Blind God's bluff

slammed into my back. I staggered, and got hit two more times before I finished pitching forward onto my face.

After a moment, the wounds started burning, like somebody was pressing red-hot metal into them. I had blood in my throat, and I coughed and retched as I struggled to breathe. I had the feeling that everything was moving in slow motion even though, with my face in the sand, I couldn’t really see anything moving. Nothing but a dark stain spreading as the life leaked out of me.

Suddenly my decision not to use magic didn’t feel so smart. Hell, I already knew that a person could die from what happened in Timon’s dream world, and I didn’t really know that he still needed me. Maybe his eyes were healing faster than I thought. Maybe he’d be okay to play when the poker game resumed.

But no. That couldn’t be right. The son of a bitch had said he was just training the horse or whatever it was. So I clenched myself and refused to bust out my power even when I felt the hard little ring of a rifle muzzle dig into the back of my head.

A blast of blackness and pain ripped everything away. Then I was sitting naked in a hard chair, with loops of rope tying my wrists and ankles to the wood. There were also wires, pinching-except that that word doesn’t do the feeling justice-where the alligator clips attached them to my groin. Someone had clipped the other end of one to the negative post of a Delco car battery. The other one was lying in the dirt near the positive post.

Electric lanterns lit up the inside of the cave. The harsh white light shined on the people moving around me. They weren’t Afghans. They wore fatigues, and their hair was high and tight.

“What is this?” I asked. It was one of the moments when the dream really had its claws in me, and I thought everything was real.

A big guy with white hair and a cheek bulging with chaw stepped in front of me. ‘Well,” he said, his jaws grinding away, “awake at last.”

“What is this?” I repeated.

He grinned. “What does it look like?”

“I’m on your side,” I said.

“If you were on our side,” he answered, “you wouldn’t whine like a little bitch about what we do.” He bent down and picked up the loose end of the second wire.

“You can’t do this!” I said. “I’m an American!”

“You were an American,” he said. “Now you’re an example.” He clipped the wire to the positive post.

After that, there wasn’t much but pain and screaming myself hoarse, or if there was, I can’t remember it. At one point, I felt my mojo trying to hit back, or put an end to the torture somehow. It was like a big dog yanking on a leash, and I think that at that moment, it and Shadow were the same thing. Somehow, despite everything, I held them back, and felt, like the shock wave from a grenade, the glare of rage and hate my dark self turned on the rest of me.

Eventually I blacked out. When I woke up the next time, I was in a soft, clean hospital bed, with white privacy curtains all around, and an IV sticking in me. It would have seemed like an improvement, except for the bandaged stumps where my arms and legs used to be.

So I had to gut my way through the wave of panic that came from seeing that. Afterward, I lay and panted while I waited for my heartbeat to slow down. Even though it wasn’t even there anymore, the big toe of my right foot gave me a twinge.

“We can do this all day,” I croaked. “But it might not be a great idea if you want me fresh and rested at the poker table.”

A grubby hand pulled open the curtains. “You’re still oriented,” Timon said.

“If that means I still know I’m dreaming, then yeah. It doesn’t mean it’s fun. You made your point.”

He leaned over me, maybe so his damaged eyes could see my face more clearly. A teardrop of slime plopped onto my cheek. He sniffed twice, then straightened up again. “I still smell defiance,” he said.

“As long as I win,” I answered, “what’s the difference? In another day or two, I can go back in my old life. You’ll never have to deal with me again.”

“It’s not that easy,” Timon said. “We Old People can let your Victoria go and just watch her for a while, because she only caught a glimpse of us. But you’ve seen a lot.”

“A lot that no one would believe.”

“There’s also the matter of your power, unlocked and potential. You’re like money I found lying in the street. If I were fool enough to let you drop back onto the pavement, somebody else would only pick you up.”

I glared up at him. “You’re telling me I’m never going to be free to live the way I please?”

He sighed like a parent trying to talk sense to a stubborn kid. “No one has unlimited options. Not even a lord. I’m telling you that a life of privilege and pleasure is opening up for you. But you won’t be able to enjoy it until you adopt the proper mindset.”

I felt another jab of pain in my missing foot.

“How about if we just focus on the tournament for now?” I said. “We can figure out my future after we take care of yours.”

“But I need to be sure of you,” he said. “I need to know you know just how bad it can get for people who cross me.”

Everything went black, and I thought I felt the bed getting bigger, the sides and foot stretching away from me. My body felt different, and not just because I had arms and legs again. I touched my face. My chin and cheeks were soft and smooth, with no stubble at all.

The bed hadn’t grown. I’d shrunk. I was a little kid again.

I guessed Timon thought that would make it harder for me to keep my cool and remember that none of this shit was real. Since he was the expert, he was probably right. But I promised myself I’d hang on anyway.

Then I rolled over and saw the skull.

In the daylight, it was just an old-fashioned cut-glass doorknob on the closet door. But when the moon shined through the window, it changed it and made it glow. Then I had to lie awake and stare at it, even though watching it made me feel stretched tight with fear. Because if I looked away, that was when it would move.

This meant I was really little, so young that grown-up me could barely even remember living in this shabby little house. So young that my mom was still alive. And the skull was the scariest thing I’d ever seen or ever would.

But only scary to a tiny kid, right? It would be ridiculous if it spooked me now.

But it was happening. I tried to fight the fear with adult thinking, with knowledge and common sense. Unfortunately, it was like the little-kid part of me didn’t speak the same language as the part that had placed bets, had sex, shot people, and finally stumbled into a world of bug people and mechanical men.

So the little boy could only stare like always, with his eyes wide and his body shivering, like his attention could nail the skull in place. As long as it didn’t float or jump around-I didn’t know exactly how it would move and prayed I never would-then maybe I’d be safe.

But I couldn’t keep a perfect watch. From time to time, and despite the fear, my attention wavered. Or, even worse, sleepiness smothered me, and I drifted off. Then I felt a jolt of terror when I snapped awake and realized what had happened.

Was the skull exactly where it had been before, or had it moved a little? I could never tell.

Until the moment when I could.

The skull’s grin spread wider. Then it rose straight up into the air like the head of a man getting up out of a chair, though I still couldn’t see even a hint of a body underneath it.

It shouldn’t have seemed all that horrible to somebody who’d dealt with Georgie and Lorenzo. After all, as zombies went, they were the total package, with cold, slimy hands to grab you and magic tricks to trip you up. While it wasn’t even obvious what the skull could actually do to you. Bite you, maybe.

But that was just a flicker of grown-up thinking that didn’t mean anything to little-boy me. I tried to scream, but my throat was clogged, and the cry came out as a whimper. I wanted to move but couldn’t.

Then the skull floated toward me. As you can probably guess, that didn’t make me any less scared. But it