Codex Born (44 page)

What would a human/dryad baby become? Strong and powerful? Beautiful and pliant?

Would she be free?

I often wonder.

Q
UESTIONS AND HALF-FORMED PLANS clamored in my head like a basket of hyperactive puppies. How had Deifilia and her followers escaped the mine without Gutenberg noticing? How many more of Bi Sheng’s students had she created, and were they protected by the books I had made? How had they entered Copper River unseen?

There were countless weapons we could use. I could fly in and drop a fairy bio-bomb from
Artemis Fowl
. Or let Gutenberg unlock the D&D handbook, and see how Deifilia liked playing catch with a sphere of annihilation. Assuming they didn’t simply absorb the magic of our attack and dissolve our weapons into nothingness.

“Lawrence, Whitney, what books do you have?” I hadn’t stocked up for a direct assault on Deifilia.

“Isaac…” Toni began.

“Thirty minutes,” I promised. “One way or another, you’ll know.”

It was an older fairy-tale-style romance that offered what I thought was my best chance at walking away from a confrontation with Deifilia. When I told Lawrence what I wanted, he looked past me to Toni, as if asking for permission.

“You’re sure about this?” Toni asked.

“Not in the slightest. But people are dying.” I waited for Lawrence to reach into the book. “Tell Pallas to evacuate the town.”

Toni folded her arms. “She’ll want to know why.”

“I know. Tell her I’m doing something stupid again.” I returned to the car and waited while Lena and Nidhi said their good-byes.

“What about megaspider over there?” Whitney asked.

Smudge scurried toward us. Whitney, Lawrence, and Toni jumped back as he placed his front legs on the bumper, as if he wanted nothing more than to climb up onto the Triumph and become the world’s first road-surfing spider.

“I don’t think so, partner,” I said. “Would one of you mind pulling the White Rabbit’s fan out of Wonderland and shrinking him back down to his travel-size?”

Once Smudge was back to normal and sitting—rather sullenly, if you asked me—on the dashboard, Nidhi and Lena ended their kiss. Nidhi stepped back.

“Isaac…”

“I know.” I glanced at Lena, who was slumped in the seat, her eyes closed. She held the branch from her tree across her chest. “I’ll keep her safe.”

Before, I had been too intent on staying ahead of our pursuers to truly see the damage Deifilia’s creatures had done. Driving back through town, I noticed everything. The playground behind the tennis court looked like a tornado had touched down. Whatever had come through here had ripped chain-link fence like cobwebs.

Sirens wailed from every direction. Twice we had to backtrack because police cars blocked the roads. Dogs were howling
from their yards. Others sprinted through the streets in a panic. We passed a pair of EMTs assisting a man covered in blood. A half mile farther on, the mining museum was on fire. I slowed the car.

“I know what you’re thinking,” said Lena. “You’re in no shape to help.”

“I’ve got two books in this car that could give me enough elemental control to—”

“They’ve got a fully equipped fire engine. Let them do their job. If you overdo it, you’re likely to make things worse.”

I tightened my fingers on the wheel and kept driving.

“What’s in that vial Lawrence made for you?”

I started to answer, then hit the brakes as a wendigo staggered out of McDonald’s. Its stomach bulged like an overstuffed sack. Before I could grab my shock-gun, a blue Harley-Davidson sped at the wendigo from the opposite direction. The driver appeared human, but the woman in the sidecar was in the hybrid form some weres could take, all muscle and fur and teeth, but still humanoid. She jumped out of the sidecar and tackled the wendigo while the driver pulled onto the sidewalk and grabbed an aluminum bat.

“Don’t kill it,” I shouted.

“Easy for you to say.”

It was anything but easy. The wendigo had fed recently. I suppose it could have stuffed itself on Big Macs and fries, but I doubted it.

“The vial?” Lena asked again as I turned into the drive-through to get past the fight. Wendigos were slower when sated, and the werewolves appeared to have things under control.

“The Porter database catalogs it as Love Potion 163-F. It’s fast-acting, works on contact, and lasts for up to ten years.”

She pushed herself up in her seat. When she spoke, she didn’t bother to disguise her anger. “One dryad isn’t enough for you?”

“You know I don’t want Deifilia for myself. I want to stop her. If we fight her head-on, she’ll crush us. But if I can create
more of a conflict inside her, split her loyalty long enough for Bi Wei and the others to act, we might have a chance. We might even be able to save her.”

“Save her?” Lena repeated softly. “With the magical equivalent of a date rape drug?”

“I wouldn’t—”

“I know. That doesn’t make it right.”

I couldn’t argue. I had racked my brain for another way to stop Deifilia and resolve this mess. But even if I could have risked using my own magic, it never would have worked. Lena and I would have to fight through wendigos and metal beasts while the students of Bi Sheng countered my every spell.

“163-F has an antidote. If we can capture her alive, we can reverse its effects. I’m open to other suggestions, but people are dying, Lena.”

“I know,” she said again.

“The trick is getting it to her. She’s going to make sure we leave any potential weapons behind. No books, no swords, and nothing magical. But she’s new to our world, and there are things she might not recognize as weapons. One of those old prank calculators that’s actually a squirt gun, or maybe—”

“You think your love will be enough to overpower the Ghost Army’s wishes?”

“I only have to distract her, to create enough of a conflict for us to act.”

She took the test tube from my hand and carefully locked it away in the glove box. “I’ll do it.”

“You’ll do what?”

“The same thing I did to you in the library,” she whispered.

“How is that better than my so-called magic date rape drug?”

“It’s not.” She straightened. “But Deifilia is family. A sister. She’s my responsibility. If anyone does this to her, it will be me. Not a human.”

“And what if she turns that power back on you?”

Lena managed a smile. “One way or another, you’ll have your distraction.”

I hadn’t liked my original plan. I liked this one even less. It was one thing for me to try to enchant Deifilia, and to risk whatever backlash might come if my plan failed. It was my research that had started all of this, after all. But if Lena failed, she would take the brunt of Deifilia’s punishment.

I turned onto my street, and a metal eagle swooped down to land on the top of the windshield, talons grating against the crystal. I slammed the brakes, stalling out the engine. Smudge lit up like a flare.

“That’s why you didn’t get to stay supersized,” I said as I waited for my heart to recover. “You’d have set the whole car on fire.” I nodded to the eagle. “We’re alone.”

The eagle spread rust-edged wings and gave an ear-stabbing shriek. Tiny, layered scales of sheet metal served as feathers. The edges were irregularly cut.

“I have the books.” I restarted the engine and edged the car forward. The eagle didn’t appear to object, though it watched me closely with eyes made of iron pellets. I was more fixated on the damage Deifilia had done.

I lived on the edge of Copper River, in a moderately wooded area. Deifilia had turned the trees against my neighbors. Using oak and maple as giant clubs, she had smashed rooftops and fences, flattened cars, and ripped through power lines. My house was the only one undisturbed. Deifilia had put the trees behind my house to another use.

I couldn’t decide whether to call it a grove or a fortress. Oak trees had sprung up in a rough circle throughout the backyard. Branches wove together to create a fence of living wood. The trees were a good forty feet higher than any others, and the smallest was three feet in diameter.

Wendigos watched us from the upper branches. Metal glinted among the bark and leaves. I saw no sign of Deifilia or her human followers. Presumably they were inside the grove.

“That’s impressive,” I said. “Terrifying, but impressive. Of course, now all the neighbors are going to want one.”

We stopped in the driveway and climbed slowly from the
car. The moment Lena’s foot touched the grass, she froze. “It’s all one tree. Isaac, this is my oak, and Deifilia is inside of it.”

On another day, I would have come up with something better to say than, “Wow.” Not only had Deifilia created a grove of cloned oak trees, she had done it in less than an hour.

“Be careful,” said Lena. “Anywhere the roots or branches touch, she can strike. The roots will encircle and break your legs, or drag you into the ground until you suffocate. Or maybe they’ll just sprout spikes and impale you.”

“Making Deifilia into Sleeping Beauty and the enchanted hedge all in one. Perfect.”

A slender figure stepped out from between the trees, the branches bending aside to let her pass. Bi Wei gave no outward sign that she knew me, though we both knew Deifilia was aware of our earlier contact. “Leave the car and any weapons. Including your books.”

I stripped off my jacket, tucked my pistol into an inner pocket, and set it inside the car. Lena did the same with her bokken, but she kept the graft from her tree. She rested one end on the ground and leaned on it like a crutch. At this point, the branch was probably the only thing keeping her upright.

Bi Wei studied us both. A pair of metal grasshoppers nested in her hair. They could have been decorative, save for the way they rubbed their forelegs together as they watched us. Harrison’s millipede circled her throat. “You carry spells,” she said, stepping closer. Her fingers touched my temple. “Here. And another, deeper within.”

I tapped my head. “I have a fish in my brain.
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
. It translates languages for me. Slimy and a bit gross putting it in, but it works well.”

For an instant, I saw amusement in her eyes, and something more: a libriomancer’s delight at discovering a new trick. But the emotions didn’t reach her voice. “What of the other spell?”

I had left the potion in the glove box, and I wasn’t carrying any other magic. Everything was locked in the car, my books, my jacket, even— “Smudge. I created him, and it’s my magic that helps to sustain him. He’s staying with the car.”

Bi Wei tilted her head, listening to sounds I couldn’t hear. “You’ve brought our books?”

If I said yes, they could kill us and rip the car apart to find them. They’d be pissed to discover the books weren’t there, but that would be little comfort, what with me being dead and all. “First I need to talk to Deifilia. She needs to leave Lena and Copper River in peace.”

She bowed slightly, then beckoned for us to follow.

“I like her,” Lena said. “She’s cute for her age.”

Each step we took whittled away at my confidence, and I hadn’t been terribly confident to begin with. Partly it was a matter of scale. From the street, the trees looked enormous. Here in their shade, with the roots turning the ground to hard lumps and coils of wood, it was like crossing into another world, a world in which Deifilia was creator and goddess. The trees muffled the sounds from outside. The canopy turned the sky green. Leaves swirled through the air, a gentle and deceptively peaceful effect.

Wendigos climbed lower, preparing to pounce. I tensed, but Bi Wei never slowed. These wendigos were fully transformed. The students of Bi Sheng must have found a way to complete the process. Flakes of ice drifted from their bodies like snow as they moved about.

The branches parted, and Bi Wei escorted us inside.

Nothing remained of Lena’s garden. Her oak stood in the center of a swamp of tree roots and fallen leaves, without a single flower or blade of grass to be seen. Lena’s central tree was unchanged, but dwarfed by the surrounding oaks.

A man and a woman stood in front of the central oak. I could feel the magic wafting from them, like heat rolling from an open furnace. Both wore loose silk tunics, but the embroidery didn’t appear to be Chinese. The necks were cut in a low V, revealing white undershirts. The man wore blue leather boots that rose just past the ankle. I’d have to check my books, but the fashion looked European. Not the wardrobe I would have expected from Bi Sheng’s followers.

Neither one showed any hint of sanity. They didn’t move at
all. I didn’t think they were even breathing, and if they blinked, it was too quick for me to see. Their eyes were wide, their mouths parted as if to speak, though they never did.

“Their books were destroyed?” I guessed.

Bi Wei said nothing, but her back tightened.

The others Deifilia had restored were trapped within the roots, bound so tightly they could move only a finger here, a toe there. She hadn’t bothered to provide clothing, though little flesh could be seen through the gaps. I counted four more.

August Harrison was here as well, and he was awake. He sat, shirtless, at the base of Lena’s oak. A single root circled his neck. Judging from the bruises around his arms, he had been bound more tightly until recently.