Libriomancer (9781101597552)

by Hines, Jim C.

  “Nice,” said Lena. “Shades, sword, and guns. Very badass.”

  “Very heavy,” I complained. The books in my jacket were bad enough. “Did you want anything else?”

  She studied me over the top of her sunglasses. “I think maybe you’d better hold off on any more magic. You’re shivering.”

  I didn’t bother to deny it.

  She pushed up the glasses and examined me, then Smudge. “Do we really have to kill Hubert?”

  “He knows he’s dying. He chose death the moment he opened himself to possession.” I returned my books to their pockets and slipped the sword over my shoulder. “I’m thinking our best chance is to speak to someone else.”

  I reclined the seat as far as it would go, trying to ignore Lena’s amused smile as I struggled to sit back down with my various weapons. The tremors in my hands didn’t help matters. I finally had to lower the top so Excalibur’s hilt would stop catching on it.

  With Smudge in his cage, I pulled onto the road and did a U-turn. Through the enchanted sunglasses, Mecosta Auto Sales and Repair was a very different place. Hubert had painted an illusion of normalcy over what was essentially a small fortress. The office building was magically dead, but the garages in back were surrounded by a makeshift barrier that could have come straight out of World War I, with wooden posts and barbed wire woven into an impassible web.

  Chrome spikes protruded from the garage walls, and a pair of armed vampires patrolled the roof. The garage doors appeared to be magically reinforced. The cars in the lot were likewise infected with magic of some sort. Every car had a bright patch of power. The location varied from one to the next.

  “How did Hubert do all of this?” Lena asked, squinting through her lens. “I thought libriomancers couldn’t create anything that didn’t fit through your books.”

  “We can’t.” I pulled into the lot as casually as I could.

  Lena handed me the charred copy of Sherlock Holmes. “You said those voices were all mad. Do you have a backup plan?”

  “Not this time,” I lied. I climbed out of the car, trying to ignore the vampires on the roof who had readied rifles. I skimmed down the page until I found the story I wanted. I reread the dialogue, memorizing Holmes’ lines. Cupping my hands to my mouth, I shouted, “Your occupation is gone, sir. You are lost if you return to London!”

  One of the parked cars lurched toward us. Throughout the lot, other vehicles came to life. Some screeched toward Lena, but most targeted me. Lena leaped easily over a rusted Corvette, then dropped low as one of the vampires fired at her. Bullets cratered the parking lot as she sprinted toward the side of the service garage.

  I shoved the book back into my pocket and pulled out both pistols. I shot blindly at the vampires until they ducked down, then sighted carefully at a red Chevy Cavalier. The laser punched through the engine, and my next shots shredded the front tires for good measure.

  High beams from my right momentarily blinded me. I squinted through the sunglasses to see a fifty-eight Plymouth Fury racing toward me. And Charles Hubert was a libriomancer.

  “Nice,” I said, firing again. The Fury had been cannibalized straight out of Stephen King’s Christine. I could see now where Hubert had welded parts of King’s homicidal car to the other vehicles, bringing them all to life. Had he grown them all from a single, book-sized piece of that Fury? King’s book had hinted that the car could repair itself.

  I pocketed the gun in my right hand and drew Excalibur, while continuing to try to pin down the vampires with the other pistol. “Until this moment, I failed to understand or appreciate the might of your organization,” I shouted. The dialogue was straight out of “The Final Problem,” the story in which Holmes sacrificed his own life to destroy his archenemy, Professor Moriarty.

  I hoped that wasn’t prophetic.

  I fired left-handed, then jumped back. Excalibur twisted in my grip, jerking my arm out and downward. The impact of sword on car reminded me of hitting a baseball, if the baseball was made of solid lead.

  I couldn’t have released the sword if I wanted to. It sliced through tires and steel, emerging from the Fury with enough speed to whirl me in a complete circle. The Fury spun out, wrecking a station wagon.

  I checked Smudge’s cage to make sure he was all right, then ran to hide behind the mangled car. “Best. Sword. Ever!”

  Lena was using her bokken to cut through the barbed wire. I crouched behind the Fury as both vampires concentrated their fire on me. I blasted the side mirror off the car and used it to peek over the hood. I fired blindly, using the mirror to try to guide my shots toward the figures on the roof. Then a cloud of mist flowed out from the garage and solidified into the figure of a woman.

  Lena thrust her bokken through the new arrival, who promptly dissolved into ash. One of the vampires on the roof dropped his weapon and sprang into the air. He snatched one of Lena’s bokken in now-clawed feet, ripping it from her grasp.

  “This is inevitable destruction!” I shouted, quoting the story once more. “Surely you can spare me five minutes to hear what I have to say.”

  The cars slowed. Over the idling of their engines, I heard an answering cry, “All that I have to say has already crossed your mind.”

  That was one of Moriarty’s lines to Holmes. I had hooked him. I peeked out from behind the car. “Have you any suggestion to make?”

  “You must drop it.”

  For the first time, I revised the script, trying to preserve Holmes’ voice the best I could. “I’ve done what I could, but I cannot beat you. You know every move of this game, and I am not clever enough to bring destruction upon you. I know it would grieve you to have to take extreme measures against me. Let us meet, that I might present an alternative solution.”

  Silence. Had my changes snapped Moriarty’s hold on Hubert’s mind? I looked to Lena and readied my weapons.

  And then the rightmost garage door began to rise.

  Chapter 20

  FLUORESCENT LIGHTS FLICKERED INSIDE. Directly in front of me, an automaton was stretched out on a car lift like Frankenstein’s monster. Three other automatons lay as if dead in the repair bays to either side, while two more stood in the shadows in the back.

  Stacks of tires lined the back wall. The air smelled of grease and oil. I knew this place. I had seen it through a book when I touched Hubert’s mind.

  Lena joined me, a single bokken resting on her shoulder. I sheathed Excalibur and kept one hand in my pocket, finger on the trigger of my laser. “Over there,” I whispered, pointing to what appeared to be a small office in the back corner.

  The door swung open. The office was dark, but through the glasses I could make out the glow of magic. And then what was left of Charles Hubert stepped out.

  The soldier from the newspaper photos was gone, replaced by a pale scarecrow of a man who looked like he weighed maybe a hundred pounds, tops. Filthy green sweatpants hung from his bony hips. His chest was bare, white skin outlining every rib. He had lost most of his hair, and his head was like a painted skull. His scar was a vivid pink line down the side of his head and face.

  Lines of faded text covered his skin. From the irregular handwriting, it looked like he had done it himself with a black marker. I saw English, German, and what looked like Pashto. In one hand, he held a heavy silver cross, encrusted with rubies.

  Lena grabbed my forearm and tugged. The laser burned through my jacket pocket and blasted the back wall, filling the air with the stench of melted rubber. She twisted my arm and plucked the gun from my hand, then retrieved the other pistol. She stripped Excalibur from my back as well.

  “Lena . . .”

  She removed her sunglasses and tossed them to the floor. In the dim light, I could just make out the pointed crosses of Lena’s pupils. The sight made me ill. He must have taken control of her before he ever emerged from his of
fice.

  “You have less frontal development that I should have expected,” Hubert said, still quoting the story. Moriarty had such a civilized way of insulting one’s intelligence. “It is a dangerous habit to finger loaded firearms in the pocket of one’s jacket.”

  “How did you persuade my companion to betray me?” I asked, and was rewarded by a glimmer of confusion in Hubert’s eyes. A mind such as Moriarty’s would never believe in magic.

  “She was clever enough to see the truth,” he said after a pause. “To join me rather than be trodden underfoot. Now tell me of the footprints.”

  I blinked. “The footprints?”

  “I see them in my memory. Two lines of footmarks clearly marked in the moist blackness of the soil, both leading away. None return.” His precise diction couldn’t conceal his confusion or his fear.

  “Of course,” I said, pulling out the Holmes book. The footprints were from the very end of the story.

  “You murdered me,” he said, his voice rising in pitch. “You flung me into the swirling water and seething foam!”

  “Not at all.” I kept my words calm, trying to draw him back from the madness. I turned to an earlier page of the story, when Holmes places his revolver upon the table. Whispers called to me, warning how easily I could follow Hubert into madness, but I had to try. I could still end this. A single shot from that revolver—

  The moment I touched the book’s magic, Hubert stiffened. I saw recognition in his eyes. Lena kicked the book from my hands. The automatons climbed down from their lifts and moved to surround me.

  Hubert stepped closer and studied me through black-rimmed glasses that were far too large for his gaunt face. His lower lip was cracked, and had left a streak of blood on his teeth.

  “Do you know who you are?” I asked.

  He smiled. The tip of his tongue dabbed at the fresh blood welling up from his lip. “Do you, Isaac Vainio? Do you know who you are? Are you certain the Porters have never tampered with your mind?”

  “I know what Gutenberg did to you. How he stole your magic, erased your memories of the Porters.” I pointed to the writing on his body. “You tried to rewrite yourself?”

  “Gutenberg did it first,” he spat. “Etched his damned spell right through my skin. He carved my skull with his magic!” He made a sound that was half laughter, half hacking cough. “He killed me, Isaac. I’m unraveling one thread at a time, every fiber stretched until they snap.”

  “Why did you steal the books from the archive?” I asked.

  “The archive . . .” He stared at the floor, as if trying to remember. “Magical locks, binding the books, everything comes down to locking the doors. Trapping magic. Creating prisons. We had to find the key. Books, automatons, people, it doesn’t matter. We had to find a way to free them.”

  “Free who? Other Porters? Or do you mean the automatons? I know about the people Gutenberg trapped in those bodies. Johann Fust and the others.”

  “Fust!” His face reddened, the lines of his mouth and eyes tightening with rage. He began to rant in German. “Johann Fust swindled from me my life’s work. He sought to steal my legacy. He stole Peter . . .” His anger broke. “Peter was a skilled scriptor and craftsman, and Fust gave his own daughter as a bribe to turn Peter against me!”

  He wiped drool from his chin, his words becoming more manic. “We invented libriomancy! We know the dangers, the threats both true and phantom. We know the lies.”

  “You murdered Ray Walker. You tortured him, and others.”

  “I didn’t. We didn’t!” He cradled the silver cross in both hands. “I couldn’t stop them. If I held them in, they turned their rage against me. I needed to hide. I needed to know what the Porters knew. I needed the books.”

  The other characters in his head, murderers and madmen, too strong for him to control. “I know about your brother,” I said softly. “I’ve read V-Day.”

  He blinked and switched back to English, his entire mannerism changing in an instant. “Really? What did you think? I wasn’t happy with the middle, and the whole thing needed at least one more good rewrite, but I had deadlines, you know?”

  Watching one mind after another wrest control of Charles Hubert gave me chills that felt as if they came from the very marrow of my bones. “It was good.”

  He preened, and then his expression shifted yet again. “My brothers . . .” His voice was gruffer now, with a faint hint of a drawl. “It was the same with my unit. They hid the truth. They kept magic from us, denied us the weapons that could have saved my buddies, could have stopped the Nazi monsters who wanted to slaughter everyone and everything I loved.”

  “Jakob?” At his hesitant nod, I pressed harder. “You were a good man, Jakob Hoffman. You saved lives. You protected innocent people.”

  “I failed,” he said. “We lost. They’re still here. Infecting everyone, turning this world into a nightmare. I couldn’t save Mikey. Couldn’t save myself. I know what I’m becoming, and I’ll burn this world to the ground before I let them win!”

  “You didn’t fail,” I said, but it was no use. This wasn’t his world, and it never would be. “Where’s Gutenberg, Jakob?”

  He giggled, a sound that transformed into a sob. “In here.” He tapped the scar on his head. “Whispering. Screaming. Begging.”

  Lena plucked the cage from my hip and walked over to join him. For the first time since her birth, she was free of any lover, enslaved instead by the magic of Hubert’s cross. I wondered briefly how much of a difference it truly made.

  Hubert opened the cage and extended a hand. Smudge crawled up his arm and onto his shoulder. Just like that, I was alone. I raised my chin, trying not to show how much it hurt to see him standing there with Lena and Smudge. I swallowed, then reached into my pocket. Lena readied Excalibur, but I wasn’t trying to use magic. Not this time.

  “It’s over, Jakob.” I gripped the tracking module I had used to find this place.

  “Oh, Isaac.” He was speaking German again. “Your magic isn’t strong enough to overpower my automatons.”

  “Really?” I smiled and jabbed the detonation button. To my right, an automaton’s head exploded into splinters. I tried not to let my relief show. “I’ll destroy them all if I have to,” I bluffed.

  “Not bad,” Hubert said, in English. The mechanical man who had once been Johann Fust toppled forward.

  “You’ve lost. Let us help you.”

  The other automatons advanced. “You will help me, Isaac. You will show me how you repaired the broken automaton I left at my cabin. You and Lena will help me to prepare more.”

  “You’re dying,” I said bluntly. “Even if I helped you, you won’t live long enough to raise your mechanical army.”

  He straightened, his voice taking on a stern British accent. “My end was inevitable from the moment I set foot upon this path. Yours could have been avoided.”

  The intonation was familiar. We had come full circle, and I was speaking once again with Professor Moriarty.

  “If you will not assist me in this endeavor, then you are of no further use.” He raised the silver cross. “Lena, my dear, it’s time for you to kill Isaac Vainio.”

  Lena strode toward me. She wouldn’t meet my eyes, which I took to be a good sign. He might have control of her actions, but she wasn’t happy about it.

  Hubert, on the other hand, was practically drooling. He had brought his fists to his chin, and his eyes were wide. He appeared to be talking to himself.

  “Even now the dead spread terror through the streets,” he mumbled. “We will burn them from their homes, and the world will unite to eradicate them all.”

  I ran, dodging between the automatons and making my way toward the open garage door. I heard the heavy clomp of feet behind me. Wooden fingers clamped around my arm. It was the same arm I had dislocated at t
he cabin, and the shoulder throbbed with pain. The automaton spun me around to face Lena, who had raised both Excalibur and her bokken, preparing to strike.

  I grabbed the automaton’s wrist. “I lied. I did have a backup plan. I didn’t tell you about it, because it’s somewhere between insane and suicidal. Sorry.”

  The automaton hauled me into the air like a piñata. I could feel the warmth of its metal armor, the spells flowing through those blocks, turning it into an animated spellbook.

  I twisted and slapped my hand against the automaton’s chest. I had read these spells at the cabin. I knew the text imprinted into the wood. I could see the letters in my mind. It was all magic. My books, the automatons, Lena’s connection to her tree . . . everything came back to energy, belief, and willpower.

  My fingers sank into the automaton’s metal skin, exactly like the pages of a book. Until that moment, I hadn’t been certain this would work. I still wasn’t. Reaching into the automaton’s magic was one thing. Doing something with that magic was the real trick.

  Lena didn’t give me the chance. I saw her lunge, and tried to twist out of the way.

  I wasn’t fast enough.

  My heartbeat grew louder, overpowering everything else. I stared down at the wooden blade protruding from my side. It felt like someone had punched me just beneath the ribs. There was less pain than I would have expected, but—

  Oh, wait, there was the pain. It felt like the blade was burning inside me, growing hotter with every passing second. I tasted blood, and it was hard to breathe, as if someone were squeezing my lungs like a damp sponge. The burning grew more intense, spreading through my entire side.

  I reached deeper into the automaton. It was a book, nothing more. Just another book. Praying to whatever deity might be listening, I pulled myself fully into the automaton’s body.