by Jim C. Hines
“In the flesh,” I said weakly.
It was Deb who finally took pity on me. She unzipped her jacket and handed it to me.
I hesitated. “No offense, but the last time I saw you, you shot up my living room and then tried to poison me.”
“That will not happen again,” Gutenberg said firmly. “I took a page from your book, Isaac. Nothing so crude as the bomb you implanted in Ted Boyer, but I promise you Ms. DeGeorge will not act against us in the future.”
Deb scowled, but didn’t say anything.
I wrapped the jacket around my waist like a makeshift kilt, tying the sleeves together at the hip. “How did you get back so quickly? Wait, how long were we in there?”
“Long enough for us to begin cleaning up the damage Hubert did.” Gutenberg returned the sword to its book. “I left you three hours ago.”
Three hours. It had felt like minutes.
“It’s a disaster,” Deb said quietly. “Like a bomb went off at the daycare center.”
“We have people working the perimeter,” Gutenberg went on. “They’ll keep the mundanes out and the vampires in until we can cover up the most obvious signs of magic.”
“Signs like a big freaking elevator shaft into the center of the Earth?” Deb asked. “Yeah, people might have a few questions about that.”
“How many…?” Lena asked quietly.
“Our preliminary count is between thirty and forty humans dead,” said Pallas. “Most were killed by vampires in the chaos. We won’t have a verified casualty list for at least a week. We’ll be monitoring the morgues to make sure everyone stays dead. At least a hundred more saw the fighting. Information on vampire casualties is rougher, since few of them leave corpses behind. We estimate that the automatons slaughtered at least fifty. It will be days before anyone can figure out how many more might have fled.”
Close to a hundred lives, maybe more, snuffed out in a single night by one deranged libriomancer.
“The vampires have telepaths among their kind,” Gutenberg said. “They’ll gather up any of their number who might have strayed.”
“And do what with them?” asked Pallas. “They murdered innocent people-”
“They were running for their lives,” Deb shot back. “Running from your killer mannequins.”
“Enough,” Gutenberg interrupted. “I’m not prepared to escalate the war Charles Hubert worked so hard to try to create.”
“So it’s contained?” I stared at them, trying to believe it. Trying to focus not on the death, but on how much worse things could have been. “We stopped Hubert in time?”
“You did,” said Gutenberg. “Though it will take months to fully contain the damage. I’ll be diverting one automaton to Taipei, where the vampires are currently engaged in a full-fledged civil war. Another will go to Kaliningrad to deal with a libriomancer who, in my absence, has been offering his services to the Russian mob.”
“What about Nidhi?” Lena hadn’t left my side. I felt her tremble slightly as she spoke.
“Alive, and human,” said Gutenberg. “Alice Granach has accepted personal responsibility for making sure Doctor Shah is returned to us unharmed.” His voice hardened, making me suspect Granach had been given little choice about that responsibility. “Ms. DeGeorge will escort you to Detroit to meet her.”
“Great, now I’m running an escort service,” Deb muttered.
Gutenberg’s words twisted in my chest. I did my best to keep my reaction from showing. Lena had made her choice the moment she learned Shah was alive and human. I turned to her. “Thank you.” I gestured down at myself. “For this, and for everything else.”
She gave me a halfhearted smile. “I figure it was the least I could do. After stabbing you, and all.”
I chuckled and stared at the ground, wanting to stall, to keep her here a few minutes more.
She looked away, tracking something I couldn’t see. Her fingers shot out to trap a mosquito hovering in the air. She offered the buzzing bloodsucker to Smudge, who cooked and gobbled it down in one quick movement. “You keep him safe, okay?”
I wasn’t sure which one of us she was talking to, but I nodded. I forced myself to release her other hand. “I’m sure Gutenberg will want me to check in with Doctor Shah to make sure my brain’s working properly. I’ll see you then?”
It sounded weak. What were you supposed to say in a situation like this, when it was time for the most amazing woman you’d ever met to return to her lover?
She leaned in and kissed me one last time, her arms tightening around my bare skin. Her forehead pressed against mine. I breathed in, holding the scent of her as long as I could.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered as she pulled away. She followed the others out of the office without looking back, as if she were afraid of what she would do if she hesitated. I watched through the doorway as they vanished with one of the automatons.
Gutenberg stooped to pick a handful of metal letters from the floor. “Now then,” he said. “I believe you had a question for me…”
I swallowed. “I want to know what I saw in Hubert’s mind.”
He picked up another book from the floor and pulled out a pair of pressed black pants, like a magician pulling scarves from his sleeve. Within seconds, he had created an entire tuxedo, which he handed to me without looking, one piece at a time. It was too tight, and didn’t include socks or underwear, but it was a step up from wearing Deb’s jacket.
“James Bond you aren’t,” Gutenberg commented.
I left the top shirt buttons undone and pulled on the jacket while he gathered up the rest of the books from the desk. “You founded the Porters to keep that thing out of our world, didn’t you?”
“In part, yes.” He began stacking books on the desk. “The truth, Isaac, is that I don’t know precisely what they are.”
“They?”
He shrugged. “I believe so, but I know only four things for certain. Whatever they are, they have existed at least as long I have, though they could be far older. As old as the universe itself, perhaps, though I doubt it. In these past centuries, they have grown stronger. They hate with a fury unlike any other. And sooner or later, they will find a way to fully enter our world.” He scowled at me. “Sooner, if idiots like you and Hubert keep flinging magic about with abandon and weakening the boundaries of our world!”
“How many people know about this?” I whispered.
“Twenty-three, now. The risk has always been that shortsighted madmen would work to summon and command these things. It’s happened before.” He opened the office door and walked out into the parking lot, where he stared into the sky. “The first time they struck at me, I thought they were the host of Hell itself. I’ve broadened my theories considerably since then, though I’ve found nothing to either confirm or disprove that original belief.”
“How do you fight them?”
“The same way you fight any enemy. With knowledge.” He smiled. “As I recall, you once expressed interest in a research position…”
Chapter 24
I finally made it home around sunrise the next morning, jittery from caffeine and magic both. Lena’s motorcycle was in the garage where she had left it. I could probably pay Dave Trembath to drive it down to Dearborn on his trailer… or I could use it as an excuse to call Lena.
And then what, Vainio? Ask how she and Nidhi are getting along? Tell her you’re always here if her current lover gets kidnapped by vampires again? I shook my head and turned away from the bike. I could deal with it later.
Inside, the house was every bit the disaster it had been when I left. Despite my precautions, flies and mosquitoes had found their way in through the back door. I halfheartedly pressed the duct tape back into place, trying to fix my makeshift curtain, then gave up.
I checked the library next, mentally cataloging which books I might be able to use to repair the bullet holes in the walls and ceiling. The back door was a lost cause.
My voice mail held six increasingly pissed
-off messages from Jennifer Latona, demanding to know why I hadn’t returned to work and asking for an update on the insurance claim.
Crap. I knew I had forgotten something…
All things considered, I should have been happy. I had stopped the man who murdered Ray Walker, and earned a promotion in the process. For years I had imagined this moment: I would have full access to the Porter archives, centuries of magical research to explore.
Only I wouldn’t get to choose which project to join, which research to duplicate and expand, adding my own ideas and insights. I had a single assignment, one which could only be shared with a handful of others Porters cleared by Gutenberg himself: find the origin of the thing I had seen in Hubert’s mind, and figure out how to stop it.
Gutenberg would be sending me material from his own personal library. Scanned copies of documents five hundred years old, including firsthand descriptions of his encounters with our unknown enemies, and an uncensored account of the founding of Die Zwelf Porten?re… including the identities of the twelve men and women who had been transformed into automatons.
Only six remained. Six trapped souls, forced to serve and protect their master. Gutenberg had offered to free them… if I could come up with a better way to protect and enforce magical law.
With a sigh, I headed for my office. While I waited for the computer to power up, I stared out the window, my thoughts drifting back to my clumsy, glorious landing on the surface of the moon. Going back would be difficult in this body, but not impossible. Science fiction had spent decades on such matters, designing energy suits that could protect me from the cold and the vacuum.
“I’m going back,” I whispered. And not just to the moon. Wherever magic could take us.
I sat down at the desk and pulled up the Detroit Free Press Web site. They described last night’s events as an explosion caused by a natural gas line rupture, though one eyewitness in the comments section insisted it had been a terrorist attack and the government was trying to hide the truth. The photo showed a simple fence where people had posted photos of missing loved ones. Flowers and other tokens were piled at the base of the fence.
Nothing was said about vampires or metal giants, or the magic used to bring the chaos under control.
I closed the site, choosing to focus instead on the lives we had saved. How much longer would it have been before the damage grew too widespread to contain? Another hour, maybe two, and the events Hubert had started would have led to war the likes of which the world had never seen.
I glanced at the phone, tempted to call and check on Lena. The Porters would have made sure she and Nidhi were safe. By now, they should be back home… and knowing Lena, they probably didn’t want to be disturbed right now.
I swallowed to ease the knot in my throat and opened up our insurance company’s Web site to start an online claim for the damage to the library. I’d be talking to Jennifer tomorrow about cutting back to a half-time position in order to focus more time and energy on my research. Nicola Pallas had already arranged a cover story to explain my absence over the past week: a severe bout of rotavirus that had put me in the hospital. A forged doctor’s note was on its way to Jennifer’s mailbox.
Once the insurance claim was sent, I logged into the Porter database. Research began with reading, and I had a lot to catch up on.
For two straight days, I threw myself into my work, reading every treatise on magic, every report on possession, every scrap of information I could find.
Including the personnel reports on every Porter whose magic had been locked and their memories rewritten. There were fewer than I had feared. On average, it looked like Gutenberg only had to do it once every decade or so. The records included notes on the magic used to wipe both the memories of the subject and to adjust the memories of their family and friends-including other Porters-in order to eliminate any questions.
“Asshole,” I muttered. But having seen what Charles Hubert had become, on some level, I understood Gutenberg’s fear.
I also looked for information on Ponce de Leon, but found little of use. Records of his time with the Porters were minimal, with nothing to indicate why he had finally been banished or what spells had been used to confine him to Spain. But there were other sources of information. Thanks to interlibrary loans, I would be receiving a copy of pretty much every biography of Ponce de Leon currently available. One way or another, I intended to piece together exactly what had happened, and how worried I should be about de Leon making off with Gutenberg’s book.
And then there was the book FedEx had dropped on my doorstep this morning: an annotated copy of the Malleus Maleficarum, a fifteenth-century guide to witchcraft which Gutenberg believed might hold some insight.
I had been reading for three straight hours when I heard a vehicle pull into the driveway. I sat back and rubbed my eyes. The book was in Latin, Gutenberg’s notes were in Middle High German, and trying to jump back and forth between the two was shorting out my brain. My knees and back cracked as I stood and headed for the door. A peek through the window showed Nidhi Shah and Lena Greenwood walking up the driveway.
I surveyed my home and grimaced. Aside from nailing sheets of plywood over the broken back door, I had done nothing at all to clean up. Nor was I much better off: my clothes were rumpled, stubble covered my chin and cheeks, and my hair was a bed-flattened disaster.
Doctor Shah didn’t look so great either. Her eyes were shadowed, and she acted jumpy, glancing about as she approached like she was waiting for something to leap out at her. Given her time in captivity, I couldn’t blame her. How did a therapist cope with that kind of trauma?
I took a moment to compose myself, trying to keep my own conflicting feelings from showing, then opened the door.
“Isaac!” Lena bounded up the steps to hug me. “Congratulations on your promotion!”
“Thanks.”
She pulled back, and her brow furrowed. “Have you eaten anything today?”
“Raisin Bran. I think.” Had I actually finished that bowl, or was it still sitting in my office? “I’ve been busy with the new job.” I stepped to the side. “I haven’t had time to straighten up around here. Sorry.”
Lena pulled a box of Hot Tamale candies from her pocket. “I brought something for Smudge. Do you mind?”
I gestured for her to go ahead, and she hurried back to my office. I shook Doctor Shah’s hand and shut the door behind her. “I’m glad you’re all right.” I hesitated. “Are you? All right, I mean?”
“I’ve had better months, but I’m getting there. I met with Margaret Hubert yesterday. Her son’s magic was crude, like an ax through her memories, but I think the Porters should be able to help her.”
Lena returned and opened the fridge. “You haven’t even been shopping yet?”
Doctor Shah rolled her eyes. I couldn’t tell if her expression was one of fondness or exasperation. Probably both.
“If I’d known you were coming, I would have stocked up on ice cream,” I said.
“Well, make sure you remember next time.”
Next time? “I’m sorry I forgot to call you about the motorcycle.”
“I’m not here about the bike.” Lena gave up on my fridge and sat down at the table, where she tossed back a few candies.
When she didn’t say anything more, I turned back to Shah. “Do you want a beer?”
Her face eased into a genuine smile. “Oh, God, yes.”
I grabbed two from the fridge, one for each of us. I took a long drink, then asked, “Did Gutenberg send you to check up on me?”
“Gutenberg has nothing to do with this visit,” Lena assured me.
“In part, I wanted the chance to say thank you,” said Doctor Shah. “For helping Lena, and for freeing me.”
“I couldn’t have done it myself.” I gave Lena a quick salute with the bottle. “She’s a better field agent than I ever was.”
“Says the man who took out four automatons,” Lena shot back.
“There’
s more.” Doctor Shah stared at her bottle. “You know why Lena first sought you out.”
“Sure.” I kept my voice as neutral as I could. “She was afraid you had been killed or turned, and she needed…”
“I needed you,” Lena said bluntly. “Especially after the death of my tree.”
I tried not to think about the branch she had grafted onto the oak out back. “Until we could reunite you and Doctor Shah.”
“Please call me Nidhi.” She forced another smile. “I think we’re well beyond titles at this point, don’t you?”
“Nidhi and I were talking about Gutenberg,” Lena said. “We had what you might call a professional disagreement.”
“Lena believes Gutenberg has narcissistic personality disorder, and may in fact be a sociopath,” Nidhi said calmly. “Whereas I believe the DSM-IV wasn’t written to diagnose six-hundred-year-old sorcerers.”
I stared. “You’re asking me to settle a debate about mental disorders?”
“We fought.” Lena was arranging her remaining candies in a single meandering line.
“It happens. You’ve had a rough few days.” Nidhi was the therapist, not me. “People fight.”
“Not like this,” Lena said softly. “Not me.”
“Lena adapts to the personality of her lover.” Nidhi wiped condensation from the neck of her bottle. “After losing both me and her tree, Lena spent an entire week with you.”
My stomach did a somersault. “I don’t understand.”
“She loves you.” There were so many conflicting emotions in those three words I couldn’t begin to untangle them all.
“I… I know.” I winced as soon as I said it. Han Solo could say that and be awesome. I just felt like a dork. “But it was one week. She loves you more.”
“I’m right here,” Lena said, flicking a candy at me. “It’s not a competition. And I love you both.”
I could translate ancient texts in a half-dozen languages, but the more I tried to follow this conversation, the more lost I became.
“I’ve never been my own person. I never will be.” Lena spoke flatly, without resentment. “But fighting with my lover like that… it was something new. Something that happened because of you.”
