As one, they ran.
• • •
The sun was setting when Menchú and Sal found the rest of the team in the courtyard surrounding the main building of the museum. In spite of the alarms, an impressive number of staff and tourists remained inside the fence, waiting to see if they were going to be allowed back in the building. Most of them had their phones out, taking selfies and recording each other to update the world on the latest wrinkle in their vacation. Menchú was pretty sure they were all about to find something far more fascinating to record. Assuming their phones didn’t fry first.
“What happened in there?” Sal asked Liam.
“It stopped chasing us somewhere in the main exhibit hall. Not sure if that’s a good sign or not.”
Asanti’s dreads were falling out of their neat arrangement, giving her an uncharacteristically disheveled appearance. “It’s not,” she said. “It got distracted by some of the artifacts near the Rosetta stone.”
Menchú’s heart sank. Hannah seemed to have an affection for the oldest texts she could locate, and he could only imagine what her summoned creature could find to feed upon in a place like this.
A crash, followed by a screeching roar, did not exactly answer Menchú’s question about what the demon had found so distracting, but it did clear up any mystery as to what the result of its detour had been.
The creature that burst through the roof of the venerable British Museum was a chimera of mythological nightmares come to life. Part griffin, part sphinx, part Chinese lion, part snake that—given their luck—was probably part of an actual chimera.
The crowd in the courtyard screamed as pieces of the roof rained down. Sal was shouting at people to get back, to calm down, to evacuate the area quickly and calmly. In spite of her using her best authoritative bellow, she was having a negligible effect.
Flapping its mighty wings—one reptilian, one feathered—the City Eater turned its serpentine neck down toward the people below. Its head looked like a cross between a bird and a dragon. It opened a hooked beak as long as Menchú’s arm to reveal row upon row of gleaming teeth. Menchú could barely stand in the backwash of its wings as it descended lower and lower and drew breath to let loose … what? A mighty roar? A gout of flame? Menchú braced himself for either, for both, and then …
In the distance, but closing fast, the thump of helicopter blades sliced across the sky. A cry of hope went up from the crowd, seeing what they supposed was rescue. Menchú felt sick. There was no way the people in the two approaching helicopters could know what they were facing or how to defeat it. He was one of the foremost experts in the world, and he had no idea what to do. But as the mechanical beasts approached, the demon drew back from the ground, struggling and confused, no more familiar with helicopters than the crews were with demons.
The slicing rotors drew near, approaching the demon from either side, causing it to twist back and forth between them. It rose, and the helicopters followed, pinning it between them, unable to escape. The demon let out a scream so loud and discordant Menchú felt his heart shudder under the assault. And just as the cry reached its apex … the creature shattered, bursting outward past the helicopters like a breaking murmuration. For an instant, the air was filled with a thousand wings.
A heartbeat later, they were gone. The cloud ascended and split, spreading over London like a bag of feathers scattered to the winds.
Menchú stared after them.
Asanti was at his side. “I need to get back into the museum,” she said. “All our research is still there. It’s our only hope.”
Menchú blinked at her. “Our only hope to do what?”
“To contain it.”
Menchú threw up a hand toward the flock scattered across the sky. “You think you can contain that? It just split into a thousand pieces. A thousand City Eaters. And it’s—they’re?—still growing.”
“I don’t know!” she burst out. “But we have to try. We might not be enough, but we’re all this city has.”
Menchú took a breath. Then another. She was right. Away from the immediate threat of the helicopters, the thousand tiny pieces merged into an amorphous dark mist and descended on the city, vanishing behind the skyline. Not gone—retreated, to gather strength. He thought he understood this rhythm. The creature would not be so easily dispatched next time.
Sirens wailed out of sight.
Menchú took a steadying breath. “Let me find the director,” he told Asanti. “He should be able to get us back inside—” A buzz from Menchú’s pocket cut him off and Menchú drew out his phone. Cardinal Fox.
Asanti looked up from the caller ID to meet his gaze. “You could let it go to voicemail,” she said.
He couldn’t. He was a priest getting a call from a cardinal. He had to answer. And they both knew it.
Menchú cleared his throat as he brought the phone to his ear. “Your Eminence,” he said, “Team Three is already on the ground. I believe we can contain the phenomenon, but there is a problem—”
Fox cut him off. “There are several problems, Father, starting with you sneaking out of the Vatican in the middle of the night and following on from there. Team One is en route to your location. I am placing Shah in charge of this operation and you will give her your full cooperation. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Your Eminence.”
“The instant your services are no longer required in the field, you and your entire team will return directly to Rome, whereupon you and I will have words about this little adventure of yours.”
It wasn’t a question, but Fox paused, and so Menchú repeated, “Yes, Your Eminence.”
“Good.” Menchú waited for Fox to hang up. Now was not the time to fight his superior for the last word. But Fox wasn’t finished. “One more thing,” he said. “Tell Asanti she’s fired.”
And with that, the line went dead.
Bookburners
Season 3, Episode 12
Broken Vessels
Brian Francis Slattery
1.
The alleyway was like a thousand others in London, so no one took particular note on this evening as it filled with dark mist. The mist cascaded down from rooftops and landed heavily for something so insubstantial. Air moved and swirled, kicking up wastepaper, rippling the surfaces of the shallow puddles collected in the corners. The mist first thickened as it gathered, condensed, than congealed into a swarm as particles joined with one another, sought others, and joined again. The outlines of a creature formed in the air.
But wait, the creature decided. Not one. Three. There was time to be one later. For now, one was too slow, too kind. Three was better. The creature was hungry and needed energy to grow, so that when it became one, eventually, it would be almost impossible to stop. So three beings formed in the alley, three that were one. They exchanged nods and glances, as if coming to an agreement, though as they were of one mind, there would never have been any dissent. Their sole desire was to feed, to grow. Resolved, they loped out of the alleyway, into the city. They were only looking for food. The mayhem left in their wake, at least for now, was none of their concern.
• • •
From the hotel room window, Sal could hear the sirens from ambulances, carrying a sense of growing threat, of pressure rising. It was all over the news in London, exploding on social media, though exactly what the it was, nobody could say. BBC commentators struggled with the lack of footage. Cameras, phones, microphones, anything that used electricity seemed to go on the fritz as soon as they got close. Reports from terrified eyewitnesses offered little more than what the witnesses were feeling. News outlets passed around tweets.
My apartment is destroyed.
Just saw something eat part of a car.
Smoke, mayhem. Mom I love you.
There was no dispute about the damage. By now it was clear that it wasn’t just an it; it was a them. Three of them. Helicopters captured it best: three trails that meandered through the city with only some regard for the division betwe
en streets and buildings. The trails zigzagged down major thoroughfares and then burst into windows, burst out of walls on another side of the block, leaving stripes of wrecked cars, broken glass, and shattered plaster. People were being killed, going missing. The police were at a loss. The authorities called it a rolling attack, possibly the result of terrorism, and urged calm and caution. The mayor told people to stay inside, but stay alert. It was getting out of hand.
“What’s our move?” Sal said.
Liam didn’t raise his eyes; he was too busy following the news on his laptop. Grace and Menchú looked to Asanti, Perry, and Frances, who had her appendages hidden beneath a long skirt as she sat in her wheelchair.
“It’s complicated,” Perry said. “What we have here goes a little beyond your usual MO of capture and containment. I’m not sure you can do it without help.”
“It seems Cardinal Fox agrees with you,” Menchú said, a trace of bitterness in his voice.
“But Team One might not be the right tool for the job either,” Asanti said.
“Like a screwdriver for a nail, eh?” Liam said, still without looking up.
“Maybe more like bringing a flamethrower to stop a flood,” Perry said.
“Nice image,” Sal said, “but not useful. We have only a few hours before Team One arrives with everything they’ve got. What can we do?”
“Punching might work,” Grace said. “At least a little.”
“She’s not entirely wrong about that,” Perry said. “These are creatures of brute force. They might respond to rage and blunt trauma in ways that they won’t respond to bullets.”
Sal thought Grace gave her a little smile.
“Slowing them down is worthwhile if it means less people hurt,” Menchú said. “Even one less person. But do you think we’re enough to stop them?”
“No,” Perry said. “For that we might need help.”
Menchú sighed. “Magical help, yes?”
“But old magic,” Perry said.
“Fight fire with fire?” Sal said.
“You’re mixing my metaphor,” Perry said. “Fight flood with flood.”
“But doesn’t that just make a bigger flood?” Sal said.
“It’s a bad metaphor,” Perry admitted. “Though it might be accurate if we’re not careful. I know how all of you feel about the cavalry who comes to save you now and again, but I for one don’t think it’s bad that they’re on their way.”
“They could kill thousands.”
“And save tens of millions.” Perry shook his head. “But there might be time to stop it.”
Menchú sagged. “Tell us what you have in mind.”
Liam looked up at last. “Something from the British Museum?”
“No,” Frances said. “We think we should investigate something a little more local than that.”
“The popular conception that London was founded by the Romans is a little mistaken,” Asanti said. “There was a town here before the Romans ever arrived. Not a city, even by the standards of the time, but not a village either.”
“That’s not surprising,” Menchú said.
“Right,” Asanti said. “It was an old town, and sacred to its people.”
“Which is why the Romans couldn’t just move in. They had to subjugate it,” Perry said. “Because the Romans wanted to build a bridge over the Thames, and the Celts didn’t want them to. The Celts considered it sacrilege, a desecration. There were battles, which the Romans won. They got their bridge. But they had to keep rebuilding it for decades, because the Celts kept destroying it.”
“Sounds familiar,” Liam said.
“Was there something in the river that made it sacred?” Menchú said.
“No,” Perry said. “The river itself was sacred. The entity that is the river is very old, maybe older than the bed it lies in. It sleeps almost all the time. Part of me is surprised that the Celts even knew about it, but they were more in touch with these things than we are.”
“You seem to know a lot about this,” Liam said.
“It’s the angel in me,” Perry said.
“And you’ve still been holding out on us?” Sal said.
“I told Asanti and Frances,” Perry said, plaintive. Asanti and Frances nodded.
“What else do you know?” Sal said.
“All kinds of things,” Perry said. “Maybe you should include me more often.”
Sal made a face and mimed his words back to him: Maybe you should include me more often.
“All right,” Menchú said. “So your idea is to wake it up?”
“Yes,” Perry said. “It has been asleep for more than a thousand years. It’ll be hungry—for magic, for worship. To it, the City Eater will look like food.”
“And when we wake the river up,” Sal said, “will we be able to control it? Will we be able to send it back to sleep?”
“I don’t know, but I think so,” Perry said. “The Celts could do it. They coexisted with it for generations.”
“We’re not as good at coexisting as we used to be,” Grace said.
“If we fail at this,” Menchú said, “there will be consequences. Even more than we’ve already suffered.”
“If we don’t do anything right now, I’d say we’ve already failed,” Sal said.
“Okay then,” Menchú said. “Let’s go.” Sal heard a new strength in his voice, the doubt she’d grown accustomed to replaced by determination. An awareness of the risks, a willingness to accept them. She was proud of him, but wondered too what it meant, and where it would take them all.
• • •
Menchú waited until Asanti, Frances, and Perry had left. Sal, Grace, and Liam were busying themselves, preparing to race around the city, joking with each other, employing humor to take the edge off. It reminded Menchú how much he liked them.
He got out his phone and made a call.
“Fox,” said the voice on the other end.
“How long before Team One lands?” Menchú asked.
“A few hours.”
“We are worried about loss of life before then,” Menchú said. “The creature has split into three parts.”
“I’ve been following the news,” Fox said.
“Part of our team is going to give chase. The other part is going to see if we can enlist aid from local sources.”
“Magical local sources?” Fox said.
Menchú took a breath. “Yes,” he said.
“And who is leading this part of your plan?” Fox said.
Tell Asanti she’s fired, Menchú remembered. “We’re deciding that now,” he said.
“Using unsanctioned magic on these missions is forbidden,” Fox said. “You know that.”
“Yes,” Menchú said. “But right now the loss of life is intolerable to me. I hope it is for you, too. And this problem is big and getting bigger. The more people are hurt, the more people are killed, the more everyone is going to demand a real explanation for what happened. Have you contacted British authorities?”
“I haven’t,” Fox said.
“Do you plan to?”
“No.”
Menchú lowered the phone and prayed. Fox intended to do it: He would let London fall. He brought the phone back to his face. “The people of London aren’t safe right now. The mayor is advising everyone to stay where they are. I think he should be ordering them to evacuate,” Menchú said.
“We don’t have enough sway with the British authorities to force them to make that decision,” Fox said.
“To me, it sounds like you just don’t want to talk to them.”
“I don’t,” Fox said. “I see no need to waste whatever pull I have on this one. Not when we already have a plan in place. A plan you are now complicating, which will not be forgotten.”
“People are dying, Fox,” Menchú said.
“Of course they are,” Fox said. “It’s a war. I know it might not seem that way to you, with your books and your research and your retrieval missions, but to me, it’s a wa
r, or is becoming one, and the sooner we accept that, the sooner we can learn to deal with it more effectively.”
“I think what’s happening right now, in the world,” Menchú answered, “is something that you can’t fight. Not the way you fight.” He surprised himself with what he said. No one had ever forced him to articulate it in quite that way before, but now that he’d spoken, he realized he believed his own words.
“You and I will have to disagree on that,” Fox said. On the other end of the line, Menchú heard him clear his throat. “Listen,” he continued. “I have a lot of respect for everything you’ve done for the Society over the years, but I’m telling you to stand down from your plan and wait for Team One to arrive.”
“And I’m telling you I can’t do that,” Menchú said.
“Then you had better hope this entire episode is tied up with the neatest, tiniest little bow that you can imagine. Because my tolerance for what you and your team have been doing lately has reached its end.”
“All right,” Menchú said. “You’ve made yourself clear and so have I.”
“So we have nothing more to discuss.”
“No, we don’t,” Menchú.
“Report back later.”
“Maybe.”
He hung up. He turned to see Sal, Grace, and Liam waiting for him.
“That was Fox?” Liam said.
Menchú nodded. “He told us to do nothing until Team One gets here.”
“Great,” Grace said. “Let’s go.”
2.
The streets around the hotel had emptied out, leaving the city feeling underpopulated. It reminded Sal of New York on New Year’s Eve—not at Times Square, of course, but everywhere else—or when the police blocked off avenues for parades. Or, for that matter, the way older officers had described to her the way the city felt the day after September 11. She suddenly had a sense of what they meant, with the sound of sirens hanging in the air.
“Should be easy enough to catch up to this thing,” Liam said. “I’ll get the car.”
“I don’t think we’ll need to do that,” Grace said. She held up a finger to make them all pay attention. She was right: The sirens were getting louder. At first, Sal knew, she was hearing only the echoes of the sound off the buildings. But the edges of that sound were getting more distinct, the intertwining whines filling more of the air. Then a bank of flashing lights wheeled around the corner two blocks away, and three police cars in a tight line approached. There was nothing in front of them. Then the glass in a shop halfway down the block exploded, and a shape burst out of it, a blob with six galloping legs, the body surging forward and rearing back. A round head that seemed to be all mouth on a stubby neck. As the creature got closer, Sal could see big shards of plate glass embedded in its body, spiking its skin. She heard it snorting and wheezing. She still couldn’t see its eyes. It was heading in their direction.
Bookburners Page 41