Jim Hines - Libriomancer

“Pallas doesn’t think so,” said Deb. “She says there are spells in place, contingencies from ages ago. None of those have been activated.”

“The vampires at the library couldn’t even stop the two of us,” Lena added. “How could they overpower Gutenberg?”

“They couldn’t,” said Deb. “Not without help.”

“You mean someone inside the Porters.” I waited, but she simply watched me, her head tilted to one side like a teacher waiting impatiently for a student to figure out the lesson. “Wait, is that why I wasn’t told? Was I a suspect?”

“We all were.” Deb reached into her jacket, then made a face. “Weeks like this, what I want more than anything else is a damned cigarette.”

“No way,” I said automatically. “I heard what you were like the last time you quit.” Magic and nicotine withdrawal made for a very nasty libriomancer. If the rumors were true, Deb had used a copy of The Odyssey to transform one particularly unpleasant patron into a pig for most of a day.

“The vampire population has doubled in the past ten years,” said Deb. “Not to mention werewolves and ghosts and the rest. They stay out of sight, but Gutenberg is losing control.” She stood and started toward the bookshelves, but caught her foot. I moved to catch her as she fell. She spun, and something hissed against the side of my neck.

“Sorry, Isaac.” Deb backed away, holding a high-tech hypospray in her hand.

Lena stepped between us, slapping the hypospray away. With her other hand, she seized Deb by the jacket and slammed her into the shelves, hard enough that books toppled to the ground.

“Easy on the library,” I protested. Warmth spread from my neck down into my chest, but for some reason, I wasn’t upset. “What was that stuff?”

“Truth serum.” Deb didn’t move. I wouldn’t have either, given how pissed off Lena looked. “I read about it in your reports. Bujold, I think.”

That would explain my laid-back reaction. Bujold wrote good truth drugs. “You should read the whole series. I’ll get you into spaceships and aliens yet.”

“Is the drug dangerous?” Lena asked.

“Nah.” I shook my head. “As long as I’m not allergic. It just makes the recipient feel content and helpful and uninhibited. And also warm.” Truth be told, this was the most relaxed I had been since the attack. I wagged a finger at Deb. “Three vampires tried to kill me, and you’re worried I’m the bad guy?”

“You’re an ex-libriomancer, yanked out of the field and banished to the middle of nowhere,” Deb said. “You kept a magical pet in defiance of Porter rules, and now you’ve acquired a dryad bodyguard. What would you think, hon?”

“I had to keep Smudge. How do you put a spider back into a book when the spider can set the book on fire? ” More importantly, returning Smudge to his book would dissolve him back into magical energy, essentially killing him.

She tilted her head, acknowledging the point. “Do you know where Johannes Gutenberg is?”

“Nope.” I smirked. “I hear rumors he’s gone missing, though.”

“Are you satisfied?” demanded Lena.

“I’ll be satisfied once I get my hands on whoever’s killing my friends,” Deb shot back. “Isaac, I went to the MSU library with another Porter. The place was smashed, like someone had physically torn down the walls. The kind of damage an automaton could have done.”

And nobody but Gutenberg could command an automaton to do such a thing. “That’s crazy. Why would he attack his own archive?”

“Hell if I know. Pallas agrees with you. She believes it could also have been caused by a Porter who couldn’t control his or her magic.” She gave me a pointed look. “When you fought those vampires yesterday afternoon, did you have any problems?”

“You mean did I lose control and blow up half the building?” I shook my head. “Not this time.”

A moth tapped against the sliding glass door, drawn to the light. Deb stared for several moments, searching the darkness before turning her attention back to me. The fingers of her right hand fidgeted against her leg. “If someone were recruiting, you’d be the perfect choice. Resentful, eager to get back in the game…”

“Oh, sure,” I said easily. “I’ve got access to the Porter database, too. But resentment isn’t going to launch me into a sociopathic killing spree.” I sighed. “You and I both know they made the right call.”

I couldn’t have admitted it without the drug, but Doctor Shah had been right to recommend I be pulled from the field, and Pallas had been right to act on that recommendation. I had anger and resentment aplenty, but most of that was directed toward myself.

“What happened?” Lena asked quietly.

“I broke the rules.” My chest felt like someone had hollowed it out with an ice cream scoop. “I was putting in my time in the field, hoping to earn a research position. I’d been tracking a drug called Iced Z. Powdered zombie brains. Nasty stuff. You do not want to be anywhere near a Z addict when he gets the munchies.

“Two victims had shown up in the medical center out on Mackinac Island. The doctors didn’t know what to do with them. They thought it was some kind of antibiotic-resistant Necrotizing fasciitis. Flesh-eating bacteria. The first victim died of an overdose. We snuck in so Smudge could cremate her before the body rose again. I managed to save the second one, though she lost about twenty percent of her brain function. She was coherent enough to tell me where she got the stuff.”

I had never talked about what happened that day to anyone except Doctor Shah, but the magical drug coursing through my blood had loosened the floodgates. “They were using the horses. Automobiles aren’t allowed on Mackinac Island, so it’s all bikes and horse-drawn carriages. The dealer had set up an entire stable of undead horses behind this beautiful Victorian mansion down by the port. He’d been selling this shit to tourists for about two months.

“As I snuck inside, I couldn’t stop thinking about the girl we’d cremated. Her brainwave activity had never truly stopped; if the hospital had hooked her up to the right equipment, they would have picked it up, but there was no reason. When I found her, she was deep in some kind of undead hibernation while her tissues died and reanimated. I kept wondering if she had felt the flames consuming her flesh. If her brain had been capable of registering the pain.”

I sighed. “In my head, I was that girl’s avenging angel, punishing those who had wronged her. I played the hero, and I did everything wrong. I had pushed myself thirty-six hours straight without sleep or food, running on righteous anger and stimulant tablets from a science fiction novel. I didn’t bother to properly learn the layout and routine of the house. I went in alone, too impatient to wait for backup. And I used magic with abandon.

“I remember the sound of bullets ricocheting from my personal shield. I fired stunners with both hands, shooting anything that moved. But those weapons only worked on the living, and this bastard had a cadre of undead bodyguards as well. Someone wrenched the pistol out of my right hand. I broke free and backed off, setting the remaining weapon to overload and throwing it like a grenade. I grabbed another book, but there was no time to read. The horses had broken free.

“Or maybe the dealer had deliberately set them loose in order to cover his escape, I don’t know. I heard their low, wheezing gasps, like tattered bellows blowing foul, rotten air. Decaying hooves clopped against the road as others smashed their way out of the stables. Four of them closed in on me. They shied back from Smudge, who was flaming like a tiny sun, but he couldn’t stop them all.”