Max started to slow.
He fell to one knee.
He jerked his head up and had time to look across at me.
My head… my head felt like it had broken like my mind had been dropped off a massive building only to shatter on the streets below.
Minutes ago I’d been begging a different Max to save my life. Now the real Max would die at my feet.
Unless I did something.
Fagan chuckled, jammed a hand in his pocket, whistled through his teeth, and turned.
“You’re out of time,” someone said. It took me too long to realize it was Max. His words were garbled and choked as those scraps of metal multiplied and grew over his very throat.
Fagan suddenly jerked his arm up and stared at his watch. I saw his face slacken, saw true dread alight in this eyes.
I still didn’t know why he had to kill at exactly 7:07 every night.
“No, I’ve got 20 seconds left,” Fagan spat. Then he moved. Faster than anything I’d ever seen. In a fraction of a second, he was beside me, the sword slashing towards my neck.
I shouldn’t have been able to move. Reason told me my body was already broken by the memory of Max’s curse.
But reason could go to hell.
I jerked backward, skidding on my back and somehow rolling out of the way.
I bought myself a second.
Fagan screamed, the move sounding like it would tear the lining from his throat. “Come here!” he bellowed.
I just had to stay out of his reach, I told myself.
No.
I had to fight.
Because there was no one left to save me.
I didn’t wait for the sparks to swarm my vision, I pivoted on my hip, brought my leg out, and kicked.
It worked – I caught the side of Fagan’s leg just as he skidded down to grab me.
The blow wasn’t hard enough to push him backward onto his ass, though. But it bought me another second.
Rather than roll to my feet and push towards the still-open door at the other side of the room, I threw myself at Fagan.
He still had the sword in his hand, and he tried to slash it across my arm, but I ducked to the side just in time.
My mind was a blur, of hatred, of vengeance, of pure survival. It gave me the force I needed to wrap an arm around Fagan’s side.
I didn’t have the strength to rugby tackle the asshole to the ground. But nor did I need to.
Because there was something in his pocket.
I didn’t need my ability to see the future to reveal that fact – I’d seen it when he’d shoved his hand into his pocket to pull out that strange magical grenade.
Fagan wrapped an arm around my neck, trying to wrench me to the side as he brought the sword around.
He was so strong that instantly the force of his arm against my windpipe sent stars exploding through my vision.
I tried to block out the pounding, thrumming pressure building in my brain, threatening to pop my head like a cork from a champagne bottle.
I reached forward, extending my hand towards his pocket, my white, numb fingers reaching for the box….
Fagan brought the sword down.
But I finally grabbed the box.
I pressed it forward against his face, willing it to work.
As I let go of the grenade, my searching thumb brushed against a raised button. And that was all it took.
Fagan brought the sword down against my arm, but he didn’t have the force to chop right through.
Because the grenade exploded. Right in his face.
It blasted me back, sending me spinning through the air until I slammed against the floor a good ten meters away.
My head rang like I’d invited an orchestra to play inside my eardrums.
Blood dribbled out from my nose, splashing over the concrete, playing up and down the sides of my lips and cheeks.
And yet, I was alive.
Which was more than could be said for Fagan.
The magical grenade had exploded right in his face.
He was blasted across the room and fell roughly on his side. He tried to push to his feet, but he couldn’t move a muscle as those metal boxes split apart and started to climb his skin like moss on fast forward. They filled the air with the strangest noise I’d ever heard. It was like listening to a mountain growing, all condensed down into a few short seconds.
He took a wheezing breath as the metal reached his throat.
Then Fagan fell, never to stand again.
….
I lay there in complete silence, staring through one bloodied eye at Fagan’s still body.
I would have remained there forevermore had not a single spark of light suddenly shifted through my vision. Then another. Then another.
The fireflies that heralded the future were back.
My tired eyes shifted from side-to-side as I watched the light zip to and fro.
Finally, the light centered on Max.
His body was completely still, dead.
No, not dead. For as the fireflies finally formed in full, they showed me pushing to my feet. They showed me staggering over to Max, dragging his metallic form through the factory, his heavy body crumpling the plastic-covered floor.
They showed me pulling him through the open door and back into the crypt. Then I found the witches. And the witches? They saved Max.
Though I shouldn’t have any energy left in my destroyed body, that didn’t matter. I pushed to my feet, staggering like my ankles had been removed.
I made it to Max, and I did as the vision dictated. As blood dribbled down from my nose and
