The Last American Wizard (35 page)

It wasn’t like the times he’d used his own blood; it was more powerful, more ecstatic, and far more dangerous. The attraction of this terrible power was digging into him like the long years he’d lost in heroin
dreams.

He’d have to hit a meeting tomorrow and begin the long fight back to sobriety, but today, he needed every bit of strength, and yes, he was willing to damn himself to get
it.

He raised Send Money and pressed him into his chest. He could feel the kid’s terrible fear and tried to feed the slow burn of determination that would give the young ghost enough willpower
to overcome it. The light was facing out and he rotated his entire body, his mind seeking out the enormous mass of mingled greatness and evil that had to be
Lincoln.

The power of the dead souls burned as it left him and he could feel it fill the young Chinese factory worker with agony. Fa Qian began to pray to his ancestors, and Steve could feel as hundreds, thousands of misty souls slowly appeared, each taking up a tiny piece of the terrible
burden.

Suddenly, Steve
Knew
that all the power inside him was exhausted and the brave soul caught in the tiny glass and metal machine couldn’t take any
more.

Steve opened his eyes and screamed, “OK, Fa Qian. Light that motherfucker
up!”

It was as if all the flashbulbs and searchlights, and flash bangs in the world went off at once as a searing cone of pure white light bloomed from the tiny phone. Almost thirty yards away, the slowly moving statue instantly went rigid in the act of stepping forward and down off the curb as it headed for the other glass high
rise.

For a moment, Steve thought it might start walking again. Thought that they had
failed.

Then he heard booming and the sound
of crumbling boulders–it was as if a mine collapse was happening deep inside the eidolon. Cracks appeared with explosive showers
of pulverized stone, the front leg broke at the knee, a fissure circled the other ankle, and while the enormous leg kept moving, the foot stayed
behind.

Slowly, ponderously, the statue tilted forward and seemed to hang for a second. Then with an intense
crack
, it broke at the waist and shattered into an enormous mound of dust and
stones.

Steve stared at the cell phone. “Nice job. You got any more of that?”

The words were light gray on black, just barely
visible.

Did we kill the
bastard?

“I think so,” Steve said. “I’d say Lincoln has gone all to pieces.”

IF YOU DO THAT
AGAIN

I COMING OUT OF THIS
PHONE

AND THE LIVING CRAP BEATING OUT OF
YOU.

“Sounds
fair.”

“You know, I always thought this was the ugliest building I’d ever seen,” Steve said as they all stood in a group about a block away and watched the steel and glass skyscraper finally implode into a gargantuan pile of broken glass, metal, and concrete. Police and rescue teams were working on the crowd.

“Did everyone get out?” he
asked.

“No, we lost quite a few on the lower levels as the big guy came through but I have a feeling you already knew
that.”

Ace shot a sharp glance at Steve, which he carefully ignored. He could still feel the dark and delicious pain roiling through him and knew Ace would never understand what he’d had to
do.

It was something only rock-bottom addicts could understand because they knew how to come back when there was no way
back. How to survive when every day meant another battle with a gnawing hunger that never faded, never could be cured. He also knew that every time he touched this blackness in the future, there would be an even chance that he’d never make his way
back.

For the first time, he thought he understood why something or, Heaven help me, Some One, had chosen him to be the Last American
Wizard.

Ace continued. “The number of casualties was acceptably low–almost none on the upper floors, in fact. Yeah, there were the wimps who complained about being chucked out of a window and then tossed from one Sword to another until they reached Carlos and Pike down on the ground, but some people are just never happy about anything. We had a few heart attacks and one guy committed suicide on the top floor. Terrible fear of heights, apparently.”

She looked at the wreckage for a moment and then continued. “We almost lost a lot of people in the television station. The idiots wouldn’t leave the control room. There was a fat senior producer
in suspenders who kept yelling at me and saying that they never evacuated for fire alarms and they weren’t going to leave now.” She spun a knife in her hand and made it disappear. “I really don’t think he believed I was serious until I stuck a knife in his ass and told the others to toss him out the window. He was a bit annoyed, but his technical folks seemed to enjoy it
immensely.”

Ace pulled the sword from her belt. “I guess it’s time to return what I
borrowed.”

She spoke to the weapon with polite gravity. “You have been of great assistance but I don’t require you any longer.” She threw it straight up into the air, and as it shot off to the northeast, she yelled, “Tell Joan I said ‘thank
you.’”

Steve stood next to her as they watched it disappear from sight. “I do have a question,” he said. “Well, a lot of questions as usual, but one in
particular.”

“Uh-huh?”

“If explosives have been rendered useless by magic, how did you rig the one that took off Abe’s
head?”

“Oh,” Ace said with a short laugh. “All of this magic stuff seems to be about how much you believe in what you are. The more you believe you’re powerful, the more powerful you become. I spent quite a lot of my spare time telling the C-4 in that shaped charge
that
it
was
the
very
best
explosive
in
the
whole
world
and that I loved it very much.” She smiled. “He did good for his mom, don’t you
think?”

“Funny. I never think of you as a maternal figure,” Steve said. “Hell, every noncom plays mom for the enlisted.” She turned and
began
walking
slowly
toward
Key
Bridge
and
the
lights
of Georgetown. “Male or female, we take a bunch of young kids and, with a bit of tough love, convince them that they’re invincible. After a couple months of that, they can do practically
anything.”

After a silence, she said, “Hurts when they
die.”

There was another gap in the conversation, and then Ace said with just a little too much casual indifference, “So, Send Money’s little flashlight worked pretty
well.”

“Yeah,” Steve said, keeping his eyes on the crowd under the emergency lights. “Barnaby’s best guess is that it sucked all the magic right out of everything it shone on. Did a job on
Abe.”

“So, you just had to push the button and
blammo,
right?”

Steve didn’t answer for a moment and then said,
“Basically.”

He could tell that Ace was looking intensely at his face, but he continued to be fascinated by the ambulances and cops milling around under the emergency
lights.

“You know that I don’t believe word one of that bullshit, right?”

“Right.”

“Just so we’re clear.” Ace hitched her climbing pack up to a more comfortable position on her shoulders. “Remember that I’m always around if you find yourself stuck in a moral quandary and require a swift kick in the ass,
OK?”

“Of course.” He smiled for a second. “What else are friends for?”

“Who said anything about ‘friends’?” She spun on her heel
and started walking
again.

Steve turned, caught up with her, and Carlos–back in human form and wearing a pair of extremely baggy shorts and a Georgetown t-shirt he’d found somewhere–came up on the other side.

“Where are we going now?” Carlos
asked.

“I think at the moment, the Lord Telford is just down the alley from Nathan’s. Neither place exists, so they have a habit of
keeping each other company in the evenings.” Ace waved vaguely at the lights across the river. “We’ll go back to saving the world tomorrow, but right now, I feel like relaxing with a beer and a couple of games of
darts.”

“Have you been able to read the business plan I put together?” Carlos began what clearly was a rehearsed sales pitch. “I think we can make this private eye thing work, and after a year or so, we can think about selling franchises across the
country–”

“Carlos.” Steve and Ace spoke in unison. “Shut the hell
up.”

Carlos looked as if he was going to burst with plans and ideas but eventually subsided into silence. The three of them continued their slow walk across Key Bridge, admiring the gothic towers of Georgetown University, the bright turmoil of the clubs along M Street, and the quiet flow of the
Potomac.

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