Chapter 86
The trickster sprinted through the city’s brick and metal canyons. He was faster than any man should be—even a conjurer. His tendons stretched, and his muscles bulged like a cheetah’s. He moved with a terrifying liquid grace. The wind fluttered over the power of his sprint, carried on his shoulder.
The trickster was as hot as the parched stone of Death Valley in the height of summer. His skin burned with scalding heat. Sweat dripped down his forehead and his back, and his T-shirt stuck to his glossy-wet skin. The wind shuddered on his booming exhales and the cannon-fire of his heart.
The trickster was scared, but by the hard line of his jaw, he was also determined. Scared but determined was a good mix. It was like steak with salt, or bread with butter. They brought out the best in each other.
“Cora,” the trickster said, “I’m going to need a bit of luck.”
He flew toward the shaking, monstrous booms. The horror was only blocks away.
There were noises—screams, car alarms, sirens.
There was a thick darkness. It was early evening, but the horror had gobbled all light.
The electricity had failed, and the streets ahead looked darker than the depths of a lightless cavern.
“Thanks.” The trickster grinned, pressing his hand to the pocket on his chest. “Hang on, okay? I think it’s going to get .
. .” He slowed at the edge of the giant darkness and stared up, and up, and up.
He swore. Then he said, his grin growing with macabre incredulity, “It’s gotten bigger.
It’s gotten . . . We’re dead. We’re dead, Cora.
Ouch. You don’t have to bite me. I only meant, if we’re dead, we might as well have fun while we’re at it.
You know we always have fun together.” He laughed at another sharp bite and then yanked the Silencer from the holster on his back.
It was a giant steel weapon, heavy, hard to hold, and elongated like a staff.
“Or . . . this’ll work, and in ten seconds, this Clark abomination will be gone. Then you and me . . . we’ll . . .”
His mouth flattened, then he pointed the Silencer at the black mass.
He mouthed a few silent words, flicked a metal switch, and then yanked on the trigger.
There was nothing to see. There never was with Silencers. It was more something to feel. A wave of power arched out of the long steel device. It spread a massive ripple, like a boulder dropped in a pond. The waves pounded outward and hit the darkness in a powerful barrage.
The trickster gritted his teeth and held on at the backlash. He struggled against the blast of power and barely held his ground as the wave rebounded against him. His shoes skidded on the concrete as he was pushed back.
The horror screamed. Its roar tore at the trickster, and he struggled to keep from bowing his head.
He held himself upright and kept the Silencer aimed at the horror.
The trickster held the weapon upright through his will.
Or maybe with a combination of fear and luck.
Either way, he held it long enough for the Silencer’s power to spread across the breadth of the darkness and all of its consuming horror.
When the weapon’s power sputtered and then trickled away, the trickster shuddered and let out a ragged breath.
He stared at the quivering, pulsing monster.
“It’s not dead,” he said. He didn’t sound surprised.
“That conniving Merchant sold me a faulty Silencer.” He narrowed his eyes.
“Or . . . he gave you the wrong instructions. You’re sure he said down was to annihilate and up was to muffle?
Ouch. Okay, yes, you’re sure. All right, we’re muffled.
That’s okay. We can work with that. We can .
. .” He swallowed and backed up a step as the monster convulsed, roared, and then spewed a swarm of larvae.
From the darkness, another roar joined the first. The trickster spun toward the noise, and then, at the sight, he laughed. It was a jubilant, relieved, wild Bard laugh.
“He is . . .” The trickster stared at the boy, shook his head, and then laughed again. “You know, I think in a different life, the two of us could’ve been friends.”
The boy dove through the Silencer’s wall.
The muffling had encased the horror, like trapping a mosquito in amber.
Whatever it did now would be inside the Silencer.
That didn’t mean its effects wouldn’t be felt.
It didn’t mean the city wouldn’t be consumed.
It only meant the beings here wouldn’t see or hear the horror surrounding them.
Evil could still come. But now, it would come silently instead of with a malevolent roar.
The boy blazed brightly. He was a blue and orange comet, flying toward the horror.
He stood on top of one of his metal creations.
It was a giant silver bird coated in fire.
Its wings threw shockwaves of scalding wind, and its screech threw sheets of fire.
The boy perched on the bird’s back, and the wind, thin as it was, yelped with glee.
His face shone like it was lit from within. The boy usually rode in shadows, but now, he was ablaze. The bird sped toward the horror, and the wind whipped around the boy, catching his clothes and his hair in its jubilant grasp.
The boy grinned, and his laugh echoed the trickster’s. He threw great gusts at the horror. They were an inferno, as hot as the sun. It were as if the boy had captured cosmic rays and was shooting them into the horror.
The horror shrieked and erupted when the cosmic wind hit it. The boy dove in, balancing precariously on the bird’s spinning back. He twisted his hands, thrusting another volley of bright wind at the monster.
The wind tried to shriek. It tried to shove the boy back.
The monster had only pretended to be injured. It had wanted to draw the boy in.
No!
The boy was too close.
The horror exploded upward. Its tentacles grabbed the fiery bird and swallowed the metal creature.
The boy conjured at the last second. The horror’s writhing mass gripped his legs, but the boy twisted loose and leaped into the air.
He was falling. He was rushing toward the concrete.
A hundred-foot fall only took seconds. He twisted his hand and gripped a whirling maple-leaf machine and landed, running full force away from the horror.
“Don’t just stand there and let me do all the work!” the boy shouted, grinning at the trickster as he sprinted past. “Fight!”
“Did I say we’d be friends?” the trickster asked his lucky one.
The wind shrieked as the horror shot out a sledgehammer of darkness and hit the boy from behind.
It flung him across the street like a feral cat tossing a mouse.
The boy somersaulted, his limbs loose. His expression tightened, and he twisted his hand.
It was too late. The boy slammed against the stone edge of a building.
His skull hit the brick with a loud crunch.
His eyes rolled back in his head. His head lolled to the side, and his body crumpled.
Blood burst free. It was coppery and hot, and the wind shied away from the taste of it.
The boy slid to the ground. He didn’t move.
Not when the wind moaned. Not when it nudged him.
Not even when it pulled as much breath to itself as it could and tried to make him wake up.
The horror descended on the boy. It wanted to consume him. It wanted to eat all his light and all his darkness. It wanted him.
The wind flew in circles around the boy, lifting dirt into a tiny whirlwind. Not a defense. Nothing could defend against this assault.
The trickster sprinted across the concrete and leaped in front of the boy.
He twisted his hands and shot a blast of pure, glistening, diamond-on-water light at the horror.
The horror shrieked and shied away, but the trickster wasn’t strong like the boy or the solange-eyed one, or even like the musician.
He was a thirdborn and part-jackaltooth.
His defense only lasted two short breaths.
Then it trickled away, and the horror roared.
The wind could feel the cold fear coating the trickster’s sweat-soaked skin.
“Sorry, Cora.” He put his shoulders back and held his hands out again, preparing to expend the last of his power. The wind shook the boy, murmuring, Wake up, wake up, wake up.
And finally, the boy’s eyelids slit open. He looked blearily at the world through his forest-glade green eyes. He blinked again. Focused on the horror descending on the trickster.
He winced and shakily lifted his hand. Instead of conjuring, he thrust a wall of darkness outward, covering himself and the trickster in an abyss of not illusion. He was the eclipse, the void, the abyss. The wind hadn’t known. It hadn’t suspected. But this was a place horror couldn’t exist.
The boy gritted his teeth. His skin was pale, and his pulse pounded too quickly. Every heartbeat pumped more blood from the crack in his skull. Head wounds always bled more than they should. The wind could see the call of unconsciousness in the boy’s eyes.
Stay awake, it urged.
Then the wind laughed, because outside of the boy’s reassuring darkness, it heard another sound. It was the slice of swords set free. It was the crackle of blue fire. It was the solange-eyed one attacking the horror.
“Finn’s here,” the trickster said, even though he couldn’t see outside the darkness.
The boy smiled. “He won’t defeat it. He can’t. He’s still a horror himself.”
The trickster lifted an eyebrow.
The boy shrugged. “It’s a fact. Me, you, Finn. Even if Lia and Ragnor helped—”
The trickster stiffened, and the boy smiled. “Even if all of us worked together, I’m not sure . . .”
A roar and a flash penetrated the darkness. The trickster flinched.
“We need help,” the boy said. “We need . . .”
The trickster stilled and then said in a quiet voice, “I have an idea.”
The boy tilted his head.
“It’s crazy. It’s really, really crazy.”
“I don’t care if it’s crazy as long as it works,” the boy said.
The wind knew what the boy was thinking. If they didn’t stop this horror, it would kill everyone. Not even the Clarks would survive.
“It’ll work,” the trickster said. Then he amended, “I think it’ll work. It might backfire.”
The boy smiled. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay.”
The trickster nodded. He pulled the boy upright and gripped his arm. “Hold it off. When you see a terrifying monster headed your way, don’t shoot. It’s the reinforcements.”
At those reassuring words, the trickster ripped through the boy’s darkness and sprinted into the night.