Ah, yes. It had to be — a surprise visitor from Bledsoe’s past. A man who should have been dead ages ago but must have had some injected help.
Theo Tremaine, who had taken Claude’s side in everything and who had done nothing but stand in the way of Bledsoe winning over Amanda.
Well, time hadn’t quite taken the man down, but now Bledsoe would finish the job.
40
Loss and Leaving
Winston needed the confusion in his head to clear, but he didn’t know how to make it happen. Bledsoe had been grappling with him, striking him, forcing the air from his body, and now he was gone.
Colors and shapes were starting to come back. The stone wall behind him. The feel of the cement under his back. Cold wind chilling the sweat on his face. A low thrum filling his ears.
He tried to see where Bledsoe had gone but found his view blocked by another person — his mom, crawling on her bound hands and knees, blood-smeared face gazing at him with worry.
Beyond her, he saw Bledsoe’s legs flailing, then Theo came into view, dragging Bledsoe by the neck.
Winston saw motion above him and glanced up. At first, he was baffled. A handful of stars descended from the sky. Some were white, some red. Every so often, one would disappear, then come back.
Winston blinked, and then the puzzle pieces fell into place. A helicopter.
That figured. The FBI was about to arrive, right when Bledsoe was in the middle of killing them all. Were they here for Bledsoe or Winston — or both at once?
More movement, this time from his left. Winston craned his neck and saw Agent Lynch rise to his full height. The man glowered at Theo, who still had his hands around Bledsoe’s throat. Lynch strode purposefully toward Theo. He reached inside his jacket and smoothly withdrew his handgun, and this one was decidedly larger than Bledsoe’s.
Winston tried to call a warning, but it was as if some of his brain’s signals only went in circles. Not even his mouth opened. He squinted his eyes, took a short breath, and tried again. Nothing.
The world continued to shift dizzily. His mom’s hands reached his leg. She kept repeating a word that he only gradually realized was his own name.
Several steps behind Lynch, Shade rose into a crouching run, as if the football had been snapped and the season depended on him making this quarterback sack. This was the same move that had knocked Brian Steinhoff off Winston and well across the school gym. It was also the same move that Shade had tried on Lynch under Old Town Pizza and had resulted in Shade bouncing off the man like a flat basketball.
This time, though, Shade had a slightly different plan. He was coming up on Lynch from behind, and he had the element of surprise.
No yell. No warning. Shade dropped his shoulder and, at a full sprint, rammed it with all his strength into the agent’s kidney.
Lynch’s legs gave out. The gun flew from his hand. His back arched in sudden agony, but his body continued forward, falling until he landed face-first in the turf, left arm now trapped in the sling beneath him.
Shade wasted no time. He landed with one knee right in the small of Lynch’s back and grabbed for the agent’s right hand, seeking to put him into the same armlock he’d used on Shade only a moment ago. However, as soon as Lynch realized what was happening, he forced his arm straight. Shade didn’t have his balance set and couldn’t counter the large man’s strength. Lynch bucked under Shade, throwing him to the side. Then Lynch twisted his body, and one leg connected with Shade’s shoulder, knocking him to the ground.
Shade tried to find his balance and get to his knees, but it was too late. Lynch dove at him, landing the top of his head square in Shade’s breastbone. Shade fell onto his backpack, then Lynch was straddling him, nostrils flared and eyes wide with fury.
Winston tried to roll toward Shade and struggled to get an elbow under his body for leverage.
“This is really going to hurt,” Lynch announced as he drew back a fist.
Shade leaned forward, as if starting a sit-up, quickly spun to the side, and rammed the heel of his hand into Lynch’s sling. Lynch leaned back, howling, leaving himself even more open.
“I bet it does,” said Shade, then he hit the spot again. Winston saw the man’s forearm collapse inward at its center.
Before Lynch could back away, a curly-haired man rose up behind him and clamped a hand onto the back of Lynch’s collar. His other hand pressed a gun barrel into the back of Lynch’s skull.
“Freeze or die, Lynch,” said Agent Smith.
***
Bledsoe tried to speak but found he couldn’t. He considered grabbing the old man’s throat and choking him back, because that seemed like the most obvious, natural response under the circumstances, but his left hand was clamped around some hard, round object and the right one still throbbed with incredible pain.
So he fell back on the tactic that seemed to be working best tonight. He focused his energy into his neck and took a mental deep breath since he couldn’t draw a physical one. Bledsoe felt more depleted than he could remember being in years, perhaps ever. It was like trying to bring in a huge amount of air for a deep ocean dive and only getting a hiccup.
It would be enough, though. He only needed a second.
Bledsoe forced that pocket of energy through his neck and into Theo’s hands with as much sharp intensity as he could muster, as if he were shoving in a knife blade.
Theo’s reaction was instant and instinctive. His hands released as he cried out. He took a step back from Bledsoe and glanced at his fingers, perhaps wondering if they’d been burned.
Bledsoe didn’t leave him any more time to wonder. He rose to his feet just as he swung his left arm and brought the object in his hand crashing into Theo’s temple.
Or so he intended. Somehow, the old man’s left arm floated up, crossing before his face, and deflected the shot just as it was about to land. At the same time, Theo’s body pivoted as it followed his arm, momentarily exposing his back to Bledsoe. Then Theo’s right elbow followed along behind the pivot and rammed into Bledsoe’s nose.
Bledsoe stumbled back and swore. He wiped at the bottom of his nose with the back of his gun hand and saw a smear of blood.
“Twenty-eight years of Tai Chi,” called Theo. “Not bad for an old guy in a park, eh?”
Bledsoe could barely hear the man over the wind and thudding of the rotor blades as the helicopter descended toward them. Bledsoe felt his moment of opportunity slipping away. Winston and Amanda remained on the ground, but they wouldn’t stay there much longer. That damned Agent Smith had somehow reappeared and had Lynch face down in the grass with a gun to his head.
The tide was shifting. Time to change boats.
Bledsoe’s right hand glowed an intense azure, and he could feel the beginnings of tactile sensation along with the pulsing of pain. And in his left… What was that thing in his hand? It wasn’t the ring, after all, which still dangled from his forearm.
He glanced down and saw a smooth, black object filling his palm, shaped like a thick doughnut. He’d come away from grappling with Winston holding the companion piece to the artifact that let him see through space. This object must work with its counterpart somehow.
“You shouldn’t have come back, Theo,” said Bledsoe.
“I’ve had a long life,” Theo replied. “I want to make sure you don’t screw that up by erasing it.”
Bledsoe smirked and wiped at his nose again. More blood.
“Hold that thought,” said Bledsoe.
He leveled his gun squarely at the center of Theo’s chest and tried to see if his trigger finger would respond yet. Impressively, it did.
Relatively speaking, a 9 mm bullet doesn’t inflict much damage. It’s not a pea shooter like a .22, but it doesn’t make an exclamatory statement like a .357 or a .45. However, at nearly point-blank range and firing into the fragile organs of a century-old body, 9 mm bullets will get the job done. A small, black hole appeared in Theo’s jacket, right between the heart and sternum, Bledsoe figured. But
Bledsoe also saw the dark spray eject from behind Theo where the shot exited. Between front and back, the shell would have ripped through organs and arteries, tearing a path of destruction that not even QVs could fix within the scant seconds left.
Theo wavered on his feet and raised one hand to his wound. Blood spilled out and across his fingers. He stared up at Bledsoe, a mix of disbelief and irritation on his face.
“Tai Chi that,” said Bledsoe.
Theo’s eyes narrowed, and he managed to make a fist with his bloody hand, save for the extended, trembling middle finger.
Then one leg gave out beneath him, and Theo collapsed to his side and forward, landing hard. His head bounced off the cement, and Bledsoe heard a crack, as of a splitting melon. Bledsoe watched for a few seconds, but Theo lay completely still, deader than dead, as Bledsoe’s granduncle used to say of fallen enemies.
Exhaustion swept through Bledsoe, perhaps propelled by that helicopter’s whirlwind battering the hilltop. He lowered his hands in weariness. As he did so, the ring slipped down to his left wrist — and suddenly jumped as it surrounded his fist, suspended in midair through some magnetic force.
No, it wasn’t surrounding his fist. It had fallen into place around the new piece, the black torus. Bledsoe could feel them both connect with his mind as the white crosshairs reappeared in the lower corner of his vision. He felt the torus pulling against his palm, as if trying to escape. He cradled the ring against his body for a second, then shifted his grip from the torus to the ring. The smaller artifact began to spin within its partner, just as he had seen it do for Winston.
Bledsoe needed an exit out of here. He searched about and found his enemies gazing at him. They were not pleased.
***
Winston stared in disbelief at Theo’s fallen body. The disconnect between the two moments was too great for him to grasp. First, there had been that Tai Chi comment. Winston might be on his back, trying to get the pieces in his head to all fit back together, but even he could recognize the sassy awesomeness of that remark. It was Theo — lonely, nerdy, quaintly polite Theo — stepping up and enjoying a retribution over sixty years in the making.
And in the next moment…
Reality slammed home in Winston’s mind.
“No!” he yelled.
Ignoring his pain and fatigue, working through his fading disorientation, he sat up and brought Little e to bear on Bledsoe. With his left hand, he pulled the chrono rings from between its arms. He wanted all the energy he could get. There was at least one big charge left in the device, and he felt just fine using it all for this purpose.
Little e’s tubes undulated, narrowing near the tips, focusing the device’s energy into a pulsing, piercingly bright nexus of contained lightning.
Bledsoe vanished in an almost instantaneous double-flash of light.
“Oh, ho!”
The voice came from behind Winston, next to the curved stone wall. Winston craned around to see Bledsoe standing there, gun aimed squarely at his chest. Above Bledsoe’s other hand floated the geo pieces, the torus spinning freely within the larger ring rotating above Bledsoe’s hand.
Winston felt his heart shatter. He hadn’t even noticed the missing piece until now. The brightness at Little e’s end ebbed.
“Look what I can do!” Bledsoe crowed.
In another flash of light and blue sparks, he disappeared and reappeared again, this time beyond the stone wall and rosebushes to Winston’s right.
Winston realized that Bledsoe was on the verge of escaping forever. He shifted around, working to push more energy through Little e and prepare for his kill shot.
In reply, Bledsoe leveled his gun at Winston.
Amanda, still on her knees with bound hands, propelled herself forward and landed between her son and Bledsoe.
“Don’t!” she screamed. “Devlin, enough!”
As the wind whipped at them and the helicopter’s landing lights bathed Council Crest in faint orange, red, and green, Winston and Bledsoe stared at each other with frozen hatred.
Winston frantically tried to weigh his options. If he could lean to the side and get off an accurate shot, he might disable Bledsoe before the man could fire. Even as he played the events through in his mind, though, he knew it wouldn’t work. In the half second it would take Little e to discharge, Bledsoe would take his shot, and that would be the end of his mother.
Just like Theo.
As it turned out, Agent Smith made the decision for him.
“Bledsoe, put it down!” he called.
Winston didn’t dare turn away, but it was a fair guess that he’d cuffed Lynch and left Shade to guard him. From the edge of his vision, Winston saw Smith maneuvering slowly around the compass circle, gun trained on Bledsoe.
“Damn it, Lynch!” called Bledsoe. “Who got you out, Smith? Management?” Then he gave a bitter laugh. “You’re with Management. You have been all along.”
“On the ground!” Smith repeated.
“That’s a good idea,” Bledsoe said. “I could use a rest.”
Sparks exploded from the space Bledsoe had occupied.
He was gone. Escaped, with another Alpha Machine piece.
Winston slumped as Little e went dark and reverted to its narrow, tapered form. A pool of blood spread from below Theo’s body, finding its meandering way across the cement and toward Winston. As in the blimp hangar, he had failed completely.
Amanda’s face appeared in front of his own. Tears mixed with blood on her cheeks, and her eyes were full of worry as she brushed at Winston’s hair with her bound hands, searching for any injuries.
“Are you OK?” she asked, barely audible over the roar of rage and despair. “Winston? Can you hear me?” He couldn’t tell if that swelling thunder came from inside him or without.
The pieces of his mind were drifting apart again. His mother’s touch somehow seemed separate from her words.
Over her shoulder, he saw a massive helicopter touch down in the field beyond the compass circle. It loomed black in the night, with white edging around some of its windows. Its long, sloping profile reminded Winston of a hornet. Had it come to sting and swallow him up?
The back wall of the helicopter smoothly swung down until it touched the earth. A small figure ran down the ramp. Her long, streaming hair swirled about her head in the rotor wind as if she were caught in a tornado. The landing lights silhouetted her body as she approached.
“Winston, can you move?” his mom asked. She tried to pull him upright but lacked the strength. “Police are coming. We have to go now.”
Only dimly did Winston realize that flashing red and blue lights strobed across the treetops down the hillside.
“Winston!”
A new voice. Beside his mom. Then a face. Thin, pale. Lips dark like midnight. And those eyes. Brown, brilliant eyes he could fall into and study like a fine painting until the world’s end.
“Help me lift him,” said Amanda. “Shade, come here!”
Those eyes blinked, looked away. What would he do without them? Without Theo or his dad?
Strong hands gripped under his arms, lifting him from the stones. Shade draped Winston’s arm over his shoulders and gripped him around the ribs.
“Come on, man,” Shade said in his ear, and he could hear the tears in his friend’s voice.
Winston felt Little e fall from his fingers, heard it ring and clatter across the stones.
“I’ve got it!” Alyssa said.
“I’m here, honey,” said Winston’s mom from somewhere close. “I’ve got you.”
A distant man’s voice, all but lost in the storm, shouted, “I’ll take care of all this! Go!”
Winston tripped on the lip of the helicopter ramp, but hands supported him. He saw tiny lights in the cave before him, hundreds of them. Perhaps he was in the throat of a monster that had just swallowed him. The monster’s incessant growl quickly rose into a whine. Winston couldn’t make out anything around him. Had the monster taken everyone in
the end?
The world careened, moaned, dimmed, rose up underneath him. Winston only knew that he had failed. And then, as black exhaustion bloomed from deep within his bones and enveloped him, he lost even that.
To Be Continued…
Don’t stop now! The climactic conclusion of our trilogy, Winston Chase and the Omega Mesh, is only one click away. Grab your copy HERE!
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AUTHOR’S NOTE
Not surprisingly, there’s a lot of my past tied up in the Winston Chase trilogy. I went to the same middle school (albeit with a very slight name change) as Winston. I was the kid in the middle of that ring of boys during gym class. I spent the summer after my junior year of high school doing odd jobs in Tillamook, Oregon…and enjoying all the smells that go with it.
I also took care whenever possible to research the locations in these books. The little hiding spot in the basement stacks at Multnomah County Central Library? It’s real. I took pictures. That access to the Shanghai Tunnels under Old Town Pizza? I did the tour. The manager at the Tillamook Air Museum was kind enough to let me crawl around inside that JF-2 Duck (which, in an earlier draft, was Winston’s escape vehicle at the end of Book 2, complete with emergency landing near Haystack Rock farther up the coastline). And yeah, I had some great times at Council Crest. In 1994, my wife and I had our first kiss on the spot where Shade and Lynch fight. That makes me laugh.
Winston Chase and the Theta Factor Page 32
