“Move away from him, A’marie,” Sylvester said. His voice was deep—not kraken deep, but still—and even in a tense situation, the words came out slow and almost sleepy. “I got no reason to hurt you.”
“You don’t have a reason to hurt me, either,” I said. “I’m on your side. I’m going to help you.”
“It’s true,” said A’marie. She hadn’t shifted away from me. I gave her a little nudge, but she still stayed put. Maybe because she was afraid Sylvester would fire as soon as she moved.
“No, it isn’t,” Sylvester said. “He came into my dreams along with Timon. From now on, there’ll be two of them torturing us in our sleep.”
“I can see how it looked that way,” I panted, “but you’ve got it wrong.”
“I’m not letting it get any worse,” Sylvester said. “Not when I can shoot and get rid of you and him both. Move away, A’marie. One day you’ll thank me.”
“You don’t want to do this,” said A’marie.
“I don’t want to, but I’m gonna.” Sylvester’s voice was a note or two higher. He was getting upset, which I was pretty sure made it unanimous. “And if you want to stand with an outsider, then you brought it on yourself. One.”
“All right!” A’marie scrambled away from me. “Do what you want to him! Just don’t hurt me!”
Her sudden one-eighty must have startled Sylvester as much as it did me. Because he didn’t shoot, not that instant. His head twisted back and forth, trying to keep track of both of us.
A’marie ripped open her shirt, popping off the little pearl buttons. She pulled out the pipes and raised them to her lips. Water dribbled out the ends as she started to blow.
I sensed right away that it wasn’t going to work, because the notes didn’t sound like before. They were shaky and thin. She didn’t have the wind she needed.
And sure enough, the magic didn’t grab hold of Sylvester. After another instant of confusion, his eyes locked on me.
I dropped, the Remington boomed, and the blast flew high over my head. Sylvester wasn’t much of a shot. Unfortunately, with everything else he had going for him, he might not have to be.
The 870 went shuck-shuck as Sylvester worked the pump. I wondered if I could make it back to the water with him blasting away at my back. I glanced back the way A’marie and I had come, then swore.
Because Sylvester had a partner blocking the way. For an instant, he was transparent and hard to make out, too. Then he snapped into focus, and I saw the big black snake from the dream parade, and the hole in the sand where he’d buried himself and waited for A’marie and me to pass on by. He had a headset and a white and gold scarf, too, but the really impressive accessory was the contraption strapped on lower down. It was made of jointed wood like a marionette, and it gave him a pair of artificial arms. Each three-fingered hand had a pistol in it.
By the time I looked back around, Sylvester was aiming at me again. I dropped the crap in my hands and scrambled in what I expected to be a futile try at dodging. Then A’marie threw her goggles and clipped Sylvester on the side of the head. It didn’t hurt him, but his hand jerked, and the next blast flew to my left.
He bared his teeth in a snarl and worked the pump. I thought the shuck-shuck noise sounded different, which didn’t stop me from scurrying as the Remington swung back down. But when Sylvester pulled the trigger, nothing happened. Something was wrong—my guess was, the spent shell hadn’t been ejected—and the gun was jammed.
I’d caught a break, and it would have been the perfect moment to rush Sylvester and lay him out cold with one awesome punch. But only if I’d been in range, he hadn’t outweighed me by at least three hundred pounds, and the snake hadn’t been coming on fast with his own guns. I straightened all the way up, rushed to A’marie, and we ran on together, parallel to the edge of the bay.
Sadly, that plan had its own problems, since each of us was barely able to breathe. We’d only gone a few yards when A’marie staggered to a stop and gasped, “Go. They don’t want me.”
“Hostage,” I said. I meant they’d make her one and use her against me. I just didn’t have enough breath left to get it all out. She scowled and jerked her head in a nod to show she understood.
Just then, the shotgun spun between us. I guessed Sylvester had gotten frustrated trying to unjam it—either he didn’t know how, or his Hickory Farms beef-stick fingers couldn’t manage it—and thrown it like a rock.
Maybe I could unjam it, and turn this mess into a whole different fight. I staggered after it, and A’marie followed.
Behind us, metal groaned and rattled. I glanced back just in time to see Sylvester heave the Miata over his head and toss it.
I lurched around, lunged at A’marie, grabbed her, and spun both of us to the side. We lost our balance and fell. The convertible crashed down just a couple yards away. The noise nearly stunned me all by itself, and greenish bits of broken window peppered us.
“My car!” whimpered A’marie.
“Sorry,” I said. I tried to stand up and didn’t make it. Dark spots floated at the edges of my vision.
A’marie and I couldn’t go on like this. We wouldn’t make it. The magic from the green pills wasn’t a sickness or a poison. But it was messing with our bodies, and I hoped that meant Red’s power could get rid of it.
I turned myself into him and gave A’marie and then me a jolt of his mojo. It worked. I inhaled, and the air filled my lungs like it was supposed to. But afterward, I didn’t have to send Red away. He disappeared on his own. Because the mojo tap was empty.
A pistol banged. The snake had decided he was near enough to start shooting. I realized I no longer knew exactly where the shotgun had fallen. I looked around and couldn’t spot it.
I jerked A’marie to her feet, and we ran away from the water. Meanwhile, Sylvester—who maybe wasn’t much of a runner—shambled toward a green pick-up. The cab had such a high roof that it had to be a custom job.
A’marie and I found ourselves in a tangle of narrow streets lined with businesses like machine shops, used car lots, and used furniture stores, plus a bunch of little houses. Even though I’d spent my life in Tampa, I couldn’t remember ever being in this neighborhood, and wasn’t sure which way to run.
Not that I exactly wanted to run. I’d hiked from one end of Afghanistan to the other, but that had been in boots. The pavement was chewing up my bare feet. I couldn’t imagine that running was lot of fun for A’marie, either, with her soaked clothes slapping and weighing her down.
Tires squealing, the pick-up raced around a corner. For a second, I thought A’marie and I might catch another break. Sylvester didn’t drive any better than he shot, and the custom truck was top heavy. It looked like he might spin out or tip over, but then he straightened it out and kept coming. The snake leaned out the passenger window and fired a shot.
It didn’t come anywhere near A’marie and me—he would have needed a lot of luck to hit one of us with the pick-up swerving around like it was—but it got us moving again. We ran between a little seafood joint—a handwritten sign offered crab roll baskets and grouper sandwiches—and a place where you could rent to own a washing machine, refrigerator, or TV.
I thought about ducking into one of those businesses, but didn’t. It might only get us cornered. And I guess that if I’d learned anything, it was not to involve ordinary human beings in Old People business.
Tires screeched off to the left. Sylvester was heading for the next street over to cut us off. A pistol banged. I turned around and saw the snake slithering toward us. He’d gotten out of the truck to follow us. I guessed he was a big believer in boxing people in.
A’marie and I ran left, where the concrete-block rent-to-own place cut off the snake’s line of fire. “We just have to keep moving till we shake them off our tail,” I panted.
“We can try,” said A’marie, puffing the words out one at a time between her short but quick steps. “But Epunamlin—the snake—is a good hunter.”
The bastard was fast, too. No matter how many times A’marie and I turned corners, he kept catching up enough to take another shot. Even using pistols, there was a good chance he was going to hit us eventually.
Looking down the space between two buildings, I saw a bigger used car lot than the ones I’d noticed before. Lines of sedans, SUV’s, and trucks sat under strings of flapping plastic pennons. There was a trailer at the back, and a yellow Mustang was “Today’s Special.”
The place gave me an idea. Well, the start of one, anyway. I led A’marie in that direction, and hoped Sylvester wasn’t waiting to run us over as soon as we charged out onto the street.
He wasn’t, although the screech of rubber sounded too damn close as he took a corner somewhere off to the right. A’marie and I staggered onto the lot and hunkered down behind a Chevy Tahoe.
“Now what?” she asked.
I struggled to come up with Phase Two. “Once you catch your breath, do you think your music could put a hex on both of them?”
“And make it stick for more than a few seconds? I don’t know. They’re both powerful in their own ways.”
I peeked around the edge of the SUV just as Epunamlin reached the other side of the street. His tongue flicked in and out of his mouth a couple times, and then he stopped where he was. Somehow he could tell A’marie and I had stopped running, and he was waiting for Sylvester to show up before he moved in for the kill.
“Okay,” I said, “then we won’t count on it to last for more than a moment or two. But tell me you have something sharp.”
“My horns?”
“No offense, but I’m not sure they’ll do the job.” Which meant I was going to have to drag somebody from the normal world into my problems after all. “Stay here.”
I ran for the trailer. Using the cars for cover, I kept low. But I had to come out into the open to get to the door. Epunamlin spotted me as I scurried up the three wrought-iron steps. A shot punched through the window on my left, making a hole and a spider web of cracks.
I hustled through the door and yanked it shut behind me. The salesman behind the desk had his eyes and his mouth open wide. You couldn’t blame him for being startled. First a bullet whizzed out of nowhere into his office, and then a crazy guy wearing nothing but swim trunks followed it in a split second later.
The salesman had a letter opener on his desk. I grabbed it. I looked around for another object like it and didn’t see one.
“They don’t want you,” I said. “Stay inside, stay low, and you’ll be all right.”
I threw open the door and dived back out. Epunamlin tried to draw a bead on me, and then thought better of it. Probably because right about then, Sylvester’s truck pulled up, and the weeping willow man climbed out.
I crouched back down beside A’marie. “What are we doing?” she asked. Her voice was tense but not panicky, and she’d caught her breath.
It only took a few words to explain, although with Sylvester and Epunamlin moving in on us, it felt like it was taking forever. When I finished, A’marie said, “Be careful.” She put the pipes to her lips and started playing.
I sneaked away. Sylvester and Epunamlin stopped where they were. The big guy stamped one foot like a trick horse counting, and the snake swayed from side to side and waved his pistols around. I still hadn’t had a good enough look at them to know what kind they were. Something that didn’t hold many more rounds, I hoped.
Unfortunately, the magic only kept Epunamlin and Sylvester trying to dance for a couple seconds. Then, just like A’marie had expected, they shook it off.
“Darn it!” Sylvester shouted. “Stop it, A’marie! We still don’t want to hurt you!”
A’marie did stop playing. “You don’t want to hurt anybody!” she yelled back. “You’re not a killer! Just calm down and let us talk to you!”
Sylvester looked at Epunamlin. “You know why we’re doing it,” said the snake. His baritone voice almost sounded prissy, like he’d learned to enunciate perfectly because he was afraid that if he didn’t, humans—and near-humans—wouldn’t be able to understand him at all. The sunlight gleaming on his black scales made him look as wet as A’marie. “And I am a killer. Just help me catch him, and I’ll take it from there.”
Sylvester’s mouth tightened under the mask of hair. “Okay,” he said.
“Good man,” Epunamlin said. “You swing left and I’ll go right.”
I’d figured they’d spread out to search. I actually wanted them to. But it still made for a nerve-wracking game of hide and seek. They hunted me along the rows of cars with prices and messages like “Cold Air” and “Super Clean” painted on their windshields, while I tried to maneuver around behind whichever one I could. My mouth was dry with knowing that Sylvester was tall enough to look over the cars. And though Epunamlin generally crawled with his head and about a yard of scaly body raised—maybe to keep his wooden arms from banging and scraping along the ground—all he had to do was dip down to peek underneath.
But like I said before, I’m sneaky when I want to be. Eventually I made it to Sylvester’s six, then straightened up and rushed him, charging down the space between an F-150 and a Civic.
Sylvester heard me coming and pivoted too soon. But A’marie blew a trill on the pipes, and that froze him for the instant I needed. I jumped like I was dunking, ripped the white and gold kerchief from around his neck, and backpedaled, crouching back down as I put space between us.
The eyes behind the coarse, dangling hair opened wide, and then he hunkered down, too. I grinned because it meant I was right.
I’d guessed that he and Epunamlin weren’t wearing identical neckerchiefs because they had the same fashion sense or belonged to the same Scout troop. The scarves were the charms that made them invisible to normal people. And now that Sylvester had lost his, anybody who drove or walked by could see him.
He started after me. I draped the scarf over the point of the letter opener. If I jerked it down hard, the point would pop through.
“I’ll do it!” I said. “The humans will put you in the zoo!”
“Just stay down!” Epunamlin said. “I’ll get him!” He was somewhere behind me, and close enough that I could hear him even without the use of Sylvester’s Bluetooth. As I glanced around, he slithered into view an aisle away, but with a clear line of fire from him to me. He pointed the pistols.
With the Honda on one side of me and the F-150 on the other, I didn’t have a lot of options when it came to dodging for cover. I threw the letter opener and neckerchief into the cargo bed of the truck, then grabbed the sidewall and heaved myself in after them.
I didn’t exactly stick the landing. I thumped down hard. But I didn’t break anything, so I snatched up my stuff again and jumped off the other side.
Then it was back to playing hide and seek, or maybe it was more like tag. Whatever it was, Epunamlin made me feel like I’d lost my touch. He was more careful than Sylvester, and kept checking his six. Twice, I started creeping up behind him, only to have him look around. Then the guns spun toward me, and I dived for cover with not an instant to spare.
I struggled to think of a way to get him. Then I spotted the Coke can some litterbug had tossed on the asphalt.
I picked it up, crouched behind a truck tire, and waited. Sylvester yelled, “What’s going on?” Apparently he was upset enough that he’d forgotten he was wearing the Bluetooth, and I doubted that Epunamlin appreciated having that shout suddenly boom into his head. But he had better sense than to respond to Sylvester to say so, or to say anything and give away his position.
Luckily, when he got really close, the whispering sound of his coils slithering on the pavement was just loud enough for me to hear. I threw the can, and it clanked down a couple aisles away.
Sometimes the oldest, simplest tricks still work the best. When Epunamlin crawled into view, his attention was focused in the direction of the noise. I let him keep moving for another second. That hid the front half of him behind a Kia Sephia, which I
didn’t like, but it also put me more or less behind him instead of off to the side.
I rushed him. The twisting S curves of his tail nearly filled the narrow lane between two rows of cars, and I almost tripped over it. But I saw I was about to set my foot wrong and managed to hop over that particular section of rippling, scaly reptile.
Maybe I made noise doing it, because Epunamlin started to twist in my direction. But by then I was within reach of his scarf. I jerked it away, ran on past him, then lurched around. I showed him that I had both neckerchiefs ready to stick on the end of the letter opener, and he aimed the pistols at me anyway. They were vintage Lugers, which only have an eight-round mag. I would have sworn he’d fired more than sixteen shots at A’marie and me, but maybe it had only seemed like it. One bullet seems like a lot when it’s flying at you.
“Don’t do it!” I gasped. “It won’t stop me from tearing the scarves. Maybe you could sneak away. But the big guy? Not a chance.”
Epunamlin stared at me. When I described him before, his headset, scarf, and puppet arms may have made him sound goofy-looking. Up close, he was anything but. I could feel the cold determination in the lidless, slit-pupiled eyes, and, long as it was, his body looked thick and solid with muscle. It was easy to imagine him blowing me away, then swallowing the body whole and crawling around with a Billy-shaped lump in the middle of him.
“You aren’t as clever away from the poker table,” he said at last. “After I shoot you, Sylvester and I will simply drive away.”
“A’marie!” I yelled. “Hit it!”
To my relief, the horn of Sylvester’s pickup blared. She’d managed to sneak around to it while its owner and the snake were focused on me.
“It will only take her a second to trash the ignition,” I said. “Then you and Sly over there will go down in Old People history as the dumb-asses who tipped off the human race that your kind are real. Is that what you want?”
He kept staring. The snake face was impossible to read.
“You better hurry and make up your mind,” I said. “The cops are going to show up soon.”
Blind God's Bluff: A Billy Fox Novel Page 19
