Codex Born

Spring celebrates the tandava,

And the newborn feels only the

Heartbeat of the dance,

Sings only her love

Of an undiscovered verdant world.

Under a moonless night,

She remembers the cold.

Her song warms the earth,

And her dance begins anew,

Celebrating the return.

But none shall ever sing so purely

As the newborn spring.

Forever after, her dance is tempered

By foreknowledge of winter’s return.

I LEFT SMUDGE BEHIND with Jeff and Nidhi. Without his cage, I didn’t trust him on the back of a motorcycle. I waited while Lena strapped her spare helmet over my head, then climbed onto the back of the bike. I tucked the bottom of my jacket between us to keep it from getting caught in the wheels.

“Hold tight,” she said, and then we were darting onto the road.

I felt her laughter as she wove through traffic. On another day, I might have shared it. Lena had the irrepressible ability to not only find joy in life, but to express it without fear or self-consciousness. She loved without fear. It was one of the things that made me crazy about her.

But even as I clung to her waist, feeling her body pressed against mine, breathing in the woodsy smell of her hair, I couldn’t stop thinking about August Harrison. About how casually he had threatened to murder innocent people. About the anger I had seen when he murdered that wendigo in Tamarack. About his willingness to transform human beings into monsters, using techniques I had developed.

Where had he found his would-be wendigos? Were these allies who had volunteered to be transformed, or were they more victims? They had dragged the unconscious bodies away, leaving nobody who could answer those questions.

The magic in Harrison’s two pelts wouldn’t last forever. The rat had reverted to normal after three days, though that had been a smaller sample of skin, one which had been preserved for years before use. We didn’t know how long the magic of a fresh skin might endure.

I kept an eye out for insects, but either Harrison hadn’t noticed Lena’s bike, or else I had stung him too badly when I swatted his last batch.

Another possibility taunted me. Maybe this was what Harrison wanted. He had tried to get the two of us to surrender back in Columbus, and here we were, speeding down the highway to find him. Victor had been a genius. I couldn’t afford to underestimate his father.

The GPS led us to a small Baptist church. Scorch marks covered the parking lot. Streaks of black rubber showed where someone had swerved around a car parked by the main entrance. The van was here, having smashed into a basketball hoop on the far side of the lot. Tire tracks on the grass suggested the truck had kept going into the field behind the church, where a row of pine trees stood like a living fence.

Lena parked her bike on the side of the road. I tugged my helmet off with one hand and clipped it to her bike. As we approached, I heard shouts from the field.

“Oh, shit.” Lena took off running toward the front door. A body lay slumped against the brick wall, half hidden by the bushes alongside the walk. Lena pushed the bushes aside, and from the way the urgency drained from her movements, I knew we were too late.

Sharp claws had opened the woman’s throat and shoulder. Her eyes were wide. Blood dribbled from the wounds, soaking into the gravel. Whoever she was, she didn’t look like she could have presented a threat. Thick glasses, a close-permed frizz of brown hair, and a round face gave her a vaguely jovial appearance, even in death. She had died clutching her purse to her chest. I knelt and opened her purse.

“What are you doing?” Lena whispered.

“I’m not sure.” I just wanted to know her name. This murder struck harder than the others. Maybe the still-warm body just felt more real than vampires who turned to dust or ash, or the wendigos who had been hacked apart until they were nothing but meat. Or maybe it was my own human prejudices, the idea that a human death meant more than the others. After all, wasn’t I the one who had experimented with old wendigo hide like it was nothing more than a toy?

I pulled out a leather wallet. The driver’s license identified her as Christina Quinney, age fifty-three. Killed by monsters because she was in the way. I returned the wallet and closed her eyes. As I stood, I ripped the blanket away from my hand and stretched the armored fingers, then donned my enchanted sunglasses. “Come on.”

Lena tested the edges of her bokken, then nodded. I debated preparing an additional weapon or two of my own, but I didn’t want to push it. Not yet. Smarter to wait until I knew exactly what would be most effective at ending August Harrison.

We made our way around the back of the church, keeping close to the wall. The pickup had driven through a small flower garden, overturning a bench and smashing a birdbath before coming to a stop by the trees. A starburst of blackened grass and the smell of sulfur showed where the automaton had taken another shot at the truck. Through my glasses, the charred grass shimmered as if someone had spilled gold glitter: the remnants of the automaton’s magic.

The battle had moved to the edge of the woods, where three people stood around the automaton. Insects lay dead and scattered, like flickering embers. Harrison and his wendigos formed a second ring, but only those inner three were actually fighting. Each held a book, and with the sunglasses, I could see three ghosts circling the automaton, draining the life from its body.

What the hell were they? I had seen possession before, where fictional characters crept into the mind of a careless libriomancer. If I kept pushing things, I’d see it a lot closer. But that was a known and somewhat understood magical phenomenon. Like possession, these beings appeared to come from books, but they behaved like the absence of magic.

“How long do you think we have before the police show up?” Lena asked.

“They won’t. Not until this is over. Automatons can become invisible when necessary, but they also divert the attention of anyone who doesn’t know what they are. Call it an apathy field, for lack of a better term.” The automaton stumbled. A patch of metal fell away from its wooden body, and three of the spells woven into its shell went dark. “Anything magic I throw their way, they can intercept.”

Lena stepped away, returning a short time later with several chunks of broken blacktop. “So we hit them hobbit style. Nothing magical about a flying rock.”

“I don’t know what’s sexier,” I said. “Watching you prepare to take on bad guys, or the fact that you’re making Lord of the Rings references as you do it.” I pulled out a copy of The Marvelous Land of Oz. “If we hit them from two directions, we should be able to draw off their attack enough for the automaton to start smacking heads.”

The automaton staggered, and the others closed in. More of its armor dropped into the grass. Two more insects flew in and burrowed into the exposed wood.

I set the Oz book aside and grabbed Plato’s The Republic. Reading was tricky with only one working hand, but I soon held the Ring of Gyges. I had done an honors paper as an undergraduate, arguing the similarity between Plato’s tale and Tolkien’s One Ring. I shoved The Republic back into my pocket and started in on The Marvelous Land of Oz.

“Dare I ask what you’re planning to do with a ring and an old pepperbox?” Lena asked when I was done.

I beamed. “It’s a surprise. Give me two minutes to get ready.”

I slipped the ring onto my finger and vanished. In theory, true invisibility should have left me blind. Vision relied on the interaction between light and the cells at the back of the eye, but thanks to the ring, the light passed