keyboard design, which was utterly insane for this time of year, but made sense if you had been stuck in a car with a wendigo for ten hours.
“Who are your friends, August?” I didn’t recognize either one, but that meant little. I was familiar with most of the Porters from the Midwest, but Harrison could have recruited help from overseas. But if they were truly libriomancers, why bring only a single book into battle?
“Why don’t you and Lena come out and I’ll introduce you? This doesn’t have to get bloody. The rest of you are welcome to leave.”
“What’s he waiting for?” Deb’s voice was strained. She sat on the bottom step; her head drooped over her knees. The knife must have done more damage than I thought. I was strangely relieved. The fact that Deb hadn’t broken the woman’s neck, despite pain and provocation, meant my friend hadn’t been completely lost to the monster.
“I’m not sure.” I watched Harrison, trying to read his face. Speaking into the phone again, I said, “A minute ago, you used one of your son’s bionic fruit flies to kill one of our companions. Now we’re supposed to just trust you?”
“He was dead long before I got here, and you know it.” Harrison stepped into the middle of the street. “I know all about you, Isaac. I know you’ve got a vampire upstairs watching us, and two more with you and Lena. I know you’ve stuffed the family into the hall closet. And I know that right now you’re trying to figure out some clever plan to stop me.” His voice dropped. “You’re not as smart as you think. Now, you and Lena are going to come with us, unarmed, or my metal friends will kill every family on this street.”
“That’s a bit dark, even for you. Rationalizing the killing of wendigos is bad enough, but these are human beings. You’re an asshole. You’re not a murderer.” I covered the phone. “Lena, get Nidhi down here.”
“There’s an elderly couple two houses down,” Harrison said. “They were playing cards together when your pet vampire knocked them out. How many people will you make me kill before you take this seriously? Do you think the sensation of steel pincers digging through skin and bone will wake them from their trance?”
Interesting. The Sanchez family was awake, but if Harrison was telling the truth, Sarah’s power over the rest of the street hadn’t broken. Assuming it was Harrison’s ersatz libriomancers who had broken Sarah’s hold, that suggested a limit to their range. Or it might mean they had selective control over the magic they countered, and like us, they preferred not to be interrupted.
Lena returned, keeping Nidhi behind her. Assuming Lena had filled her in, I got straight to the point. “Will he do it?”
“I don’t know,” said Nidhi. “I knew the man only through his son.”
“Why does he want the two of us?” Lena asked.
She spread her hands in a silent shrug.
Harrison’s voice buzzed through the phone. “Go ahead and shoot, Isaac.”
“What?” He must have spotted the gun through one of his insects. I switched the phone to speaker so everyone could hear.
“I assume that’s what you’re discussing?” said Harrison. “Whether or not you can take me down before I command my insects to attack? Be my guest. This might be the fastest way for you to learn what you’re facing.”
Nobody bothered pointing out that it was a trick. Some things were too obvious for words. On the other hand, he had seen me holding what looked like an ordinary revolver. Maybe he assumed his metal insects would be strong enough to stop a bullet.
I stood up and walked slowly toward the door, trying to project confidence. Harrison didn’t move. I raised the shock-gun with both hands. He smiled and spread his arms.
With a shrug, I pulled the trigger.
One downside to shooting lightning bolts was that everything happened far too quickly to see. I wasn’t terribly surprised to see Harrison still standing. He wasn’t smiling, though. It looked like he had jumped back a good three feet, which gave me some satisfaction.
I blinked, trying to see the afterimage to reconstruct why the shock-gun had failed. It looked like the bolt had stopped a short distance in front of Harrison. I frowned and tried again.
“Look at the ones with the books,” Nidhi said.
I took a third shot, this time keeping my attention on the woman with the green hair. Before, she and her friend had just been standing there, but now they were chanting. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but their eyes were closed.
If they were libriomancers, they could—in theory—open up the magic of their own books, then use them to absorb my attack. Any shots striking their books would be dissolved back into magic. But they would have had to move in front of Harrison to intercept my incoming fire, and they would have needed to make sure they held their books in exactly the right spot.
“Are you satisfied, Isaac?” Harrison asked. “I’ve been more than patient.”
Deb crawled across the family room floor until she reached the pile of clothes Jeff had discarded when he changed. “Harrison’s friends can mess with people’s magic. How nice.” She dug out Jeff’s pistol and pulled herself up onto the couch.
The crack of gunfire was even louder than my shock-gun, and the metallic scent of gunpowder joined the ozone smell. August Harrison scampered around behind the SUV, but Deb hadn’t been aiming for him. She fired again, and this time Rook joined in from upstairs, sending the libriomancers fleeing for cover.
“What the hell, Deb?” Three wendigos charged toward the house. Rook dropped one, and I sent a lightning bolt into the next. It crackled over the frost and fur, then arced to his friend.
Wasps flew through the hole in the door to swarm over Deb, concentrating on her hands. She shrieked and flung the pistol away, then did her best to crush the bugs drilling into her skin. From the commotion upstairs, they were going after Rook as well.
“Congratulations, Isaac,” Harrison shouted. I could barely hear him over the ringing in my ears. “You’ve just killed two innocent people.”
I shouted into the phone. “Wait! You win! We’re coming out. Everybody stop shooting!” I glanced at Lena, who nodded.
“Get your bugs off of the vampires,” I said.
The wasps stilled, then retreated to the door. “Leave your books and other weapons,” he said. “That goes for the dryad, too.”
I slid my arms from my sleeves and set the jacket carefully on the floor. Smudge’s cage followed, and then the shock-gun.
Lena tossed her bokken onto the floor beside my things. She took my hand in hers and pulled my head down as if to give me a quick kiss. “What now?”
I glanced down at my phone and began to tap out a text message. “Now we take this bastard down.”
8
