Mikkel Birkegaard - The Library of Shadows

Remer's expression was contorted with pain, but he still kept reading, practically doubled up over the book, as if he wanted to protect it with his body.

There were still about a hundred people standing around the dais and taking part in the ritual, either by reading or by supporting the readers. Most of them kept casting anxious glances at Remer and Jon before they once again returned to the text.

It smelled as if something was burning, and the air was charged with electricity, which made the hairs stand up on Katherina's arms.

The spark between Jon and Remer seemed pale. It started very slowly to move at a calmer and calmer tempo, diminishing in size and luminosity. At the same time Remer began to straighten up, and the expression of pain vanished from his face.

Completely new sparks surrounded two other Lectors. Those who were standing too close leaped away, screaming with pain, while some people fainted on the spot. Others in the vicinity moved aside or ran off. A great noise erupted from those who were reading and from others who were talking or screaming and trying to get away. Accompanying everything was an angry hissing from the sparks.

Katherina cautiously backed further away from the podium as she tried to maintain her support for Jon and also take a look around. The others had to turn up soon. It was too late to stop the reactivation, but they needed to do everything they could to limit it. She reached a pillar and pressed her back against it. More Lectors ran past her, headed for the exit. Terror shone in their eyes. She tried to shut everything else out and focus on supporting Jon.

One of the Lectors, the latest to be reactivated, collapsed with a shriek. It happened without warning. He'd shown no signs of weakness or pain before he passed out, and Katherina had the feeling the same thing could have happened to anyone in the crowd.

On either side of Remer two new clouds had appeared. They had human shape, but were not yet fully formed.

Remer smiled.

Jon noticed another jolt in the images, a signal from Katherina which he took to be a warning. He sensed her support grow and he gathered all his forces. The cloud cover became pitch-black and the wind raged through the cemetery. Headstones toppled, pulling up the earth, which was whirled through the air in little tornadoes.

Maybe he couldn't fool Remer again, but the two new arrivals were in for a surprise. Before they were fully formed, Jon ratcheted up all the effects surrounding the figures. He wanted to make them disappear, remove them from the story, erase them like the misprints they were. They started to dissolve. One of them vanished almost instantly, whirled away in one of the tornadoes like smoke into an exhaust vent. The other stood its ground.

Remer was no longer smiling. He looked first at his companion and then at Jon.

Suddenly the headstone next to Jon changed shape, and in fright he lost his concentration. Before his eyes the granite liquefied and the stone changed from a rectangular shape into a cross.

Jon looked about in confusion. More changes were occurring all around him. Railings appeared, the vegetation shot up in some places and vanished in others. The sky grew lighter and the wind subsided.

'This is amazing!' shouted Remer with delight, stretching his arms up in the air.

The figure next to him was now fully formed, and Jon recognized him as one of the Lectors he had greeted in the foyer. The new arrival looked around in astonishment. Behind him three more hazy figures appeared.

Remer laughed. 'You don't have a chance, Campelli,' he shouted. 'Give up.'

'Why?' replied Jon. 'You've already got what you need.'

'True enough. But we still have room for a man like you in the Order.' He threw out his arms. 'Just look what we can accomplish together.'

'You duped me,' snarled Jon. 'Forced me to betray my own people.'

'You had it in you already, Campelli. I just brought it into the light.'

The three figures behind him were gradually becoming more solid.

'And pushed everything else into the dark,' said Jon. 'Katherina, the bookshop, my family. You made me forget my own family, Remer.'

'It won't do you any good to dwell on the past,' said Remer with annoyance. 'Even your father would have realized that. He would have loved being able to step into the story and change things the way we now can.'

'But you never gave him a chance,' Jon pointed out. 'You killed him.'

Remer shrugged. 'It was necessary,' he said. 'We would never have been able to turn him.'

Jon felt anger welling up inside him. With a flash of light the clouds overhead once again turned pitch-black, and lightning shot across the sky with an angry crash.

Remer cast an uneasy glance at the clouds.

'Who did it?' asked Jon through clenched teeth.

'What difference does it make?'

'Who killed my father?' shouted Jon, accompanied by yet another crash of thunder overhead.

'Patrick Vedel, the receiver,' replied Remer indifferently. 'It was necessary.'

'Patrick Vedel,' repeated Jon. It wasn't more than an hour ago that they were sitting side by side in the car on their way to the library. His anger grew stronger, and he knew that Vedel could feel it, because the hand he felt on his shoulder seemed to lose its hold for a moment, but then gripped even harder. Vedel was still keeping Jon inside the story, and he was wise to do so.

'Luca found out about our activities down here,' Remer went on. 'I think he realized he was out of his depth.'

'My father was here?' asked Jon. The idea that Luca would put so much distance between himself and the bookshop seemed unlikely.

'He could have been a good detective,' Remer acknowledged. 'Just like you, but even so I think he was shocked.' Remer shook his head. 'A man struck by panic could do anything. He had to be stopped.'

'So you killed him.'

'He might have gone to the authorities. That would have been equally bad for your little girlfriend and her reading buddies. It wouldn't have benefited any Lectors, any of us.'

The three figures behind Remer had assumed their final form and stood there looking about in amazement. One of them was Poul Holt.

Remer smiled. 'So, Campelli, what's it going to be?'

Katherina gasped for breath. The air in the reading room seemed to be getting heavier by the minute and the smoke was tearing at her lungs. Big sparks kept reaching out and making contact with the overhead beams, the pillars and other random objects. Some struck fleeing Lectors who were flung to the ground and either lay where they fell or tried to crawl away.

The energy in the room was stronger now than when they had arrived. At first it had seemed like an eiderdown settling over the space, but now it had changed character and felt like a rushing river, violent, roaring and overpowering.

Katherina had positioned herself next to a pillar so she could see both Jon and Remer. In the flow of images coming from Jon, she had caught a glimpse of a red-haired man. She recognized him as one of the men who had chased her through the marketplace, and judging by the emotions Jon attributed to the images, the red-haired man wasn't exactly a friend of his either. The accompanying anger was enormous, and when brief picture sequences of Luca got mixed in, she understood why.

The red-haired man was the receiver who had killed Luca.

Jon's concentration weakened due to his anger, and Katherina had to set aside her own fury to help him. Even though it pained her to do so, she muted the emotions in the pictures of Luca and instead supported the story as best she could. Slowly Jon regained his focus and began working his way through the text. She couldn't tell exactly what was happening in the place where he found himself, but something was certainly going on that went far beyond the words and sentences of the text, as if each letter of the alphabet was a landscape in and of itself.