“What the fuck are you?” Seth asked.
Frightened, the man said, “I was a person like you.” The man sobbed, but produced no tears. “I no alive!” he shouted in anguish. He shook his head and tore open his shirt. He took out a small piece of paper with numbers on it and handed it to Seth. “You tella Matilda, Lorenzo love her so much,” he said. The man took Seth’s hand and pressed it to his chest. It melted through, past the empty chamber where his heart should have been, and came out the back. To both their surprise, Lorenzo was still standing, with a hole through his chest and Seth’s arm deep into it.
“Oh shit!” Lorenzo shouted. He was in a bigger panic now. “What I gonna do? How I gonna die?”
“How the fuck should I know?” a distressed Seth responded. He had had his fill of bloody sludge for one night. Seth left the tree, pushing Lorenzo backward toward the nearest pyre. He braced his foot against the man’s stomach, pulled out his arm from the guy’s chest, and pushed him into the fire all in one motion. Lorenzo’s cries of terror rang hollow. Seth doubted Lorenzo could actually feel the fire. After all, he took a hole in his chest with barely a whimper. The idea of burning alive was probably more than Lorenzo could handle. Seconds later, Lorenzo fell silent. Seth didn’t know if he was truly ended or simply found peace with what was happening to him. If burning to ash did not kill that guy, Seth certainly didn’t know what else would.
Cal and the other henchman rolled into Seth, knocking him on his butt. The goon had the same baggy eyes and sallow skin as Lorenzo. Cal outclassed his opponent and had him properly pinned, but could not render the man unconscious.
“Won’t die?” Seth asked.
“Get back to the damn tree,” Cal growled.
“Crap!” Seth said, getting up.
Ben hobbled out from his position near the trailer and hacked at Cal’s assailant with his ax. “Get to the tree,” Ben told Seth. “I’ll help him.”
Seth turned around to get back to position, only to find Mr. Seven-Foot Ugly in between him and his destination.
“Cat?” Seth called out. “I thought you were keeping this guy honest.”
“Out of bullets,” she yelled back.
The giant smiled. Seth realized he couldn’t get around the guy to Rosencrantz. Buckshot rang through the air and the giant took a hit to the shoulder. He howled in rage at Helen Reyes on the trailer steps, who then took a second shot at him. Seth grabbed some burning paper and branches and threw it at the giant, singing his own hands in the process. “Shit!” he screamed, and blew on his hands.
The giant stumbled back against the tree, swatting the embers on his clothes. Cat, who was still on the branch above, took the rifle by its barrel turning it into a makeshift club and whacked him in the head with the butt. Seth saw his opportunity and squeaked by the big guy to lay hands on Rosencrantz again. He reached out and grabbed the giant by the arm, but nothing happened.
“I’m not a wight or a filthy gnoll,” the giant said in a deep baritone voice that was peppered with nails. He took a swing at Seth, who ducked just in time to see a deep splintering indent punched into Rosencrantz’s trunk, instead of his head.
Cat hit him again with the rifle. The giant grabbed the butt this time and yanked the weapon out of her hands. He smashed it against the tree and tried to grab Cat from her branch.
Ben came up from behind and lodged his ax a good three inches into the giant’s right hamstring. The giant roared and backhanded Ben. The old man fell back several feet, his head almost falling into one of the pyres. Cal tackled the giant from the side shoving him away from the tree and past the border pyres. Seth wondered what happened to the henchman Cal had been fighting. Someone grabbed Seth’s ankle. It was a severed hand. He shook his leg but it wouldn’t let go. Ben had done a real good job on that guy with his ax, and now all the pieces were dragging themselves toward Seth. The hand on his ankle began to blister and melt, just like Lorenzo.
“I guess that’s a wight,” he said to Cat.
“Come here,” she said. She placed her foot on his shoulder and then a large portion of her weight.
“What the heck?”
“Help me down,” she said. She crouched until she was sitting on Seth’s shoulder. Seth squatted until her good foot touched the earth. She grabbed the remnants of the rifle, hopped over to the dismembered man, and used it to sweep the pieces Ben had chopped into a pyre. The fires were getting smaller.
“Helen, we need more magazines,” Cat said.
“Is Ben all right?” Helen asked.
Cat spotted Ben on the ground and rushed over to him. Ben had a cut across his head and a shiner on his cheek where the giant hit him. “Ben, are you okay?”
“I feel like Muhammad Ali in ’71, when he was introduced to Frazier’s left hook,” Ben said. He smiled to advertise that he was fine.
Cat searched for Cal and the giant. They were beyond the compound, out there in the dark. Seth could hear the struggle. He didn’t know what they would do if it was the giant that returned. Cat borrowed Helen’s shotgun and walked into the dark toward the sounds. Seth wished Lelani would do her thing so he could go hide under the trailer.
“Come on tree… talk to me,” Seth said. “Tell me what to do.” Seth climbed up Rosencrantz, using the giant’s indent in the trunk as a foothold, and took position on the big branch. In the meadow where Lelani fought, he saw a fireworks show like the type you see on the fourth of July. “Give ’em hell, Red,” he muttered under his breath. Then he heard Lelani scream. The sound cut through the night like a razor and chilled him to the bone. Seth thought something went horribly wrong. She failed. Then everything slowed, moving as though underwater. Something was coming at him from the meadow, and he knew… Seth knew this was it. He somehow knew to open his arms wide as though to catch a medicine ball. The force entered his embrace still crackling with potency, looking for its target to rewrite laws of physics in a way this universe was not used to. The energy flowed through his right arm around to his left, which he aimed toward the spell’s point of origin, and it exited back toward the south meadow. Time started again.
4
Cat walked out of their well-lit “safe” zone and into the dark after her husband. The giant wouldn’t be able to see in the dark any better than Cal could, so he had no special advantage other than his size. At least, that’s what she hoped. Cal could handle a larger assailant. He was the best hand-to-hand fighter in the NYPD. But everyone could use a little extra help. Cat kept her finger off the shotgun trigger; she didn’t want to accidentally shoot her husband.
A few yards away from the pyres, the meadow was tranquil. It belied the actions going on around it. The earth was a solid black mass. She wouldn’t see a mouse if it walked right up to her. The clouds from earlier in the day had moved on, the stars were out in force-spectators to the drama unfolding on the world stage below. Cat could see the top of the tree line along the edge of the meadow. She had forgotten how many shades of black were possible in the country.
In the distance, sparks and powerful flashes erupted, illuminating the tree line and revealing the two mages in heated battle. Cat was comforted that the centaur was still alive. The light also revealed two large silhouettes grappling about twenty-five feet ahead of her. The pyrotechnics died, but she was already halfway to her husband as the light faded.
Lelani let out a scream that made Cat freeze. She thought for a moment that the centaur might need her help more than Cal, but she made the difficult decision to look after her own first-and damn the guilt.
She walked south of the men to keep the camp’s fires behind them; that way she could see them better. The giant had gotten the advantage over Cal, who was on his back with the big guy sitting on him. But Cal had a vise grip on his wrists, so he couldn’t hit. The giant’s arm was weak, torn up from the shotgun wound, and bled down. They were at a stalemate.
Cat came up to within a few feet, cocked the shotgun and aimed at the giant’s head.
“Get the hell off my husband,” she said.
