And nobody but Gutenberg could command an automaton to do such a thing. “That’s crazy. Why would he attack his own archive?”
“Hell if I know. Pallas agrees with you. She believes it could also have been caused by a Porter who couldn’t control his or her magic.” She gave me a pointed look. “When you fought those vampires yesterday afternoon, did you have any problems?”
“You mean did I lose control and blow up half the building?” I shook my head. “Not this time.”
A moth tapped against the sliding glass door, drawn to the light. Deb stared for several moments, searching the darkness before turning her attention back to me. The fingers of her right hand fidgeted against her leg. “If someone were recruiting, you’d be the perfect choice. Resentful, eager to get back in the game…”
“Oh, sure,” I said easily. “I’ve got access to the Porter database, too. But resentment isn’t going to launch me into a sociopathic killing spree.” I sighed. “You and I both know they made the right call.”
I couldn’t have admitted it without the drug, but Doctor Shah had been right to recommend I be pulled from the field, and Pallas had been right to act on that recommendation. I had anger and resentment aplenty, but most of that was directed toward myself.
“What happened?” Lena asked quietly.
“I broke the rules.” My chest felt like someone had hollowed it out with an ice cream scoop. “I was putting in my time in the field, hoping to earn a research position. I’d been tracking a drug called Iced Z. Powdered zombie brains. Nasty stuff. You do not want to be anywhere near a Z addict when he gets the munchies.
“Two victims had shown up in the medical center out on Mackinac Island. The doctors didn’t know what to do with them. They thought it was some kind of antibiotic-resistant Necrotizing fasciitis. Flesh-eating bacteria. The first victim died of an overdose. We snuck in so Smudge could cremate her before the body rose again. I managed to save the second one, though she lost about twenty percent of her brain function. She was coherent enough to tell me where she got the stuff.”
I had never talked about what happened that day to anyone except Doctor Shah, but the magical drug coursing through my blood had loosened the floodgates. “They were using the horses. Automobiles aren’t allowed on Mackinac Island, so it’s all bikes and horse-drawn carriages. The dealer had set up an entire stable of undead horses behind this beautiful Victorian mansion down by the port. He’d been selling this shit to tourists for about two months.
“As I snuck inside, I couldn’t stop thinking about the girl we’d cremated. Her brainwave activity had never truly stopped; if the hospital had hooked her up to the right equipment, they would have picked it up, but there was no reason. When I found her, she was deep in some kind of undead hibernation while her tissues died and reanimated. I kept wondering if she had felt the flames consuming her flesh. If her brain had been capable of registering the pain.”
I sighed. “In my head, I was that girl’s avenging angel, punishing those who had wronged her. I played the hero, and I did everything wrong. I had pushed myself thirty-six hours straight without sleep or food, running on righteous anger and stimulant tablets from a science fiction novel. I didn’t bother to properly learn the layout and routine of the house. I went in alone, too impatient to wait for backup. And I used magic with abandon.
“I remember the sound of bullets ricocheting from my personal shield. I fired stunners with both hands, shooting anything that moved. But those weapons only worked on the living, and this bastard had a cadre of undead bodyguards as well. Someone wrenched the pistol out of my right hand. I broke free and backed off, setting the remaining weapon to overload and throwing it like a grenade. I grabbed another book, but there was no time to read. The horses had broken free.
“Or maybe the dealer had deliberately set them loose in order to cover his escape, I don’t know. I heard their low, wheezing gasps, like tattered bellows blowing foul, rotten air. Decaying hooves clopped against the road as others smashed their way out of the stables. Four of them closed in on me. They shied back from Smudge, who was flaming like a tiny sun, but he couldn’t stop them all.”
“What did you do?” asked Deb.
“What do you think I did? I panicked! I tried to shove free, but the horses were too massive. I remember teeth clamping down on my jacket, yanking me off-balance. My shield would stop projectile weapons, but it was useless against zombies.”
I had tumbled to the floor, landing amidst soiled straw and blood and maggots. The sight of those unstoppable horses closing in on their long, bony legs had made me think of H. G. Wells. “Do you remember the Martian tripods from War of the Worlds?”
Deb nodded.
“As I lay there, I could see the pages of the book. I remembered the hopelessness and despair I felt the first time I read the story. I could feel the story, as if I was reliving that night at home, huddled by the light to read just one more chapter.
“Another horse bent down to bite my face. I pressed my hand to its neck and fired a beam of heat that burned through the horse and seared a hole in the wall behind. The same heat ray the Martians used.”
“Holy shit.” Deb stared. “Libriomancy without the book?”
“It almost killed me.” I glanced at my hands. “Humans char, too.” I shuddered, remembering the numbness in my arms, the blackened skin that had taken months to heal. “I destroyed everything. The horses, the zombies, the dealer… I would have died if the fire department hadn’t dragged me out of there. The next thing I remember, I was waking up in a magically warded prison cell.”
Lena reached over to give my hand a quick squeeze. “You stopped that man.”
“I got lucky,” I said. “I ignored the rules. I punched through the boundaries between myself and my magic until it almost consumed me. I could have destroyed half the island.”
“What was the last contact you had with the Porters?” Deb asked.
“An e-mail from Ray about a week ago, confirming that he had received my latest batch of books to be magically sealed and asking if I caught the Firefly marathon on Saturday.” My head was starting to throb. I didn’t remember Bujold describing headaches when she wrote about this drug, but it had been a while since I read her stuff.
Deb turned to Lena. “And how did you end up here, just in time to rescue Isaac from these vampires?”
“He was the closest Porter I thought I could trust,” Lena said, a little too quickly. “I came to his house first, figuring it would be better to talk privately. A sparkler showed up looking for him.”
I yelped. “They came here?”
“Only one. He got a lot more cooperative after I cut off his right hand. He said the others were planning to jump Isaac at the library.”
“What did you do to the sparkler?” Deb asked.
“I sent him home.”
“You let him go?” I demanded. “How do you know he won’t come back?”
Lena smiled innocently. “Because I said if I saw him again, I’d use his hand for fertilizer, but if he went away like a good boy, I’d mail it to him later this week. Which reminds me, there’s a vampire hand in your freezer’s ice maker.” Seeing my aghast expression, she added, “Don’t worry. I double-bagged it.”
“This is not how I used to fantasize about you showing up on my doorstep,” I protested.
Lena’s brows rose.
“Relaxed inhibitions,” Deb reminded her.
“Yep.” Which I suspected I would regret later, but at the moment I couldn’t bring myself to care. “I always imagined you as the outdoors type, and the two of us rolling around in the grass together. Maybe in the rain. Definitely barefoot, though.”
“Or taking a rowboat out after hours and making love on the river?” Lena suggested. To Deb’s exasperated look, she said, “What? I work part time for Parks and Recreation. I’ve got the keys to the boat sheds.”
“That would be good, too,” I said, shifting position. “See, it’s that kind of talk that explains why men used to go wild over nymphs.”
Her lips quirked. “Not just men.”
“Ooh. Now that’s just the kind of information that would have spiced up those fantasies.”
Deb gave me a gentle smack on the arm, pulling my attention back to the immediate crisis. “I’m sorry, hon. I didn’t believe you could be involved, but I had to be certain.”
“I understand.” I’d probably be pissed later, but for now I didn’t care. “I’m curious, what were you going to
