Daniel Abraham - Inside Straight

Rustbelt reached the top of the dune. He stopped, and Michael heard the ace grunt.

“Shit.” Michael saw the issue as he scrambled up next to Rustbelt. For the moment, they were alone in an oasis of relative calm. The main force of the army was focused on the road snaking through the landscape a quarter mile to their left, on the east bank, north of the dam. There, smoke rose from the twisted hulks of personnel carriers and tanks. The troops of the caliphate and the armed jokers of the Living Gods were engaged in a fierce firefight. In the midst of it, in the smear of the tracer rounds and the explosions from mortars, the aces of both sides had come together.

The banner of the Djinn waved, bloody and threatening. Around him, the armies swarmed, but the Djinn stood untouched, a tower in the midst of the plain, his hands lifted to the sky as if in praise. The followers of the Living Gods were running away from him in wild retreat, firing their weapons over their shoulders to no effect. Even from this distance, Michael could feel the tinge of fear radiating from the ace. Uncertainty burned in his stomach. This would be a quick and brutal assault. The Caliph intended to take the High Dam and end this, and the Djinn was going to make certain that the job was accomplished swiftly.

Michael didn’t see any way to stop it. The Djinn dwarfed everyone, and the fear he produced was spreading outward in a wide crescent in front of him. Taweret was among those fleeing, running over her own people in her panic. Michael watched the Djinn reach down and pluck a trio of jokers from the running troops behind Taweret. His fist squeezed, and he flung the broken bodies at the Living God and her priests, chortling in his bass voice.

“If we only had Ana,” Bubbles said, and Michael started to see her standing next to him. “We’d see how that bastard likes being buried under a hundred feet of sand.” Rustbelt grunted in answer.

But they didn’t have Ana. They didn’t have King Cobalt or Hardhat or Holy Roller. They didn’t have the hundreds of jokers who had died yesterday. Those who were still standing were exhausted and injured, and there would be no Peregrine to call “Cut!” when it was obvious they had lost.

The wind devil of Simoon raged to the Djinn’s left flank, her sands tossing tanks as if they were toys, her fierce winds ripping flesh from bone and leaving skeletons on the sand in her wake. The funnel cloud bent toward the Djinn and he opened his arms as if to welcome her, unmoving. “No!” Michael heard Lohengrin’s cry even from where he stood. “Simoon, don’t! “ But she ignored the warning. The tornado tossed aside the Djinn’s guards. Her funnel touched his outstretched hand and he roared as if in pain, snatching his hand back as blood rained on his troops. Simoon curled her winds toward him; they whipped the Djinn’s robes, they lashed his face and body and he retreated a step back. For a moment Michael felt hope. But he braced himself in the sand, reaching for her again, this time with both hands as if he were grasping something hidden in the twisting column of the tornado. The winds abruptly ceased to howl and sand fell like rain; the Djinn’s massive hands were flayed and bleeding, but in them was Aliyah, naked. They could see her mouth open in a scream. “Bubbles—” Michael said. “Can you … ?”

“I can’t,” she said. “Not while he’s holding her.” Michael could see Kate with a stone in her hand, evidently with the same doubt in her mind. Lohengrin called challenge and Sekhmet roared, but the Djinn’s huge fingers closed over Aliyah’s head and shoulders, around her hips. With a grimace, the Djinn twisted his hands as if he were snapping a dry twig.

“Oh God,” someone said, and Michael didn’t know if it was Bubbles or Rusty or himself.

The Djinn tossed the halves of Aliyah’s corpse to either side, trailing gore. He laughed. New skin slid over his wounded hands, as if painted on by an invisible brush. He pointed at the cluster of Sekhmet, Kate, Lohengrin, and Sobek. He took a stride toward them that covered yards.

Rusty started to lumber down the dune toward the others. Bubbles and Michael followed, stumbling through the sand. They were going to be too late, Michael knew. Already he could feel the fear clogging his throat and making each step more of an effort.

Lohengrin ran toward the Djinn, armor gleaming and sword shining; Sekhmet roared, flames jetting from the lioness’s mouth; Kate brought her arm back and flung stones at the giant ace; Sobek, crocodile mouth gaping, snarled as he advanced, his finger holding down the trigger of the AK-47 he held; a clot of wasps arrowed toward the Djinn.

“Hurry!” Rustbelt shouted over his shoulder as they ran. He stumbled, over-balanced and went rolling down the slope of the dune. Michael and Bubbles slid through the sand behind him.

The Djinn took another step and was within arm’s reach of Fortune’s group. Shadows played around him even in the brilliant sunlight, as if he were surrounded by unseen figures; he loomed over them like a god. Sekhmet was slapped down in midleap; Kate’s stones went careening away; Sobek was down, bleeding from a head wound; a puff of breath from the Djinn banished the wasps. The giant reached toward Lohengrin, ready to pluck him from the sand. “ Deus Volt! “ they heard the German ace cry, and Lohengrin’s sword slashed at the hand that curled around him—two massive fingers fell like tree trunks to the sand. The Djinn roared, and the sound drowned out everything else. His other hand came down and struck Lohengrin open-handed. The ace went flying, slamming hard into a disabled tank.

The glow of ghost steel faded. Where there’d been a warrior drawn from myths and legends, a pudgy blond boy now sprawled, unconscious.

“Fuck .” Michael spat out the word along with a mouthful of sand. They’d reached the bottom of the dune. Bubbles was helping Rusty to his feet. “Hit me!” she shouted at him, at Michael. “Hit me now!”

Ahead, Kate and Sekhmet were the only two still standing. Kate reached into her bag of stones; Sekhmet roared defiance. The followers of the Living Gods were fleeing the confrontation, while the Djinn’s elite guard spread out around the giant once more. Between Michael and Kate, there was little but open sand. “Come on,” Michael said, as Rusty slammed a fisted hand into Bubbles’s stomach. “We gotta get there.”

They ran. As they did, Sekhmet roared once more, the sound louder even than the Djinn’s laughter. Fortune bounded in one leap toward the Djinn; Michael saw Kate shout at him—“No!”—and desperately begin to fling stones. The Djinn stood calmly. Shadows pulsed; his figure shimmered. Kate’s stones slid harmlessly through and past the Djinn.

And Fortune: the lioness of Sekhmet leapt toward the Djinn, and he rushed forward to embrace the Living God. He was too slow this time. Sekhmet twisted in midair, slipping past his maimed hand. She slashed at his bearded face with her claws, ripping a quartet of bloody lines down his cheeks. Strips of flesh curled back from the wounds. The flames from her mouth set his beard afire.

The Djinn pulled her from his face as more flesh tore. He held Sekhmet in one hand; his fingers tightening around her body. The lioness screamed, an awful shrill of torment. The flames gushing from her mouth went to smoke as he threw her hard to the ground.

The lioness fell, but it was Fortune, naked and unprotected, who lay crumpled on the sand. The Djinn crouched and picked him up again, a smile twisting under his dark beard, his cheek bloodied and torn. As he held him tendrils of smoky vapor began to curl from the scarab embedded in Fortune’s forehead toward the Djinn, wreathing around his body and sinking into his flesh. Fortune screamed in his hands, wordless and horrible. Kate, weeping, flung stones.