by N. D. Wilson
The redhead nodded at Bull and Dog.
“Well, go ahead,” she said. “Shoot him.”
3
Super
INSIDE ONE HEARTBEAT, SAM FIRED HIS BOW TWICE, FEELING both triggers depress and both strings jump. Each bolt found its target before Sam could even flinch from the bullets he knew were coming.
One loud gunshot, and one big man’s yelp of pain. And then nothing but the distant echo.
Sam looked up from half a crouch, unwounded. Bull was trying to tug a bent and twisted arrow out of his rifle barrel. Dog was sucking on his bloody right hand.
Girl Sam brushed back her curls. And then she smiled. Sam didn’t like her smile at all. And yet part of him also liked it a lot. It reminded him of Cindy. Maybe because she had just ordered her men to kill him.
“It’s hard to believe you’re real. I had to check,” she said. “And I didn’t think you’d kill them. We aren’t safe here. But you have to give us your bow and blind your snake hands or something and you can’t be called Sam if you want to stay in our camp.”
“I’m not doing anything to my hands,” Sam said. “And I’m not going to your camp. So I guess you can keep being a Sam. You won’t have to go back to Samantha.”
“Samra,” the girl said. “Samra Finn. And you’re coming. That was pretty awesome, but your bow is empty. You don’t really have a choice.”
Dog spat blood and examined the gash in his hand. “Leave him. But take his boat. And we should find his storehouse. Anyone with a boat and fuel has a stash somewhere out there.”
Kill. The thought flowed up Sam’s left arm from Cindy. She gripped her single arrow tighter and her rattle began to quake. Obviously, the ax man was trying to sneak up on him again.
Sam spun, snapping his wrist, letting Cindy do the aiming. The arrow wobbled into a spiral and thunked into the surprised man’s sternum, but with nowhere near the velocity needed to do real damage. It barely pierced his green raincoat.
“Whoa!” He plucked the arrow out and threw it on the ground.
Cindy grabbed another arrow with Sam’s left hand. “I’m not going anywhere with you and neither is my boat.”
Bull finally managed to twist the arrow free of his rifle barrel, and he flicked it away. “He doesn’t get it,” he said to Samra. “You don’t get it,” he said to Sam. “This isn’t our patch. We’re trespassing, too. And if we don’t get moving soon—”
Distant gunshots echoed across the lava ruin. The sound of a racing motorcycle engine followed.
Sam and Samra, Bull and Dog and Dice all scanned the surrounding hills. At least a mile and two dark lava flows away, Sam saw the antique motorcycle and sidecar wobble down a broken street between slumping buildings and then shoot out onto lava rock. Only a girl straddled the seat, her ponytail fluttering. The sidecar looked empty.
“Who is that?” Samra asked.
“Glory,” Sam said. But no Peter. He should have been in the sidecar. Bracing his crossbow between his feet, Sam reloaded quickly. Two bolts. “You should probably leave. I don’t think she’s going to like you.”
A small rusty pickup riding high above its tires bounced out onto the rock behind the bike.
“Come on, Glory,” Sam muttered. “Open that throttle up.”
A gun fired from much closer and rock sprayed up from the street in front of Sam. Dice collapsed onto the ground beside him, unconscious and bleeding.
“Cover!” Samra yelled, but Sam grabbed her by the vest before she could dive away. The redhead whipped around, swinging at Sam’s head, but Cindy grabbed her fist with Sam’s left hand.
“Sidearm, bullets, backup gun, anything,” Sam said. “I need whatever you have.”
Another bullet exploded in the street. Rock shrapnel stung Sam’s cheek as the ricochet screamed away. Samra jerked free and ducked against a low ruined wall between Bull and Dog. Sam was left alone with the body of Dice. The motorcycle was growing closer, as was the truck behind it, but Glory was outrunning her pursuer, so she could handle herself for now. Sam dropped into a crouch with his bow raised with both hands and turned in a quick circle, searching for the closer threat. He didn’t see a thing, but as the bow passed over what was left of a charred building a few hundred feet down the slope, Cindy jerked it back and held it as still as stone, aiming for a dark second-story window.
Kill.
Sam waited. Cindy wasn’t entirely reliable. It could be a cat. Or a dog. Or simply a person with bad enough luck to be watching.
Then Sam saw the barrel and flash and, a split second later, heard the shot as something hissed past his ear.
Cindy aimed the crossbow with his left hand, but Speck pulled the trigger. Once. Twice.
The arrows hissed away, arcing up and then dropping into the square just above where Sam had seen the flash. The shooter’s gun tumbled out the window. A limp forearm dangled over the sill.
Sam holster-hooked his bow and refocused his attention on Glory. The truck was gaining on her quickly.
Samra and her bodyguards climbed cautiously back to their feet.
“Bull,” Sam said, pointing at one of the big men. “Let me borrow that rifle.”
“I’m Dog,” the man said. “And make sure you give it back.” He tossed the old gun through the air, and it landed heavily in Sam’s hands.
The weight of the weapon flooded Cindy and Speck with adrenaline. The scales in Sam’s arms rippled inside his long johns as he quickly inspected the old rifle. The wood stock had lost most of its varnish and the metal had lost its black, but it was clean and cared for. The rifle was an old western model with the lever action Sam had seen in every cowboy illustration he had ever studied and in the hands of friends and foes alike in Arizona, two centuries before.
Sam raised the heavy gun to his shoulder.
He held the rifle in his own way, with his left hand pressed tight against the side of the barrel, giving Cindy a clear line of sight to control his aim. Speck was more responsible with the trigger.
“We’re not hurting anybody,” Sam whispered to himself. “Just shake that truck off of Glory. Shoot at the tires.”
The motorcycle was bouncing across the lava too slowly to outrun the truck, but the truck was bouncing too much for the man hanging out of the passenger window to get a good shot at Glory.
Holding his breath, trusting Cindy more than he liked, Sam began to squeeze the trigger.
Cindy whipped the barrel sharply to Sam’s left. The butt of the gun bucked against Sam’s shoulder like a stung mule, kicking to kill. His ears screamed at each other through his brain. The gunshot was louder than any he had ever heard.
One block away, Cindy’s target slumped to his knees. He was big, made even bigger by a huge fur coat. He held a shotgun in his left hand, and his right was raised to throw a grenade at Sam. He fell onto his face.
Speck levered out the empty shell, and Cindy scanned for a new target.
An explosion shook the face off of an already ruined building, burying the man and his coat where they had fallen.
Senses sharpened, heart pumping, Sam spun around and focused on Glory’s pursuers.
But Cindy pointed the gun at Glory.
“No!” Sam jerked Speck away from the trigger, then quickly switched hands and shoulders.
Speck grabbed the side of the gun, pressing Sam’s fingertips flush against the hot barrel and taking control of the aim. Cindy waited impatiently by the trigger.
“Gotta be quick here,” Sam said. “Quick.”
The man in the truck fired, and Sam saw Glory wince, jerking her hand off the throttle. The motorcycle swerved dangerously.
His first target was spinning and bouncing at least half a mile away. There was a breeze. Even with Speck aiming, anything could happen taking a shot at this distance. But not taking the shot was sure to be worse.
Sam exhaled and felt his heart slow. The motorcycle veered and the truck turned, showing Sam both tires on the driver’s side.
Now, Sam t
old his hands.
The mule kicked, levered, re-aimed, and kicked again so fast that the two gunshots blurred into one rolling boom.
Sam staggered backward in pain.
Half a mile away, the front and rear tires exploded on the driver’s side of the truck at virtually the same time. The two bullet impacts and the torn skin on the backs of Sam’s fingers told him that Cindy had levered in and fired a second round as fast as Sam had blinked. And Speck had kept concentration, shifting targets just as quickly. It didn’t seem possible, even for them. Part of him was happy when his hands worked together so well, but it made the smarter part of him . . . nervous.
The truck tripped, heaved, and tumbled across unforgiving lava rock. The echo of crunching metal replaced the echo of gunfire. The motorcycle managed to steady and point in Sam’s direction.
Dog, now on his feet, took the hot rifle from Sam’s hands and studied the barrel.
“How did you sight?” he asked.
Sam held up both hands. “Ask them,” he said. “Or don’t. They won’t tell you.”
“This is bad,” Bull said. “When the rest of them find out you killed one of their own.” He glanced down at the truck. “They’re gonna want revenge.”
Sam looked at the big man and then at Samra. Her pale face was serious in the center of her red, curly halo. Dog was still staring at the snake heads on the backs of Sam’s hands.
“You know,” Sam said to Samra, nodding at Bull. “Your muscle here looks tougher than he talks.”
Two more rusty trucks bounced out onto the distant lava field, engines roaring. Both truck beds were overflowing with men. All carrying rifles.
Bull and Dog grabbed Dice’s limp arms and began to hurry away, dragging his body between them.
Samra stood right beside Sam, watching the new trouble come.
“You know the only reason we came here?” Sam asked. “Toilet paper. That’s it. No other reason. At least that’s what my friends told me. I’m not sure I believe them.” He grimaced, rubbing his right shoulder. “I hope they actually got some.” Turning, he smiled at Samra. “It was nice meeting you, Sam. Now I really need to get this boat running. We’re going to be leaving in a hurry.”
Samra pulled an old pistol out of her vest and pointed it at his chest.
“No.” She shook her head. “You’re coming with me. We need someone like you. A superhuman or whatever you are. You could change everything for us.”
Sam looked at the gun barrel and then stared into Samra’s eyes. Both of his rattles began to buzz and hot anger boiled up from his arms and into his skull.
“Listen to me,” Sam snarled, and he checked the motorcycle’s progress. Five hundred yards and entering a dip out of sight. “If you seriously think—”
Cindy interrupted him.
Kill.
Sam’s left hand flashed up, jerking the gun out of Samra’s hands and swinging the butt down on top of her head. She collapsed in a pile on Sam’s feet.
“Oh, gosh,” Sam said. He glanced at the coming trucks, at Bull and Dog still hustling away, back at the pier where he had tied up the boat, and then down at the curly red hair hiding his boots.
“Glory, if you don’t have toilet paper . . .” Sam scrunched up his face, but his anger was already completely cold. “I think I’m going to mind,” he said. “A lot.”
Kill.
Cindy tried to turn the gun around.
“Oh, shut up,” Sam said. He whipped his left hand away, forcing his fingers open despite Cindy’s anger. The gun spun over a wall and clattered to a stop out of sight. “You’ve done enough, you stupid horned snake. Arrows only for you.”
In the distance, barely visible through the haze, a jagged ridge spat orange ribbons in a curtain of freshly molten stone.
COUGHING, GLORY WIPED HER EYES QUICKLY WITH HER left hand. The motorcycle twisted beneath her, and she slammed her hand back down to the handlebar. The awful smell of sulfur still burned in her sinuses. Smoke still haunted her lungs. Despite the cool air and the breeze, her skin still felt hot enough to blister.
Peter had been taken. Those winged things had floated him out of the sidecar while the city had puked up lava and gas and ash all around them. She had been sure they were both going to die right there, but then the bright shape had come and had thrown her forward to where that day’s time misadventures had begun . . . beside the supplies she and Peter had collected.
Only now, instead of sitting quietly in a heap where she had left them, armed men had been throwing them into the back of a truck. Two more trucks had been rumbling one street away.
The surprised men had given her only seconds to recover. She’d opened up the throttle and peeled away by the time the first bullets had flown, ducking over the handlebars and hoping the sound of shots would warn Sam to get the boat ready.
How Sam had found a rifle, Glory didn’t know, but she was thrilled that he had. It had to have been him. Who else could have made that shot? She even knew which hand had been aiming. Cindy would have aimed for the humans, not the truck tires.
The motorcycle settled onto a stretch of smooth rock, running up toward the crumbling buildings where Sam was supposed to be waiting. Glory glanced back at the one already crumpled truck and the two others still in pursuit, loaded with armed men. She knew she was a tough target, but some chump might still get lucky.
Digging into an inside pocket on her jacket with her left hand, Glory pulled out the hourglass Father Tiempo had given her. It was hot in her hand, and the glass had darkened to a deep sapphire blue. Peter had warned her not to use it until she could get some instruction and safe practice; he had made all sorts of horrible predictions about the kind of things that could go wrong. But Peter’s older self was the one who had given it to her in the parking lot of a pizza place, with hardly any warnings at all.
Glory was completely over being shot at for the day. And she had done more than a little bit of practicing with the glass at night, when she couldn’t sleep, and the moon had been her only witness.
Glory thought about what she wanted and felt the glass immediately begin to torque in her grip. Black sand trickled from one of the open ends. Following the impulse of the glass, she swung it around her head once and snapped it toward the ground. Instantly, the tailing sand became white, spreading into a smoky sheet and then rippling into a webbed shell of hot glass as thin as breath and as gapped as lace. And the strange egg grew in whichever direction the hissing hourglass went.
Inside the growing tunnel of glass, time raced but appeared normal—the motorcycle engine throbbing, shocks bouncing, tires tearing at the rough lava rock. But outside, water vapor hung motionless in the air. Flames emerged from gun barrels like snails stretching slowly from their shells in the morning. The trucks drifted over bumps like space vehicles with too little gravity.
Holding the hourglass high, Glory opened the throttle wide, racing up the slope inside her sparkling, sighing, steaming web of glass, up toward the buildings where she and Peter had left Sam. Just before she reached the top, Glory flipped the hourglass around in her hand and swung it behind her.
Cold wind hit her face as she reentered her original time stream. Behind her, as glass shattered and became sand, her time tunnel was crushed and swallowed by the time outside with a sound like wave foam sucking on the shore.
Ahead of her, with crossbow raised and eyes wide, Sam Miracle jumped back out of her way. But he didn’t stay startled long. Wind snapped at his old poncho and forced its way through his thick, messy hair as he scooped an unconscious redheaded girl up off the ground and staggered forward to dump her in the sidecar. Once the girl was in, Sam hopped on the bike behind Glory.
“Her name’s Samra!” Sam yelled. “Where’s Peter?”
Glory didn’t even try to answer. Peter’s abduction terrified her. And being terrified made her angry. Being shot at made her angrier. But the fact that Sam had found the time to collect an unconscious redhead somehow trumped everything else compl
etely.
She kicked the bike into gear and peeled out toward the ruined buildings, veering between them down the hill toward smooth dark water, a jagged pier, and the old metal boat.
Glory felt Sam rock back on the seat as she accelerated. She halfway hoped he would fall off, but his left hand slammed into her waist, gripping her tight.
“Peter was taken!” she yelled over her shoulder. “He’s gone!”
4
Neverland
DARK EVERGREEN ISLANDS ROSE ABOVE THE SILVER WATER of the Puget Sound, stark against a background of fog, steam, and smoke. Long glassy-backed waves bent and rolled behind the lonely boat.
Glory Spalding sat in the bow on the thick planks where her motorcycle had been tied down. The adrenaline of the chase was fading, but slowly. In her mind, she kept replaying her decision to use the hourglass the way she had. It was one of her closer calls in the last couple of weeks, but she still could have made it without crashing through a faster time stream. Her stomach was still uneasy. Bordering on nauseous. It always was whenever she did something like that. Maybe it was nerves, fear of making some terrible mistake and ending up trapped or ancient and wrinkled. Maybe it was her worry that Peter was gone for good, that whoever—or whatever—had saved her hadn’t done the same for him. Or maybe it was the simple and inevitable consequence of experiencing something mortals were not equipped to handle.
Or maybe it was the sea.
Glory preferred that option. She was just a touch seasick. If she did throw up, that’s the only explanation Sam would be getting. The damp wind snapped Glory’s dark ponytail over her shoulder and skirmished with loose strands of hair on her forehead. She traced a bullet dent on her bike’s front-wheel fork, and studied the redheaded girl, unconscious on the floor beside Sam’s boots.
No matter how she looked at it—at her—bringing the girl back to the island had to be a mistake.
“Did you kill her?” Glory yelled over the rumbling engine.
Sam was squinting into the wind while he steered—Speck on the throttle and Cindy on the wheel—his poncho flapping like a cape behind him. He always stood to drive the boat, even though there was a perfectly good seat. Both snakes obviously hated every minute of the cold wind and showed their hatred with twitches and ripples and shivers that ran up the visible scales on Sam’s forearms. Beneath the poncho, he had pushed up his sleeves as high as they would go, and the snakes weren’t happy.
