Blind God's Bluff A Billy Fox Novel - By Richard Lee Byers Page 0,110

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 Minié 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