through them. Past the bleachers there were dozens of tables and chairs arranged along the pedestrian mall. They were all empty, the tourists and transients who normally sat there must have seen us coming and took off. It sounded like the
I hit the brakes and spun the wheel, but we were going too fast to come to anything resembling a controlled stop. The Explorer struck a cement barricade at the far end of the mall. The next thing I knew we were off the ground and tilting sideways, then upside down. The cubes of safety glass from the broken window jumped off my lap and out of the leg well, raining up to the ceiling. I felt the seat belt strain under my weight, the strap cutting into my shoulder and chest. The Explorer came down on its roof, skating across the section of Broadway that was closed to traffic, and crashed into the side of a clothing store, shattering the store’s floor-to-ceiling display window. Only then, finally, did we stop.
My head, neck, and shoulders throbbed. The wounds on my back flared with new pain. I reached for the seat belt and, bracing myself, released the buckle. I tumbled upside down from my seat, bumping my neck and shoulders against the ceiling. I winced and tried to get my feet under me again. I had to scrape my knees and shins past the steering wheel, but finally I lay on my side and did a quick check of my limbs. No broken bones. I was lucky. “Are you okay?” I called back to Bethany and Thornton.
They lay in a tangled heap below the overturned backseat, caught like flies in the web of their seat belts.
“I have some exciting new wounds and my right arm seems to be bent the wrong way, but otherwise I still feel dead,” Thornton replied. “Thanks for asking.”
“My leg,” Bethany groaned, her voice laced with pain. “I’m jammed in.”
From the way the car was lying, I couldn’t see the Black Knight, but I knew he wasn’t far. If he found us like this, it would be like shooting fish in a barrel. I thought about how easily that sword of his had cut through metal. I didn’t want to know what it would do to us.
“Thornton, help Bethany,” I said. I crawled through the hole where the driver’s side window used to be and out onto the sidewalk. I stood up, but I was still dizzy from the accident. I steadied myself against the side of the car. People on the sidewalks in the distance still had their cell phone cameras raised, flashes popping. Damn. If any of them got a clear picture of my face, not only would I have botched this job, I would have blown any chance of getting information out of Underwood. My only hope was that the cameras were too far away to capture any detail.
Then, slowly, it dawned on me that I wasn’t the one they were taking pictures of. The Black Knight trotted up and slowed his horse to a stop. He dismounted. He didn’t pay any attention to the crowd across the street. His attention was fixed on me.
I tried to tug open the car’s back door, but it was wedged stuck. I dug in against the sidewalk and gave it another yank, a hard one. With the loud groan of metal scraping against metal it opened, but only halfway. “Can you move?”
Bethany looked up at me, her teeth clenched against the pain. “I don’t know, but I’ll damn well try.”
I looked over the top of the overturned car. The Black Knight was striding toward me, holding his sword low.
“If you’re going to try, you better do it now,” I said. I pulled my gun from the back of my pants and aimed down the barrel at the Black Knight. “Back it up,” I shouted. The Black Knight ignored me, continuing toward us. I cocked the gun. “Back the
Both of them ricocheted off his armored breastplate. It didn’t even slow him down.
“You gotta be kidding me,” I said. I put the gun away and squatted down by the open door again. “Can one of you tell me why everyone is immune to bullets all of a sudden?”
They’d gotten free of their seat belts, and now Thornton was trying to push Bethany toward the door with his left arm. It wasn’t working. “See if you can pull her out,” he urged me. His right arm hung limply at his side.
I took both of Bethany’s hands and pulled, but she gritted her teeth in pain and didn’t budge. “Get out of here, Trent,” she said. “There’s no point in all three of us dying.”
“When are you going to stop trying to get rid of me?” I said.
I spotted the Anubis Hand lying near her. If the Black Knight was the king of the gargoyles, did that mean the Anubis Hand would have the same effect on him that it did on the gargoyles in the warehouse? There was only way to find out. I pulled the staff out of the car.
“Just run, Trent, before you get yourself killed!” Bethany yelled.
I walked around to the front of the car and faced the Black Knight, holding the staff in both hands. “We don’t have the box you’re looking for,” I said.
The Black Knight lifted the heavy, angry-looking sword over his head and brought it down toward me. I swung the staff, knocking his blade aside. I followed through with the momentum, spinning around and ramming into him with my back. I brought one elbow up hard into the Black Knight’s breastplate. The metal felt as hard as rock. Pain surged up my arm. The Black Knight didn’t so much as stumble.
Still, he moved slowly in all that armor. I could use that to my advantage. Before he had a chance to get his sword up, I spun again, and this time I swung the staff up and out. The Anubis Hand struck the Black Knight’s helmet full on.
I waited for the flash of light, for the Black Knight to be thrown backward in a blazing inferno, but nothing happened. Instead, he shrugged off the blow and came at me again.
Shit. I backed away, holding the staff defensively in front of me. I risked a quick look over my shoulder. Thornton was out of the car and helping Bethany through the door. His limp right arm was crooked at the elbow in a way that looked painful. The leather bracelet hung cockeyed at his wrist. Bethany had an angry cut on her right knee that dripped trails of blood down her jeans leg. I turned back to the Black Knight just in time to see him raise his sword, preparing to strike.
As the blade came down, I brought the staff up to block it. The sword cleaved the staff in two, and suddenly I was holding two useless pieces of wood, one with a mummified fist attached to it. Damn, I thought, now what?
“Run, Trent!” Bethany shouted. “You can’t win! He’ll kill you!”
Maybe I couldn’t win, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to leave them here for the Black Knight to cut to pieces. I held the two halves of the broken staff like clubs and took a deep breath. I didn’t have a plan, let alone a strategy for fighting him, but there was no way I was going to let this asshole get past me.
I ran at him and got past his sword before he could swing it. The Black Knight pivoted, and hit me across the face with his armored forearm. It felt like getting hit by a steel girder. I fell onto my back. The two pieces of the staff fell out of my hands.
The Black Knight loomed over me. He lifted his black-bladed sword high, its sharp point gleaming above my face.
“Fuck you,” I said, “and the horse you—”
Before I could finish, the Black Knight drove his sword down toward me.
Nine
I rolled aside. The Black Knight’s sword clanged against the pavement where my head had been only a moment ago. He raised his sword and brought it down again. This time I rolled in the opposite direction, narrowly avoiding the sharp edge of the blade as it buried itself deep in the concrete. As the Black Knight struggled to pull the sword free, I got back on my feet.
There wasn’t enough time to run. The Black Knight yanked the sword free, sending tiny bits of concrete showering through the air. He advanced on me again and swung the sword. I jumped back, feeling how close the point came to my chest as it cut past me. I took another step back and bumped up against the Explorer. The Black
