He watched as Amanda realized that he was sinking. His eyes were almost level with hers. Soon, he would fall to his knees. Her expression had gone from total fear to a budding sense of victory. She had held on to all of her reserves, presumably for years, waiting for this one moment to unleash everything and strike him down. She wanted to heat his gun until the bullets within it exploded like a grenade. He had seen the aftermath of a loaded gun thrown into a fire, and he knew neither of them would survive it. No doubt, that was her intention.
Well, that wasn’t going to happen. He was the Theta Factor, right? The unknown variable. Time to act like it.
Bledsoe pulled back some of his energy output. She would take it as a sign of his weakening. For sure, he couldn’t last much longer like this. But where QV-granted power might fail, he could still fall back on good old-fashioned force.
He couldn’t control his limbs well, but he could stop resisting the urge to double over from the cramping and agony. Bledsoe threw himself into the impulse, and the top of his forehead smashed down into Amanda’s face just above the bridge of her nose. Her head rocked back as blood gushed from her nostrils. Bledsoe felt the rush of her energy into him suddenly slacken to a trickle.
She managed not to release his gun hand. The burning there was a phenomenal spike of misery ramming into his mind, but he held it at bay, even as a primal shout burst from his throat. He released Amanda’s neck, drew back his left fist, and slammed it into the side of her head.
Her grip went slack, and the last of her energy attack vanished as her head and body lurched to the right. Still, her fingers remained on his wrist, proof that she refused to stop defying him. Her eyes met his, and there was still resistance in them.
Careful not to let the Alpha Machine piece fly from his left arm, Bledsoe hit her again. The crack of impact rang around the hilltop as her lips split and left a trail of blood across Bledsoe’s knuckles.
Amanda’s body spun around toward Winston, and she collapsed onto the flagstone compass rose. Bledsoe took one step forward and pressed his gun to the back of her motionless head. He tried to squeeze the trigger, but his burned fingers wouldn’t obey.
Fine. His other hand would have to do.
Bledsoe reached up and wrapped his left fingers over his right.
***
Sixty interminable seconds ago, Winston had been at least slightly confident of his plan: wait for Bledsoe to be distracted, placejump right beside him, grab the geoviewer off his arm, and knock the surprised Bledsoe aside just enough to jump away with his mom. Clearly, none of that was going to happen. Discovering that his mom shared his QV powers only compounded his disorientation and shock.
When Bledsoe head butted Amanda, though, Winston snapped out of his reverie. He admired strong women, and his already-high opinion of his mom had multiplied several times since discovering her unbelievable history. When she fought through Bledsoe’s torture and began frying him like a chicken leg, his heart had leapt with pride.
Now, the intensity of his love transformed into an all-encompassing hatred for Bledsoe. Every plan in his head vanished like fog before a gale. The city lights, the water and radio towers, even Shade pinned to the ground under Lynch’s bulk, all ceased to exist in his vision. He only saw Bledsoe’s tight knuckles smeared with his mother’s blood and the strangely slow swing of his gun toward her head.
Perhaps the flash of Winston’s disappearance distracted him, because when Winston reappeared behind him, Bledsoe was bringing his left hand up to his right. His hands met around the gun, but by then Winston was already swinging. If Bledsoe wanted to go back to old-school fight rules, Winston could do that, too.
He smashed Little e into the back of Bledsoe’s skull. It was a testament to the alien device’s engineering that the three Alpha Machine pieces still spinning within its arms remained in place rather than scattering across the hilltop.
Bledsoe collapsed to one knee.
“That’s for hurting my mom!” Winston cried. He drew back his arm. “And this is—”
Winston had hoped that Bledsoe would be knocked unconscious, because that’s what was supposed to happen. The man should at least have been stunned. Then Winston could have swooped down and grabbed the geoviewer from his arm.
Instead, with far more speed and agility than Winston would have thought possible, Bledsoe twisted and pushed off from his planted foot. His right hand, still clenched around his gun, whipped up and caught Winston on the side of his jaw.
For a moment, the world went black. Winston knew he was moving, but he couldn’t tell where or how. Slowly, his senses reconnected. He was still on his feet, stumbling backward. His arm was pulled up protectively around his face. Lights moved in the distance. The world was supposed to have a distinct up and down, but Winston couldn’t tell which was which. His feet tangled, and he crumpled onto his back.
More movement filled his vision. A face. Bledsoe. On top of him, teeth bared, eyes black in huge white fields.
Bledsoe swung his gun at Winston’s head again, and Winston barely had the coordination to block the strike. Gunmetal bit into his forearm with incredible force and pain. Winston cried out, sure that his bones had broken.
If Bledsoe had moved to strike again, he surely could have beaten Winston’s face into ground meat. Instead, Winston saw Bledsoe lunge for his right hand — for the Alpha Machine.
Fingers clawed along his arm. Nails scraped his wrist as Bledsoe tried to get his hand inside Little e.
“No!” Winston cried as he tried to scoot out and away. “You can’t!”
The hand fled from Winston’s wrist, and Bledsoe’s elbow landed in nearly the same place the gun had struck him. Winston’s head rocked to the side and stars erupted everywhere.
He felt Bledsoe move on top of him, leaning out for the Alpha Machine, the man’s weight crushing his ribs.
And then the weight vanished.
***
Bledsoe’s desire to kill the boy nearly outweighed his craving for the Alpha Machine. He couldn’t get the thing off the kid’s hand while he kept squirming.
He thought about putting his forearm into Winston’s throat and choking him, but he didn’t have the two or three minutes that could take. He might be able to shoot him, but that required two hands, and he didn’t want to give the boy a chance to fight back.
Bledsoe rocketed his right elbow into Winston’s face. His elbow protested with sudden pain, but he suspected the boy had the worse end of the deal. He could tell from the emptiness in Winston’s eyes that if he wasn’t knocked out, he was really close.
Bledsoe launched himself toward the Alpha Machine again.
Leave the tube thing. Don’t need it. Get the pieces.
His hand groped. Fingertips touched cold metal. One of those spinning rings rapped into his knuckles just as he tried to grab—
Fingers closed around Bledsoe’s throat.
He glanced down in surprise. Not the boy. Winston was struggling just to blink his eyes.
The hands lifted Bledsoe up and back, dragging him.
The grip wasn’t crushing, so it couldn’t be Lynch. Amanda, then.
Bledsoe tried to draw breath and couldn’t. That was bad.
He tried to get his feet under himself as his assailant continued to drag him away from Winston.
The hands dug into Bledsoe’s windpipe, searching for an even deeper hold. As he fought the grip, the pressure lessened but managed not to let go. Bledsoe still couldn’t breathe. What few reserves of adrenaline were left to him shot into his bloodstream.
Bledsoe stopped trying to stand and instead let his feet trail out in front of him. Then he jackknifed his body, folding at the waist, and kicked a foot up and over his head. His instep collided with something hard.
The grip lessened enough for Bledsoe to turn within the fingers before they clamped down anew. By the time his air supply closed off again, Bledsoe was on his knees and staring into the face of his attacker.
It wasn’t Ama
nda.
At first, he didn’t recognize the person in the dark. It was some wrinkled old man, lips peeled back, blood beginning to trickle from one gray eyebrow. Wispy ashen hair fluttered about his face, stirred by the breeze.
Bledsoe could have ended it right then. The thought occurred to him: Raise gun. Point at face. Pull trigger.
But he had to know who this man — this bold, insane, surprisingly strong, ancient man — was and why he had come here.
Bledsoe tried to put the pieces together. Who would Winston have trusted? Height, build, jawline, eyes…
Ah, yes. It had to be — a surprise visitor from Bledsoe’s past. A man who should have been dead ages ago but must have had some injected help.
Theo Tremaine, who had taken Claude’s side in everything and who had done nothing but stand in the way of Bledsoe winning over Amanda.
Well, time hadn’t quite taken the man down, but now Bledsoe would finish the job.
40
Loss and Leaving
Winston needed the confusion in his head to clear, but he didn’t know how to make it happen. Bledsoe had been grappling with him, striking him, forcing the air from his body, and now he was gone.
Colors and shapes were starting to come back. The stone wall behind him. The feel of the cement under his back. Cold wind chilling the sweat on his face. A low thrum filling his ears.
He tried to see where Bledsoe had gone but found his view blocked by another person — his mom, crawling on her bound hands and knees, blood-smeared face gazing at him with worry.
Beyond her, he saw Bledsoe’s legs flailing, then Theo came into view, dragging Bledsoe by the neck.
Winston saw motion above him and glanced up. At first, he was baffled. A handful of stars descended from the sky. Some were white, some red. Every so often, one would disappear, then come back.
Winston blinked, and then the puzzle pieces fell into place. A helicopter.
That figured. The FBI was about to arrive, right when Bledsoe was in the middle of killing them all. Were they here for Bledsoe or Winston — or both at once?
More movement, this time from his left. Winston craned his neck and saw Agent Lynch rise to his full height. The man glowered at Theo, who still had his hands around Bledsoe’s throat. Lynch strode purposefully toward Theo. He reached inside his jacket and smoothly withdrew his handgun, and this one was decidedly larger than Bledsoe’s.
Winston tried to call a warning, but it was as if some of his brain’s signals only went in circles. Not even his mouth opened. He squinted his eyes, took a short breath, and tried again. Nothing.
The world continued to shift dizzily. His mom’s hands reached his leg. She kept repeating a word that he only gradually realized was his own name.
Several steps behind Lynch, Shade rose into a crouching run, as if the football had been snapped and the season depended on him making this quarterback sack. This was the same move that had knocked Brian Steinhoff off Winston and well across the school gym. It was also the same move that Shade had tried on Lynch under Old Town Pizza and had resulted in Shade bouncing off the man like a flat basketball.
This time, though, Shade had a slightly different plan. He was coming up on Lynch from behind, and he had the element of surprise.
No yell. No warning. Shade dropped his shoulder and, at a full sprint, rammed it with all his strength into the agent’s kidney.
Lynch’s legs gave out. The gun flew from his hand. His back arched in sudden agony, but his body continued forward, falling until he landed face-first in the turf, left arm now trapped in the sling beneath him.
Shade wasted no time. He landed with one knee right in the small of Lynch’s back and grabbed for the agent’s right hand, seeking to put him into the same armlock he’d used on Shade only a moment ago. However, as soon as Lynch realized what was happening, he forced his arm straight. Shade didn’t have his balance set and couldn’t counter the large man’s strength. Lynch bucked under Shade, throwing him to the side. Then Lynch twisted his body, and one leg connected with Shade’s shoulder, knocking him to the ground.
Shade tried to find his balance and get to his knees, but it was too late. Lynch dove at him, landing the top of his head square in Shade’s breastbone. Shade fell onto his backpack, then Lynch was straddling him, nostrils flared and eyes wide with fury.
Winston tried to roll toward Shade and struggled to get an elbow under his body for leverage.
“This is really going to hurt,” Lynch announced as he drew back a fist.
Shade leaned forward, as if starting a sit-up, quickly spun to the side, and rammed the heel of his hand into Lynch’s sling. Lynch leaned back, howling, leaving himself even more open.
“I bet it does,” said Shade, then he hit the spot again. Winston saw the man’s forearm collapse inward at its center.
Before Lynch could back away, a curly-haired man rose up behind him and clamped a hand onto the back of Lynch’s collar. His other hand pressed a gun barrel into the back of Lynch’s skull.
“Freeze or die, Lynch,” said Agent Smith.
***
Bledsoe tried to speak but found he couldn’t. He considered grabbing the old man’s throat and choking him back, because that seemed like the most obvious, natural response under the circumstances, but his left hand was clamped around some hard, round object and the right one still throbbed with incredible pain.
So he fell back on the tactic that seemed to be working best tonight. He focused his energy into his neck and took a mental deep breath since he couldn’t draw a physical one. Bledsoe felt more depleted than he could remember being in years, perhaps ever. It was like trying to bring in a huge amount of air for a deep ocean dive and only getting a hiccup.
It would be enough, though. He only needed a second.
Bledsoe forced that pocket of energy through his neck and into Theo’s hands with as much sharp intensity as he could muster, as if he were shoving in a knife blade.
Theo’s reaction was instant and instinctive. His hands released as he cried out. He took a step back from Bledsoe and glanced at his fingers, perhaps wondering if they’d been burned.
Bledsoe didn’t leave him any more time to wonder. He rose to his feet just as he swung his left arm and brought the object in his hand crashing into Theo’s temple.
Or so he intended. Somehow, the old man’s left arm floated up, crossing before his face, and deflected the shot just as it was about to land. At the same time, Theo’s body pivoted as it followed his arm, momentarily exposing his back to Bledsoe. Then Theo’s right elbow followed along behind the pivot and rammed into Bledsoe’s nose.
Bledsoe stumbled back and swore. He wiped at the bottom of his nose with the back of his gun hand and saw a smear of blood.
“Twenty-eight years of Tai Chi,” called Theo. “Not bad for an old guy in a park, eh?”
Bledsoe could barely hear the man over the wind and thudding of the rotor blades as the helicopter descended toward them. Bledsoe felt his moment of opportunity slipping away. Winston and Amanda remained on the ground, but they wouldn’t stay there much longer. That damned Agent Smith had somehow reappeared and had Lynch face down in the grass with a gun to his head.
The tide was shifting. Time to change boats.
Bledsoe’s right hand glowed an intense azure, and he could feel the beginnings of tactile sensation along with the pulsing of pain. And in his left… What was that thing in his hand? It wasn’t the ring, after all, which still dangled from his forearm.
He glanced down and saw a smooth, black object filling his palm, shaped like a thick doughnut. He’d come away from grappling with Winston holding the companion piece to the artifact that let him see through space. This object must work with its counterpart somehow.
“You shouldn’t have come back, Theo,” said Bledsoe.
“I’ve had a long life,” Theo replied. “I want to make sure you don’t screw that up by erasing it.”
Bledsoe smirked and wiped at his nose again.
More blood.
“Hold that thought,” said Bledsoe.
He leveled his gun squarely at the center of Theo’s chest and tried to see if his trigger finger would respond yet. Impressively, it did.
Relatively speaking, a 9 mm bullet doesn’t inflict much damage. It’s not a pea shooter like a .22, but it doesn’t make an exclamatory statement like a .357 or a .45. However, at nearly point-blank range and firing into the fragile organs of a century-old body, 9 mm bullets will get the job done. A small, black hole appeared in Theo’s jacket, right between the heart and sternum, Bledsoe figured. But Bledsoe also saw the dark spray eject from behind Theo where the shot exited. Between front and back, the shell would have ripped through organs and arteries, tearing a path of destruction that not even QVs could fix within the scant seconds left.
Theo wavered on his feet and raised one hand to his wound. Blood spilled out and across his fingers. He stared up at Bledsoe, a mix of disbelief and irritation on his face.
“Tai Chi that,” said Bledsoe.
Theo’s eyes narrowed, and he managed to make a fist with his bloody hand, save for the extended, trembling middle finger.
Then one leg gave out beneath him, and Theo collapsed to his side and forward, landing hard. His head bounced off the cement, and Bledsoe heard a crack, as of a splitting melon. Bledsoe watched for a few seconds, but Theo lay completely still, deader than dead, as Bledsoe’s granduncle used to say of fallen enemies.
Exhaustion swept through Bledsoe, perhaps propelled by that helicopter’s whirlwind battering the hilltop. He lowered his hands in weariness. As he did so, the ring slipped down to his left wrist — and suddenly jumped as it surrounded his fist, suspended in midair through some magnetic force.
No, it wasn’t surrounding his fist. It had fallen into place around the new piece, the black torus. Bledsoe could feel them both connect with his mind as the white crosshairs reappeared in the lower corner of his vision. He felt the torus pulling against his palm, as if trying to escape. He cradled the ring against his body for a second, then shifted his grip from the torus to the ring. The smaller artifact began to spin within its partner, just as he had seen it do for Winston.
Winston Chase- The Complete Trilogy Page 62