by Briana Snow
“Ow!” she hissed, and there were alarmed shouts from behind. The bookshelf hadn’t collapsed completely thank goodness, mostly because of how high it was and how narrow the avenues were between the books. Instead, Penelope sat in a pile of books that looked as though they had been torn down in a whirlwind.
The portal. The grimoires. Penelope knew that the grimoires caused that sort of devastating whirlwind, but, aside from the occasional collapse of a book or two, there was no such spectral hurricane happening now. They must be closed, she thought, digging down into the pile of books at her feet until she saw them: the two large, leather-hide covered volumes of the Luminaire. She pulled them out quickly, and even made to check them for damage when she stopped herself. Of course they wouldn’t be damaged, they protected themselves, after all.
“Allo?” said a voice. “Allo, madame?” It was in a French accent, and accompanying it was the spear of light from a torch, as it was night time here, clearly.
“Where am I?” She groaned, standing up on weak legs and clutching the grimoires to her body.
“Where do you think we are?” said another voice, as the security guard crumpled to the floor under the weight of another heavy volume as large as the Book Hunter’s torso. Verity dropped the book to one side. “Excusez-moi,” she apologized to the unconscious security guard, picking up his torch before rubbing her own head. “We’re in the Biblioteque Nationale of Paris, or the National Library of France as it is otherwise known, and my head feels like someone has just dropped a bookshelf on top of it.”
“Oh, right, sorry.” Penelope winced. “And thank you, as well. For saving me back there, in that blue light.”
“Don’t mention it.” Verity sighed wearily, wincing. “Now. We’re so close, and we haven’t got much time, because all of the forces of Hell, both in this plane of existence and in the underworld, will be tearing themselves apart to get here now that they have felt the portal open and close so recently. We have to find the third grimoire.” Verity looked around the aisles of tall shelves, shining her torch at the distant walls.
“Aha! Special Collections: Restricted Access.” She beamed at Penelope, gesturing towards a sign in French over a set of metal doors. “That’s got to be us, right?”
“Wrong.” Click. The two women heard the unmistakable click of a gun. “Well, in some sense you are correct, Miss Vorja. That is us, but the us you are referring to is me as well.”
Penelope and Verity looked around, as stepping out from behind the shelves came none other than Darius Harp, Penelope’s brother and acting chief of their sworn enemy, the Knights Templar.
“Darius—what are you doing here?” Penelope said in surprise.
“What do you think I’m doing here, sister mine?” he snarled, gesturing with the gun. “I’m here to take those grimoires off of you, and do what I should have done a long time ago!”
“And what is that? Kill me just like you killed our parents?” Penelope stood up, holding the first two volumes of the Luminaire across her chest.
A look of—something—crossed the young man’s face. Calculation, a grimace, a tightening of the jaw. Good, Penelope Harp thought. He feels some shame inside that heart of stone, at least!
“That was a necessary evil, I am afraid, in a complicated world.” Darius gestured with the gun. “Now, I want the pair of you to go towards the door. Not that way, thank you.” He started to steer them away from the door to the Special Collections vaults, where Verity had assumed that the third and final volume of the Luminaire had to be held.
“We don’t have much time, thanks to your insane meddling, but I have a car waiting outside, and we will seek to take the Luminaire as far from each other as possible,” The male Harp said, as Penelope started edging towards Verity over the books.
Bzzt! A blare of radio static, and Darius reached a hand into his suit pocket to retrieve a blocky and military-looking walkie-talkie.
“Bring the cars out to the front of the Biblioteque, please Pierre,” he said through the crackle, before grinning at Penelope. “We’ll take one of the volumes to a boat, and then a lead casket, and throw it in the bottom of the sea this time. Let’s see if any interfering psychics manage to get their hands on it then!” he said with a savage grin.
“I’m not just some interfering psychic, Darius,” Penelope tried to plead with him, remembering that moment of shame and guilt she had seen cross his features. “I’m your sister. Your sister.”
“And one that I have never met, nor spoken to, so why should I suddenly start caring for you now?” Darius scoffed. “No, I’m afraid that you will have the option of relinquishing the volumes into my care, or you will have the option of joining one of them in that lead casket. Understand?”
Penelope made a startled, choking sob. How could he be so unfeeling?
Verity was opening and closing her mouth, a pained look on her face as if she was trying to pass a message on to Penelope.
“Enough of the theatrics, Miss Vorja. I really have no time for such things.” Darius laughed. “The game is up. You have lost. Really, this is very ungracious of you.”
But Verity had indeed stopped in her tracks, and was leaning against the nearest bookshelf, holding a hand to her throat.
“Verity? Oh my god—what is it?” Penelope whispered, rushing to her side.
“Stand clear! Stay away from her!” Darius barked.
Verity was shaking her head rapidly, her eyes bulging, flapping with her hands weakly to try and push Penelope away from her.
“What can it be?” Penelope muttered. “Maybe it is the poisons from Hell? You said that Hell would be killing us both, were it not for the Luminaire protecting us…”
The Luminaire protecting us… Penelope thought suddenly. Why am I so afraid of a man with a gun when the grimoires will try to keep me alive? “Don’t worry, Verity, we’ll fix whatever is wrong with you,” the Special Collections Librarian said as she took a sudden step towards her brother, swinging the heavy grimoires at him.
BANG! His heavy pistol went off, but Penelope didn’t feel any pain, even though it was impossible for him to miss her at such a close distance.
THOCK! Both of the books smashed her brother across the face, causing a gargled shout of pain as he was thrown against the nearest bookshelf and to the floor.
“Come on!” Penelope seized Verity’s hand with one of her own, pulling her toward the metal door that Verity had pointed towards, the one that would lead them down to the Special Collections laboratory.
Chapter XLI
Penelope heard an anguished, furious scream from behind them as Darius pulled himself up from the floor, but the two women weren’t wasting any time as they clattered down the stairs that they found, leaping them or taking them in twos and threes, careening off the walls as they passed the floor below, and the next, and then the next.
“Sister!” Darius kicked his way into the stairwell above them. “You’ve broken my bleeding nose!” CRACK! CRACK-CRACK! He leaned across the banister and fired down at the fleeing women, but all the Special Collections Librarian had to do was to raise the Luminaire over their heads like she was holding a coat out to protect from rain. She thought that she even felt the thuds and thocks of something hitting the leather-backed manuscripts, but nothing penetrated it.
The things are almost indestructible, she thought. Almost.
“Penny—I, I can’t… Leave me.” Verity was starting to flag, looking like she was in severe pain, although Penelope couldn’t tell just what could be so suddenly wrong with her.
“No! We’re so close now, it can’t be much further.” They rounded the next set of stairs as Darius above gave up trying to shoot them and instead started to clatter down the stairs after them in pursuit, shouting as he did so.
“You’re making a terrible mistake, Penelope! You cannot control the grimoires! You will open the full portal, and all hell will be loose…”
“Don’t listen to him,” Verity breathed, clutching at her
heart. “You can do it. You’re a Harp.” They rounded the next landing, finally coming to the bottom of the stairs, with their pursuer just a handful of floors above them and gaining.
The bottom of the Paris National Library was sealed by a barred metal door and a key-card system.
“Oh no…” Penelope said, looking at how strong and impregnable it looked.
“The Luminaire!” Verity gasped, raising her heads in a mime as Darius drew closer. Understanding what the Book Hunter meant, Penelope knew that the grimoires would want to be reunited with their fellows, and swung them at the metal security bar of the door in the same way that she had struck her brother.
There was a fizzing of electric sparks from the electric lock, and the door shook as if hit by vast internal forces, and wavered open, releasing the smell of dry air, dust, and faint twinges like vanilla and cleaning solution.
The smells of a secure manuscript facility, Penelope thought, shoving at Verity to go ahead of her as they pushed through the ruined metal doors and into a wide stone corridor. This must be deep below the National Library. Penelope saw the dull flicker of sodium lights stapled to the walls, with their black wires snaking between each. This might even be a part of Old Paris, the catacombs and sewers below the city.
“Where would they keep it?” Penelope said urgently.
“Just—” Verity doubled over coughing, turning to wedge the metal doors closed behind them with an audible click. “Just follow the books,” she wheezed, sliding down to a crouch.
“Oh no, you don’t. I’m going to need you with me,” Penelope said, hefting the Luminaires under one arm and pulling at her apparently seriously ill friend with the other.
Thud! The metal doors shook as Darius, on the other side, hit them.
“They’re already broken. It won’t take him long,” Penelope whispered.
“Then leave me! I’m useless now.” Verity’s legs shook.
“Not to me you’re not.” Penelope pulled the Book Hunter bodily beside her, using every ounce of desperation and strength as she followed the pull of the grimoires in her hand, and, to her surprise—they were pulling at her, or rather, they were pulling at her mind.
Thud-thud! The sound of the Templar attacking the wedged metal vault doors receded as the two women ran down stone corridors past low arched openings to other glass-fronted rooms, where it seemed special air-pumps had been installed to perfectly preserve the books and scrolls on display and being studied down here. Penelope paid them all no heed, taking a turn and then another as she followed the invisible line that drew her, inexorably to another stone and brick archway, inset with vacuum-sealed glass doors. A dim spotlight was on the inside of the room, illuminating a stand, and upon that stand there sat none other than an exact replica of the two volumes that Penelope held in her hand.
“The final volume of the Luminaire Minus Clavem,” Penelope panted, wondering at just how many lives had been lost for this.
“Urgh!” Verity suddenly collapsed to the floor, clutching her chest. “It feels, it feels like I’m burning up…”
“Verity!” Penelope shouted, as the stone and brickwork behind them started to eddy, shake, and swirl.
“Have you opened the grimoires?” Verity was trying to push herself up from the floor, blinking the tears of pain from her eyes.
“No! No, of course I haven’t.” Penelope shook her head at the way that the incredibly small, localized earth tremor seemed to be happening just down the tunnel from them. “Is it some trick from Darius?”
Verity was coughing and spluttering as the shaking grew worse, just as there was a sudden, tremendous noise like amplified grinding teeth, followed by a dull boom. Rock dust and charcoal-smelling soot and smoke blew down the tunnel.
Penelope screamed, and was thrown through the reinforced glass separating her from the final volume.
“Verity?” With her head still ringing, and the dust not even settling, Penelope raised her head to see a shape rising out of the stone dust. But it wasn’t Darius and nor was it Verity. “It cannot be. How…?” the Special Collections Librarian said in horror.
It was. It was the form of a horribly mangled man, still wearing the once-smart black suit of an officer of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The dark shades that he had religiously worn over his eyes were now shattered and gone, and in their place was the ruined black space of his eyes.
“Consul Maximus!?” shouted a voice. It was Darius, who had apparently managed to break down the door, and was approaching down one of the tunnels holding his gun in both hands.
“That’s not the Consul,” Penelope groaned, as the Archon inside the FBI agent’s body saw her, and started running forward. Only, it couldn’t run, it could only lurch as the trip from Hell had managed to wound it.
“Maximus? What are you doing?” Darius was screaming, as the Archon growled, reaching the wall.
Suddenly, a shape rose, hitting the Archon over the head with a broken slab of rock. It was Verity, knocking the possessed man to the floor in a blow that would have killed any lesser mortal. “Get to work, Penelope!” she hissed, hefting the block of masonry for a second strike, but the Archon had already rolled horribly out of the way, one side of his face a ruined mess as it stood up, and threw a backhand to fling Verity to the wall with a crunch.
“Verity!” Penelope screamed. The Luminaire volumes were all about her, and all she had to do was open the cover of the third volume, but she was too distraught with what was happening to her friend.
And then came a horrible, choking sound. The sound of the Archon trying to get the dead man’s vocal chords to work. The Archon hacked and coughed, unclicking its jaw as it started to make a strange, guttural chuckling noise.
“I… should… thank you… Vorja,” the thing rasped, holding up something that was smoking and smelled terrible, looking like old and matted string.
“Her hair,” Penelope whispered in horror. The hair she left in Pandemonium.
“Just… had… to follow. The hair was… calling to you.” The thing grinned, and its mouth stretched wider and wider, impossibly wide as its jaws cracked open once more in a terrible approximation of a rictus grin.
No wonder Verity felt like she was in Hell. A part of her was, Penelope thought, reaching towards the third and final volume of the Luminaire.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK! Gunshots exploded into the tunnel, as Darius Harp, the acting head of the Knights Templar and brother to Penelope Harp finally saw what sort of creature they were dealing with. An Archon. A creature that wore the body of a human, but was about as far from human as it was possible to get (or at least, most other Princes of Hell were. This one had taken quite a fondness to the body of Consul Maximus).
Decades of programming and training kicked in for Darius. Years of pledging and repledging oaths, and believing quite fanatically that he had but one purpose on this earth: to stop the legions and spirits of Hell from gaining admittance, and here was one of the worst. Any awareness that he had of anything else vanished in a moment, as he fired round after round into the thing that had stolen a human form.
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
Inside the shattered remains of the manuscript vault, Penelope reached her hand to the final volume of the Luminaire Minus Clavem, to find that it wasn’t locked, and that the leather was subtly warm, soft, and spongy under her fingers. It feels alive, the Librarian thought.
In the passageway, Darius kept on walking forward as he fired, and kept on firing as the Archon was pushed back, thrown against the far wall, and then further into the rubble by the powerful bullets. The Templar was also a very good shot. He was good enough to be considered a marksman in the mundane world, so his shots hit the knees and the head, the cavity where the heart of a human would be, and the shoulders, smashing shoulder blades and joints, and crippling limbs. Any human suffering such an onslaught would have died within moments of such shock and damage performed to their body, and even any lesser devil would have been destroyed as the body lost
all of its tenuous links to life. But not so, the Archon.
Penelope pushed the three grimoires next to each other in front of her, side by side. No time. Her ears were ringing with the sound of her brother’s gun shots, and her mind was full of the sight of Verity hitting the rubble on the floor. Maybe she should wait to try and get Verity, but no—there really wasn’t any time.
All three volumes were high, and they were all authentic from her quick visual scan. Not that she needed her Librarianship skills right now, as she could feel the excited quiver of the grimoires as they wanted to be opened.
Suddenly the gunshots stopped. Darius had run out of bullets, and the thing was finally dead, and lying in a broken and twisted heap on the floor.
As the body of Special Consul Maximus finally became irreparable (even by the Archon’s prodigious magical powers) there was released a torrent of anger, hate, and fury within the creature’s spirit. It had just started to learn what it was like to have a body. What it was like to feel the emotions of satisfaction, victory, and reward. The twisted spirit had even relished the feeling of pain in its body, as all of these things were new and novel to it.
“And stay down!” Darius was hissing, as behind him, his sister reached for the third and final volume once more, flipping it over onto its back.
“This had better work,” she murmured, opening the back cover, and the final page of the Luminaire.
All of a sudden, the room and the tunnel was filled with the sudden whirl of noise like an invisible gale. But this time, instead of the winds blowing around and away from the Luminaire, the spectral whirlpool seemed to blowing straight towards it.
“Sister!” Darius was shouting, turning in alarm. “What are you doing? Close the book!”
But Penelope was having trouble enough keeping the other two grimoires unopened, as first the last page of the last book, and then the next, and the next, started flipping back towards the start of the volume, getting faster and faster. I have to make sure it all happens in time. In the right time. Penelope knelt on the other two volumes, feeling their metal locks digging into the flesh of her calves as she struggled for volume one and two to remain closed.