I placed my hand on the ground and anchored myself, becoming the earth. I sent pulse after pulse of root Muladhara energy through the cliff. My head swam from the concussion I was pretty sure Joey had given me when he coldcocked me with the shotgun. My lungs burned and my body ached from the spell I had narrowly escaped. What I was trying to do now, most wizards in the world, in history, couldn’t do on the fly. The enormity of it threatened to eclipse my mind, my will.
Too big, it’s too big …
But not my fucking ego. I am Laytham-motherfucking-Ballard, and I am the greatest wizard to ever stride this earth, I am an ass-kicking, pillar-of-salt-turning, motherfucking god, a goddamned rock star, I’m fucking Thulsa Doom with a better agent. The immovable object quivered, shook.
I stalled. It was too big, it was too much. The next Dugpa’s head came into view, then his chest, his raised gun. There was another appearing behind him and another after that. All black-clad, like the night itself was sending its army to kill me, to kill … Garland. Garland, his eyes, his mother’s eyes. You are all that stands between that little boy who never hurt a soul, and the hungry night. You’re it. If you die, they take him.
I was no rock star, sure as fuck no god. I was a tired, guilty, selfish, old man running from his fears, from his failures. I was ready, this was as good as it was going to get. That boy was going to live a good life, and that was worth the bad one I had wasted. I released a single breath, felt my Sahasrara chakra take over, gently pushing instead of violently pulling. I begged, instead of ordered, and I felt the world open and yield, felt the other mage’s attempt to stop what I was doing crumble like a sand castle.
A large section of the rocky cliff face, including the stairs, collapsed, crashing and tumbling down on the beach below. I heard the shouts and screams of the Dugpa assassins as they fell and then only the sound of the settling earth and the relentless waves.
I stood, shaking. My whole body felt twitchy and weak, as if I had physically pushed the weight. Each breath was fire. It was only then that I realized I had been hit again. I was bleeding from my chest as well as from my shoulder. I walked back to the edge of the cliff, carefully looking over the side. I got dizzy for a second but didn’t fall, couldn’t fall. Below there were boulders and debris everywhere along the beach. In the silver light, bodies were scattered about the rockslide, unmoving. The two rafts sat alone at the edge of the encroaching sea. That was easier than … I … thought it … The Dugpa work through misdirection, they never come at you straight on.
“Damn it!” I said. I immediately started hacking for my effort. My lungs felt like they were made of molten lead, I couldn’t get a good breath. My cough brought up bright red blood. I spit over the cliff and headed back toward the house and the yard as quickly as I could.
The back door was locked. I kicked it open and nearly puked and passed out for my effort. I stumbled into the nearly demolished 1950s-style kitchen. Cabinet doors were reduced to splinters, their hinges partly melted as if by terrible heat. The oven was crushed, crumpled like a tin can. Every drawer had launched itself across the room and the cracked, stained tile floor was littered with old rusted cutlery and now fat, dark drops of my blood. Some of the knives and forks were impaled in the walls, still vibrating from the impact.
“Joey!” I called out as I moved through the debris and into the darkness of the hall connected to the kitchen. “Garland!” The house was cold, colder than outside, and the place smelled of stale piss and something else, something familiar to some corner of my awareness. I saw scraps of light ahead, hidden under thick plastic shower curtains, hung before a doorway. I pushed the curtain aside, focusing my strained concentration, raising my defenses, preparing to fight.
The living room was lit by several battery-powered lanterns. Joey braced against a wall, his body partly hidden by shadow. He was panting and wincing in pain, bleeding from a deep, ugly gut wound.
I turned and saw Garland, his face slack with fear, and before the boy, in the harsh LED light, was Crash Cart, its multiple cabled arms sprouting scalpels and whirring circular bone saws, dripping with Joey’s blood. It turned its mangled half-face toward me, and beneath the blood-clotted surgical mask I thought I saw it grin. Two of the tulpa’s oil- and blood-slick tentacles were obscenely wrapped around the boy’s chest, but it hadn’t hurt him. Joey struggled to bend over and pick up the still-smoking shotgun off the floor; its barrel had been cut in two. “You can’t have him,” the father growled, fighting to hold his insides in.
Garland looked to me, pleading. Everything was dimming. I could hear my blood swelling in my veins, in my skull. I fought to remain present in this nightmare.
“Glad to see you still on your feet, Ballard,” Brett Glide said, stepping into the light. “Better late than never, I always say.” The Dugpa was dressed all in black, like his men on the beach. “Those were some impressive workings back on the beach. You are as good as they say you are, almost as good as you think you are. Even if you have mastered the technique to keep Crash Cart from affecting you, the boy and his father are not
