Bookburners: Season One Volume One
Page 33
The words started to speak to her, encouraging her to read the book aloud, to unlock what was inside. A tap at her calf distracted her, and she looked down, breaking the hold of the words. The tattoo gun cord was bumping against her leg as Gardener fought with it.
“Well hell, that’s easy,” Sal muttered, and yanked the cord to grab the gun from Gardener.
He didn’t expect a pull on his weapon, and dropped it. Grace punched him, hard, then kicked him in the face when he went down. He didn’t move again. Sal took the moment to pick up the tattoo gun and begin slashing through the skin pages, cutting the words with ink until they became illegible.
Screams erupted from the waiting room, and the tentacles on Gardener’s back rose high, agitated, then fell down in a torrent of ink. His scream sounded as if it came from something other than the man himself, something higher or older or weirder. Ink leaked from his eyes and mouth and nose.
When Sal was done with the book, he had bled out, ink was everywhere, and the floor had stopped hissing.
She closed the book and unplugged the tattoo gun.
• • •
Sal hadn’t seen Liam since they’d returned to Rome. He’d been silent on the trip back, mostly sleeping or brooding. She had texted him a few times without an answer. Sal finally figured she would ask Menchú if Liam was all right.
Menchú’s door was cracked, and Sal heard voices. She positioned herself outside the door, flat against the wall.
She heard weeping.
Menchú said something in Latin that sounded like a prayer. Then, “Liam, child of God, you are forgiven your sins and are free of the Gardener’s taint. The book holds no more power.”
“I’m broken, Father. I have been since you found me, and Las Vegas just made it worse. I won’t ever be free of this fear,” he said, his voice thick. “I am a sinner. I summoned a demon—”
“And then we saved you, and you found Christ, repented, and were forgiven,” Menchú interrupted, patiently. “Your years since then have changed you.”
“I lost two years, Father. I woke up when you found me in that closet, tangled in wires and chanting. What if whatever did that to me is still here? What if that damned tattoo artist put something else inside me?”
Sal peered through the crack in the door.
Liam knelt, shirtless, at Menchú’s feet. The ink from Gardener’s attack had drained out after Sal had destroyed the book, leaving a small white scar. Liam’s skin was red and irritated. Long scratches crossed the white mark, as if he’d tried to tear it from his skin with his own fingernails.
“I can’t, Father, I can’t have another one in me. I’m not strong enough,” he said, slumping against Menchú’s bed.
“And you don’t, Liam. You weren’t carrying a demon when we found you; you were its tool, not its vessel. And now we’ve confirmed that Gardener’s death, and the confiscation of his weapon, freed everyone he infected—including you. You belong to yourself, and to God. You are a warrior of Christ. You’ll be fine. Go and get some sleep.”
Sal had heard enough. She left them talking, and went to help Grace remove the bandages that had covered her burns.
“Did you tell Mama Tat she’s safe now?” Grace asked as Sal tended her wounds.
“Yeah,” Sal said. “She offered me a free tattoo, but I didn’t really feel like one after all that. I kept her card, though.”
“What do you think will make you change your mind?” Grace asked.
“Who knows? A lot of things happened to change my mind on a variety of things, just in the past week.” She tossed the last bandages into the trash, stretched, and yawned. “I’m heading home before Menchú can find another crisis. I need some sleep. I’ll see you later.”
• • •
When Liam called Sal later and asked her to come over, she wasn’t surprised. “You were right,” he said flatly when she reached his apartment. “I can’t do this anymore.”
Sal crossed her arms. She wanted to argue, but she couldn’t do that to him now. “So that’s it?”
“I am a weak man, Sal, weaker than you deserve. I have to find out who I am before I give myself to someone else.”
It hurt more than she expected. “And you have to do this alone? No help along the way?”
“No,” he said. “What happened in Nevada . . .” He raised his right hand as if about to pull back his sleeve and show her—then dropped it again. “I can’t.”
“‘It’s not you, it’s me,’” Sal said. She stood. “If working with this team has taught me anything, Liam, it’s that we all need someone cover our backs. If you want to figure out this ‘weak man’ crap alone, fine, but your team would be here, your friends would be here.” She wanted to go further, but she didn’t know what to call herself. Finally she said, “I would be here. If you asked.”
He closed his eyes and shook his head. Sal got her coat and left, and closed the door softly behind her.
Liam wasn’t only damning himself to solitude, she realized. He had been her closest friend on this continent. Now she was alone, too.
Again.
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Writer Team
Max Gladstone (lead writer) has been thrown from a horse in Mongolia, drunk almond milk with monks on Wudang Shan, and wrecked a bicycle in Angkor Wat. Max is also the author of the Craft Sequence of books about undead gods and skeletal law wizards—Full Fathom Five, Three Parts Dead, Two Serpents Rise, with Last First Snow.
Max fools everyone by actually writing novels in the coffee shops of Davis Square in Somerville, MA. His dreams are much nicer than you’d expect.
Brian Francis Slattery is the author of Spaceman Blues, Liberation, Lost Everything, and The Family Hightower. Lost Everything won the Philip K. Dick Award in 2012. He’s the arts and culture editor for the New Haven Independent, an editor for the New Haven Review, and a freelance editor for a few not-so-secret public policy think tanks. He also plays music constantly with a few different groups in several different genres.
He lives with his family just outside of New Haven CT, and admits that elevation above sea level was one of the factors he took into account. For one week out of every year, he enjoys living completely without electricity.
Mur Lafferty is the author of The Shambling Guides series from Orbit, including The Shambling Guide to New York City and Ghost Train to New Orleans. She has been a podcaster for more than ten years, running award-winning shows such as I Should Be Writing and novellas published via podcast. She has written for RPGs, video games, and short animation. She lives in Durham, NC, where she attends Durham Bulls baseball games and regularly pets two dogs. Her family regrets her Dragon Age addiction and wishes she would get help.
Before joining the Bookburners team, Margaret Dunlap wrote for Eureka (SyFy) as well as ABC Family’s cult-hit The Middleman. Most recently, she was a writer and co-executive producer of the Emmy-winning transmedia series The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, and co-created its sequel Welcome to Sanditon. Her short fiction has previously appeared in the online magazine Shimmer. She tweets as @spyscribe.
Margaret lives in Los Angeles, CA, where she taunts the rest of the writing team with local weather reports and waits for the earthquake that will finally turn Burbank into oceanfront property.
Table of Contents
Episode 1: Badge, Book, and Candleby Max Gladstone
Episode 2: Anywhere But Here by Brian Francis Slattery
Episode 3: Fair Weather by Margaret Dunlap
Episode 4: A Sorcerer’s Apprentice by Mur Lafferty
Episode 5: The Market Arcanum by Margaret Dunlap
Episode 6: Big
Sky by Brian Francis Slattery
Episode 7: Now and Then by Max Gladstone
Episode 8: Under My Skin Mur Lafferty
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Writer Team