I was so not looking forward to another skirmish so soon after the last.
“Uh, no,” Ty said, behind me. “If you write fire, and fire takes the path of least resistance in a wooden house with wooden walls, what’s going to happen?”
“Right.”
“You sure like fire,” Tiff said.
“Fire works,” Alexis said.
“Gotta love fire,” Eva said. “Hey, that reminds me. Horrible fates awaiting you guys if my brother’s dead? Fire’s a good one. Fire hurts. One of the worst ways to die, frankly.”
“Actually, you don’t die by burning when you die in a fire,” Tiff said. “You suffocate from the smoke.”
“I won’t let you suffocate,” Eva replied, very matter-of-factly.
I believed her.
“Better,” Ty told Alexis.
“Good enough better?” I asked.
“Good enough.”
The next few seconds were basically what I’d done against the twins, only en-masse. We charged the front group, Ty and Alexis flinging papers. It was chaos, and in the midst of it, I alternately felt like I was doing it all and I was barely contributing.
But Ty got the door open.
“Roxanne, Kathy, Christoff, close your eyes! Follow Ty! Hold his hand!”
I didn’t get a chance to see what they were doing.
I only fought. Brutal, savage, stupid fighting, where I seemingly took as many hits as I delivered. No strategy, no tactics.
One praying mantis limb punched through the center mass of my body.
I pulled free, feeling the numb coldness sweep through me. Some kind of poison.
But very little of me was flesh, still.
“Come!” I heard the voice, distant.
Green Eyes and Eva pushed out, then retreated. I kept fighting, pushing forward, retreating, waiting for reflections to clear up, using the blood on the walls.
Not hard, the hallway was practically coated in blood.
Then I returned to the mirror in the library.
All the Thorburns gathered, my friends, and Eva. Evan was perched on the upper floor, by Andy’s body. Ellie was slumped over. Evan had let them in. Cracked the lock.
They’d tried to shut the doors behind them.
The clockwork automaton was there. The Behaim’s work, no doubt, and its hands were keeping the door from shutting all the way.
Holding the door open a crack.
“Andy,” I heard Eva.
She was already climbing the ladder.
“Stop her!” I called out, but it was futile.
She’d reached her brother’s side.
I couldn’t attack him.
We had no leverage on the witch hunters, now. Maybe we could have managed it if we could threaten her with all of our concerted efforts, but we couldn’t.
The witch hunters were the least of our problems, with the Thorburns gathered in the diabolist library, and monsters at the gates.
12.03
“Keep your eyes closed,” Alexis told the Thorburns, uselessly.
Silly. The Thorburns that hadn’t yet collectively opened their eyes and looked around.
To be fair, it was kind of a miracle they’d obeyed this much. Fear, it seemed, went a long way. Not all the way, necessarily, but when the entire house probably reeked of blood and other noxious smells, I imagined it helped win over those fight or flight instincts that were so warped in this particular family, and get them back to their more primitive roots.
At the second floor entrance to the library, the clockwork man was straining to push the doors apart. Ty held one of the sliding bookcases that formed the door, Alexis and Tiff were at the other, and despite their efforts, the clockwork man was holding his own.
Callan left Christoff behind, nearly slipping on a bloody footprint on the floor of the library as he headed to the door. He added his strength to Ty’s.
The automaton lost a little bit of ground, fingers almost touching. Tiny gears were at each knuckle, and as its hands drew closer together, the gears came close to touching.
Green Eyes twisted around to face the door. I could see Kathryn and Roxanne step back as the mermaid moved across the floor using her arms, the natural moisture of her body reducing the friction as she moved forward.
I wasn’t sure if her sudden approach was a factor, if someone reacted with a bit of fear and lost their grip, but the automaton managed to push the doors apart.
Two little toothy guys came crawling through – one above the automaton’s head, scaling the surface to cling to the underside of the second stage of the library, while another crawled between the clockwork man’s legs.
Green Eyes got the second, pouncing on it. The first crawled up and around to the railing, then onto the second floor, lurking, before it made eye contact with Eva, kneeling at her brother’s side. Ellie was a short distance away, having crawled back from Andy.
“Get them,” Eva said, “I’m not going to stop you.”
It scampered away on all fours, circling above us, fingernails and toenails making faint clicking and shuffling sounds as it disappeared from my field of view, lurking somewhere above.