I looked up to see Roland Blue being run through, torn, and shredded by the spinning bladed arms. He screamed as long as he had the functioning equipment to do that, then he just sagged and jerked. Some of his blood splashed on my face, more of it, and soupy parts of him splattered on the stainless steel tray of rusted surgical instruments that was bolted to Crash Cart’s torso. I reached back and tugged at the alien, unyielding arm that was tearing apart my back and headed toward my spine. It was too strong, too slippery with fluids. The arm that had shattered the marble desk was headed for my face, its blades whirring. I heard the “pop, pop, pop” of small arms fire and the chatter of machine-gun fire as the office door crashed open. I knew none of it would do any good, any more than any spell, any effort. Crash Cart was a mental projection, imagination given form and power. There was only one way to stop it. I knew what I had to do and I had to do it now, no hesitation, not a grain of doubt in my mind, no fuzzy thinking, no distraction. The blades came at my face, the pain in my back was burning, twisting, humming agony.
I closed my eyes, stayed crouched under the ruined desk and began the earth mudras with my hands and fingers, willing them to not tremble. I tried to remember what Wayne English had taught me, so briefly, about his own war with these nightmares given substance, so long ago. I had to calm my mind. There was no Crash Cart, there was no pain, no wounds, there was only the clean, bright, endless intellect. I was anchored to the world and it was anchored to me. There was no second before impact, no second before my spinal cord was severed; there was no time, it was a shade, a trick, a lie of possession, of attachment. There was nothing. It was all a sick dream, and I gave it no power over me. In this I was infinite, not a single atom of my being doubted, flinched. It. Was. Nothing.
I opened my eyes. The pain in my back was gone, my spine was intact. No blades had touched my face. Roland Blue’s body, his bloody, hewn face, was a few inches from me on the floor. His eyes, my eyes even to the last second of life, could no longer see me. His lips formed a word, summoning a bubble of blood to his mouth. The dark bubble popped, and he died, the life leaving my reflected eyes. Then the eyes themselves faded, leaving only bloody, empty sockets. I glanced over to see my spilled whiskey glass, the amber liquid pooling on the floor with melting ice.
Crash Cart was still manifested, ripping into Blue’s men now. Vigil, with twin pistols he’d acquired from some of Roland’s dead soldiers, was blasting away, making a valiant charge at the creature. He’d die. I stumbled to my feet and tackled him in mid-charge, driving both of us, crashing, through Blue’s office window and plummeting down to the stage below in a rain of bloody glass. We both hit hard, and the crowd gasped and then shouted angrily. Vigil and I helped each other to our feet, and he fired off a round into the air; the crowd’s anger at us ruining the show was replaced with squeals of fear and lemming-like running for the exits.
“What the hell was that for?” he asked, brushing glass off himself and scanning the panicking crowd for Blue’s security.
“The only way to not get killed by that thing is to be absolutely certain it’s not real,” I said. “It would have done to you what it did to Roland and was trying to do to me.” Above us, from the shattered office window there was the burp of automatic weapons fire, screams, and then silence. “We need to get the fuck out of here. It was sent to shut Blue up, but I’m pretty sure it will be happy to slaughter every single person in this building.”
As if to punctuate my point there was more screaming and the squeak of rubber wheels from up on the catwalk. I saw some of Blue’s pit security headed our way, fighting against the stream of fleeing customers. I headed for one of the stage exits but looked back to see Vigil walking toward the unicorn. “We don’t have time for this shit!” I shouted.
Vigil stuffed a pistol in his waistband and leveled the other 9mm in the direction of the oncoming gunmen. A beautiful knife with an ornately engraved silver hilt and a blue, glowing, crystal blade about a foot long sizzled into being in Vigil’s free hand.
“You have a soul-bound knife?” I said, shaking glass out of my scalp. “Where the fuck did you get that from?” A soul-bound weapon was tricky, high-order magic. It was knitted into the very essence of the wielder. Very few mages were adept enough to even try it, and few people had the focus and
