Blind God's Bluff A Billy Fox Novel - By Richard Lee Byers Page 0,105

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