Blind God's Bluff A Billy Fox Novel - By Richard Lee Byers Page 0,67

But you’ve seen a lot.”

“A lot that no one would believe.”

“There’s also the matter of your power, unlocked and potential. You’re like money I found lying in the street. If I were fool enough to let you drop back onto the pavement, somebody else would only pick you up.”

I glared up at him. “You’re telling me I’m never going to be free to live the way I please?”

He sighed like a parent trying to talk sense to a stubborn kid. “No one has unlimited options. Not even a lord. I’m telling you that a life of privilege and pleasure is opening up for you. But you won’t be able to enjoy it until you adopt the proper mindset.”

I felt another jab of pain in my missing foot.

“How about if we just focus on the tournament for now?” I said. “We can figure out my future after we take care of yours.”

“But I need to be sure of you,” he said. “I need to know you know just how bad it can get for people who cross me.”

Everything went black, and I thought I felt the bed getting bigger, the sides and foot stretching away from me. My body felt different, and not just because I had arms and legs again. I touched my face. My chin and cheeks were soft and smooth, with no stubble at all.

The bed hadn’t grown. I’d shrunk. I was a little kid again.

I guessed Timon thought that would make it harder for me to keep my cool and remember that none of this shit was real. Since he was the expert, he was probably right. But I promised myself I’d hang on anyway.

Then I rolled over and saw the skull.

In the daylight, it was just an old-fashioned cut-glass doorknob on the closet door. But when the moon shined through the window, it changed it and made it glow. Then I had to lie awake and stare at it, even though watching it made me feel stretched tight with fear. Because if I looked away, that was when it would move.

This meant I was really little, so young that grown-up me could barely even remember living in this shabby little house. So young that my mom was still alive. And the skull was the scariest thing I’d ever seen or ever would.

But only scary to a tiny kid, right? It would be ridiculous if it spooked me now.

But it was happening. I tried to fight the fear with adult thinking, with knowledge and common sense. Unfortunately, it was like the little-kid part of me didn’t speak the same language as the part that had placed bets, had sex, shot people, and finally stumbled into a world of bug people and mechanical men.

So the little boy could only stare like always, with his eyes wide and his body shivering, like his attention could nail the skull in place. As long as it didn’t float or jump around—I didn’t know exactly how it would move and prayed I never would—then maybe I’d be safe.

But I couldn’t keep a perfect watch. From time to time, and despite the fear, my attention wavered. Or, even worse, sleepiness smothered me, and I drifted off. Then I felt a jolt of terror when I snapped awake and realized what had happened.

Was the skull exactly where it had been before, or had it moved a little? I could never tell.

Until the moment when I could.

The skull’s grin spread wider. Then it rose straight up into the air like the head of a man getting up out of a chair, though I still couldn’t see even a hint of a body underneath it.

It shouldn’t have seemed all that horrible to somebody who’d dealt with Georgie and Lorenzo. After all, as zombies went, they were the total package, with cold, slimy hands to grab you and magic tricks to trip you up. While it wasn’t even obvious what the skull could actually do to you. Bite you, maybe.

But that was just a flicker of grown-up thinking that didn’t mean anything to little-boy me. I tried to scream, but my throat was clogged, and the cry came out as a whimper. I wanted to move but couldn’t.

Then the skull floated toward me. As you can probably guess, that didn’t make me any less scared. But it flipped my fear from the kind that paralyzes you to the kind that makes you run like hell.

I dived out of bed. My feet tangled in the covers and I