Blind God's bluff

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

When I felt up to it, I finally went home. I couldn’t see a point to staying in Timon’s hotel when he wasn’t likely to give me any more magic lessons, and when the only guy I might need protection from was him.

I still had Old People looking me up, but they-A’marie, Epunamlin, and others-were all on my side. They told me that while Timon waited for his eyes to heal, he was making a tour of his new fiefs, popping in on the unfortunate new vassals by private jet.

Since I could use all the prep time I could get, I hoped he’d stay away for a while. But it was just a week later that he called me back to the Icarus.

With Queen, Gimble, Leticia, Wotan, and their entourages gone, fewer candles burning, and fewer of the Tuxedo Team on duty, the place seemed darker and more like an actual abandoned building. My footsteps echoed as I crossed the lobby.

But not everything was gloomy and creepy. I could see excitement in the servants’ eyes. After watching me win the tournament and kill Wotan, they believed I might really be able to help them.

I hoped they were right.

Timon and the Pharaoh were waiting for me in the Grand Ballroom. They both looked better than when I’d seen them last. Timon’s eyes were okay, and the mummy had gotten rid of the head brace and the wheelchair. Instead, he had an ivory cane with a gold crook on the end. When he saw me, he started to use it to heave himself up from his seat at the oval conference table.

“Don’t get up,” I said, stepping into the air polluted by his smoke and Timon’s funk. “Let’s just shake.”

He gave me his hand, and then, scowling, Timon did, too. It made me wish for some Purell, but I minded my manners and didn’t even wipe my fingers on the leg of my jeans. Not until I took my seat, and it was less obvious.

“So,” said the Pharaoh, “a competition in dream. Given that the possibilities are limited only by your imaginations, I’m curious to hear what you’ll come up with.”

“During the poker game,” I said, trying to sound casual, “you lords talked about racing. I’d be up for that.”

The Pharaoh smiled. “The sport of kings.”

Timon sneered. “And perhaps he assumes that I, who look like a beggar in his eyes, know nothing about it.”

Assumed, no. Hoped, yes. “The point,” I said, “is that I know something about it. I street-raced when I was a kid. And I’m not going to bet my life on a game I know nothing about.”

The Pharaoh turned his dry, sunken eyes on Timon. “Since you have the advantage of playing in your seat of power, it does seem equitable to allow your opponent to choose the contest.”

Timon snorted. “My opponent isn’t a lord. He should have to play whatever I want. But I agreed to let you officiate. So if you want a race, I have no objection.”

“But I’ve got some conditions,” I said. “Rules I need to give me a fighting chance.”

The Pharaoh stubbed out one cheroot and reached for his gold cigarette case. “And what might those be?”

“First off, no flying, and no blinking from one spot to another. We have to move on the ground, and we have to cover all of it.”

Timon shrugged. “Agreed.”

“Second, we can use magic, but not the kind that gets in the other guy’s head. We can’t turn each other into little kids, or make each other see things that aren’t there.”

“Agreed,” Timon repeated.

“Third, we’ll race through your private Tampa. And it has to stay Tampa. You can’t change the geography or the street plan. No fair dropping the Grand Canyon in front of me to keep me from getting where I need to go.”

“Agreed.”

We were all quiet for a second. Then the Pharaoh asked, “Is that everything?”

“I guess so,” I said.

Timon laughed. “And do you really think those limitations have pulled my fangs? I almost feel sorry for you.”

I grinned. “Big talk. But if you were sure you could beat me, you wouldn’t have given Wotan permission to kill me.’

“There’s no need for bluster,” the Pharaoh said. “We’re all gentlemen here, planning a sportsmanlike contest. And I believe the next step is to lay out the course.”

“I’ve got an idea for that, too. Something to keep either one of us from pushing for a route that he thinks would give him an advantage.” I reached into my jacket for a map of Tampa, unfolded it, and spread it out on the table. Then I pulled a handful of dimes out of my jeans and tossed them into the air. They clinked and clunked, bounced and rolled, as they came down on the paper.

I offered the Pharaoh a Sharpie. “Now you connect the dots however you want.”

After Timon agreed to it, he did. Then there was nothing left to do but pick a time. We decided on twelve the following night.

That gave me a chance to check that Pablo had made it to the hospital and was going to be okay. It also gave me time to take A’marie to lunch at the Columbia, with its glazed tile, slender pillars, and all-around Spanish decor, and watch people wait on her for a change. She wore her curls fluffed up to hide her horns, tinted glasses to hide the silvery flash of her eyes, baggy pants, and regular-looking shoes. She still attracted her share of second looks, but only because she was cute.

As she ate her last spoonful of flan, I said, “I kind of feel like I owe you a car.”

She frowned. “I don’t.”

“Well, anyway, I’m planning on getting you whatever you’d like. But just in case it turns out that I can’t, we can at least do this.” I slid a manila envelope across the tablecloth.

She undid the clasp and looked inside at the spare keys and the title to the T-bird.

“There’s some stuff in the trunk,” I said. “Not much. Family photo albums. My dad’s toolbox. A couple medals they gave me in the Army. I don’t expect it to mean anything to anybody but me. Toss it if you want.”

“What is this shit?” she asked. “You promised you were going to win!”

“I said I thought I could, and I still do. I’m sure as hell going to try. But Timon’s going to show up with his own bag of tricks, so nothing’s for sure.”

“Even if he did beat you, it wouldn’t mean you’d die!”

I shrugged. “But it might. He’d definitely rather kill me than lose. So I was even thinking, you could get in the car right now and drive. Then, whatever happens, you’d be out of it.”

“While you and the others would still be stuck in the middle of it. Do you think I’m the kind to run out on my friends?”

“No. I was pretty sure you’d say what you just did. But-”

“Just drop it, before I get really mad at you!” She flipped the envelope and hit me in the chest. “If you’re so worried about me, just make sure you do what you’re supposed to!”

“All right! I’m on top of it!” I smiled. “And for what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re going to be here.”

I paid the tab and then we strolled around Ybor, browsing through little art galleries and music stores, and looking at the flash art on the walls of the tattoo parlors. I was just trying to have a nice, relaxing afternoon, and she was trying to help me. Afterwards, I dropped her off at her ratty little apartment and went home to mine.

Where, despite my attempt to unwind, I had so much trouble falling asleep that I almost popped a couple of my dad’s leftover Ambiens. But I was afraid they might slow me down in dreamland, too. So I settled for a beer, kept my eyes shut, and finally drifted off.

The next thing I knew, I was standing on the fifty-yard line of Raymond James Stadium, home of the Tampa Bay Bucs. Timon’s power had pulled me to where I was supposed to be.

The lights blazed down, and the stands were full. But none of those sixty-five thousand people was moving or making a sound, and I was pretty sure that if I got close enough, I’d see the same few faces repeated over and over. They were puppets like the ones Timon had used to create his parade.

And when they suddenly started cheering and applauding, the cannons on the steel-and-concrete pirate ship boomed and fired confetti and soft-rubber footballs, and the PA system started playing “The Hallelujah Chorus,” I knew he was making his entrance. Sure enough, he floated down out of the sky with his arms outstretched and his filthy rags fluttering.

“It’s kind of sad how you get off on it,” I said. “Considering that it’s really just you cheering for yourself.”

Timon smiled a crooked yellow smile. “I want you to remember that it really didn’t have to be this way. All you had to do was accept my friendship.”

“It isn’t friendship when you get to boss me around.”

“It can be and it will, once I wring the human out of you. And I’ve figured out how. When I have control of you, I’m going to make you do things to A’marie and Victoria, too. Eventually, you’ll start to like it.”

“That could never happen.”

“Nonsense. Of course it can. You have a shadow self, remember? I glimpsed him myself when you needed him to kill Wotan. We’ll call him out to torment and finally murder the ladies. We’ll feed and exercise him until he’s a much bigger part of you.”

It nearly got to me. Then I realized that even if he could and would do it, it was still more trash talk, meant to put me off my game.

I grinned back at him. “If you think Shadow would ever like you more than I do, then you really don’t understand him. But it doesn’t matter anyway. You can’t make me do shit unless you win. And that’s not going to happen.”

“I’m eager to see if you’re right,” the Pharaoh said.

Timon and I turned. The mummy was standing right beside us. In the real world, he had some new bandages, but the ones wrapped around his dream self were all old and brown. The breeze played with the loose ends and the smoke from his cheroot.

“You made it,” I said.

“Of course,” the Pharaoh said. “I would have gotten here sooner, but to monitor the action effectively, I had to establish my presence all along the course.” He raised his arm to look at the gold Rolex wrapped around his stick of an arm. “It’s nearly midnight. Would you care to evoke your vehicles?”

“Sure.” I drew a shiver of power up from the center of me, told myself the T-bird would be there when I turned around, and sure enough, it was, porthole hardtop, shark fins, Raven Black paint, and all.

I could have gone with something modern. Something with ESC, NOS, a turbocharger, or maybe even seatbelts. But the T-bird was fast, and I was used to it.

And besides, it wasn’t real. It was a piece of my magic, and I figured that because of that, whatever felt right, was.

Timon raised his arms over his head, and the crowd in the stands went nuts again. I cringed at the extra eye-stinging stink that drifted out of his armpits. Even the Pharaoh took a small step backward.

Streamers of silvery light whirled up from the ground. And kept rising and spinning, until they made a tower of glow way too tall to be a car. Then the turning slowed to a halt, the light clotted into something solid, and I broke out laughing.

Because Timon had created a contraption like Robosaurus, Megasaurus, or Transzilla, with big, blue, triangular window eyes, serrated steel jaws to chew up a car, and enormous pincers to grab hold of one and lift it up for the bite. It probably breathed fire like the originals, too. Still, it was crazy to think the huge, slow-moving toy could do anything to me. I’d be out of the stadium before Timon could get it turned around to threaten me.

He gave me another nasty smile and said, “Remember that you laughed.” Then he soared up into the air and climbed inside the metal monster’s head.

I got in the Thunderbird, started it up, and revved it a couple times. Beside me, Timon gunned the dinosaur nonstop, and the roar all but drowned my engine out. He fired jets of flame, too, and the reflections splashed across my hood.

Then the Pharaoh pointed at the pirate ship, and all the cannons shot at once.

I yanked the shifter down into Drive and hit the gas. The wheels spun, but I didn’t move. The ground beneath the car had been solid when I got in, but now it was mud. Because, as A’marie had warned me, anything can happen in a dream.

The mechanical dinosaur rolled through the start of a turn that would end with me in front of it. Fortunately, the turn was wide and slow. Because, while anything could happen, apparently not everything could. Some stuff had to follow the rules of the waking world, or the dream wouldn’t have any shape or meaning.

I rocked the car, a burst of flame flickered over the passenger side, and then it finally lurched up out of the soft spot in Reverse. Cutting ruts in the turf, I maneuvered around the mud, aimed at the gate, and then noticed everything else that was happening.

The cannons on the pirate ship were shooting nonstop, while the PA system blared “Yo Ho (A Pirate’s Life for Me)”. The T-bird and Timon’s robot were running around on the big Bucs Vision screens. Any of that could have been distracting, but the real problem was the spectators streaming onto the field and running straight at me.

They weren’t real people, and even though it made me squeamish, I was willing to run over them. But that would slow me down and maybe wreck the car. So I told myself my M16 was on the seat beside me, and when I glanced over, it was. Then I willed myself to split like the lion man’s axe had split me.

I felt a stab of pain inside my head, maybe because Timon was trying to stop me. But then Shadow appeared beside me, just like I wanted, and my other three souls popped into existence jammed into the backseat. I didn’t really have a use for them, but I didn’t know how to split off one and not the others.

I expected Shadow to hang out the window and shoot while I drove. Instead, he slid out of it, hauled himself onto the roof, and car surfed. I assumed he was kneeling, not standing, but I still couldn’t imagine how he was going to keep himself perched up there. But I couldn’t afford to worry about it, either. I had to concentrate on the driving and let him handle the shooting.

Which was what we did. I swerved back and forth, trying to keep away from trouble and find a path to the gate. Shadow did his best to shoot anybody who got too close, and when someone darted into hitting and grabbing distance anyway, he lashed the rifle barrel into the puppet’s face.

After a while, guns started banging from the backseat, too. Startled, I glanced around. Silver had created two more rifles, and Red and Ren were firing out the windows at the onrushing puppets.

It helped. But I still couldn’t find a clear path through the mob. There were just too many of them, and no matter how many we dropped, they kept on charging like maniacs. Silver made a wall to hold some of them back, but they punched through like it was made of paper, either because Timon helped them or because they weren’t really alive.

Finally they swarmed the car like waves sweeping in from all directions at once. Fists hammered my window, and it shattered. The puppets reached in, clutched at me, and pulled, trying to break my grip on the steering wheel and drag me out.

I had puppets climbing on the hood, too, to get at Shadow. Behind them, I could just make out the robot, in position at last and reaching for the T-bird with both sets of claws.

I couldn’t do shit about it, either. Twisted around with the puppets yanking on me, I couldn’t even reach the gas pedal.

But then something boomed. It sounded almost like the fake cannons that had been blasting all along. But I knew the difference because I’d heard the noise not long ago in Showmen’s Rest.

One of the steel dinosaur’s eye windows exploded inward. Lorenzo’s aim was perfect.

And all the puppets either dropped into slow motion or froze completely. The zombie human cannonball had slammed into Timon hard enough to stun him or at least break his concentration.

I thrashed, broke the grips of the hands that were holding onto me, and dropped back onto my seat. I hit the gas, and puppets tumbled off the hood. Then, bumping over bodies, I finally spotted what might be a way out. A narrow one. I sideswiped Timon’s creatures as I weaved along.

Then the mob stopped being paralyzed. But I floored it and smashed puppets out of the way, my other selves fired bursts, and then we were clear. We raced down the tunnel and out into the parking lot.

“Everybody all right?” I panted.

“I think so,” Ren replied.

Shadow tossed his M16 into the car, then swung himself back onto the seat beside me.

As I sped toward Dale Mabry Highway, I hoped Lorenzo was okay. I didn’t think crashing into the robot had hurt him. That was his gift. But Timon could punish him.

He probably wouldn’t spend the time, though. Not while he still had a race to win.

As I turned onto the crowded eight-lane road, I spotted the Pharaoh standing on the corner. He blew a smoke ring.

For maybe a minute after that, everything seemed normal. Well, normal except for my driving, as I kept it above ninety and cut back and forth through the congestion. A traffic cop could have made his quota for the month just by pulling me over and writing all the tickets I deserved.

Then, as I headed into an intersection, other cars surged forward from both sides of the cross street, even though I had the green light. I jerked the wheel and swerved through without anybody hitting me, but the situation ahead was no better. Suddenly, like someone had pushed a button-which I guessed Timon more or less had-nobody was braking or yielding anymore. Cars crashed together in what amounted to a demolition derby.

Still, I had to keep trying to weave my way through, and the only way was to drive even crazier. I jolted over a concrete divider, rocketed along left of center for a moment, then jerked the T-bird back an instant before a semi would have hit it head on. I slammed Shadow’s side of the car into the back corner of a Sentra that was sitting across three lanes with steam fuming up from under the crumpled hood. The impact slammed me into the steering wheel, but the Nissan spun out of my way, and the T-bird survived the collision and kept rolling. I swerved into the parking lot of the Mons Venus strip club when the pavement there looked clearer than the next little patch of highway. The Pharaoh and three identical blondes watched as I knocked over a newspaper box and cut back onto the road.

“Timon’s coming,” said Ren.

I glanced back. Sure enough, Timon was closing fast. He’d switched from the dinosaur to something that wasn’t quite an M1025 Humvee but mostly looked like one, including the machine gun on the roof. And naturally, traffic did its best to get out of his way, like he was an ambulance or something. The only thing slowing him down was the obstacle course of wrecks that couldn’t move.

I looked for a way through the mess ahead. Shadow, Red, and Ren hung out the windows and shot backward. The almost-Humvee’s machine gun returned fire. Nobody hit anything. There was too much in the way, and the vehicles were veering around too much.

“He’s gaining!” yelled Ren.

And the tangle of careening, crashing cars and wrecks ahead of me looked thicker than ever. Muttering “Screw it,” I reversed, hit the gas until I got to a relatively clear spot, cut the wheel a quarter turn, and dropped the shifter into Drive. The T-bird swung around to face the oncoming Humvee. It sideswiped a disabled SUV doing it, and bounced my other selves and me around, but it was still drivable afterward.

“Shit!” said Ren. He’d just figured out what I meant to do. Shadow grinned like a wild animal showing its fangs.

“Yeah,” I said, “shit.” I hit the gas.

Since the puppets behind me had been trying to clear a path, there was almost a straight line from Timon to me. We could play chicken if we wanted to, and we did. We raced toward one another.

Meanwhile, the guns blazed. At first, trying to shoot and drive at the same time, Timon couldn’t hit anything. Then the T-bird’s windshield shattered, showering me with bits of glass, and a bullet hole popped open in the hood, before the machine gun wandered off target again.

My team was shooting straighter, but the Humvee was up-armored. Sparks danced on the front of it as rounds hit and glanced away.

If the guns didn’t matter, then it really was a game of chicken, and his ride was bigger and heavier than mine. On top of that, he was a supernatural being, and I was just a guy.

But I’d played this scary game before. If I was lucky, he hadn’t, and according to Murk, he could die here in dreamland, even if it wasn’t likely. Put it all together, and I was betting it meant he’d flinch.

I’d just about decided I was going to lose that bet when he finally jerked the steering wheel. He hurtled past the T-bird close enough to shear the rearview mirror off. And do the same to Red’s head if he hadn’t jerked himself back inside.

I braked and checked the other rearview mirror. The Humvee was spinning. “Flip over, you son of a bitch!” I said.

It came so close that I suspected Timon used magic to set it back down on all four wheels in front of a Chinese restaurant. I swore, and then Sylvester dashed-well, lumbered, really, but for him it was a dash-out from behind a freestanding neon sign in the shape of a dragon. He stooped, grabbed the Humvee under the passenger door, and, straining, rolled it over onto its side. As soon as it overturned, he shambled away again, maybe hoping to get back under cover before Timon ever spotted him.

I followed his example. I burned rubber out of there before Timon could get his act together to do anything else to me.

With the boss distracted, the puppets in the cars ahead gradually stopped driving as recklessly as I was. It was still bad for about a block, but okay afterwards. I sped through a yellow light and turned left, heading down a two-lane street toward Hyde Park. Standing in front of a dentist’s office, the Pharaoh struck a flame from his lighter.

So far, we hadn’t seen any more of Timon. “Do you think he’s dead?” asked Ren. “Or at least knocked out?”

“No such luck,” I said. “But he hasn’t caught up to us yet, and I’m starting to feel a strain-”

Shadow snapped around to glare at me.

“Sorry,” I said. “But that’s how it is.” I reached with my mind and pulled the four of them back inside me.

Hyde Park’s a historical district, full of big old houses that yuppies spend big bucks to renovate. Timon’s version looked like the original except that it was empty, with no puppet drivers on the road, and nobody strolling on the sidewalks or sitting at the outdoor tables in front of the bars and cafes. He didn’t have unlimited mojo, either, not even in dreamland, and had evidently decided not to populate the back leg of the course.

That was fine by me. No traffic meant I made better time. For a little while, I wondered if I might even make it to the finish line before he caught up with me again.

Then a low shape with blue headlights like long, slanted eyes appeared in the rearview mirror. As it sped up on me, closing the distance fast, I saw that it wasn’t quite a Maserati MC12, just like the Humvee hadn’t quite been a Humvee. But near enough.

I tensed, waiting for Timon to open up on me with more machine guns, a rocket launcher, or whatever 007-style aftermarket features he was packing. But, maybe because Old People thought it was tacky to use the same trick twice, he didn’t. Instead, he cut left of center to pass.

Why not? Maserati built the MC12 for racetracks. It wasn’t even street legal, and it was way faster and more maneuverable than the T-bird.

But I was out in front, and, just from watching Timon charge up behind me, I already knew I was a better driver. I spun the wheel and shot left of center, too, before he could pull up beside me, and then kept matching him zig for zig and zag for zag.

He tried bumping me. It jolted me forward in my seat, and I had to jerk the wheel to keep from jumping the curb. But it was still a really bad idea, because the impact actually made Timon lose control. The MC12 veered, clipped a parked car, spun through a one-eighty, and came to a stop. I laughed, and then the street went black.

Suddenly there were no traffic signals hanging in front of me, no streetlights on either side, and no neon. Except for the moon and stars, the only light shined from the two cars and the windows of a couple of the houses. But I didn’t see why that mattered until the T-bird changed.

That happened in a split second, too, most of the car melting around me while the rest heaved me higher off the ground. That, and the instant slowdown, confused me. By the time I figured out that I was now pounding along on top of a black horse, I was already slipping sideways off its back.

I spotted the saddle horn, grabbed it, and held myself in place. Realizing that it had a floundering idiot for a rider, the horse stopped running. Something rumbled and clattered behind me.

I looked around. The MC12 was gone, too. Now Timon was driving a buggy, and two white horses with glowing blue eyes were pulling it. Nearly dumping me off again, my horse jumped out of its way.

I kind of understood what had happened. The rules said Timon and I would race through Tampa. But I hadn’t specified modern Tampa, and he’d rolled back time to before there were cars. Which meant we couldn’t have them. I flashed the Thunderbird, laying it on top of my horse’s head, but I couldn’t change it back.

But hey, no problem. It wasn’t like I didn’t know anything about horses. I’d taken a pony ride once, at a school carnival when I was nine years old. And I’d thrown away a lot of money betting on them.

All that-or maybe the movies-had at least taught me that you were supposed to put your feet in the stirrups and steer the horse with the reins. I fumbled around and found them both, while Timon’s buggy disappeared into the night.

I also thought that if you made a clucking noise, or flicked the reins, a horse would move. Mine didn’t. I kicked backward with my heels, and that did the trick. I kept it up until we were galloping.

The horse got instant revenge for the kicking, as the saddle spanked me again and again. Eventually I tried standing up in the stirrups. That helped, but made me feel even more like I was in imminent danger of falling off.

I didn’t sit back down, though, and I didn’t let the horse slow down, either. We chased the buggy’s clatter, and then the carriage itself when I could make it out in the dark. Gradually we pulled up even with it.

Timon twisted on his bench and his grimy, wrinkled face snarling, snapped a whip in my direction.

The lash cracked across my horse’s head. It veered away from the buggy and stopped, almost pitching me over its head. I tried to kick it into motion again, but it bucked and reared. I just had time to notice my feet had slipped out of the stirrups, and then I went flying over its ass.

I slammed down hard and cracked my head against a street that was now made of cobblestones, not asphalt. The shock dazed me, made me want to lie still, and I fought my way through that. I filled up with Red and used his power to fix any damage the fall had done.

Then, still a little shaky, I stood up. The horse had run away, and I was still in the past, without an electric light, telephone pole, or parked car in sight. I flashed the Thunderbird and concentrated, willing my car to reappear in front of me. It didn’t.

That only left one option. Still burning Red’s mojo, I sprinted after the buggy.

I ran faster than I ever could have in real life, even with my Ka juicing me. But I still didn’t see Timon again until I was all the way out of Hyde Park and onto the street that almost certainly wasn’t called Kennedy Boulevard yet. And then he was still way ahead of me. There was no chance I could catch him on my own.

So it was a good thing I had another partner lying in wait.

As the buggy pounded and rattled onto the bridge that arched across the Hillsborough River, Murk rose to the surface. The first sweep of a tentacle smashed the buggy to pieces and laid the team out flat. One horse lay pulped and motionless. The other screamed and kicked with legs that bent in too many places.

But Timon stood up, bleeding from a cut on his head, from the middle of the wreckage. “Traitor!” he howled, and when a second tentacle reached for him, he snapped his fingers. The end of Murk’s tentacle burst into flame, and he had to dunk it in the river to put it out.

They went back and forth like that for a while, the kraken reaching, slipping some of his tentacles under the bridge to attack from both sides at once, and Timon counterattacking with fire. The Pharaoh took it all in from the center of the bridge, apparently not worried that Murk would pulverize him by accident.

Wheezing, my heart pounding despite all Red could do, I reached the foot of the bridge. Then shadowy forms appeared on black surface of the water. Cannons boomed and rifles cracked as the puppets on the gunboats fired on Murk from behind.

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.