Unbound (34 page)

Update to Existing File

NAME:
Isaac Samuel Vainio

ALIASES:
None

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION

SEX: M

RACE: Caucasian

HEIGHT: 5’9”

WEIGHT: 155 lbs

HAIR COLOR: Blond

HAIR LENGTH: Short

EYE COLOR: Brown

SCARS/MARKS/TATTOOS: None

FAMILY:
Unmarried, no children. Cohabitates with Lena Greenwood. One brother: Toby. Parents: Erik and Heidi Vainio.

CRIMINAL HISTORY:
Member of the magical organization known as the Porters. Suspected involvement with the disappearance of Ted Boyer (Marquette, MI). Suspected involvement with the murder of Ray Walker (East Lansing, MI). Suspected involvement with multiple, unexplained deaths in Copper River, Michigan (see case file C89626.)

KNOWN ASSOCIATES:
Nicola Pallas (File 16821-23). Nidhi Shah.

Property of the U.S. Government. For internal use only.

L
ENA AND I REMATERIALIZED
within the Chevalier House’s basement, just outside of the archive. The inner door was open. Nicola and Jackson were slumped unconscious against the wall. Nicola had been gagged and bound as well, presumably to keep her from using magic if she recovered. Ward and her automaton must have caught them by surprise.

I could see the spells laid over them like blankets, keeping them asleep. Given time, I could probably reverse them, but we didn’t have time. “Where did they go?”

Lena jogged to the end of the hallway and opened the outer door. “No sign of her here. What the hell did you do, by the way?”

“That cape is what’s called a Wondrous Item
. Once per day, it allows your character to open a dimensional doorway. I used
to play a dwarf rogue who caused all sorts of mischief with one of those capes.”

I found the armillary sphere in the crate where we had left it. Nothing else had been touched, as far as I could tell.
I checked Nicola and Jackson more closely. Both were breathing normally, and had no obvious injuries.

Shouts from aboveground gave me a good idea where Ward had gone. Lena snatched the armillary sphere, and seconds later we were running up the stairs and out of the house.

We found Sarieha Ward facedown on the ground in front of Damon Knight’s magical gismo. Her automaton lay beside her, its head separated from the torso. Sarieha had removed several metal disks from the head, presumably “wiping” it of its current occupant in preparation for the magical cloning process.

It wasn’t the automaton that made Smudge burst into anxious flames. It was Bi Wei. Power swirled around her, raw and unformed and terrifying. I couldn’t tell whether or not Sarieha was still alive, but if she was, Bi Wei intended to change that. “Wei, stop!”

The eyes that turned toward me were wide with rage and terror. Bi Wei stood in the eye of a magical maelstrom. I could see Meridiana’s tendrils stretching toward her, seeking her heart and mind. Meridiana fed on those who channeled too much magical power. But Bi Wei didn’t stand alone. Shadows surrounded her: the other students of Bi Sheng, lending her strength.

“The Porters are
not
going to do this!” I gestured to the automaton. “I won’t let it happen.”

Cameron and his automaton materialized atop the north wall.

“Oh, shit.” The automaton reached toward me, and I saw a line of familiar Latin flare to life.
Pluit ignem et sulphur de caelo et omnes perdidit.
“Incoming!”

Sulfurous flames poured forth. Cameron wasn’t playing around anymore. Neither was Bi Wei, who diverted the attack
and spun, carrying the fire like a dancer twirling her partner, then launching it back at Cameron.

Lena tossed the sphere to me and sprinted toward the wall. I dropped to one knee and checked Sarieha. Her legs were broken, but she was alive. I turned my attention to the automaton’s head. With its inner workings exposed and its defenses down, I could have destroyed it, but Babs and Cameron had two others they could use to build their army. And since Sarieha had gone to the trouble of opening this one up for me . . .

I twisted the ring on my hand, another of the items I had pulled from the gaming manual. I hadn’t planned on using the ring’s three wishes until I faced Meridiana. Then again, when had any of my plans worked out the way I wanted? I crafted my first wish in my mind, examining every word for loopholes before speaking it aloud.

While I worked on the automaton’s head, Lena plunged her hands deep into the northern wall. Branches sprouted from the palisade, twining around Cameron’s arms and legs. Lena directed other branches to attack his automaton, while Bi Wei countered the automaton’s magic.

I finished my work on the automaton’s head and turned my attention to the armillary sphere. Magic poured forth from the ring, and the second of the three jewels disappeared. The sphere vanished from the grass.

Babs and her automaton appeared on the eastern wall. I yanked out my shock-gun, adjusted it to the highest level, and fired at the platform beneath her. It collapsed under their weight.

Another branch trapped Cameron’s arm. Bi Wei raised her hands. Dozens of shadows moved with her, preparing to finish him off.

I switched to a nonfatal setting and shot her in the back. Electricity fragmented over her body, and she fell.

“Come on!” I shouted.

Lena left Cameron fighting to free himself. Babs and her automaton were already getting back to their feet. Lena
scooped Bi Wei into her arms, and we ran toward the southern gate. Smudge’s cage banged against my hip with every stride.

Fire washed through the gate behind us, but they didn’t chase us. Why bother? Their first priority would be to find the sphere, and they could see neither of us had it.

Ponce de Leon waited for us in the parking lot, leaning against the Triumph with his arms folded. I was a little surprised. With Gutenberg gone and the Porters crumbling, I had half-expected him to do the pragmatic thing and get the hell out of here. Instead, he got in and started the engine, leaving the door open.

“Do you have Nidhi?” Lena shouted.

“They put her into an enchanted sleep. She’s resting comfortably in the passenger’s seat.”

“We could have used a hand back there,” I said.

“I’ve squared off with automatons before. I’d prefer not to do so again.”

I didn’t have time to argue. “We have to get to Copper River. The Triumph isn’t big enough to—”

Ponce de Leon didn’t move. “How long has it been since you stole my car, Isaac?”

“Technically, I didn’t steal it from you. It was in storage. Confiscated after you snuck into France back in seventy-nine. All I did was fudge some paperwork.”

“You were clever enough to forge Porter requisitions, but you’ve yet to uncover everything this car can do.” He tucked his cane behind the seats. “You’ll want to stand back.”

He pulled the choke out as far as it would go, sealed the air vents, then turned on the hazard lights. With a satisfied smile, he turned on the radio and pressed the fourth station button.

The transformation was too swift for me to follow, though scraps of magical text taunted me as they flew past. The car’s body spread outward. Paint melted into the metal, leaving the appearance of hammered steel. The door slammed shut, locking Nidhi and Ponce de Leon inside.

Lena and I fell back. The car was now three times as wide
as before and almost twice as long. Portholes the size of dinner plates spread equidistantly around the upper portion. A ramp hissed down to the pavement, and Ponce de Leon beckoned us inside.

I didn’t move. “Are you telling me I’ve had my own
flying saucer
all this time?”

“It’s a shame you didn’t steal the manual. It will be cramped, but we should all fit, and this form makes much better time. We may need to stop for gas, though.” He sat in a padded metal-backed swivel chair at the exact center of the ship. A curved control panel arced in front of his lap, studded with toggle switches and bright lights in primary colors. “What do you think? One of your libriomancers helped me with the layout.”

The ramp lifted, leaving only the low illumination from the lights hidden in the base of the walls. A chrome control stick, two-handed and reminiscent of something you’d find in the cockpit of a jumbo jet, rose from the instrument panel. Lena set Bi Wei on the floor, then moved to sit with Nidhi.

“You turned your car into a UFO,” I said.

He looked over his shoulder at me. “How do you know I didn’t turn my UFO into a car?”

There were no chairs or seatbelts, only metal plating for the floor and a circular bench that ringed most of the ship, with a gap for the ramp. The walls curved up around us, suggesting that the engines and electronics were all locked away in the lower half.

The floor buzzed as we rose into the air. The wall in front of Ponce de Leon turned transparent, a viewscreen showing the Mackinac Bridge stretched out before us.

“This is awesome,” I whispered.

He glanced over his shoulder. “You should see my DeLorean.”

And then we were off, streaking through the sky toward Copper River. I couldn’t tell if the ship somehow knew where it was going, or if Ponce de Leon had a hidden GPS on that console. Most of the lights and switches were unlabeled and incomprehensible, though they looked extremely cool.

“I feel like we should stop to burn a crop circle,” I said. Instead, I turned to study the spell keeping Nidhi asleep. After a few minutes, I was able to peel the magic away. I did my best to preserve the spell, transferring it like a sheet of gold leaf and laying it over Bi Wei. Her legs twitched, and her breathing deepened.

I dug out my phone to begin putting the rest of my plan into effect. “Can you fly lower? I can’t get a signal up here.”

Ponce de Leon dropped the ship through the clouds, taking us lower and lower until we were skimming over the treetops. I stared at the phone, but I couldn’t bring myself to use it.

“What’s wrong?” Lena asked. She sat with one arm around Nidhi’s shoulders.

I closed my eyes, but when I did, I saw the graves from a month before. “Meridiana knows we’re coming. We need help. But anyone I drag into this fight might not walk away.”

“Don’t drag them,” said Nidhi. “Tell them the truth. Let them choose for themselves.”

My heart was pounding as hard as it had during the fighting at Fort Michilimackinac. In some ways, I was more scared of this phone call than I had been to enter Gerbert d’Aurillac’s sphere. At least with the sphere, I had only been risking my own life and sanity.

I started with Jerry Beauchamp, who answered after the fourth ring. I hadn’t seen Jerry or his family among the mob at my house, but given the speed of gossip in this town, he would have heard about it by now. And about me.

“This is Isaac Vainio. I—yah, I know you’re at work.” I hadn’t, but I should have realized.

“What do you want?” Jerry asked warily.

“It’s not what I want. It’s what I need.” I wiped my other hand on my jeans. “I need to tell you the truth. And I need your help.”

Ponce de Leon hadn’t lied about the ship’s speed. We reached the northern coast of the U.P. in a half hour, and the Copper River Public Library five minutes later.

We landed on the side of the road across from the library. The ship blocked both the sidewalk and one lane of traffic. I crept down the ramp, shock-gun in one hand. I neither saw nor felt magic aside from our own, and Smudge was relatively unworried.

A man stopped on the far side of the road with an overweight toy poodle on a leash. My jaw tightened. Andy Rosten had been part of the mob that attacked me and stood by while my home burned.

He didn’t move. The sight of me emerging from a flying saucer with what looked like a revolver in my right hand might have had something to do with that.

I strode purposefully toward the library’s back door, stopping only to nod in his direction. “Good afternoon.”

I could see him trying to say my name, but no sound emerged.

There were only a few people inside, and they stayed out of my way as I stocked up on books. Alex was working the main desk. “Isaac, what are you doing? You know you need to check those out first.”

I turned around.

He raised his hands. “Or you could do it later.”

When I emerged, more people had gathered to stare at the UFO. Andy hadn’t moved at all, though his dog was pulling impatiently at the leash. He flinched when I glanced his way.

“How are the twins?” I asked.

“Good.” His voice squeaked a little. “They’re . . . they’re good.”

“Did they ever pick up those
Justice League
books they reserved?”

He nodded.

“Glad to hear it. Tell Cindy I said hi.”

Just down the street was a small flower garden surrounding a set of copper statues commemorating the original miners of
our town. I pulled out a wand, and seconds later the miners and their full cart of ore were shrinking to the size of children’s toys. I tucked the wand away, scooped the three statues and cart into my hand, and turned to go.