Alex fired again.
This time, when the sphere glowed, Alex could see cracks spreading out from the point of his bullet’s impact. Davis’s hand closed around his pistol and he jerked it free.
Alex fired.
Davis’s shield shattered with enough force to send the spell breaker spinning away from him and the bullet went through and struck him in the right side of his chest. Alex fired again, and the second bullet caught him in the stomach.
Despite being hit twice, Davis fired back. He wasn’t in much of a condition to aim and his shots went wide, but they did force Alex back into the cover of the hall.
“How?” Sorsha asked but Alex just grinned and shrugged. “You lying rat,” she grunted a moment later. “You told me there wasn’t a spell breaker rune on your gun.”
“There isn’t,” Alex said, picking up his hat. “The runes are on the bullets.”
He pushed his hat around the corner and Davis put a hole right through it.
“That’s pretty good shooting for a man as badly wounded as you are,” Alex called. “You know that belly wound has to be treated soon or you’ll die.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Davis gasped.
“Your plan’s a bust,” Alex said. “Miss Kincaid warned the other sorcerers. They’ll be waiting for those spies you sent up to them. No one is going to die. There’s not going to be a sorcerer war in America.”
“Oh, ye of… little… faith,” Davis grunted through the pain.
“Don’t pull my leg,” Alex said. “If you try crawling over to your spell breaker, I’ll have plenty of time to lean out and finish you off. Give up now and I’ll see you make it to the hospital alive.”
“So your sorcerers can strip my mind of all its secrets?” he said. “No, thank you. Besides, you’re wrong about my plans being done for. The spell holding this castle up is unraveling. It is drifting east and south right now.”
“Empire Tower,” Sorsha gasped.
“That’s right, Sorceress,” Davis said. “This levitation spell should last long enough for us to reach the core, and then…boom.”
“Is he right?” Alex looked at Sorsha.
“Imagine if all the stored energy in Empire Tower were released all at once,” she said through clenched teeth. “The impact of my house falling on the tower would shatter the spells that contain its power. The sudden release of all those forces at once would be like the Halifax disaster.”
“That left a crater over two miles wide,” Alex gasped.
“Think of that, scribbler,” Davis said, his voice weak. “Everyone in America will blame that… on the sorcerers. There will be a war, just of a different kind, as you drive your magic wielders out.”
Alex ducked his head around the corner and pulled back just as another shot rang out.
“All I have to do… is sit here and wait,” Davis said. “I may not have… much time left, but this spell has… even less.”
Alex looked back at Sorsha. “He’s hiding behind the big purple spell,” he said. “If I try to shoot him through it, my spell breakers could destroy it.”
“Why doesn’t he just shoot it?” Sorsha said. “Doesn’t he have a spell breaker rune on his gun?”
“He must have used them up,” Alex said. “Remember, runes disappear after they’re used.”
“I still have enough bullets to keep you at bay,” Davis said. “My only regret… is that I shall miss the glorious… rise of the Third Reich.”
Alex carefully pulled his left arm out of the sling, then struggled out of his suit jacket. He only had a few runes left in his book and one of them was something he hoped he’d never have to try. He’d give a significant amount of his own skin for a flash rune, but he simply didn’t have one, or the three hours and piles of equipment it would take to write one. Even if he had one, there was no guarantee that Sorsha could fix the damaged levitation spell in her condition.
“How on earth are you a Nazi spy, Davis?” Alex asked, gently rolling up his left shirt sleeve.
“I was sent here as a spy during the Great War,” he said. “By the time I’d established my cover… the war was over. I was ordered to stay… in case the day came that I was needed.”
“What are you doing?” Sorsha whispered as Alex exposed the escape rune tattooed into the flesh of his arm.
Alex winked at her. He wasn’t sure himself, and he didn’t have time for long explanations.
“Must have been quite a coup when you got into the FBI,” he said. Davis chuckled.
“You have no idea how happy my superiors in Berlin were.”
Alex paged through his book until he found the rune he sought. It had taken him five hours to write it, mostly with silver ink, and it glowed softly in the dim light.
“My real mission was to bring you back to the Fatherland, Sorsha,” Davis said. “What a boon your mind would have been… to the Fuhrer.”
“I don’t think I would have fit into your new Germany,” Sorsha said.
Alex found a blank paper and pulled a pencil from his shirt pocket. Most runes required time and exotic materials to write, but there were a few, like the minor restoration rune he’d drawn so Mary could mend her stockings, that could be done with just a pencil and a few moments. He laid the paper on the stone floor, then leaned over and began drawing a joining rune on the bit of flash paper.
“Of course you would fit in,” Davis said. “You are the perfect Aryan.”
Sorsha’s eyebrows dropped into a scowl. “So was Agent Warner,” she shot back. “I saw how much that counted for.”
“I am sorry about that,” Davis said. “But I couldn’t have you discovering my plans… until it was too late for you to stop me.”
As if on cue, the castle shook and dipped. It reminded Alex of being on the roller coaster at Coney Island. Sorsha cried out in pain as the castle stopped falling suddenly and her wounded hip slammed into the floor.
“It won’t… be long now,” Davis said, his voice thick with pain. “You’ve both been exceptional adversaries. Especially you, scribbler. My only regret is that you didn’t find the Archimedean Monograph for me. What a triumph… that would have been.”
Alex finished the joining rune, then licked it and stuck it to his arm. He lit a cigarette, then licked the silver rune and stuck it on top of the joining rune. Sorsha reached out and grabbed his leg.
“What are you doing?” she demanded. “I won’t leave while we still have a chance to save New York.”
A sound like glass breaking inside a bell suddenly filled the vault and the floor dropped out from under them.
“I win,” Davis shouted as the castle began to fall.
“Like hell you do,” Alex shouted back and touched the cigarette to the flash paper on his arm. Light blazed from the tattoo etched into his flesh and the world suddenly appeared transparent. He could see Davis suspended in the air over the failing levitation spell, and Sorsha clutching at his leg as the castle fell away from under her. Alex reached down and pulled her tightly to him, then everything collapsed inward, and he felt as if his body were made of rubber, being forced through a long tube.
A moment later he felt his body re-expand, but the castle was still falling, and he was falling with it.
25
The Landing
The castle fell around Alex and Sorsha. He didn’t know how long he had until it ran out of sky, but it couldn’t be long.
“What have you done?” Sorsha screamed at him, but her words were cut off by another blinding flash of light.
Alex felt his body going shapeless again, then being rolled and folded in on himself while being pushed through another narrow tube. The sensation went on for what seemed like a long time, until finally he felt himself falling again. He landed heavily on a hard surface and felt the air crushed out of his lungs as Sorsha came down on top of him.