There was blood on the floor under him, but he was on his feet more quickly than I’d thought possible. He charged me, which I hadn’t been expecting. I backpedaled, but I was already too close to him, and he bowled me over. Before we went down, my brain registered a flash image of him: bleeding from the neck and the side. I’d hit him both times.
The only guaranteed firearms stop on a mammal is a hit to the central nervous system. And even then, it’s not really guaranteed guaranteed. Just because you’re shot doesn’t mean you’re dead.
I tried to get Fox pointed in his direction, but I had ended up on my back and he had my arm pinned with his knee.
He was breathing heavily and in obvious pain.
I squirmed underneath him, but he reached inside my collar and put his finger on my neck.
I froze again, just like I had in the Hall of Sculpture.
All of my gear, my stupid hat, none of it was worth an ounce of protection if he was able to make skin to skin contact with me.
“There,” he said. “Just hold still.”
Keeping his finger on me, he sat up straight. His other hand went to his neck.
“Wow, that’s really bleeding,” he said. “Lincoln, you shot me. That’s… well I suppose I kind of deserved it.”
He leaned over me and stretched his neck out. The fresh, hot blood oozed down his neck and started to drip from his collar bone. He held himself so it landed on my face.
Blop.
Blop.
Blop.
“See?” he said. “If you hadn’t shot me, this wouldn’t be happening. Gross, isn’t it?”
He said another word that I heard but didn’t understand, and all of my nerves exploded at once. My senses stopped working, as his spell short circuited my pain receptors, and I was reduced to a writhing ball of agony.
I tried to maintain my mind inside of it, counting.
One.
Two.
I lost count.
It hurt.
One.
I was going to die.
One.
Please stop.
Two.
One.
It stopped.
I tasted blood in my mouth.
I opened my eyes and realized that I didn’t remember closing them.
Dan released me from his spell and stood up.
I tried to move, but even with the magic gone my nerves weren’t responding. An aftershock from the pain ran through me, and I shuddered. I had as much chance of lifting my hand with Fox in it as I would of hoisting a car over my head.
Dan laughed.
“That,” he said, “was for… well, I don’t know what it’s for. But I’m sure you did something at some point that deserved it.”
That’s when a feeling came over me.
A sensation with which my memory had only recently become reacquainted. It was almost like a taste in my mouth, the remains of a scent I didn’t quite have the receptors to detect.
It was magic, and not the small, interpersonal kind Dan had just performed, but something really, frighteningly big.
Dan felt it too. He stood up straight and started to turn his head. He made a gesture with his hand, and I saw a bit of magic start to coalesce for him, the beginnings of shield.
“Shit,” he almost had time to say.
There was a thunderous crack that left me temporarily deaf. Something like an atom bomb channeled itself into a sizzling bolt about two-feet wide and shot across the floor.
And Dan was just… gone.
I lifted myself an infinitesimal margin to see the woman, the strike team leader, on her knees. Her broken arm had been realigned, and somehow she’d managed to push it inside her vest. Her good hand was smoking, and I saw traces of powerful magic trickling down her arm and dripping from her elbow.
“Die asshole,” she said, seemingly to herself. Then her eyes rolled back, and she collapsed.
My body didn’t want to move, but it had to. She’d hit him with something huge, but I didn’t know how this stuff worked. For all I knew, he had absorbed it and was going to fling it back at us. I trusted nothing at this point. I’d believe Dan was no longer a threat when I saw his dead body.
I managed to get to one knee without vomiting. Shakily, I rose to my feet. I had to go back down right away, as everything started to tunnel.
Crouching then, I took some measured breaths. Fox was in my hand.
Give it a second, and look around.
A mom and her little daughter walked past me, managing not to step in any of the blood, pointing to the awesome ceiling I knew was above me. There were having a perfectly nice, normal day, studiously and magically ignoring the carnage around them.
How many were in the room?
Quick count from here looked to be at least twenty.
Just having a regular day.
Babd lay at the bottom of the giant cast gate. She’d been thrown a good fifty feet. She wasn’t moving.
And where was Dan?
I didn’t see him.
Maybe the Lightning Bolt had simply turned him to ash.
Then I’d believe it when I saw the ashes.
I did a quick vector extrapolation based on where the strike leader was when she’d magiced his ass and where I was right now. If the blast was straight-line, which it probably was, I should be able to project…
There. Against the far wall. Lots and lots of blood, and one of his shoes. It was smoking.
But no Dan, and no Dan-sized piles of ash.
I carefully got the rest of the way to my feet. I took two more long breaths. I decided that I wasn’t going to pass out, which was encouraging.
I moved toward the wall, and it felt like I was walking through setting concrete. Whatever Dan had done to my nervous system was still jangling around. I had no strength, and I could feel cold sweat soaking my shirt.
He was gone but had left behind an obvious trail.
The thick smears of blood on the marble floor led back into the Hall of Sculpture.
I wanted to do some surface area math on the amount of his blood that I could see, and what that said about how much he was losing in terms of volume, but it was too complex for my shocked brain. It was a lot though.
I leaned against the wall for a couple of breaths, steadying myself.
Then I dragged my sorry ass around the corner, struggling to keep Fox up in some kind of defensive position.
The blood led through the Hall of Sculpture and out the back.
I was in bad shape, and I knew it. Never had walking thirty feet felt so far. I think I zoned out at least twice. If he’d wanted to ambush me and was paying attention, I’d be dead.
But I was alive, so I guess he wasn’t paying attention. Maybe he wasn’t doing too well either. I followed the blood through the Hall of Geology, expecting Dan to zap me or mind control me into having a heart attack or something at every step. I couldn’t go completely hair-trigger though and just blast anything that moved. There were people walking around.
It was surreal.
He’d taken a right into the Gems and Minerals exhibit.
As I staggered in, my heart sank.
My goggles showed me something I hadn’t expected. The Carnegie has an extensive gem section, and nearly half of the gems on display glowed with magical energy. I had very little idea what that meant, but I was sure it was much better for a wounded Praecant than for an idiot in a leather vest and bomber hat who couldn’t sling magic.
It was dark in here, mostly lit by colored lamps under and above the stones themselves.
A couple of people went by me.
Lots of glass and mirrors.
This was not the best environment for an encounter like this.
So focus on the blood on the floor, stupid. It wouldn’t lie.
And for God’s sake, stay alert.
I could feel adrenaline trying to push out whatever Dan had done to me, so it could re-assert itself as the sole cause of my shakiness. One thing was for sure:
if I lived until tomorrow, I was probably going to wish that I hadn’t.
But I’d take it.
Actually, there was another thing I knew for sure. The minerals and gems section had only one exit. If you wanted to leave, you went out the way you came in. Dan could go the whole way to the back, but he wasn’t going to be sneaking out and coming around behind me. Unless of course the magic in the gems gave him Praecant superpowers, and he could teleport or walk through walls.
Which, now that I thought of it, didn’t seem implausible.
Shit.
I tried to stay low, and inched my way through the exhibit.
I’d been in here dozens of times. It was cool. And I’m sure it was cool for the half-dozen people I encountered who were happily oohing and aahing at the minerals, ignoring the raggedy Praecant, the blood on the floor and the wildman decked out in leathers and carrying a gun.
I passed through the threshold between the minerals and gems and jewelry sections. Not as many of the rocks were glowing in here, but a bunch still were.
I was trying like crazy to stay focused, but it wasn’t always happening.
I took a moment to collect my breath, and as I did so, my mind started to drift.
Babd.
Gwen.
My family.
The Zoro on the hill in the park.
How I’d felt that night.
It seemed both real and dreamlike at the same time.
The things that had happened since then.
I tried to focus, to be completely here.
Concentrate...
Find something concrete and physical to key on...
The sensation of my feet on the floor?
My screwed up nervous system?
If someone wanted to ambush me-
Heat and light to the right.
A purple flash, some searing heat, and Fox was gone.
Dan swung his glowing, sizzling blade at me again, and some animal part of me managed to fall backward in time to keep it from carving me into two separate pieces. It was the magical weapon he’d taken from Stoneface.
I dropped the melted grip of Fox, which was so hot that it was burning my hand. He’d cut the gun clean in half, miraculously missing my hand. If it was me holding that blade, I would have just gone for the arm, but what the hell do I know?
Back in the warehouse, I’d seen him take the Archywhatsit to pieces with it in a matter of seconds. I had no reason to think I’d fare any better.
He blocked the exit, so I spun and backed away into the room. The “one way out” feature of this section of the museum had just converted itself into a massive liability.
“Lincoln,” said Dan, pointing the blade at me like a conductor’s wand. “I- I don’t really know what to say.”
I didn’t have the breath to respond.
“Brigit likes you, you know.”
I smirked inside.
Liked.
“I guess I should feel bad about this,” he said, and his voice was thin like something was caught in his throat. In the multi-colored underlighting, the blood all over him looked black.
“I should, but I don’t. I mean, I guess I do in some kind of intellectual way, but I don’t, you know, feel it feel it.”
Well aren’t you lucky.
“They would never have let you live anyway,” he said. “They’re such a bunch of tight asses. If they’d known what you were up to, they would have lit you up like a fucking Christmas tree. And I kept you hidden. I helped you.”
“Thanks,” I managed to say.
“Sarcastic or not?” he said. “I can’t tell. It’s like the only thing I’m not good at. I’ll assume you’re being sincere.”
He took a step toward me.
I looked around for something to grab as a weapon.
There was nothing.
“I mean, yeah, I needed your help to get rid of Guster and his Mickey Mouse Club. But what are you-”
And here he faltered. I could tell that he’d lost his focus for a moment. The blade itself dimmed. He drooped to one side and steadied himself against a display. I was lagging too, or maybe I could have used the opportunity to jump him. Except that he was armed and way bigger than me.
But then he was back and the moment was gone.
“Haha. Ha. Not feeling super great at the moment. Brigit should be back soon. She’ll fix me up,” he said.
“Dead,” I said, and shook my head.
He looked down, then to the side. He took a breath.
“Oh,” he said. “Okay.”
He pressed the heel of his free hand into his jaw for a moment and looked like he was trying to decide what to do.
Then, he put the hand toward me and formed his fingers into an intricate position.
“Sorry, Lincoln,” he said. “I mean. Not really. But, you know. Force of habit.”
He parted his lips to release a spell, but it never happened.
With a crash, all one hundred twenty pounds of Babd came flying through the doorway and attached herself to his throat. Her momentum caused them both to cartwheel onto the ground, breaking glass and scattering priceless jewelry everywhere.
She set her massive paws and shook him like a stuffed toy.
He tried to fight back, but I could see how weak he really was.
The magical knife flashed once, then twice, then three times.
Babd didn’t stop.
The amount of blood that flew every time she let go and re-fixed her bite was astonishing.
His blade swung far to the side, then buried itself into her.
She gave a last tug at him, then collapsed.
Dan tried to pull the blade away, but didn’t seem to have the strength.
I stumbled forward and grabbed the handle, trying not to let him touch me. His hand brushed mine, but nothing happened.
I stepped away, and Babd’s unmoving body fell off of him. I could see a smoking hole that went the whole way through her.
Dan did not get up.
His breathing was ragged.
I held the magical cylinder in my hand, the blade no longer present. How did it work? Dan had said it was powered by the internal magic of the wielder, but here, surrounded by all of the magic in the gems, maybe it would work for me.
I tried to remember the magical keyword that I’d heard both him and Stoneface use back in the Strip District, but there was no chance of that. The magical words didn’t stick in my brain.
I tried to visualize the power I could see flowing all around me from the gems, channel it through me and into the blade. Drive it with my intent.
But nothing happened.
Stupid. Silly.
I wasn’t a Praecant, so it was no more than a stick to me.
I threw the weapon behind me as hard as I could.
I could see that I wouldn’t need it.
Dan was in bad shape. The dim light revealed the blood still coming from the two gunshot wounds, and his throat was something I’d rather not have to remember seeing.
For an instant, for a foolish single instant, I thought about calling 9-1-1. It was instinct, I guess. Since I was a kid, that’s what you did in an emergency.
Or maybe he was pushing that thought into my head. The Lincoln behind the glass slowly shook his head. “911 is a joke,” he said.
In some other universe, Dan is being carted off on a stretcher and some dour detective is assuring me that he’ll face justice for sure after he’s healed up.
The ref behind the glass said, “Move it along, Lincoln.”
“Hey buddy,” said Dan, and the sound of his voice was wet, suppressed. “Hey, come here. I want to tell you something.”
In some other universe, I was stupid enough to do that so he could touch me.
In some other universe, he told me the story of everything he’d done, and why and how.
“I did something else to you, and I wanted to tell you,” he said.
Something else.
But I realized that I alrea
dy knew. The piece of my brain that had been working on something for the last little while finally got its shit together and delivered.
It all fit.
The memories of what had happened to my family, the kind of destruction that had been logged in the accident reports, everything that had happened to me after that and how it had fit into Dan’s plan. The flavor of magic I’d only recently remembered from the accident.
It had been Dan.
I had no idea how, but that was the only thing that made sense.
There had been no gas explosion. I was sure of it. The accident that had ruined my life hadn’t been an accident at all. It had been deliberate. And Dan had been responsible.
Somehow.
And that was that.
A thing welled up inside me that I didn’t know was there. I’d acted in self-defense at Carol Dee’s house, even though it had turned out that it really wasn’t. I’d acted in a moment of fury in the park when I’d seen Babd turned into a bonfire and found a ball bat in my hands. And the other things I’d done had been mostly unwitting at worst or well intentioned at best.
This thing was different.
There were a hundred good, very practical reasons why Dan should die, but none of them mattered right now. This new conviction that had appeared fully formed in my mind told me that Dan was in fact going to die, but not for any of those real and sensible reasons. I was going to kill him simply because I wanted nothing more in the universe right now than to personally force the life from his miserable body.
Yes, for Gwen.
For Babd.
For my family.
For Guster, Carol and Stoneface.
And even for Brigit.
But mostly for me.
Because I wanted to and because I deserved to.
I didn’t have Fox, and I couldn’t make the magical blade work.
Oh well. I had hands. I’d grab him by the bloody mangled throat and make sure that he didn’t last one more second in this world than he had to.
It was only when I knelt to grab his neck that I saw he wasn’t breathing any more.
Dead. Bled out.
My hands were shaking.
I stood up and kicked his side in frustration.
The first screams from the rest of the museum began about two seconds later.
Chapter 19
Lincoln, Fox and the Bad Dog Page 32
