by DD Barant
I manage. The gas I want to employ is ejected sideways from the cylinder, so in order to use it I have to hold the Ruger parallel to the ropes. I can just barely bend my wrist enough to do that—but it means the barrel is now pointed, more or less, at my head.
I angle it down. Now it’s aimed at my breasts. I lift up my chin, suck in my breath, and try to aim somewhere between. If this doesn’t work, the bullet will go through my neck.
I pull the trigger.
The recoil almost snaps my wrist. I swear I feel the bullet graze my throat as the gun flies out of my hand.
But the ejected gas severs three-quarters of the rope. I yank on it with all my might—and it holds.
“No goddamn way,” I hiss, and then all rational planning and carefully executed maneuvers go out the window. I haul on that sucker, ignoring the pain of my wrist and cursing at the top of my lungs.
“You’re history, you crappy little piece of string! You lousy, yarn-humping, thread-sucking—your mother had sex with baling twine! Break, goddamn you!”
It’s a good thing my gun’s now on the other side of the room. If it had been in reach when those last few strands did finally break, I’d probably have grabbed it and just shot the rope restraining my other wrist.
But it isn’t and I don’t. I untie my left hand, put on the only piece of clothing I can find—a bathrobe—and tear out of the room.
I don’t know how much time has passed since Azura left. I don’t have a cell phone, or change for a pay phone. I can’t even commandeer a car; I don’t have a badge and I can’t threaten anyone with a weapon they don’t recognize. I doubt if a cab will stop for someone in a bathrobe, and when I get outside and try I see that I’m right.
I’m on the Strip, maybe a ten-minute walk from the motel.
So I run.
* * *
A woman wearing only a bathrobe and running down the sidewalk with a gun in her hand would get arrested pretty quick in my reality. Here, all I get is laughter and wisecracks: “Hey, baby! Who set your tail on fire?”
“You just remember you left the bathtub filling up at home?”
“Slow down, you forgot to get dressed!”
I don’t have the time or breath to reply. Focus, Jace. Control your breathing. Long, even strides.
Bitch even took my shoes.
I get to see a little more of Vegas, but not much detail. Don’t see many thropes in were form, and the ones I do see are wearing a lot of jewelry. Guess that’s how you indicate you’re a high-roller without designer clothes.
It takes no more than five of the longest minutes of my life to get back to the motel. I’m on the last block when I see the crackle of high-powered magic flash into the sky, and know I’m too late.
I hit the parking lot of the chapel in time to see a thrope fly through a window backward and smash into the side of an SUV. Won’t kill him, but the concussion’s enough to knock him out; he reverts to human form at my feet. Gunderson.
“Charlie!” I yell. I barrel for the front door—and run smack into a body flying through it going the other way. And I do mean flying; it’s about three feet off the floor and moving in a flat trajectory, slamming headfirst into my gut. We both go down hard, tumbling backward another ten feet or so in a tangle of limbs and curses. Okay, the cursing is just in my head; what little air I have left in my lungs after my mad dash is knocked out of me on impact. I gray out for a moment, and when my head clears I realize I’ve lost my gun.
I push myself off the ground, get to my knees. And look straight into my own eyes—Azura’s no more than three feet away, blood running down her face from a cut on her forehead. She’s on her feet, but wobbly.
My gun is on the ground, halfway between us.
I dive for it. I don’t make it, though—Azura points her hand at me and something shoots out of her sleeve and wraps around me at chest level, pinning both of my arms. It looks like the same thing she tied me up with: thin white rope with the reflexes of a bullwhip and the attitude of an anaconda.
“Stop,” she gasps. It sounds more like a request than a demand, not that I have a choice. “You don’t have a chance. He was ready for me—”
That’s all she has time for. The roof of the chapel blows off in the kind of light show that would give George Lucas an orgasm. It’s clearly a magical explosion—the sound it makes is more like a giant sneeze than a boom. Red slate roofing tiles shoot up a hundred feet or more into the air … and then start to come down.
I throw myself to the ground—which hurts, since I can’t break my fall with my hands—and roll under the nearest vehicle. Unfortunately, Azura does pretty much the same thing with another vehicle.
“I am going to put a bullet in you for every one of my team who’s hurt,” I shout. “Count on it!”
She stares back at me from under the car she’s under. “Listen to me,” she says. “Your team is down, but nobody’s dead. Not yet. Ahaseurus is after me, now—I’m the one who tried to ambush him. Do what I say and your team lives—”
She’s interrupted by the crash of several hundred pounds of kiln-dried shrapnel smashing itself into smaller pieces all around us.
“—we have to draw him away!” she shouts. “That’ll buy your team some time! If we don’t, he’ll kill both of us and them as well!”
I don’t trust her. She’s abducted me, stolen my face, and may have gotten my team hurt or worse—but the smartest thing for her to do right now is bolt and leave me behind to take the blame. She isn’t doing that—and my only other option seems to be going head-to-head with a sorcerer who’s way, way out of my league.
I roll out from under the truck. “Get this damn thing off me,” I say. Azura crawls out and gestures; the rope unwinds, snakes across the ground, and slithers back up her sleeve. Nice trick.
I reach down and pick up my gun. She watches me but does nothing.
“Go,” I say.
And then I’m running again, and Azura’s right behind me.
* * *
I don’t like running from a fight. Hell, I don’t like running from anything. But I think I knew all along that our only chance of taking down the Big A was to catch him by surprise, and that ship has sailed. Didn’t get very far, either.
I only hope Azura’s telling the truth about Charlie and the team still being alive. So far her track record on honesty isn’t exactly unblemished.
I’ve done my share of chasing suspects through backyards and alleys, over fences, and around every conceivable obstacle. This is the first time I’ve been on the other end of the pursuit—but at least I’m half dressed and barefoot. Oh, and waving a gun around—that’s always good for establishing a general mood.
We’re ducking through a yard with a pool when Azura hisses, “Stop!” She’s staring at the water with an intent expression on my face.
“What?”
“I know how we can lose him, but you have to trust me.”
“Lose who? I haven’t spotted anyone on our trail—”
“He’s coming.” She’s got a shut-up-and-listen-if-you-want-to-survive-this tone in her voice, so I do. “Follow me, don’t let go of my hand, and keep still.”
She grabs my hand—then jumps into the pool, pulling me in with her.
I have enough time to suck in a lungful of air—two would have been nice, but oh well—and then we’re not just in the water, we’re under it. Azura’s pulling me down to the bottom, and when we get there she looks me straight in the eye and expels all the air in her lungs in one big, bloopy bubble.
That’s your plan? Drowning? I scream inside my head.
But she isn’t drowning. Her other fist is clenched tight, and I can feel a pulse of something coming from it. Something that travels through her body and into mine at our clasped hands.
She takes a deep lungful of water, driving the last few silvery pearls of oxygen out her nose. She stares at me calmly and nods.
I shake mine violently. No goddamn way. A hundred thousand years of air-bre
athing DNA tell me that now is not a good time to give up my addiction. I’ll quit tomorrow. Really.
Azura frowns—and then her features shift, losing my contours and regaining her own. Maybe it’s supposed to make me trust her, but a little face-time is not enough to make me abruptly change a lifelong—not to mention life-preserving—habit. I don’t care what kind of mojo she’s working, I’m just not that interested in changing my name to Aquagirl—
And then a star appears over our heads.
I think it’s the spotlight of a helicopter at first, sweeping over the pool. But it’s not focused or moving in the right way—it’s radiating in all directions from a single fixed point. Oh, and it’s a bright, arterial red.
But not fixed, after all. The star is getting closer.
Azura flattens herself against the wall of the pool, and I do the same. The pool is filled with an unearthly blood-red light, but the angle leaves us in shadow. That’ll change if the light moves over the pool itself, leaving us completely exposed.
It stops. We stare up at the light, which is pulsing in a way more organic than astronomical. Whatever—or whoever—is radiating it must be standing a few feet away from the pool’s edge. All they have to do is take a step closer and peer down …
Right about then is when I realize I can’t hold my breath any longer.
My lungs insist I head for the surface. My brain vetoes that idea, but rebellion is in the air. No, don’t think about air … lovely, sweet, chest-filling air, lightly scented with the smell of freshly baked bread and mountain pine … okay, screw this, I’m going up.
It’s not my will that breaks—it’s sheer physiological override by my monkey hindbrain that makes me start to struggle upward, the same kind of panic response that makes a drowning person try to stand on the shoulders of her rescuer. Azura refuses to let go of my hand, so I try to pry her fingers off mine—
She punches me in the gut. Hard.
And that’s it for what little oxygen is left in my lungs. It comes out in a silvery cloud of bubbles, and a second later I inhale out of reflex. Water rushes into my lungs with a horrible, heavy sensation, like having my chest filled up with concrete.
But I don’t die. In fact, a second after it happens, my panic subsides, along with my overpowering need to breathe, because I am breathing. Water is flowing in and out of my lungs as easily and naturally as air usually does, despite being a lot more dense.
Azura pushes me back against the wall and flattens herself again. If the bubbles I released a moment ago caught the attention of Mr. Bright up there, we’re dead.
We wait. I wonder if I’m going to die with the overpowering taste of chlorine in my mouth.
A few agonizing years pass. Finally, the crimson brilliance moves on—Azura must be masking us with more than just water, or maybe the occult senses our tracker is using don’t work so well on the aquatic. We wait another century or so, and then Azura motions me that we’re going topside.
She lets go of my hand as soon as we break the surface, and the first thing I do is my impression of a whale: I spew water from my blowhole, emptying my lungs so thoroughly they ache. She does the same.
“Whuh, whuh, what the hell,” I manage, gasping. I swim over to the edge of the pool and haul myself out. Wearing a wet bathrobe makes me feel like someone turned up the gravity.
“Sorry,” she gasps back. She pulls herself out and sits on the edge, then shows me what was in her clenched fist: a small bone, probably from a fish. The magic in this world is based on animism, the idea that all things—animal, mineral, vegetable, other—have a spirit in them, and by talking to it you can cause different things to happen. Apparently we were just talking to the spirit of a flounder. “Didn’t exactly have time to discuss it, did we?”
“No,” I admit.
“We have to keep moving—doubling back on our trail will fool them, but not for long. We need to get someplace safe, where I can throw up a few wards and hide us.”
“Sure,” I say. “Throwing up—urrk!—sounds like a great idea.” I get rid of the last of the water in my lungs.
I ditch the bathrobe; I’d rather be running around in my underwear than lugging an extra twenty pounds’ worth of H2O and dripping everywhere. Besides, my own clothes are right in front of me—and surprisingly, I don’t even have to ask. Azura shucks out of them and hands them over without a word. I notice that while she might be at home underwater, she doesn’t seem to believe in underwear. No sign of her pet rope, either.
“Thanks,” I say. She grabs my soggy robe and holds it up in front of her as water cascades onto the pool deck, then swirls it around her like a cape and settles it on her shoulders—except by the time the fabric stops moving, it’s completely dry and has changed into a lightweight wraparound dress that fits her perfectly.
“Okay,” I say. “Can I have my shoes back, too, or are you going to turn them into hooker boots?”
“Sorry.” She kicks them off.
I’m still wet, but at least I’m dressed. I put my gun in its holster—funny that she took that and not the gun itself—and say, “Let’s go. We need to see if anyone needs medical attention—”
“No,” she says. “We can’t.”
“My partner—”
“Your partner’s fine. We’re the ones who aren’t.” She hesitates. “That light we saw? I was wrong, that wasn’t Ahaseurus. That was one of your own team, and she was looking for you.”
“So why did we hide?”
“Because she thinks you’re a turncoat, Jace. She thinks I’m you—and I just tried to kill the target you were supposed to take alive.”
“Which doesn’t make sense, meaning they’ll see through it pretty damn fast—”
“No, they won’t. I’m not the kind of shaman you’re used to dealing with, Jace. I’m—well, on my world they call me an Astonisher. And when I want to fool someone, they stay fooled.”
My stomach is starting to do that sinking thing I’m way too familiar with. “Your world?”
“Yeah. I’m not from around here, either.” She shrugs. “How about I buy you a drink and tell you about it? Or we could wait for you to be arrested … but then I’d have to abandon you, and I hate drinking alone.”
I sigh. “You’re buying.”
My shoes squish as we walk away.
* * *
“Look, I’m telling you nobody on your team died,” Azura says. “I’d be able to tell—I’m attuned to these things.”
“That doesn’t mean nobody got hurt,” I growl.
She takes a long sip from her drink as an excuse not to answer. I knock back my own—tequila, or what passes for it—and signal the waiter for another.
We’re in a back booth of a dive called Miss Pointy’s, a strip club catering to pires. The air is smoky, the lighting is either red or blue depending upon the act on stage, and none of the clientele is looking in our direction. I guess that’s a plus.
“Give me one good reason I shouldn’t march your ass back to the motel at gunpoint and have you explain all this to my team,” I say. “And make it convincing.”
“I’ll give you several good reasons. One, they won’t believe you unless I confess, and I won’t. Two, you’ve got a way, way better chance of taking Ahaseurus alive if we work together. And three, you’d have a hard time aiming your gun at me when you don’t have it.”
I grab for my Ruger. It’s not there. Azura smiles, and it’s suddenly in her hand. “Interesting weapon. Not the kind of thing we use where I come from—or here, apparently. What’s it do?”
“It makes holes. Big, messy ones, usually in people. Don’t point it at me, please.”
She shrugs. “Look, I’m sorry you got caught in the middle of this, but it makes sense for us to work together.”
I don’t like it. I can’t trust her. But my only alternative is going back and trying to assure everyone I haven’t gone completely insane—which is a condition thropes and pires don’t exactly understand in the first place. I
could wind up incarcerated, all my friends shaking their heads sadly and saying, “But she seemed so normal—I guess it’s just a human thing…”
“Look, there’s something else you need to know,” Azura says. “Ahaseurus has something big planned. I don’t know exactly what it is, but I know it’s going to happen soon. We have to stop him, and we have to do it now.”
I study her for a long moment. Finally I say, “What’s an Astonisher?”
She grins at me. Impishly. “An Astonisher is many things. We specialize in making the impossible possible, in dazzling the senses, in making things vanish and making things appear. We cannot be imprisoned, we cannot be predicted, we cannot be seen if we wish to remain hidden. We are master tricksters and cunning thieves, well versed in the arts of disguise and subterfuge. We are—”
I groan. “Oh my God. You’re a magician.”
“Well, of course I’m a magician—”
“No, I mean you’re a magician. Card tricks, pulling rabbits out of top hats, sawing assistants in half. I’m in Vegas and I’m working with David Copperfield in heels.”
“We prefer the term illusionist, if you don’t mind.”
“So you’re not even going to deny it?” The waiter arrives with my tequila and I grab it from him with a glare; the man must have turtle in his genes.
“Why should I? It’s true that Astonishers hone their skills in the public eye when they start out; illusion and performance go hand in hand, after all. But that’s only our apprenticeship—we go on to much more serious matters. Astonishers, as everyone knows, are the power behind the power—we advise rulers, collect secrets, create or cover up scandals. Appearance is everything in politics—and we can make things appear however we wish.”
“Right. So you’re a glorified spin doctor?”
“Most of my assignments are closer to espionage than public relations. Like trying to stop a rogue sorcerer who’s jumped to another dimension.”
“Wait—Ahaseurus is from your world?”
“That he is. From a land called Nightshadow, which is also my home.” She shakes her head. “I’ve been here for a while, Jace, doing some investigating. I knew you were my best chance at getting close to Ahaseurus, and I blew it. But we still have one advantage; he doesn’t know I’m here. He’ll blame the attack on you.”