Bookburners

by Max Gladstone

  Liam rolled his eyes. “I feel better already. And what are you going to do while I’m calling Asanti?”

  Menchú turned for the door. “We’ve heard Father Lopez’s side of the story. I’d like to talk to someone who might have warmer feelings about new people buying property in town.”

  • • •

  Upon leaving the rectory, Menchú surveyed the tiny village square. The day was sunny, peaceful, and perfectly normal. Residents walked between shops, sat at the café, and generally acted just like people who hadn’t turned into wolves the night before. Menchú exchanged polite greetings, asked a few innocuous questions, and eventually found what he was looking for on the side of the square almost directly opposite the church—the local real estate office. It was a modest storefront: the front window was filled with neat rows of property listings, and beside the door a small brass sign read, “Hannah Abasolo, Agente.”

  Upon entering to the quiet chime of a discreet bell, Menchú found the woman in question seated behind her desk. She was somewhere in her middle forties, and wore a smart spring suit only somewhat at odds with a floppy straw hat and oversized sunglasses that gave the impression she had just driven in from Ibiza.

  “Hello,” she greeted him. Her Spanish was lightly accented with something that seemed familiar to Menchú, but that he couldn’t quite place.

  “Hello,” he replied. “I have just arrived in town and wondered if you could answer a few questions for me.”

  The woman paused, looking him up and down, and then smiled. “Of course, Father,” she said.

  Menchú frowned. As a precaution, he had removed his collar before leaving the rectory, just in case Father Lopez wasn’t the only resident wary that a strange priest might be an Inquisitor in disguise. Menchú was about to ask what had given him away when the woman took off her sunglasses and he saw her eyes for the first time.

  The eyes had changed since the last time he had seen them: light silver-gray so as to be almost white, with tiny black pupils instead of undifferentiated white from lid to lid. But Menchú knew them instantly. And with that, he recognized the voice as well.

  A voice he had last heard from the throat of a young boy in Guatemala, uttering his last words before slitting his own throat.

  Let this be a lesson to you.

  The woman was still smiling, placid as she sat, cool and poised behind her desk. “I’m so glad you got my message, Father. It’s been such a long time.”

  5.

  Menchú sputtered. “Your message? YOUR MESSAGE!” He was roaring; he couldn’t stop himself. He wanted to reach across the desk and shake the smug smile off her face. “You took over the body of a young boy, murdered an entire village, and then slit his throat!”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Yes,” she said calmly. “You asked me to protect the villagers from the rebels and from the army. I did. You didn’t specify that I had to leave them alone after that.”

  “Whatever, whoever you are—” Menchú sputtered.

  “Call me Hannah,” she said. “It will save time.”

  “Leave this place,” said Menchú. “It will save lives.”

  Hannah walked casually from behind her desk, as though men came into her office ranting about her being a murderous angel so frequently it wasn’t worth getting excited over. “You’ve got quite the conundrum here: on the one hand are peaceful villagers living quietly for hundreds of years who just happen to be werewolves, which means they are monstrosities in the eyes of the Church, and must be destroyed. On the other, you’ve got a bunch of obnoxious foreigners who would run down a priest on the side of the road, but who are innocent of the corruption of magic.”

  Menchú scowled at her. “You’re the reason I’m here, aren’t you?” he said. “Yet set off the Orb.”

  “With the influx of so many new people, the truth was going to come out sooner or later. Someone will get a video of a red-eyed wolf on their cell phone; someone will put together the correlation between the wolves hit by cars in the night and the people who are found dead the next day. Now that the world has found their sanctuary, the residents won’t be able to go back to their lives of quiet isolation. All I did was give you a warning before the simmering pot boiled over. Solve the dilemma now, and you might be able to keep the secret that your Society is so devoted to a little bit longer. Hopefully, you learned your lessons from what happened last time.”

  “And what was I supposed to learn?” growled Menchú. “That the devil can speak with the voice of God? That anything you touch ends in blood? Or was Asanti correct, were you trying to teach me to ‘make a better deal?’”

  Hannah’s lips quirked. “That’s one solution. Although I doubt that it’s the route you’ll choose.”

  • • •

  Getting through the ring of muscle that separated the serpent’s gullet from its stomach was hell. The agony of childbirth from the perspective of the child. But when Grace at last emerged, she found herself not in the bright cold world, but an immense cavern, hot and full of shadows.

  The acid was stronger here; Grace could feel it even through her heavy pants and boots, but for the first time in what felt like hours, she had enough room to stand, and she reveled in it, even if keeping her footing as the creature’s belly undulated around her was a challenge. The beam from her headlamp sliced the dark, revealing the swampy edge of an acidic sea. Around the walls of the chamber, multiple orifices gaped and closed. Passages from other necks to a single stomach.

  Grace had been raised Christian, educated in schools built by missionaries sent to China from the West. The woman who had taught Grace in the second grade had been especially fond of the story of Jonah, either because of the moral that there was no escaping the call of God, or because she still had vivid memories of her own sea crossing. Grace feared that even if she waited for three days and three nights, God would not be commanding the hydra to cough her back up again.

  Methodically, Grace swept the surface of the stomach acid with her light, looking for the telltale glint of the Society’s magic sword, or her torch. She was halfway through her search when, out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of something moving.

  Grace was not alone in the belly of the beast.

  • • •

  Menchú returned and found Father Lopez ensconced in his office with two parishioners. He couldn’t hear more than murmurs through the door, but it was possible that the story about a couple doing their premarital counseling hadn’t been a complete fabrication. Satisfied that the other man would remain occupied for a while, Menchú returned to the guest rooms, where Liam was still on the phone with Asanti. Seeing him enter, Liam put the phone on speaker, allowing the archivist’s voice to fill the room.

  “I found one thing that may verify Father Lopez’s story,” Asanti was saying, her tone cool and professional, with little of its accustomed warmth. “Five hundred years ago, our understanding of the Orb was very primitive—”

  “As opposed to how well we understand it now,” muttered Liam.

  “But the medieval archivists did keep meticulous records of its activities, and it appears that there was a flare in your area during the time Father Lopez mentioned.”

  “Did any of the teams investigate?” asked Menchú.

  “Not that I can tell,” said Asanti, “but the Society and the Inquisition were quite close at the time; they may have handed the matter over to them.”

  “And then just buggered off when they never heard back?” asked Liam.

  “This was the fifteenth century, Liam,” said Asanti. “They wouldn’t have been expecting a response for months. They might have forgotten about it. Or the Inquisition may have chosen not to advertise that a whole party of Inquisitors got eaten.”

  “Did you find any other cases of lycanthropy?” Menchú asked. He braced himself for an acerbic reply from Asanti, but it was not forthcoming.

  “Quite a few, actually. Many of them have even been verified. Which I suppose shouldn’t be surp
rising. All those myths had to come from somewhere. Unfortunately, none of Frances’s research implies that this is a condition that can be cured. Once you’ve been bitten, you’re a werewolf, full stop.”

  “What about cases where people were made into werewolves by a means other than being bitten?” Menchú asked.

  “I haven’t found any,” said Asanti. “It always comes back to a bite at some point.”

  Liam gave Menchú a look that he easily read as I told you so.

  Menchú caught his foot tapping, and began to pace instead. There had to be a way out of this problem that did not involve the murder of an entire town. This time.

  He took a deep breath. “What about the relic that Father Lopez mentioned? The tooth of the Wolf of Gubbio?”

  “Nothing beyond the basic story. Although …”

  “What?” asked Menchú.

  “In the story, the wolf begins by eating livestock in and around Gubbio. Then it graduates to eating people, until everyone in the city is so frightened that they refuse to leave their homes for fear of the wolf.”

  “So they weren’t stupid,” said Liam.

  Asanti continued, ignoring Liam’s interjection. “But then Saint Francis arrives, and being Saint Francis, he doesn’t kill the wolf. He made a bargain with it.”

  “He what?” Liam asked before Menchú could.

  “He told the wolf that it had sinned, but that if it didn’t eat the people or their animals anymore, the residents of the city would feed it.”

  “And that worked? For the people and the wolf?”

  “By all accounts, yes. It lived for two more years and when it died, the residents buried it under the church. They found nearly a full skeleton during renovations in the nineteenth century.”

  Menchú’s feet finally stilled. “Are you saying you think I should make some kind of deal between the old residents and the new ones?”

  Asanti let out a tart sigh. “I’m not saying you should do anything. You asked what I found, and that’s what we’ve come up with. I’m not cleared for the field, remember?” And with that, she hung up.

  Liam frowned at the cut connection. “The analogy kind of breaks down when the villagers are the wolves and also the ones getting killed.”

  Menchú had to allow the point. “Worse, I think negotiating the effects of immigration and gentrification is a bit outside my areas of expertise.”

  “Closer to yours than mine.”

  Menchú shook his head. “What if we’re overthinking this?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The original transformation was tied to an artifact. What do we do when we find magical artifacts?”

  “We put them in a shroud and take them back to the Archives.”

  “All right. Let’s do that, then.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then we’ll see what happens.”

  • • •

  Grace glided as quickly as she could through an ever-shifting soup of half-digested fish, seawater, and stomach acid until she came to the deck of a small junk that appeared to have been bitten in half and then swallowed. After untold years bathed in acid, the teak boards of its deck were bleached bone white, but otherwise it was remarkably intact.

  On flat ground for the first time in hours, Grace stood a moment and listened to the silence, broken only by an occasional rumble of stomach muscles, or a bit of bile bubbling up. If she hadn’t been certain of what she had seen, she would have thought herself alone. When her unknown companion in the belly of the beast did not emerge, she called: “I’ve seen you, and we’re both stuck here, so you may as well come out.”

  From the remains of the boat’s forward cabin, a woman stepped into the beam of Grace’s headlamp. Her eyes were so light that her pupils seemed to be floating all alone. “Hello,” she said. “I was hoping I would get to meet you.”

  “Who are you?” asked Grace.

  “Call me Hannah.”

  • • •

  Father Lopez was nowhere to be found. He wasn’t in the rectory; he wasn’t in the church next door. When Menchú and Liam went outside, they discovered the entire town deserted.

  Liam checked his watch. “I realize that we are in Spain at one in the afternoon, and everyone is probably having their siesta or whatever, but I don’t think this is a good sign.”

  Menchú shook his head. Father Lopez already didn’t trust them. Had he heard them calling Rome and assumed the worst?

  “We need to go back to the church.”

  “Why?” asked Liam.

  “Because we have to get to that relic before Father Lopez does.”

  • • •

  “Are you looking for this?” Hannah asked. In one hand, she held an open book. Covered in ornately tooled leather, its brass locks had been made to resemble interlocking teeth. Even extensive crushing and water damage couldn’t disguise the mastery of its craftsmanship. “You won’t believe how difficult it was for me to find. The immortal head of the hydra. Ancient poets were so … poetic.”

  Grace said nothing, and Hannah considered her. Grace had the sudden feeling that the other woman had looked straight through to her soul.

  “Or maybe you weren’t looking for this at all. Maybe you were looking for something else. Death by sea monster?”

  Grace forced herself to show no outward reaction. “Suicide is a sin,” she said.

  “So I’ve heard,” said Hannah. “But your … condition … puts you in an interesting theological position. Is having control over how and when you use your life the same as killing yourself? Or only if you use your life without purpose? Is that why you read all the time?”

  Grace hauled her fist and swung but the instant before she connected, Hannah shifted and Grace’s fist hit nothing but empty air.

  “If you’d burned, you could have hit me.”

  “You don’t know anything about me,” said Grace.

  “Oh, Grace,” said Hannah. “I know everything about you. I know how lonely you are watching your friends grow old and leave you one by one. I know you’ve determined how quickly your candle is burning, calculated the hours and days and interminable years that are left to you. I know you’ve considered burning yourself out in one last rush. A literal blaze of glory.”

  Hannah looked around as Grace seethed. “This isn’t a bad place for it. Eaten by a sea monster is very definitive. No one would question it. You’d get a proper burial, if that’s important to you. Not that they would ever find your body.”

  She held out the book, offering it to Grace. “If you still think your job is important, you can close this before you go. Or not. Either way, it won’t be your problem anymore.”

  And then Grace was holding the book, and Hannah was gone.

  • • •

  The reliquary, placed behind the altar, was not hard for Menchú and Liam to find. It was also empty.

  Liam tucked the shroud he had brought back into his pocket. “So much for this being easy.”

  A low growl broke the silence of the sanctuary.

  Wolf after wolf emerged from between the pews, pressing Liam and Menchú back against the altar, cutting off any possible avenue of escape.

  Overhead—although there was no one to pull the rope—the church bell tolled.

  • • •

  Grace held the book in her hands. So this was how it had felt for Eve in the moment after the serpent handed her the apple but before she brought it to her lips.

  Her heart pounded her in chest, drowning out every other sound. Faster, faster, faster …

  6.

  Father Lopez emerged last, still in human form, walking out of the deep shadows at the back of the small sanctuary. “You didn’t have to call the Vatican,” he said as he advanced toward Menchú. “You could have let us be.”

  If Menchú was nervous, Liam could not detect any hint of it in his voice. “Father,” he said. “I assure you, if you are not harming others, we are no danger to you.”

  “There�
�s always an if, isn’t there?” Lopez’s voice came out with a nearly canine snarl. “If you’re a good Catholic, you have nothing to fear. If you are kind to your neighbors, they will be kind to you. Do you want to know what happened to the Inquisitors, Father? The monks couldn’t kill them. But they couldn’t risk letting them go either.”

  Lopez was close enough for Liam to see his right hand was not empty. His fist was clenched, and from the cracks between his fingers, a strange light emerged. Liam had a pretty good guess what had happened to those Inquisitors.

  “So they made our secret their secret. And now the miracle that saved our ancestors will save us.”

  “More people will come,” said Menchú. “The world is a smaller place than it was then. Your secret can’t be kept forever.”

  “Then we will turn them all. For the power of God is infinite! And his glory—”

  Liam sensed that his window to act was rapidly closing. Taking care not to startle Father Lopez or the wolves, he stepped in front of Menchú, passing him the shroud as he did. Lopez was too swept up in his monologue to notice.

  He felt the pressure of Menchú’s hand around his wrist in a warning squeeze. No, don’t do it. It’s not worth the risk.

  Liam appreciated the sentiment, but he remembered Asanti’s words. Once you’ve been bitten, you’re a werewolf, full stop. In Liam’s book, turning into a wolf, even if it was only a few times a year, was too close to being possessed for comfort, and he had no desire to add to his list of unintended sins.

  Lopez could break and lunge for them at any moment. As a man, his leap and reach would be shorter than as a wolf. Liam needed his own to be just a fraction of an inch longer. Just a little bit closer. Just a little bit …

  The instant before Father Lopez leapt, Liam launched himself at the monologuing priest. In the same moment, four of the wolves surged for Liam. Fuck, he hadn’t counted on four of them. Two, maybe, but four? That was excessive. Damn pack hunters. One caught him in the meat of his calf just as it left the ground. Eighty more pounds of teeth and claws hit Liam straight in the chest. He felt fangs digging into his right forearm, followed by the snap of a tendon behind his left knee. Jesus, Mary, Joseph. But at least with the wolves busy with him, and Lopez taken by surprise, no one was looking at Father Menchú.