by Logan Jacobs
Pandemonium broke out then as the rest of the men tried to decide what to do next. One man, a tall fellow with a five o’clock shadow, started toward me as he twirled his billy club in a circle.
Sorcha ducked to avoid a blow, but the man wasn’t paying attention to her any more.
“Well, shit,” I muttered to myself. “So much for not drawing attention to ourselves.”
I took aim at the man with the billy club first. I was surprised when he didn’t at least try to jump to the side or do something to protect himself, but maybe he thought the twirling billy club would somehow stop the bullet. I shrugged as I pulled back the hammer, and then I felt the familiar bite of the gun against my hand as I pulled the trigger. The gun roared again, and a shiver of excitement coursed through my body.
The man jerked backward as the bullet caught him in the shoulder, just above the heart. Blood sprayed out like ripples on a lake as the momentum of the impact spun him around before he dropped to the ground. He hit with a loud thud, then screamed as he rolled over onto his injured shoulder.
“Hex!” Sorcha called out. “He’s got a crossbow!”
I glanced toward the blonde mage, who pointed across the street. I could just see the top of the head of another gangster, and he ducked behind a porch column. He peered at me from his hiding spot, then lifted the crossbow. I fired the revolver before he could release the bolt, and I saw the lower half of the man’s jaw disintegrate. The bullet kept going and passed through his skull and out the back of his head before it smashed into the window behind him. A grizzly mist of blood and tissue exploded from his head just as the glass exploded and sent thousands of shards onto the sidewalk.
There were only three men left, and they’d all tried to find places to hide. Two crouched behind a produce stand, and the third was plastered to the backside of a barber’s pole. As I debated who to fire on next, I heard alarm bells start to sound. It took me a moment, but I realized the warning was in my head and not something anyone else could hear.
I glanced at the revolver, but it looked the same, so maybe the alarms were a warning from the gun that the backup was nearly here.
“We need to go,” I urged Sorcha as I started to back away from the last three men.
Sorcha nodded and ran to my side. I tried to keep an eye on all three men as we started to leave, but I saw the Asian’s body for just a moment, and then all I could feel was the itch in my palm once again. Even the alarm in my head seemed unimportant compared to the urge to hold the gun.
“Do you see the other gun?” I asked Sorcha.
“It’s just over there,” she replied with a tilt of her head, and I caught the glint of silver near the Asian’s body.
“Get it, please,” I ordered.
“Hex,” she started to protest, “the others will be here soon … ”
“Just get the gun,” I hissed.
Sorcha huffed at my tone, but she left my side and walked toward the body that laid in the middle of the street. I swept the revolver between the three men, all of whom watched Sorcha from their hiding spots.
“Leave him alone, witch!” one of the men blurted out.
“Shut up!” I shouted. “Sorcha?”
“I’ve got it,” the blonde mage replied as she started back toward me.
She held the gun by the tip of the barrel with her fingertips rather than the grip, and she tiptoed back toward me, as if she expected the gun to explode in her hands if she didn’t handle it with care.
But the loss of the gun was more than the man behind the barber pole could take.
“Fuckin’ grave robbers!” he shouted as he lunged toward Sorcha.
Sorcha stumbled away from him as he started to grab for his club. I heard the snub nose clatter to the ground again, and then I fired the revolver one more time. The gun roared, the acrid scent of sulfur and charcoal filled the air, and the man collapsed in front of Sorcha before he could pull the club from his belt.
But my hand was suddenly empty, and I looked at it in disbelief. For a heartbeat, I could see the barest outline of the revolver, and then the shimmer died away, and there was nothing there. The alarm bells had gone silent as well, and I suddenly understood what they’d been trying to tell me.
I’d had one bullet left, and I’d just fired it.
“Shit,” I muttered. I tried to create another gun, but my hand remained empty. Only the barest tingle filled my palm, and I shook my head in disbelief.
“The gun’s gone,” one of the remaining gangsters declared as he stood up. He was a heavy set man with a hook nose and a feral grin.
“Did he drop it?” his partner, a short man with a thatch of thick curls, asked as he peered from behind the vegetables.
“Don’t know, don’t care,” the heavy set man growled as he stepped out from his hiding place.
I made another desperate attempt to summon the gun, but still nothing appeared. The heavy set man bared his teeth and started to charge toward me. I bolted back toward the middle of the road and the spot where Sorcha had dropped the gun.
“Don’t let him get the gun!” the heavy set man yelled at his fellow gangster.
I heard two pairs of footsteps behind me, but I’d spotted the gun by then. I veered away from Sorcha and slid across the intersection. The gun had come to rest in a pool of blood near what was left of the Asian’s head. I started to reach for it when something slammed into my back and sent me sprawling into the road.
I rolled away before the blade I knew was coming could finish the job. I kicked out as I did and heard my opponent grunt as I found a knee. I scrambled to my feet, and the heavy set man aimed a low sweep at my legs before I was balanced. I managed to jump over the arch of the blade, barely, but I hit the ground with a thud and felt a twinge in my ankle from the hard landing. I tried to set my feet, but the blade came back at me, up high and straight for my throat. I ducked beneath the blade and managed to plant my shoulder in the other man’s sternum, but not before he cut along my shoulder blades.
Still, I landed several swift punches while he tried to bring the blade back around. He staggered backward, and I glanced along the street. Then I saw the snub nose, now near the curb where someone must have kicked it. It was barely bigger than my hand, and the barrel looked like it had been lopped off in a farming accident.
I ran across the street with the heavy set man’s footsteps right behind me and snatched up the gun just as I saw the other man’s shadow close in. Then I spun around as I raised the gun. The man’s blade was already on its downward sweep, and I would have been dead meat on any other day.
But I had the snub nose, and it was pointed dead center at his chest.
He started to say something, but I pulled the trigger and felt the corresponding pressure from the gun. It pushed back more than the revolver had, but that made sense to me. It felt like a more powerful weapon, and when I finally unleashed it, I understood why.
I thought the revolver sounded like an explosion, but it had nothing on the snub nose I held in my hand. I was surprised the glass in all the nearby windows didn’t shatter at the power.
And the kick.
The snub nose bucked like an angry horse, and I could feel it all the way to my shoulder and down every inch of my back. I was so surprised that I almost stumbled.
Most amazing of all, there was a burst of fire that shot from the end of the barrel. It fanned out for a brief moment like a miniature fireball, then vanished just as quickly as it had appeared. After that, there was just black smoke and the smell of eggs that had been boiled for too long.
The shot was higher than I intended, since I hadn’t expected such a jolt. Most of the gangster’s throat was gone, and I wondered how his head was still connected to the rest of his body. I could see tendons and muscles as the blood oozed down the front of his shirt, and a strangled sound came from his lips. He dropped the sword, then fell to his knees. He teetered there for a moment as his hands fluttered by his side, and then he slowly fell sideways.
I looke
d around for Sorcha and the last gangster.
Sorcha stood just a few feet away, with her hand over her mouth as she stared at the heavy set man.
The last gangster was next to her, and he wore a terrified expression on his face. He must have felt my gaze, because he suddenly stepped behind Sorcha and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. I started to lift the gun in his direction, but he swung the mage around like a shield and used his free arm to hold a blade to her throat.
Sorcha froze when she felt the tip of the knife against her skin, and I saw a trickle of blood start to drip from her throat.
“I’ll kill her,” the curly haired man barked as he started to back away.
Sorcha started to open her mouth, but the man pressed the blade against her throat even harder. So, she clamped her mouth shut and gave me a pleading look.
“Let her go,” I demanded as I slowly followed the man.
“Not a chance,” the man snarled as he tried to pull the blonde mage even tighter against his body.
Sorcha squirmed and wrinkled her nose, then went still as I gave her a nod.
“Let her go, and I won’t shoot you,” I added.
“Or what?” the man spat. “You’ll shoot us both?”
“No,” I replied as calmly as I could, “just you.”
The man jumped at that and peered around Sorcha’s head as he tried to figure out what I planned to do. I inched forward until we were only a few feet apart. The man’s left eye started to twitch, and the hand that held the knife was less steady.
“I can make the bullets go around her and hit you,” I declared.
Sorcha gaped at me in surprise, and the gangster’s whole body twitched.
“I’m a mage,” I insisted. “How else do you think I managed to get a gun? And why do you think it disappeared when I used all the bullets?”
That seemed to be all the proof the man needed. He pushed Sorcha toward me, then ran away, back into his gang’s territory.
I managed to grab Sorcha as she stumbled toward me, and I held her for a moment until she could steady herself.
“You can tell the bullets where to go?” she asked as she pushed a lock of hair from her face.
“I have no idea,” I admitted, “but he believed it. That’s all that matters.”
Sorcha shook her head, but I saw the smile that played at the edges of her mouth.
“We should move on,” she said as she took in the scene of the battle. “Eventually, the sheriff will come to investigate, and we know there are more members of the gang on the way.”
“How fast can you move?” I asked as I glanced at the three roads. “And which way do we go?”
Sorcha started to respond, but a flash of light filled the intersection. The earth seemed to heave up for a moment, and we both stumbled as we tried to get our balance. I could feel a powerful energy prickle along my skin, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
“Mage,” Sorcha hissed as we both covered our eyes.
When the brightness faded away, I opened my eyes a crack. It took a moment for the stars to clear, but when they did, I spotted four more people in the midst of our battleground.
The one who caught my attention, though, was the woman with the icy stare and small flickers of lightning dancing around her upraised hand.
“This can’t be good,” I murmured to the blonde standing next to me. I’d only seen a lightning mage once before, a crazy man who had set vast swaths of grazing land on fire before he’d finally been knocked out by two other mages and taken into custody. It had been terrifying watching him in action, even from the distant hilltop where we’d stood, and I experienced that same sense of dread now as I stared at the woman.
“Damn,” Sorcha muttered. “Lightning mages are always a little crazy.”
I raised the gun and fired just as the mage charged toward us, but the three fifty-seven was harder to handle with only one hand, and I didn’t think about how much distance was between us. The gun jumped in my grip, and though I tried to keep it on target, I felt my arm lift the slightest bit.
The bullet only grazed the mage, and a small trail of blood formed along her bicep. She managed to ignore what had to be a great deal of pain as she unleashed a strike that shattered the air around us and burned the dirt beneath us. I was tossed into the air like a ragdoll and landed several feet away with a hard thud.
I found myself crumpled on my side, my vision blurred, my ears ringing again, and nothing but pain coursing through my veins. I felt someone approach and squinted toward the vague shape. I tried to lift my arm and fire the gun, but something hard smashed into my hand. I felt my fingers open, and the gun fell away. I heard it hit the ground, and then something sent it skittering across the road.
“Oh, you think a gun will save you?” a woman’s voice demanded. “You believe those stories that only a bullet will kill a mage?”
“Who are you?” I mumbled.
“The mage who’s going to kill you, gunslinger,” came the laughing reply.
Chapter 8
I rolled onto my back as my vision cleared, and I found myself staring at the woman. She was a towering figure, well over six feet tall, with long black hair tied into a heavy braid and a pair of biceps that most men would have killed for. Purple lightning flickered around her fingers, and she gazed at me with two very cold eyes.
“Where’s Sorcha?” I mumbled because I couldn’t come up with anything else over the buzzing sound still in my head.
“I’ll deal with your ensorceler in a moment,” the mage replied, “but for the man who killed my brother, I’ll provide a very special death.”
The Asian gangster, I realized. I could see the similarities in the face, even if she did carry a more caucasian look.
The mage smirked when she saw I’d guessed the identity of her brother, and she slowly lifted both of her hands above her head. The lightning turned white, and small sparks fell to the ground as the streaks from one hand crashed into the others.
I scrambled backward as I tried to feel for the gun, but all I found was dirt and slime.
I needed a gun. I pictured the revolver, and I could almost feel it in my hand, but it didn’t appear, and the tingle died away. Desperate, I tried to picture the snub nose. The tingle became a thousand pinpricks in my fingertips, and then there was the wonderful feel of the dimpled grip against my palm and the pressure of the trigger on my finger. I had no idea why I could create the snub nose and not the revolver, but right then, it didn’t matter. I had a gun in my hand and an angry mage in front of me, so I raised the snub nose toward the woman who towered over me.
I fired the first shot in the general direction of the mage just as the lightning started to pour from her hands, and the boom of the gun combined with the thunder of the magic to create an explosive roar. I was forced to shield my eyes again as the lightning sparked around me, but then I heard the mage cry out as the light faded away, and the acrid odor of the gunsmoke filled my nostrils.
When I opened my eyes, I saw the mage held one of her arms against her chest. She stared at a river of blood that flowed from the arm, and I scrambled to my feet while she tried to stanch the flow with her fingertips.
She heard me stand up, and her gaze shot toward me. She snarled in frustration, then her good arm came up. Her hand was sticky with her blood, and I could smell the sickly sweet odor of burning blood as she started to create yet another ball of lightning.
But I knew what to expect from the gun now, and my vision was finally clear.
I held the snub nose in both hands, just to keep it steady, and took aim at her heart. Then I pulled the trigger and felt the power of the explosion rock the gun. I kept it locked in my grip, though, and kept my arms fixed. The flames that leapt from the end of my version of the snub nose were more blue than orange, but it was still an impressive sight.
The mage tried to draw back as the gun boomed, but it was too late. The impact twisted her to the side as the bullet smashed into her chest, and
she fell to the ground with a grunt, then went still. The thunder died away, and the air was filled with the smell of sulfur once more. I took two steps closer toward the mage, careful to keep the gun pointed at her, but her eyes were blank, and the large hole near her heart spewed blood along her chest and onto the street.
I stepped away from the body and tried to find Sorcha. The blonde mage was curled up near a signpost, but I couldn’t tell if she was still breathing. I pointed the gun at the three gangsters who had arrived with the lightning mage as I moved toward my companion, but they were still reluctant to cross whatever invisible line delineated their territory.
“Sorcha,” I called as I tried to pull her up with one hand while still keeping the weapon trained on the other men.
She groaned, but after a moment she reached up toward her head and gingerly felt around a bloody bump.
“The mage … ” she mumbled as she tried to push her hair away from her face.
“Dead,” I assured her, “but we need to get moving. I don’t know how long those other gang members will just stand there and watch.”
I helped Sorcha struggle to her feet, and we started to back away again. The gangsters glowered at us as we moved further along the street, but none of them made any attempt to pursue us. I spotted a few brave souls who peered at us from windows or around the edge of a door, and I had no doubt that word would be sent to the sheriff as soon as we were out of sight.
We made it to the next block, still under the watchful eye of the gangsters, but they stayed on their side of the Hook. Then we found ourselves on a street paved with stones and lined with a few scrawny trees. Despite the noise of our battle just a block away, there were people on the sidewalks. There was no sense of panic or concern, either, though a few people stood on their stoops and peered in the direction of the intersection.
I tucked the snub nose into my jacket pocket as Sorcha and I tried to blend into the crowd, but the people we passed looked startled at our appearance, and calls that someone should summon the sheriff followed us along the street. I finally pulled Sorcha into a park filled with trees and thick shrubs that made for handy hiding places. We followed a trail until there was no one else in sight, and then ducked into the bushes.