Blind God's Bluff: A Billy Fox Novel

by Richard Lee Byers

  The mask made a sucking sound as it came off. The head underneath was nothing but dozens of eyes glaring in all directions from a round black skull. It shouldn’t have filled out the mask to give it the right shape, but apparently magic had taken care of that.

  “Look!” I yelled, still scrambling away from the other finheads and their shivs. “It’s not your wife! They’re not your kids and friends! This isn’t real!”

  The thing that had been passing for Mrs. Rufino wrenched herself out of my grip and jammed her knife into my guts. The breath whooshed out of me, and I didn’t seem to be able to suck in any more.

  But then a shock jolted everything. I’d never been in an earthquake, but I imagined it was probably like that, except that the jolt was inside my head as well as outside. It was like the world was a mirror, and suddenly, it cracked.

  The hostile finheads froze like statues, some of them with their blades just inches from my body. Rufino thrashed, snapped the ropes tying his wrists and ankles to the stocks, and shakily drew himself to his feet. “Lies,” he said. That first one was a whisper, but he got louder with every repetition, until he was screaming at the end: “Lies, lies, lies, lies, lies!”

  I felt another shock, and another. Sections of what was in front of me disappeared, leaving white emptiness behind. If this place had been a cracked mirror before, now it was shattering completely, and pieces were falling out of the frame.

  After another second, I fell out of it, too. I was back in my physical body with my hands on Rufino’s chest. I brought up another surge of Red’s energy, and this time I used some of it to wash away the scary feeling of wrongness in my stomach. After that, I could tell that Mr. Ka didn’t have any more to give. So I let him go, to sink back down inside me or mix himself back in with the rest of me.

  Then, panting like I’d run ten miles, I looked down at Rufino to see if I’d actually accomplished anything.

  His fin was still ragged and tilted off center, and scars still covered his skin. But he’d stopped struggling, and there wasn’t any terror, hatred, or craziness in his eyes, just a plea to be let out of the gag and restraints.

  So that was what his family did. Then there was a lot of babbling and hugging. Rufino told them he was sorry for making their lives hell, and they told him it wasn’t his fault.

  A’marie and I stood back and left them to it. Then she gasped, stepped right in front of me, and stooped to get a better look at the front of my shirt.

  I looked down at it, too. It had blotches of wet blood all over it, with the biggest one on the stomach. I figured I had one on the back of my right pant leg, too.

  “It’s okay,” I said. I pulled up the shirt to show there weren’t any wounds underneath.

  Not anymore. Still, if I needed more proof that what happened while I was outside my body could kill me, well, now I was wearing it. And seeing, feeling, and smelling it made me feel lightheaded and queasy.

  “Mr. Billy,” Rufino said.

  I turned and saw him and the family looking at me.

  “Thank you,” he continued. “It’s so… small just to say you saved me. That you saved our whole family. I wish I had bigger, better words.”

  I wished I did, too, but the best I could do was: “You’re welcome. And now I think it’s probably time for the whole family to bug out to Cuba, don’t you? You don’t owe Timon anything anymore, not after what he did to you, and you don’t want him finding out you got better. He might decide to hex you all over again.”

  “But if Timon isn’t the lord here anymore,” said A’marie, “then he won’t be able to hurt Rufino. He won’t dare to deprive another lord of the use of one of his servants.”

  I sighed. I’d known this was coming. Still, it would have been nice to have another minute or two as everybody’s hero.

  “You can’t count on Timon losing the fief,” I said. “Because I’m still not going in the tank.”

  A’marie stared at me. “I don’t understand. You saw what Timon did to Rufino. It must have moved you, or you wouldn’t have healed him. Are you afraid of Timon’s revenge? Because you don’t have to be. If you make a deal with one of the other lords, he’ll protect you.”

  “That isn’t it,” I said.

  “Then what?

  I wasn’t sure I could put it into words that would make any sense. Or that wouldn’t make me sound like a selfish scumbag. So I went a different way.

  “Look,” I said, “I get it: Timon’s the devil. But I watched Wotan eat some poor person he murdered. Gimble beat the shit out of Clarence just to make it look like he didn’t stick me on purpose. Leticia messed with my brain just like Timon messed with Rufino’s, and the Pharaoh tried to mangle my soul. Maybe there isn’t any difference.”

  A’marie’s eyes kept drilling into me. “You don’t know anything about our world or how we live. All you’ve seen is the lords’ stupid game. So don’t try to tell us you understand them and their ways better than we do!”

  “I wasn’t,” I said, although I guessed that really, I had been.

  “Please, A’marie,” Mrs. Rufino said, “it’s all right. He’s done so much already. We can’t ask—”

  “It’s not all right,” snapped A’marie, “and I can ask! Of course we’re grateful for what he’s already done. But we need him to help everybody, not just one person!” She turned her glare back on me. “If you won’t do it because it’s right, do it because I stopped Leticia from hurting you.”

  “And then I stopped her from hurting you,” I said. And was sorry as soon as the words came out of my mouth, since A’marie had only been in trouble because she’d stuck her neck out for me.

  I could tell from the way her mouth twisted that she agreed with me that it had been a dick thing to say. “Fine,” she said. “Do what you have to do. Help Timon, take your money, and go away. We’ll fix our own problems.”

  With that, she turned and disappeared down the dark hallway. Her spindly goat legs moved in kind of a delicate, mincing way even when she was mad and stamping along.

  After that, there wasn’t much to do but ask Rufino and the family if they knew their way out. It turned out they did, so I didn’t have to help them look for it. I borrowed one of the hurricane lanterns—A’marie had taken our candle with her—and climbed the stairs back up to my room to put on fresh clothes.

  There was a manila envelope leaning against the bottom of my door. And maybe all the danger and craziness was making me paranoid, but I got a bad feeling as soon as I saw it.

  But it probably wasn’t a letter bomb, or the magical equivalent of one, and I couldn’t just stand and stare at it all day. I picked it up, tore open the flap, and dumped out what was inside. It turned out to be a cell phone.

  A gift from Timon, to replace the one he’d blown up? I doubted it was his style to be so thoughtful. I flipped it open and checked for stored numbers and messages. I didn’t find either one.

  Feeling edgy, I unlocked the door, carried the phone inside, and set it on the table in the middle of the dirty breakfast dishes. I was just pulling on another shirt when it rang, playing a bland little riff of tinny electronic music.

  I snatched it up and said, “Hello.”

  At first, nobody answered. I wondered if I should throw the phone across the room before something supernatural and nasty jumped through the connection. For all I knew, that kind of thing could happen. Then a girl said, “Billy?” I could tell from the catch in her voice that she’d been crying.

  All of a sudden, my throat felt clogged. I was scared in a way I hadn’t been even when all the finhead impersonators were coming at me with their knives. “Vic?” I answered.

  “They beat me up,” she whimpered. “And they say they won’t let me go until—” Then she wasn’t there anymore.

  “Vic?” I said. “Vic?”

  “She’s all right,” Rhonda Sullivan said in her husky four-packs-a-day voice. “But she isn’t going to stay that way unless you bring my money.”

  “
I’m getting it!” I said. “I just need a little more time!”

  “This afternoon,” Rhonda said, and then hung up.

  My hands shaking, I hit Redial. My call didn’t go through.

  I strained to push panic out of my head and think. None of this made sense. Rhonda and the Martinezes shouldn’t have kidnapped an innocent, a real citizen, no less, just to put the screws to the likes of me. The return wasn’t worth the risk. And even if they were going to, they shouldn’t have picked on Vic. They shouldn’t even have known who she was.

  And speaking of stuff that didn’t add up, how had the new cell phone gotten in front of the door to the room, and how had Rhonda known to call me on it?

  There was only one explanation. One of the lords had somehow gotten Rhonda to do something she’d normally never do. Which still left the question of how any of the monsters had known about Rhonda or Vic. But hey, magic.

  I ran downstairs to the front desk. The guy behind it told me Timon wanted me and was waiting in the meeting room where we’d talked the night before. So I rushed back up to the mezzanine.

  Timon looked like his recovery was coming along. He had pale, glistening lumps in his sockets, although they weren’t anything you’d actually call eyes. Not yet. He sniffed twice when I burst through the doorway, then scowled.

  “You’ve been working magic,” he said. “Why?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I answered. “Something’s happened.” Pacing around, I told him what it was.

  When I finished, he said, “Hm. When you were experiencing your ‘flashbacks,’ as you called them, it’s possible Leticia caught glimpses of them, too. That could have led her to this Victoria.”

  “Whatever. The point is, I have to pay Rhonda, and that means I need my money early.”

  “No,” he said, “the real point is that one of my rivals wants to lure you out of the hotel, where you’ll be easier to attack.”

  “I know that,” I said. “I’m not stupid. But I still have to help Vic.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “If she’s your ex-fiancée, why do you care?”

  “Because,” I said, “not so long ago, she meant everything to me. I’m still grateful for all good times we had and all the things she did for me. I don’t expect you to understand—”

  “The problem,” he said, “is that you don’t understand. This woman is only a human, and you’ve grown into something more: a lord’s champion. You can’t let a sentimental attachment distract you from what’s actually important.”

  I glared. “Meaning, saving your ass.”

  “Meaning, fulfilling your responsibilities according to our bargain, and so assuring yourself of a comfortable place in the world where you really belong.”

  “Look,” I said, “it doesn’t have to be one thing or the other. If you’re worried about me, give me some bodyguards to tag along when I deliver the money.”

  “I admit, that would reduce the danger. But not enough. My rivals are powerful and clever, and I seem to be going through a patch where my servants aren’t as motivated as they ought to be.”

  “Well, how about if you have a messenger deliver the money? I can tell him where to take it.”

  He frowned. The blob in his right eye socket started twitching over and over again. Bubbly fluid seeped out from underneath it, and I caught a raw-meat smell through his usual cloud of funk. “If I pay you in advance,” he said, “what is there to keep you motivated?”

  “Oh, come on!” I said. “If you’ve been paying attention at all, you know I want to beat these assholes. Hell, everything they do just makes me want it more. And I will. I’ve dominated the table ever since you brought me in.”

  “Still… ”

  “If I lose, I’ll pay you back.”

  He scowled. “Yes, you will, or—”

  “You’ll kill me,” I snapped. “Or hex me. I understand that, too. I’ve seen how you people work. So let’s skip over the threats and just get the damn money together, okay?”

  Eventually, we did. One of the Tuxedo Team brought bundles of bills from the hotel safe. We counted out a hundred and fifty thousand, and I pocketed twenty. I swear to God, at that point, all I really cared about was getting Vic out of trouble. But still, there was no point giving away money I didn’t owe.

  Timon sent a guy named Donald, who looked pretty normal except for really long, pointed fingernails, each painted a different color, to deliver the cash. Afterward, I prowled around the hotel and waited for my new cell phone to ring.

  It didn’t. And as time crawled by, I got more and more worried. More and more sure that sending the money wasn’t really going to accomplish anything at all.

  Because if one of the lords was controlling Rhonda and the Martinez brothers, with magic hypnotism or whatever, then the real point of taking Vic prisoner was to get me out of the poker game. Which meant they wouldn’t let her go even after they got paid. They’d just keep using her against me.

  A picture flashed into my mind. I walked into the nightly buffet, and this time, it was Vic lying in pieces on Wotan’s long silver tray, with her face still untouched so I could recognize her.

  I needed to go to Rhonda’s store and see what was happening. But even desperate as I felt, I realized it would be a bad idea just to head for the front door and my car. Timon might have told his flunkies to stop me if I tried to leave, and it was possible that one of the other lords had agents waiting right outside to jump me.

  I asked one of the Tuxedo Team where A’marie was. I found her on the fourth floor, brushing at the carpet in the hall with a broom and a kind of dustpan on a long handle. I guessed that was how everybody had to sweep a rug before Edison and Tesla gave us electricity.

  Her face lit up when she saw me coming, and even with everything else I had on my mind, I winced when I realized I was about to disappoint her all over again. “I need your help,” I said, and then filled her in on what had happened and what I needed.

  By the time I finished, she was frowning. “And if I do this,” she said, “are you going to give me what I want in return?”

  “No,” I admitted. What else could I say? I felt more obligated to Timon than ever, now that I’d actually taken his money. “Look, you said it yourself. I’m a stranger in your world. I don’t know anything about anything. I’m not the guy you should be looking at to win the revolution.”

  “Then why would I help you?” she replied.

  “Well, I saved Rufino. I even got knifed doing it, or near enough. Didn’t I score any points for that?”

  She looked at me for what felt like a long time. Her silver eyes reflected the light of the candle burning nearby. Finally she asked, “Do you really love Victoria?”

  I shrugged. “I used to.”

  “Wait for me in your room,” she said. She leaned the broom and pan against the wall and hurried away.

  It took her a while to come back. I’d figured it would. But I was so impatient that I was about to say screw it and just make a dash for the T-bird when the lock clicked and she opened the door.

  As I hurried over to her, she reached inside her black coat with its white carnation and shiny lapels, brought out a Smith and Wesson Model 439, and offered it grip first. “Is it all right?” she asked.

  I wasn’t a big handgun guy. I would have felt a lot more at home with a rifle. But the automatic would put a hole in somebody, and it’s tough to tuck an M16 into the back of your jeans and hide it under the tail of your shirt.

  “It’s fine,” I said, ejecting the magazine, then shoving it back in. “Where’d you get it?”

  “It belongs to one of Timon’s guards. He won’t miss it for a while.”

  So Timon let his people keep loaded pistols? I wondered again why they didn’t just kill him. Were they just that scared of him, or was he bulletproof? Was that possible, considering what the brownwings had—

  I shoved that line of questions out of my mind. Timon wasn’t the problem, n
ot right now.

  “Are you ready to go?” asked A’marie.

  I tucked the pistol into the back of my jeans. “Yeah,” I said.

  This time we had to grope our way down the service stairs without a candle. I understood why. She didn’t want anybody to spot a light moving through the dark.

  We had light for just a few seconds when we got to the ground floor, because one of the hurricane lamps was still burning. She took my hand and led me on, back into blackness and around a couple turns. Past the storeroom where we’d met the finheads, probably, although I wasn’t sure. Voices echoed, too soft and distorted for me to make out the words. The sound gnawed at my nerves. I told myself it was just the kitchen workers talking, not ghosts. Although for all I knew, ghosts were real, too.

  I didn’t realize we’d reached a door until she cracked it open. The strip of bright sunlight dazzled me. Squinting, I made out a beat-up old Miata with faded paint and the top down. A’marie had parked it in a sort of rectangular niche that connected to an alley.

  “I don’t see anybody,” she whispered.

  “Me, either,” I replied.

  “Then come on!”

  We scrambled to the car. A Miata’s not made for a guy with long legs, but I wedged myself into the passenger side as best I could. I was still groping under my ass to find my seat belt when A’marie threw the convertible into reverse, backed out into the alley, then headed for the street. While she waited for a break in the traffic, I spotted my T-bird sitting safe and sound, without even a ticket on the windshield. Then she turned right and sped away from the hotel.

  It would be bullshit to say that all the things that had happened since I met Timon suddenly seemed like a dream. How could they? I was riding shotgun beside a goat girl and on my way to deal with a problem that other strange creatures had caused. But it did feel weird to be suddenly back in the middle of normal life. All around us, human beings were doing ordinary human things. Drivers drove. Pedestrians scurried along. A woman dressed all in black set a panting on an easel in the window of an art gallery. A fat guy in a business suit fed a credit card into an ATM.