| |
“Any ideas?” Krawczyk asked on the long trudge down the slope. Fingers of her blue hair poked out from under her floppy hat, and sunburn flushed her cheeks. She resembled a small child who’d been rolling in the dirt all day being called in to face her mother’s wrath.
“Try not to die.” I felt as baked as an overdone potato, salty with old sweat, my skin leathery and chapped, and trapped in a sauna of my own sour smell.
Shadows like elongated alien bodies stretched to our left, one tall and one short. An amalgamated blob followed those skinny shadows, eight spidery legs topped by two horse bodies. Misery and Blaze kept pace without being led, coming along at my mental command. The underside of the western clouds burned orange, painted by the dying sun.
In the packed earth at my feet, footprints had been impressed in the soil and hardened there. I frowned at an odd-looking set of prints, which seemed to be one shoe and one round hole. A peg leg? Had Esmeralda been there, or was this from another single-legged person walking around the cabin? Seemed a coincidence, but I had seen more than one amputee stumping around town—veterans of the Civil War.
We stopped well within pistol range of the sheriff. If I could get off a shot, I could nail Bridger through the forehead at that distance.
With the man touching a bottomless well of magic, that would be stupider than your normal.
True. Quicker than a speeding bullet, Bridger could convert energy to defeat or deflect the shot as soon as it left the barrel. Unless I could pull a miracle out of my ass, Bridger had won the battle and the war, all without breaking a sweat.
I hawked and spat to the side with tough-guy bravado. “What now?”
“Well,” Bridger said, “as much as it would amuse me to pull your dick off and nail it to the door, I’m pretty well done tired of your uppity coon ass.”
With a look of narrow-eyed concentration, Bridger crushed me with a fist of magical energy from shoulders to hips. I had a moment to think, Well, that was fast, before the wind exploded from my lungs. As easily as crumpling a beer can, the invisible force squeezed me like a hydraulic press. I strained against the force, but I might as well have tried holding back a dump truck.
Bones snapped. I screamed without sound. Organs ruptured. Gore pulsed up from my guts and spilled past my lips. Blood and worse warmed my pants, stained my crotch. It happened so quickly that I barely felt any pain, just enormous pressure.
I dropped when released. I didn’t feel the impact with the ground.
My cheek lay in the dirt.
A pool of red soaked into my vision.
Pain would come. Soon. I knew it would hit with a vengeance, once my nerves recognized and reacted to the damage. I experienced a moment of clarity in that calm before the outrage. I couldn’t breathe. My lungs were crushed, shredded by broken ribs. Somehow my heart still pounded as blood pulsed through torn veins. Wetness showered the dirt and clogged my throat. My guts felt liquefied, pureed and somehow poured back into my skin sack, leaking from places best left unexplored.
So this is how it ends.
That I would die in the dirt at the hands of a Magical, I had never once doubted. I just hadn’t expected it today. It was too soon. Would any day not be too soon? Probably not, but I had always pictured it happening at some point far in the future, after I was worn out, tired, and ready to quit. Now, with my blood and guts dribbling through my teeth, I had to face facts. I was dying, and there wasn’t a thing I could do to stop it.
Krawczyk was shrieking something in cursive. Something so blisteringly foul that birds should have been falling dead from the sky. I felt her hand on my shoulder. I wanted to say something, warn her that her knee was in a puddle of blood. She would never get the stain out, if she wasn’t careful. My mouth moved, and a shudder wracked me. More gunk puddled out. I tried to breathe and remembered I couldn’t.
“Now,” came Bridger’s voice, smarmy and full of false cheer, “what should I do with you? Are you good for anything, you little blue-haired bitch? Or do you want to join the coon there? Stop your squawking, darlin’, and talk to me sweet, else I might be inclined to think you’re not worth a flying fuck.”
Bridger’s boots entered my line of vision. He’d left Merilee somewhere, probably on the porch, as he approached. Daylight was going—or maybe it was me going. I couldn’t be sure. It was getting dark, whatever the cause. Hooves thudded nearby, and Misery snuffled my ear.
The pain was coming on strong, but pain was nothing new. Pain was pain, and this was no different—except in intensity, depth, volume, and scope. A grin threatened to lift the corners of my lips. Okay, so maybe it is something new.
“Go to hell, Bridger!” Krawczyk screamed. She was really quite pretty when she was incensed. I felt the tingle of magic flowing through her touch into my shoulder. Bless her, the woman was trying to heal a broken water main with a sponge. The best she could do with her meager shot of magic was fix a few broken blood vessels, maybe hold off the worst of the pain. Even as I recognized the magic trickle for what it was, the flow tapered off and died.
Bridger took another step closer. “I think I’ll—”
Fuck that.
The words rang in my head, clear as if spoken in my ear. A flickering shadow passed over me, and I heard a double thud. Bridger landed on the ground a few feet away. The sheriff’s mouth hung open, and there was a half-moon horseshoe print etched on his forehead.
What. The. Hell. I had trouble connecting thoughts in a logical sequence. I tried piecing together events from my limited viewpoint and found the needed concentration slipping from my mind. Thoughts seeped into dark corners and faded away.
Horse lips tickled my ear.
One thought finally solidified enough to have meaning. Misery? Did you...
Who cares?
My miserable excuse for a horse had kicked the evil supervillain in the head. My horse. Had kicked. A Magical. To death.
If I had any air in my lungs, I would have died laughing.
Instead, I died with a smile on my face.
#
A persistent, irritating voice wouldn’t go away and leave me alone.
“Come on, Shivers, stay with me. Come on, you stupid bastard.”
Things were happening inside my body. Hideously painful things. I found out I could breathe because I realized I was screaming. Warmth radiated from a palm on my shoulder—no, not warmth, cast-iron-skillet heat. Krawczyk’s voice chanted the refrain, “Stay with me, stay with me.”
Why do people always say that when you’re dying? And then agony ratcheted up the scale from unbearable to fucking incredible.
No, I howled inside my head. I don’t want to stay with you, because you’re fucking killing me worse than Bridger did!
Misery snorted, and I heard Krawczyk say, “Hold that horse before he tries to kick me too.”
Kick her! Kick her!
The horse ignored my order. What else was new?
Merilee cooed at Misery, and the traitor let himself be led away. Stupid horse!
“Owww, fuck, that hurts!” My eyes snapped open, and I found Krawczyk crouched over me, one hand on my shoulder, one hand touching an ugly statue the size of a working man’s thermos.
The Nimerigar magic totem.
Magic energy flowed through healer and into my body, repairing, rearranging, and redressing the heinous damage done by Bridger’s bear hug. I could... feel things inside my skin moving around. Ribs snapped back into place. Guts twisted into their original shape and placement. Organs popped back out like flat tires being filled with air. And every bit of it was accompanied by wall-scraping, rug-chewing pain.
Something crackled in my backbone, and feeling rushed back into my legs and feet, arriving with the sensation of having stepped into live voltage.
“Jesus Christ, Krawczyk!”
“Shut up, you big baby,” she said. “This is hard enough without your bitching and whining. You want to live or not?”
Not really, no.
Shut up, you’re not helping.
Minutes dragged their way over hot coals, and time stretched itself on a rack. Things inside my body popped and crackled and aligned, and the pain receded as though riding the overlapping waves of an outgoing tide. At some point after a million years or so, Krawczyk slumped, and her hand fell away. The burning spot on my shoulder where she had touched me cooled. I breathed normally, without pain. My body felt wrung out—a thought that made me laugh silently.
Wrung out. Hah. You’re hysterical.
“Hey,” my crusty voice croaked. I brushed Kat’s knee with a knuckle. “I hate you so much right now.”
“Don’t mention it.” She sounded as tired as I felt, shaking herself awake at my touch. With a lift of her chin, Krawczyk indicated the totem squatting beside her. “This thing. This thing is fucking awesome. I’ve never... I never knew there was this much magic in the whole world. I can’t feel the end of it. It’s like, uh, standing on the shore of an ocean and not being able to see the other side.”
I rolled up on my side, bracing for pain and surprised not to feel any. Dried blood caked my lips and flaked off my cheek. Something best left unexplored had fouled my jeans. I ignored the mess, reached for the statue, and touched it.
My stomach, so recently healed, threatened to plummet through the center of the Earth. Krawczyk was wrong. This was no mere ocean of magic. This was a galaxy of magical energy. It felt like jumping off a cliff and into the deepest watering hole imaginable. By comparison, the magic of my amulet, at full power, was a swimming pool.
I looked at Krawczyk.
She looked back.
“This is a lot of fucking magic,” I said.
“You got that right, Harry Potter.” She scraped her splayed fingers through her choppy hair. “A Magical with that much power could change the world. End poverty. End hunger.”
I forced my hand away from the stone. It felt like parting from a lover’s embrace. Krawczyk was still speaking.
“I could cure everyone,” she murmured, her eyes locked on the ugly little statue, “of every disease. Build dams to bring power and water to this backward-ass place.”
“Level mountains,” I added.
“Save the Native Americans from persecution.”
“Destroy cities.”
“End suffering.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “All that’s great, but more importantly, maybe we could use it to get home.”
Alizandra.
#
Merilee appeared, leading Misery and Blaze back from the river. Both horses dripped water from their muzzles. She stopped and goggled at me. “You’re alive. That’s bloody amazing.” Her nose wrinkled. “But you smell awful. Wait a sec.” She handed the reins to Krawczyk and detoured around us to enter the shack.
I groaned, staggered to my feet, and took Misery’s reins. “Nice kick.”
Who cares?
“Not you, of course.” I tucked Misery’s head against my shoulder and scratched the buckskin’s chin. “You’re just a big sack of meanness wrapped in horsehair. Whoa...” My legs wobbled, and I clung to the horse’s bridle to stay upright. I shook my head to dispel the cobwebs.
“Take it easy, Your Honorness,” Krawczyk said. “I could knit together the broken veins, but I couldn’t put the blood back inside. Best I could do was drain the internal bleeding out of you, along with all the other waste inside your abdomen. Otherwise, we’d risk peritonitis.”
What I heard sounded a lot more like Charlie Brown’s teacher than real words. I rattled my head again, clearing more of the blackness around the edge of my vision. “Peritonitis? That’s bad, right?”
“Very bad.”
Merilee appeared on the porch from inside and crossed the yard to lay a bundle across Misery’s saddle. Jeans, shirt, and long johns. “Archie—ah, that is, Sheriff Bridger—had apparently stashed clothes and... other items under the floorboards.”
I noted the pause and wondered if the “other items” happened to be banded stacks of bills stolen from a certain Geyser Falls bank.
Merilee stepped back onto the porch and continued, “He had just finished pulling this out of his hidey-hole when you lot arrived. There are dresses and a woman’s things in there, as well, but they are all too small for me. I have no idea for whom he intended them.” She gestured to the men’s clothes. “You may have to roll up the edges a bit, but I believe they’ll fit. Might I suggest you hie yourself off to the river and clean up, Mr. Shivers?”
“Yeah, dude,” Krawczyk said. “Some things, all the magic in the world can’t fix.”
I slid a hand along the buckskin’s neck until I had hold of the saddle horn. “C’mon, horse. Show me the way to the river.” I took a second to cast a glower at the two women. “Hate for my smell of recent deadness to offend anyone.”
Misery snorted and tossed his head. You stink.
“Shut up and drive.”
#
Clean though damp, I walked back from the river while gnawing on a piece of jerky from a sack in my saddlebags. My legs, feeling as rubbery as boneless chicken wings, threatened to let go. Some of the dizziness had cleared, although if my willpower had been a battery, it would have been sorely in need of charging. The only thing stopping me from curling up on the ground and sleeping for a week was the promise offered by the Nimerigar totem. The memory—the power flowing through my fingertips and electrifying my mind with possibilities—kept driving me up the riverbank to the cabin, one staggering step at a time. I had, for a moment, touched the sun, and I wanted to do it again.
Krawczyk met me with fists on hips the moment I wobbled up. “So what’dya mean, maybe go back home? Have you figured out how?” She and Merilee had found some rickety chairs and dragged them to the porch. They sat together in the slanted evening light, nearly invisible in the shadows of the cabin’s front wall.
I opened my mouth then closed it, glancing at Merilee.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Krawczyk said. “I told her everything.”
“Everything?”
“Every detail.”
“I must say, it’s all a bit much, isn’t it?” Merilee said.
The statue sat between their chairs. Squat and crudely carved, the stone could have been anything from onyx to granite for all I knew—I also slept through geology. As far as I was concerned, rock was something to play at very loud volume. I stared at the smug little face atop the totem and wondered who’d carved it, where they found it, and most importantly, how it had come to contain such vast quantities of latent magic.
“What’s the tune you’re humming?” Merilee asked.
“Hmm?” I broke off my staring contest with the statue. “Oh... ah, ‘I Am, I Said.’ Neil Diamond.”
“I keep thinking about making my way back,” Krawczyk sang.
I chuckled silently. “And we’re sure as hell lost between two shores.”
“So back to my original question.”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Bits and pieces are coming back. Something about pinching off a bubble of mass and moving it sideways through a huge application of energy. I’ll need time and a metric ton of magic to figure out how Birnbaum converted that much energy and how he... did whatever he did.” I paused. “The good news is, we now have a ton of magic. We’ll just need to hole up somewhere until we can figure it out. We know it can be done, so we just have to recreate the wheel.”
Krawczyk, who had grown more agitated throughout my speech, jumped off her chair, sending the fragile contraption into a death rattle. “Are you kidding me? We have to give it back!”
“Back? To the pygmy cannibals?”
“Yes! Don’t you see? Look what happened after Bridger stole it. The Nimerigar came out of the mountains and started slaughtering right and left, trying to get it back. They’re killing people right now for this thing. We have to let them have it so they’ll leave everybody alone.”
I blinked. Never give in. Never surrender, my father had said once when I came home, beaten and bloody from a schoolyard fight. You don’t stop a bully by giving him what he wants.
“No,” I said to Krawczyk. “That’s ridiculous. We can’t hand this much power to a tribe of cannibal savages.”
“They held onto the thing for years, and nobody noticed. I don’t think they can even access the magical energy. I doubt they know it’s there.”
“How do you know that? You can’t know that.”
“I know that people are dying!” Krawczyk stabbed a finger at me. “And I know you’re being a jerk. If we leave without helping those people, we’re as good as killing them, and what does that make us? We’ll have the blood of an entire town on our hands.”
Merilee rose from her chair much more elegantly than the smaller woman had. She swished off the porch and approached me. By the early starlight, her beauty shone through the dust and weariness and fatigue, and I was reminded of the toughness that underlay her remarkable appearance. She placed her fingers lightly on my forearm. “Please, Mr. Shivers. Miss Krawczyk says you’re kind of a battle wizard in your own time and that you can fight with magic.” Merilee looked at the ground and shook her head before meeting my eyes again. “I still can’t wrap my mind around saying that. ‘Magic.’ But please, if you can save my town, I would be most grateful.”
I frowned and straightened. It was hard to read Merilee’s expression in the dark, so I played back her last words in my head, listening between the lines, as it were. After a few replays, I realized I could uncover no hidden meaning behind the hotel owner’s words, no double entendres or offers implied by her statement. No quid pro quo sex. She would be grateful, and that was it.
“At the very least,” Krawczyk added, “we need to go back and see if we can help the town. No matter what we do with the statue.” It looked like it cost her a lot to add that final sentence.
I picked at a loose thread on my saddle. A dozen and one reasons to say no played in my mind, but what came out, as if torn from my chest, was “Fine. Let’s go take care of the Nimerigar.” I kept my expression neutral in case my poker face slipped at the wrong moment. “Take care of” could have been interpreted any number of ways, and I did not want either Kat or Merilee to force me into being more specific.
Keep your options open.
Exactly.
“Oh,” Krawczyk said. “I almost forgot. Bridger had this on him.” She handed me a small round stone. My amulet. Fully charged. The knot of anxiety around my chest unwound a turn. I put the stone in my pocket and nodded my thanks without speaking. I led my horse away from the others and occupied my hands by adjusting bits of tack.
“Let’s go,” I said when I could trust myself to speak.
I mounted Misery and kicked him into plodding motion.