John said, “Nah, that’s not your game. You kill whoever you feel like killing, whenever you feel like it, and use their deaths to manipulate the living. Until you get bored of toying with them, of course, at which point you kill them too.” John shrugged. “So whatever. Do what you’re going to do. That’s on you.
“But back to my earlier point. Guns? Really? This from a guy who can supposedly kill with a gust of wind and a gum wrapper? Not too impressive an ace, if you can’t finish the job without resorting to a hail of bullets.”
“It’s true,” Rip replied; “I take pride in my ripple effects. I think of myself more as a death artist than a death merchant. But you know, Juanma, it’s an awful lot of effort. Money, time, research … sometimes it’s easier to just”—he made a gun of his thumb and forefinger, pointed at John, and jerked his hand up—“cap them. Besides, in this case, it’s all part of my plan. Which brings me to the second reason I took out your guards.”
“Which is … ?”
“To frame you,” he said, pulling something out of his pocket.
While he spoke, Tiffani landed on the concrete pad behind them and released the handle of the black-camo hang glider she’d ridden down on.
“Hello, Rip, darlin’,” she said.
He spun. “Tiffani? What the—how did—”
“I have hidden depths.” She leaned forward and repeated herself, jabbing him in the chest with each word. “Hidden. Depths.”
He started to reply but jerked his head to stare at John as a mellow, clear tone rose from the stage. It was a trumpet, playing the opening notes of Louis Armstrong’s hit single, “Hello, Dolly,” with Ellie’s contralto voice accompanying it.
Rip opened his pack. The golden trumpet inside dematerialized and rose in a cloud of shards, which whipped around him in a miniature tornado. He screamed and beat at them.
John ran and rammed him in the gut. Rip stumbled off the Mylar sheet and John snatched it up, and shoved it into his pocket. “Beef,” John said, “Outside south quadrant, backstage door. NOW!”
The hang glider frame and nylon had risen up in a cloud of particles when the shrapnel tornado had struck Rip. Now they and the shrapnel reunited and coalesced into Rashida’s shape as the ground began to tremble. Arry galloped up in a thunder of hooves. Boom! Boom! Boom! Two tons of angry Beef bore down.
Arry skidded to a halt behind Rashida, pelting them all with rocks. She took in the sight of her team members’ bodies, the spilled blood, the back-spatter against the stage wall. Her face contorted with anger; her arm muscles bunched and she gripped her mace handle so hard John feared it might crack. She looked at John, who tilted his head toward Rip. Arry’s bellow shook the air. Her horns began swaying. She bellowed again, and stomped her right hoof rhythmically, cracking the cement.
“YOU KILLED OUR BOYS!” she thundered.
“Stand down!” John ordered. Sorry, love. This one is mine.
“You pulled a switch,” Rip said to Rashida. “How? There wasn’t time.”
“Sure there was.” Between sure and was she had sloughed off enough Patina essence to shape a trumpet in her hands. “The real one I dropped”—she let it fall—“and caught”—she obscured it in a swirl of dust near her feet—“and carried away with me while”—she spawned a second trumpet, which she held up—“leaving the fake for you to find. In the dark, it was easy.”
In the light of John’s fireballs, which he was lobbing every so often to keep the area lit, he saw Tiffani standing back a bit. She had been looking from Rashida and John to Rip to the bodies on the sidewalk. Now it was as if something in her snapped. She stalked over and whacked Rip in the face with a diamond-crusted hand, hard enough that John could hear the crack!
* * *
Rip put a hand to his cheek. “Ow! What the hell—?”
She laughed. “I have been wanting to give you a smack like that since day one.”
He balled his fists. “You lying little shit. How dare you?”
“‘How dare I?’ Oh, honey. I haven’t even started.” Her anger was incandescent. Glorious, like a fury-filled Pomeranian facing down a nervous pit bull. “You know what my mama would say about you, Mr. Titus ‘call-me-Rip’ Maguire? That you wasn’t worth pickin’ up in the road for stew, if you was hit by a truck. You sorry son of a bitch!”
She slapped him across the other cheek. Rip put a finger in his mouth and drew it out bloody.
“You should’ve just followed my directions, Megan. Now there’ll be hell to pay.” He reached out to grab her by the arm, but Tiffani slapped his hand away, hard enough to break bone. “Don’t fucking touch me, you animal.” She jabbed a thumb over her shoulder toward the dirigible. From where they stood, the stage structure obscured all but the upper edge of the giant balloon. “You put my family at risk, to try to make me kill all those airship passengers. And you intended for me to go down right along with them.”
He sighed and shook his head. “Not true. If you’d just done what I’d asked, woman, you would have been fine.”
“Don’t ‘woman’ me—I ain’t your damn woman. Besides, no way I would have been fine! You would have had me stay on that airship with a bad part on it.”
He had something in his hand that he was fiddling with—that object he’d pulled out of his pocket a moment before. John started in alarm and lunged, but Rip stepped backward, down the slope, and tossed the device into the air. John caught it. It was a remote the size of a pack of gum. He tucked it in his pocket.
Rip was saying to Tiffani, “I’d already switched the parts out during the recall, actually. The replacement part I gave you was just a little test. I might have found a way to save you, if you’d shown any loyalty. How did you get off the airship, anyway?”
“You ‘might have’ saved me? Fuck you. You and your damn shitty loyalty tests.” Then her eyes grew wide. “Wait. You mean—”
“Correct! It didn’t make any difference to the outcome. I just wanted to see if you’d actually do it for me. I couldn’t tell in the dark whether you swapped them out. And apparently you did not … ?”
She only glared at him. He sighed. “I never could get a good read. Still, it was all very entertaining, watching you go to the trouble you did on that caper. Jumping over electric fences and climbing through windows, getting all grubby for little ol’ me? Your mama wouldn’t have believed it.” He laughed. “I wish I’d been able to film it.”
She balled her fists. “Titus Maguire, you’re a terrible, hateful person, and someday—if I have anything to say about it—you’ll have your comeuppance.” She turned away. John saw the haunted look beneath her anger.
“It’s like I said at the very beginning,” Rip said. “In some scenarios, you become a trusted ally, not in others. It wasn’t to be. A shame.” Without warning, he bolted and leapt off the retaining wall. John ran to the edge. Rip was staggering to his feet.
John blasted a red fireman’s slide from the edge of the retaining wall down to the gravel shore, leaped onto it, and summoned blue as he slid. Patina swooped down off the retaining wall in a cloud. John fired a raging sapphire blast at Rip’s receding back as his momentum propelled him off the slide and onto his feet.
Rip must have heard the crack of the blast’s release—he dove aside and the frigid bolt skimmed past, carrying ice chunks and boiling liquid air. The blast struck the waters of the harbor about a third of the way to the far shore, and plowed an ice wedge several yards long through the water. The force of the blast caused the wedge-shaped iceberg to rear like an unruly horse and land with a splash. Fog billowed out and carbon dioxide snow fell along the blast’s length, then vanished in the hot night air.
John’s last light globe had fizzled out, but the lights from the amphitheater provided enough illumination for him to see Rip scramble back to his feet. The Beef landed behind John with a ground-shaking boom and a grunt. Her mace flew past John at Rip. The spiked ball grazed Rip between shoulder and head, close enough to take off an ear, and landed in
the mud near the water’s edge. Rip stumbled again, but he had covered most of the distance to the waterline.
John pursued, drawing more blue from inferno-world as Arry thundered past him at a four-limbed dead run, her hooves throwing mud and gravel high. She took care to stay out of his line of sight—Good play, Arry!—and he loosed another blast of blue at the spot between Rip’s shoulder blades. But he hadn’t been paying attention to Rashida, behind him. As soon as Arry had struck she’d made her own move, from the left, and a field of steel marbles now bounced across the sloping hillside into Rip’s path.
Rip’s heels struck the marbles and staggered. John’s next blue blaze caught Rip’s right arm as it cartwheeled up—but the bulk of the ice blast sailed on over his head. Rip threw his hands in front to catch his fall and his right arm snapped off at the elbow. John recoiled as Rip tipped over and bashed his head on the ground.
But he barely seemed to notice the amputation. He clambered over the handle of Arry’s massive mace and rolled down to the water’s edge, into the water—
—and at its touch, turned to spinning-mirror fans—
—and the dark water lit up in a rapidly expanding wave, revealing two-dimensional planes that spun off from that point where he’d entered—further self-spawning planes fanning from the present instant into endless futures in black and white and shades of grey—as far as the eye could see. Then all went dark again. The ripples in the water settled. Rip was gone.
John’s fists went to his hip bones. He shook his head. “Well, shit.”
“Sorry, Candle,” Rashida said as she reformulated. “You would have had him.” She was slowly growing as her Patina marbles bounced back to her and soaked in where they struck.
“No.” John rubbed his head with both hands. “I should have had a closer eye on what you were doing. Too pissed off to think clearly.” He called up red flames to build them a staircase up the retaining wall and then green to heal their injuries. Rashida floated up and reassembled next to Tiffani, who was sitting on the ground crying, while John and Arry hustled up the makeshift, burning, gooey stairs.
The stairway wasn’t a great batch of red; the flames lasted only long enough for Arry to scramble up beside him onto the platform, then collapsed in smoldering puddles on the shore. “Did you know he could do that?” John asked Tiffani, gesturing out at the harbor. “Use water as a mirror like that?”
Tiffani shook her head. She used her wrist to rub mascara off her cheeks. “It appears there was much I did not know about that man.”
“And now he has thousands of miles of continuous mirrored surface to exit from,” John said. “Fucking great.” He went over and knelt next to Horace’s and Gil’s bodies.
“Candle, hon,” Tiffani said. He looked over at her. “From what he said … I think the airship is sabotaged, after all.”
“What? Is that what you two were talking about?”
“Yes! He was saying he’d already sabotaged the airship himself. That whole swapping-out parts business he had me do was just him messing with me.”
John headed toward the front of the stage. People wouldn’t have noticed what had happened to the water—the amphitheater and the Golden Lady would have blocked their view—but the fireworks might have been visible from the edges of the upper amphitheater seating.
Winston Marcus said something, his sister Ellie replied, and laughter rippled through the stands.
As John came around toward the stage entry point, a sound like multiple bells chiming came from the dirigible above, and then a growl that grew louder, like a giant garbage disposal chewing metal. John looked up. First came a loud clanging and then the sound of ricochets. Black spots appeared along the dirigible’s side. Correction: in its side. The airship’s frame shuddered and it listed sideways.
“It’s coming down!” He spun. “There’ll be a panic—too few exits! Beef, you’re on audience evacs—stop a stampede if you can. Patina, rescues! Tiffani, backstage evacs! Now go! Go!”
His two seconds ran forward and Tiffani yanked open the backstage door. John followed, dodging through the clutter and commotion and out onto the stage. Peregrine and the musicians were still there, but he ignored them. Ignored the crowd’s screams, the shouting. Nothing mattered now but the airship.
The airship was maybe five hundred feet up. Tears were opening in the dirigible’s near side as well, as its front end swung around. The airship was dropping fast, coming forward. It would plow headfirst into the stage in seconds—eight, maybe ten.
John marked his heartbeat and twisted back into the forest of fire. And he caught that glimpse of spinning mirrors at the threshold of the inferno.
Oh, so you’re still around, are you? I’ll deal with you later, then. If I survive this.
Wandering among the vast, coiling energy towers, he tried to work up his nerve. Gobs and rivulets like he was used to weren’t going to cut it. He’d have to try something new. Oh, hell. His body, back there on Earth, was standing at ground zero, anyway. No point in drawing this out.
A wine-red cable swung near, blazing bright and strong, cool and pliable as he could hope for, as big around as a sequoia. One of the smaller ones, in fact, for a primary firestalk. That was some consolation. He put a hand out. Paused. Here goes.
The cable bent toward his outstretched hand. He could feel its ferocious, brilliant presence. Something there knew. Responded. Maybe sentience, maybe not, but there was a beingness. A purpose. Maybe it would understand. Couldn’t hurt to ask. “Try not to kill me, would you?” he said, and drew it in.
* * *
People were already clearing out of the backstage area by the time Tiffani got there. She ran past them and looked through the wings. “What the—!”
The musicians were still out front! She saw Peregrine loft herself up, and ran out onto the stage. Winston Marcus was shouting into his mic, trying to get everyone to calm down, but it was hard even for her to hear him over the screams and shouts of the crowd beyond the pit.
Beyond the stage, pandemonium raged. This was a losing battle—people had lost their minds. They pushed and punched and trampled each other. The airship’s downward drift was arcing more sharply into a fall. Tiffani could see the faces of the people in the gondola. Her heart rate leapt. That could have been her, up there.
Like her falcon namesake, Peregrine dove, grabbed two little kids from their parents’ outstretched arms, and carried them out beyond the walls toward the Golden Lady. Patina swooped over, cushioning someone’s fall when they got shoved over the edge of the wall as people pushed their way down the stairs.
Then the Candle, standing mid-stage, erupted in flame.
Tiffani had never seen anything quite like this.
Oh, sure—sometimes you might get a look at traces of his fire before they emerged—a glow under his skin, or flames flickering along his flesh. You might catch a fuzzy glimpse of bone or organ lit up within. Then the flames would stream from his hands—or his head or butt or wherever, if he was goofing off. Maybe he’d use the full length of his arms sometimes, if he wanted a bigger blast.
But now he was the fire. A blazing figure from which a dozen jets of burgundy flame thick as tree trunks snaked out, so bright and fast you had to shield your eyes, with a crackling roar so loud you covered your ears. The fire figure swayed and spun, flinging energies out across the stands and back. The fire cables over the stands coiled together, weaving themselves into a massive mesh. They soared up to ensnare the lighting towers—piled up along the skybox’s roof—entangled themselves in flaming knots along the front rail of the catwalk—looped and wormed along the eaves at the front of the stage.
The airship, meanwhile, grew bigger, and yet bigger.
“Holy fuck,” Tiffani said.
The airship was truly falling by now—massive, twice the size of the amphitheater. It headed toward the net nose first. People below were screaming, pushing each other. As the last gouts of red flame dripped from John’s arms, she saw him look up at
the ship. He was wobbling at the stage’s front edge. Right before a two-story drop into the pit.
Shit—he’s going down. She ran all out, leaped over a knocked-down chair and music stand, and skidded to her knees—just in time to grab his belt and yank as he buckled. Instead of pitching forward, he toppled back into her lap, unconscious.
Meanwhile, the dirigible had bounced up out of the net, bowed in the middle, and with a buck came back down. Its nose struck the stage roof with a crunch that drove cracks through the ceiling and down the walls. She shielded John’s head and upper torso, and went full-on glam till chunks of roofing stopped falling on and around them. Crashes came from backstage as the backdrops collapsed and equipment got knocked over by falling debris. Up in the stands, the metal lighting towers groaned and bent as the airship settled. The flaming red safety web sagged under its weight. Screams went up again from the people beneath the airship. But the web held.
Well, the pilots are goners unless they got out beforehand, Tiffani thought. Their gondola had struck the stage roof smack in the middle on that second bounce. But the passenger gondola had by some miracle escaped being crushed. It hung at sideways at an angle now, its front pointed down, and was gradually settling toward the empty chairs of the auditorium, as the wine-colored flame mesh stretched and began to melt under its weight.
Behind her, a loud fanfare pierced the commotion. Winston Marcus held up the trumpet and spoke loudly. “Folks, I’m no ace, like old Pops, and this here horn isn’t magic, either. But music itself has power. So let’s use the power of Satchmo’s music on this historic trumpet to gather up our own courage and save each other’s lives. How about we get everybody out safely?”
Some quieted and turned. Ellie said, “That’s right, we’ll stay right here with you till everyone is safe. Y’all help your elders, now, and all those folks that need more time, who might be using wheelchairs or canes or walkers. Help those folks with younger kids and babies.”
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