Blind God's Bluff A Billy Fox Novel - By Richard Lee Byers Page 0,66
onto my face.
After a moment, the wounds started burning, like somebody was pressing red-hot metal into them. I had blood in my throat, and I coughed and retched as I struggled to breathe. I had the feeling that everything was moving in slow motion even though, with my face in the sand, I couldn’t really see anything moving. Nothing but a dark stain spreading as the life leaked out of me.
Suddenly my decision not to use magic didn’t feel so smart. Hell, I already knew that a person could die from what happened in Timon’s dream world, and I didn’t really know that he still needed me. Maybe his eyes were healing faster than I thought. Maybe he’d be okay to play when the poker game resumed.
But no. That couldn’t be right. The son of a bitch had said he was just training the horse or whatever it was. So I clenched myself and refused to bust out my power even when I felt the hard little ring of a rifle muzzle dig into the back of my head.
A blast of blackness and pain ripped everything away. Then I was sitting naked in a hard chair, with loops of rope tying my wrists and ankles to the wood. There were also wires, pinching—except that that word doesn’t do the feeling justice—where the alligator clips attached them to my groin. Someone had clipped the other end of one to the negative post of a Delco car battery. The other one was lying in the dirt near the positive post.
Electric lanterns lit up the inside of the cave. The harsh white light shined on the people moving around me. They weren’t Afghans. They wore fatigues, and their hair was high and tight.
“What is this?” I asked. It was one of the moments when the dream really had its claws in me, and I thought everything was real.
A big guy with white hair and a cheek bulging with chaw stepped in front of me. ‘Well,” he said, his jaws grinding away, “awake at last.”
“What is this?” I repeated.
He grinned. “What does it look like?”
“I’m on your side,” I said.
“If you were on our side,” he answered, “you wouldn’t whine like a little bitch about what we do.” He bent down and picked up the loose end of the second wire.
“You can’t do this!” I said. “I’m an American!”
“You were an American,” he said. “Now you’re an example.” He clipped the wire to the positive post.
After that, there wasn’t much but pain and screaming myself hoarse, or if there was, I can’t remember it. At one point, I felt my mojo trying to hit back, or put an end to the torture somehow. It was like a big dog yanking on a leash, and I think that at that moment, it and Shadow were the same thing. Somehow, despite everything, I held them back, and felt, like the shock wave from a grenade, the glare of rage and hate my dark self turned on the rest of me.
Eventually I blacked out. When I woke up the next time, I was in a soft, clean hospital bed, with white privacy curtains all around, and an IV sticking in me. It would have seemed like an improvement, except for the bandaged stumps where my arms and legs used to be.
So I had to gut my way through the wave of panic that came from seeing that. Afterward, I lay and panted while I waited for my heartbeat to slow down. Even though it wasn’t even there anymore, the big toe of my right foot gave me a twinge.
“We can do this all day,” I croaked. “But it might not be a great idea if you want me fresh and rested at the poker table.”
A grubby hand pulled open the curtains. “You’re still oriented,” Timon said.
“If that means I still know I’m dreaming, then yeah. It doesn’t mean it’s fun. You made your point.”
He leaned over me, maybe so his damaged eyes could see my face more clearly. A teardrop of slime plopped onto my cheek. He sniffed twice, then straightened up again. “I still smell defiance,” he said.
“As long as I win,” I answered, “what’s the difference? In another day or two, I can go back in my old life. You’ll never have to deal with me again.”
“It’s not that easy,” Timon said. “We Old People can let your Victoria go and just watch her for a while, because she only caught a glimpse of us.