Gremlin Night by Dale Smith (top 10 non fiction books of all time txt) 📕

Dara pointed her finger at me. “What guarantee do I have that you won’t try to escape?”

I rolled my eyes. “Come on, Dara. We’re nearly out of time. I want to stop whatever’s about to happen even worse than you do.”

She threw up her hands. “Very well. I need to know what this is all about and how to stop it.”

I swallowed. That was a tall order. “Fine. Let me handle the book and I’ll find it.”

Dara’s eyes narrowed. “I could just have Riley here hold it up in front you, and turn the pages as you read.” The scorn was so thick in her voice you could use it to mortar a brick wall.

I bit back a nasty retort. “Look, I need to be able to trace the characters with my fingers, feel them against my skin.”

Her eyes narrowed to a squint. “You’ve got to be bull-shitting me.”

“By the vault of the universe, I swear I speak the truth.” Magical scripts weren’t written in ink, they were written in the blood of the supernatural who spoke that language. Unlike human languages, supernaturals could only understand their own. Humans could understand supernatural languages, but it took a lot of work.

“I just don’t believe she’s the type to be gifted with manifestation scripts,” Riley said.

I glanced at Riley and sighed. “It speaks.” I looked back at Dara. “I’m a binder. Let me loose and I’ll find whatever answers are in that book. We’re still burning time here.”

Dara glared at me for a long moment. “Fine,” she said, biting off the word. She motioned at Riley, who looked like he’d been asked to kiss a pig. He unlocked my cuffs.

I stretched my arms. My joints cracked. My muscles burned. I winced, held the stretch. “Deciphering the book would be easier if I could actually feel my arms, and move my fingers.” I twiddled my fingers, then alternated bending back my left hand with my right, and my right with my left. Twiddled my fingers again.

My muscles still burned but there wasn’t time for any more.

I took the book from Tully, and opened it. The Elvish script was a slender line of graceful, swooping characters, written in indigo. Written in Sylvas’s blood.

“Let me see and understand,” I whispered, the spell building in my mind. I stroked the first character, shivered from the music that began in my mind, a flute playing a lonely tune. I traced the next character, and the next and on, until a symphony played something like a Bach concerto in my head. Images began flickering in my mind.

Therese, smiling at Sylvas. Sylvas, smiling back. The two of them holding hands, walking in her garden. The air smelled of sweet spring, fresh rain and roses. A wood at twilight, the silver crescent of the moon high in the sky, as Therese and Sylvas kissed. The vision trembled, then changed. Therese lay in bed, skin bone white, cheekbones showing through.

Sorrow filled me like a frozen sea.

The vision changed. It was a very dark night. A visitor appeared outside Therese’s house. A cloaked figure, dripping with magical power, voice altered, loomed just beyond the front door and offered to help Therese. She only had to give over her logbooks, her teleportal map, and the living map she had of the mana contours.

Therese refused.

“Then I’ll take what I need,” The wizard threatened, the words low, like the sound of a knife cutting leather.

“No,” Therese said. “You shall not have them.”

The wizard retreated to beyond the gate, then mana gathered in a purple cloud, shot through not with the golden light of magic, but the red of a foul conjuration, something I’d only seen once before. Ravagers strode from the cloud, and watched the house, while the wizard began an elaborate ritual.

Therese took Sylvas by the hand. Gave him a scroll, whispered to him what she knew. The wizard was unknown to her, but she saw the connection to another wizard.

The vision shifted and I glimpsed Rudy’s face. Therese had identified him, was watching him. I saw Rudy in a basement someplace, conjuring a gremlin, which vanished before it could fully manifest.

“They are connected, this enemy and the bitter man who wishes to conjure chaos,” Therese whispered to Sylvas. “You must take this with you, to the safe house, and write down all that I tell you, and deliver it to R.U.N.E.”

“Why not tell R.U.N.E.?” Sylvas had asked her,

It was a sensible question. Why not, I wondered.

“Because I can’t, not now,” she told Sylvas. “The enemy has sealed me in this house. You must leave.”

“I cannot desert you,” he’d said.

“You must,” she had insisted.

I trembled as I deciphered the story.

He did as she asked. She tapped a reservoir of mana she had accumulated to open the teleportal in her house, despite the seal, and send Sylvas through. She reminded him she couldn’t leave, since she needed to remain in order to keep the teleportal open. He’d gone not to the garage, but to their safe house.

He wept a storm of tears once he was inside, and the teleportal closed.

He opened the map, and began inscribing it.

Information filled my mind. Too much for me to hold, but centered on a point in downtown Portland, a luxurious hotel. Mana swirled about it in a huge purple cloud. More than that, the feeling of great potential loomed, juxtaposed over another image, that of a woman so beautiful it hurt to look at her. She was too beautiful to be human-- she was a nymph. Darkness swallowed me.

I woke up, sprawled on the floor, with Tully looking down at me, concern filling his face. Beside him, Dara glared at me, suspiciously.

I struggled to sit up. Tully squatted beside me, his strong hands helping me.

“You okay?” He asked.

“Not really,” I said. “There was so much emotion in that book.”

“Really?” Dara asked, voice filled with sarcasm. “There wasn’t any time for you to read that book. It had been