I vaguely remembered one of my teachers talking about Union blockade ships bombarding Fort Brooke during the Civil War. And although I couldn’t see many details in the dark, I had a hunch Timon had more or less recreated the event.
Whatever he’d done, the barrage caught Murk by surprise and hurt him, too. He roared and thrashed, and while he was distracted, Timon moved up to the guardrail, and, the grubby fingers of both hands snapping nonstop, set more parts of him on fire.
It was obvious Murk couldn’t take much more. I had to get across while I could, before Timon noticed I’d caught up. I managed a last burst of speed and ran behind him, trusting the bang of the guns and Murk’s howling to cover the noise I made.
Apparently they did, because Timon didn’t turn around. But either some of the puppets on the gunboats spotted me, or else they were lousy shots. Because a couple Minie balls whistled past me, and a cannon ball blasted apart a section of guardrail right in front of me. Two flying splinters jabbed into my face, one above the eye and one below.
I didn’t stop to brush them out. I did it on the run, and made it almost all the way to the other end before Murk dived for the safety of the river bottom. Then Timon spotted me. I wasn’t looking back to see him pivot in my direction, but I felt his magic suddenly poised in the air around me like a rat trap about to snap shut.
Then, however, I caught a break. I took the final running stride that carried me off the bridge, and the towers and lights of modern Tampa exploded into view in front of me. I glanced back. The gunboats were gone. The bridge was made of concrete, not wood, and Timon wasn’t standing on it anymore. I hoped that he couldn’t see me, either. That we’d be out of synch until he either followed me off or switched off the vision of the past that he’d created.
Still following the course, I ran left on Ashley, by the art museum. I flashed the Thunderbird and tried to make the T-bird appear beside one of the parking meters. It didn’t.
Then I realized I was picturing it in perfect condition, the way it had looked at the start of the race. On a hunch, I imagined it beat to hell, as by rights, it should be now, and for some reason, that did the trick. It shimmered into view with a long scratch on the hood, where Timon’s whip had cut it when it was a horse.
I scrambled into the car, threw it into gear, and stamped on the gas. By the time I was opposite the library, blue headlights were shining in the rearview mirror.
I made two more turns, and then the Maserati was on my back bumper again. Epunamlin, Georgie, and a couple of Timon’s other servants popped up from behind cover to shoot at him as we hurtled by. A’marie blew her panpipes at him. But none of it even slowed him down.
That left it up to me to make sure he didn’t get around me. I managed until we were hurtling south on Channelside Drive, with the faceted glass dome of the Florida Aquarium, lit from the inside and gleaming like a diamond in the night, dead ahead. Our finish line was in front of the main entrance.
A second after we turned into the parking lot, which had a stripe of yellow phosphorescence glowing on the asphalt at the other end, the wind howled. It shoved the T-bird, which was also suddenly hydroplaning, even though the pavement had been dry an instant before. Rain hammered through the hole where the windshield used to be, stinging and blinding me, damn near drowning me like a waterfall.
It was an instant hurricane, another blast from Timon’s past, and it screwed with my driving in half a dozen ways at once. But the worst was that here in the parking lot, he had room to pass on either side, and I couldn’t see or hear him anymore.
Maybe it was luck that made me jerk the wheel to the left. Or an experienced racer’s instinct. Anyway, metal crashed, and the jolt knocked me sideways. The T-bird spun and the engine cut out. When the car stopped moving, I turned the key, but it wouldn’t start again.
I tried to open my door, and it was stuck. I crawled out onto the hood and into the storm, not that I hadn’t pretty much been in it all along.
I couldn’t see Timon or the MC12 and had no idea what the crash had done to them. But I could just make out a smudge of yellow. I ran toward it.
When I got close enough, I spotted the Pharaoh behind it, sheltered from the downpour under the big purple cube of the overhang. Then Timon ran up beside me. We were neck and neck for a step or two, and then I noticed his arms and legs stretching like Silly Putty, lengthening his stride. It looked like enough to get him the win, so, pushing for all I was worth, I sprang ahead, stopped dead, snapped my arm out, and clotheslined him.
He thought he was a god, and here in dreamland, he was pretty close. But he was still easy to sucker punch, and my wrist caught him right in the Adam’s apple. He stumbled and hunched over clutching at his neck, while I ran across the stripe of yellow glow, up to the ticket booths, and out of the rain.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The storm stopped a second after I staggered under the overhang. Unfortunately, that still left me soaked and chilled. Timon was just as wet when he came charging up, but he also looked so mad that I could believe he didn’t even feel it.
“Foul!” he croaked. “Cheat!”
“Bullshit,” I answered. “You had your robot spitting fire at me before I broke out the rifles, punched you, or anything else.”
“I’m not talking about that!” He was still yelling, or anyway, doing his best with a bruised throat, and drops of spit flew from his mouth. The rain had washed some of the BO off, but hadn’t done a thing for his breath. “I’m talking about the other traitors! This was supposed to be a contest between you and me, and you had help every inch of the way!”
“Yeah.” Water trickled from the hair plastered across my forehead down into my eyes, and I swiped it to one side. “And all you had was a whole army of puppets and the power to control time and the weather.”
“That’s not the point!”
“True. This is the point. We agreed on a set of rules. They didn’t say anything about me sneaking in helpers, and anything they didn’t forbid was okay. That’s the way you lords play.” I turned to the Pharaoh. “Am I right?”
The mummy smiled and blew a stream of smoke. “I’d have to say that that’s a fair assessment.”
“Damn it!” Timon said. “He isn’t one of us!”
“He is now,” the Pharaoh said. “Because I declare him the winner. And, knowing you for the fine fellow you are, I’m confident you don’t really intend to be a bad sport about it.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Look where that got Wotan.”
Timon gave me a final glare. But then his shoulders slumped, and he thrust out his hand. “Just tell me how,” he gritted.
“How did I get Lorenzo, Murk, and the others into your private playground? Well, it turns out there’s this thing called lucid dreaming. It lets people control what they dream. There are Internet sites and books about it. You should check it out.”
“I know about it! There’s nothing there with the power to weaken my magic!”
“No,” I said. “Definitely not by itself. But Tampa’s full of Old People who know a whole bunch of weird hexes, and no offense, but all of them hate your guts. We took the lucid dreaming info and put it together with their tricks and the stuff you taught me. And once we picked the team of guys to help me, I gave them each a zap of mojo from my Ka. Usually, that’s how I heal people, but this time, it was extra strength to help them get inside this place and do what they needed to.”
Timon scowled. “It was still a fluke! And one I’ll make sure never happens again!”
“That’s okay,” I said. “We only needed it to happen once. Which kind of brings me to the awkward part. I don’t want you hanging around town figuring out how to get back at me and the other ‘traitors.’ Get out. Now. Before sunrise. Otherwise, I may not be able to kill you, but I’ll find a way to make you wish I had.”