The needle was on empty when we reached Mecosta. I stopped at a gas station on the edge of town and filled the tank while Lena hurried inside. It was difficult to plan without knowing exactly what we were heading into. Maybe Hubert had already succumbed to madness, and we’d find him unconscious or dead in some shack in the woods, but I doubted it. More likely, that shack would be guarded by automatons and vampires both.
We could hold our own against a vampire or two, but Hubert wouldn’t make it so easy. The characters in his head might be mad, but they were also brilliant, and Hubert himself had years of military experience.
I peered through the window at the books tucked behind the driver’s seat. I had kept a copy of Gutenberg’s biography. If it worked for Hubert, it should work for me. Possessed by Gutenberg, I could slow or confuse the automatons long enough for Lena to reach Hubert.
At which point he could still use the Silver Cross against her. Crap. Okay, so what if I used Moly or some other magic-inhibiting substance to try to protect her from the cross’ effect? Only Mister Puddles had ignored the effects of my love magnet, back in Detroit. Hubert’s magic was too damn strong.
Lena emerged carrying a warmed-over hot dog, a one-liter bottle of Mountain Dew, and a handful of frosted fudge cakes. She handed the hot dog to me and kept the rest. “I fight better on a full stomach.”
“How do you even function on a diet like that?”
“Trees use glucose for energy, too. Anything I don’t burn off, the tree pulls for itself.”
I stared warily at the shriveled hot dog in its stale bun. Anxiety and overuse of magic churned in my gut, but I forced the hot dog down.
“What if we go in small?” Lena asked over the crinkle of cellophane. She broke off a few crumbs of chocolate and set them out for Smudge. “Sneak in like we did back at the MSU archive?”
“Automatons can sense magic. No matter what we do, they’ll see us coming.” Lena and Smudge were magic, and I was carrying around a magical fish in my head. “We could try to overwhelm them. Some of the weapons in those books could take out an entire building.”
“What about Gutenberg? We don’t even know for certain that Hubert will be with him.”
“Gutenberg is too great a threat,” I said. “Hubert won’t risk anyone finding him. He’ll be there.”
We continued to brainstorm as we drove, discarding one plan after another. A quick, hard strike seemed to be the best option. Hubert should be distracted with his assault on the Detroit nest. If we hit fast enough, we might be able to overpower him before he could respond.
Lena watched the tracking screen, calling out directions as we drove. The tracking device didn’t include street maps, which created a bit of a challenge, but Mecosta was a small town. Our automaton was a little way west, toward Big Rapids.
“There,” she said.
“Are you sure?”
“It’s your magic box, and it says we’re right on top of that thing.”
Which meant Johannes Gutenberg was being held captive at Mecosta Auto Sales and Repair. The office building was a small, blocky structure of brown brick and glass. The windows were dark. One had been broken and covered with plywood. A sun-faded banner announced an old going out of business sale.
Behind the office was a larger building with four separate garage doors, presumably the repair bays. A handful of cars were parked in a large, mostly abandoned lot. Prices were still painted onto the windshields.
I kept driving, just to be certain, but the signal on the tracking device didn’t change. Smudge confirmed it, turning in place to keep a wary eye on the dealership.
I pulled off the road a mile past the dealership and grabbed my books. The sunglasses I had used back at Hubert’s cabin were damaged. I dissolved them into Heart of Stone and waited for the magic to re-form them. A thin line of char marked the center of the pages, but I went ahead and retrieved a second, identical pair, which I handed to Lena.
Next, I proceeded to arm myself much the same as I had at the Detroit nest, with garlic, crucifix, and a pair of pistols. I also created a sheathed broadsword with a gold, jewel-encrusted hilt. “Excalibur number seventy-three.” We had more than a hundred versions of Excalibur cataloged in our database. “Cuts through just about anything.”
“Nice,” said Lena. “Shades, sword, and guns. Very badass.”
“Very heavy,” I complained. The books in my jacket were bad enough. “Did you want anything else?”
She studied me over the top of her sunglasses. “I think maybe you’d better hold off on any more magic. You’re shivering.”
I didn’t bother to deny it.
She pushed up the glasses and examined me, then Smudge. “Do we really have to kill Hubert?”
“He knows he’s dying. He chose death the moment he opened himself to possession.” I returned my books to their pockets and slipped the sword over my shoulder. “I’m thinking our best chance is to speak to someone else.”
I reclined the seat as far as it would go, trying to ignore Lena’s amused smile as I struggled to sit back down with my various weapons. The tremors in my hands didn’t help matters. I finally had to lower the top so Excalibur’s hilt would stop catching on it.
With Smudge in his cage, I pulled onto the road and did a U-turn. Through the enchanted sunglasses, Mecosta Auto Sales and Repair was a very different place. Hubert had painted an illusion of normalcy over what was essentially a small fortress. The office building was magically dead, but the garages in back were surrounded by a makeshift barrier that could have come straight out of World War I, with wooden posts and barbed wire woven into an impassible web.
Chrome spikes protruded from the garage walls, and a pair of armed vampires patrolled the roof. The garage doors appeared to be magically reinforced. The cars in the lot were likewise infected with magic of some sort. Every car had a bright patch of power. The location varied from one to the next.
“How did Hubert do all of this?” Lena asked, squinting through her lens. “I thought libriomancers couldn’t create anything that didn’t fit through your books.”
“We can’t.” I pulled into the lot as casually as I could.
Lena handed me the charred copy of Sherlock Holmes. “You said those voices were all mad. Do you have a backup plan?”
“Not this time,” I lied. I climbed out of the car, trying to ignore the vampires on the roof who had readied rifles. I skimmed down the page until I found the story I wanted. I reread the dialogue, memorizing Holmes’ lines. Cupping my hands to my mouth, I shouted, “Your occupation is gone, sir. You are lost if you return to London!”
One of the parked cars lurched toward us. Throughout the lot, other vehicles came to life. Some screeched toward Lena, but most targeted me. Lena leaped easily over a rusted Corvette, then dropped low as one of the vampires fired at her. Bullets cratered the parking lot as she sprinted toward the side of the service garage.
I shoved the book back into my pocket and pulled out both pistols. I shot blindly at the vampires until they ducked down, then sighted carefully at a red Chevy Cavalier. The laser punched through the engine, and my next shots shredded the front tires for good measure.
High beams from my right momentarily blinded me. I squinted through the sunglasses to see a fifty-eight Plymouth Fury racing toward me. And Charles Hubert was a libriomancer.
“Nice,” I said, firing again. The Fury had been cannibalized straight out of Stephen King’s Christine. I could see now where Hubert had welded parts of King’s homicidal car to the other vehicles, bringing them all to life. Had he grown them all from a single, book-sized piece of that Fury? King’s book had hinted that the car could repair itself.
I pocketed the gun in my right hand and drew Excalibur, while continuing to try to pin down the vampires with the other pistol. “Until this moment, I failed to understand or appreciate the might of your organization,” I shouted. The dialogue was straight out of “The Final Problem,” the story in which Holmes sacrificed his own life to destroy his archenemy, Professor Moriarty.