The Last American Wizard

by Edward Irving

  Her aim was perfect–one shot landing right on top of another in the back of the enormous right knee. Lincoln began to limp slightly but it scarcely slowed his laborious pace. Even over the scream of the BMW’s heavy turbocharged engine, Steve could hear the heartbreaking sound of Lincoln as he continued to bellow out his confusion of grief and fury.

  Steve shouted, “How long before you think you can cut through?”

  “Unless he’s got a stone ligament in there I can cut…” Ace paused for another shot. “I figure about a week.”

  “That’s not good.”

  “No, it’s not. But it keeps me from being bored.”

  Steve took a second to peer through an armored slit in the front windshield. “Be careful of the rest of the Scooby Gang. We don’t want a friendly fire incident.”

  “Why do they call it that?” Ace snapped off another shot. “If you get hit by a bullet, it’s not friendly, regardless of whose gun it came from.”

  Ahead, Steve could see Carlos–who had grown to about twice as large as his previous incarnations–attack Lincoln’s ankles. Steve was impressed; not only were the dog-monster’s fangs extraordinarily large but they were capable of gouging out great chunks of solid stone as if it were wet clay.

  The wounds were amazing even for a supernatural dog monster but they only amounted to scrapes and scratches on ankles that were six feet around.

  He looked for the police officers and saw Cobb, the Knight of Swords, zooming in on his strange-looking dragonfly-horse to spear Weishaupt from behind. Sadly, he appeared to and then had to perform amazing evasion maneuvers to avoid Lincoln’s enormous hand as it rose to swat him away.

  “Just like a man brushing away a horsefly,” Steve thought and immediately regretted not having anyone to tell what he thought was a damn good pun.

  Bautista, the Prince of Swords, had brought his strange little chariot up the back of the frock coat on the opposite side from Weishaupt and leapt off onto the stiff collar. Between tossing up Ace’s missiles, Steve caught a glimpse of the young police officer braced between the collar and the left shoulder and wielding his sword like an axe against the thick neck. Again, the magic sword was cutting deep into the stone, but it was having about the same impact as it would if he was trying to cut down a full-grown redwood.

  Suddenly, Bautista put his fingers in his mouth and whistled. The tiny versions of the Prince instantly whipped the chariot into a tight turn and pulled past Lincoln’s shoulders. Bautista jumped in and then right back out again, landing on the opposite shoulder next to Weishaupt. Steve threw a fireball up without even looking– resulting in a loud curse from Ace–and watched as Bautista whipped a fast cut at the Illuminati.

  Incredibly, the sword passed right through the Bavarian’s body without stopping. Obviously, Weishaupt was only a specter; he hadn’t needed to manifest completely as he had when he tried to kill Steve at Bladensburg.

  The unchecked force of the blow spun Bautista around and he lost his balance and fell out of Steve’s sight. A green flash zipped in from the side and, a second later; Bautista reappeared, holding on to the rear floorboards of his chariot. He shook his head disgustedly and flew up and then dropped onto the top of Lincoln’s curly hair. Once he had his feet placed, he began to chop straight down like a man preparing to go ice fishing in a Minnesota winter.

  Steve threw up another fireball just as Hans went into a screeching swerve to the left. The car actually moved under the missile but the effect was that it moved directly towards Ace. She jumped up off the seat, slammed a hand down on either side of the sunroof, and flew up high enough that the ball went between her legs.

  Unfortunately, that left her also moving in a straight line as Hans curved back and right out from under her. Without thinking, Steve snapped his golden staff up through the sunroof in her direction–round and smooth this time instead of sharp and deadly– and she grabbed it, let her velocity swing her around, and dropped back into the passenger seat.

  She took a deep breath, shook herself, and then said, “Thanks, but if you make one comment about pole dancing, I’ll make you eat that thing.”

  Steve retracted the pole into his palm, “Never crossed my mind.”

  At that instant, Hans hit the curb on the left side, bounced about a foot in the air, and came down on the broad sidewalk already jacked over into a violent right turn. He tore past the statue, rocketed back onto the road, and headed for the other end of the bridge.

  “Those aren’t standard shocks any more, are they?” Steve asked.

  Keine Scheiße, Genie

  “’No shit, Genius?’ What sort of talk is that?” As he rebounded off the car door, Steve asked mildly, “What’s with the accent, anyway? Aren’t you from Spartanburg, South Carolina?”

  I swear, you ain’t got the brains God gave a catfish. Who’d admit they were from a town so lame that even NASCAR moved out?

  Steve said, “Well, I suppose that is true.”

  Ein verdammt, ich bin Deutsch

  “OK, OK. You’re German.” Steve agreed.

  “Can you break away from chewing the fat with Beemer-boy and get back to supplying me with ammunition?” Ace stood up again and braced herself against the side of the sunroof. “Hans, I’m going to set up for a stand at the end of the bridge. Can you heavy- up your front end? I mean, like bulldozer-heavy.”

  Steve tossed another fireball and they settled back into their rhythm with Ace now facing backward and aiming for the giant’s eyes. When they reached the far side of the bridge, Hans slid to a stop and everyone piled out. Hans–who now had a heavy angled iron wedge in place of a front bumper–pulled to the left, spun around in a cloud of smoke, and stopped, now headed away from Washington.

  Ace ran to the other side of the road and motioned for the Queen of Swords to follow. Steve started to follow but she waved him back. “You’re not going to be able to help with this. Why don’t you try that blast ray you used on Colonel Tataka?”

  Steve, of course, didn’t have a clue what he’d done to blow an enormous hole in the woman who, at the time, had become a rather irritable rakshasa demon. He walked out to the center of the road leading off the bridge and concentrated on the Fool. This time, there was no devastating pain, so he kept his eyes open and watched as a column of fire easily two feet wide shot from his chest and directly at the stone giant. He kept adding more power to the beam, pouring his will into making it faster, stronger, and more explosive.

  He could feel the beam–it seemed to sink into itself, become more concentrated, and distilled into a coruscating golden bar. He felt the now-familiar sense of time slowing, but this time, it reached the point where the ray seemed to be crawling towards the enormous figure, now frozen in midstep. He clenched his fists and brought image after image into his mind–holding every Fool he’d ever seen, from the innocent boy, to the grizzled tramp, to the green, horned guy with the tiger chewing on his leg.

  All sounds dropped down into the bass range and then disappeared. His little space-time bubble was quiet and rather pleasant, Steve decided. Having a bit of privacy was, of course, too good to last.

  He heard a calm voice in his head. “Let me see if I can help a bit, son.” From the sense of quiet amusement, Steve had no doubt that it was Coyote and he could almost feel the demi-god’s strong hands on his shoulders. New jets of power poured through him–he caught flickering images of animals, plants, and even rocks and streams. The beam shimmered with a rainbow of colors and he had to fight to keep it concentrated and focused–watching it as it begin to burn like a magnifying lens in the sunlight.

  Steve thought briefly that his cranium was getting a bit crowded when he heard Barbara Harlan say, “Well, it would seem that I have discovered at least one of the Empress’s abilities. I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve called in emergency reinforcements.”

  A massive torrent of Power flowed into Steve with the blast of a fire hose. It was woven of so many different streams that he assumed it was the will of ev
ery major Power user in the District. He could feel stern and stolid minds he thought must be dwarves and the flashing intelligences that he recognized as elves. There were many other, more complex beams and even–so subtle he almost missed it–a stream that tasted like the gleam of golden eyes, dragons adding their strength from their hidden lairs.

  “Yes, I called on Congress, K Street, and all the political action committees,” the president said. “I felt it was worthy of a bipartisan effort–hard as that is to pull off in this town.”

  Steve swayed with the effort of controlling the enormous amount of energy pouring into him. Huge bronze hands slipped under his arms and Albert Pike boomed, “Steady, lad. I’ve got you.”

  The beam was now far larger and made of so many strands that it looked like the fasces, the leather-bound sticks that represented the strength of people when they worked together.

  That symbol with the motto, “Out of many, one” or “e pluribus, unum,” was chiseled into all Washington’s government buildings. Or, at least, all the buildings designed before 1940, when the fascists stole the fasces along with the swastika.

  Time returned with a splintering burst that seemed to blast through every cell in Steve’s body. The thick and mighty braid of Power leapt forward and struck the marble figure in the dead center of the chest. Instantly, Steve broadened the focus, hoping to first penetrate and then expand the massive force, blasting the marble into shards and dust.

  For several moments, smoke and flame completely enveloped the bridge, hiding the statue from view. Steve was determined to destroy this creature and he could feel the strain as all the other Powers reached their limits and then went just a bit beyond. At this point, the beam was a dozen feet wide. The smoke–a deep black color, shot with flickers of blue discharges, and emitting the slamming thunder of lightning bolts in a unceasing storm of sound–was so thick, it looked like the Lincoln Memorial itself had disappeared.

  Then it was over. The beam snapped off in a blink and Steve slumped against the cool strength of Pike’s metal chest.

  A breeze blew away the smoke and Steve could see that Lincoln had been stopped and even shoved back a few feet. Then, the massive figure regained its balance and the giant limped first one step and then another, dragging behind him the leg that Ace had tried to hamstring.

  The smoking crater where the beam had struck was yards deep–they’d almost blasted their way through. Steve could sense that they had burned away much of the blood magic that Weishaupt had used to animate the mass of stone. The eidolon was weakened but far from destroyed.

  Lincoln roared again, a thunder of rage and madness. The normally calm and benevolent face was twisted in a blend of fury, determination, and infinite sadness. Even though it was moving slower, it was only steps away from the Virginia side of the bridge.

  On the other side of the circle, he could hear Ace yell, “All right, Rowan. I didn’t think you could draw half that much mojo. It was worth a try, anyway.” Then she turned away and, like the starter at the Indianapolis 500, spun her hand over her head and then pointed it straight at Hans.

  “Let’s try a little kinetic force,”

  Steve saw that Ace and the Queen had shoved one of the curved concrete Jersey barriers into the road on the right side of the circle and then flipped it down so that it formed a crude ramp. Hans took off around the circle, engine roaring and tires screaming as it gathered speed. The front bumper was now a solid steel ram a foot thick and covering the entire front of the car.

  Ace was shouting orders in a command voice that was so clear, Steve figured it could be heard–well, perhaps not in New York City, but definitely in Baltimore. Albert Pike shoved Steve out of danger and then ran heavily toward the statue. Carlos and the three Swords pulled back to the other side of the traffic circle, turned 180 degrees, and began a running, or flying, charge.

  As Hans came around the last quarter of the circle, Steve could hear the 4.4-liter twin turbo V8 engine howl as it used every one of its 445 horses—as it straightened in the run up to the ramp, it was topping out well over a hundred and twenty miles per hour.

  The timing was perfect.

  The BMW was the hammer. It hit the improvised ramp and flew into the air at a 45-degree angle to the bridge. Seconds behind the hurtling vehicle were the two flying Swords, aiming to hit high and drive the statue just a bit more to the left.

  Albert Pike and the canejo were the anvil. The eleven-foot solid bronze statue was driving in at the statue’s left knee– intending to cut down the eidolon like cornerbacks submarining a tight end. Carlos was off the ground in a tremendous leap with all four hoofs aimed straight for the outside of the left knee.

  Hans’s massive front bumper hit Lincoln precisely at the top of the enormous chest. Less than a second later, the Knight and Prince of Swords drove into the head–burying their swords deep into the eyes and then pushing with everything they had. Carlos approached smashed into the front of the statue’s left knee, while Pike put his shoulder down and drove into the rear.

  Again, Lincoln staggered sideways on feet so massive that they ground the concrete sidewalk into powder.

  Albert Pike was struck by a flailing stone foot and thrown backwards, demolishing the bridge railing, and managing to stop just on the edge, flailing his arms in a successful attempt to stay out of the Potomac.

  The King and Knight of Swords pulled around to attack the face again, and the Queen ran in, leapt, and drove her sword straight into the right knee.

  In a perfect parabola, Hans shot upwards, flew over the statue and the entire width of the four-lane bridge, and slipped quietly into the dark water on the other side.

  For a split second, Steve thought that Lincoln would follow but the monster managed to stop with the heel of one enormous shoe hanging off the bridge. Then he slowly pulled himself upright, shook his head, and resumed his shambling assault on the brilliantly lit glass towers–ignoring his attackers as if they were less than gnats.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Steve had always thought that the coolest fighting scene in any movie occurred in The Return of the King when Legolas attacked the Oliphaunt. But that was before he saw Ace’s assault on Lincoln.

  Steve was running in pursuit of the statue, now crossing the lawn below the Iwo Jima Memorial, but Ace left him behind as if he was standing still. As she ran, she fired small fletched bolts with the Wrist Rocket, creating a series of handholds up the broad back. A massive foot swept back as Lincoln slipped on the grass verge of Route 50 and only missed her by inches as she dove forward and rolled up between his legs.

  Steve lost sight of her when exhaustion caused him to slip and fall in the thick wet grass. A quick Study of the Fool gave him a boost of vitality at the cost of a sciatic agony that felt like a high- tension wire had been attached to his ass.

  When he stood up again, he could see that during the seconds he had focused on the card, Ace had dropped the slingshot and unfolded a small but wicked-looking crossbow from the small pack on her back. He couldn’t help but wince as she fitted a barbed bolt into the slot and fired straight up into the giant’s crotch.

  The marble creature didn’t show any pain–something that Steve couldn’t quite decide if he felt good or bad about–but the bolt was rammed solidly into its…trousers, and a length of rope now trailed behind it. Ace clipped the crossbow to her belt and went up the rope like a featured act at the Cirque de Soleil.

  Luckily, the sculptor had given Lincoln a “thigh gap” worthy of a Photoshopped Vogue model, or Ace would have been crushed between the marble legs as he walked.

  Instead, she swung on the rope twice and then released at the apex, spinning like a gymnast, and unfolding just in time to grab a finger hold on the first of the crossbow bolts. The sound of hooves came up from behind and Steve was suddenly thrown in the air as Carlos stuck his snout between his legs and tossed him up. It was a painful landing on the cadejo’s broad back, but he dug his fingers into the thick fur and looked for the
others. The three Swords were swinging around to get between Lincoln and the city, the Queen perched on the back of the Knight’s strange flying horse.

  It appeared that the Prince had discovered at least one magic power. He was making sharp throwing gestures with one hand as he held on to the chariot with the other. Green lightning bolts shot out and detonated with massive thunderclaps against the statue’s head.

  Lincoln’s head would snap to the side at each impact but his path never wavered. Even compensating for the extremely erratic gait of a hoofed dog, Steve could see Ace climbing up the back of the marble colossus—essentially free-climbing a moving mountain. Gripping a bolt, swinging for momentum, and flying free to grab the next bolt or a wrinkle in the stone cloth.

  When there was absolutely no higher hold in reach, she slammed Joan of Arc’s sword straight into the marble and used it as a piton–reaching back from the next hold to pull it out. It was an exhibition of skills so advanced that she made it look easy.

  Weishaupt’s apparition was still whispering urgently into the statue’s ear. He spotted Ace as she came up over the vast shoulder blades and began to speak frantically, gesturing back to the oncoming SEAL. Ace hurled two knives at him and he would have had one in each eye if both hadn’t passed right through his head and arced off into the darkness.

  Ace looked disgusted as she ducked around to the left just as the immense hand came up to brush at his coat and missed her by inches. In a series of moves worthy of any American Ninja finalist, she gained the relative safety of the opposite shoulder.

  There, she knelt and pulled what looked like a soda can and a short pencil from one of her cargo pockets. She held them close to her mouth and appeared to whisper to them for several minutes.

  Then she jammed the can into one of the niches carved earlier by the Prince of Swords, inserted the slim cylinder into the rear, and got out of the way by throwing her feet back and sliding down the upper arm until she came to rest in the crook of the elbow.