And a psychic, morbidly obese clown.
Things shouldn’t happen that way.
But so often they did.
Look to the portal.
The black angel again.
He raised his eyes. The portal was slowly clearing. So time wasn’t frozen. Just slowed to an imperceptible crawl.
The swirling fire, the crackling blue lighting had parted. Beyond was the city, its buildings touched pink with the cool fingers of dawn. The city lay nestled around the dark waters Korbahn Bay. Twinkling streetlights still shone here and there. The towers of downtown stood tall, their windows red with the rising dawn.
His city.
He was aware of his fingers clenched on the opening of Sinzerklaazz’s bag. He could feel the weight of the massed armies of the dark lords at his back. As soon as the black angel released this moment, they would pour through and seize and rape the city.
Unless he stopped them.
They can not be stopped, the black angel said.
I don’t need to stop them, he replied, that’s someone else’s job. I’ve been set up for something else.
Do what you must, Hilario the Clown.
Do what I’ve been conned into doing. Why did you let it get this far?
We are not allowed to interfere.
What do you call this?
I am doing my duty, the black angel said, I am being a conduit of life force.
And that was how it was going to happen.
He commanded his fingers to release Queezleyan. The little six-tailed rat demon fell away. Disappeared into the joyous light inside the black angel.
Hilario’s body stiffened as power surged through him. A terrible, wondrous heat that singed the tattered remnants of his soul as it passed through him.
For he was a conduit, too.
Light energy.
Which wasn’t made of purity and joy and puppies and kittens.
It was made of everything. It was all the energies of the unseen world and the normal world. Distilled into a single essence.
He needed all of them and all of them were in the van with him. He extended psychic tendrils and connected with his passengers. Drawing energy from them.
And giving energy back. Taking and giving until there was no separation between them. They were a single entity.
With a single purpose.
Spring the trap.
The diabolical trap. Years, perhaps centuries in the making.
An image of the old wizard, seated behind his improbable bloodwood desk, rose in his mind. The wizard looking him up and down. You’ll do.
There was no choice. It was either let the dark lords have the city–and a foothold in the normal world…or…save the city.
No matter what the cost.
70
Time came rushing back.
Noise crashed in on him. Tires screeched on pavement. He nearly lost his grip on the silky red bag as the van slewed to the side.
He gave the side door a mental push. It flopped open.
The city lay before him, framed by the doorway. The van was parked sideways in the middle of the road leading into the city. A faded welcome sign sat by the shoulder.
The road from the old lighthouse.
Not a single car rolled down the road. The dewy scent of damp grass and evergreens drifted in with the chill morning air.
A roar cracked the stillness. The hordes of the dark lords. The portal crackled in the air. From the oval center, lines split the air on either side. Black stone and red sky shone through the crack. The unseen world. The edges of the crack crumbled. The crack grew bigger by the second.
Orkes and ogres and goblins poured over the gap. They shook their swords and spears and battle axes in the air.
Their gnarled feet hit the soft earth with muffled thumps. So many of them the sound became a continuous thunder.
There were only seconds before the beasts overran them.
Rodney the pizza delivery driver stared at the oncoming horde.
“No more magic mushrooms!” he shouted.
“Drive!” Hilario shouted in a voice that didn’t sound like his own.
Rodney jerked his head around and screamed. Really, the fellow had quite the set of lungs on him. It was quite piercing.
Of course, he probably wasn’t seeing Hilario the Clown. He probably saw a very scary spiky black thing surrounding a giant orb of a very tired clown.
Rodney stomped the gas. The van rocked from side to side. They fishtailed onto the road, the engine roaring. How was he able to make it do that? The van never giddy-upped and went like that for him.
Not that there was any time to ask.
“Rachel,” Hilario said, “Hold the bag outside the door. Roger, make sure she doesn’t fall out.”
Rachel’s eyes glowed bright green. The vines wrapped over her arms writhed and extended to her hands. The vines twined themselves in the loops of the golden rope and moved the bag to the door.
Roger the ogre pulled away. Ran his gaze up and down Rachel.
“Ummmsss…”
“Just grab the vines,” Rachel said.
Hilario kept one hand on the open end of the bag. The wind whipped the silky red bag like a flag.
Was this going to work?
There is no room for doubt, is there?
The voice of the black angel.
No, there wasn’t room for doubt.
Hopefully there was room enough in the bag.
“Hilario.”
The Sapphire Witch. She held out the gold and sapphire amulet. It glinted in the morning light.
So many ways for things to go wrong.
“Throw it to me,” he said.
She tossed it. The van ran over a bump.
For a heart stopping moment he thought the amulet would fly out the open door. But his fingers snagged the chain.
He quickly spun the chain around his fingers. The amulet slapped into his bare palm. The magic infused bauble tingled his skin. It was amazing he could even feel it with the black angel wrapped around him.
He brought the amulet down to
