I slumped lower in the chair. “How?”
“Jane was first on the scene, and arrived as Harrison and the others were leaving. Her orders were to wait, but you know libriomancers and their books. From the look of things, she put up a good fight.”
“Damn.” I hesitated. After reading Bi Wei’s book and touching her mind, some part of me had hoped she would object to Harrison’s rampage, that she would stop him from hurting anyone else. “I, um, kind of charred Nymphs of Neptune last night. I don’t think they’ll be able to use it, but we should make a note in the catalog.”
“Good. I need you to stay where you are. Once we’re done cleaning up at the fort, we’ll join you at the library.”
“We?”
“Gutenberg, myself, and every other Porter within traveling distance. It’s time to put an end to this.”
“Past time.” Relief hit first, followed closely by fear. Gutenberg had tried to destroy the students of Bi Sheng once before. I had no reason to believe he wouldn’t attempt the same thing. But Bi Wei might be a match even for Gutenberg. Regardless of who won, the collateral damage would be ugly.
Copper River was about to become ground zero in a magical war the likes of which the world hadn’t seen in more than five hundred years.
16
Even deep within the slumber of my oak, Nidhi’s scream cut through me like the freshly sharpened blade of an ax.
I leaped from my tree, one of six oaks planted in a row on the northern side of Nidhi’s small yard. My feet hadn’t even touched the grass when a man slammed into me like a rhino. We crashed together into the tree.
“Not smart.” I spat blood, twisted a branch from the tree, and clubbed my attacker in the side of the head.
In my hands, the branch grew into a short spear. Whatever he was—I suspected a vampire, given his strength and speed—he didn’t seem surprised. My toes gripped the roots for balance as I stepped toward him. My next strike knocked him into the yard.
He had destroyed my garden, uprooting every plant, from the grapevines to the tomatoes. My roses were torn to mulch. One way or another, this bastard was going down.
He came at me again, and the roots wrinkled like inchworms. His speed worked against him now. The roots looped up to catch his ankle and hardened like steel. The end result was a vampire face-first at my feet, screaming in pain as he tried to free his dislocated ankle.
I jammed my spear through his shoulder to pin him in place. “How many?”
He hissed and reached for my wrist, so I twisted hard.
“Three more,” he cried. “Inside the house.”
I didn’t want to kill him. Most vampires had no more choice or control over what they became than I did. Their condition rarely involved truly informed consent. I let the spear take root, which should have been enough to keep him from causing further trouble. But he was stronger than I realized. He snarled and reached behind him, crushing the wood with one hand. He pushed himself up off of the broken spear, and his ankle popped into place with a sound like cracking stone.
I kicked him in the chest, then pulled the broken spear free. When he came at me again, I sidestepped and swung two-handed, forming an edge even as the wood hummed through the air. The newly-made blade cut cleanly through his neck. I was inside the house before he had finished dissolving into ash.
I ran through the living room and vaulted the couch. Two figures were dragging Nidhi toward the front door.
I ran one through and used my weapon as a lever to fling him back. The second threw Nidhi against the wall and flew at me. Literally. She seized my neck and slammed me into the brick fireplace.
I dug my fingers into her hands. I might not be human, but I still needed oxygen, and my brain liked its blood flow. I managed to break her left thumb, but that only pissed her off.
And then I heard the chainsaw snarl to life in the backyard. Metal teeth bit into my oak, and I screamed. The saw felt like it was cutting through my bones, and while the oak was strong, every second chewed through bark and wood. I tried to strengthen the tree, but I needed to free myself first.
Instead of fighting the vampire’s hold, I jabbed my fingers at her eyes. Either the eyes were vulnerable, or she hadn’t been dead long enough to outgrow her human reflexes. She flinched back, one hand coming up to protect her face.
I punched her in the throat, grabbed her hair, and flung her over me and into the fireplace. If we had kept it burning, we could have had a proper fairy-tale ending. I settled for grabbing an iron poker and running her through.
I staggered to my feet. Ash stung my eyes, but I spotted Nidhi on the floor. She was still breathing. I started toward her, but the vampire was back on her feet, the poker protruding from her chest.
I felt the moment the oak’s strength failed, when the weight of the tree overwhelmed the wood that remained. Fibers snapped and popped, and the world swayed around me. The vampire punched me in the side, cracking two ribs, but I barely felt it. My senses were imprisoned by the slow fall of my tree.
“Run,” said Nidhi.
The oak slammed into the earth hard enough to shake the house. I screamed from pain and grief, forgetting vampires, forgetting even Nidhi as a part of me died.
Then I was ducking and falling back by reflex as the vampire attacked. I made it to the backyard, where her partner came at me with the chainsaw. Had I been stronger, I would have wrested it from his grip and cut him down, just as he had done to me. But the oak was my strength, and it lay on the ground, branches smashed through the fence. Leaves and broken sticks littered the yard.
I jumped onto the trunk and ran through the branches. My oak protected me one last time as the life leaked from the wood. The branches let me pass while snatching my pursuers like barbed wire.
Seconds later, I was alone.
JEFF AND NIDHI GOT to the library around nine in the morning. Jeff stopped in the doorway, wrinkled his nose, and announced, “I’ll be out by the car, where it doesn’t smell like I’ve fallen into a chemical toilet.”
Lena got up to greet Nidhi, leaving me to pore over a chart I had begun working on more than a month ago. They kept their reunion low-key. The library was mostly empty, save for Alex at the main desk, and Dustin LaJoie, who was checking out a stack of Curious George books for his two-year-old daughter.
Lena had created a second bokken from a tree down the street, and had reshaped them both into a spiral cane. It thumped against the floor as she and Nidhi walked over to join me at the public computer terminal.
“Do you have Smudge?” I asked.
Nidhi checked to make sure Alex wasn’t watching, then pulled a translucent yellow hamster ball from her purse.
“You put him in plastic?” I opened the lid, and Smudge darted up my arm. His feet dug into my sleeve as he crouched protectively on my shoulder. Jennifer would have yelled at me had she been here, but Alex thought the spider was, in his words, “freakishly awesome.”
“It’s the first thing I could find at the pet store,” Nidhi said. “If Harrison came after us, melted plastic was going to be the least of our worries.”
“Hey, buddy.” I pulled a jellybean from my candy pocket and handed it to him. Lena made puppy-dog eyes, so I tossed one to her as well.