clomp of feet behind me. Wooden fingers clamped around my arm. It was the same arm I had dislocated at the cabin, and the shoulder throbbed with pain. The automaton spun me around to face Lena, who had raised both Excalibur and her bokken, preparing to strike.
I grabbed the automaton’s wrist. “I lied. I did have a backup plan. I didn’t tell you about it, because it’s somewhere between insane and suicidal. Sorry.”
The automaton hauled me into the air like a pinata. I could feel the warmth of its metal armor, the spells flowing through those blocks, turning it into an animated spellbook.
I twisted and slapped my hand against the automaton’s chest. I had read these spells at the cabin. I knew the text imprinted into the wood. I could see the letters in my mind. It was all magic. My books, the automatons, Lena’s connection to her tree… everything came back to energy, belief, and willpower.
My fingers sank into the automaton’s metal skin, exactly like the pages of a book. Until that moment, I hadn’t been certain this would work. I still wasn’t. Reaching into the automaton’s magic was one thing. Doing something with that magic was the real trick.
Lena didn’t give me the chance. I saw her lunge, and tried to twist out of the way.
I wasn’t fast enough.
My heartbeat grew louder, overpowering everything else. I stared down at the wooden blade protruding from my side. It felt like someone had punched me just beneath the ribs. There was less pain than I would have expected, but-
Oh, wait, there was the pain. It felt like the blade was burning inside me, growing hotter with every passing second. I tasted blood, and it was hard to breathe, as if someone were squeezing my lungs like a damp sponge. The burning grew more intense, spreading through my entire side.
I reached deeper into the automaton. It was a book, nothing more. Just another book. Praying to whatever deity might be listening, I pulled myself fully into the automaton’s body.
Pain gave way to numbness. My physical form dissolved, joining the magical energy contained in this wood and metal form, like an enormous mechanical battery. I had always wondered what happened to my physical hand when I reached into a book. Now I knew. It became nothing.
When I was six years old, I had gone wading at Lake Superior. I followed a school of minnows deeper and deeper until the sand dropped out from beneath me and I sank below the water.
My brother had come after me and hauled me back within seconds, but I never forgot that sense of panic, gasping for breath as I bobbed up and down, my body flailing instinctively as I tried to stay afloat. I couldn’t control my own limbs. I couldn’t scream.
This was worse. Magical energy dragged me in all directions. I couldn’t see, couldn’t move, and nobody was going to reach in to seize me by the hair and pull me to safety.
Who are you?
The words were in German. I clung to that other presence, tried to call out for help. In return, it tried to smother me.
That attack saved both my life and my sanity. Burning lines of text flared to life: Gutenberg’s spells, embossed into our wooden skin. My skin. I focused on the magic, orienting myself within this form. And having called his twelve disciples together, he gave them power over unclean spirits, to cast them out.
The automaton saw me as a spirit to be excised. Our body staggered, and my awareness began to fade. The mind trapped here had five hundred years of experience in this form, and I hadn’t even figured out how to walk.
Another verse flared to life. And a fire was kindled in their congregation: the flame burned the wicked. I had spent enough time with Smudge to recognize magical fire as it spread through me.
“I’m not here to hurt you!” I might have spoken the words out loud. There was no way of knowing.
Get out!
Pain worked its way inward, surrounding me. I pushed back, but it was like trying to stop the tide with my bare hands. The magic surged past my efforts. I felt the metal keys growing hotter, searing the wooden skin. The automaton would destroy itself before it let another mind take control.
Could I turn the automaton’s magic against itself? Use one of its protective spells to block this attack?
No… forget the text encasing our body. I turned my awareness toward the gears and rods in our head, and the letters that bound that other spirit here.
Katherine Pfeifferin. Not a name I recognized from the history books. I could feel the magic spreading out from those carefully engraved letters, a web that both trapped Katherine here and infused her spirit throughout the automaton’s body.
“Katherine!” Nothing. Like Johann Fust, she appeared to have no memory of who she had been.
I tried once again to manipulate the flames, but instead of fighting them, I channeled them toward that metal disk, adding my own strength and will to their heat in an attempt to burn away those letters. I felt Katherine’s fear and confusion, a momentary sense of disorientation. Flames spread over my body, and the metal keys began to soften.
And then, just like that, I was alone. The flames died. I toppled onto my back. My head felt like someone had stabbed a red-hot poker directly into my brain stem. Which was essentially what I had done.
“How did you do that?” Charles Hubert’s voice. I could sense the specific line of Biblical text that allowed me to hear. Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. The world slowly flickered into place around me.
I saw Hubert and the other automatons. Lena stood in front of me, Excalibur held ready. Her bokken was gone. I touched my side, remembering the agony spreading through me from her sword. What did it mean that I could no longer feel the pain? Had I healed myself when I fled into the automaton, or-more likely-had I destroyed my own body in the process?
Another automaton stepped toward me. I could sense the magic connecting it to Hubert. The entire building buzzed with magic. The silver cross in Hubert’s hand was a magnet, tugging at everyone it had touched, including Lena and Smudge.
“Go to repair bay three,” Hubert commanded me. “Lie down and be still until I can study you.”
I started to move before I realized what I was doing. Something in that voice, in that presence, demanded obedience. This was my Lord and creator.
No… the true Gutenberg lay beyond, in the office. I could sense him there, unconscious but alive. I stopped walking.
The automaton at the cabin had absorbed the magic from my fairy dust, dragging me back to Earth. I turned around and reached one hand toward the silver cross, just as that other automaton had done. I could end this now. I could free Lena and Smudge, and break Hubert’s control over the vampires. All I had to do was find the right spell.
Wooden fists clubbed me from behind, slamming me to the ground. There was no pain, which was a nice change from the beatings I’d taken lately. I rolled over as another automaton kicked my side, knocking me through a garage door and into the parking lot.
Hubert had four other automatons in here, all of whom were far less clumsy than me. We were pretty much indestructible, but with four of them against me, I had no doubt they would eventually inflict enough damage to destroy me.
I tried to push myself up, but another automaton seized my head. Two others grabbed my arms. They hauled me into the air, straining to rip me apart.
“Wait.” Hubert hurried toward me. “Tell me what you did!” For a moment, the madness was gone. He was simply another libriomancer, eager to understand a new facet of magic. And then his face shifted, the muscles going taut. “Tell me!”
I turned my vision upward, even as another blow sent a hairline crack through the side of my face. He might not know how to repair an automaton, but he knew how to destroy one.
I found the text that gave the automaton the power to speak. And they cried with a loud voice to the Lord their God. My words reverberated through the building, powerful enough to make the doors buzz. “I’ll tell you when I get back.”
My wooden bones creaked, the brute strength of the other automatons threatening to unravel the spells that held me together. I needed to take them to a place where they’d be just as disoriented and clumsy as I was.
