Bookburners

by Max Gladstone

“Huh. Civil unions are legal in Italy? Take that, Kansas,” Bradley said.

  They shuffled forward in line, pointedly ignoring a couple speaking loudly in Russian in front of them. “Anyway, work usually has me too busy to think about romance,” Sal said. “And that’s probably for the best.”

  “Why is that?” Jennifer asked.

  “It’s stressful. I don’t have a lot of emotional energy left at the end of the day,” Sal said truthfully.

  Her father took her hand gently. His brown eyes were sincere. “Finding love may be the only thing that keeps you sane when you have a dangerous job. Remember when I told you I went undercover a few months before you were born? The only thing that got me through was knowing your mom was waiting for me.”

  Jennifer smiled. “And the times I was doing search and rescue during hurricanes and floods, when she ship was about to capsize, the thought of your dad kept me going. Too much stress is a sign that you need someone in your life, not that you should avoid people.”

  “Yeah, yeah, you guys are the perfect couple and disgustingly romantic,” Sal said, laughing and trying to hide her discomfort. She had tried to tell Liam the same thing when they had broken up, but he hadn’t listened. Now she was using the same excuse to avoid romance, and her parents were calling her on it.

  They neared the front of the queue, with Sal keeping her eyes open to look for anyone suspicious. Then she realized no self-respecting demon would wait in any line like the one at the Vatican museums. They’d find another way inside. They’d done it before.

  Sal and Perry followed their parents as they wandered from gallery to gallery. Perry seemed to enjoy looking at the art, but Sal kept an eye on the people visiting.

  After a few hours of saints and popes and absolutely no action, they paused in the café for a cup of coffee and a place to sit down. Perry brought the group their coffees while Sal continued to watch for anything weird.

  “Sal, are you okay?” Bradley asked. “You haven’t looked at any of the art since we got here.” He frowned. “Is it so bad working here that you need to avoid your coworkers? Is there something you need to talk about? Because if it’s harassment or something—”

  Sal shook her head. “No, Dad, I promise that’s not it. I’m fine. I’m sorry, I’ve just seen this stuff before.”

  “Yeah, you’ve seen one Sistine Chapel, you’ve seen them all,” Perry quipped. “Why bother appreciating art more than once?”

  Sal sat up and faced him. “Do you have a problem, Perry?”

  He raised both hands in surrender. “No, Sal, I don’t. Just trying to lighten the mood. You seem really tense, that’s all.”

  “Easy, kids. Drink your coffee,” Bradley said. He leaned and looked over Jennifer’s shoulder to see the guidebook she was looking at. “So, Perry, where do you want to go next?”

  “I want to see the gardens,” Perry said, pointing to the door at the other end of the café that led to the beautiful sunny day.

  Her mother flipped through the guidebook. Something pulled at Sal’s awareness and she looked up, startled, to see a blonde woman staring at her. Her eyes flashed silver. She didn’t recognize the woman but that wasn’t normal.

  Woman. Silver eyes. Café. Not doing anything. Will follow, she texted to Liam quickly.

  As she was typing, the phone buzzed. She answered it just as the first screams started in an adjacent hallway.

  The woman smiled at Sal and exited through the door to the gardens.

  • • •

  “Evacuate all museums adjacent to the gardens!” Menchú said into his phone. “Asanti, inform Fox. I think we have to ignore the clock on this; they’re not going to want to give us six hours, much less thirty-six. Liam, you’re with me.”

  “Right,” Asanti said.

  “We’re not ready yet. What about Sal?” Liam said.

  “Doesn’t matter how ready we are. We’ll need Sal, give her a call and get her here,” Menchú said.

  “Um, she’s actually here. She couldn’t get out of touring the museum with her parents,” Liam said, pulling his phone from his pocket.

  “Then call her and see if she knows what’s going on!” Asanti said over her shoulder, hurrying from the Archives to find Fox, presumably.

  Liam thumbed through his Favorites and pushed Sal’s avatar. The phone began to ring. There was no answer.

  His phone binged and Sal’s message came through. Liam read it to Menchú and Asanti.

  Menchú paled visibly. “Oh no,” he whispered.

  “What?” Liam said. “We can take one woman. That seems a lot better than dealing with a giant fire demon or a bleeding sore demon or—”

  “Shut up, Liam,” Menchú said. “Asanti, skip Fox. Just tell Grace we need her. We have to move, now.”

  • • •

  Inside the museums, it went dark. All the lights, including the emergency lights, exploded in a shower of glass and sparks. “Take care of them!” Sal shouted to Perry, and was up in a flash. Her parents shouted questions, but Sal was gone, praying Perry would handle it.

  Footsteps pounded and screams surrounded them, frantic praying and sobs.

  “I saw the Virgin weeping blood!” screamed a woman. Sal couldn’t tell if she was experiencing total religious epiphany or outright fear. Since she had a long streak of blood down her jawline, and some of it appeared to be hers, Sal guessed the latter.

  The Virgin was weeping. Which Virgin? Sal thought about how many statues of Mary were around the Vatican and figured that didn’t narrow it down much. She activated the flashlight on her phone and ran against the stream of people toward whatever the threat down the hall was.

  When she got there, Sal stopped to take in the scene.

  She stood in a hallway of marble statues and busts, some Christian themed, others dating back to the Holy Roman Empire. Well-lit by sunlight streaming through large windows, all were weeping blood from blind eyes. All turned their marble necks to face her.

  “Shit,” she said.

  She took a step back and glanced through the window.

  The chaos wasn’t limited to the interior of the museums. The vast gardens were now patrolled by moving topiary that dragged root balls behind them, stalking the screaming crowds. One young child, maybe five or six, was cornered by a great hedge lion, and she cowered with hedges on all sides, blocking her escape. She crouched and wept, reduced to hiding her face and hoping that if she couldn’t see it, it couldn’t see her.

  Sal remembered being frightened like that, with no way to fight.

  The statues with legs began to move toward Sal, still weeping. The ones with arms did their best to drag themselves. Sal ran for the emergency exit to the garden, shoving the velvet rope aside and leaping the three steps down to the steel door. Opening it set off an alarm, but that just added to the noise. Down the hill, brightly dressed Swiss Guards ushered people away from the area, carrying out a moderately efficient evacuation.

  Sal sprinted toward the hedge lion. Her phone rang. She snagged it and managed to answer while sprinting.

  It was Liam. “You out of the museum yet? What happened?”

  “Um, no, still here,” she said. “Gardens outside the café. After that woman walked by, statues started weeping blood and moving, and hedges are attacking young children, and all the lights exploded. They’re evacuating and I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to fight topiary.”

  “Menchú wants to know if the woman is still anywhere near you?”

  “I don’t know, a lot of people are near me!” Sal snapped. The lion reached out a paw and batted at the girl, who screamed. “Gotta go.”

  “We’re on our way,” Liam said as the phone fell to the turf.

  The lion had originally been rampant, standing on one paw that was planted in the ground. That paw now trailed a huge root ball. Sal reached down and grabbed two fat roots and yanked back mightily.

  Hedges were large, dense things, and the Vatican kept theirs very healthy and lush. She barely
budged the bulk of the lion, but she did lift it off the ground, breaking its foundation. The lion stumbled once and looked over its shoulder.

  “Run!” Sal commanded, and the lion turned to swipe at her. The girl dashed away, and Sal was grateful she wasn’t frozen with shock and fear.

  Team Three could use a kid like that in twenty years or so. If we’re still around.

  The lion pulled its root-ball paw out of her grasp and she nearly fell forward with it, but she let go and hit the ground, rolling. Thorny claws raked the spot where she had just been, and she scrambled to her feet.

  Fighting a hedge. She would need a blade, or fire, or herbicide. She had a gun.

  “Thanks for keeping us prepared, Fox,” she said.

  From inside one of the museum buildings, the bust of a long-haired, thoughtful man burst through a window and soared toward them. Sal sidestepped to the right and the lion followed her movements—

  —which led it into the path of the marble bust, which hit it in the back of the head. It didn’t do much damage, as the lion was more flora than fauna, but the statue had an awful lot of mass. The lion tumbled forward with the impact.

  Sal managed to sidestep again, and looked up to see Grace leaping from the broken window and sprinting toward her, blades in her hands.

  “Ever fought a hedge before?” Sal asked.

  Grace nodded. “I had a flamethrower at the time, though.”

  The lion struggled to its feet.

  “I’ll look for one,” Sal offered.

  Grace shook her head. “These should work. Arturo believes this is a distraction. The entire Vatican is like this. Statues moving, fountains running with blood, paintings preaching blasphemy, the whole bit. There doesn’t seem to be a book or demon to focus on.”

  “So we run?” Sal asked.

  “One second,” Grace said, and leapt forward. She crossed her swords and brought them together like scissors when she reached the lion’s head. It tumbled off its shoulders and onto the grass.

  Grace landed, gave a curt nod, and they dashed back toward the hole Grace had leapt from. It was around six feet off the ground, and Grace made the jump with ease, while Sal scowled up at her. A roar sounded behind them, and Sal turned.

  The lion’s head was still roaring, its face pointing toward them. The body, a little shaky, began bounding in their direction.

  The emergency exit door opened in front of her, and Grace beckoned her through.

  Sal took her eyes off the topiary for an instant to move through the door, but the headless lion hedge hit her with a swipe in the back, taking her off her feet and shredding her leather jacket. The thorns raked her skin before the blow knocked her through the door, and Sal was too stunned to break her fall. She hit the three steps and crumpled.

  4.

  Every mission, Grace had to remind herself that her companions were much more fragile than she was. She should have punched her way through the emergency door to get Sal out of harm’s way, or cut the lion into kindling. Something other than leaving Sal alone with a giant topiary monster.

  The door closed behind them and Grace bent to examine Sal. She was groggy, though not out cold. Her back oozed blood, but her jacket had taken most of the damage.

  Something hit Grace from behind, bruising a rib and sending her tumbling.

  “This is bullshit,” she said, getting up and snarling at the statue of the wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus. The statue was covered in blood, the dead eyes still leaking. Grace stood in front of Sal, shielding her, waiting. The wolf leapt, sending hundreds of pounds of statue flying at her. She met it, ducking a little and catching the wolf’s chest and pushing up as if the wolf were a volleyball. It went sailing through the window she had previously broken and landed on the grass outside, making a large dent in the ground.

  The headless lion came by to investigate it, but ended up disinterested.

  Pity. Grace had hoped that they would fight each other.

  “Come on,” she said, helping Sal to her feet. “You’re okay.”

  “That’s a matter of debate,” Sal groaned. “I can’t believe I got beaten by a hedge.”

  “If it helps, you were running away from it, not fighting it.”

  “No. No, that doesn’t help.” Sal rubbed her forehead where she’d hit the step. “Just don’t tell Liam. Speaking of, where is everyone else?”

  “Asanti is trying to figure out where the center of all of this is, and Liam and Arturo are actively searching the museums.”

  “Then let’s find them,” Sal suggested.

  After a few texts, they met at the doors of Saint Peter’s Basilica. To the side, two members of the Swiss Guard were seeing to a colleague, strapping him to a gurney. Menchú greeted Sal and Grace with a grim nod. He pointed at the guards.

  “She came this way.”

  “Is the guard dead?” Sal asked.

  “Not yet,” Menchú said. “We think the woman has gone into the necropolis to the tomb of Saint Peter.”

  “Because she went down those stairs,” Liam said, pointing at a door. Then he waved his hand at the general chaos behind them. “And all of that was distraction.”

  “Let’s go,” Grace said, striding through the door.

  “Wait,” Menchú said, taking her arm. Her stopping was politeness; he couldn’t have held her back if he tried. “This is one of the holiest churches in all of Catholicism. I hope it goes without saying that we need to take the utmost care within.”

  Grace nodded, and then went on through the door.

  • • •

  The cathedral was glorious. A massive ceiling with arches and art and gilded everything. Sal could see the pull of Catholicism just because it gave you pretty places to pray in. The team spent far too little time in the cathedral; they headed below to the catacombs, which were much less glorious. Narrow halls, stone floors, crumbling red walls, and mazelike passages greeted them. They walked single file, Grace leading with purpose, Menchú following Grace a bit more slowly, Liam behind him, straining his neck to look all around him, and Sal bringing up the rear.

  Sal and Liam spoke in far-too-loud whispers. “You seriously mean you’ve never been here?” Sal asked. “Seems like you would be a natural visitor to places like this.”

  “I’m busy saving the world from demons. I don’t have a lot of time to make tourist visits,” Liam said archly. “Besides, I have too much respect for the dead to disturb them with gawking.”

  “Yeah, I haven’t had enough time to go sightseeing yet either,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Hush, or it’s going to hear us coming,” Menchú said. He put his hand on Grace’s shoulder and she froze. “Let me, please,” he said, and moved past her to lead the way. “I think I know where she’s going.”

  “Did he say ‘she’?” Sal asked. “Who’s ‘she’?”

  “Dunno. I noticed it too,” Liam whispered.

  They passed walls of skulls, small tombs separated by thick sheets of plastic or glass, and ended up at an unassuming ruin. Menchú gasped when he spotted a small blonde girl there, chipping away at the wall with an ancient stone knife. Sal swore behind them. It was the girl she had rescued from the topiary, only carrying herself with the confidence of ages. Her eyes glowed the same way the woman’s had earlier that day.

  “Stop,” Menchú said to the girl. He drew in breath to say something else, but Grace had already launched herself forward.

  The being waved her hand at Grace, and Grace hit an invisible wall, bouncing off and landing in a crouch.

  “Arturo. You weren’t distracted nearly as long as I expected you’d be. Good job,” the demon said in a high, girlish voice. She dug again at the wall, and Liam swore, outraged, as red chips fell from the crude hole she’d created.

  “What are you doing here?” Menchú asked the being, as if he knew her. Behind him, Grace stepped forward, murder in her eyes.

  “Just looking for something I misplaced,” she said, still digging in the wall.
<
br />   “You misplaced something in the tomb of one of our greatest saints?” Menchú said.

  “You act as if it was hard to do,” she said. “It is easy when you had access during the time they were building it. Just slip something in for later. A time capsule. Let it marinate for a while. It’s a little harder to get to after several centuries.” She started chipping again.

  Grace clenched her fists and tensed to run at her again.

  “Stop,” Menchú said softly. “That’s not her natural form. She’s inside an innocent; if you kill her, she will just go to another victim and all we will have done is kill a child at the tomb of Saint Peter.”

  Sal walked forward, mindful of the wall, to get a better look at the knife. “What are you using there?” she asked conversationally. “You couldn’t find a better tool?”

  The girl smiled. “Style is important. You can do this with a hardware store hammer. But a midwife doesn’t use a box cutter, even though I suppose she could. The wrong tool won’t feel as g—” her words cut off abruptly as Grace wrapped an arm around her and lifted her away from the wall, yanking the knife from her hand.

  • • •

  Grace was grateful to Sal for distracting the girl, but also for encouraging her to figure out how to use her burn in a more creative way. She hadn’t actually tried vibrating through walls yet—although she did enjoy the comic book that Sal showed her depicting that feat—but she thought if she tried to vibrate hard enough she could break whatever magic was keeping her from the girl.

  She focused and tensed and felt the heat rise, and could almost see her candle flaring higher and hotter as she demanded more from it. She heard a hum and realized it was her own body vibrating. She reached out her hand and placed it against the force field; it was there, but she could push through it like a pin passing through a piece of tape on a balloon. She made a hole but didn’t burst the field and distract the girl, who was talking to Sal.

  She didn’t take the time to revel in her new trick, because she had a goddamn demon to put through the wall—or at least pick up like she had been a bad girl.

  The girl writhed in Grace’s arm, reaching for the knife and swearing loudly. “What do you want me to do with this?” Grace asked Menchú.