Codex Born

8

I slept for five days before they found me. At first, I thought the pressure on my roots was a dream, but the pain of the metal ax biting into my roots shocked me awake. I curled my injured root close and flexed the rest, toppling my attacker onto the ground. As my awareness moved closer to the surface, I began to make out their words.

“Ha! Pay up.” A man’s voice.

“Okay, you were right,” said a second man. “The tree’s magic.”

“What do you think, Mike?” asked the first. “Wizard of Oz?”

“Nah. The fighting trees were more willowy. The branches bent down like vines to wrap around the scarecrow, remember. This is oak. Narnia, maybe?”

“I don’t recall C. S. Lewis’ trees killing random farmers and burying their bodies.”

They thought I had murdered Frank. I started to withdraw again, retreating deeper into the heart of the wood. It didn’t matter what they believed. Frank was gone. Let them cut down my tree.

“If you ask me, we should be looking into the ex,” said Mike. “Maybe she never got over losing Frank. ‘If I can’t have him, no one can,’ and all that. She sounded crazy enough to do it.”

“I’m more interested in that girl, Lena. The one Frank was shacking up with. Marion said Lena tried to kill her once. Wouldn’t surprise me if she killed him, too. If she was a witch, it would explain the magic we picked up.”

“A witch who used her power to ruin Frank Dearing’s marriage and trick him into letting her work his farm for no pay, year after year?”

“What about Dungeons and Dragons? Don’t they have some kind of spell or scroll we could use to figure out what this thing is? The old man locked the main rulebooks, but there’s a new supplement out. It might not have been cataloged yet.”

As the pain from the ax eased, so did my fear. I could hear the fondness beneath the men’s banter. Their presence made me yearn for companionship. My isolation was a physical pain constricting my very core, worse than any ax. In isolation, I had been content to sleep, but now that others had arrived, the loneliness was suffocating. Before I realized what I was doing, I stretched myself from my tree and stepped lightly onto the dirt.

A young man pulled a gold-bladed sword from a scabbard at his side while the other raised a tiny gray-and-black pistol. A nylon backpack sat open on the ground a short distance away. It seemed to be stuffed with books. The ax rested against the base of a tree.

“Lena Greenwood?” asked Mike, keeping his sword ready.

“I didn’t kill Frank,” I said.

“You did something,” said the man with the gun. “Whatever magic you used, the Porters felt it all the way over in Chicago.”

Mike lowered his sword, but I noticed how his friend stepped to one side, keeping a clear line of fire. “We aren’t here to hurt you. We’ve talked to your neighbors. We know how Frank treated you. If you were acting in self-defense—”

“No!” Why wouldn’t they believe me? “I loved him.”

They looked at one another. “How long did you live with Frank?” asked Mike.

The question confused me. “I’ve always been with Frank.”

“John, why don’t you give Doctor Shah a call?” Mike sheathed his weapon and smiled. While John unclipped a cell phone from his belt, Mike extended a hand. “Would you mind coming with us to talk to a friend?”

I didn’t have the willpower to refuse.

“Don’t worry,” John said as he dialed. “Nidhi’s nice. You’ll like her.”

AUGUST HARRISON’S FRIENDS WEREN’T the only ones who could counter magic. I peeked down at the phone as I typed out the message. Found killer. Hostages. Need distraction and automaton.

My phone tried to correct the last word to “airmen.” I fixed it and hit Send, then brought the phone to my face. “We’re coming out. Call the wasps back.”

I waited for the insects to retreat from the door. An answering text arrived a few seconds later. Understood.

I stepped onto the porch. “The wendigos, too.”

“In time.” Harrison sounded every ounce the gentleman now that he believed he was in control. He stood behind the SUV’s hood, watching me. “Your friends will be free to go as soon as you’ve joined us.”

An aborted squeak made me whirl. Deb froze, a guilty expression on her face, then slowly wiped her mouth on her sleeve. She was moving better, and her knife wounds had stopped bleeding. She swallowed, grimaced, and offered me a halfhearted shrug.

I looked past her to the empty birdcage. “You didn’t.”

“Hey, if that woman hadn’t stabbed me when all I was trying to do was help, maybe—”

“What is wrong with you?” I yelled.

“Nothing, anymore.”

I was tempted to shoot her myself. “When this is over, you’re buying this family another bird.”

My phone buzzed with another text message. I glanced at the screen. I didn’t have time to deal with Deb. With a disgusted glare, I turned back to Harrison. “Sorry about that. We’re coming out.” A low double-beep signaled another incoming call as I descended the steps. When my foot touched the bottom step, I pretended to stumble. I caught the rail with one hand. With my other, I tapped the phone, bringing Nicola Pallas into a three-way call with August Harrison.

Even with the phone away from my ear, the opening bars of Pallas’ song felt like she had plugged an electrical cable directly into my eardrums. I flung the phone into the grass and clung to the rail with both hands while I waited for the world to stop spinning.

As unpleasant as that tinny melody was for me, how much worse must it have been for August Harrison, who had his phone clamped to his ear. Pallas’ bardic magic dropped him with the first notes.

“Go,” I yelled.

Jeff bounded out the door, knocking me off my feet. Deb and Sarah followed close behind, and I saw Rook flying from the window, swooping into the street like an enormous geeky raven.

Lena hauled me inside, then grabbed her weapons. I did the same, scooping up books and my shock-gun, and clipping Smudge’s cage to my jacket. Outside, the two libriomancers were doing their thing, presumably trying to suppress the magic coming from Harrison’s cell phone. But even if they succeeded, the damage was done. He wouldn’t be waking up for a while, and that meant he couldn’t command his swarm.

“Isaac, there were more around back,” Lena shouted as she followed the others outside. “Make sure they don’t cut through the house.”

Flames danced through the bars of Smudge’s cage. I heard claws scrabbling overhead. “Watch the roof!”

Lena jumped down to the sidewalk as the first wendigo landed on the porch. She spun, one wooden sword raised high, the other low for stabbing. The wendigo ripped the iron railing from the concrete and hurled it at her. She lunged to the side, using both swords to bat the railing out of the way.

“Dumbass,” I muttered, and shot him in the back. I opened the first of my books to a dog-eared page and skimmed the text. As a second attacker bounded around the corner of the house, I finished my spell and flung the book at his chest like a Frisbee. The cover flapped open as it flew, and the dust jacket tore away to flutter to the ground.

The cover art showed a single bee beneath the title: African Honey Bees in North America.

The bees emerged en masse and angry. They wouldn’t have been a threat to a true wendigo with its thick armor of ice and fur, but this wasn’t a full wendigo. He—no wait, this one was female—scrambled backward, swatting furiously.

Sarah’s scream echoed down the street. I turned to see her falling backward, her extremities dissolving into dust. I couldn’t tell what the two wendigos had done to her, but by the time she hit the road, only a skeleton remained. That crumbled away within seconds.

A third libriomancer had joined the other two, and I counted a total of seven wendigos in an all-out brawl with Deb, Jeff, and Rook in the middle of the road.

Lena sprinted toward them, and the green-haired girl raised her book like a shield. Lena veered toward her, one sword slashing at the book.

The sword snapped like a rotted stick. Lena flung the hilt at the girl’s face, then dropped low to kick her feet out from beneath her. Before she could follow up, a wendigo leaped onto the top of the SUV and pounced.

I took another shot with my shock-gun, but as before, the lightning failed to reach its target. It looked like they had ended my spell with the killer bees, too.

I ran toward my phone and dialed Pallas’ number again. “It’s Isaac. We could really use that automaton right now.”

“I’m aware of the disturbance. I’m waiting for approval from Gutenberg.” She sounded utterly unfazed. I was pretty sure Pallas was incapable of being fazed. “I thought your plan was to question Victor’s ghost.”

“August Harrison had his own plan. The ghost-talker is dead, as is one of his escorts. Harrison has his own little army of mutant wendigos, not to mention three wannabe libriomancers doing tricks I’ve never seen before.”

“This shouldn’t take long. In the meantime, in case you’re killed, what have you learned so far?”

“That’s cold, Nicola.” But I couldn’t argue with her logic. Outside, another wendigo hurled Deb through the air. She crunched into a tree and didn’t get up. I fired again, with no more effect than before. “August got his hands on Victor’s magic bugs and used them to hack our network. He’s building himself a little army of wendigos. No idea how he’s controlling them.”

“We have a team in Switzerland working to lock him out of our computer network.”

I was only half listening. Each time I pulled the trigger, the point where my shot dissolved moved closer. Whatever barrier they were using, it was creeping toward me. The only effect the lightning had was to interfere with my phone’s reception. “Gotta go, Nicola. If they kill me, just send a ghost-talker to get the rest of my report.”

I tossed the phone aside, gripped the gun with both hands, and kept shooting. I picked other targets, trying to assess the size of the barrier, but however they were doing this, it was enough to shield a spread of at least ninety degrees.

A flicker of light in the front yard announced the arrival of our reinforcement. The automaton was eight feet tall, armored in small, magically linked blocks of metal. Only the extremities revealed the dark wood Gutenberg had used to craft the body centuries ago. A blank wooden face turned, eyes like oversized black pearls taking in everyone’s positions.

Each automaton housed a human spirit, a mind that gave them some freedom to think and act within the boundaries of their magical programming. Every line of text stamped into their wooden bodies was a spell, allowing them to access power far beyond any libriomancer.

I hated the damned things, but at this particular moment, I was ready to jump up and cheer.

Three wendigos peeled away from the fight and charged the automaton. It strode to meet them, arms outstretched. Flame and yellow smoke billowed forth from its hands.

“Pluit ignem et sulphur de caelo et omnes perdidit,” I whispered. It rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. It was a verse from the Gutenberg Bible, the text of which Gutenberg had somehow transferred to his automatons. The stench of sulfur spread through the air, making me grimace.

As the rest of the wendigos turned to face the new threat, Lena used the respite to grab Deb and haul her back from the carnage. Jeff tried to get at Harrison, but gunfire drove him away. Rook was fleeing down the street at inhuman speeds, proving him to be the smartest of us all.

Another wendigo jumped onto the automaton’s back, wrapped its arms around the neck, and tried to wrench the wooden head free.

The automaton reached behind, the shoulder swiveling well beyond what any human joint could manage, and seized the attacker by the arm. With no visible effort, it flung the wendigo into the SUV. Metal crumpled from the impact, and the wendigo didn’t get back up.

The green-haired libriomancer shouted, “Concentrate on the golem!” She and her two companions ran forward with their books.

The automaton stopped moving.

“How the shit did they do that?” Deb asked weakly.

“I don’t know, but they look preoccupied.” I raised my gun, sighted through the doorway at the closest of the libriomancers, and pulled the trigger. He must have seen my movement, because he whirled and raised his book. He took a jolt, but not enough to put him down.

The automaton shuddered, then stumbled forward. Green shouted another order. Wooden fingers ripped a slab of blacktop from the road and hurled it at the closest book-wielder. He tried to dodge, but he wasn’t fast enough. The missile caught his shoulder, spinning him in a full circle and sending the book flying to the side of the road.

Another burst of flame poured forth, but this time it failed to reach its target. Instead, the fire curved toward the house.

“Oh, crap.” I dove into the family room. Lena hurled Deb after me, then rolled out of the way as flame poured through the door. Jeff got a little singed, but the fire wasn’t as bad as I feared. Whatever they were doing to turn the automaton’s magic against us must have weakened its power.

I snatched up my satchel and pulled out an urban fantasy called Heart of Stone. The pages showed the faintest dusting of char, like someone had rubbed a pencil lead over the inner edges. I had used this book too often in my research, but I needed to understand what was going on out there. I yanked a pair of mirrored sunglasses from the story and slipped them on.

The enchanted lenses darkened my vision and painted a grid of glowing magical energy over the scene on the street. I could see the patches of wendigo skin, burning a sickly brown color that spread through the bodies of Harrison’s pet monsters. White light cocooned the automaton, the strands of Gutenberg’s magic encasing it in a dense web of power.

None of this was particularly unusual, though I rarely had to sort out so much magic all at once. But where I would normally have seen libriomantic magic pouring from the three books, there was only emptiness, like holes in the surrounding magic. Given what had happened to my spell back in the woods, I wasn’t entirely surprised that those holes formed the outlines of three people standing before the automaton.

Another blast of fire poured forth, and two of the figures moved in unison, stepping into the automaton’s magic and diverting it once again. The third joined in as the injured man retrieved his book from the street.

This wasn’t libriomancy. The books were…what, exactly? Lamps for magic-eating genies? Charms to allow the ones who carried them to magically project themselves? Were the books simply bodies for a kind of creature we’d never before encountered or cataloged? Or were these the ghosts Nicholas had talked about, the ones who had distracted him from his conversation with Victor?

Two of the wendigos were dragging August Harrison toward a black pickup down the street. I aimed through the broken window and tried to stop them, but they got Harrison around the far side of the truck before I could fire. I adjusted the setting and sent a bolt of lightning into the truck, and was rewarded with the sight of one wendigo leaping back.

Unfortunately, my attack drew the attention of one of the three ghosts, or whatever they were. “Incoming!”

My warning did little good. Nobody else could see the figure that flew through the doorway, hesitated, then dove through Deb’s body. Deb’s magic dimmed, and she stumbled backward. The ghost continued to swirl around her, feeding on her power. And I had no idea how to make it stop.

Maybe another target would help. I jumped up and sent a volley of electricity toward the battle. One of the two remaining ghosts intercepted the shots, and from the corner of my eye, I saw Deb fall as her attacker turned to me.

I flung the gun out the window. It followed the weapon, and when it finished, not a trace of magic remained in my shock-gun.

A full-sized van, dark blue with tinted windows, screeched to a halt in the middle of the street. The remnants of Harrison’s team crammed inside as the ghosts continued to hold back the automaton. The ghosts vanished a moment later as both the van and the pickup truck sped away.

I ran out the door and waved my arms at the automaton. “Stop them, you overgrown pile of Lincoln Logs! Get August Harrison!”

It stepped after the van, then stopped as if confused. The damn thing reminded me of Nidhi’s idiot cat, whom I had once observed chasing a fly across the kitchen, only to stop halfway and look around as if she had completely forgotten why she was in such a hurry.

“Go!” I yelled.

The automaton jolted back to life and began to run. It disappeared in mid-step, reappearing at the intersection in a flash of light. The truck screeched to a halt, but once again the automaton failed to finish the job. It stood dumbly as the van turned left and the truck sped off to the right. It snapped out of its trance again seconds later and resumed its pursuit.

“Not good.” I sagged against the wall and turned to look at the damage we had done. Broken glass littered the house. The door was destroyed. The road outside was even worse, from cars that had been ripped apart to the cratered blacktop and smoking yard beyond. Sirens were approaching in the distance. I fetched my phone and hit redial.

“Nicola? It’s Isaac again. I think we’re going to need some help cleaning this one up.”

Deb was in lousy shape, but she appeared to have recovered from whatever it was the ghost had done to her. She limped down the driveway to meet the approaching police cars.

The cars stopped a short distance from the house. Deb waited with arms spread as uniformed officers exited their cars with guns drawn. They crouched behind the front of the cars, where the engine blocks would provide cover against incoming fire.

I couldn’t blame them. Between the damage we had done and the sight of Deb DeGeorge standing there bruised and bloody, her skin making her look partially mummified, I wouldn’t have gone near her either.

I could see the moment Deb touched their minds. She might not have been as powerful as Sarah, but she was strong enough to lure her prey into dropping their guard. The police officers lowered their weapons, and by the time they reached Deb, they moved with a slow, relaxed pace that made me think they were sleepwalking. Deb had gotten stronger since the last time I saw her.

As soon as they were fully distracted, I ran outside to retrieve my shock-gun. It was dead, as I had expected, but that could be fixed. You had to be careful, but it actually took less energy to use a book to re-form an existing magical item than to create it from scratch.

When I entered the house again, the crackle of bone and popping joints filled the room. Jeff had managed to tug off the moonstone necklace. It was glowing beneath the couch where he must have kicked it to block the light. When he finished wrenching himself back to human form, he collapsed into an old recliner and started pulling on his underwear and pants.

I grabbed my jacket from the floor, pulled Time Kings from one of my pockets to fix my gun, then froze. Mister Sanchez was staring at us from the hallway. The black Lab cowered behind his legs.

I watched as he gathered his courage. His hands were shaking, but he straightened and stepped closer. “What are you?”

Nidhi spun. “I asked you to stay in the bathroom, Laszio.”

He stared at the broken window and door, the bloodstained carpet, and the ruins of the yard and street outside. “This is about the man who used to live here? The one who was murdered.”

“Yes,” said Nidhi.

He gave a small nod, looking simultaneously grateful and frightened by her honesty.

“We’ll find a way to cover the damages,” I said softly. If the Porters wouldn’t take care of this, then I would, and to hell with the rules. There were plenty of books I could use to produce everything from gold to gemstones.

His attention flitted about, stopping briefly with Jeff, then moving to Lena and her broken sword, and finally to me. His gaze dipped to Smudge. “Your spider. Is it on fire?”

I looked down. “A little bit, yeah.”

“Laszio, look at me.” Nidhi moved to impose herself between him and the rest of us. “We came here because of Victor Harrison, but this fight wasn’t about him. It was about us. You and your family will be safe once we’re gone.”

He managed a nervous smile. “No offense intended, Doctor Shah, but if that is the case, I hope you’ll leave quickly.”

“We will,” Nidhi promised.

And once we were gone, Nicola would send someone to alter the family’s memories, just as easily as a Hollywood writer reworked a script. Just as Deb was manipulating the minds of the police outside, burying the truth beneath layers of magical falsehoods.

“He’s a fire-spider. His name is Smudge.” I think the words surprised me as much as anyone else. Nidhi gave me a sharp look, but didn’t argue when I lifted Smudge’s cage to eye level. With my other hand, I grabbed the Red Hots. “I created him when I was in high school. He’s saved my life several times.”

I brought a candy to the edge of the cage and waited for Smudge to snatch it up.

Laszio took a half-step closer, the fear in his eyes joined by a glimmer of curiosity. “He eats junk food?”

“Every chance he gets,” I said. “He loves chocolate, but that can get messy. He tends to melt it, and you end up with stains all over the carpet.”

Laszio looked down at the bloody, blackened carpet. “Yes. We wouldn’t want that.”

He sounded so serious, and I laughed before I could stop myself. He joined in a moment later, though I think it was more a release of fear and exhaustion than humor.

“The fire,” he said. “It doesn’t hurt him?”

“It’s how he protects himself. How he protects me and helps me to stop people like the ones who attacked your home.”

“I don’t understand.” Laszio kept watching as Smudge devoured his treat.

“I know,” said Nidhi. “Neither did I, the first time I saw something like this. You’re handling it far better than I did.”

I doubted that, but I didn’t say anything. Instead, I returned Smudge’s cage to my hip and opened Time Kings. Laszio flinched when I lifted the gun. He looked back to the hall, and I knew he was thinking about his wife and children.

“It’s all right.” I shoved the gun back into the pages, letting the words and images of the readers transform the weapon from an empty relic back into a fully-charged shock-gun. “This is what we do.”

“Ay dios mio,” he whispered. Both Nidhi and Lena were watching him very closely now, ready to intervene if he lost it. “Those creatures outside. What did they want?”

“You should see to your family,” Nidhi interrupted. “Reassure them. We will be gone very soon, and I promise we’ll make sure you’re safe.”

I took that as my cue. “Lena and Jeff, could you come with me? We need to inspect every house on this street to make sure Harrison’s swarm left with him.”

I pocketed the shock-gun. Deb appeared to have things under control outside. One of the police cars was already pulling away, its sirens dark.

“Why did you tell him about Smudge?” Lena asked as we exited the house.

“Because it didn’t matter.” I was surprised at the anger boiling up inside me. “Because we’re going to rip every memory of today from his head. Not to protect them, but to protect us.”

They wouldn’t remember what had happened, but we couldn’t completely erase the trauma. Even after we stole their memories, they would be exhausted and jumpy for a long time.

Lena stopped at the end of the driveway to pick up the broken mailbox. She twisted the post free and turned it in her hands, shaping it into a serviceable club. Then she looked back at the house. She stood there for so long I thought something was wrong. Had she spotted one of Harrison’s bugs? But when I touched her shoulder, she merely turned to kiss my cheek. “I think you’re wrong,” she said softly. “I think it did matter.”

None of the neighbors had emerged to see what was happening. I took that to mean they hadn’t yet woken from Sarah’s magic slumber. Smudge didn’t turn into a fireball when we entered the first house, which was another encouraging sign.

“Do you think the automaton will be able to stop them?” Lena asked.

I thought about August Harrison and his swarm, the half-breed wendigos, and the ghosts that had devoured our magic. “No.”