Jim Hines - Libriomancer

I looked up to see Lena dragging the sword through my body like an oar, sweeping away injuries both old and new. Not only had I retained the injuries I had suffered before I joined with the automaton, I had somehow managed to gain new ones while trapped within that body. My mind immediately began picking through competing theories as to how that could have happened, but the result was burnt, blistered skin, bruised flesh, and several broken bones.

One by one, Lena sliced my wounds away. I had to close my eyes when she brought the blade to my face. After this, I’d never worry about visiting a dentist again. Nothing they did could compare to Lena fixing my battered jaw with a broadsword.

“That should do it.” The cot shifted as Lena sat down beside me.

I tested my limbs. I felt the same. I looked the same. She had even fixed the scar on the back of my right hand where I had cut myself on Captain Hook’s sword seven years ago. “Um… I don’t suppose I could trouble you for clothes?”

Lena’s eyes sparkled. “Where’s the fun in that?”

Tiny, hot feet tickled my leg as Smudge climbed my body. I held perfectly still, torn between relief and nervousness. He made his way to my shoulder and settled down, watching the door.

“I believe they’re ready,” came Gutenberg’s voice from outside.

I yelped and pulled my knees to my chest as the door swung open and Gutenberg entered, followed by Nicola Pallas and Deb DeGeorge. Pac-Man and another of Pallas’ animals snarled at me, straining at the chains Pallas gripped in her fist. Four automatons stood behind them. I also saw what was left of the automaton I had commandeered.

It stood motionless, the metal blocks scattered in a circle on the floor. Roots had sprouted from the feet, punching into the cement floor. Green buds clung to the fingertips. Tiny branches like shiny brown spikes protruded from the neck and head.

“Not bad,” said Gutenberg. He held one of the buds in his fingertips.

“Not bad at all.” Lena was still looking at me. My neck grew warm.

Gutenberg’s brows rose, but he said nothing as he picked up both Excalibur and the sword Lena had used to heal me. Pallas stepped past him, studying me from one angle after another, all the while humming the Linus and Lucy theme from Charlie Brown. Pac-Man sniffed my feet. The other animal growled, but Pac-Man nipped it on the ear, and the growl changed to a yip of pain.

“Sit,” Pallas snapped. Both animals dropped to their haunches. Blood matted Pac-Man’s side. The other one trembled, as if it could barely restrain itself from ripping out my throat.

Deb stood in the doorway, looking like she wanted nothing more than to flee. She was covered in dust and dirt, and her skin was paler than before. She kept one hand to her hip, and her face was taut with pain. “Good to see you in one piece, hon.”

“What’s going on?” asked Lena. Her attention was on Pallas’ animals. She kept her fingers spread, ready to seize them both.

Gutenberg held up a hand, waiting for Pallas to finish whatever she was doing. She took her sweet time, getting far too up close and personal for my taste, before straightening. Only then did the humming stop. She had gone for at least five minutes without pausing for breath.

“It’s him,” she said, hauling her beasts back. “ Only him.”

“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?