Unbound (5 page)

But Deifilia’s power, like Lena’s, comes from books. I know the book that gave birth to them. I look beyond the tree to the
magic flowing through it, layer upon layer of familiar text. I reach for that story.

My hand sinks into the roots. I use Lena’s roots to trap Deifilia in place, just as she had done to me.

“I pushed too far.” My throat was dry. Pain throbbed through my leg as I remembered my senses stretching through the roots, the branches, even the individual leaves. I had manipulated the magic of
Nymphs of Neptune
, and when I did, that magic sank its roots into my thoughts. “The air was cold.”

“You heard voices?”

“Characters from the book, yah.”

“I am yours now, John Rule of Earth.” A nymph kneels on the ice, blonde hair flowing like a golden river over the voluptuous curves of her body. Arousal pounds through my veins, and I forget about the pain.

“I was hallucinating. It happens sometimes, when libriomancy goes wrong.” I shivered, remembering the chill of the Neptunian caves, the ice beneath my body. “They told me there was no returning from this place.”

“They were wrong.” Carl sounded like a father soothing a child after a nightmare. “You’re safe here, Isaac. But this is where the ride gets a little bumpy. So far, Euphemia’s just been helping you relax, settling you into a nice trance. You’re in control, and everything that happens next is up to you. The answers are in your mind, but you have to want them.”

“I do.” Euphemia’s song couldn’t completely suppress my annoyance.

“What happened next, Isaac? You saw someone else. Not a character from a book. Someone real.”

My muscles tightened. My breath caught. It was as if I had fallen from the raft and plunged not into the warmth of the pool, but a frozen lake. Swirling currents seized my body, tugging me down.

Euphemia’s song grew louder. The rhythm was uncomfortably sexual, an erotic melody sinking its hooks into my bones. My months with Lena had taught me a great deal about desire,
but this was different, more primal. I had felt sensations like this only once before, when Lena demonstrated what her unfiltered power could do. It was like a shot of adrenaline directly to the libido.

Euphemia sang of mystery and promise and dreams fulfilled. I could no more turn away than I could stop my own heart from beating. I imagined her swimming through my memories. I followed, desperate to reach her, but she kept just out of reach.

“What do you hear, Isaac?” Carl pressed.

I swallowed. “Gutenberg was there.”
He stands over me, his anger palpable even in my delusional state. He and Lena are arguing.

“He’s lost,” Gutenberg insists.

“None shall harm him while I live.” Lena’s words blur with those of the book.

“Even if I wanted to help the man who betrayed the Porters, he’s too far gone.”

I knew what came next. The tip of a golden fountain pen pressing against my brow like a scalpel, cutting away my magic. Tears slipped down my face, rolling past my ears to the sides of my neck. “Please don’t.”

My words sounded distant. I reached for happier memories. Using magic to transport myself to the surface of the moon. Making love to Lena for the first time. Watching Smudge play in the glowing coals of a barbeque grill, jumping about and flinging ash into the air with his forelegs.

Euphemia slowed her song, calling me back to that moment of loss. Her words promised me everything I dreamed of, all of the joy of those memories and more, if only I swam deeper.

“There was another voice,” said Carl. “The book wasn’t the only thing trying to get inside your head.”

The Ghost Army. In fighting Deifilia, I had opened myself to their assault. The ghosts rode the currents of magic, and I was channeling a hell of a lot of it. “I can’t see her.”

“Her?” he repeated. “It’s a woman?”

Memories rushed past, swirling too quickly and violently to grasp. If I tried, they would tear me apart. This was a place of death, a place where something had burned my thoughts to ash and salted the ground to make sure I would never remember her attempt to drown me.

“Listen to Euphemia. She can’t read your thoughts, but her song can lead you to what you most desire.”

Her voice whispered to me from beneath the ash, offering knowledge, magic, love. I could have it all. I could reverse the spell Gutenberg had carved into me and restore my magic. I could move beyond the limits of libriomancy, figure out exactly how magic made the universe work, manipulate the gears of creation.

Lena was there as well. Beyond her waited treasured memories and moments from my past. Christmas morning. My mother baking brownies. Seeing
Star Wars
for the first time. Helping take my eighth grade Knowledge Bowl team to nationals, where we placed third. Anything I had ever loved or desired.

“Focus, Isaac.” Carl sounded far away.

That wasn’t right. We had won second place at nationals. Silver medals, not bronze. Yet it was bronze that edged my vision, framing my thoughts. My focus narrowed with each word of Euphemia’s song. Stone walls shut me out of my own memories, but her music pulled me irresistibly through the cracks.

I heard myself whispering,
“Who are you?”

“Would you like me to show you, Isaac?”

Pinpricks grip my chin, turn my head to one side then the other, as if I’m a prize poodle at a dog show.

“She wore a metal mask. Bronze, I think.”

The stones crushed together, sealing memories and cauterizing thought. Euphemia’s song grew stronger in response, dragging me downward. Euphemia hammered the shell of my prison, every word ringing through my thoughts. New fissures appeared, and through the gaps I saw a woman clad in bronze
armor. She was short and inhumanly beautiful, though I wasn’t sure how I could know that, since the armor hid every inch of her skin. Even her eyes were shielded by thin shells of bronze.

The bronze woman stretches out a hand. Through her eyes I see an empire of the dead. I watch her slaughter half of humanity to build her army. Jeneta is the key to her victory. Libriomancy transforms every book into a potential weapon, and Jeneta’s e-reader holds all those weapons in a single device.

I couldn’t breathe. Cold fingers tightened around mine, pulling me closer. My heart felt like a balloon about to burst. Panic clawed within my chest like a trapped animal. I was no longer flying, but falling—

I landed hard on stone tile, coughing and gagging. Strong hands rolled me onto my side. I vomited water from my mouth and nose.

“Don’t struggle.” Lena held me in place while I fought to breathe. “You rolled off the raft. Carl said it was the final step in the process, that when you came back up, you’d have the memory you needed.” Her face was pale. “You didn’t come back up.”

I blinked at her. Memory and reality blurred. I saw a ghost trapped in bronze, the living cut down by the dead. Most of humanity knew nothing of magic. We were unprepared to fight such a one-sided war. She would rip her ranks from our corpses.

“Isaac!” Lena’s cry pulled me back. Water streamed from her hair onto my chest. Goose bumps tightened my skin. She pulled me up and wrapped her arms around me. I could barely force my arms to return the embrace. I felt like I had finished a marathon on a planet with twice Earth’s gravity.

Euphemia lay unconscious on the edge of the pool, a short distance away. Carl sat beside her, his eyes wide.

“What happened?” I asked hoarsely.

“I told her to stop singing.” Lena’s body was tense. “She didn’t.”

“She was
helping
him.” Carl started to rise, looked at Lena, and apparently thought better of it.

“You said you’ve never lost a patient.” Nidhi stood beside me. Unlike Lena, she neither raised her voice, nor was her body language in any way threatening, but the clipped intensity of her words made Carl flinch. “If Lena hadn’t stopped your wife and brought Isaac up, he would have died.”

“You don’t know that for certain.” Carl swallowed. “Look, that was no simple repressed memory. It’s like you asked us to heal a cut, then brought us a patient with terminal cancer. The only way to treat that sort of thing is to burn it out.”

“Even if you kill the patient?” Nidhi turned to me. “Isaac, I didn’t know. I swear to you. I’ve consulted on their cases. Carl promised you would be safe.”

“It’s all right.” I closed my eyes and rested my head on Lena’s shoulder. A part of me didn’t care about drowning. I wanted Euphemia’s song back, yearned to return to that place of memory and hope and desire, and to escape the vision of a world where the living were enslaved to the dead. “It worked. I remember her name.”

“There you go.” Carl stretched his hands toward me, like a magician’s flourish after a grand trick. “Exactly what you asked for. No harm, no foul.”

Nidhi silenced him with a look. “This man was your patient, and you almost killed him.” She crouched beside me and touched my wrist, checking my pulse. More quietly, she added, “He’s also family.”

It was the first time she had used that word to describe me. I turned to look at her, to respond, but the words wouldn’t come. Nor did she give me the chance to speak. Her attention and anger were utterly focused on Carl.

“When Isaac fell into the water, you told us this was normal. You’ve done this before.”

“Sometimes recordings aren’t enough,” he said defensively. “Some patients need a more immersive treatment.”

“Why wasn’t that included in your reports?” She slashed a hand through the air, cutting off his reply. “When I get home, I will pull up every patient record you ever signed. I will follow
up with each and every one of those people. If I find a single person who suffered thanks to your negligence, you’re through.”

Carl glanced down at his wife, then scowled. “Who the hell do you think you are? You think the state will yank my license because you tell them fairy tales about magic songs?”

“Why would I waste my time reporting you to the
state?
” Nidhi countered quietly.

“You don’t work for the Porters anymore,” Carl said. “You can’t—”

Nidhi continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “I’ve worked with many powerful, dangerous people over the years. I helped them through traumas nobody should have to endure. I taught them to rebuild relationships torn by magic and secrets. I fought for them, helped them find hope, helped them to retain their humanity.” Her voice dropped even lower. “And I have most of those people on speed dial.”

I had never seen Nidhi like this. Carl looked like he was the one who had almost drowned. His eyes were round, and the color had faded from his cheeks.

“Thank you for your assistance.” Nidhi joined Lena in helping me to my feet. We started toward the house, pausing only long enough for Lena to fetch Smudge and my clothes from the sauna.

I made it to the driveway before the tears began. Carl had warned me about the yearning, but words couldn’t convey the sense of loss. I was hollow, as though everyone I loved had been ripped away from me, killed without warning. Every dream crushed, every possession stolen, every hope turned to dust. It was ridiculous and irrational and I couldn’t control it any more than I could hold back the sunset.

But one memory remained. Through the tears and the grief, I saw the woman who had taunted me that day in Lena’s grove. I saw the one who commanded the Ghost Army, who had taken Jeneta. I saw her, and I remembered.

Meridiana.

W
EREWOLVES
V
S
.
BIGFOOT

Summary:
Viral video claims to show shotgun-wielding werewolves hunting Bigfoot from the back of a pickup truck.

Status:
Inconclusive.

Sample E-mail:

Hey, check out this cell phone video, captured by a 17-year-old girl in Copper River, Michigan.

You can’t see the driver, but look at the two shotgun-toting hicks in the back. And before you say it’s just a couple of hairy guys in masks, wait for the 0:42 mark, when a white-furred giant streaks across the road.

A good makeup artist can create a convincing werewolf, but that dude in the back jumps at least ten meters FROM A MOVING TRUCK to tackle what looks like an albino sasquatch. Both of them bounce back from the impact like it was nothing.

Copies of this video have already been pulled from YouTube and other sites for “copyright violation.” Screen caps are below, in case they yank this link, too.

Background:
Many rumors have been spread about the recent tragedy in Copper River. At least 34 people are known to have died, but initial reports of property damage appear to have been wildly exaggerated. The official cause of most deaths was listed as accidental, according to police reports. [Sources: Associated Press, Copper River Journal, CBS News]

The video in question first appeared on the Internet on August 5 of this year. On August 8, Reddit user BlackCapsFan12 posted a detailed analysis of the background motion to demonstrate that the “impossible” jump was a result of camera trickery. Other users argued the video was genuine, and submitted evidence suggesting BlackCapsFan12 was a sockpuppet account.

Another theory is that the video is part of a viral marketing campaign for an upcoming movie or television show. (See also “
Vampire Photobombs Live News Report.
”) Hollywood is certainly capable of producing a video of this quality. However, no studio
has claimed responsibility, nor has anyone been able to connect the video to a specific forthcoming release.

Conclusion:
While most people scoff at the idea of magic and monsters, there is no conclusive proof that the video was faked. In addition, materials such as the
George R. R. Martin Letter
suggest that we must at least consider the possibility of such things being genuine. Therefore, ChainBusters.com has given this story a verdict of INCONCLUSIVE.

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• Iron Dragon Escapes from Copper River Mine, Attacks Local Library