I hoped that wasn’t prophetic.
I fired left-handed, then jumped back. Excalibur twisted in my grip, jerking my arm out and downward. The impact of sword on car reminded me of hitting a baseball, if the baseball was made of solid lead.
I couldn’t have released the sword if I wanted to. It sliced through tires and steel, emerging from the Fury with enough speed to whirl me in a complete circle. The Fury spun out, wrecking a station wagon.
I checked Smudge’s cage to make sure he was all right, then ran to hide behind the mangled car. “Best. Sword. Ever!”
Lena was using her bokken to cut through the barbed wire. I crouched behind the Fury as both vampires concentrated their fire on me. I blasted the side mirror off the car and used it to peek over the hood. I fired blindly, using the mirror to try to guide my shots toward the figures on the roof. Then a cloud of mist flowed out from the garage and solidified into the figure of a woman.
Lena thrust her bokken through the new arrival, who promptly dissolved into ash. One of the vampires on the roof dropped his weapon and sprang into the air. He snatched one of Lena’s bokken in now-clawed feet, ripping it from her grasp.
“This is inevitable destruction!” I shouted, quoting the story once more. “Surely you can spare me five minutes to hear what I have to say.”
The cars slowed. Over the idling of their engines, I heard an answering cry, “All that I have to say has already crossed your mind.”
That was one of Moriarty’s lines to Holmes. I had hooked him. I peeked out from behind the car. “Have you any suggestion to make?”
“You must drop it.”
For the first time, I revised the script, trying to preserve Holmes’ voice the best I could. “I’ve done what I could, but I cannot beat you. You know every move of this game, and I am not clever enough to bring destruction upon you. I know it would grieve you to have to take extreme measures against me. Let us meet, that I might present an alternative solution.”
Silence. Had my changes snapped Moriarty’s hold on Hubert’s mind? I looked to Lena and readied my weapons.
And then the rightmost garage door began to rise.
Chapter 20
Fluorescent lights flickered inside. Directly in front of me, an automaton was stretched out on a car lift like Frankenstein’s monster. Three other automatons lay as if dead in the repair bays to either side, while two more stood in the shadows in the back.
Stacks of tires lined the back wall. The air smelled of grease and oil. I knew this place. I had seen it through a book when I touched Hubert’s mind.
Lena joined me, a single bokken resting on her shoulder. I sheathed Excalibur and kept one hand in my pocket, finger on the trigger of my laser. “Over there,” I whispered, pointing to what appeared to be a small office in the back corner.
The door swung open. The office was dark, but through the glasses I could make out the glow of magic. And then what was left of Charles Hubert stepped out.
The soldier from the newspaper photos was gone, replaced by a pale scarecrow of a man who looked like he weighed maybe a hundred pounds, tops. Filthy green sweatpants hung from his bony hips. His chest was bare, white skin outlining every rib. He had lost most of his hair, and his head was like a painted skull. His scar was a vivid pink line down the side of his head and face.
Lines of faded text covered his skin. From the irregular handwriting, it looked like he had done it himself with a black marker. I saw English, German, and what looked like Pashto. In one hand, he held a heavy silver cross, encrusted with rubies.
Lena grabbed my forearm and tugged. The laser burned through my jacket pocket and blasted the back wall, filling the air with the stench of melted rubber. She twisted my arm and plucked the gun from my hand, then retrieved the other pistol. She stripped Excalibur from my back as well.
“Lena…”
She removed her sunglasses and tossed them to the floor. In the dim light, I could just make out the pointed crosses of Lena’s pupils. The sight made me ill. He must have taken control of her before he ever emerged from his office.
“You have less frontal development that I should have expected,” Hubert said, still quoting the story. Moriarty had such a civilized way of insulting one’s intelligence. “It is a dangerous habit to finger loaded firearms in the pocket of one’s jacket.”
“How did you persuade my companion to betray me?” I asked, and was rewarded by a glimmer of confusion in Hubert’s eyes. A mind such as Moriarty’s would never believe in magic.
“She was clever enough to see the truth,” he said after a pause. “To join me rather than be trodden underfoot. Now tell me of the footprints.”
I blinked. “The footprints?”
“I see them in my memory. Two lines of footmarks clearly marked in the moist blackness of the soil, both leading away. None return.” His precise diction couldn’t conceal his confusion or his fear.
“Of course,” I said, pulling out the Holmes book. The footprints were from the very end of the story.
“You murdered me,” he said, his voice rising in pitch. “You flung me into the swirling water and seething foam!”
“Not at all.” I kept my words calm, trying to draw him back from the madness. I turned to an earlier page of the story, when Holmes places his revolver upon the table. Whispers called to me, warning how easily I could follow Hubert into madness, but I had to try. I could still end this. A single shot from that revolver-
The moment I touched the book’s magic, Hubert stiffened. I saw recognition in his eyes. Lena kicked the book from my hands. The automatons climbed down from their lifts and moved to surround me.
Hubert stepped closer and studied me through black-rimmed glasses that were far too large for his gaunt face. His lower lip was cracked, and had left a streak of blood on his teeth.
“Do you know who you are?” I asked.
He smiled. The tip of his tongue dabbed at the fresh blood welling up from his lip. “Do you, Isaac Vainio? Do you know who you are? Are you certain the Porters have never tampered with your mind?”
“I know what Gutenberg did to you. How he stole your magic, erased your memories of the Porters.” I pointed to the writing on his body. “You tried to rewrite yourself?”
“Gutenberg did it first,” he spat. “Etched his damned spell right through my skin. He carved my skull with his magic!” He made a sound that was half laughter, half hacking cough. “ He killed me, Isaac. I’m unraveling one thread at a time, every fiber stretched until they snap.”
“Why did you steal the books from the archive?” I asked.
“The archive…” He stared at the floor, as if trying to remember. “Magical locks, binding the books, everything comes down to locking the doors. Trapping magic. Creating prisons. We had to find the key. Books, automatons, people, it doesn’t matter. We had to find a way to free them.”
“Free who? Other Porters? Or do you mean the automatons? I know about the people Gutenberg trapped in those bodies. Johann Fust and the others.”
“Fust!” His face reddened, the lines of his mouth and eyes tightening with rage. He began to rant in German. “Johann Fust swindled from me my life’s work. He sought to steal my legacy. He stole Peter…” His anger broke. “Peter was a skilled scriptor and craftsman, and Fust gave his own daughter as a bribe to turn Peter against me!”
He wiped drool from his chin, his words becoming more manic. “We invented libriomancy! We know the dangers, the threats both true and phantom. We know the lies.”
“You murdered Ray Walker. You tortured him, and others.”
“I didn’t. We didn’t!” He cradled the silver cross in both hands. “I couldn’t stop them. If I held them in, they turned their rage against me. I needed to hide. I needed to know what the Porters knew. I needed the books.”