Libriomancer (9781101597552)

by Hines, Jim C.

  “This way.” Granach led us past thick Plexiglass doors built into either side of the white-painted hallway. In one room, a young boy sat huddled in the far corner. “The doors are thick enough to withstand even our strength. Should one ever break, it would trigger an array of ultraviolet lasers strong enough to vaporize flesh. Each cell is also airtight, a necessity when some of your prisoners can dissolve into mist.”

  I peered more closely at the rubber-sealed edges. A smaller, similarly-sealed metal square was built into the wall to the right of each door, like miniature air locks. “Who are these people?”

  “Anyone too dangerous to roam freely through our home who, for whatever reason, we’ve chosen not to eliminate. Yet.” Granach pointed to a middle-aged woman in another cell. “She tried to feed on her own kind, hoping to absorb their powers. We’d have destroyed her on the spot, except it seems to have worked. We’re studying her blood to learn why. The boy we just passed was conspiring with a vampire hunter from the Catholic Church, hoping for redemption. He lives until we know exactly how many people he told of our existence. Naturally, this hasn’t made him terribly cooperative.”

  “What about him?” I asked, pointing to a skinny black-haired vampire sleeping on a stone-carved bench.

  “He hacked our servers. I lost four years’ worth of e-mail.”

  We turned right, and Lena froze. Up ahead, a single figure sat in a wooden chair in front of another cell, talking to someone within. A tall, broad-shouldered man with a gun stood guard behind her. The dim lighting made it hard to discern any details, but I heard Lena’s slow, indrawn breath. She took a single step, then spun around and grabbed my shoulders.

  “Whatever they did, there will be consequences,” I promised, pulling her close. “We’ll find a way.”

  “I know.” Her hand slid up my neck, into my hair. She kissed me once, inhaled deeply, then turned to face Nidhi Shah.

  Shah rose from the chair and stepped toward us. Even from here I could see her confusion and disbelief. She halted in midstep when the guard behind her readied his gun.

  “It’s all right,” said Granach. “Isaac is a Porter. He and his friend Lena have come to lend us their expertise.”

  “Lena? How . . .?” Shah looked exhausted. Behind the rectangular lenses of her glasses, her eyes were shadowed. Her lower lip was swollen and bruised. Her clothes were filthy. The embroidered collar of her blue shirt was low enough to see her neck. The exposed skin was undamaged, and her shirt was free of bloodstains. “What are you doing here, love?”

  Lena whirled toward Granach, her eyes wide with disbelief.

  “Yes, she’s human,” Granach said, sounding amused. “Once she understood the threat we faced, she cooperated willingly. It’s for the best, as this leaves her mind intact.”

  Shah gave us a tentative smile, revealing the slight gap between her front teeth that I remembered from our sessions. Her hair hung about her face in dirty wisps, and I could just make out the faint blue tattoo on her left temple, a series of Gujarati characters that meant balance.

  Lena pulled away from me. I glanced at Smudge, who continued to glow like a coal, but he didn’t noticeably react to Shah’s presence. “I think she’s telling the truth.”

  Lena ran down the hall, wrapped her arms around Doctor Shah, and kissed her hard. For her part, Doctor Shah returned the embrace with enthusiasm.

  “So nice to see young lovers reunited,” Granach purred, her cold breath tickling my neck. I hadn’t even heard her approach. She was smiling, not at Lena and Doctor Shah, but at me, as if she was the one who had jabbed a knife into my chest and twisted.

  I did my best to swallow the jealousy and forced a smile of my own. “I’ve never met a vampire with dentures before. What kind of cream do you use to keep them in?”

  “You have a good eye,” she said, but the amusement was gone from her voice. “These are specially designed. Would you like to see?” Her smile tightened, and tiny triangular blades slid from the canine teeth.

  “Don’t tease her, Isaac,” said Shah. “Alice doesn’t take well to challenges.”

  “Isaac.” Lena stared at me, her mouth round with confusion. She kept a possessive arm around Shah’s waist. I had the feeling she had completely forgotten my presence until Shah mentioned my name.

  Doctor Shah looked from Lena to me and back. “I see.”

  “I thought you were—” Lena began.

  “I understand.” Shah was breathing hard, and her face was darker than usual. She wiped her brow and studied me more closely. “You’ve been overdoing your magic again, Isaac.”

  There was the calm, clinically detached tone I remembered from the last time I walked out of her office. “I haven’t had much of a choice.”

  Granach let out a melodramatic sigh. “Perhaps you could sort out your tangled little human emotions at a later time? I believe Isaac was going to try to help us find a rogue libriomancer.”

  “She thinks Gutenberg is behind this,” said Shah.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I’ve learned my way around Porter minds, but Gutenberg is a breed apart. The only thing I know for certain is that I don’t know or understand what goes on in that man’s head.”

  Granach gestured toward the glass door. Lena didn’t meet my eyes as I stepped past her to examine the prisoner inside.

  The woman in the cell was short and slender. Her skin had a strange blue-gray pallor. She wore green hospital scrubs covered in bloodstains, especially at the waist. Heavy scars covered her wrists, as if they had been repeatedly clawed open. Her fingernails were glassy with a bluish tinge, and there were faint lesions on her skin.

  “You’ve been helping them?” Lena asked.

  “Not at first.” I had rarely heard Doctor Shah angry before. She tapped the tattoo on her temple. “The Porters’ protections kept them from reading my mind, but they found other ways to batter my will. They took my files, forced me to decrypt and translate them so they could study every patient I’d ever worked with.”

  The fury in her words reminded me of my own when Deb had first told me about the destruction of our library. Forcing Doctor Shah to break confidentiality was a violation far worse than the attack on her home.

  Granach rapped a knuckle on the glass, earning a snarl from the creature within. “Her name is Chesa. She staked one of the elders and secreted him away, torturing him for two days before we found them.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “A rosewood stake through the heart to immobilize him. After that, she used knives.”

  Just like the vampire who had killed Ray Walker.

  “She’s a sociopath,” said Doctor Shah. “Though that particular diagnosis doesn’t mean as much down here. She cut off the victim’s head when she heard the others coming.”

  I moved to the far edge, trying to make out Chesa’s eyes.

  “She’s tried four times to kill herself with her bare hands,” Shah continued. “But her body heals too quickly. Those scars on her arms will be gone within an hour. The guards pass blood into the cell through here to feed her.” She tapped the small square panel, which was connected to a flexible hose leading to a heavy green air tank. “I suspect Chesa would starve herself if she could, but her nature works against her. She can’t fight the bloodlust. She drinks her own after each suicide attempt, even licking the floor in her hunger.”

  “So what stops her from going up in flames like the others?” I asked.

  “Flame requires oxygen.” Granach pointed to the tank. “Pure nitrogen and carbon dioxide.”

  “Clever.” That would explain the blue-tinged skin and nails. “What does oxygen deprivation do to a creature so dependent on blood?”

  “It tortures her,” Shah said flatly. “Imagine every muscle in your body cramping with superhuma
n strength, your skin cold and stiff as leather. Every cell starving.”

  I knelt to examine the mechanism. A one-way valve was screwed onto the plate, which would prevent a vampire from going gaseous and forcing her way out through the air tank. “How did you capture her in the first place?”

  “Not even vampires are invulnerable,” said Granach. “Strike hard enough, and most can be knocked unconscious, at least for a time.”

  “Good to know. What else have you learned?”

  Shah sagged into her chair. She seemed calm, but her knuckles were white as she clung to Lena’s hand. “Chesa’s mind isn’t her own.” She grabbed a notepad from the floor and flipped through the pages. “I’ve seen glimpses of what I believe to be Chesa herself, but they’re fleeting. Moments of fear and confusion, swiftly overpowered by the controlling mind. Minds, rather.”

  “There’s more than one?” I asked.

  “If Chesa were human, I’d probably diagnose her with some form of dissociative identity disorder. Her body language, her intonation, everything shifts at random. One moment she’s pacing like a tiger, looking out as if she can smell my blood even through the barrier. The next she’s rocking and banging her head against the wall, a violent self-stimming behavior that reminds me of severe autism. I’ve documented at least four distinct patterns of behavior and body language.”

  I stared at Chesa, trying to fit the pieces together in my head. “What species is she?”

  “Manananggal,” said Granach.

  “Really?” I pressed against the door, my other concerns momentarily forgotten. “That would explain the blood at the waist, but what is she doing in Detroit?”

  “What’s a manananggal?” asked Lena.

  “A creature that originated in the Philippines,” I said. “Natural, not book-born. She’s not exactly a vampire, though she does feed on blood. And organs. And the occasional unborn child. At night they sprout wings, and the upper part of the torso separates from the lower, allowing her to fly and hunt.”

  “Not in there,” said Granach. “We keep the air pressure too low.”

  Chesa slammed her head against the door, making me jump. Smudge flared hot. I patted out the sparks on my jacket. “What have you tried to get her to talk?”

  “Hypnotism had no effect,” Granach said sourly. “Nor did drugs or torture.”

  “None of them affect whoever is controlling her.” I cupped my hands to the door, studying the gold irises that flexed around her cross-shaped pupils. “What about her blood? Can’t your readers sort through her thoughts?”

  “We’ve tried. They followed her memories through the streets. She was attacked during the daytime. From the speed and power, we assume it was another vampire. There was pain, a falling sensation, and then . . . nothing. She has no recollection beyond that moment.”

  “The one thing the murders have in common is rage,” said Doctor Shah. “Fury like that doesn’t come out of nowhere.”

  “They hate us,” I agreed, remembering Ray’s apartment. “This is personal.” If Gutenberg was responsible, how long had this hatred been building beneath the surface, and how had he managed to hide it from those around him?

  I knocked on the cell door. “Hi, there. Alice here says you have no memories, but I’m betting you remember me.”

  Chesa sank back slowly. Her arms and shoulders shivered, reminding me of a bird ruffling her wings.

  “Looking at the murders suggests we’re dealing with a serial killer,” Shah said. “A serial killer wants power. The thrill of playing God.”

  “That could be any Porter,” I said dryly.

  “Why do you think they keep me on staff?” she countered, matching my tone.

  “Touché.” I reached deep into my pockets to grab a copy of Heart of Stone.

  “You were searched,” Granach said darkly. The guard moved toward me, but she held up a hand. “How—”

  “Do you want me to examine your prisoner, or do you want to stand here in front of the woman you kidnapped and argue about rule breaking?”

  She scowled, but didn’t stop me from tugging a pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses from the pages. The nosepieces were warm, and sweat smeared the top of both lenses. I used my shirttail to wipe them clean, then slipped them on.

  The tunnel dimmed further, but certain figures brightened. Lena appeared backlit, as if sunlight flickered just behind her body. The vampires glowed as well, a silvery light more reminiscent of the moon.

  “You’re pushing too hard,” Doctor Shah warned. She was a faded shadow, utterly without magic save for the small burning light on her temple. “Have the voices returned?”

  “Not yet,” I lied.

  I glanced down. I would have expected Smudge to glow like fire, but his magic was different. A simple white light surrounded him like a comet, the tail extending toward me. I unhooked his cage and held it at arm’s length, using the cuff of the jacket to protect my fingers from the heat of the bars. No matter where I held him, the tail pointed to my chest.

  How much of Smudge’s magic flowed through me? That connection would explain why he understood my plans so easily.

  Lena was a product of libriomancy, too, and as I looked more closely, I saw flickers of white light stretching away from her. One led to Doctor Shah, while another, weaker thread connected her to me. A third extended through the wall at a slight upward angle. Perhaps that was her connection to the trees above, some lingering thread to the pine she had slept in last night, or to the branch she had grafted to my oak in Copper River.

  I examined Chesa next. Unlike the rest of us, Chesa was surrounded by two competing magical auras. One was similar to Granach and Kyle. The other matched the white, comet-like light coming off of Smudge, complete with a faint tail pointing toward whoever was controlling her. “Which way is north?”

  Granach pointed off to the left. My guess had been off by a good ninety degrees or so. I clipped the cage back onto my belt loop, then stuck singed fingers in my mouth. “What are you so worried about, Smudge? She’s not getting out of that cage, and nobody else is trying to kill us right this minute.” To the others, I said, “Our killer is west of here. Is there any way to take Chesa aboveground? I could triangulate a rough location.”

  “It would be difficult,” said Granach. “What else can you see?”

  “I’ve never used these glasses before, but the magic matches my own. I think this was done by a libriomancer.”

  “We surmised as much.” Granach pressed a hand to the glass. “Can’t you conjure up a crystal ball or a magic mirror to show us the face of our enemy? Or summon a genie and wish that enemy into nothingness?”

  “I could pull Aladdin’s lamp into our world, sure.” I continued to study the manananggal. What happened to Chesa’s organs when she separated her body to hunt, and how did they repair themselves afterward? The average human being had twenty-two feet of small intestine alone. If her magic could be duplicated by Porter surgeons to heal—

  “The lamp,” Granach prodded.

  “Sorry,” I said. “The lamp would fit through the book, but the transition from the fictional world would destroy the genie’s mind. On the bright side, I doubt we’d survive long enough to worry about a murderous libriomancer. As for mirrors and such, they come preprogrammed for another world. Take Tolkien’s palantir, for example.” I stared at their blank faces and sighed. “It’s a crystal ball. Didn’t you people at least see the movies?”

  Doctor Shah cleared her throat.

  “Right. The point is, I could use the palantir to try to find our enemy. Likely as not, it would show us the dark lord Sauron from Lord of the Rings. And if we’re really unlucky, Sauron would reach through that connection to attack or possess whoever looked upon him.”

  “So you have no other way of finding this libriomancer?”

  I
hesitated. “Taking Chesa up to the surface will be fastest.”

  “We could send others through the air lock to subdue her,” Granach said slowly. “If she were kept unconscious, sealed in an airtight coffin . . .”

  A whoosh of heat and flame seared my hip. I swore and jumped, which only rattled Smudge further. He was burning like a blackened marshmallow, running vertical loops within his cage. Smoke poured from my jacket as I yanked it back.

  Lena ripped the cage free, tearing my belt loop in the process. She set him gently on the floor, then flexed her reddened hand. “Have you considered asbestos-lined jeans?”

  “Yes.” I flapped my jacket, trying to find the source of the smoke. The material was blackened, but nothing appeared to be burned or melted.

  “That’s not smoke,” Kyle said softly.

  It was mist, thick and black, which poured from my jacket and rushed toward the guard, where it coalesced into a familiar figure. Rupert Loyola, also known as Mister Puddles, grabbed the guard’s head and twisted, then hurled the body at Alice Granach.

  A slash of Loyola’s blackened nails tore through the air hose into Chesa’s cage. Kyle grabbed him in a bear hug. They staggered, but Loyola kept his balance long enough to smash a heel into the small air lock.

  Lena shoved Doctor Shah back, picked up her chair, and shattered it against Loyola’s ribs. The broken chair back shifted in Lena’s hands, growing sharpened points.

  Loyola was already dissolving into mist once again. He swirled away, re-forming behind Granach. She spun, and her hand shot through his half-formed neck.

  I looked away. The sound of crunching bone and sinew was horrifying enough. I didn’t need the visuals, too.

  Nobody moved. Only the whisper of rushing air broke the silence. Kyle shut off the air tank, but the hiss continued.

  “The air lock,” I said. Inside the cell, Chesa laughed as she pressed up to the other side. Lena covered the metal plate with her hands, trying to slow the flow of oxygen, but it was too late. Chesa’s cross-slitted eyes flared like coals.