My voice trailed off. One of the ruined books in what remained of the cabin was magically active. I pushed the sunglasses higher on the bridge of my nose, squinting at what appeared to be a rip in reality, edged in char. “Uh-oh.”
“Uh-oh as in this is going to be hard, or uh-oh as in we should be running away as fast as we can?” Lena joined me, swords ready.
“Do you remember how I tried to find Hubert, back in the auto factory in Detroit? I think Hubert has done something similar here.” I stepped onto the cabin floor, slowly shifting my weight forward until the boards bowed and cracked. Lena jabbed one bokken into the ground and crouched, touching the floorboards. The wood creaked as she used her magic. Through the glasses, I could see the plywood strengthening, the fibers knitting together.
I crawled forward to snatch the book. The cover was torn away, and exposure to the wind and rain had taken its toll, but the interior pages were still legible. The page header revealed this to be The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
“One of the characters in Hubert’s head comes from Holmes.” That couldn’t be a coincidence. Was possession the result of overusing this book, which was badly charred? Or did Moriarty’s connection to the text make it easier for Hubert to access its magic? There had been frustratingly few studies on the effects of possession on magic.
“Can you seal it?” Lena asked.
I grimaced. The safest way would be to access the book’s magic myself, then use that connection to close off whatever Hubert had done. It was the same strategy I had used to end Deb DeGeorge’s chlorine gas attack. Only Deb hadn’t been using a text so damaged it could fail catastrophically, unleashing God only knew what.
I peered over the top of my glasses. Even without them I could see the magical damage, like someone had held the book spine-first over an open flame. I wondered briefly if the connection worked both ways, if I could use this book to peek in on Hubert again.
With that thought came the memory of the last time, and the madness that had found me there. I shuddered.
“What is it?” asked Lena.
I tried to will my hands to stop shaking. “I can do this now, or I can do it safely. I can’t do both.” And I wasn’t all that sure about the “safely” part, even if I had a month to study.
A flash of light momentarily blinded me. I ripped off the glasses and rubbed tears from my eyes, trying to focus on the thing that had materialized in the woods on the far side of the cabin.
“They’re a lot more intimidating when they’re moving,” Lena said, raising both bokken and stepping in front of me.
An automaton stepped out of the woods like an oversized armored knight. Metal enclosed its body, all save the head and hands. Those glassy black eyes found us, and a jaw that made me think of a ventriloquist’s dummy opened slightly as it strode forward.
Even as we backed away, I found myself wondering if automatons were capable of speech, or if the mouth was just an aesthetic touch. Without a word, Lena and I split up. She retreated downhill, while I backed toward the car. I spotted Smudge in the edge of my vision, burning like a miniature sun on the stone where I had left him.
The automaton followed me. I snatched a book and read faster than I ever had in my life, snatching a laser pistol and firing before the barrel had fully cleared the text. I vaporized the corner of the book, and the red beam splattered against the automaton’s metal armor without doing the slightest damage.
“Just like the thing in Detroit?” Lena shouted.
“Looks that way.” Magic was useless against an automaton. I fled into the woods, hoping the trees would slow it down. No such luck. I glanced back to see wooden fists smashing trees aside like twigs.
A chunk of concrete the size of my head smashed into the automaton, exploding into a cloud of gray dust. The impact would have killed a human instantly, and even a vampire might have thought twice. The automaton merely staggered, then turned to face Lena.
She had stabbed her bokken into the cabin’s foundation and used them to pry off large, jagged blocks of concrete. She hurled another, and the automaton knocked it aside with one wooden fist.
I tossed the useless laser pistol away and switched to a David Weber book. Sweat dripped into my eyes, blurring my vision, and my entire body shook with fear and adrenaline. The pulse rifle I wanted barely fit through the pages. I dropped the book and hefted the rifle to my shoulder.
The automaton whirled again. The things were supposed to be able to sense magic. Every time I reached into a book, I was essentially shouting, “Come and get me!”
I sighted at the ground in front of the automaton and pulled the trigger. Tiny explosive darts spat from the barrel at supersonic speeds. The automaton’s foot sank into a smoking hole. I fired again, blasting the ground where it stood. Shooting this thing directly might not work, but maybe I could bury it long enough for us to escape. Clay and rock sizzled, and sparks shot through the smoke.
With another flash of light, the thing vanished from my makeshift pit and reappeared down by the stream.
“That’s cheating,” Lena complained.
I hurried toward her. “Get out of here. Take the Triumph, and contact Pallas. Tell the Porters what we’ve learned.” I blasted the ground again, trying to slow the automaton down.
“Right.” She grunted as she hurled another chunk of concrete. “Because the unstoppable clockwork golem will never catch up with a forty-year-old car lurching up a dirt road in first gear.”
I fired at a tree, hoping to topple it onto the automaton. Maybe that was what Hubert had done to destroy the other one. Explosive darts shredded the trunk, but the tree fell too slowly and at the wrong angle, missing by a good twenty feet.
Lena hit me in the shoulder with the butt of her weapon, hard enough to make me stagger. “Don’t do that again.”
“Sorry.” Right, no more shooting trees.
Lena raised her swords. “The hands and feet are exposed wood. If it would stay still long enough for me to grab hold, I might be able to destroy this thing from the inside.”
“Even if it wasn’t protected from magic, it would crush you the instant you tried.” Before I could say anything more, the automaton leaped forward.
Lena grabbed the back of my jacket and hurled me aside. She spun back to face it, raising one arm to block its swing.
I heard bone crack, followed by Lena’s shout of pain. This was a woman who had outmuscled vampires, and the automaton batted her aside like a rag doll. Her left arm was shattered, her sleeve torn and bloody.
“Lena, go!”
“I don’t think so.” She held her arm tight against her side as she pushed herself upright. She jumped back, dodging the next swing, but pain made her cry out again. She stumbled and grabbed a young birch tree for balance. “Besides, you’ve got the keys.”
“Dammit!” I switched books, this time pulling out a copy of Peter and Wendy. Just as before, my use of magic yanked the automaton’s attention back to me. I held the book over my head and shook it like a salt shaker. Fine dust sprinkled from the pages. I thought back to the kiss Lena and I had shared that morning, and fueled by fairy magic and happy thoughts, shot into the air like Superman. I tossed the car keys toward Lena, then spun in midair to face the automaton. “That’s right, catch me if you can!”
It could. There was another blink of light, and then it was high overhead, dropping toward me like a missile. I swore and swerved wildly, barely dodging the thick-fingered hand that clapped shut mere inches from my leg. Trees shook as the automaton crashed into the ground.
I was well above the treetops, which made both Lena and the automaton look like toys. If I fell from this height, it was an even bet whether I’d die when I impacted the ground, or if the tree branches would just batter me to a broken but breathing pulp. I curved to the side, my guts lurching like I was on the world’s w
orst roller coaster.
The automaton merely watched, its eyes glowing like tiny stars. The dust clinging to my hair and clothes began to sizzle, and I felt myself losing altitude.
“Not fair.” It was one thing to absorb magical attacks, but nobody had ever told me they could reach out and drain the magic from others. I dove toward the trees, trying to reach something solid. I stretched out my hands, reaching for a branch—
The last of the fairy dust dissolved. Lena shouted my name, though the air rushing past my ears made it hard to hear. The branch I had hoped to catch struck my palms like a baseball bat and tore out of my grasp. The impact spun my legs over my head, and another branch hit me in the back. Something sliced the side of my face. Wood cracked and split, and then the earth slammed into me.
I tried to sit up, but a wave of pain and nausea crushed that idea. I could see the automaton striding toward me. Two of them, actually, though I assumed my doubled vision was a side effect of the impact. Blood pooled inside my cheek, along with a shard of something sharp that might have been part of a tooth.
“Isaac!”
I tried to wave Lena off, but my arm wouldn’t work. I looked down, and the sight of my dislocated shoulder made me queasy. I spat and looked up at the automaton. “I don’t suppose I could interest you in a bribe?”
Wooden fingers reached for me, and then Lena hit the automaton with a tree. The force of her one-handed swing knocked the thing off its feet, a good six feet into the clearing.
“Stay down,” she said as she limped past me. Her face was swollen and bloody. Her weapon was a five-inch-thick maple tree. She had sheared away the roots and branches, creating what was essentially an enormous wooden club.
The automaton was already coming toward her. She shifted her grip, braced herself, and smashed the legs out from beneath it. The tree whooshed through the air overhead as she twirled and slammed the end down on the automaton’s face.
“Lena, you can’t—”
“Shut up, Isaac.” She swung again. The automaton blocked, and the tree cracked against its arm. The broken end fell away, and she stepped back, adjusting her grip. “I couldn’t save Nidhi. I’m not losing you.”
I tried to stand, but the effort made me throw up. I had probably given myself a concussion with that landing.
Lena thrust the broken tree like a sword. The automaton caught it in both hands and crushed it to splinters, then backhanded Lena into the woods, a blow that would have killed a human being instantly. I saw her push herself to her knees and prayed she would stay down.
But she wouldn’t, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to help her. The automaton turned back to me.
We should have fled the moment I found that book . . . though once an automaton had your magical scent, they were supposed to be able to find you anywhere. I wondered briefly why Hubert hadn’t used them more often. Why bother with vampires when you had unstoppable mechanical soldiers?
I saw Lena hobbling toward us again. I shook my head. “Get out of here!”
“No.” She crouched at the base of a large maple tree and shoved her fingers into the dirt. A short distance away, roots punched out of the earth and coiled around the automaton’s feet.
It ripped free without apparent effort and strode toward her. She swore and stood, back against the tree.
“Over here,” I shouted, but it ignored me. Wooden hands reached for Lena’s throat.
Her lips pressed into a tight smile. Her eyes met mine, and she blew me a quick kiss. With her good hand, she grabbed the automaton’s wrist.
And then both Lena and the automaton fell backward into the tree.
I could hardly move, let alone reach the tree where Lena had vanished. If my body hurt this much with adrenaline still pumping through me, I didn’t want to know what I would feel like later.
I had left the Narnia book behind, not wanting to overuse its magic. I had swapped it for a gaming tie-in novel, one which came with potions of healing. Unfortunately, that novel was in one of my back pockets, meaning I had to sit up or roll over to reach it.
I braced myself with my good arm and pushed onto my elbow. My eyes watered, and I cursed in three different languages until the pain receded enough for me to sit up the rest of the way. Sweat was dripping from my forehead by the time I managed to tug the bottom of the jacket out from beneath me.
“Right,” I gasped. “From now on, the healing book goes in the front pocket.”
I wiped my eyes and did my best to ignore the buzz of fictional minds reaching for mine as I thrust my hand into the book and plucked a healing potion from a halfling thief. I downed the entire thing, then gasped as my shoulder wrenched back into place.
It wasn’t quite as effective as Lucy’s Narnian potion, but it fixed the worst of the damage. Cuts faded to red lines, and bruises dulled somewhat. Between crashing through branches on the way down, then landing on my books, my skin remained a mottled mess of black and blue. My tooth was still chipped, too.
I was more worried about internal injuries. I pressed my abdomen, feeling for firmness and pain, but found nothing worse than bruises.
Blackened weeds showed where Smudge had fled into the woods. I found him cowering in the dirt in a circle of charred pine needles. I waited for him to scramble back up to his customary spot on my shoulder, then turned to the tree where Lena had vanished.
I pressed a sweaty palm to the tree. The bark was undamaged and cool to the touch. Their feet had dug deep into the dirt, gouging the earth. I could see where she had braced herself for that one final pull.
So why hadn’t she emerged? I didn’t fully understand Lena’s magic, or the automaton’s for that matter. They could have both been killed, or they could still be battling within the tree. And if Lena lost that fight, could the automaton claw its way back into our world?
I picked up the rifle and walked toward the cabin. I kept seeing Lena’s face right before she vanished: pain tightening the lines of her neck and jaw, eyes narrowed with determination. Again and again, I watched in my mind as the automaton beat the hell out of her. Her broken arm, her cries of pain ripping free even though she was obviously trying to hold them back.
By the time I spied the discarded copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, I was too pissed off to think. I raised the rifle to my shoulder. “Let’s see if your little peephole works both ways, you son of a bitch.”
I switched the rifle to full auto and pulled the trigger, emptying the magazine into the book in a mere four seconds.
That might not have been the best move. Magical backlash surged through the gun like an electrical shock, flinging me backward. The rifle dissolved in my hands, leaving nothing but a coating of greasy black dust on my palms. I landed on my back hard enough to knock the wind from my lungs.
Smudge skittered off my shoulder to the ground, flame rippling on his back as he turned around to glare at me accusingly.
“Sorry about that.” I wiped my hands on my jeans and sat up. I had dug a smoking hole at least twenty feet deep and five feet wide. The book was gone. I retrieved my sunglasses. One lens was shattered, but the other worked well enough. I searched the hole, making sure no trace of magic remained.
“Come on, Smudge.” The smart thing would be to get the hell out of here. If Lena hadn’t destroyed the automaton, if it managed to escape the tree, then at any moment I could find myself face-to-face with a mechanical nightmare, with no dryad bodyguard to save my ass this time around. Or Hubert could send another one after me.
But Lena was in that tree, too. She hadn’t left me, and I’d be damned if I was going to abandon her.
I gathered up every book I could find from the cabin and brought them to the tree. Back at my house, Lena had said she knew I was home because she sensed my arrival through the trees, meaning she retained some awareness of the outside world. I l
eaned against the trunk, wondering if she could feel my hands and forehead against the bark. “Thank you.”
I sagged to the ground, surrendering to the aftermath of so much magic, but there was one precaution left to take. If the automaton won whatever battle it was waging within the tree, it would try to escape. I re-created the monofilament sword I had used in Detroit. The blade should cut through the tree as quickly as I could swing.
I might not be able to use magical weapons against the automaton, but if it killed Lena, I’d slice the whole damn tree to pieces before I let it back into the world.
I tried to concentrate on the books, sorting those that showed the worst signs of magical char. Those were the books Hubert had used the most. “What were you doing here?”
Practicing, yes. But what else? He had come here, to a place that was quiet and familiar and safe. I thought back to the Copper River Library and the sparklers who had attacked me. Had magic come as naturally to Hubert as it had to me? Had he felt the same excitement, the same joy? Even as I had been certain I was about to die at the hands of those vampires, I had been grateful for the chance to use magic one last time.
How much had he remembered? His anger toward the Porters suggested he knew what had been done to him. Gutenberg had taken away that part of his life once before. He would have wanted to find a way to protect himself. V-Day gave him a weapon, but books took time to write and publish.
The Silver Cross wouldn’t be enough to overpower Gutenberg. Nor should it have worked on automatons, not if they were constructed to absorb magic. I flipped through the first book, an old copy of Dracula. Vampire research, perhaps.
The next book was Silence of the Lambs, by Thomas Harris. This was probably how Hannibal Lecter had crept into Hubert’s mind. I set it aside and reached for the next. The cover was gone, and the first few pages fell away when I opened them. I flipped to the middle of the book and froze. This was Albert Kapr’s biography of Johannes Gutenberg.
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