by N. D. Wilson
“So, how does this help us?” he asked. “Do you have any idea what to do now?”
“Thanks for the confidence.” Glory looked back out into the kitchen. “Of course I do. If we can move, this is the best thing ever. I actually kind of know what is going on. I did something like this to Peter, but hopefully opposite.”
“Why hopefully?” Sam asked.
“Because if I did it like this instead, then he’s already dust,” Glory said. “I tried to put him in a bubble where his time would be slower. So we’d have more time out here to save him. We’re in our own bubble, but a lot faster.” She glanced back at Sam, and then pointed at the lantern on the counter. “Much, much faster. Way faster. So much faster that you can see light waves moving in bundles.”
Sam stared at the lantern. “That’s light? Moving full speed?”
Glory nodded. “And everything looks smoky because normally the atoms are moving fast enough to make stuff solid. But not from where we’re standing.”
“What’s with the water?” Sam asked.
“Space,” Glory said. “Time. Standing still enough that it looks like liquid. That’s my guess, anyway. I only got good at this today. I’ve done little baby versions of this before, playing with the hourglass. But this is the real deal.”
“Okay,” Sam said. “We’re sitting in a superfast time bubble. How do we get out?”
“I’m not sure.” Glory rotated the hourglass in her fingers as she tried to think. “But when we do, we have to track down El Buitre and deal with whatever he has done to Peter.”
“Look out.” Sam’s right hand whipped past Glory’s ear. Vinegar spattered against her cheek as she flinched away, and the fat pickle Sam had just thrown slammed into the watery surface.
The pickle punched a long cylinder of emptiness into the liquid time before it slowed and became smoke. The smoke passed in a contrail over Leviathan’s head, still moving faster than the lantern light, and then it plowed through ghostly kitchen cabinets and vanished, leaving behind a curling crater like puckering lips.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Glory said quietly. “That could have killed someone. Were you listening to anything Ghost said? Moving this fast you could literally blow someone’s head off with your breath. You just fired a pickle through the house faster than a meteor.”
“It had to be a pickle,” Sam said. “The peaches were too slippery.”
Glory ignored him. Instead, she held up one end of her open hourglass to the wall of liquid time. Slowly, the fluid began to twist and spin, stretching in toward the glass. She flipped the glass around and the whirlpool slowed and reversed direction, retreating away from the pantry door, whirling and widening a tunnel out into the room.
“The Angel of Death gave you his blood,” Sam said. “You’re getting scary.”
“Says the boy with snakes in his arms,” Glory said, smiling back at Sam over her shoulder. “Now stay close. We’re going to move through here like the Reaper collecting souls.”
THE VULTURE STOOD IN A SMALL CHAMBER, FACING A STONE arch filled with absolute darkness so heavy and smooth that the entry looked more like a vertical pool than an opening. Behind him, outside the chamber mouth, torchlight from his cavern courtyard flickered around the fountain and across the empty stone table. Mrs. Dervish waited off to the side, like a servant stationed beside an open door. She wore a long black skirt above riding boots and a lacy white blouse, buttoned up all the way to her plump jaw and pinned with a pearl-and-silver brooch that looked like the moon. Her hair was in a tight ballerina bun, stabbed into place with a thin silver knife.
“The boy found me in a dream, Dervish. He passed through the protective seal on this place,” the Vulture said. “Tell me how and I might trust you again.” When she didn’t respond, the Vulture continued. “He challenged me to face him. And now you want me to do just that, on the ground of his choosing, in the moment of his choosing? And without your mothers. Where is the woman who was preaching patience? Are you so jealous of them that you would push me to risk an ambush?”
Mrs. Dervish sniffed loudly and placed her hands on her wide hips. The Vulture towered over her. “William, you know the charms protecting this realm are of the Tzitzimime, not me. Still I assure you, this is not an ambush. One of my men sent the message! He has Sam Miracle captured, ready to deliver to us. We need only collect him. Kill him on the spot if it will make you feel more secure. Or bring him back here and do it properly. Heave him up on a pole in front of a chanting crowd, I don’t care. But get it done, and get it done now! Yourself! Do not run to my mothers for this. Be as strong as you can be, or they will quickly forget you when you have released their army.”
The Vulture tugged at his beard between his finger and his thumb.
“The boy is captured? You’re sure.”
“Yes. And he cannot escape through time. The priest is dead. My mothers are performing their rite with his stolen heart in front of ten thousand drooling naaldlooshii, as you dillydally here.” Mrs. Dervish stamped her foot. “Do it now, William! Do not let them take the boy’s heart as well, and prove you a coward!”
The Vulture growled, a low rumble in his chest that rose to a lip-curling, spitting snarl when he spoke. “You forget yourself, Dervish. Do not give me orders, laced with insults. I will choose my time and my city and release your mothers and my army out into it like a nightmare. Try pushing me again, woman, and I’ll take your heart along with Sam Miracle’s.”
Mrs. Dervish pursed her lips tight, and then reached back and pulled a black lever on the wall behind her. The sound of clattering metal poured out of the dark entryway, overwhelming the chamber. Chains unspooled in the ceiling as unseen stairs were lowered into liquid blackness.
When the rattling had stopped and the echoes had died, Mrs. Dervish gave El Buitre a smile.
“I have a guide ready,” she said. “One of my mothers’ many servants. By the time the Tzitzimime have finished with Tiempo, you will be holding the heart of Miracle in your fist.”
8
Hunting Party
SAM STAYED AS CLOSE TO GLORY AS HE COULD WITHOUT actually getting a piggyback ride. The funnel tunnel Glory was using to burrow through the slower time stream was widest where she was standing and the liquid sides sagged in behind her.
With the hourglass extended, Glory moved where time receded. Sam grabbed onto the back of her shirt with his right hand, and wound it tight in his grip.
“Where are we going?” he asked. The smoky shape of Samra was on his right. Leviathan, her massive father, was on the left side of the counter. The slow strings of light from the lanterns hit the tunnel walls and exploded into sparkling reflections as they entered Glory’s accelerated time.
“Hold on,” Glory said. She was leading him toward the kitchen counter. Her tunnel engulfed the corner and then the top of the counter. The four-string crossbow Barto had made for Sam was swallowed by the tunnel next. Glory grabbed the bow and handed it back. Sam let go of her shirt and took it. The strings were empty. Glory handed back a fistful of arrows and he jammed them point down into his left holster. Then he bent over and began to load his bow. There was a metal loop at the end that he kicked his boot into to hold it down, then he used both hands to pull back and lock the strings in place, one at a time.
He was on string number three when the walls of the tunnel rippled and compressed around him, popping both of his ears.
Glory slipped and sat down. Sam dropped to his knees behind her, grabbing at his arrows and quickly fitting two onto strings as Speck and Cindy rippled and tensed.
“There,” Glory said. “Look.”
Out in the liquid living room, above the vaporous bodies of the tied-up Lost Boys, a vertical cylinder was spinning in place. It was hollow, it was dividing in two, and as it did, the tunnel around Sam and Glory compressed further. Glory swung her hourglass in every direction, keeping her tunnel open, and slid even closer to Sam.
The two halves of the vertical cylinders s
eparated further, both spinning, spreading darkness in between them like a scroll—like a doorway.
Six golden watches on six gold-and-pearl chains floated out of that black door and the liquid time retreated before them. Sam watched time part as the watches and chains moved with a purpose, like the tentacles of a hunting octopus or the spinners of a spider.
Sam blinked and his memory overwhelmed him. Desert heat and a shattered, smoking train. The room at the top of his tower in San Francisco. How many times had he faced this man and how many times had he lost? How many times had he been a boy moving in slow motion, trying to catch up to the guns of a man who had entered a different speed?
Fear was climbing up Sam’s throat. Dizziness was worming into his vision. This was what he wanted. He had shown himself to the Vulture and had begged him to come fight. But his body knew better. His body had healthy responses carved deep into its instincts. His body knew that panic and flight might give Sam the best chance of survival.
Cindy and Speck disagreed. They had their own minds and their own anger, and they hadn’t lost to the Vulture hundreds of times. But they knew enough to hate him more than any other man they had ever sensed or seen.
With both snakes taut and rattling, Sam waited to see the man who always followed after the floating watches. His throat cinched up completely and his beating heart thundered in his head.
KILL.
Cindy stopped rattling. She wanted to give this enemy no warning. Speck’s rattle shivered to a stop. The snakes agreed.
So did Sam.
KILL.
Glory grabbed Sam’s right arm, squeezing Speck and his wrist tight.
El Buitre stepped out of the outer darkness and into the room. His black pointed beard was longer than it had been in Sam’s dream, as was the black hair curling on his shoulders. He was wearing a bloodred vest where all six watches and chains attached. A seventh watchless chain dangled past the gun belt at his waist. As the Vulture entered the room, that broken chain rose, pointing straight at Sam.
Sam felt the seventh watch tug forward in reply.
“Shoot him!” Glory hissed, releasing Sam’s wrist. “Now! Before he sees us.”
William Sharon, the Vulture, onetime king of California’s golden age, arch-outlaw king of all ages, looked down at his golden, tugging, watchless chain. And then following the chain’s direction, he looked up.
Through twenty feet of liquid time, Sam met the outlaw’s hooded eyes. And in that second of seconds, all Sam’s fear vanished. How could he be afraid, when fear was what he saw in El Buitre’s eyes? That . . . and surprise.
In one accelerated time stream, the Vulture reached for his guns. In another, Sam raised his bow.
THE SOUND WAS BIGGER THAN ANYTHING MILLIE MIRACLE had ever heard. A single boom, louder than thunder, trailed by a wave of heat and the smell of burnt pickle. And just after, while her bones were still buzzing, she looked up and saw splinters of kitchen cabinet smoking around a large hole in the wall.
But there was no time to even think about what had happened or why it smelled like pickles.
Jude was laughing.
Leviathan was shouting for his men.
The air wobbled like sheet metal in the kitchen and half of the counter disappeared, along with the lantern. And Sam’s bow.
“Sam?” Millie asked.
A foul smell surrounded her, a smell from her nightmares, the smell of the endlessly rotting things lost in the outer darkness that had once been the constant aroma of her captivity.
Millie gagged. Jude had stopped laughing.
Two more explosions split the room, searing the air with bright stripes of fire.
A third boom spun a smoking blue braid between them.
Millie had no time to scream or flinch. She barely had time to blink.
And then the only man she feared in the world was suddenly falling out of the sky, falling from nowhere with a blue arrow in his shoulder.
El Buitre—with a gun in each hand—crashed to the floor across the tied-up bodies of the Lost Boys. Six golden watches bounced on the marble floor around him.
GLORY FELT ONE OF THE VULTURE’S BULLETS HISS PAST HER left ear. His shots sent so many slinky ripples through the liquid time, it was impossible to see Sam’s blue arrow fly. Impossible for the Vulture, too, judging from the surprise on his face when the arrow punched into his right shoulder.
The big man staggered backward and slipped, splashing into the much slower time stream, trailing watches from his smoky figure as he fell.
“Go!” Glory screamed. “Finish it!”
Sam was trying to fit another arrow onto a string.
“Now!” Glory grabbed Sam and swung her hourglass down.
The thick, slow time collapsed in around them, slamming them to the floor, filling their lungs and tearing at their skin. Glory gasped, her ears ringing, but not so loud that she couldn’t hear the snakes both rattling again on Sam’s shoulders. It was like having an ocean fall on her back. Like a car wreck. Like drowning.
Somehow, Sam was already rising to his feet, raising his crossbow. Hanging on to her hourglass, Glory scrambled up beside him.
Leviathan was on the floor with his hands over his ears along with his daughter and her two huge bodyguards. The Vulture should have been sprawled out bleeding on the marble.
But he wasn’t. The Vulture was gone.
There was only a rippling mirage in the air above the bodies of her friends, where they had seen the doorway to darkness open.
“Oh no,” Glory said.
“Down!” Sam yelled, and he lunged for Glory, but she knew they were already too late. She knew she had made a huge mistake. They never should have left the faster time. Now they were the smoke, the helpless targets, as helpless as Sam had been beside the train when the Vulture had destroyed his arms so many lifetimes ago.
Invisible guns thundered.
The mind is the fastest place in the body. But spirit is faster than all flesh. Faster than thought. Glory’s fingers didn’t move around the hourglass. Her arm didn’t even twitch toward defense.
Her soul moved. As fast as the first light from the lips of the first Word.
Sand pulsed into a glassy swirling window like a shield.
Sam tackled her and they both flew behind the kitchen island, landing back on the marble.
A woman screamed and Glory looked up through the spinning shield that trailed back to her hourglass. A beautiful but terrified black woman stood up against the refrigerator with a platter of vegetables and dip in her hands. She was dressed for a party, in a shimmering dress and high heels, and an amazing pair of gold curtain earrings. The kitchen was full of daylight. The electricity was on. In that strange moment, peering into a happier time, Glory wondered if the woman was the boss of the maid she’d scared upstairs earlier, or if they were from totally different decades.
“Sorry!” Glory said. “Love the earrings, by the way.”
“Russ!” the woman screamed and threw the platter of vegetables at Glory’s window.
Glory reached up and punched the glass suspended above her. Sand and carrots and spinach dip rained down around her and all over Sam. He sat up quickly, shaking sliced peppers out of his hair and trying to spit sand off his tongue.
The kitchen was dim again. And it smelled like pickles. They were back.
“Glory,” Sam whispered. “Hurry! We have to follow him. Do your glass thing!”
Glory grabbed onto the counter and pulled herself up until her eyes were just high enough to see into the living room. She could see the rippling in the air around what she knew was the door into darkness. She thought she could see three shimmering shapes inside it—two shorter ones helping a much taller one. The Vulture had assistants. Of course he did. The idea of trying to follow them through that doorway into the foul darkness was total craziness, and yet Glory knew that’s what she was about to do.
Peter’s body was upstairs turning to sand. Because of the Vulture. Father Tiempo’s
life was turning to sand. Sam’s life. Glory’s. Millie’s. Every moment and every year, every city and every nation that Father Tiempo had ever defended or upheld, all of it would be nothing but sand.
Glory twisted the hourglass in her hand. It was her only weapon, but a little more control would be nice. She looked down at Sam. He was seated on the floor, his foot hooked into the end of his crossbow, pulling back strings and slipping arrows into place as Speck and Cindy rattled.
“Go!” Sam whispered. “The train has to make it across the bridge!” He blinked, confusion flooding his eyes.
Great. Could she really do this if Sam was hallucinating?
“Samra?” The voice was Leviathan’s.
Sam looked up.
“Are you okay?” the man asked. “Are you hurt?”
“I’ll live,” Samra’s voice responded. “My ears hurt. Who was that?”
“Your father’s boss,” Jude answered. “The Vulture. El Buitre. The great giver of batteries. That’s who.”
“Not my boss,” Leviathan growled. “A client. An ally. Occasionally.”
“Well, he’s leaving,” Jude said. “Look. You see this rippling business in the air? That’s your battery king running away.”
Glory focused on Sam’s eyes.
“Stay close,” she whispered. “And don’t let me die.”
Sam climbed into a crouch, his bow held with both coiling, scaled arms. Speck was on the triggers, Cindy would be handling the aim.
“What time is this?” Sam was blinking faster now, fighting to understand. “Why do I have a bow?”
Glory bit her lip. She had to make a choice right now. And hiding behind the kitchen island wasn’t going to save Peter or kill the Vulture.
“I just had guns a second ago,” Sam continued. “In the desert. Pretty sure there was a train wreck . . .” He shook his head, looking up and down and all around.
