Max Quick: The Bane of the Bondsman (Max Quick Series Book 3)

by Mark Jeffrey

  And Max knew, it was not a Bondsman song. It had not emanated from his dark energy, like the Dream had. Rather, the song was a comment on the drudgery of every day existence. It was a protest of the Bondsman’s world. It something coming from the people themselves.

  Marvin Sparkle listened but merely stared into the streets silently.

  “And now we have these people popping in,” Cody said. “People from other times.”

  “And that unspeakable thing down there,” Marvin said, referring to the vortex.

  “The Bondsman is unifying, connecting, collapsing boundaries,” Logan added. “The illusory nature of the world as separate and distinct entities and consciousness is breaking down. Every time is becoming the same time. Everywhere is becoming the center.”

  “A singularity,” Ian snapped. “Everything is racing towards some kind of unification of opposites. Or … or …”

  Logan helped: “Yes, that is correct. Change is increasing exponentially, until even change itself changes and becomes its opposite: One-ness.”

  “But shouldn’t that be good?” Ian said. “I mean — it’s terrifying on one level, yeah. But shouldn’t it lead to something more positive?”

  Logan nodded. “Yes. It could. And it was meant to. But the Bondsman is warping it, corrupting it, speeding it up — partly through Max. He wants a One that is shaped like a pyramid, with himself and ultimately the Archons at the top, feeding off the bulk of the pyramid below, forever. One-ness is meant to be a circle. But it doesn’t have to be.”

  “The Archons — the Bondsman — they’re using me,” Max said. “I’m the one collapsing times. I can’t help it.”

  “Your very presence empowers them, yes.” Logan confirmed. “As I have said.”

  “So you’re radioactive,” Casey said. “Psychically speaking.”

  Max nodded. Even as he did so, several carriages popped into existence in the streets below. Startled car drivers swerved out of the way, barely managing to hit the horses drawing them.

  “And still you resist,” Logan offered to Max. “Even when it is intolerable and impossible.”

  Do what only you can do, Romani had said.

  “Damn,” Ian breathed, looking down on the chaos below. Now several Native Americans had appeared, startled by the modern world springing up all around them. They drew guns and looked around anxiously. People in the street nearby ran screaming.

  “All of history is colliding, happening at once,” Logan continued. “If this continues, history will merge into an eternity of Now that is perpetual and horrific beyond belief.”

  “There’s no entropy in a permanent Now,” Ian said. “It would never run down. It would just … go on forever.”

  “The Archons would feed off the despair of all the world’s people for eternity,” Logan said.

  “Perdition,” Cody said. “Hell. That’s what we’re talking about here?”

  “But that can only happen if Max becomes the Bondsman,” Casey said. “Right?” She turned to Logan. “He’s the only who is powerful enough to complete the job. The Bondsman we have now can sort of inch the ball up the field, but he needs Max to sort of cap the thing off, to make it really work. Because of his talent, his power as an Imaginal. Right?”

  Logan nodded. “So it would seem.”

  “Yeah, that’s it alright,” Max said. “And I know you still don’t trust me, Casey.”

  Casey fingered the edge of the Red Roses and wondered if even her weapons were powerful enough to actually kill Max, should it come to that. She glanced at Marvin Sparkle and their eyes met. For the first time, she actually understood why he had tried to kill Max.

  Spotting this, Jane Willow inched slightly closer. When Casey noticed, she dropped her hand from the Roses, embarrassed that she had even been thinking that.

  Cody Chance watched this exchange from the shadows on the other side of the room, where he had carefully and quietly positioned himself, his hands on his own guns.

  “So don’t go,” Casey pleaded with Max. “That’s what he wants. So don’t give it to him. He can’t win if you don’t go.”

  “No,” Max said quietly. “He’ll just find some other way. All of this is bigger than me. The Bondsman has to be cast down. Romani said so. And I know how to do it.”

  “But you won’t tell us,” Casey said accusingly. “How convenient.”

  “No,” Max confirmed. And with with that, there was a crash and the Waldorf shook as if an earthquake had just hit. “That was another one of those void-things — it just took a bite out the building. We have to leave. Now! If you’re coming, follow me.”

  Max went to the door, and left.

  Ian followed immediately, as did Logan White-Cloud, Jane Willow and Marvin Sparkle.

  Maurice looked at Casey — but then he simply threw up his arms and said, “Helter Skelter is here, woman! This place ain’t safe. And if he really is going to face down The Frown, I want to see it! I’m going!”

  “C’mon,” Cody said to Casey gently. “We should go.”

  Sasha had hung behind to make sure Casey would go — and looked at Cody with relief as Casey gave an exasperated puff and followed the company through the door.

  THE STREETS OF Imperial City — New York — were sheer chaos. Panicked people ran everywhere, some popping out of thin air dressed in different eras of clothing. None of the people — old or new — feared the lawmen of the Bondsman any longer: chaos and mob-rule were the order of the day, so Casey and Sasha drew their weapons — as did Cody Chance and Logan White-Cloud. Anytime anyone came close to the company, one of the four fired a warning shot.

  All the while, the company ran east and then south.

  Casey had no idea how Max thought they were going to get to the island of the ‘stitch point’ as he called it. But when she spotted Sky Chambers whizzing overhead, she guessed he meant to somehow commandeer one.

  The whirling shadow-static voids were appearing now with more regularity and frequency. Some had begun chewing through buildings, leaving great gaping holes as if meteors had careened through the structures of steel and glass. None had fallen yet, but enough of this and Casey knew that buildings were going to start coming down.

  “I know where he’s going,” Ian said when he realized they were being led south on what should have been FDR Drive (now called Simon de Valcourt Drive). The traffic had all stopped in the midst of the sudden strangeness, and people were abandoning their vehicles, running this way and that. Multiple horse-and-carriage ensembles from different eras were here as well, and likewise mostly abandoned, with their horses simply waiting, confused, for their drivers to re-appear.

  “The Peking. He’s going to take the ship.”

  “The ship?” Sasha said. “You mean the sailing ship? The one his friend Dunkirk used to captain?”

  “Yes,” Ian said. “Trust me, I don’t know how thinks he’s going to sail there either.”

  “That’s insane!” Sasha said, in between gun blasts. “And how does he even know it’s still there in this timeline?”

  Looting had begun, and the crowds on Simon de Valcourt Drive were getting nastier. Several men had tried to grab Sasha as she went past; she meant to show them she meant business. Ian immediately donned his bloodmetal in response — but Sasha shook her head and bade him to let it go, which he did.

  Cody and Casey brought up the rear and Ian considered himself lucky that she had not heard his remark about the Peking.

  But he knew she was not going to like it at all.

  ANOTHER BLACK tornado-void abruptly appeared directly in front of the company, and the suction it produced made the wind suddenly howl with the ferocity of a hurricane. Max was only several yards away when it debuted, and just barely managed to avoid being sucked away into the nothingness by latching onto a nearby flatbed truck. He pulled himself along its length until he reached the rear, where the virulence was lessened.

  The rest of the company likewise found holds on nearby stationary automobile
s.

  “What now?” Maurice yelled into the gusts.

  Max motioned for them all to keep backing up — there was no safe way around the disturbance. But just as they were doing this, the vortex began moving and elongating at the same time. It drifted upwards and towards the city, morphing from a circle to a long, spinning, snake-like tangle of darkness. It slithered in the air, a creature of dust and ash, a mote in the fabric of space-time. Around its edges, light warped, blurred, bent towards it, giving everything in the background a distorted appearance.

  The shadow-worm tore into a nearby building with what looked like purpose and rage, smashing through girders and concrete, but leaving no debris — every bit of particulate matter it created was immediately annihilated in the event horizon of its wriggling edges.

  Max stared at it the monstrous thing — shocked at this new development of seeming sentience in the vortices. It was a projection of his own psyche, he knew that. He was staring at a manifestation of his own shadow: it was not unlike what Blackthorne had been for Casey. Yet his creation was more chaotic and directly destructive — he realized from an ancient memory that it was akin to the description of Shiva, the Indian mythological deity of destruction, the un-creator, made real in the real world.

  But this only hardened his resolve: he barked at the company to move faster.

  Again, they resumed their southern sprint.

  AS THEY NEARED the docks, the skyline of Imperial City was a wreckage of smoking, broken buildings and writhing shadow-worms. Sky Chambers buzzed the skies in panicked droves, but there was nowhere to run to, not even in the air — several were sliced in half or gouged by contact with the acid snake-vortex surface, and dropped like rocks from the clouds.

  “This is it,” Max said as they arrived at the Peking. “Get on board. Quickly! Quickly!”

  Wasting no time, Max ran up the gangplank and began whooshing around the deck, hoisting sails at blinding speeds.

  “You have got to be kidding …” Casey started, but Cody had spun next to her and begun firing. A crowd was surging towards the boat, realizing as the sails went up that it was about to disembark from the doomed City. Cody wasn’t shooting anyone, just firing well-aimed warning shots at them. “Stay back!” he growled. “Anyone who comes any closer is going to get shot!”

  Casey joined him in shooting, as the crowd was not slowing down. She took a more aggressive stance and grazed the ears of two of the front-runners. When the rest of the crowd heard their yelps of surprise and saw actual blood on their hands as they snapped up to the sides of their head, that got their attention at last. “He means it!” Casey screamed. “I mean it too!”

  The crowd stopped, breathing like a beast waiting for prey to inevitably run out of the energy to resist. Their eyes were blank, remorseless — devoid of any love or human emotion other than greed, fear and anger. They were beserker — just like the crowd at the Bondsman rally had been.

  But for the moment they had been cowed. They stood there like confused zombies.

  “C’mon,” Cody says. “Let’s get on board before something worse shows up and makes them think facing down our guns is the better option.” Casey nodded mutely and joined him and the rest of the company on deck. Quickly, Cody and Maurice pulled up the gangplank.

  Sasha cut the ropes tethering the Peking with the White Roses — three quick shots, and the ropes snapped like rubber bands, and the company was free and heading out into the harbor. When Casey looked a question at her, she simply said: “Well, I don’t think we’re coming back on this boat. Do you?”

  Max was already at the wheel, steering the ship and taking advantage of the strong winds being produced by the vortices ravaging the City behind him. Every once in awhile, he would whoosh up to this or that sail, adjust it, and then re-appear at the wheel within a matter of seconds.

  With his restored memories, Max was a master seaman — his time with Dunkirk aboard the Peking had taught him well. And he knew this ship like the end of his own nose: it had once been his home, and he had sailed it for Dunkirk many, many times. He knew every quirk and vibration of the deck, the feel of the rudder and how it was warped and listed slightly to the starboard such that he needed to cheat to port in order to achieve a straight sail.

  As a result, the Peking moved out to sea at good clip, churning white froth beneath her bow and cutting the waves cleanly as she drove onward.

  The crowd on the shore had finally decided to do something, seeing a shadow-worm abruptly come too close for comfort. Several of them dove into the water, trying to swim to the Peking, but it was already far too late for that.

  The harbor was not immune to time’s breakdown; ships and small boats from multiple eras of the last five hundred years were popping in with regularity now. One in particular appeared to be carrying pilgrims. And the air was not immune: two bi-planes had just appeared along with a slow-moving zeppelin.

  Ahead of them was Ellis Island — or what used to be Ellis Island, anyway. Gone was the Statue of Liberty. In its place rose a great golden statue of the Bondsman. He stood there, holding a golden ball with a ring of lightning around it in one hand and with the second hand he pointed accusingly at Imperial City across the waves. Ian shook his head in disgust.

  Just when Casey was finally catching her breath and heaving a sigh of relief, a fleet of Sky Chambers roared out the City and started making a beeline right for the Peking.

  “Max!” Casey howled, drawing her guns once again. “Incoming!”

  “Yeah I see them. I’m on it.”

  But as he watched the skies, three more void-worms appeared in the air near their position. Max cursed; it was obvious that his own presence was attracting them, willing them into being. These further manifestations of the breakdown of time were his doing, his uncontrolled power as an Imaginal with a shattered psyche of fractured memories of many times and places.

  The first shadow-snake stooped in the sky — and sliced the head clean off of the Bondsman’s statue on Ellis Island. Appearing to happen in slow motion due to the sheer size and distance of the event from the Peking, the Bondsman’s head crashed into the chest with a metallic clang like the ringing of a great bell. It then tumbled onto the outstretched arm — and bounced, spinning wildly — while bending the golden arm at the same time. It hung at an odd angle like a broken limb. Then the head crashed into the sea, raising a plume of white froth.

  Max watched this with a certain grim satisfaction: his void-worms were raw untamed chaos, beyond even obedience to the Bondsman. There was at least that.

  But now, one of the other shadow-leviathans plunged into the sea just off the side of the boat. Immediately a whirlpool formed, threatening to suck the Peking into it swirling sea-hurricane of destructions.

  At the same time, the legion of Sky Chambers rushed the ship from above. They began firing.

  The company drew guns and returned fire, knowing that this was probably useless. Ian seethed in his bloodmetal, unable even to do so little himself. Seeing this, he made his way over to Max and screamed, “We can’t even get out of this harbor. How do you expect to get to some island off the coast of Britain? Never mind that we don’t have food or water!”

  “It doesn’t matter where we are!” Max yelled back. “Here — keep those Sky Chambers off my back so I can steer the ship!”

  Exasperated, Ian threw his hands up and joined Sasha and Casey. Their eldritch weapons were taking bites off the hulls of the Sky Chambers, but not doing any meaningful damage. But the Niburian craft fired wildly — the sky-snakes of midnight were harrying them, keeping them on the run as they tried to attack the company. Some part of Max’s participation in their being was besetting them upon the Sky Chambers. As a result, so far, not a single gout of energy had hit the Peking: they had all splashed into the ocean with massive blasts of steam.

  But they were getting closer each time.

  And the whirlpool had caught the ship in its inevitable grip. The Peking began to twirl now, spinning as
the galaxy-like spiral arm of the whirlpool also gripped its orbit around the bottomless hole of worm-void that lurked beneath the shadowy waves.

  The Sky Chambers dove aggressively on the Peking. One blast hit the midmast high up, splintering the beam but not shattering it fully. The highest sail canvas was ripped away on a splash of fire.

  “Max!” Ian howled at him. “Hit the bloody Sky Chambers already, will you?”

  Now, Max thought. Now or never.

  Max focused intensely, summoning all of his power as an Imaginal — he lit up with his star power. But he did not throw any gouts of white fire into the melee above.

  He forgot the Sky Chambers and the void-worms and the whirlpool — and focused on the sky itself. He honed in on the sun and the moon — and turned the wheel of the Peking, spinning it as hard and as fast as he could.

  “Look!” Ian screamed, pointing into the sky.

  The sun and moon were moving towards one another at terrific speeds — and both were growing larger as they did so, swelling like they were becoming engorged by each other’s presence. Shadows raced across the deck of the Peking like a time-lapse movie.

  As this happened, the sky and sea seemed to split in two — Max was steering the Peking through something other than space. The Sky Chambers receded slowly at first and then very quickly, like the ship had just gone to something akin to warp at sea.

  And then the sun kissed the moon in the firmament. A perfect eclipse was formed: the midnight disc of the moon lay like a black lozenge in the mouth of the sun, which in turn wreathed it in flame and perfected its shadow by way of contrast.

  An eldritch island lay just off the starboard bow of the Peking.

  Wordlessly, Max steered the ship into the nearest inlet and bid the company to disembark.

  “There is another world beneath this one,” Maurice whispered to no one in particular at all.