I landed someplace else instead.
I looked around in confusion. It was dark, but not dark enough to keep me from making out the high stone columns holding up the roof, because the building had no walls to block out the starlight. Or the sight of distant pyramids rising against the night sky.
I just had time to think: Egypt. Then creatures stalked out of the shadows.
They were eight feet tall, with heads that were too big and the wrong shape. The nearest one roared like a lion and chopped down at me with an axe.
I jumped out of the way, and I swear, he missed. Still, a shock went through me, and I split into pieces.
Or into five versions of myself. Number Two looked exactly like me. Number Three glowed red, and Four, a silvery white. Five was murky and almost invisible in the gloom. But I still recognized him as a semblance of me, the way you recognize your shadow on a wall.
The giant with the lion’s head came at me-or at us-again. So did one of his buddies, who had the long toothy jaws of a crocodile.
The five of us scattered. I felt instantly that it was a mistake, but it was also the only thing to do if we were all going to avoid having to fight giants with our bare hands. And I didn’t control the others, anyway. Each of them was making his own decisions.
I ran, dodging through the columns with their carved hieroglyphics, using them for cover. The giants used them, too. A fat one with the head of a hippo jumped out right in front of me, feet planted wide in a sumo stance and hands stretched out to grab me.
I dropped and slid on the hard stone floor like I was sliding into second. I shot between his feet, scrambled up, and ran on.
Not long after that, I found myself at the spot where the temple-if it was a temple-gave way to desert sand. Panting, I wondered if I should keep going. Then what I thought might be the voice of a hippo man gave a grunting, croaking cry.
But not quite the way a real animal would do it. I thought I could make out words in the noise, although I had no idea what they meant.
Echoing through the temple, other animal voices roared, hissed, and bellowed in response. The three or four monsters that had been hot on my trail turned and headed back the way we’d come.
That seemed like it ought to be a good thing. But I was pretty sure it wasn’t.
For the first time since the Army cut me loose, I wished for my M16. And when I did, I felt what was starting to be a familiar shiver inside my chest.
Was it possible I could make a rifle, or call one to me? I figured I might as well try. I pictured the Thunderbird, and then the M16. I remembered the weight and feel of it in my hands, and the kick when I fired it. I wanted the hell out of it, and hoped I wouldn’t fly off to wherever it was instead of drawing it to me.
Then the cramps hit, like my insides were rupturing. Maybe because I was operating on only one fifth of my mojo. I kept concentrating anyway.
Something slithered around and through my fingers, liquid and oily at first, then hardening. I looked down and saw my rifle, just like back in Afghanistan. It even had the long scratch on the stock.
My instincts told me that, hard as the trick was, it would have been a lot harder in the real world. But in this place, I’d had just enough juice to pull it off.
I waited for the cramps to ease, then crept deeper into the temple. As I did, my other selves slipped out of the shadows one by one.
First came the red guy, shining like a hot coal. Next, the one who looked exactly like me. And then, hesitantly, the shadow.
Which left us a man down. “Where’s the other glowing guy?” I whispered.
The shadow pointed toward the heart of the temple. Right on cue, animal voices started chanting.
“Shit,” I said. The giants had called off the chase because they’d caught one of us, and one was apparently all they needed. “Christ only knows what they’re doing, but we need to go get him.” I started forward.
The others stayed put.
I turned back around. “What’s wrong?”
“If I die tonight,” asked the guy who looked exactly like me, “who will remember me?”
“Who gives a rat’s ass?” I answered. I looked at red me and shadow me. “What’s your problem?”
They just stared back, and I decided they couldn’t talk. Not that they really needed to. Their attitude was clear.
“Hey,” I said, “I don’t want to go, either. But do you really think any of us can be all right without him? And at least we’ve got this.” I hefted the M16.
At first, nobody reacted, and I wondered if Red and Shadow had really even understood me. Maybe the five-way split hadn’t left them with their fair share of brains. But then the glowing me gave a nod, and the spooky version turned up his hands in a way that somehow communicated that he still didn’t like it, but he was in.
“Give me the rifle,” said my twin. “I’m a really good shot.”
“To hell with that,” I said, “make your own. Or, if you can’t, wait until I shoot a monster with an axe, and then pick it up.”
Apparently he couldn’t whistle up an M16, because he just gave me a pissy look. Then we all sneaked toward the chanting. Sometimes it sounded like real voices reciting real words, and sometimes, like feeding time at the zoo.
Finally our objective came into view. Sort of. The lion, croc, and hippo men hadn’t been considerate enough to light torches or anything like that. But even in the center of the temple, there was a little light coming in from outside, and that, combined with the GE soft white glow of silver me, was enough to show what was happening.
A round pit opened in the floor. On the far side of it was a giant bronze balance scale. A pale, fluffy feather longer than I was tall lay in one weighing pan. A lion man and a croc man were lifting Silver into the other. He struggled, but feebly, like he needed to recover from a crack over the head.
I couldn’t see any way that Silver wasn’t going to weigh more than a giant feather, but the monsters weren’t leaving anything to chance. They pulled down on the pan in which he lay like drug dealers gypping a customer.
The chanting stumbled to a stop. The lion man and the croc man dragged Silver off the scale and hauled him toward the edge of the pit.
And, just standing there like an idiot, I realized I was running out of time to do anything about it. I shouldered the M16 and shot the croc man in the head. He reeled backward. I shifted my aim and shot the lion man. He dropped, too.
I hoped that at that point, silver me would make a run for it, and he did. But staggering, not sprinting, like he was still dazed.
I lost sight of him when giants rushed my three buddies and me. We’d been lucky until then. Caught up in their ceremony, the monsters hadn’t noticed Red’s glow as we sneaked up on them. But it would have been hard to miss the bang and flash of the rifle.
With their long legs, the creatures came on fast. I switched to three-round bursts and blasted away for all I was worth. It didn’t look like it was going to be enough. One of the giants would charge into striking distance, and that would probably be that.
But then a hippo man fell down clutching his crotch and bellowing. Shadow me whirled away from him and used the axe in his ghostly-looking hands to hack a croc man’s leg in two. The whole thing was one smooth blur of movement.
As I went on shooting, I saw that Red and my twin were fighting, too. Not with the kung-fu-master-goes-berserk speed and fury of Shadow. I couldn’t match that, either. But, mostly taking cheap shots at giants who were busy trying to kill him or me, they were doing all right.
In fact, we were winning. And I was happy about it until I shot a hippo man in the chest. When he went down, I saw what was behind him. A crocodile man had recaptured Silver and wrestled him to the edge of the pit.
I aimed for the giant’s head and pulled the trigger. The M16 was empty. The croc man shoved Silver into the hole, looked across it at me, and made a gesture that’s apparently as old as ancient Egypt. Then he turned around and ran.
Down
in the pit, something gave a rasping hiss. It was like the voices of some of the animal men, but louder. Much louder.
I ran to the edge of the hole, looked down, and gasped. The thing at the bottom was huge. Its reptilian head belonged on a dinosaur, though you couldn’t honestly say the same for the lion’s mane at the back of the skull.
The body was mostly hippo, but with a big cat’s forelegs and claws. Long, tapering, and scaly, the tail switched back to crocodile.
Silver had his back against the wall. The creature reared up on its hind legs, ready to smash down on him like an avalanche.
I yelled and threw the M16 at it, and the rifle bounced off its spine. It didn’t even seem to notice.
But when it plunged down-and I flinched-it didn’t plunge all the way to the target. Its paws thumped to a stop in front of Silver’s body, and it snarled like something had hurt it.
It was a little hard to see through the shine, but Silver’s face had a tight, strained expression on it. I realized he’d made an invisible wall, just like I had earlier in the evening.
But my wall hadn’t even held back brownwings for long. Silver wasn’t likely to do much better against Godzilla. Snarling, the monster started slashing away at the barrier with its claws, and the other me jerked with every blow, just like they were ripping into him.
I had to help him, but reinforcing his wall didn’t seem like the answer. Even if I still had enough mojo, the thing in the hole would knock it down eventually.
I needed to haul Silver out of the pit. But it was way too deep for me just to reach down and grab his hand.
Could I make a rope the way I’d made the rifle? Probably not, running on empty like I was. I looked around.
The dead giants were wearing what I supposed were loincloths twisted around their hips in a complicated, almost diaper-ish way. I ran to the nearest body and started pulling at the folds.
About that time, the rest of the squad came trotting up. It was good to see we were all still okay. So far.
“What are you doing?” asked my twin.
“We can knot these together,” I said. “Get more. Fast!”
He and Red hopped to it. Crouching, bloody axe in hand, Shadow stood guard in case there were any giants left that wanted another crack at us. He might not have wanted to fight before, but he was into it now. Even with his face all smudged and dim, he gave off an eager viciousness.
When I judged the makeshift rope was long enough, we rushed it to the pit. Where-thank God-Silver was still holding out, and the Beast That Ate Cairo was still snarling and clawing away. We dropped the line, and I had a bad moment when it stopped partway down. I thought Silver had put a roof on his invisible fort. He hadn’t, though. The rope had just caught on top of the wall, and it flopped on down a second later.
Silver grabbed it, and, exhausted though he was, managed to hold on as we pulled him up. The monster roared even louder, then fell sprawling when it took another swing at the wall, and the obstacle suddenly wasn’t there anymore.
We let Silver sit, slumped and gasping, on the floor. “What now?” asked my twin.
I felt like asking why I had to be the one to think of everything. Instead, still going with my gut, I told him, “We need to put ourselves… our self… whatever back together. Everybody join hands.”
Shadow threw away his axe, which clanked on the stone. I ended up holding hands with him and Red. His fingers were ice cold, and Red’s were toasty warm.
I pictured the Thunderbird and wished us smooshed into one person.
Everything seemed to spin. Suddenly I had five strings of thoughts jabbering in my brain, which I don’t recommend unless you want to go crazy or at least develop a migraine. Fortunately, it only lasted an instant, and then there was only one of me again.
Okay, I thought. If I could pull off one more trick, maybe I’d come out of this all right.
The first time I’d run around in my spirit body, I’d felt a connection between it and the flesh, blood, and bones it had jumped out of. Now that the monsters had stopped messing with me, maybe I could feel the same thing again. I tried, straining like you’d strain to hear something faint and far away.
Off to the left. I hoped. The tug was so soft that I wondered if I was just imagining it. But I tried to think positive and ran at the spot. When my feet came off the ground, and running turned into flying, I knew I was right.
The temple vanished, and the candlelit ballroom appeared. It seemed bright compared to where I’d just been. I was thrilled to be back until I felt the fingers twisted in my hair.
They belonged to Wotan, and they were holding my head up to stretch out my neck. He had his other arm cocked back to punch me.
Sitting down and already grabbed is a piss-poor posture for self-defense. Still, I managed to throw up my arm to block. The punch slammed into it and jammed it into my Adam’s apple. Which hurt, but at least didn’t crush my windpipe or break my spine.
Wotan snarled and pulled back his fist for another try.
“No!” I croaked. “No!” It was all I knew to say. After all the scary, mysterious shit that had happened in the temple, I’d lost track of what was going on this world, and what reason he had to attack me.
My whining worked about as well as you’d expect. But the Pharaoh said, “Hold on.” And that did make Wotan hesitate.
“He’s awake,” Leticia said.
“He was in a trance,” the huge man said. And he still seemed huge, even after I’d just fought actual giants. “Doing something.”
That jogged my memory. I realized I must have been sitting there without talking or moving-for all I knew, maybe drooling-and Wotan had picked up on the fact that I was cheating.
But I had a hunch I’d only been out for a couple seconds. I’d already learned that time could move at different speeds for different people, and Wotan was way too impatient to wait for minutes on end while I sat like a mannequin.
“Are you crazy?” I said. “I was just thinking.”
“Bullshit,” Wotan said.
“It’s not,” I said. “And how would you know, anyway? Can you tell when people are doing, uh, mind magic?”
For all I knew, he could, and if so, I was screwed. But my impression was that he was all about the physical.
He hesitated for maybe half a second. Then he said, “I know what I know.”
“Maybe you should ask the others,” I said. “The people who really could tell.”
Which shows how desperate I really was. Because it was one of those same others-given the Egyptian theme, I figured the Pharaoh-who’d stuck my wandering soul in Fantasyland. But for some reason, he hadn’t said anything about it yet, and maybe he still wouldn’t.
“I didn’t notice anything,” said Queen, munching a dragonfly.
“I didn’t, either,” said Leticia.
Gimble and then the mummy said the same.
“I don’t care what you say!” Wotan said.
“But you know the rules,” the Pharaoh said. “If you resort to bloodshed when the target’s impropriety isn’t manifest to everyone… ” He shrugged.
“Damn you all!” Wotan snarled. “I know what you’re doing!” He shuddered. “But it won’t work.” He gave my hair a yank that felt like it could give me whiplash, then let go. “This little turd isn’t worth it.” He stalked back to his seat.
I took deep breaths and told my heart to slow down. When Wotan reached for the pot, I said, “Hold it. The little turd hasn’t folded. And isn’t going to. I call.”
He goggled at me. Apparently he’d believed that, whatever magical dirty trick I was trying, he’d interrupted me before I could make it work.
“In that case,” said Leticia, with a hint of laughter in her voice, “let’s see what you have.”
I turned up my cards. Wotan picked his up and threw them on the felt. The seven landed facedown. Gimble waited a moment, then flipped it over himself.
Then Queen dealt the common cards. Neither Wotan nor I paired
up. My ace was good.
Wotan got up and stalked out. We heard him smashing things in the lobby.
The Pharaoh puffed on his cheroot. “If everyone’s agreeable, I’ll count out Billy’s winnings from Wotan’s stack. I can also post his blinds until he returns.”
But Wotan never came back, not that night. The session ended just a few hands later.
Leticia started to shuffle, then set down the cards again. “Sunrise,” she said, and to my surprise, I felt it, too, as a spot of warmth to the east. It was like her awareness was contagious.
Not that I cared a whole lot about it. What mattered was that, not only had I survived my first night of this craziness, after doubling up through Wotan, I was the chip leader. Which is what you always want to be. But I also knew it hung a target on me.
CHAPTER FOUR
After the game broke up, we players just left our chips on the table. Since cheating was allowed, that seemed reckless. But since everybody else was doing it, I went with the flow.
Leticia smiled and started toward me, and I wouldn’t have minded chatting. She was playing against me, but she’d also helped save my life. And did I mention she was gorgeous?
But Timon reached me at the same time she did. Fumbling, he grabbed my arm and snapped, “I need to talk to you.” I gave Leticia a sorry-but-what-can-you-do smile as he dragged me off into the corner.
“What in the name of the Two Rivers is wrong with you?” he asked. His voice was soft, but it still had anger quivering inside it.
I shook my head. “I guess we’re skipping over the part where you say, ‘Nice job.’”
“Because it wasn’t. If the others hadn’t decided to lie for you, I’d be a commoner right now.”
“Well, gee. When you put it that way.” I yawned, and suddenly felt how tired I was. “You’re sure they lied? Meaning, they knew?”
“The Pharaoh and Leticia, certainly. The other two, probably. But at that moment, they decided they’d rather see Wotan frustrated than you eliminated.”
“I guess that makes sense.” In a we-don’t-think-like-humans kind of way. Since the Pharaoh had been messing with me only a moment before, it meant his attitude had turned on a dime. “If Wotan had gotten my chips”-I yawned again-“he would have had a huge stack to push everybody else around. And maybe the others still don’t take the lowly human seriously.”
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