Marc Zicree - Magic Time

Then Stern’s firestream cut off at last. Stern cursed and spun, trying to reach behind him, fling Cal off. But Cal dug his fingers into the armored ridges of Stern’s shoulders, held on fiercely. The roof was an inferno now, sheets of angry flame dodging about them. Frantically, Cal sought out Colleen and Tina but couldn’t see them as he careened atop Stern.

“Get off me!” Stern shouted as they lurched toward the edge. He leaned sideways like a swooning man and plunged over the side. Cal clutched Stern’s neck, clinging to him. He heard a scream-Tina’s-but it was swallowed in the wind that pummeled him. His stomach rose nauseatingly as the building fell away.

The black street rushed at them. Cal felt a ripple of powerful muscle beneath him, Stern’s great wings unfurled with a snap like a bedsheet, and they were soaring, whirling and swooping, rocketing crazily above Fifth, the dark towers on either side grim cliff faces, dizzying blurs. Stern’s wings pounded as Cal clasped the leathery furrows of skin, tightened his legs about Stern’s massive waist. Harsh, staccato rasps were coming off Stern, beast sounds that might have been crazy, raging laughter.

Abruptly, Stern veered sideways, rammed into a building face, scraping along its edge. The impact flared pain flash-bulb bright behind Cal’s eyes, and he was flung loose, only saving himself by grasping a spur of bone projecting from Stern’s spine. He clambered back, again locked his legs, hunkered down close.

Stern howled, threw himself from side to side against the buildings as they whipped by. The blood was loud in Cal’s ears; he snatched breath as the wind tore past. And then Stern tilted up sharply, soared above the level of the buildings, wings hammering the air as he rose.

Stern slashed through the night sky, climbing fast, dozens, then hundreds of feet above the tallest spire. They were almost dead vertical. Cal grasped Stern as though trying to merge with him as the world fell away.

They pierced a cloud, and Cal felt the damp kiss of fog on his face. The steady rise and fall of Stern’s respiration throbbed beneath him like a huge bellows, and he found himself matching his breathing to Stern’s.

Almost lazily, Stern angled over, dipped below the cloud layer. He was gliding now, banking in a wide, descending spiral.

Then he folded his wings and dived.

The change was so abrupt, it caught Cal unawares. Blood rushed to his head, he fought to keep from blacking out. They were spinning, shrieking downward. Cal felt his body lighten, the pull of gravity ripped away under their savage velocity. In a rush, he saw clearly Stern’s intention to hurtle toward the pavement, then pull up at the last minute, certain the momentum would wrench Cal free, smash him into the asphalt like an offending bug.

Stern was screaming now, a primal howl that matched the wind and challenged it. Cal found himself screaming, too, but he couldn’t hear it over the din, only feel the raw outrage in his throat. Fighting down vertigo and panic, Cal made out a blazing rectangle rising swiftly to meet them, knew it for the roof of the Stark Building.

A sudden, desperate hope seized him. Stern was slowing his rate of spin now, gauging his target. Cal held his breath as the rooftop neared. He locked his legs about Stern more firmly, dared to loosen his arms. He sought out the scabbard at his hip, closed a hand about the wrapped leather binding of the hilt, eased out the sword as they thundered down.

The fiery summit was only yards away now, below and to the west of them. In an instant they would sweep past, and the moment would be lost.

Steeling himself, Cal gripped the sword in both hands, raised it high overhead and-with a cry that surged up from the core of him-rammed it between Stern’s wings.

Stern screeched in anguish and surprise as the blade pierced through hide and meat, splintered bone. Blood geysered up, drenching Cal in a sickening hot stench. Stern’s wings spasmed, flapping reflexively as he curled in on himself, tumbling.

It was the effect Cal had prayed for, as wind resistance slowed Stern’s plunge, at least marginally. He tore the sword free, launched himself clear into space, toward the roof. Stern plummeted like a downed bomber, was lost in the blackness between buildings.

Cal smashed into the lip of the rooftop, went flailing across the surface, blasting through a curtain of green flame and halting thankfully on a bare strip of concrete. Shakily, he rose to his feet, slapping away burning ash, sheathed his blade. A blast furnace roar assaulted him, the heat was appalling.

“Cal!” He spun to see Colleen, smudged but unharmed, thirty feet off near a wall of flame. He ran to her, caught the desperation on her face. She nodded toward the barrier.

Through the flames Cal spied his sister standing on the precipice, the unbroken line of demonfire advancing, backing her inexorably toward the drop.

There was no way to reach her.

Colleen hocked a shaft into her crossbow. Her voice was grief, a whisper. “If you want, I could. .”

“No!” Cal said. He cast about for some answer, some tool. But there was no water, nothing to quench or smother.

Through the leaping, killing flame, Cal locked eyes with his sister, saw terror there and a forgiveness that cut to his soul. She was moving her lips, speaking to him, but he couldn’t hear her over the wail of combustion. Sparks of blue energy spat from her pores, flared swimming across her skin.

And then the fire surged up to her, and she reeled back from it, off the edge into space. Cal screamed. A blue flash like lightning erupted from her, and she was lost from sight. Flame shot off the roof in a long tendril toward where she had been, as though drawn by a vacuum, whipped about in midair, coalesced into a tornado of fire. It wheeled and swelled, drawing fuel from the rooftop, inhaling ravenously.

Like a molten sea emptying out, the fire gushed to the edge, cascaded into the whirlwind until the roof was free of flame, a wasteland of char and smoke. The funnel was spinning faster now, an impossible blur throwing off blazing fingers. It grew brighter and more frenetic, contracting upon itself, squeezing down to a pitiless core, dazzling white. Then it exploded.

The blast knocked Cal off his feet, blinded him. Dazed, the afterimage strobing in his eyes, he groped, found a handhold, the stone still hot, searing him. He dragged himself upright.

He could see a little now. Colleen stood with an odd light shimmering over her, childlike with awe. He followed her gaze past the lip of the building to the space beyond.

There Tina, or what had been Tina, hovered in a nimbus of light, an opalescent play of midnight blue, yellowjacket, carnelian weaving over its surface. Her face seemed broader yet more fine-boned than before, her skin blue-veined marble, lips thin and bloodless. Her ears elongated to fine points that thrust outward through hair that, albino silk, wafted about as if underwater. Her clothes too drifted weightless, the sphere of light about them seemingly a shield from the world’s forces.

Cal thought of the boy he had glimpsed in the tunnels, who had fled at his sight.

Tina was regarding her hands abstractedly, the fingers El Greco long and nail-less, turning them this way and that. Then she glanced up, and her eyes met Cal’s. They were all blue save the vertical pupil, with no whites showing, and blazed such a savage cobalt they seemed lit by an alien fire. Her mouth twisted in a bleak grimace, and he saw to his dismay that her teeth were triangular razors, like a shark’s. What are you? he wondered. She seemed so inhuman.

But then she began to weep, and he knew he had not lost her, at least not fully. He stretched out his arms, coaxing her, and she came floating to him. His arms pierced the boundary of light and then his face, effervescence tingling on his skin. But Tina was solid, and his arms enfolded her as she cried.