Free Yesterday's Hero by Jonathan Wood Page A

supernatural. Screw cauldrons and smoking test-tubes.
    “If it’s not too much of an imposition,” Clyde starts, proving he’s the only man who can use those words and not make it sound like it’s the beginning of an insult, “would you pop the hood, and then on the word ‘Arcum’ slam these down on the car battery?” He takes a firm hold of the metal clamps on his end.
    How exactly I managed to kill Clyde before he did it to himself, I’ll never know.
    “Any chance of you telling me what’s going to happen when you say that?” I get nervous whenever Clyde works magic. It always seems far too closely associated with someone trying to tear off parts of my body.
    “He’s good with books,” is all Clyde says, and then he’s off muttering to himself. “Entok um jessun. Lom niem mor cal anum. Eltoth mok morinum.”
    And because I’ve seen what happens when magic isn’t powered by electricity, I pop the hood and jump out of the car.
    Violently exothermic, Clyde called it. Magicians getting turned into bloody smears on the ground seems a little closer to the mark.
    “Cathmartum mal ellum. Etok mol asok.” Clyde intones nonsense syllables, a voice that is not quite his own issuing from behind a mask that… that is him.
    What if I took it off the body? What would be left? Some mindless fellow? A vegetable? So much human meat?
    “Melkor al malkor. Mor tior. Arcum—”
    And then there’s no time to think. At the requisite word I slam the contacts on the battery.
    “—locium met morum um satum Winston.”
    Wait. Winston?
    Sparks fly. The world darkens, blue light spitting from the battery, crawling up the wires towards Clyde. He keeps chanting as it racks him, working its hissing, burning way over his body.
    Clyde convulses. His gut heaves. I worry about him dropping the clamps. About violently exothermic results that blow me halfway to China.
    Then Clyde hawks out a great white gob of lightning. His throat bulges with it. His face behind the mask distorts, distends. I can see his cheeks bulging. Then it flies out and under the mask as he gags. It smashes into the box. Books explode out, scatter. They fly through the air, slap into the walls. But they don’t fall. They just spin. Faster. Faster.
    Clyde chokes up another lightning ball. He spits and gags. His body doubles over. Another. Faster.
    The books slam round the corridor. All in the air. All caught in the maelstrom of detonations.
    The lightning batters at the books. Balls of the stuff smash into them, force them together. Tighter, tighter. A ragged cylinder of crackling paper.
    Clyde chokes again. More lightning balls. Faster.
    The mass of books changes shape. Is refined. Gains defined edges. Then the realization hits me. This isn’t just Clyde blowing off steam in a fit of adolescent arcanum. The lightning is molding the books. This is magical sculpture.
    Hardbacks stack into legs. Papers and encyclopedias jostle to form a chest. Paperbacks and dictionaries become two roughly hewn arms. At their ends, books clack open and shut like lobster claws. A head starts to appear. A book on its side for a mouth. Children’s books with finger puppets for eyes.
    A jagged silhouette of a man, limned in crackling white.
    Clyde collapses, the spell done. I pull the clamps off the battery, blinking away the shapes that have bleached my retinas.
    The book man lets out a racking cough. “Oh fuck me sideways,” he says. “That stings like a bitch.”
    Oh God. I wonder if becoming incorporeal might have seriously damaged Clyde’s judgment.
    “Seconded,” Clyde coughs.
    The book-man takes a stumbling step forward, catches himself, takes a second, more confident stride. “Arthur?” he says. He has a thick cockney accent. “Is that you, mate?”
    Winston. Clyde’s book golem. His inside man at the Bodleian library. Scanning for thaum… thaw… thaumer… spell books. Living in the stacks. Owner of a filthy mouth.
    “Hello, Winston,” I say.
    Pages ripple in