Codex Born (20 page)

W
E FOUND HARRISON’S INSECTS in the five houses closest to the Sanchez family. The insects weren’t asleep, exactly, and they reacted when we approached, but they were sluggish, refusing to stray very far from their chosen hostages. Lena clubbed most of the insects into scrap. I caught two more with a hammer I picked up from the garage of the second house.

We got back to find Nidhi hauling the spare tire out of the trunk of her car. The rear tire had been blown apart in the fighting. The driver’s side window was broken as well. Nidhi gave me a
look
, but didn’t say anything.

On the bright side, having a Renfield around made it a lot easier to change a tire. Who needed a jack when Deb could lift the car with her bare hands? Lena helped with the tire while I swept out the pebbles of glass the best I could.

Deb stepped back, brushed her hands on her pants, and folded her arms. “The head bloodsuckers in Detroit aren’t going to be happy about losing Nicholas and Sarah.”

“I’m not thrilled either.” I didn’t remind her that Harrison had killed Moon as well. Or maybe she remembered, and the vampires simply didn’t mind losing that particular sparkler.

I grabbed Heinlein’s
Friday
from my jacket. The vampires had taken care of their side of the bargain, after all. The Shipstone battery I created was no larger than my wallet. It could
light the entire vampire city, deep in the underground salt mines, but it might not be enough to make up for the death of three of their number. “Be careful.”

“Don’t worry about me, hon. Anyone asks, I’m putting all the blame on you.” Deb shoved the Shipstone into her pants pocket. “Watch your back. And give me a call if you change your mind about wanting a few extra years of reading and study.”

We waited for the first of the Porters’ clean-up crew to arrive. A pair of fresh-faced field agents nodded a greeting, then set about erasing our mess. One strode into the Sanchez house as if he owned it, while the other used some kind of purple crystal to search for fragments of magic, like the expended pellets from my shock-gun.

Once we were back on the road, I examined a handful of fragmented insect parts: wings and shells, mostly, along with a few gears, a bit of wire that might have been an antenna, and a pair of oversized grasshopper legs. I squinted through my enchanted sunglasses, but the scraps were magically dead.

We knew where the bugs had come from, but where had Harrison found his accomplices? How had he persuaded them to help him butcher wendigos? More importantly, what did they all want? Harrison was motivated by power, but what did he hope to do with his magically-boosted brute squad?

And why come after me? If he had gotten into Victor’s system, he could have tracked down any Porter he wanted, but I hadn’t heard of any other break-ins. Harrison had come to the U.P. and hacked my computer. I looked out the rear window toward Lena, thinking of my private notes. There were things I had learned about her that I refused to share even with the Porters.

If August Harrison had found those files, it would take time to decrypt them, but if he was even half as smart as his son had been, he would get there eventually. Whether or not he could do anything with that information was another question. He had no direct magical ability. I had no idea what else his would-be libriomancers could do.

I called Nicola Pallas. “The serenade worked beautifully, thank you. Please tell me the automaton has Harrison and his friends.”

“Not yet.”

“Dammit.”

Jeff turned in his seat. “What’s taking so long? I thought those things were supposed to be unstoppable.”

“Not exactly,” Nidhi said mildly. “Isaac destroyed four earlier this year.”

Jeff cocked his head and stared at me like I had just turned into a were-rabbit. Admittedly, this was a tremendous improvement over wanting to tear me limb from limb. “Well, shave my ass and call me a poodle. How the hell did you manage that?”

“You have to know how they think.” Which August might also know, depending on what he had gotten out of my computer. This just got better and better. To Nicola, I said, “Why doesn’t it materialize in front of their truck, punch out the engine, and be done with it?”

“As far as we’ve been able to determine, the automaton is having trouble
seeing
them.”

Perfect. “I need to talk to Gutenberg. The people August had with him were using magic I’d never seen or read about before.”

“Hold on.”

I’ll say this much about Nicola: she was efficient. It couldn’t have been more than five seconds before my phone beeped.

“What have you learned?” asked Johannes Gutenberg. It was his customary greeting. Never “Hello, Isaac,” or “Great job cleaning up that will-o’-the-wisp situation at the strip club last month, Isaac.” All he cared about was whatever new knowledge I had uncovered, whether it was the innermost secrets of a forgotten branch of Egyptian magic or the extra ingredient Loretta Trembath used for her spicy Cudighi.

I had never been able to describe Gutenberg’s accent. I would have expected his words to be colored by his upbringing, but I heard no trace of Germanic when he spoke. Instead,
his voice was simply…precise. Every word, every syllable was carefully chosen and articulated. It made sense when I thought about it. How many languages had he learned and relearned over his lifetime?

“August Harrison has help,” I said. “Three people, all young and Asian in appearance. They used books to absorb or dissipate magic. I think the books held some kind of ghost that diluted or consumed whatever we threw at them.”

“Describe these ghosts,” Gutenberg said sharply.

I did the best I could, beginning with Nicholas’ complaints about other ghosts. Nidhi and Jeff chipped in additional details. “Who the hell are these people? You said you sent me the full, uncensored history of the Porters for— For my research project. There was nothing about this style of magic.”

“Tell me about the books.”

I closed my eyes. “They were hardcovers. Larger than most modern books. Quartos, maybe, bound in red cloth or leather. They looked like something you’d keep in the rare books section of a library.” But such uncommon or one-of-a-kind editions shouldn’t work for libriomancy. Books had to be mass-produced to build up the cumulative belief and power you needed for magic. “I didn’t see any embossing on the cover. The pages looked yellowed.”

“Did you see what language the books were written in?”

Was I imagining the urgency in his words? “I didn’t get close enough.”

“It’s not libriomancy,” Gutenberg said quietly.

I waited for him to explain. Eventually, I started to realize I could be waiting a very long time. “Then what is it?”

“I’m not sure.”

I didn’t buy it. He might not know for certain, but he wouldn’t be this pensive if he didn’t have suspicions. “So guess, dammit.”

The silence that followed gave me time to realize I was barking orders at the founder of the Porters, a man with five hundred years of magical experience who could probably fry me through this phone without a second thought. I saw Nidhi’s
hands tense on the wheel, and even Jeff gave me a small shake of his head.

“I won’t know anything for certain until you bring me back their books.”

I forced myself to count to ten, in Latin, before responding. I should have gone to at least thirty. “You remember I’m a researcher now, not a field agent, right?”

“You are whatever I order you to be, Isaac Vainio. The Porters are not your personal social club. We are a guild, bound to a purpose, and I am master of that guild. I’ve given you a great deal of leeway, due to your contributions and potential. But there are limits to my patience.”

“Yes, sir.” The words slipped out automatically in response to his unspoken threat. “But can’t the automaton bring back whatever you need?”

“Normally, yes.” His anger shifted into frustration. “However, as near as I can determine, my automaton is stuck. I’ll send you the location.”

“Stuck?”

“Locked up. Paralyzed. Bluescreened. Frozen.”

“How?”

“Presumably your friends with their book-ghosts have found a way to throw a wrench into my magic.”

“Are you serious?” The words slipped out before I could stop them. “If these people can overpower your spells, what exactly do you expect me to do?”

“Improvise. As you did before.”

Take control of the automaton. I shook my head. “Lena and I both could have died last time.”

“Then find a better tactic. Our enemies have shown themselves to be exceptionally good at avoiding detection. We may not have another opportunity. If you strike now, while their efforts are concentrated on containing and depowering the automaton, you may not need such extreme measures.”

“All right.” I took a deep breath. “Any other advice?”

“Yes, in fact. If I’m not mistaken, Mister Harrison has awakened.
He’s sending his creatures after you. Use them to weaken him before you attack.”

“How the hell do I do that?”

Nobody I knew could pack as much weariness into a single sigh as Johannes Gutenberg. “
Think
, Isaac. How does August Harrison control so many creatures?”

“Through the queen. Victor built a telepathic interface.”

Silence.

“Feedback,” I said, feeling like an exceptionally slow student struggling to keep up. “That’s why he didn’t come after us last night when we destroyed the insects in Lena’s tree. He felt it. If we kill enough of his pets, we can take him out right now.”

My phone went dead. A second later, the screen lit up with a new text message:
Automaton is approximately 10 miles north of your location, at the intersection of Wilcox Rd. and Allegan St.

“What did he ask you to do?” Nidhi asked tightly.

“Stop Harrison.” I handed the phone up to Jeff, who nodded and typed the location into Nidhi’s GPS. “He also warned me we’re about to have company.”

I dug through my satchel, looking for a book I wasn’t entirely sure I could use. But if this worked, I should be able to knock August Harrison on his ass.

The roof of the car began to ring like it was raining gravel. A beetle hit the windshield hard enough to chip the glass. It clung there, boring deeper into the tiny crater.

Nidhi flipped on the windshield wipers. The beetle held tight, and the wiper blade slid over it with a thumping sound. She switched on the washer fluid next. That was enough to dislodge the beetle, but more bugs were rattling down on us.

“Speed up,” I yelled. The faster we went, the harder it should be for the insects to hold on. I tried to ignore the clatter of bugs, concentrating instead on the pages of a good old-fashioned dungeon crawl. Gutenberg locked most role-playing manuals, but there were plenty of tie-in novels out there.

The page I had bookmarked described an enormous warrior cowering in the back of a cave as a creature that looked
like a super-sized cross between an armadillo and a cockroach waddled closer.