chapter thirty-five

Jeff bounded out the door, knocking me off my feet. Deb and Sarah followed close behind, and I saw Rook flying from the window, swooping into the street like an enormous geeky raven.

Lena hauled me inside, then grabbed her weapons. I did the same, scooping up books and my shock-gun, and clipping Smudge's cage to my jacket. Outside, the two libriomancers were doing their thing, presumably trying to suppress the magic coming from Harrison's cell phone. But even if they succeeded, the damage was done. He wouldn't be waking up for a while, and that meant he couldn't command his swarm.

"Isaac, there were more around back," Lena shouted as she followed the

others outside. "Make sure they don't cut through the house."

Flames danced through the bars of Smudge's cage. I heard claws scrabbling overhead. "Watch the roof!"

Lena jumped down to the sidewalk as the first wendigo landed on the porch. She spun, one wooden sword raised high, the other low for stabbing. The wendigo ripped the iron railing from the concrete and hurled it at her. She lunged to the side, using both swords to bat the railing out of the way.

"Dumbass," I muttered, and shot him in the back. I opened the first of my books to a dog-eared page and skimmed the text. As a second attacker bounded around the corner of the house, I finished my spell and flung the book at his chest like a Frisbee. The cover flapped open as it flew, and the dust jacket tore away to flutter to the ground.

The cover art showed a single bee beneath the title: African Honey Bees in North America.

The bees emerged en masse and angry. They wouldn't have been a threat to a true wendigo with its thick armor of ice and fur, but this wasn't a full wendigo. He—no wait, this one was female—scrambled backward, swatting furiously.

Sarah's scream echoed down the street. I turned to see her falling backward, her extremities dissolving into dust. I couldn't tell what the two wendigos had done to her, but by the time she hit the road, only a skeleton remained. That crumbled away within seconds.

A third libriomancer had joined the other two, and I counted a total of seven wendigos in an all-out brawl with Deb, Jeff, and Rook in the middle of the road.

Lena sprinted toward them, and the green-haired girl raised her book like a shield. Lena veered toward her, one sword slashing at the book.

The sword snapped like a rotted stick. Lena flung the hilt at the girl's face, then dropped low to kick her feet out from beneath her. Before she could follow up, a wendigo leaped onto the top of the SUV and pounced.

I took another shot with my shock-gun, but as before, the lightning failed to reach its target. It looked like they had ended my spell with the killer bees, too.

I ran toward my phone and dialed Pallas' number again. "It's Isaac. We could really use that automaton right now."

"I'm aware of the disturbance. I'm waiting for approval from Gutenberg." She sounded utterly unfazed. I was pretty sure Pallas was incapable of being fazed. "I thought your plan was to question Victor's ghost."

"August Harrison had his own plan. The ghost-talker is dead, as is one of his escorts. Harrison has his own little army of mutant wendigos, not to mention three wannabe libriomancers doing tricks I've never seen before."

"This shouldn't take long. In the meantime, in case you're killed, what have

you learned so far?"

"That's cold, Nicola." But I couldn't argue with her logic. Outside, another wendigo hurled Deb through the air. She crunched into a tree and didn't get up. I fired again, with no more effect than before. "August got his hands on Victor's magic bugs and used them to hack our network. He's building himself a little army of wendigos. No idea how he's controlling them."

"We have a team in Switzerland working to lock him out of our computer network."

I was only half listening. Each time I pulled the trigger, the point where my shot dissolved moved closer. Whatever barrier they were using, it was creeping toward me. The only effect the lightning had was to interfere with my phone's reception. "Gotta go, Nicola. If they kill me, just send a ghost-talker to get the rest of my report."

I tossed the phone aside, gripped the gun with both hands, and kept shooting. I picked other targets, trying to assess the size of the barrier, but however they were doing this, it was enough to shield a spread of at least ninety degrees.

A flicker of light in the front yard announced the arrival of our reinforcement. The automaton was eight feet tall, armored in small, magically linked blocks of metal. Only the extremities revealed the dark wood Gutenberg had used to craft the body centuries ago. A blank wooden face turned, eyes like oversized black pearls taking in everyone's positions.

Each automaton housed a human spirit, a mind that gave them some freedom to think and act within the boundaries of their magical programming. Every line of text stamped into their wooden bodies was a spell, allowing them to access power far beyond any libriomancer.

I hated the damned things, but at this particular moment, I was ready to jump up and cheer.

Three wendigos peeled away from the fight and charged the automaton. It strode to meet them, arms outstretched. Flame and yellow smoke billowed forth from its hands.

"Pluit ignem et sulphur de caelo et omnes perdidit," I whispered. It rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. It was a verse from the Gutenberg Bible, the text of which Gutenberg had somehow transferred to his automatons. The stench of sulfur spread through the air, making me grimace.

As the rest of the wendigos turned to face the new threat, Lena used the respite to grab Deb and haul her back from the carnage. Jeff tried to get at Harrison, but gunfire drove him away. Rook was fleeing down the street at inhuman speeds, proving him to be the smartest of us all.