Bookburners: Season One Volume One

by Max Gladstone

  “I gave them the wrong orders,” Jacob said. “I wasn’t as careful as I should have been. It’s like Mom said: The Tornado Eaters do just what you ask them to. And I asked them to do the wrong thing. Protect this place from all threats, I told them. I imagined them just up there in the sky, or at the edge of town, standing guard and ready. But I think I should have said town instead of place. Because the Tornado Eaters have been in that box a long time, and it’s been over a hundred years since they’ve seen the place. And I hadn’t looked at it like this, but in the last hundred years, we haven’t been very good to this place.”

  “So the threat to the place is you,” Sal said. “Us.”

  “I think so,” Jacob said.

  “And there’s no way you can just order them back in the box.”

  “I live here,” said Jacob. “We all do. We’re part of the threat.”

  “But someone from outside of town might not be,” Sal said. “Someone who knew what they were doing with magic.” As long as they don’t come in here shouting and fighting and guns blazing, she thought. Like we did.

  Jacob nodded again. “Yes. I suppose that’s right.”

  There’s an opening here, Sal thought. A way out of this. There was someone in the Society who knew how to fix this, Sal was sure of it. All she needed was a way to communicate with them, with Asanti, and the Society could send someone in who could put the Tornado Eaters back in their box.

  She just had to get out of town, away from the magic, and use her phone.

  “Jacob?” she said. “One more question. How many Tornado Eaters did you let out?”

  “Five,” he said.

  “And the biggest one is the one in the sky?”

  “No,” he said. “The biggest one is underground.”

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll take my chances.”

  “You’re going?” Ray said.

  “Yeah,” Sal said. “Frankly, I don’t understand why you haven’t tried yet yourselves.”

  Ray just looked at her. “We’re home already,” he said. “We don’t want to leave.”

  • • •

  The walk would have been relaxing, romantic even, if Sal hadn’t been so scared. Tanner City was a pretty little town. The moon was setting and the sky was flooding with stars. The brick and wood houses in the middle eventually gave way to newer places with vinyl siding and wider lawns. There were bikes in the yards. A basketball hoop hung over a garage door. On a mailbox close to the street, someone had hung a sign advertising a tailoring and embroidery business.

  It was all so recognizable to Sal. She didn’t have a general theory about people—she’d seen a little too much for that—but if someone had forced her to give one, it would have been that most people don’t ask that much from their lives. They want a roof over their heads, a job that isn’t too terrible, a couple days off to relax now and again. If they have kids, they want to do okay by them. That’s about it.

  The world she lived in as a cop, where people did crazy and horrible things to each other and themselves, was abnormal. The world of politics she saw in the news, where people actually wanted to run states and countries, seemed to her to be full of ambitious sociopaths. This—Tanner City—was full of people Sal thought of as like most people. They had crummy but tolerable jobs, friends and families, and they didn’t ask much more than that. They didn’t ask for tornadoes and monsters. And right about then, it didn’t seem all that fair to Sal that they’d gotten them, though of course fairness had nothing to do with it.

  She felt a push in the air and looked up.

  The stars were wavering, as if through smoke, or old glass. There was something right above her. How far up, she couldn’t tell. But it was right there.

  She froze for what felt like hours, until the stars were clear again.

  At last, she was on the outside of town, and she kept walking for another mile. She went by a billboard that offered farm refinancing on one side and eternal salvation if you accepted Jesus on the other. She looked back.

  There was Tanner City. A little cluster of lights on the plain, clinging to both sides of the road into town. No sign at all of the creatures in the sky.

  Completely normal.

  She took out her phone and turned it on. It was working. She called Asanti.

  • • •

  Cardinal Varano frowns.

  “I want to thank you,” he says, “for exposing the presence of a working magician to the Society. We are in your debt for that.”

  “Sir?” Sal says.

  “You may address me as Cardinal,” Varano says.

  She keeps herself from rolling her eyes. You can kiss ass when you need to, Sal, she reminds herself. This is one of those times.

  “Cardinal,” she says, “may I ask what happened to Jacob?”

  “What do you mean?” he says. “You know what happened to him.”

  “No. I mean what we did with him.”

  “Miss Brooks,” he says. “He and his family are safe and sound, where they belong.”

  Where they belong. She doesn’t like the sound of that at all. She looks over at Balloon and Stretch, those two weirdos she’d run into with Menchú when she’d first gone to visit Perry, back when she first got here. They are sitting with their monsignor and Hilary Sansone, another of the members of Team Two. Balloon and Stretch are both looking back at Sal, as if they’ve been watching her the whole time. They each give her a huge grin.

  “Please proceed,” the cardinal said.

  Sal’s left something out of her testimony, the part where Jacob defended what he did. You understand why I did it, don’t you? he’d said. I just love this place so much and I don’t want to leave it. None of us do. Do you understand?

  Sal had looked at everyone in the brick house and they all nodded. She believed them. The tornado that destroyed half of Tanner City couldn’t make them go. The creatures that were destroying what was left couldn’t make them leave, either. They were the survivors, the people hanging on. The state could unincorporate the town around them, turn off the power, stop delivering the mail, stop fixing the roads, and they’d probably still be out there. And when anyone asked them where they were from, where they lived, they’d still say the same thing: Tanner City. Full stop.

  So what did Team Two do?

  • • •

  “Sal,” Asanti said. “It is very good to hear your voice.” Her own voice sounded strained, anxious.

  “Is everyone else okay?” Sal said.

  “We heard from Liam. Liam is all right.”

  Sal felt a weight leave her heart. She hadn’t realized she’d been feeling it until it was gone.

  “What about Grace and Menchú?”

  “No word,” Asanti said.

  And the weight returned. Sal put it away, the way her job, her life, had trained her to do.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Team One is on its way,” Asanti said. “They’re probably almost to you now. No more than a few hours off.”

  “Asanti,” Sal said, “I think I may have found a way to fix this without Team One. The Tornado Eaters—”

  “The what?” Asanti said.

  “That’s what they call the monsters around here.”

  “Who?”

  “The people in town.”

  “There are people in town?” Asanti said. “And they have a name for the monsters?”

  Sal told Asanti everything.

  “Asanti, is there any way of calling off Team One?” Sal said when she was finished with the story.

  There was a long pause on the other end.

  “Team One,” Asanti said, “is more like the military than the police. Once the gears are in motion, they turn. Team Two is following them in. From what Liam described to us, and now from what you’re telling us about the people in town, it sounds like they’ll be necessary.”

  Balloon and Stretch, Sal thought. The cold looks they’d given her. She pictured Balloon and Stretch talking to Sharon and Ja
cob—doing more than talking—and shuddered.

  She suddenly regretted having told Asanti anything. It was what she was supposed to do, but she was wondering if she should have.

  Then Asanti said, “Call Liam. You should be together when Team One arrives, at least so you’re easier to account for. And Liam will be thrilled to know that you’re alive.”

  “I’ll do it,” Sal said.

  “Sal?” Asanti said. “Please be careful.”

  “I’ll report back when Liam and I have joined up.”

  She called Liam. He was as relieved as Asanti said he would be, as Sal expected him to be. They figured out they were less than a mile apart. Within a half hour she was approaching the intersection of two local roads, not much more than two dirt tracks crossing at the corners of two farms. In the light gathering before dawn she could see that Liam was already there, a shadow standing in the dust. When he saw Sal he ran to her and gave her a crushing hug, big enough to lift her feet off the ground.

  “You have no idea how good it is to see you,” he said.

  They told each other what they’d done to get there. There wasn’t much more to say after that. So they waited for Team One. They were just glad to be there.

  • • •

  In the quiet of the fields at dawn, Sal and Liam could hear Team One rolling down the county road for a good minute before they actually got there. They were in a small line of Humvees that pulled to the side of the road in unison, the first one stopping less than a foot from Liam’s shin.

  Christophe Bouchard, Team One’s leader, got out of the passenger side of the head vehicle.

  “Doyle,” he said, giving him a smile. “So here we are.”

  “Yes,” Liam said. “I’m glad to see you.” He pointed toward Tanner City.

  “The monsters there are invisible right now. They won’t be when they attack. That’s our experience so far.”

  “We’ve seen that sort of thing before,” Bouchard said. “How many of them are there?”

  “At least two,” Liam said.

  “Three,” Sal said.

  Bouchard looked at her. “You’re sure?”

  “Yes. I talked to the person who let them out.”

  Bouchard’s eyebrows rose.

  “He didn’t mean it,” Sal said. “At least not . . . this.”

  Bouchard nodded. “So many of them always seem to have the best intentions. Good thing managing the general populace isn’t my department.” He cleared his throat. “How big are they?”

  “The tallest one we saw has legs that are possibly a quarter mile high,” Liam said.

  “That big?” Bouchard said.

  “Possibly. Maybe bigger.”

  “And that’s not the biggest one,” Sal said. “Not according to the person who let them out.”

  Liam and Bouchard both looked at her.

  “The biggest one is underground,” she said. “We haven’t seen it yet.”

  Bouchard pursed his lips. “Okay, then,” he said. “Tell me what else you know about these things.”

  Sal and Liam did. Sal protected Sharon and Jacob whenever she had a chance. Then Bouchard paced over to the lead vehicle and made a gesture. In less than a minute the other members of Team One had gotten out and were standing in tight formation.

  “Gentlemen,” Bouchard began. He walked them through the details of what Liam and Sal had related and waited for a response. There was none.

  “We will need everything we have,” he finished. “Conventional and unconventional. Suit up.”

  Out came an assortment of metal pieces that looked like something between medieval armor and an industrial exoskeleton. A crate of oddly shaped weapons. Two pairs of wings, one made of sharp metal feathers, the other almost transparent, like the wings of a giant dragonfly. A pair of claws.

  Team One suited up. Two of them took the wings and strapped them to their backs, and the wings softened and fluttered. Another soldier pulled the claws over his own hands and they seemed to bond to his arms. They donned their armor as if they’d each only found pieces of a full suit. One of them had an arm sheathed in a coppery metal. With that arm, he hoisted a machine gun Sal was sure should be mounted on the front of a helicopter. Another slid into a set of trousers and, testing them, jumped over the van in a single leap and landed crouching on his feet. A third soldier draped a cloak over his shoulders, closed his eyes, disappeared, and reappeared ten feet down the road.

  What was all this stuff? Sal thought. And what about the swords, axes, and vials that hung from Team One’s belts?

  How much magic was involved here?

  “All right,” Bouchard said. “Let’s go in noisy so we can see what we’re up against.” He turned to Sal and Liam.

  “Can you guys drive these?” He motioned to the Humvees.

  Sal and Liam nodded.

  “You round up the civilians you mentioned and get them out of town, okay?” Bouchard said.

  “All right,” Sal said. She turned to Liam. “Follow me.”

  Sal took the lead vehicle. Team One stood in the road in front of her, again in tight formation. Bouchard’s arm was raised. He dropped it like the blade of a guillotine.

  Team One took off. One soldier grabbed the hand of the one with the cloak, and both vanished. One jumped onto the back of the man with the trousers, and they sprinted off down the road, almost flying. The ones with wings began flapping them, rising to hover in the air. They grabbed the final two earthbound soldiers under their arms and flew toward Tanner City. Bouchard himself took off at a run, too fast for humans to go without some kind of help.

  Sal hit the gas and careened into town behind them. She looked in her rearview mirror. Liam was right behind her, teeth gritted.

  Just after Sal hit the edge of town she took a sharp left onto a side street, backtracking. She passed the sign on the house where the woman did embroidery. The basketball hoop. The bikes in the yard. The vinyl siding gave way to wood and brick. She was almost back in the center of the town. For a split second she didn’t recognize the brick house where Ray, Sharon, Jacob, and the others were. It looked different during the day, from the back. Then she saw the tree, the tree that had bent sideways, as though in a storm, as she and Ray had walked through the parking lot. She pulled into the lot without losing speed and shrieked to a halt.

  She looked up, expecting to see the monsters appear in a wink, right out of the clear blue sky. But the monsters were already there. They had seen Team One. The first one was just a block away, towering over the roofs, its triangular head pointed toward the sky. The other one was still there, too, its legs arcing down from the clouds, its body way above. Was it only a quarter mile? Was it more? It was impossible to say.

  And where was the biggest one?

  As Sal watched, the soldier from Team One with the metal wings, carrying another soldier, dived straight toward the monster. The creature’s mouth opened into a roar. The wings tucked, and the two team members gained speed. The soldier being carried pulled out a blade that grew in his hand to the size of a lance. More blades sprang from his arms, his legs, until he was covered in razors. He put his bladed arms out in front of him. Before the monster even had a chance to stop roaring, the coupled soldiers started spinning like arrows, flew straight into the monster’s mouth, and burst out of the back of its head in a blossom of black blood and torn-up flesh. The blades on the suits retracted and out came the wings, and the two team members sped away in the air, in time to clear a fireball that started in the creature’s neck, right below its head, and ballooned outward from there. The Tornado Eater started to let out a horrific cry that was choked off at once as the head separated from the rest of the body and tilted downward to fall into the street.

  The two team members paused in midair and looked like they were exchanging jokes with each other. One of them, Sal thought, must have dropped a bomb down the Tornado Eater’s throat as they were passing through. Like they’d done this drill a hundred times.

  She r
an to the door of the brick house and smacked on it with her palm until someone opened it. It was Ray.

  “Get everyone out,” Sal said. “We’re getting you out of town. It’s not safe to be here right now.”

  “We just saw,” Ray said, “through the window.”

  “Then you know,” Sal said. “Come on.”

  All nineteen of them made a break for the Humvees in the lot.

  “Don’t look up,” Sal told them. They all did.

  They could see tracer bullets rising from the street toward the legs of the Tornado Eater suspended in the sky. The shots must have been coming from the street. Then the firing stopped, and as they watched, five soldiers came into view, one climbing each leg, until they reached the spot where, against nature, the legs started getting thinner. The Tornado Eater started thrashing, trying to kick them off, but they held on tight; Sal realized they’d each spiked something, a knife, a spear, into the flesh and were hanging onto that. They weren’t coming off.

  “Get in, get in,” Sal yelled. Everyone did, and they drove a few blocks away, until Sal was sure they were safe. She turned the Humvee around so she could see.

  The two team members who could fly shot up toward the body until they were far enough away that no one on the ground could see them. Then some signal must have been given. High above them, the body of the Tornado Eater erupted in flame. At the same time, the team members on each leg drew weapons—swords, axes, some circular bladed weapon that Sal didn’t recognize—that grew to seemingly four times the soldiers’ height. They flashed in the sun like giant scissors. That they could wield them at all seemed like an impossibility, but there it was. They brandished them in near-synchronicity, then together they cut through all the legs at once, and scrambled back down. The body started to fall from the sky.

  The air darkened, reddened.

  It was a mist of blood. Sal turned on the windshield wipers and waited until it cleared.

  Outside it was quiet.

  “Are we safe?” Sal asked. She looked back at the people in the van.

  “No,” said a voice. “Not at all.” Jacob.

  “Tell me,” Sal said.

  “The last one,” Jacob said, “will eat the town before it lets you have it.”