the scraps floated to the floor.
The blizzard of pages drifted through the air. The last scrap of paper landed on the carpet. As if marking finality, it was accompanied by a deep, earth-shuddering boom.
Then another, more out of place: boom.
The entrance to the wing flew open. The heavy oak doors rocked back on their hinges. As Andras’s temporary ward dropped, electrified air swept through the space, carrying in with it the smoky residue of powerful magic and a crackle of lightning. A monstrous figure blocked the doorway, wings splayed, and the gargoyle let out a howl that came from every direction and multiple dimensions at once.
The echo died a moment later, and smoke settled in tiny eddies around the feet of three figures.
A gawky and thin teenage boy.
A soldier holding a sword kissed with lightning.
And a woman.
Claire flicked a gaze of cold fury around the room before landing on Andras and his men.
“Get your hands off my book.”
40
CLAIRE
It’s not just for the sake of the authors and the books that we keep the unwritten sleeping. Yes, we have to preserve the stories, and yes, the trauma an escaped book could do to an author is significant. But the whole situation is rotten for them, isn’t it? Coddled away to sleep in some dusty realm?
Might be, the unwritten have an idea or two of their own on how their story should go. Might be, they’d have reason to be angry. Pray they never wake up.
Librarian Fleur Michel, 1798 CE
THE STENCH OF CRACKLING leather and burned ink stole the breath from her lungs. Claire tried to breathe through her mouth, until her tongue clotted with paper ash. The Library’s tall stacks slumped like defeated giants, ripped from their moorings and spilling their contents in a trail of paper and leather around the front lobby. Black blood and fading sheaves were the evidence of those crushed underfoot or eaten by the wyrm’s acid. So many books damaged, so many stories lost.
Claire’s eyes were reserved for one book in particular.
Soot and ink nearly completely covered Hero’s skin, painting his bronze hair gray. He was barely conscious, but swollen and split lips twitched up as he tried to open his injured eye. The Horror held a claw over Hero’s pages, uncertain what to do now.
Andras forgot his game entirely as his yellow eyes lingered over Claire, taking in her patches of blood, stopping at the amulets looped around her neck. For the time being, surprise and the dangerous sizzle of Rami’s sword kept the Horrors at bay. The gargoyle creaked at her back, wings flexing to create a protective shadow over their heads. It let out a low, warning rumble. Claire raised her hand, and it stilled.
Andras’s eyes narrowed. “It appears the Hellhounds have not lived up to their reputation.”
“Can’t blame them too much for their failings,” Claire said. “Demons are so unpredictable.”
“We share that with humans.” He opened his mouth as if to say something more. It would be just like him to have a dramatic speech, Claire thought. But he seemed to think better of it. His hand twitched, and the time to talk was over. “Kill them.”
The Horrors surged like the tide.
Rami strode forward and met one group, gray feathered coat billowing as he buried his blade in the chest of the first demon that approached, then pulled it cleanly out to strike at another. The smell of ozone and storms and fury filled the air, and he moved like a powerful dervish. A building storm of lightning and force. Ramiel, the Thunder of God.
The gargoyle had swept aside the nearest Horrors with one hand, and the wyrm surged and attacked. The serpent twisted and coiled around the bellowing creature. The wyrm was bigger, but the gargoyle’s stone skin was slick, difficult to gain purchase on. They clashed in a titanic roil of scale and stone that knocked another shelf to the ground.
Out of the corner of her eye, Claire saw Leto hunker behind a shelf near the door as he’d promised.
Leto. Matthew Hadley.
He might have been, what, a nephew? Grandchild? Had it really been that long? The impossible thought had a stranglehold on her heart. In a whisper, while they prepared in the hallway, Rami had told her what he knew and how he’d found Leto. It was too much for a coincidence.
And too much to think of now. Claire ducked as a wing swept over her head, and she focused her attention on the demon at the eye of