Codex Born (15 page)

“Damned arthritis.” Whatever else he might have said was lost as he finished his transformation into a lean, black-furred wolf. He lowered his gray-dusted muzzle to the floor and sniffed. His lips peeled back in a low growl.

“Oh, cool,” I said.

“What is it?” asked Lena.

“I can understand him.” Jeff wasn’t speaking a true language, but the fish in my head could pick up the thoughts behind his vocalizations. “He doesn’t think the family was involved, but whoever killed those wendigos was here. The scent is too faint for it to be someone who lived here.”

Jeff padded into the kitchen. Dirty dishes and pans filled
the sink. Others were stacked in a wire rack to one side. A toddler and his mother slept at a round table, a half-eaten jar of applesauce between them. The toddler lay with his head on the tray, black hair full of food. Nidhi stroked the hair back from his face and used a napkin to wipe a chunk of applesauce from the side of his nose.

“One of ours died here,” Nicholas said, brushing his fingertips over the edge of the sink. He breathed deeply, like he was sniffing a fine wine. “She cried out in pain and anger.”

“Anyone else find this guy creepy as hell?” Lena asked in a low voice.

Nidhi, Deb, and I raised our hands. I glanced at Nicholas’ guards. With a shrug, Sarah raised her hand as well.

I had read the reports of Victor’s murder. He hadn’t died without a fight. His home was well-protected, and his tricks had taken several of his would-be killers with him. A long footnote on page three had proposed several explanations for the pair of fangs found in the garbage disposal, and recommended destroying the disposal altogether rather than attempting to study its magic. I swallowed and turned away. “We need to talk to him.”

“Patience, Isaac.” Nicholas closed his eyes and inhaled. His smile grew. “The instinct to survive is so strong. Stronger than love. Stronger than fear. Threaten a man’s life, and you push him to truly
live
.”

“That’s why you agreed to do this, isn’t it?” Nidhi asked. “To remember what life feels like. To touch what you lost.”

The skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled, and for a moment his smile flickered. The amusement snapped back into place an instant later, along with a dismissive sneer. “You expect me to mourn my lost humanity? To weep for the forgotten days when I scurried about as one of you, an insect scavenging in the dirt?”

Deb cleared her throat. “Dr. Shah, please don’t play mind games with the sociopathic ghost-talker.”

“Victor fought well,” Nicholas said. “But he soon realized there were too many for him to defeat. That understanding broke his will. It marked the beginning of his death.”

“We didn’t bring you here to give you a peep show into Victor’s last moments,” I said tightly.

“No, you brought me because you need my help.” Nicholas turned. “There are too many dead. I have to find the moment the life left his body. Only then will he speak to me.” He scowled and crossed through the family room, then climbed the steps to the second floor. A narrow hallway separated two bedrooms on the left from the stairs and bathroom on the right. The right side of Nicholas’ face twitched as he looked about, his eyes tightening as if he could see through the walls. A moment later, he relaxed. “Ah, yes. Victor retreated to his workshop.”

Nicholas stepped down the hall and opened a door into a pink-painted bedroom. A rainbow-colored ceiling fan spun lazily overhead.

“Watch your step,” said Lena.

A young girl had stripped the blankets and pillows from her bed, turning them into a makeshift fort. She lay sleeping, a yellow pony clutched in one hand. From the array of toys spread through the room, it looked like the Jedi and the My Little Ponies had been fighting an army of Barbies and LEGO figures.

“Victor kills two more vampires here,” said Nicholas. “Metal creatures bore through the heart of the first, reducing him to ash, but Victor is injured. The life and will drain from his body with every step. Another vampire follows him into this room.” Nicholas stepped to the side, as if clearing a path for the phantom assailant. “Victor snaps his fingers, and the overhead light flickers. The vampire’s skin begins to sizzle.”

“Ultraviolet bulbs,” I guessed. They would have burned many species of vampire as effectively as sunlight. “Tell me about the metal creatures. How was Victor controlling them? Where did they come from, and how many were there?”

Nicholas ignored me. “Another enters through the window. His skin sparkles in the light. He smashes Victor into the wall. Pain and confusion flood Victor’s senses. He is angry. Frightened. He isn’t ready for death. There’s so much yet to do.”

“That sounds like Victor,” Nidhi said quietly.

Nicholas whirled.
“Be silent!”

Nidhi jumped. Both guards moved in, and Jeff’s hackles rose, but I didn’t think Nicholas was talking to us. His attention was elsewhere, and he sounded genuinely angry.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Death attracts death. The ghosts are pulled to this place. They clamor like children.”

I looked to Deb, hoping she would know whether this was normal behavior or a sign that our ghost-talker was about to snap. She spread her hands and shrugged.

“Victor’s thoughts tunnel inward.” Nicholas’ words grew louder. “Why him? Why now? He doesn’t want to die alone.”

“Enough ghouling.” Deb swatted him on the back of the head like he was a misbehaving puppy. “Can you talk to the dead guy or not?”

“Yes,” Nicholas said grudgingly.

“Ask him about the insects,” I said.

Nicholas mumbled to himself, repeating the questions in another tongue. An old form of French, if I wasn’t mistaken. “He reverse-engineered one of Gutenberg’s automatons.”

Deb was the first to recover her voice. “He did
what?
”

“It’s all about miniaturization and user interface these days,” Nicholas said. The intonation was Victor’s. It was spooky. “Microscopic spells laser-etched onto the inner workings, telepathic interface, and as much memory and storage as I could give them.”

“Why?” I asked.

“To search out lost and forgotten magic. I sent six prototype scouts into the world. One was eaten by a bass. Another was struck by a locomotive. Three survived to report back, sharing their findings with the queen, and through her, with me.”

“A bass?” I thought back to the damage they had done to Lena’s tree. “That shouldn’t have stopped these things.”

“I could have ordered it to work free, but that would have hurt the fish.”

It was such a Victor thing to say, I couldn’t help but smile. “What about the sixth?”

“Lost overseas.” He shuddered, then stared blankly at the empty air where Victor had died.

“Tell us about the queen,” I said.

Nicholas relayed the question. “A cicada, three inches long, with carbon fiber wings and a titanium exoskeleton. A redundant twin-chip brain. The eyes were tiny black pearls. She was magnificent, Isaac. I wish I’d been able to show her off. You would have loved her.”

“The queen controls the other insects?” I asked.

“The song of the cicada can reach 120 decibels. My queen’s commands are silent to our ears, but her children can hear her even from the far side of the world.”

“What did you tell her as you were dying?” asked Nidhi.

Nicholas stepped back and seemed to come back to himself. “Victor cupped her in his hands.” He brought his own hands together, mimicking Victor’s final seconds. “Past and present flooded together as the barriers of memory crumbled. In his mind, he was a child once more. He was in pain, but didn’t remember where it had come from. He knew only that he wanted comfort. Like a child, he called out.”

“He wanted family,” Nidhi whispered, her words clipped. Her hands tightened into fists.

“Yes,” said Nicholas. “Victor sent the queen to fetch his father.”

Frank Dearing died in late autumn, after the trees had shed their leaves, but before the snow arrived to freeze the earth.

I was asleep in my oak when he died. The shock felt as though lightning had split my tree, blackening the exposed heartwood. I ran to the house as quickly as I could, but even before I reached the bedroom, I knew he was gone.

He looked little like the man I loved. His eyes were open, and his lips were pale and dry. He had been sleeping in red long johns, which smelled of urine. His upper body was bare, and the skin on his chest was unnaturally pale.

I scooped him into my arms. His limbs hung limp. Even his skin sagged loosely, emphasizing the bones beneath.

My thoughts were clouded as if I had been drinking, though I had spent much of the night in my oak, and time in my tree usually cleansed alcohol and its effects from my body. I didn’t know what to do. I had no other friends, nor had I ever wanted or needed any. Frank was my world.

I acted on instinct, carrying him from the house. I wove carefully through the trees, making sure not a single branch snagged my lover’s hair or scratched his skin. I hated the coolness of his body against me. My tears dripped onto his chest.

When I reached my oak, my first impulse was to bring him into the tree with me and never emerge, but that felt wrong. Disrespectful and wasteful.

I knew human burial customs, but I couldn’t let Frank be locked away in a box, buried forever in the earth while the ex-wife who had turned her back on him waited impatiently to scavenge through his belongings.

I rested him gently at the base of my tree and drew a blanket of leaves over his body. Only then did I retreat into my tree, where I could feel his weight pressing down on my roots.

This was proper. This was love and respect for the dead.

I reached deeper into the wood of my oak. The roots curled inward, digging through the cold, hard dirt to peel open the earth. Other roots eased Frank into the newly dug hole, curling around him like a blanket and sliding him closer to the taproot.

Frank and I had been together for so many years. I couldn’t lose him. I wouldn’t. His body would sustain my tree, becoming part of me and giving me the strength to survive his loss.

I
MIGHT HAVE BEEN the only one in the room who understood Nidhi’s curses, the Gujarati words she spat so quickly I could barely keep up.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “Victor’s insects went to find his father. How do we get from that to killing wendigos and attacking Lena’s tree?”

Nidhi watched the sleeping girl, her face unreadable. “Does your family know about your abilities, Isaac?”

I shook my head. “My brother walked in on me once while I was practicing pulling coins from
Treasure Island
, but I don’t think he saw anything.”

Deb’s lips pursed like she had eaten something sour. “My family doesn’t, but the Porters cost me a fiancé about fifteen years back.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said.

“You don’t know everything about me, hon.”

“Victor’s father is a monster.” Nidhi turned to face us. “August Harrison beat his wife for years. That lasted until Victor was eleven years old. Two days after August broke his wife’s nose, Victor was watching through the window as his father mowed the lawn. He enchanted the family car, which smashed through the garage door and tore across the yard. August tried to get away, but he wasn’t fast enough. The car broke his femur. He spent more than a month in traction.”

I gave a low, soft whistle. Victor had always seemed so pleasant and easygoing, with half his attention permanently lost in his work. “And that’s the guy he wanted when he was dying?”

“Victor’s mother died eight years ago,” said Nidhi. “He had no siblings, no spouse. August Harrison was the only family he had left. And their relationship was…complex.”

Jeff snarled. “Doesn’t sound complex to me. Rip the bastard’s throat out and be done with it.” I relayed his comment for the others.

“When August finally returned from the hospital, he acted like he had changed,” Nidhi continued. “He apologized to his wife and son, and promised to make things better. Two days later, he took Victor out to dinner, bought him several new toys, and asked Victor to teach him magic.”