Unbound

by Jim C. Hines

  “The Porters are not going to do this!” I gestured to the automaton. “I won’t let it happen.”

  Cameron and his automaton materialized atop the north wall.

  “Oh, shit.” The automaton reached toward me, and I saw a line of familiar Latin flare to life. Pluit ignem et sulphur de caelo et omnes perdidit. “Incoming!”

  Sulfurous flames poured forth. Cameron wasn’t playing around anymore. Neither was Bi Wei, who diverted the attack and spun, carrying the fire like a dancer twirling her partner, then launching it back at Cameron.

  Lena tossed the sphere to me and sprinted toward the wall. I dropped to one knee and checked Sarieha. Her legs were broken, but she was alive. I turned my attention to the automaton’s head. With its inner workings exposed and its defenses down, I could have destroyed it, but Babs and Cameron had two others they could use to build their army. And since Sarieha had gone to the trouble of opening this one up for me . . .

  I twisted the ring on my hand, another of the items I had pulled from the gaming manual. I hadn’t planned on using the ring’s three wishes until I faced Meridiana. Then again, when had any of my plans worked out the way I wanted? I crafted my first wish in my mind, examining every word for loopholes before speaking it aloud.

  While I worked on the automaton’s head, Lena plunged her hands deep into the northern wall. Branches sprouted from the palisade, twining around Cameron’s arms and legs. Lena directed other branches to attack his automaton, while Bi Wei countered the automaton’s magic.

  I finished my work on the automaton’s head and turned my attention to the armillary sphere. Magic poured forth from the ring, and the second of the three jewels disappeared. The sphere vanished from the grass.

  Babs and her automaton appeared on the eastern wall. I yanked out my shock-gun, adjusted it to the highest level, and fired at the platform beneath her. It collapsed under their weight.

  Another branch trapped Cameron’s arm. Bi Wei raised her hands. Dozens of shadows moved with her, preparing to finish him off.

  I switched to a nonfatal setting and shot her in the back. Electricity fragmented over her body, and she fell.

  “Come on!” I shouted.

  Lena left Cameron fighting to free himself. Babs and her automaton were already getting back to their feet. Lena scooped Bi Wei into her arms, and we ran toward the southern gate. Smudge’s cage banged against my hip with every stride.

  Fire washed through the gate behind us, but they didn’t chase us. Why bother? Their first priority would be to find the sphere, and they could see neither of us had it.

  Ponce de Leon waited for us in the parking lot, leaning against the Triumph with his arms folded. I was a little surprised. With Gutenberg gone and the Porters crumbling, I had half-expected him to do the pragmatic thing and get the hell out of here. Instead, he got in and started the engine, leaving the door open.

  “Do you have Nidhi?” Lena shouted.

  “They put her into an enchanted sleep. She’s resting comfortably in the passenger’s seat.”

  “We could have used a hand back there,” I said.

  “I’ve squared off with automatons before. I’d prefer not to do so again.”

  I didn’t have time to argue. “We have to get to Copper River. The Triumph isn’t big enough to—”

  Ponce de Leon didn’t move. “How long has it been since you stole my car, Isaac?”

  “Technically, I didn’t steal it from you. It was in storage. Confiscated after you snuck into France back in seventy-nine. All I did was fudge some paperwork.”

  “You were clever enough to forge Porter requisitions, but you’ve yet to uncover everything this car can do.” He tucked his cane behind the seats. “You’ll want to stand back.”

  He pulled the choke out as far as it would go, sealed the air vents, then turned on the hazard lights. With a satisfied smile, he turned on the radio and pressed the fourth station button.

  The transformation was too swift for me to follow, though scraps of magical text taunted me as they flew past. The car’s body spread outward. Paint melted into the metal, leaving the appearance of hammered steel. The door slammed shut, locking Nidhi and Ponce de Leon inside.

  Lena and I fell back. The car was now three times as wide as before and almost twice as long. Portholes the size of dinner plates spread equidistantly around the upper portion. A ramp hissed down to the pavement, and Ponce de Leon beckoned us inside.

  I didn’t move. “Are you telling me I’ve had my own flying saucer all this time?”

  “It’s a shame you didn’t steal the manual. It will be cramped, but we should all fit, and this form makes much better time. We may need to stop for gas, though.” He sat in a padded metal-backed swivel chair at the exact center of the ship. A curved control panel arced in front of his lap, studded with toggle switches and bright lights in primary colors. “What do you think? One of your libriomancers helped me with the layout.”

  The ramp lifted, leaving only the low illumination from the lights hidden in the base of the walls. A chrome control stick, two-handed and reminiscent of something you’d find in the cockpit of a jumbo jet, rose from the instrument panel. Lena set Bi Wei on the floor, then moved to sit with Nidhi.

  “You turned your car into a UFO,” I said.

  He looked over his shoulder at me. “How do you know I didn’t turn my UFO into a car?”

  There were no chairs or seatbelts, only metal plating for the floor and a circular bench that ringed most of the ship, with a gap for the ramp. The walls curved up around us, suggesting that the engines and electronics were all locked away in the lower half.

  The floor buzzed as we rose into the air. The wall in front of Ponce de Leon turned transparent, a viewscreen showing the Mackinac Bridge stretched out before us.

  “This is awesome,” I whispered.

  He glanced over his shoulder. “You should see my DeLorean.”

  And then we were off, streaking through the sky toward Copper River. I couldn’t tell if the ship somehow knew where it was going, or if Ponce de Leon had a hidden GPS on that console. Most of the lights and switches were unlabeled and incomprehensible, though they looked extremely cool.

  “I feel like we should stop to burn a crop circle,” I said. Instead, I turned to study the spell keeping Nidhi asleep. After a few minutes, I was able to peel the magic away. I did my best to preserve the spell, transferring it like a sheet of gold leaf and laying it over Bi Wei. Her legs twitched, and her breathing deepened.

  I dug out my phone to begin putting the rest of my plan into effect. “Can you fly lower? I can’t get a signal up here.”

  Ponce de Leon dropped the ship through the clouds, taking us lower and lower until we were skimming over the treetops. I stared at the phone, but I couldn’t bring myself to use it.

  “What’s wrong?” Lena asked. She sat with one arm around Nidhi’s shoulders.

  I closed my eyes, but when I did, I saw the graves from a month before. “Meridiana knows we’re coming. We need help. But anyone I drag into this fight might not walk away.”

  “Don’t drag them,” said Nidhi. “Tell them the truth. Let them choose for themselves.”

  My heart was pounding as hard as it had during the fighting at Fort Michilimackinac. In some ways, I was more scared of this phone call than I had been to enter Gerbert d’Aurillac’s sphere. At least with the sphere, I had only been risking my own life and sanity.

  I started with Jerry Beauchamp, who answered after the fourth ring. I hadn’t seen Jerry or his family among the mob at my house, but given the speed of gossip in this town, he would have heard about it by now. And about me.

  “This is Isaac Vainio. I—yah, I know you’re at work.” I hadn’t, but I should have realized.

  “What do you want?” Jerry asked warily.

  “It’s not what I want. It’s what I need.” I wiped my other hand on my jeans. “I need to tell you the truth. And I need your help.”

  Ponce de Leon hadn’t li
ed about the ship’s speed. We reached the northern coast of the U.P. in a half hour, and the Copper River Public Library five minutes later.

  We landed on the side of the road across from the library. The ship blocked both the sidewalk and one lane of traffic. I crept down the ramp, shock-gun in one hand. I neither saw nor felt magic aside from our own, and Smudge was relatively unworried.

  A man stopped on the far side of the road with an overweight toy poodle on a leash. My jaw tightened. Andy Rosten had been part of the mob that attacked me and stood by while my home burned.

  He didn’t move. The sight of me emerging from a flying saucer with what looked like a revolver in my right hand might have had something to do with that.

  I strode purposefully toward the library’s back door, stopping only to nod in his direction. “Good afternoon.”

  I could see him trying to say my name, but no sound emerged.

  There were only a few people inside, and they stayed out of my way as I stocked up on books. Alex was working the main desk. “Isaac, what are you doing? You know you need to check those out first.”

  I turned around.

  He raised his hands. “Or you could do it later.”

  When I emerged, more people had gathered to stare at the UFO. Andy hadn’t moved at all, though his dog was pulling impatiently at the leash. He flinched when I glanced his way.

  “How are the twins?” I asked.

  “Good.” His voice squeaked a little. “They’re . . . they’re good.”

  “Did they ever pick up those Justice League books they reserved?”

  He nodded.

  “Glad to hear it. Tell Cindy I said hi.”

  Just down the street was a small flower garden surrounding a set of copper statues commemorating the original miners of our town. I pulled out a wand, and seconds later the miners and their full cart of ore were shrinking to the size of children’s toys. I tucked the wand away, scooped the three statues and cart into my hand, and turned to go.

  Andy was practically a statue himself. I gave him a quick salute with the wand, and he flinched.

  Once inside the saucer, I sat down beside Lena, who had been watching through one of the portholes.

  “I think he might have soiled himself,” she commented, putting a hand on my thigh. “You look like you enjoyed that.”

  “Damn right.” I tossed one of the statues in my hand.

  “And you needed miniature statues why?”

  I grinned. “It’s a surprise.”

  Lena and Nidhi exchanged a look of exasperation.

  “Where are we going?” asked Ponce de Leon as we lifted off.

  “She’s at the river. Fly north.”

  He turned in his seat and raised a single dark eyebrow.

  I winced inside. “Please.”

  We landed in a picnic area about a half mile from the river. Nidhi stayed with the ship. Or the car. Whatever you wanted to call it. If it transformed into a flying saucer, what other modes might it have? Assuming we all survived, I needed to see if I could read the different layers of magic worked into the body.

  Flames rippled over Smudge’s back as we climbed out. Ponce de Leon had been kind enough to conjure me a passable imitation of the old leather duster I used to wear as a field agent. The extra pockets allowed me to better stock up on books. It also gave Smudge a leather-insulated shoulder to cling to instead of being confined to his cage.

  We had gone only a few steps when a shadow flew toward us. Meridiana’s warrior angel, Binion, cut through the sky like an overgrown owl. He crashed into Lena with an impact that would have shattered the bones of an ordinary human. They rolled through the grass together. I concentrated, intending to strip his angelic story away, but before I could act, he cinched an arm around Lena’s neck. The other pinned her arms to her sides, preventing her from drawing her weapons.

  I raised my gun. Bodies conducted electricity well enough for me to stun them both. But when I pulled the trigger, the lightning dissipated before reaching them.

  “Buzzing the town in a UFO isn’t subtle.” Binion pressed Lena’s head sideways, straining to crack her neck.

  “I wasn’t going for subtle,” I said. “Let her go.”

  Ponce de Leon readied his cane. I forced myself to relax, to read the currents of Binion’s strength and power.

  Lena wedged her chin down, trying to force it into Binion’s elbow to create a gap so she could breathe. She bent her knees and sank lower, then rammed her elbows backward.

  It shouldn’t have worked. Binion was as strong as Lena. Probably stronger. But he gasped and released his grip. His hands went to his sides, where blood darkened his robe.

  Lena spun to face him. Six-inch wooden spikes had grown from her elbows. Binion drew his sword and swung at her head. She blocked the blow with a forearm now covered in thick bark. The thunk of steel hitting oak echoed over the grass.

  Lena continued to transform as she fought. Plates of bark grew over her exposed flesh. Wooden spikes jutted from her knees. Sharp wooden spurs slid from the backs of her hands, reminding me of Wolverine’s claws from the X-men and making me suspect Lena had been reading Nidhi’s comics again.

  Binion tried to take flight, but she caught his leg. He reached down to grab her hair. She rammed the spurs on her left fist through his forearm and slammed him to the ground.

  He bellowed a most unangelic curse as he bounced to his feet. His right fist snapped out to strike Lena’s face, rocking her head back. But even as blood dripped from her nose, she lunged again, slicing and stabbing.

  I could see Binion trying to drain her magic, but there was too much, and Lena was striking too quickly.

  The crack of a hunting rifle made me jump. Binion staggered, his left arm hanging uselessly.

  Lizzie Pascoe stepped out from the woods, rifle raised to her shoulder. Binion moved sideways, trying to keep Lena between himself and Lizzie. He thrust his sword. Lena knocked it aside and punched him in the sternum, driving wooden spurs into his chest. She ripped them free and dodged to one side, allowing Lizzie to put a bullet into his chest.

  The sword slipped from his bloody fingers, and he fell face-first to the ground.

  Lena hadn’t even needed to use her bokken. This was an aspect of her magic I had never imagined. If she could stretch her power like this, what else could she do?

  Lizzie turned her weapon toward Lena.

  “Wait!” I waved my arms and ran to stand between them. I could understand Lizzie’s fear. Aside from the brown rings of her eyes, nothing human remained of my lover. She was a being of wood, with overlapping plates of bark for armor. Even her teeth had grown thicker, encased in fine-grained cellulose. The blood dripping from her nose was thick as syrup. “That’s Lena.”

  The rifle didn’t move, and I realized that putting myself in the line of fire of a woman who had recently helped burn down my house and beat the shit out of me was, perhaps, a poor tactical choice.

  “Yah, I . . . I know,” Lizzie said at last. She lowered her rifle. “I saw her fighting before . . . before all that.” She looked from Lena to me to Ponce de Leon, and then to the flying saucer behind us. “Is there anything more you want to tell us?”

  “Sure. That’s not a real UFO, the gentleman there is five hundred years old, and there’s a woman trying to break out of a prison built by a pope a thousand years ago. And thank you.”

  She shook her head and glanced at the grass by her feet. “Isaac, I don’t know what the hell’s going on, or what you and your girlfriend really are. But about what happened before . . .”

  Another monster bounded out of the woods before she could finish. Grotesque and scarred, with yellowed skin. I remembered seeing him in Gutenberg’s apartment building, right before it exploded. Up close, the misshapen features helped me to finally place why he looked so familiar.

  “You’re Frankenstein’s monster!” I fished one of the shrunken statues from my pocket. “Awesome!”

  Like the rest of Meridiana�
�s puppets, he had both the physical strength of his distorted body and the magical powers of her ghosts. I could see that magic reaching toward me, seeking to disarm whatever spells or weapons I might have prepared.

  With a grin, I hurled the tiny statue straight at him.

  Under normal circumstances, the wand I had used should have kept the statue miniaturized for up to eighteen hours, depending on the roll of the die. But with his magic stripping my spell away like a swarm of hungry piranha, the statue returned to its normal size—and mass—in midair.

  Its velocity, on the other hand, was unchanged. I saw the monster’s rheumy eyes turn round, and then the full-sized metal mining cart knocked him flat onto his back. He lay staring up at the clouds, simultaneously moaning and gasping for breath.

  I wanted to stop to study how his body worked, how the muscle and bone from different corpses grafted together so powerfully. Not to mention what an EEG of his brain activity might show. How did magic compensate for the body’s automatic rejection of foreign blood and organs? Or was the immune system dead as well, its functioning replaced by Meridiana’s magic?

  Instead, I turned to Lizzie. “Stay behind us.”

  She stared at me, then at the monster on the ground, then back at me. “Damn right I’m staying behind you!”

  In my peripheral vision, I saw Smudge slip from my shoulder. I caught him instinctively. My fingers closed not around the body of a hot, bristling spider trying to pretend he meant to do that, but a small stone statue, perfect in every detail. His petrified forelegs were raised as if in protest.

  I felt sick. Smudge had been my companion since high school. I cupped his body in my hands, too stunned to speak.

  “What happened?” Lizzie raised her rifle and searched the woods.

  “Don’t look!” I jumped in front of her. Which way had Smudge been facing when he fell? I grabbed a copy of Heart of Stone from my pocket. I had catalogued this book myself, and had taken it from the library on the chance that we’d face Meridiana’s gorgon again.