receiver, wreathed in a wispy curtain of orange light that jerked back toward the wormhole that hovered behind them like a floating diamond.
“Hey,” said the point man, crossbow dangling loosely from his fingers. “Do you guys see the parallels between Einstein and Daffy Duck now? That duck knew what he was talking about.”
There would have followed another eight seconds or so of cosmic wisdom had not Garrick realized intuitively that fate would never again drop such a ripe opportunity in his lap. He attacked like a death-dealing dervish, springing from his hiding place onto the four-poster bed, where his opponents stood like cattle in the slaughterhouse pen.
Use yer bows now, my boys , he thought.
Garrick’s arrival on the receiver bed smashed the cocoon of bliss, and the hazmat team was instantly vigilant—all but Smart, who was still shrouded in quantum particles, which caused his extremities to warp and shudder as though underwater.
Garrick’s first strike was the sweetest, as it drew hot red blood. He had been anxious that his steel might encounter armor of some kind, but though the material was exceptionally hardy, it could not resist the singing sharpness of his trusty fish knife. The man who had spoken of ducks sank to the sheets, his heart popped in his chest. A second black-clad newcomer arranged his fists in an approximation of a boxer’s stance and delivered a lightning hook to Garrick’s solar plexus.
The assassin grunted in surprise, not pain. These dark demons were fast, but not magically so, and it would take a sight more gumption in a blow to penetrate the flat boards of muscle on Garrick’s torso.
Garrick had studied many of the fighting arts, from Cornish wrestling to Okinawan karate, and chosen what he wanted from each one. These skills he augmented with his own speciality: sleight of hand. His was a style that could not be clinically recognized and defended against, as there was only one master and only one pupil.
The magician engaged his unique skill and palmed the blade across to his left hand. The second man in black followed this move with a tilt of his head, but he did not cotton to the throwing spike that sprouted in Garrick’s right hand as though growing from the vein.
By the time the man in black caught the deadly glint from the corner of his eye, it had already begun the flashing flight toward its target. Not toward the second man, but toward a third while the second was distracted by Garrick’s left hand, which held the fish knife.
The second man realized this too late and had barely time to watch the throwing spike puncture his comrade’s chest before the fish knife slashed across his own jugular.
So much blood, thought Garrick. An ocean of blood.
Three of the hazmat team were down. The fourth opted to attack rather than be slaughtered where he stood. This guy was a real bruiser, who was famous in the FBI for having punched out a world boxing champion in a Vegas bar fight. He sent out a lightning right cross that would have floored an elephant and mentally mapped out his next three punches.
He would not need them. Garrick ducked under the punch, rolled the man across his back, and met him on the other side with a prison shiv. The agent did not die immediately, but he would not tarry long.
One left now, the one clothed in magical light. The man with true power. Garrick felt himself salivate.
How to steal the magic? What was the technique? An incantation, perhaps? Or did they need a pentagram? Everything Garrick had tried in the past to suck even a spark of power from the ether now seemed garishly jokish. Candles and weeds, animal sacrifices. He had been a mere child scrabbling around in the dark. Here was true power in front of his eyes, if he could take it.
Garrick pocketed the blade and dipped his icicle fingers into the orange light until he found the man’s neck. The tendons looked taut as gibbet ropes, but to the touch they were softer than butter. Garrick saw his own fingers somehow merge with the stranger’s body, and with the merging came a sharing of souls.
I know this man, he realized. And he knows me.
With his free hand Garrick ripped off the man’s mask, to demand the knowledge that he could not find in the man’s mind.
“Tell me how to take your magic,” he demanded. “Give me your secrets.”
The man seemed in a stupor. He