Blind God's Bluff: A Billy Fox Novel

by Richard Lee Byers

  Still, I had to keep trying to weave my way through, and the only way was to drive even crazier. I jolted over a concrete divider, rocketed along left of center for a moment, then jerked the T-bird back an instant before a semi would have hit it head on. I slammed Shadow’s side of the car into the back corner of a Sentra that was sitting across three lanes with steam fuming up from under the crumpled hood. The impact slammed me into the steering wheel, but the Nissan spun out of my way, and the T-bird survived the collision and kept rolling. I swerved into the parking lot of the Mons Venus strip club when the pavement there looked clearer than the next little patch of highway. The Pharaoh and three identical blondes watched as I knocked over a newspaper box and cut back onto the road.

  “Timon’s coming,” said Ren.

  I glanced back. Sure enough, Timon was closing fast. He’d switched from the dinosaur to something that wasn’t quite an M1025 Humvee but mostly looked like one, including the machine gun on the roof. And naturally, traffic did its best to get out of his way, like he was an ambulance or something. The only thing slowing him down was the obstacle course of wrecks that couldn’t move.

  I looked for a way through the mess ahead. Shadow, Red, and Ren hung out the windows and shot backward. The almost-Humvee’s machine gun returned fire. Nobody hit anything. There was too much in the way, and the vehicles were veering around too much.

  “He’s gaining!” yelled Ren.

  And the tangle of careening, crashing cars and wrecks ahead of me looked thicker than ever. Muttering “Screw it,” I reversed, hit the gas until I got to a relatively clear spot, cut the wheel a quarter turn, and dropped the shifter into Drive. The T-bird swung around to face the oncoming Humvee. It sideswiped a disabled SUV doing it, and bounced my other selves and me around, but it was still drivable afterward.

  “Shit!” said Ren. He’d just figured out what I meant to do. Shadow grinned like a wild animal showing its fangs.

  “Yeah,” I said, “shit.” I hit the gas.

  Since the puppets behind me had been trying to clear a path, there was almost a straight line from Timon to me. We could play chicken if we wanted to, and we did. We raced toward one another.

  Meanwhile, the guns blazed. At first, trying to shoot and drive at the same time, Timon couldn’t hit anything. Then the T-bird’s windshield shattered, showering me with bits of glass, and a bullet hole popped open in the hood, before the machine gun wandered off target again.

  My team was shooting straighter, but the Humvee was up-armored. Sparks danced on the front of it as rounds hit and glanced away.

  If the guns didn’t matter, then it really was a game of chicken, and his ride was bigger and heavier than mine. On top of that, he was a supernatural being, and I was just a guy.

  But I’d played this scary game before. If I was lucky, he hadn’t, and according to Murk, he could die here in dreamland, even if it wasn’t likely. Put it all together, and I was betting it meant he’d flinch.

  I’d just about decided I was going to lose that bet when he finally jerked the steering wheel. He hurtled past the T-bird close enough to shear the rearview mirror off. And do the same to Red’s head if he hadn’t jerked himself back inside.

  I braked and checked the other rearview mirror. The Humvee was spinning. “Flip over, you son of a bitch!” I said.

  It came so close that I suspected Timon used magic to set it back down on all four wheels in front of a Chinese restaurant. I swore, and then Sylvester dashed—well, lumbered, really, but for him it was a dash—out from behind a freestanding neon sign in the shape of a dragon. He stooped, grabbed the Humvee under the passenger door, and, straining, rolled it over onto its side. As soon as it overturned, he shambled away again, maybe hoping to get back under cover before Timon ever spotted him.

  I followed his example. I burned rubber out of there before Timon could get his act together to do anything else to me.

  With the boss distracted, the puppets in the cars ahead gradually stopped driving as recklessly as I was. It was still bad for about a block, but okay afterwards. I sped through a yellow light and turned left, heading down a two-lane street toward Hyde Park. Standing in front of a dentist’s office, the Pharaoh struck a flame from his lighter.

  So far, we hadn’t seen any more of Timon. “Do you think he’s dead?” asked Ren. “Or at least knocked out?”

  “No such luck,” I said. “But he hasn’t caught up to us yet, and I’m starting to feel a strain—”

  Shadow snapped around to glare at me.

  “Sorry,” I said. “But that’s how it is.” I reached with my mind and pulled the four of them back inside me.

  Hyde Park’s a historical district, full of big old houses that yuppies spend big bucks to renovate. Timon’s version looked like the original except that it was empty, with no puppet drivers on the road, and nobody strolling on the sidewalks or sitting at the outdoor tables in front of the bars and cafes. He didn’t have unlimited mojo, either, not even in dreamland, and had evidently decided not to populate the back leg of the course.

  That was fine by me. No traffic meant I made better time. For a little while, I wondered if I might even make it to the finish line before he caught up with me again.

  Then a low shape with blue headlights like long, slanted eyes appeared in the rearview mirror. As it sped up on me, closing the distance fast, I saw that it wasn’t quite a Maserati MC12, just like the Humvee hadn’t quite been a Humvee. But near enough.

  I tensed, waiting for Timon to open up on me with more machine guns, a rocket launcher, or whatever 007-style aftermarket features he was packing. But, maybe because Old People thought it was tacky to use the same trick twice, he didn’t. Instead, he cut left of center to pass.

  Why not? Maserati built the MC12 for racetracks. It wasn’t even street legal, and it was way faster and more maneuverable than the T-bird.

  But I was out in front, and, just from watching Timon charge up behind me, I already knew I was a better driver. I spun the wheel and shot left of center, too, before he could pull up beside me, and then kept matching him zig for zig and zag for zag.

  He tried bumping me. It jolted me forward in my seat, and I had to jerk the wheel to keep from jumping the curb. But it was still a really bad idea, because the impact actually made Timon lose control. The MC12 veered, clipped a parked car, spun through a one-eighty, and came to a stop. I laughed, and then the street went black.

  Suddenly there were no traffic signals hanging in front of me, no streetlights on either side, and no neon. Except for the moon and stars, the only light shined from the two cars and the windows of a couple of the houses. But I didn’t see why that mattered until the T-bird changed.

  That happened in a split second, too, most of the car melting around me while the rest heaved me higher off the ground. That, and the instant slowdown, confused me. By the time I figured out that I was now pounding along on top of a black horse, I was already slipping sideways off its back.

  I spotted the saddle horn, grabbed it, and held myself in place. Realizing that it had a floundering idiot for a rider, the horse stopped running. Something rumbled and clattered behind me.

  I looked around. The MC12 was gone, too. Now Timon was driving a buggy, and two white horses with glowing blue eyes were pulling it. Nearly dumping me off again, my horse jumped out of its way.

  I kind of understood what had happened. The rules said Timon and I would race through Tampa. But I hadn’t specified modern Tampa, and he’d rolled back time to before there were cars. Which meant we couldn’t have them. I flashed the Thunderbird, laying it on top of my horse’s head, but I couldn’t change it back.

  But hey, no problem. It wasn’t like I didn’t know anything about horses. I’d taken a pony ride once, at a school carnival when I was nine years old. And I’d thrown away a lot of money betting on them.

  All that—or maybe the movies—had at least taught me that you were supposed to put your feet in the stirrups and steer the horse with the re
ins. I fumbled around and found them both, while Timon’s buggy disappeared into the night.

  I also thought that if you made a clucking noise, or flicked the reins, a horse would move. Mine didn’t. I kicked backward with my heels, and that did the trick. I kept it up until we were galloping.

  The horse got instant revenge for the kicking, as the saddle spanked me again and again. Eventually I tried standing up in the stirrups. That helped, but made me feel even more like I was in imminent danger of falling off.

  I didn’t sit back down, though, and I didn’t let the horse slow down, either. We chased the buggy’s clatter, and then the carriage itself when I could make it out in the dark. Gradually we pulled up even with it.

  Timon twisted on his bench and his grimy, wrinkled face snarling, snapped a whip in my direction.

  The lash cracked across my horse’s head. It veered away from the buggy and stopped, almost pitching me over its head. I tried to kick it into motion again, but it bucked and reared. I just had time to notice my feet had slipped out of the stirrups, and then I went flying over its ass.

  I slammed down hard and cracked my head against a street that was now made of cobblestones, not asphalt. The shock dazed me, made me want to lie still, and I fought my way through that. I filled up with Red and used his power to fix any damage the fall had done.

  Then, still a little shaky, I stood up. The horse had run away, and I was still in the past, without an electric light, telephone pole, or parked car in sight. I flashed the Thunderbird and concentrated, willing my car to reappear in front of me. It didn’t.

  That only left one option. Still burning Red’s mojo, I sprinted after the buggy.

  I ran faster than I ever could have in real life, even with my Ka juicing me. But I still didn’t see Timon again until I was all the way out of Hyde Park and onto the street that almost certainly wasn’t called Kennedy Boulevard yet. And then he was still way ahead of me. There was no chance I could catch him on my own.

  So it was a good thing I had another partner lying in wait.

  As the buggy pounded and rattled onto the bridge that arched across the Hillsborough River, Murk rose to the surface. The first sweep of a tentacle smashed the buggy to pieces and laid the team out flat. One horse lay pulped and motionless. The other screamed and kicked with legs that bent in too many places.

  But Timon stood up, bleeding from a cut on his head, from the middle of the wreckage. “Traitor!” he howled, and when a second tentacle reached for him, he snapped his fingers. The end of Murk’s tentacle burst into flame, and he had to dunk it in the river to put it out.

  They went back and forth like that for a while, the kraken reaching, slipping some of his tentacles under the bridge to attack from both sides at once, and Timon counterattacking with fire. The Pharaoh took it all in from the center of the bridge, apparently not worried that Murk would pulverize him by accident.

  Wheezing, my heart pounding despite all Red could do, I reached the foot of the bridge. Then shadowy forms appeared on black surface of the water. Cannons boomed and rifles cracked as the puppets on the gunboats fired on Murk from behind.

  I vaguely remembered one of my teachers talking about Union blockade ships bombarding Fort Brooke during the Civil War. And although I couldn’t see many details in the dark, I had a hunch Timon had more or less recreated the event.

  Whatever he’d done, the barrage caught Murk by surprise and hurt him, too. He roared and thrashed, and while he was distracted, Timon moved up to the guardrail, and, the grubby fingers of both hands snapping nonstop, set more parts of him on fire.

  It was obvious Murk couldn’t take much more. I had to get across while I could, before Timon noticed I’d caught up. I managed a last burst of speed and ran behind him, trusting the bang of the guns and Murk’s howling to cover the noise I made.

  Apparently they did, because Timon didn’t turn around. But either some of the puppets on the gunboats spotted me, or else they were lousy shots. Because a couple Minié balls whistled past me, and a cannon ball blasted apart a section of guardrail right in front of me. Two flying splinters jabbed into my face, one above the eye and one below.

  I didn’t stop to brush them out. I did it on the run, and made it almost all the way to the other end before Murk dived for the safety of the river bottom. Then Timon spotted me. I wasn’t looking back to see him pivot in my direction, but I felt his magic suddenly poised in the air around me like a rat trap about to snap shut.

  Then, however, I caught a break. I took the final running stride that carried me off the bridge, and the towers and lights of modern Tampa exploded into view in front of me. I glanced back. The gunboats were gone. The bridge was made of concrete, not wood, and Timon wasn’t standing on it anymore. I hoped that he couldn’t see me, either. That we’d be out of synch until he either followed me off or switched off the vision of the past that he’d created.

  Still following the course, I ran left on Ashley, by the art museum. I flashed the Thunderbird and tried to make the T-bird appear beside one of the parking meters. It didn’t.

  Then I realized I was picturing it in perfect condition, the way it had looked at the start of the race. On a hunch, I imagined it beat to hell, as by rights, it should be now, and for some reason, that did the trick. It shimmered into view with a long scratch on the hood, where Timon’s whip had cut it when it was a horse.

  I scrambled into the car, threw it into gear, and stamped on the gas. By the time I was opposite the library, blue headlights were shining in the rearview mirror.

  I made two more turns, and then the Maserati was on my back bumper again. Epunamlin, Georgie, and a couple of Timon’s other servants popped up from behind cover to shoot at him as we hurtled by. A’marie blew her panpipes at him. But none of it even slowed him down.

  That left it up to me to make sure he didn’t get around me. I managed until we were hurtling south on Channelside Drive, with the faceted glass dome of the Florida Aquarium, lit from the inside and gleaming like a diamond in the night, dead ahead. Our finish line was in front of the main entrance.

  A second after we turned into the parking lot, which had a stripe of yellow phosphorescence glowing on the asphalt at the other end, the wind howled. It shoved the T-bird, which was also suddenly hydroplaning, even though the pavement had been dry an instant before. Rain hammered through the hole where the windshield used to be, stinging and blinding me, damn near drowning me like a waterfall.

  It was an instant hurricane, another blast from Timon’s past, and it screwed with my driving in half a dozen ways at once. But the worst was that here in the parking lot, he had room to pass on either side, and I couldn’t see or hear him anymore.

  Maybe it was luck that made me jerk the wheel to the left. Or an experienced racer’s instinct. Anyway, metal crashed, and the jolt knocked me sideways. The T-bird spun and the engine cut out. When the car stopped moving, I turned the key, but it wouldn’t start again.

  I tried to open my door, and it was stuck. I crawled out onto the hood and into the storm, not that I hadn’t pretty much been in it all along.

  I couldn’t see Timon or the MC12 and had no idea what the crash had done to them. But I could just make out a smudge of yellow. I ran toward it.

  When I got close enough, I spotted the Pharaoh behind it, sheltered from the downpour under the big purple cube of the overhang. Then Timon ran up beside me. We were neck and neck for a step or two, and then I noticed his arms and legs stretching like Silly Putty, lengthening his stride. It looked like enough to get him the win, so, pushing for all I was worth, I sprang ahead, stopped dead, snapped my arm out, and clotheslined him.

  He thought he was a god, and here in dreamland, he was pretty close. But he was still easy to sucker punch, and my wrist caught him right in the Adam’s apple. He stumbled and hunched over clutching at his neck, while I ran across the stripe of yellow glow, up to the ticket booths, and out of the rain.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The storm st
opped a second after I staggered under the overhang. Unfortunately, that still left me soaked and chilled. Timon was just as wet when he came charging up, but he also looked so mad that I could believe he didn’t even feel it.

  “Foul!” he croaked. “Cheat!”

  “Bullshit,” I answered. “You had your robot spitting fire at me before I broke out the rifles, punched you, or anything else.”

  “I’m not talking about that!” He was still yelling, or anyway, doing his best with a bruised throat, and drops of spit flew from his mouth. The rain had washed some of the BO off, but hadn’t done a thing for his breath. “I’m talking about the other traitors! This was supposed to be a contest between you and me, and you had help every inch of the way!”

  “Yeah.” Water trickled from the hair plastered across my forehead down into my eyes, and I swiped it to one side. “And all you had was a whole army of puppets and the power to control time and the weather.”

  “That’s not the point!”

  “True. This is the point. We agreed on a set of rules. They didn’t say anything about me sneaking in helpers, and anything they didn’t forbid was okay. That’s the way you lords play.” I turned to the Pharaoh. “Am I right?”

  The mummy smiled and blew a stream of smoke. “I’d have to say that that’s a fair assessment.”

  “Damn it!” Timon said. “He isn’t one of us!”

  “He is now,” the Pharaoh said. “Because I declare him the winner. And, knowing you for the fine fellow you are, I’m confident you don’t really intend to be a bad sport about it.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Look where that got Wotan.”

  Timon gave me a final glare. But then his shoulders slumped, and he thrust out his hand. “Just tell me how,” he gritted.

  “How did I get Lorenzo, Murk, and the others into your private playground? Well, it turns out there’s this thing called lucid dreaming. It lets people control what they dream. There are Internet sites and books about it. You should check it out.”