Cooper, denting it inward. The other dropped lightly to the blacktop between us and the hotel door.

  “Tell your Porter friends not to try anything.” The driver blurred closer. “I can rip out your throat before any of you can crack open one of your magic books. But we’ve been instructed to make your death . . . memorable.”

  “They’re not Porters. Aside from her, I mean.” I cocked a thumb at Nicola. “Look, we’re in a hurry, and this is a really bad idea. Any chance we could reschedule for next week? I promise I’ll come down to Detroit to clear things up with your queen. Alice Granach is still running things in the salt mines, right?”

  Lena had her bokken. Nicola’s hands twitched to a rhythm only she could hear. Ponce de Leon held his cane in one hand, a cold smile on his face. And then there was Bi Wei.

  “Take him,” said the sparkler. “If he resists, kill his friends.”

  By my estimate, the fight lasted no more than twenty seconds.

  Ponce de Leon burned the sparkler to ash where he stood. One of the flying vampires tackled Lena, only to scream and roll away with a bokken through her leg. A single swipe of the second bokken separated her head from her neck. Nicola’s song lulled a third to sleep.

  The rest were unfortunate enough to reach Bi Wei.

  Wind swirled around us, tossing the screaming vampires into the air. The sky turned gray, and dust choked the air.

  Of those twenty seconds, half were spent watching a miniature tornado carry the undead trio out of sight.

  Bi Wei removed her sunglasses and wiped the dust from the lenses. “I was reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz yesterday before I received your message. It was inspirational.”

  The Porters had transferred their Midwest archive to Fort Michilimackinac after the destruction of the MSU Library in East Lansing. Located at the tip of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, the fort was a moderately popular tourist attraction, as well as the site of an ongoing archaeological dig. The latter presented a challenge at times, as there were certain artifacts and discoveries the Porters preferred remain hidden, but a little judiciously-applied magic prevented anyone from digging too deep in the wrong spot.

  I spent part of the drive on hold with the Detroit vampire nest. Deb DeGeorge had given me the number for one of Alice Granach’s fledglings who apparently doubled as her administrative assistant. After twenty minutes of waiting, the fledgling picked up again and said, “Mistress Granach will be with you shortly. If you would just—”

  “Keep waiting while you try to trace the call? That’s not going to happen.” Not with the amount of magic shielding the Jeep. “Look, we just dusted half the team you sent to kill me and sent the rest off to Oz. I know you’re pissed about the blood thing, and you’re right. That was rude of me. I don’t have time for this right now, and so far, I haven’t told the Porters or anyone else the details about your orbiting blood banks. Tell Granach if she wants a war, I’ll tell the whole damn world, and we can make bets as to which agency shoots them out of the sky first. Or, she can call off the hunt, and we can talk about reparations like civilized beings.”

  “I . . . will pass your message along to Mistress Granach.”

  “Threatening the head of the Detroit nest,” Lena said once I had hung up. “You’re quite the diplomat.”

  “Granach isn’t stupid. They got Mahefa, so by now they know he set me up. Killing me anyway to send a message makes sense, but not if it costs them more than they gain.”

  “You hope,” said Nidhi.

  “Yah.”

  Nicola glanced back. “What is this about other blood banks?”

  “Ask me again once I’ve heard back from Alice Granach. In the meantime, I want to study that poem.”

  Thankfully, she didn’t press the matter, and we spent the rest of the drive in relative quiet.

  The fort was smaller than I remembered. I hadn’t been here since I was fifteen. My parents had spent that summer trying to show my brother and me as many Michigan historical landmarks as possible. It hadn’t been my most thrilling summer vacation.

  Nicola had an annual pass, while the rest of us had to purchase tickets in the gift shop. We could have climbed the chain-link fence that surrounded the grounds, but there was no reason to risk attracting attention.

  To the right, the Mackinac Bridge stretched across the water, dividing Lake Michigan from Lake Huron. To the left was a refreshment stand and a small playground built like a miniature fort, complete with a tiny toy cannon pointing out at the water. A woman in Ojibwe garb was working around a small campfire up ahead, beside the sidewalk that led to the wooden walls of the fort. A man dressed as a fur trader welcomed us when we re
ached the northern entrance.

  The wooden palisade enclosed a scattering of buildings and open grass. Tourists wandered through reconstructed homes, barracks, and other structures, while park employees in period costumes answered questions, chopped wood, tended the small gardens, and tried not to look bored out of their minds.

  Everything we saw was a reconstruction. The fort had been burned to the ground in the late 1700s, when the British relocated to Mackinac Island. But the spells laid by the French traders and soldiers who originally built the fort had survived the flames.

  “You’ve got that look on your face,” Lena said fondly.

  “What look?”

  “You’re mentally reading this whole place like it’s a history textbook.”

  I gave an offended harrumph. “Just for that, I won’t tell you how the Ojibwe took control of the fort in 1763.”

  Lena touched each building in turn as we walked. Wasps crawled over many of the wooden shingles, but they left her alone.

  “Who’s working the archive?” I asked.

  “Jackson Chapin transferred up from East Lansing four weeks ago.” Nidhi turned toward a small wooden cabin beside a grassy hill, near the southwest corner of the fort.

  Chapin had been the archivist at the MSU library before it was destroyed. He had minimal magic, barely strong enough to earn a place among the Porters, but he knew the title of every book on his shelves by memory. He was brilliant, stern, and likely to be of very little help in a magical battle.

  A sign on the cabin named it the Chevalier House. Inside, a narrow stairway led down into the old powder magazine. This was one of the few areas to have survived the British torches. It was here that the original magic was strongest, and here that the Porters had quietly moved in.

  Glass walls protected the blackened stumps of the original palisade, displayed for tourists. Nicola waited for another family to move along to the next exhibit, then took a silver key from her pocket. She studied the cylindrical steel lock on the glass. The key was the wrong shape, but when she touched the tip to the lock, the cylinder melted aside to reveal a second, older-looking keyhole. She inserted the key and turned it a full three hundred and sixty degrees. To the left of the display case, a section of wall swung open.

  Cool, dry air drifted out. The hallway beyond was built of wood, caulked with what looked like white mud or plaster. A pair of flickering fluorescent bulbs hummed overhead. Nicola replaced the lock and led us inside. Ponce de Leon pulled the door shut behind us.

  A small video camera was mounted in the corner above a second door at the end of the hall. Patches of green moss covered much of the wooden door. On the ceiling directly in front of us was a steel pipe and what looked like a sprinkler head. “What do they run through the pipes? Lethe-water?”

  “I think so,” said Nicola. “Though I’m not certain which type.”

  Various authors had written about the memory-wiping properties of the river Lethe, each one giving it his or her own twist, and in the process providing the Porters with a range of forgetfulness potions. Should anyone manage to make it this far without authorization, they would soon find themselves back in the parking lot with no recollection of how they had gotten there.

  Nicola pressed her hand to the largest patch of moss, which rippled and molded itself to her fingers. The door opened inward to reveal the business end of an eighteenth-century blunderbuss. The brass barrel lowered a moment later, and Jackson Chapin stepped aside to welcome us in.

  Jackson looked like he would be more at home on the rugby field than in a library. Tall and broad, with a rectangular head and a quarter-inch buzz cut, he appeared even more imposing in the cramped confines of the archive. An ID badge hung from a lanyard around his neck. “Master Pallas? What’s going on?”

  Nicola stepped past him. “We need to use this facility. Isaac and Bi Wei will be working at your desk.”

  The archive was less than half the size of our former facility in East Lansing, and had an odd blend of modern and colonial furnishings. The gleaming white floor and walls reminded me of a laboratory, but the wooden writing desk in the corner was two hundred years old if it was a day. Fluorescent light fixtures hung from old square timbers overhead.

  Sealed crates filled the room, stacked from floor to ceiling. There were no shelves here, but each crate was meticulously labeled. They looked strong enough to safely transport high explosives.

  “Is there a problem?” asked Jackson.

  “Not yet.” Nicola turned on the desk lamp. Every power cord in the room ran to a single silent generator in the corner, roughly the size of a home dehumidifier.

  Hanging from the wall above the desk was a six-inch wide image of a white rabbit, created with porcupine quills. I hadn’t seen this particular piece, but I recognized Jane Oshogay’s work. She was Jackson’s predecessor, and had been killed when Meridiana’s ghosts attacked the archive earlier this year.

  I spread the finished poem on the desk, weighing down the edges with a stapler, a pencil holder shaped like a wooden barrel, and a dog-eared copy of Charlotte Brontë’s Villette.

  “Interesting.” Jackson peered over my shoulder. “The Latin reads like gibberish. I take it this is some form of code?”

  “Something like that.” With a sigh, I surrendered my chair to Bi Wei.

  “When you free the sphere, Meridiana will know.” Ponce de Leon moved to stand on the opposite side of the chair. “I believe the passive enchantments in this place should prevent her from locating us immediately, but she will devote all of her energy to finding us.”

  “Whoever she is, she’ll have her work cut out for her,” said Jackson. “The old underground timbers are like heat sinks. Any escaping magical energy within the fort is absorbed and masked as part of a constant low-level emanation. It’s ingenious. From what we can tell, the original runes were carved into the heartwood using some species of powderpost beetle, though nobody knows how the beetles were controlled.”

  Lena coaxed a branch from one of the rafters, growing it until it was strong enough to hold Smudge’s cage.

  “Can you do it?” asked Nicola.

  Bi Wei chewed her lip. “Meridiana stole the lives of our fellow students. We will do this, not for your Porters, but for them and the rest of the world.”

  “That works for us,” I said before anyone else could answer.

  She scanned the pages again. Her eyes followed the outer triangle, then worked inward along each spoke. She whispered to herself, pronouncing the Latin words without hesitating or stumbling. At the beginning of each seemingly nonsensical stanza, she repeated the name “Anna.”

  “Be careful,” I said quietly. I didn’t think Meridiana could strike through the poem, not without a copy of her own, but I had been wrong before. Both Nicola and Ponce de Leon stood ready to act. I split my attention between Bi Wei and Smudge, trusting the fire-spider to warn me if everything went to hell.

  After about five minutes, Ponce de Leon leaned closer. “Remarkable. The letters are changing.”

  “Changing how?” I asked.

  “They shine in the light,” said Jackson. “Like metal or glass.” He adjusted his glasses. “Master Pallas, what precisely is this woman attempting to accomplish? If this presents any kind of risk to the books preserved here—”

  “Life is risk, Mister Chapin,” Ponce de Leon interrupted. “At least, any life worth living.”

  Bi Wei’s fingertips slipped through the page. She jerked back, and now even I could see gleaming threads clinging to her nails like liquid bronze.

  “Be ready.” She reached into the poem again.

  The sound of ripping paper made me cringe. Threads of smoke rose from the paper where Bi Wei’s fingers disappeared. Metal letters climbed her hands, gradually fading into invisibility on her tan skin.

  “We can feel the sphere,” she said through clenched teeth. “It’s hot. Almost too hot to touch.”

  “If I may?” Ponce de Leon touched her arm. I couldn’t tell w
hat he did, but Bi Wei visibly relaxed.

  “Thank you.”

  The paper around her fingers blackened and curled upward. I wondered if Jackson had a fire extinguisher tucked away in here. If we burned down the Porters’ new archive, Gutenberg would—

  The thought of Gutenberg’s name conjured the memory of his final, surprised grunt. The sound in my mind was so real, it was as if I was back in the room watching him fall. I swallowed and focused on Bi Wei’s efforts.

  The paper continued to burn, though there was no visible flame. I watched my own handwriting melt into Bi Wei’s skin, one metal pen stroke at a time. It didn’t seem to hurt her, but it was a disconcerting sight after a very disconcerting week.

  “It’s heavy.” Bi Wei flinched. “This is like pulling a wasp nest from a branch, feeling the insects buzzing inside.”

  “Meridiana can’t hurt you from within the sphere,” I said.

  “You’re certain?”

  I hesitated. Gerbert d’Aurillac hadn’t believed Meridiana would be able to escape at all, but she had learned to reach beyond her prison. “She won’t do anything to stop you from retrieving the sphere.”

  Bits of ash fell away like carbonized confetti. I double-checked Smudge for signs of anxiety or fear. He was preoccupied with grooming the bristles on the top of his head, rubbing his forelegs over his scalp like he was trying to fix a stubborn cowlick.

  Like a magician revealing a final trick, Bi Wei lifted her hands. The remnants of the poem dropped onto the desk, leaving her holding the bronze globe I had seen during my conversation with Gerbert d’Aurillac.

  She set the sphere on the desk, moving as slowly and carefully as if it were a bomb primed to explode.

  I reached out to touch the sphere. Despite the heat Bi Wei had described, the metal was cool to the touch. The rings were polished and utterly clean of dust or corrosion. I might not be able to sense the magic, but I could still appreciate the craftsmanship that had gone into this sphere: the precisely drilled holes, the rings mounted to various axes, the images etched into the metal.