The Library (The Librarian of Alexandria Book 1) by Casey White (surface ebook reader .TXT) 📕

He felt her hand working at the button of his pants.  “Well,” she whispered, her face right alongside his.  “You should enjoy yourself once in a while, then.”  She chuckled again, low and soft.  “If you don’t want to, I’ll walk away.  None of this will have happened.”  Her other hand slipped under the collar of his coat, curling about the back of his neck.  “But you should hurry up and say so.”

Every fiber of his being bellowed to say no, to pick Olivia up and set her off him and hide himself deep in the Library’s halls until she left.  That could be that.  He could ask Indira to send someone else.  He could tell himself she’d never come to Alexandria at all.  Given enough years, he might even believe it.  It was just so sudden, his thoughts shrieked.  Too much.  Too fast.  It didn’t make sense.

Be careful, he heard a voice whisper, right on the edge of his senses and familiar enough to hurt.

It’d been so long, though.  He’d been apart for so long, and nothing he’d tried had ever worked.  No matter how he tried to tell himself it didn’t matter, or that it was just a matter of time, the same sight would swim up in front of his vision - a lonely grave marker at the ass-backward end of a lonely cemetery, forgotten by the world.

He knew it was stupid.

But when Olivia shifted, pressing her chest to his and swinging her leg across to straddle him, he didn’t say no.  His hands were on her hips by then, pulling her closer still.  She let him, sliding forward with a laugh.

Once they’d crossed the line, it was like the last of their reservations fled.  Her hands swept across his chest, exploring the layers of leather and the muscles beneath.  True to her word, she never reached for his mask.  He slipped a hand under her shirt, pushing the hem up.

She made an impatient noise, twisting her arms over her head as she fumbled to work the garment free, and-

The silence around them shattered.

A wall of noise slammed across the courtyard, roaring like a freight train, like glass breaking, like metal sundered in two.  It hit them like a physical thing, hard enough to leave Owl winded.

The wind followed in its wake - a wind that howled like a two-voiced beast, with an unearthly undertone whistling along with it.  It didn’t come in waves or bursts that swirled around them.  No, it was like an unending, unstoppable surge, as though the air itself had become a river that flooded over them.

Through it all, the bells tolled, bellowing out a warning that neither of them needed.

Owl gaped.  Olivia shrieked, clinging to him.  There wasn’t even an ounce of romantic intention left in the motion, the mood ruined by that sound and that wind more surely than if they’d jumped into an ice-cold pond.

All Owl could do was stare across the Library, wide-eyed and terrified, at the grand structure of Alexandria.

And at the crackling, seething storm of something that had exploded from its roof.

- Chapter Thirty-Eight -

Fire.

Owl stood frozen, his hands quivering as he stared across the expanse.

A fire.  Fire in Alexandria.  In his Library.  Or-

Another plume of something blue and crackling fired from the roof across the blurred space, sending tiles shattering down across the outlying fields.

Not fire, then.  His mind was oddly clinical in that moment, somehow separated from the raw panic that filled his every other thought.  Fire was too simple a word.  Too natural.  Nothing about this seemed natural - not the seething masses of blue smoke and crackling bolts of lightning that flashed from within their depths.

Magic.  It was magic.  He knew it at a glance, even if he’d never seen anything of its like before.  His gut churned - but he stared across the distance, locked in place with wide eyes.

“Holy shit,” he heard Olivia breathe from alongside him.  She still clutched his shoulder, clinging to him for stability.  “O-Owl.  What’s-”

“Go back,” he said, reality returning in a seething rush as though Olivia’s words had broken the spell over both of them.  “Get back to the exit. Now.”

“O-Okay,” she gasped, lurching to her feet.

What if she didn’t make it back there?  The thought screamed through Owl’s mind.  What if something happened?  What if the magical blaze spread, cutting off her path, and-

Olivia yelped, lurching as his hand snapped out to catch her by the wrist.  “No,” Owl said, surging to his feet.  “Don’t go alone.  Sorry.  That’s stupid.  I’ll-”

His words died in a hiss.  He turned, eyeing the ever-growing destruction.  An entire wing.  The clouds of blue and white were spreading, coating an entire damn wing, and the horrible wind hadn’t stopped yet.  He needed to get over there, now.  Whatever had caused this, whatever was going on, it was his job to handle it.

But he was the Librarian.  He had a responsibility to his guests as much as to Alexandria.  She was capable of handling herself.  Olivia?

Olivia was white as a sheet, all of her fervor and intensity from minutes before wiped clean by the shrieking of the magical hurricane gusting through the Library.  She seemed smaller, somehow, as though all of her usual energy had been sucked away.

He couldn’t turn her loose in this mess.  And- He winced.  Somewhere out there, Will was every bit as vulnerable.

Helping Alexandria was important.  But he had to make sure his guests were safe first.

“Come on,” he spat, hurling himself forward.  “Stay close.  And hurry.”

“But what’s-”

“Just come,” Owl snapped.

When she followed after him, ashen-faced and quiet, he let go of her hand so that they could run.  Stay close, he pleaded silently.  Don’t wander off.

Back into the Library they ran, the grass turning back to hard tile under his feet.

Owl fixed the location of the storm in his mind, but he didn’t have to.  The roar of it screamed through the halls