He lifted a finger to stroke one side of his mustache. He pretended to consider it. Then he said, “That’s one idea. Or I could hobble you and then kill her while you watch and then have you taken away to be tortured until you tell us where the talisman is. Yes, I think all in all, that’s the option I prefer.”
This time, I saw him make his move. I guess I was expecting it the whole time he was talking. I saw his hand go to the hilt of his sword just as it had in the tower where Lady Kata died. Just as before, he drew his sword in a flash of steel and swung it in a cruel arc at my head. I threw up my arm in a useless gesture of defense.
And with a loud clang, his blade struck the blade of the sword that was suddenly—magically—gripped in my hand!
I gaped at my blade crossed with his. It was the queen’s sword, the silver sword I had drawn from the heart of the oak! Just as it had vanished into me, so it had sprung out of me in the moment of need. Likewise, the mercurial armor that had been sucked into my body now emerged from my skin and clothed me head to toe in liquid metal!
Whoa! I thought. And Sir Aravist looked like he was thinking something similar—because he was standing there just like I was standing there, staring, gaping at the sword just like I was.
But I understood it first. I recovered my wits first.
I lifted my foot high and kicked him in the stomach.
I don’t know where I came up with that move. Something I once saw in a movie fight scene maybe, I don’t know. I just thought of it, and I did it. I planted my foot hard in Sir Aravist’s leather-clad belly. I don’t think it hurt him much, but it was a square-on blow, and it sent him reeling backward.
I didn’t charge after him. It would have been suicide. I mean, yes, I had a sword now, but I hadn’t the faintest idea how to use it. If I got into a duel with him, he would cut me to pieces, armor or no.
He was already recovering his balance, already straightening on his feet, ready to fight.
I grabbed Lady Betheray’s hand and rushed with her across the room.
It was a desperation move. How was I going to outrun Aravist? How was I going to get past the other two guards? I had no idea. But this was the only thing I could think of.
Sword in one hand, lady in the other, I reached the bedroom door. I swung Betheray through it.
“Run!” I cried.
And I leapt after her into the house’s hallway.
Except not the hallway. Not the house. I suddenly wasn’t anywhere I recognized.
Then I did recognize it. My Nissan! I was in my Nissan! Sitting behind the wheel of my car in the driveway outside Serge Orosgo’s hilltop ranch!
I didn’t know whether to scream at the insanity of it or to say a prayer of thanks for my salvation. Second after second, I just sat there in the car, panting with terror and excitement, my heart fluttering in my chest as if I’d just awoken from a nightmare. Which I suppose in some way is exactly what I had done. Except I’d awoken from a nightmare into another nightmare, because now I was back in LA, and I had to find the book Another Kingdom, or Sera, the girl-boy assassin, would be set free to torture me to death—unless I was teleported back to Galiana first. Then Sir Aravist would torture me to death. Either way, there seemed a high probability that I was going to be tortured to death.
It took me three tries before I could steady my violently trembling hand enough to slip the key into the ignition and get the Nissan going.
SHATTERED, TREMBLING, CONFUSED beyond reason, I drove home through the snaking darkness of Coldwater Canyon. I kept telling myself I needed to think—Think! Think!—but I couldn’t think. Bouncing back and forth between the fatal dangers of Los Angeles and the fatal dangers of Galiana had left me in something like a state of waking coma. I stared through the windshield without seeing the road. I steered the car without knowing where I was headed. My mouth hung open like an idiot’s mouth or a drunk’s. I did everything but drool, and I probably would have drooled too if I’d thought of it. But I couldn’t think of anything, nothing at all.
Somehow—by habit, I guess—I made my way back to North Hollywood. I found my apartment building. I drove into my garage and parked. I reached for the handle of the car door.
And I froze with my fingers on the metal.
The old Galianan doorway problem. What if I stepped through the door and was back in Netherdale? Sir Aravist had been two steps behind me at most, his sword drawn. A second after I returned he would be on me. He would strike me down a second later. Lady Betheray would only live a few moments after that.
I sat there in my dark car, surrounded by dark cars in the half-lit garage. I didn’t know what to do.
Finally, I went into my pocket and brought out my phone. The glow of the screen filled the Nissan’s shadows. I searched for a video: “How to Fight with a Sword.” Guess what? There was a whole series of three-minute instructional sword-fighting videos. No kidding. Yay, internet.
I sat in the car and watched the videos. Each video covered one type of blow or defensive move. I watched each one three or four times, trying to memorize the instructions. When I had gone through six of them—as many as I thought I could remember—I set the phone on my lap and closed my eyes. I imagined how I would use the moves in the video to fight with Sir Aravist. There was one I liked especially: a forehand slash down to the hand that knocked the sword aside, then a back slash to the face. I knew I would only have one chance to catch my opponent off guard before he killed me, but I pictured in my mind what it would look like if I pulled it off. It calmed me down a little. A little, anyway.
I stuffed the phone back in my pocket. I sat and stared at the car door some more. I realized that the moment I passed through it might be the moment of my death. I took a deep breath. I opened the door and stepped out.
No transformation. No Galiana. I was still in Los Angeles. Still in the garage.
I stayed there a few more minutes. I rehearsed the sword fight moves I had learned in the videos, moving about the concrete floor, imagining the sword in my hand, slashing my arm down to my opponent’s wrist, up to his face. After a while, another car came into the garage, and I was caught in its headlights, playing at the duel. It made me feel like an idiot. I headed into the building.
I went up to my apartment. Each time I passed through a door—the building door, the elevator door, the apartment door—I braced myself. Each time, I thought I might be hurled back into the hallway of Netherdale with Sir Aravist right behind me. I couldn’t even enter my own bathroom without being afraid it would send me back to die at the point of Aravist’s sword.
By the time I went to bed, I was a nervous wreck. I lay there wide awake, watching the sword-fighting videos on my phone again and again. And when that exhausted me, I put the phone down and just lay there, staring into the darkness.
My weary mind returned to Lady Betheray. The feel of her in my arms. The sight of her tearstained face turned up to me. What a woman she was! So feminine, so passionate, so steadfast, honorable, and loyal. I had never met anyone else like her. How was it possible I had won her love? A Hollywood nobody like me. In those snatches of half memory that had come to me out of nowhere when I was holding her, I seemed a different person. Better. Braver. More heroic. How would I ever be able to live up to that quantum man whom I had never been but only remembered? In a way, I thought bitterly, I’d be lucky if Sir Aravist killed me the minute I returned. At least I’d never have to see the disappointment in Betheray’s eyes when she realized I was not the man she thought I was.
It was almost dawn before I drifted off to sleep.
THE BOOK!
That was my first thought when my eyes opened in the late morning. Somehow I had to find that book, Another Kingdom. If I didn’t find it—and if I didn’t find it fast—Serge Orosgo would let Sera kill me. Who knows? Sera was so crazy and so angry, he might come after me and kill me even if Orosgo didn’t let him. That is, if I didn’t flash back to Galiana and get killed by Sir Aravist first.
But wh
ere was I supposed to find the book? I had no idea where it was. I didn’t even know where to begin looking.
I went to the bathroom—after hesitating on the threshold for several minutes, afraid I might be flung back into the sword fight. I brushed my teeth and shaved, looking in the mirror. The bruise on my head was totally gone, washed away by the nymphs in the magic river of Shadow Wood. The marks on my wrist, same thing—gone as well. Even so, I looked like crap. Exhausted. Eyes full of worry. My hand so unsteady I nicked myself with the razor twice. Some hero.
As I was wiping the last of the shaving cream off me, I heard my phone buzz in the living room. Reflexively, I went to answer it, crossing the bathroom threshold again, only this time without thinking. The moment I realized what I’d done, I pulled up short, terrified Aravist was about to run me through. He wasn’t. I was still here, still in LA.
I hurried to the phone, which was recharging on my desk by the window. It was a video call. My kid sister, Riley.
I plopped down into the desk chair and answered it on the laptop so I could see her on the bigger screen.
There she was, as she almost always was when she called me, as she always was in her crazy conspiracy videos, lying tummy down on her unmade bed, her legs bent at the knees so that her tiny feet in their ankle socks waggled up in the air behind her. She was only three years younger than I was, but she seemed a childlike creature, small with straw-yellow hair she wore in braided pigtails and a round, cute face that got all pinched and wrinkled when she was upset, like a baby’s face when she’s about to cry. Her body was more a girl’s body than a woman’s, with no shape to speak of, and she always wore tattered jeans and baggy T-shirts that gave her a gamine charm. I couldn’t look at her without wanting to feed her and tuck her into bed as I had often done when she was little.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey. What’s up?” she said.
For a moment, I wondered if I should tell her what had happened to me after my dinner with Mom and Dad last night—tell her about my second dinner on the patio with Serge Orosgo. Should I let her know that our family’s benefactor was a homicidal nutball with a gunsel who wanted to kill me?
Probably not. Riley was so crazy already with all her alien invasion conspiracy theories, I didn’t want to make her any worse. So I just said, “Nothing’s up. What’s the matter with you?”
“Who said anything’s the matter?”
“You only call me when something’s wrong, Riley.”
“That’s so untrue!”
“Okay, how’s everything?”
“Everything sucks,” she said. And she kicked one little foot pettishly into the mattress. “I hate our parents.”
“Which means they’ve cut off your money.”
“That’s such a shitty thing to say, Austin. Not everything’s about money.” It was my turn to roll my eyes. “All right, yes, they cut me off,” she said. “But it’s still shitty to say it.”
“Well, whatever you’re doing to annoy them, they want me to talk you out of it.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“Which means you’re going out with some awful guy again.”
I remembered my mother had said something about this: This new one … Juan or Pedro … Unfortunately, the same girlish vulnerability I found endearing in Riley was a magnet to the sort of men who wanted to use her and mistreat her. Which, sadly enough, seemed to be just the sort of men she was attracted to.
“Not everything is about a guy, Austin!” Riley said. Then she said, “His name is Marco,” and she coyly twined her stockinged feet together and smiled at someone standing behind her camera.
On cue, Marco entered the picture. He plopped down on the mattress beside her and gave her a smack on the backside: a gesture of ownership she clearly enjoyed. It made me wince. Plus the guy looked like a drug dealer—assuming he wasn’t something worse, like a pimp or a hitman or a serial killer. He was long and sinewy with blue ink tats on his neck, chest, and arms, all of which were visible because he wasn’t wearing a shirt. He looked aggressively good shirtless too, with his washboard abs folded neatly into the enormous silver belt buckle at the front of his jeans. He had long, shaggy hair and long vulpine features and olive skin like some brand of Latino. He smiled at me, hand still resting on Riley’s bottom. It was a domineering and insinuating smile, a strong-man-to-a-weak-man smile, an I-have-my-hand-on-your-sister’s-bottom smile. The bastard.
“Austin, this is Marco. Marco, Austin,” Riley said. “Isn’t he cool?” she added fondly, rubbing her head against him as if she were a kitten.
“Jesus, Riley,” I said. “Of course Mom and Dad won’t give you money. What did you expect?”
“It’s not because of Marco.”
“Of course it’s because of Marco. Look at him.”
Marco smiled wider, showing me his white predatory teeth.
“Well, okay, they do hate him,” Riley said affectionately. “But it’s my vids they’re angry about. They say they’re not going to help me anymore until I stop posting them. They say I’m humiliating them.”
“Well, you know, Ri, the whole alien-Illuminati-world-takeover thing: it does kind of embarrass Mom and Dad in front of their intellectual friends.”
“It is because she is getting too close to the truth,” Marco chimed in at this point. He had a deep, mellifluous voice with a fake-sounding Latin Lover accent. He was the whole bad-news package, all right. No wonder Riley adored him.
“Yeah, too close to the truth,” I said drily. “That must be it.”
“Marco was a documentary filmmaker in Venezuela during the collapse,” Riley said proudly. “He saw my videos online and came to help me.”
“I’ll bet he did.”
“We are very close to exposing the whole conspiracy, my friend,” he said. And he lifted his hand off my kid sister’s butt long enough to indicate the mess on the shelf on the wall behind them. Books about UFOs and Illuminati stacked up or leaning lopsided. Purple crystals and plastic pyramids and a big pile of ragged pages tied together with twine.
“We just need a little more time,” Riley wheedled. “If they would just give us enough to live on for a few more months, we’ll be famous.”
“Riley …”
“Could you ask Richard for us? Please?”
“Richard won’t give you money if Mom and Dad won’t.”
“But he’ll argue with Mom and Dad if you ask him to. They love him and he loves you and you love me—that’s how our family operates.”
I was about to ask “Who do you love, Riley?” but then Marco replaced his hand on her backside and gave me his toothy grin again, so that answered that.
Riley rolled over and pressed the back of her head into Marco’s bare belly. “Please, Austin?” she repeated. She stretched the words out as far as they would go.
I looked at her, sprawled on her side with her T-shirt bunched up to expose her navel, and her jeans torn to show the white flesh high on one thigh. I thought about my parents and my brother being funded by Serge Orosgo and Serge Orosgo threatening to kill me for a book about a world I kept teleporting into. I thought maybe Riley was the only sane one among us. It sure as hell wasn’t me.
“I’ll think about it,” I said finally. I gestured toward Marco. “Meanwhile, dump this clown. He’s trash.”
Marco grinned even wider. The bastard. I broke the connection.
I sat back in my chair. I ran my hand through my hair and sighed. My family. Serge Orosgo. Another Kingdom. The sword fight at Netherdale. Too much stuff. So much stuff! I gazed dolefully out the window.
And I saw the black Mustang parked across the street. Sera was at the wheel. The killer was staring up at me, his eyes bright in his kittenish face, his teeth bared in an insane grin.
I felt my whole body clutch like a dry engine. Look at him! Gun in his jacket, murder in his heart. I had to get out of there, and fast. I didn’t know whether Sera had come to kill me or just to watch me for Orosgo. I didn’
t know if Sera knew either. But I knew if I stayed in my apartment alone and did nothing, I’d be completely unprotected. I couldn’t call the police—it would be sure to get back to Orosgo. No, I needed to get myself to a public space, somewhere there were people, witnesses, who might make Sera think twice.
Hitchcock’s. It was past breakfast time: My people might have come and gone. But there’d be others there. And Schuyler would be there, working the day shift. Schuyler might be pissed off at me because Jane Janeway loved me instead of her, but I still thought she’d probably object if Sera shot me dead in front of her—if only because she wanted to do the job herself.
It was an unpleasant journey. I was afraid of every doorway—afraid it would take me back to Netherdale—afraid Sera would be waiting for me on the other side.
Down in the garage, I searched under my car for a tracker. I didn’t find one, but it didn’t matter much. Sera didn’t need a tracker. He and his Mustang were still right there at the curb when I came driving out of the garage. The minute he saw me, the slender blond pulled away from the curb and followed after. He wasn’t subtle about it either. He kept his front fender pressed close to my rear. I could see his bright eyes and eerie grin in my mirror. Stopped at a traffic light, I saw him pout at me flirtatiously and wink.
He followed me right into the restaurant’s parking lot, but he didn’t get out of his car. He just sat there behind the wheel, just watched me as I walked to the restaurant door.
I went into the restaurant without thinking about the door. There are so many doors to walk through in life, you can’t be afraid of all of them, even if you know one of them might be your last.
It was a relief to be in my old hangout. The familiar brown wood walls and white fairy lights, the TV news dancing on the liquor bottles behind the bar—it was all so familiar, it created an illusion of normalcy and even safety. Sera wouldn’t just walk in here and open fire. I didn’t think he would, anyway.
There were plenty of starving artists still sitting at the tables, drinking their coffee concoctions under the old suspense movie one-sheets. Even a couple of my disreputable crew were still at our usual place by the kitchen door. Ted Wexler, the aspiring asshole agent, was scrolling through the emails on his phone with one hand and picking at the crust of some dry toast with the other. The inscrutable beauty Wren Yen was inscrutably blowing the steam off a cup of tea while inscrutably staring into space, a living Eurasian stereotype.
Another Kingdom Page 18
