Someone stepped on my calf, pinning it to the stone floor. The pain in my kneecap was intense. I tried to glance back to see who it was, but I didn’t have that much freedom of motion.
Zahn stood, took a linen napkin from his pocket, and delicately wiped the blood off his face. He began to resemble the little old man I’d seen on the Wilburs’ back lawn.
“Damn,” I said, trying to keep tremors of fear out of my voice. “You carry a napkin around? I guess cannibals never know when they’ll need to freshen up.”
“That word holds no revulsion for me. I have done many, many things that you would consider a horror, but to me they are the price of power and extended life. I do not even think of this”—he held up the bloody cloth—“as distasteful anymore, unless they soil themselves in fear.
“But you find many things to be a horror, yes?” He began walking toward me. I tried to move my pinned leg, but I didn’t have the leverage. “I enjoy killing your people, Mr. Twenty Palace Society. I enjoy seeing your numbers dwindle. You were so close to winning, not so many decades ago, yes? Or maybe you don’t know that. You were very close to making yourselves kings of the world.”
He stopped in place and held his arms out as though a crowd was cheering for him. “But there were always some, like me, who refused to play by your rules. Individualists. Rebels. And how many palaces do you have left now? Eleven? Ten? Six, perhaps? And you have no more dreamers, yes? Soon your kind will be gone from the world, and free men will be free.”
He started toward me again, taking his time. I didn’t like seeing him so confident and relaxed. I wanted to shake him up. “Free to bring predators here to feed on other people …” Maybe he no longer thought of himself as human, but I pressed on. “And feeding on them yourself, too. The world would be better off without you.”
Zahn smiled. He should have packed some floss along with his linen napkin. “What would the world be without magic?”
Then, finally, he stepped on the slot I’d cut in the floor.
I said: “What would this town be without magic?” I closed my eyes and
It cut through Zahn’s foot and flew into my open hand. The old man gasped as a jet of black steam shot out of the top of his black leather shoe. I ducked low, letting it blast over me.
The people holding me cried out in shock and pain as the steam struck them, and I broke free. I kicked the leg of whoever was standing on me, knocking him into a pile, then dropped to the floor and rolled away from the scalding blast. With a twist of my wrist, I slid the ghost knife through the handcuff chain.
I scrambled to my feet as Zahn fell to one knee. He clasped his hands over the energy blasting out of his foot. I charged at him, grabbed him by his scrawny neck, and scraped the ghost knife down his spine.
Another, larger blast of black steam roared out of him. I gripped my spell in my teeth, grabbed Zahn’s leather belt, and lifted his tiny, withered body off the ground.
I held him in front of me and ran at the human shield around the sapphire dog. The steam made the pets fall back, covering their faces and shrieking. They didn’t break and run, but they did fall.
I spun Zahn behind me, dropping him to the floor in case more pets came at me from behind. He caught hold of the lapel of my jacket as I let him go, and I wasted precious seconds slipping out of it. Then the sapphire dog was right in front of me. I grabbed the ghost knife out of my teeth.
The predator split into three and vanished.
I wanted to roar in frustration, but I didn’t have the time. The pets were all around me. I dropped to the floor next to Steve’s legs. My hand fell on a gun lying against the wall, and I grabbed it, then scrambled through the hole the sapphire dog had made.
I heard shouting and commotion behind me. A hand grabbed at my pant leg, but I fought free. The second hole to the outside was just a couple of feet away. I scrambled through.
Then I was outside. I ran, holding the found gun by the barrel.
I heard two quick gunshots, but I had no idea if the shooter was aiming at me. I ran through the tents to make myself a more difficult target. I felt faster without my jacket, but that wasn’t going to last. I was cold, wet, and hungry. The only real weapon I had was my ghost knife, which was useless against the pets. If the old man summoned another floating storm, I was dead.
I stole a cinnamon bun out of a booth and, still running, took a bite. It was sweet and sticky and exactly the fuel I needed.
There was movement ahead. A teenage boy stepped out from behind a plastic tent. He raised an old revolver, but I was too fast for him. I hit him hard and ripped the gun out of his hand as he fell.
I passed the last of the stalls and hit open ground. There were no more pets in front of me, but there were plenty behind. I could hear them yelling instructions to one another. I would have guessed that, with the predator in their heads, they wouldn’t need to talk to one another, but that wasn’t the way it worked, apparently.
I had five options: the two feeder roads across the open field; the parking-lot exit; the horse trail that connected the fairgrounds with the stables; and finally the pastor’s church and ruined house. The feeder roads and parking lot pretty much guaranteed I’d be shot. The horse trail was the safest in the short term, but the locals knew the landscape and would run me to ground eventually.
The last choice had something the others didn’t—Annalise. Even if she couldn’t help me—and I hoped she was still alive and dangerous, even if only barely—I couldn’t leave her behind. Besides, I hoped she would have something I needed.
So I ran toward the rubble of the pastor’s house, swerving erratically in case someone took another shot.
At the edge of the field, I scrambled up the small hill bordering the church property. A bullet smacked into the dirt beside me, and goose bumps ran down my back.
When I made it to the top of the hill, I looked back. The people of Washaway, teen to senior citizen, ran toward me in a straggling mob, weaving between the stalls. A few carried guns, but most had other weapons.
I turned back toward the church. Waterproof Cowboy and his crew lay scattered across the grass. All of their