Unbound (21 page)

“Take the stairs,” said Nicola. “Get out on the second floor, break into one of the apartments, and go out through the window.”

Gutenberg nodded and hurried past, leading us toward the end of the hallway.

A door opened behind us. I spun, one hand going to my shock-gun as an older man peered out and shouted, “What the devil is going on out here?”

“Emergency drill, Mr. Bennett.” Gutenberg strode past the door toward the stairs. “Best to stay inside. Things will soon quiet down, one way or another.”

Another door opened. Gutenberg sighed. “Juan?”

Ponce de Leon tapped his cane on the floor. Mr. Bennett yelped as the door swung shut in his face. Up and down the hallway, I heard deadbolts click into place.

Gutenberg pushed open the door to the stairs, peered down, and swore. “They’re coming up. Back to the apartment.”

“We could do that newt thing again,” I suggested.

“That’s unlikely to work this time,” said Ponce de Leon. “Particularly now that Johannes and I have vanquished one of her devourers. She knows we’re here. If she can’t find us, she might decide to destroy the entire building to prevent us from escaping.”

Once we were back inside Gutenberg’s apartment, Lena shut the door, locked it, and sank her fingers into the wood. Roots began to grow into the frame and the walls.

Gutenberg and Ponce de Leon were arguing in low tones. Gutenberg glanced at me long enough to say, “I believe the window now offers our best escape. Isaac, if you would?”

I fired the shock-gun, leaving a smoldering hole in the curtains and an empty frame with bits of jagged, semi-molten glass dropping from the edges.

Gutenberg tilted his head to one side. “Dramatic, but effective.” He reached into his carpet bag to produce an umbrella with a carved head in the shape of a parrot.

“That’s from Mary Poppins,” I said. “I
knew
I recognized that bag!”

“The umbrella’s magic should carry us safely to the street, so long as everyone holds tight.”

“Will it support all of our weight?” asked Lena.

“That won’t be an issue. The umbrella’s magic creates a field of near-weightlessness.” Gutenberg yanked open the curtains. “Poppins wasn’t clinging for dear life as she flew about, after all.”

“There are people on the street,” said Nidhi. “I can’t tell whether they’re with Meridiana or if they’re trying to see why lightning just shot out of somebody’s window.”

I looked past her. “How close is the nearest automaton? We could try to set up an ambush, or they could teleport us away . . .” I trailed off when I saw the grim expression on Ponce de Leon’s face.

“He doesn’t feel them,” said Gutenberg.

“Doesn’t feel what?” I asked.

“The Ghost Army.” Ponce de Leon traced a symbol onto the door with his cane. “If Meridiana had simply brought the same handful of warriors she had in Rome, we might have a chance. But the presence of additional ghosts complicates both our defenses and our escape. Teleportation is dangerous at the best of times, but I’d risk it now if not for the ghosts. The
slightest interference, and we could end up rematerializing in the sun or scattered across a three-mile stretch. Assuming we reappeared at all.”

“And what stops the ghosts from sucking the magic from that umbrella and dropping us in mid-flight?” I did my best to match their calm, though I suspect I failed.

Ponce de Leon twirled his cane. “Me.”

Gutenberg opened the umbrella and approached the window. “There’s a parking garage across the road, close enough for us to reach.”

Something smashed against the door. Books fell from the shelves, and dishes rattled in the kitchen cabinets.

“Television!” Lena shouted.

Ponce de Leon spun toward the flat-screen, which had begun to bulge outward. He pinned the struggling, partially-formed devourer in place with his cane. “Johannes?”

Gutenberg pulled a book from his back pocket, opened it one-handed, sank his thumb into the text, and tossed the book to Ponce de Leon, who caught it and thrust it into the screen. Creature and television both imploded into nothingness.

Ponce de Leon touched the end of his cane and grimaced. “Almost took the tip with it.”

“I’m sorry,” said Gutenberg. “Next time I’ll look for a gentler black hole. Now get over here.”

We each grabbed the umbrella’s handle, pressing together like we were part of the world’s weirdest maypole dance. Lena kicked shards of cooling glass from the window frame. People were shouting and pointing from the ground below.

“Don’t look,” Nidhi whispered.

I nodded and held tighter.

Wind filled the apartment, rustling fallen books and tugging the umbrella. Then, as if we were standing on an invisible platform, we rose gently out the window.

“Here they come,” said Ponce de Leon. “Brace yourselves.”

The instant we were out of reach of the building, we dipped like an airplane hitting turbulence. I wrapped both hands
around the handle. I didn’t know which was worse, the potential fall or the fact that I was helpless to do anything about it.

Not that my magic would have been effective. Meridiana’s incorporeal soldiers weren’t ghosts in the traditional sense, but beings of magic who had lost their sanity and sense of self long ago. Trying to fight them with spells was like using a squirt gun against a giant squid.

Ponce de Leon simply grinned. The winds around us grew stronger, pulling trash from the street and books from the apartment into a cyclone. “They feed on magic. Let’s see how much they can swallow.”

Under other circumstances, I would have loved to watch Ponce de Leon command the wind, but right now, I was more interested in not plummeting to my death.

“Incoming.” Lena drew one of her bokken and pointed it toward the roof.

A familiar angel loomed from the edge like a gargoyle, wings spread wide, sword in one hand.

Even if his bones were hollow as a bird’s, basic physics meant there should be no way for him to truly fly in this gravity and atmosphere. As was often the case, magic just chuckled and kicked physics in the balls, leaving it groaning and wondering what just happened.

The angel jumped from the roof and swooped toward us. Lena twisted to parry his first strike. The impact spun the umbrella like a merry-go-round.

I pried my right hand from the umbrella and reached for the shock-gun. I needed an angle that didn’t risk me shooting through a window and killing innocent people if I missed. “Can you get us below him?”

“Unfortunately, his maneuverability is better than ours,” said Gutenberg. We pulled to the left to dodge the next attack. We were halfway to the parking garage.

I heard a siren in the distance. Traffic below had stopped. Horns blared, and people shouted at us and at one another. All I cared about was the glorious rooftop ahead.

The angel curved around to block our way. He hovered in front of us, holding his sword in both hands. He didn’t need to take us down. He just needed to keep us here long enough for the rest of Meridiana’s brute squad to arrive.

We dipped lower. I adjusted my aim and fired. Lightning stabbed the air, only to dissipate into smoke when it reached the angel. He smiled.

“I see,” said Ponce de Leon. His cyclone slowed. “Perhaps if we try a less direct approach.”

I couldn’t tell what he did, but about five seconds later, a pigeon dive-bombed the angel. Its claws and beak left tiny red scratches on his face.

Gutenberg chuckled as two more pigeons attacked. Others followed, fluttering and pecking as if our attacker was a piñata stuffed with discarded fast food.

The angel fought back against the birds the best he could, but the pigeons were surprisingly difficult targets. For every one he grabbed, another pecked his fingers. His sword slipped away, and Ponce de Leon blasted it into oblivion before it could strike the ground.

“Dumpster?” said Gutenberg.

“Excellent choice.” Ponce de Leon twisted to point his cane at the street. A metal dumpster lurched into the air and tumbled end over end. The ghosts might have tried to intercept his magic, but by then, momentum had taken over. Pigeons fled in all directions, giving me a brief glimpse of one royally pissed-off angel wiping away blood, feathers, and pigeon crap. I don’t think he even saw the dumpster that slammed him into the building. Angel and dumpster dropped onto the street with a deafening clang.

We landed on the top level of the parking garage and immediately ducked behind a van.

Gutenberg watched the broken window of his apartment. “Nicola, Juan, find us transportation. My own vehicle is parked below my building, regrettably out of reach. Meridiana’s ghosts are still here, so be cautious and use as little magic as
necessary. Lena, please go with them. I believe your strength might be useful.”

Leaving Nidhi and me to hide and wait. Not that I really
wanted
to confront whatever else Meridiana sent after us, but I hated feeling useless.

A resounding crack came from inside the broken window across the street, followed by a puff of dust and smoke. They had broken through the door. It felt like we had stepped out of that window an hour ago, but it couldn’t have been more than a minute or two.

In Jeneta’s body, Meridiana looked down at us, flanked by the gorgon from Rome—still wearing her burqa, thankfully—and an enormous, misshapen man with yellow skin.

Meridiana clutched her e-reader close to her body. I couldn’t make out her facial expression, but from here, she looked like any other kid. Right up until she reached into her e-reader and pulled out a writhing yellow serpent, which she hurled toward us. The snake lengthened and split again and again, until a swarm of indignant and presumably venomous serpents were raining down at us.

Gutenberg was ready with a book of his own. I backed away, wishing my gun had a wide-field setting.

Meridiana’s magic must have cushioned the snakes’ landing, because they immediately started hissing and slithering when they hit the ground. But they didn’t attack. To the last snake, they darted into the shadows, fleeing whatever Gutenberg was doing.

“The legend of Saint Patrick,” he said calmly, holding up his book. “If he can drive the serpents from Ireland, I can banish these from a parking garage. We’ll send an automaton into the sewers later to gather them up.”

Meridiana’s next assault created what looked like streams of silver glitter falling from the sky. She directed them not toward us, but to the onlookers below. It wasn’t until the screams began that I realized what it was.

“Burn them,” I shouted. “Don’t let it reach the ground!”

Gutenberg swapped books and launched a jet of flame, but the ghosts must have intercepted his assault. The fire sputtered and died before reaching its target: deadly spores known as Thread, from Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonrider series. Watching it fall from Earth’s sky was like reliving the first time I read
Dragonflight
, and the horror I felt at wave after wave of deadly Thread that consumed all organic life it touched.

“Give me d’Aurillac’s poem, and I’ll end this.” Meridiana’s words cut through the screams, as if she stood directly in front of us.

The quick beep of a horn announced the arrival of our ride.

“We can’t leave,” I said. “The Thread will start to burrow.” Most of the ground below was blacktop or sidewalk, but there were strips of green, grassy soil where Thread could thrive.

“We both know I’ll find you wherever you go,” Meridiana continued. “The only question is how many people you’ll sacrifice in the meantime.”

Gutenberg tucked his book away and pulled out his cell phone.

“I could summon Thread down upon Lena’s grove,” she said. “This is but one of a thousand plagues I can—”

Gutenberg tapped a button on his phone, and the apartment exploded.

DIET OF THE DAMNED

A popular new diet plan could soon put a stake through Jenny Craig’s heart.

Nutritionist Jamie Bergren of Los Angeles, California announced earlier this week that she will be launching her exclusive blood-based weight-loss program online. Doctor Bergren says she has been using this plan with select clients for years, with incredible results.

Her Web site features photographs of slender, attractive men and women drinking blood from wine glasses, but Bergren is quick to point out that human beings can’t survive on blood alone.

“Healthy arterial blood is used as a dietary supplement only,” she explained in a press release. “Every client’s needs are different, depending on weight, gender, physical activity, and other factors.”

How did she discover this unusual diet? That’s simple. According to Bergren, her father was a vampire.

“He was turned when I was eleven years old,” Bergren explains. “Before that, he had always been obese. He couldn’t play with me or my brother without getting out of breath. We watched him try one fad diet after another, but nothing worked.

“Within a year of becoming a vampire, he was down to a hundred and seventy pounds. The most significant change to his lifestyle, aside from having to avoid sunlight, was his diet.”

The California Department of Public Health is currently investigating Doctor Bergren’s practice, and has not yet issued a statement.

“You don’t know it, but you’ve seen several of my success stories in the movies and on television,” claimed Bergren. “They look better, and more importantly, they
feel
better. They’re healthier, happier, and, if I say so myself, hotter.”

Bergren’s Web site advises people not to begin the vampire diet on their own. Potential risks include blood-borne illnesses, iron overdose, dehydration, and more. “My clinic takes every precaution to guarantee the safety of donors, the cleanliness of the
blood, and the health of the recipients.” A one-month trial will cost $250. Everyone who signs up will receive sealed packets of blood-based salad dressing, drink additives, and a flavored syrup said to go great with pancakes.

We want to know what you think. Visit our Facebook page to share your thoughts on this article.

S
MOKE BILLOWED FROM THE
shattered windows. People in the streets screamed and fled. Fire alarms buzzed through Gutenberg’s building, audible even over the ringing in my ears. Torn and burning books fell like confetti.

By the time I recovered from my shock, Gutenberg had resumed his assault on the Thread. He burned it from the sky, then turned his efforts to the street below.

“You killed her,” I whispered.

“Doubtful.” Gutenberg flicked his fingers, and a sweet-smelling rain began to fall on the wounded, healing the worst of their injuries. “I can’t imagine Meridiana would enter my domain without precautions, and even if her physical host
was
destroyed, her spirit remains bound within the sphere.”

“Her
physical host?
Jeneta Aboderin was—is—fourteen years old! She’s a kid, a victim.”

“You think I want to kill her? She was one of ours, Isaac. One of mine. But if you ask me to choose between the life of one girl and the safety of this world, I
will
make that choice. Be grateful you don’t have to.”

I understood the logic. I wanted to deck him anyway. It wasn’t just the choice he had made, but the coldness with which he made it. There had been no hesitation, no doubt. When I looked at him, I saw not the slightest trace of regret for what he had done.

I looked at the apartment. The interior had caught fire, and smoke continued to pour out the windows. If Jeneta and her monsters had survived, I couldn’t see them.

“If you want to save lives,” said Gutenberg, “the best thing you can do is finish that poem.”

Behind us, Lena stepped out of a red four-door Jeep with oversized mud tires. She looked at the three of us, then to the apartment beyond. Her jaw tightened.

“The ghosts remain, though they appear disorganized,” Ponce de Leon said from the driver’s seat. “We should be going.”

I told myself Gutenberg was right. Meridiana would have taken precautions. Jeneta was still alive.

“Interesting choice,” said Gutenberg as he joined us. He took the passenger’s seat.

“It looked like a fun car to drive,” said Ponce de Leon.

I stared out the window at the column of black smoke.

“Who buys a Jeep this size for Chicago traffic?” Ponce de Leon slid his fingertip along the top of the window, leaving tiny etched characters in the glass. They looked similar to some of the enchantments in my convertible.

“Is everyone all right?” asked Nidhi.

“For the moment.” Gutenberg went silent while Ponce de Leon paid the parking attendant. “We’ll be safer once we leave the city.”

Traffic made that an even slower process than usual, thanks
to the damage we had caused. I split my attention between Smudge and the windows, waiting for the next monster to attack. People continued to pour out of the building, but they all appeared human from here. I wouldn’t say we had won this battle, but we hadn’t lost, and it looked like Gutenberg had disrupted Meridiana’s plans enough for us to get away.

“Isaac, can you work while we drive?” Gutenberg asked.

I nodded tightly and pulled my notes from my pocket. Setting the briefcase on my lap, I began to write.

We spent the next two days at a bed and breakfast outside of Green Bay. It was rather crowded for six, but the owners were friendly enough. More importantly, it was outside of the city and a far cry from the kind of accommodations anyone would expect two of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful magic-users to use.

The owners put us in the third-floor suite of their converted farmhouse. The old hayloft ceiling curved overhead, the naked timbers an odd contrast to the nineteenth-century wallpaper. The main window looked out on maple trees and fenced-in fields where sheep wandered about, grazing lazily or napping in the shade. Lena spent much of her time outside, sunbathing on the balcony or resting within the trees. At the moment, she and Nidhi were playing chess behind the barn while Smudge hunted grasshoppers.

The sleeping arrangements were, if anything, even more awkward than they had been in Gutenberg’s apartment. The owners lent us several extra cots, but there was little privacy. And it turned out that Nicola sang in her sleep.

During the day, Nicola and Gutenberg continued to coordinate with the other Regional Masters while I updated Gerbert d’Aurillac’s poem. Nidhi’s job, when she wasn’t with Lena, was to keep the rest of us from killing one another.

Between being driven from his own apartment and news of
additional Porter casualties, Gutenberg was a magical time bomb searching for an excuse to explode. For Ponce de Leon, it was being stuck in the middle of nowhere that was slowly chipping away at his sanity. His latest complaint was the lack of “a single
real
Vietnamese restaurant.”

Personally, I preferred the B&B to the cramped, crowded feel of the city. If you had to stack people’s homes and workplaces on top of one another to make it all fit, you officially had too many people crammed into too little space.

I tried to ignore their griping. As much as I despised feeling helpless, how much worse was it for the two of them, who had spent so long at the top of the magical food chain?

Gutenberg slammed through the French doors from the balcony and announced, “The state of literacy in this world is shameful.”

“Waiting on your Potter fans?” Ponce de Leon sat in a rocking chair, reading
Harry Potter and the Goblin’s Scepter
. He had begun the book last night. Every reader helped build the book’s magic, after all.

I, on the other hand, had been forbidden from touching the book until I finished the damn poem, for fear—not entirely unjustified—that I would lose focus on my work.

Gutenberg waved his own copy in the air. “Twenty-three bookstores held surprise midnight release parties last night. The rest put the books out this morning when they opened. Tens of thousands of copies should be in people’s hands by now, but what are they doing?”

“Some people work on Tuesdays.” I wondered if Jennifer had officially fired me yet, or if she would wait to do it in person.

He ignored me, turning instead to what looked like a kind of miniature phonograph. An engraved brass disk began to spin, and Gutenberg peered at the marble-sized black jewel at the center of the disk. This was one of the tools he used to monitor his automatons, who were hunting without success for Meridiana and her army. “I assumed the other books would require an additional day or two, but the Rowling?”

“The
fake
Rowling.” Ponce de Leon picked up his smart phone from beside the chair. “You’ve done a marvelous job of blowing up the Internet today, Johannes. The lack of a decent signal makes it difficult to keep up with the fallout, but your readers may simply be too busy yelling at one another online to actually finish the book.”

Gutenberg grumbled something unintelligible and turned toward me. “Aren’t you done yet? You were supposed to have this worked out yesterday.”

“I had to adjust the spokes.” Only when I was rewriting my poem had I spotted another layer of meaning in the original work. The letters within the vertical spoke were decorated slightly differently than the rest, with additional horizontal strokes. After staring at it for three hours, I had finally recognized them as meridian lines. Each of the twelve horizontal lines in those letters extended to the left or right of the center spoke. Tracing the endpoints created an elongated figure eight. If the poem were laid out as a sundial, the shadow would fall on those marks at noon on the first day of each month. Which meant recalculating each one of the lines for our current latitude. “It will be done by dinnertime.”

“Assuming you haven’t missed anything else.”

“Give the boy a break, Johannes,” said Ponce de Leon. “Do you want it now, or do you want it right? You know he’s almost there. You can feel it as well as I can.”

I hunched my shoulders and continued working. Whatever magic simmered within the poem, I couldn’t feel it, nor would I be able to touch it once I finished. Gutenberg and Ponce de Leon would be the ones to infuse the text with their own magic and—if nothing went wrong—retrieve Meridiana’s prison.

The experience had given me eyestrain, a throbbing headache, and tremendous respect for Gerbert d’Aurillac’s mind. He had buried so much meaning within these lines. I wasn’t about to admit it to Gutenberg, but I was terrified I had overlooked something vital.

Gutenberg dragged a chair across the floor and sat down
beside Ponce de Leon. They reminded me of grumpy cats sharing a sunbeam. Gutenberg glared at the book as if he could intimidate it into producing the scepter.

Ponce de Leon turned a page. “I enjoyed the scene where Harry consults the paintings of former headmasters. The description of the artwork was quite striking, and his interaction with Snape hit just the right balance of snark and grudging respect.”

Gutenberg grunted.

“The Quidditch scene dragged on a bit, though. And on page sixty-seven, you’ve got Neville going out alone to the forbidden forest, but then suddenly he’s with Ron and Luna. This is why you need proofreaders, Johannes.”

I stared, poetry forgotten. “
You
wrote that book?”

“Shut up,” snapped Gutenberg.

“You have a distinctive voice,” Ponce de Leon continued. “Even after all these years. You’ve gotten much better. I thought the ongoing romance between Ron and Hermione was particularly well done.”

I had to be one of the only living people who had ever seen Johannes Gutenberg
blush
. “You told me you had hired a fanfic writer, a woman—”

Gutenberg lowered his head, ignoring us and pretending to read. I knew perfectly well that he could see and manipulate a book’s magic without ever opening the cover, but he buried himself in the pages, his eyes darting to and fro.

“He did,” Ponce de Leon said. “In a manner of speaking. Check online for work by ‘Darcy Nacht.’ That’s the alias you’ve been using lately, isn’t it?”

I jumped out of my chair and headed toward Nicola’s computers.

“If you so much as touch that keyboard, I will turn you into a caterpillar and feed you to your own fire-spider,” Gutenberg said.

“Don’t worry.” Ponce de Leon winked at me. “I’ll change you back before Smudge eats you.”

Gutenberg’s expression convinced me I was better off not pressing my luck. I clamped my jaw, pressed my lips together, and returned to my work.

“There’s nothing shameful about fanfiction,” Ponce de Leon said. “That piece you did about Shakespeare and Elton John—”

“Not now, Juan.” Gutenberg had picked up his copy of
Harry Potter
. “It’s ready.”

Ponce de Leon’s face darkened. “Johannes . . .”

“I know,” he said without looking. “But Meridiana has been fighting to return to our world for a thousand years. We’ve always known something was working to claw its way back and destroy us all. This is why I
created
Die Zwelf Portenære. Twelve Doorkeepers to guard the way. We cannot allow her to succeed.”

“Meridiana wants to supplant God,” Ponce de Leon said. “If you attempt to eliminate magic, to rewrite the world as you see fit, how are you different?”

“False equivalency? You’re better than that, Juan. Besides, if it comes to that and I do use this spell, wouldn’t that prove it was all part of your God’s plan?”

I turned toward Ponce de Leon. “You believe in God?”

“You sound surprised.”

I was, a little. “Everything in the Bible can be explained by magic. With all you’ve done, all you’ve seen, how can you still believe?”

He smiled at me. A little sadly, I thought. “With all you’ve done and seen, how can you not?”

“Proselytize later.” Gutenberg’s fingertips sank into the paper. He grimaced. “Never attempt libriomancy with your own work. It’s like repeatedly slamming your brain in a toilet seat, then flushing it away.”

“Lovely simile,” said Ponce de Leon. “You should use that for your next story.”

Gutenberg reached deeper, burying his hand and forearm in the book. He blinked sweat from his eyes. I couldn’t tell if his
exertion was from the mental dissonance of working with his own book, or the relatively small pool of belief empowering that book.