She had stabbed her bokken into the cabin’s foundation and used them to pry off large, jagged blocks of concrete. She hurled another, and the automaton knocked it aside with one wooden fist.

I tossed the useless laser pistol away and switched to a David Weber book. Sweat dripped into my eyes, blurring my vision, and my entire body shook with fear and adrenaline. The pulse rifle I wanted barely fit through the pages. I dropped the book and hefted the rifle to my shoulder.

The automaton whirled again. The things were supposed to be able to sense magic. Every time I reached into a book, I was essentially shouting, “Come and get me!”

I sighted at the ground in front of the automaton and pulled the trigger. Tiny explosive darts spat from the barrel at supersonic speeds. The automaton’s foot sank into a smoking hole. I fired again, blasting the ground where it stood. Shooting this thing directly might not work, but maybe I could bury it long enough for us to escape. Clay and rock sizzled, and sparks shot through the smoke.

With another flash of light, the thing vanished from my makeshift pit and reappeared down by the stream.

“That’s cheating,” Lena complained.

I hurried toward her. “Get out of here. Take the Triumph, and contact Pallas. Tell the Porters what we’ve learned.” I blasted the ground again, trying to slow the automaton down.

“Right.” She grunted as she hurled another chunk of concrete. “Because the unstoppable clockwork golem will never catch up with a forty-year-old car lurching up a dirt road in first gear.”

I fired at a tree, hoping to topple it onto the automaton. Maybe that was what Hubert had done to destroy the other one. Explosive darts shredded the trunk, but the tree fell too slowly and at the wrong angle, missing by a good twenty feet.

Lena hit me in the shoulder with the butt of her weapon, hard enough to make me stagger. “Don’t do that again.”

“Sorry.” Right, no more shooting trees.

Lena raised her swords. “The hands and feet are exposed wood. If it would stay still long enough for me to grab hold, I might be able to destroy this thing from the inside.”

“Even if it wasn’t protected from magic, it would crush you the instant you tried.” Before I could say anything more, the automaton leaped forward.

Lena grabbed the back of my jacket and hurled me aside. She spun back to face it, raising one arm to block its swing.

I heard bone crack, followed by Lena’s shout of pain. This was a woman who had outmuscled vampires, and the automaton batted her aside like a rag doll. Her left arm was shattered, her sleeve torn and bloody.

“Lena, go!”