Scarlett forced herself to look away from the barrel of Bruno’s oversized handgun and take in the rest of him. He was a monster in every sense of the word, much bigger than Roger had described him. Bruno towered over her even at a distance, eight feet high and built like an ox. The top of his head brushed the tile kitchen ceiling. Scars and coarse hair crisscrossed the back of the oversized left hand wrapped around his cannonlike gun. He had ivory claws for fingernails, and his feet encased in dark hide boots that would have comfortably fit Frankenstein’s monster. A black-leather trench coat of impeccable design cloaked the rest of his brutish form; his left hand rested deep inside a pocket of the coat. The collar of a purple silk shirt showed at the top of his belted coat—an incongruous touch of class on an otherwise hideous shape.
Bruno’s face was the worst. He was human only in a casual sense; his appearance spoke loudly of the beast. Yellowed tusks rose from his lower jaw in place of canines, his other teeth pointed at the ends like a carnivore’s. Dark bristles sprang from his eyebrows, swept back from his forehead, and ran down his cheeks. A squashed nose, lantern jaw, and deformed ears completed the unearthly picture, but for the gleaming red pools that were his eyes. Bruno stood against a bank of grease-stained ovens and steel ventilation hoods along the far wall. Before him was a long table where someone had been chopping up a bloody haunch of raw beef less than an hour before. The kitchen extended to the left and right, but only the spot where Bruno stood held Scarlett’s attention.
Why in the world did Rita ever go out with this guy? she wondered in amazement. No accounting for tastes, I guess. She swallowed and said the first thing that came into her head, which was, “My, what big teeth you have, Grandma.”
Bruno gave Scarlett a broad smile. “The better to eat you with, my dear,” he said, his deep voice drumming in her bones. “No hurry, however. I have all the time in the world.”
Scarlett eyed the giant’s canine fangs, then risked another look around the kitchen to be sure she wasn’t about to be ambushed. “Were you expecting me?” she asked.
“No, but Adele was kind enough to send me a warning when she realized you were in her restaurant again,” said Bruno. “You and I have met twice before, in a manner of speaking, but I must say it is a pleasure to have an actual conversation with you. There’s so little time for niceties in this world. And I see you brought a friend as well. That was thoughtful. I always have room for dessert.”
He didn’t expect me, thought Scarlett. Maybe he can’t predict what I’m going to do. She stepped into the kitchen holding Excalibur like a baseball bat, prepared to swing despite its lack of utility against Bruno’s oversized firearm—not to mention the space she would have to cross in order to reach him first, and the table in the way. Tananda, her bloodless face tight with tension, stayed in the hall several feet behind, out of the way in case Excalibur came around in a wide slash.
“Where’s Roger?” said Scarlett, wanting to keep the conversation going. A direct attack did not seem like a good idea just yet, and she needed to think.
“Roger LaSouris, the great mouse detective.” Bruno sighed. “He and I had not met face-to-face, either, until just a few minutes ago. A dogged but minor-league player compared to his all-star associate, Maxwell Lane—if I am using the correct sports analogies for your world.” Bruno’s gaze shifted to a spot over her shoulder and behind her. “Minor league in the same way as your companion is to you, Scarlett.”
“Tan can hold her own,” said Scarlett. The sword drew back in her grip. “I’d like Roger back, please.”
“Roger,” said Bruno with distaste. He withdrew his right hand from his pocket and held out his wide, open palm. In the middle of his hand was a tiny white mouse, its tail trapped between two of Bruno’s massive fingers.
“Scarlett!” cried Roger shrilly. “Get out of here! Run for it! You don’t know what you’re up against!”
“I’m know what I’m doing,” Scarlett retorted, “but it’s pretty obvious that you didn’t! Did Bruno kidnap you out of the apartment?”
“I was in your aunt’s car outside!” Roger yelled. “He got me there!”
“The car?” Scarlett said in disbelief. “Aunt Elaine brought you? What the hell’s going on?”
“It was all her idea!” Roger yelled. “She and this English guy who’s stuck inside a computer got it in their heads to come and rescue you because they said you’re related to King Arthur or some kind of crapola—”
“What?”
“It’s true,” interrupted Bruno, looking at Roger with mild annoyance. “Scarlett is Arthur Pendragon’s only surviving child—an unfortunate oversight on my part.”
“What do you know about my parents?” Scarlett shot at Bruno.
“Don’t you want to hear the rest of my story?” cried Roger. “Your crazy aunt—”
Bruno used his thumb to thump Roger on the head (“Ow!”). “Your parents are dead,” said the giant in a casual tone. “Just over a decade and a half ago, in time relative to you, I killed your father after a prolonged and difficult battle. Your supernatural mother faded into oblivion soon thereafter when the isle of Avalon disintegrated, its magical architecture undone by my forces. Your troublesome aunt rescued you and fled Avalon through a gateway that she then destroyed so no one could follow her. You are all that is left of the glory that was Avalon and Camelot before it, you and your aunt and that pitiful excuse for a wizard that your mother entrapped in a stone centuries ago. You are not from this world, child, but from a place and time you know only as bedtime stories.”
“That’s a bunch of lies!” Scarlett shouted, trembling with anger and fear. “My parents were real, normal people! They—”
“Real, normal people do not possess enchanted swords that are given over to their offspring for battle,” Bruno said patiently. “Name one other person, a real person anywhere, who has done the same. I dare you.”
Scarlett glanced uneasily at Excalibur, then glared at Bruno. “That doesn’t matter! I’m as normal as they were!”
“In a sense, you are correct,” said Bruno. “You could also have said that you were as ab-normal as they were, and you would have been equally correct. Normal people do not have paranormal powers like you do. Normal people do not have talking mice as pets.”
“I’m not a pet!” Roger yelled, then yelped when Bruno moved his fingers together and squeezed the mouse’s tail. “OW! Son of a bitch!”
“Stop hurting him!” said Scarlett, the heat rising in her face. “Stop being such a creep!”
Bruno’s mouth twitched, the corners rising in a smile. “I’m afraid I won’t do that. Being a creep, as you call it, is what I enjoy most in life.”
Scarlett fought down the urge to charge Bruno and cut him to pieces, his gun be damned. Of her options, talking was still best. Bruno did act as if he had all the time in the world; his confidence was troubling. Worse, she had no assurance that the scabbard of Excalibur made her immune to firearms as it apparently did to swords. Even if she was, Tananda would be maimed or killed if Bruno shot at her. Anything Scarlett did might result in Tan’s swift demise. Indeed, Bruno’s weapon looked as though it was actually targeting Tan, who was standing behind the near-invulnerable Scarlett. Allowing her best friend to come along to confront Bruno now looked like a very bad idea.
“I don’t understand a few things here,” Scarlett said, hoping to delay a fight until she had a better plan—or any plan at all. “Why were you after my parents anyway, if what you’re telling me is true?”
“There is war in the heavens as there is here on earth,” said Bruno, warming to the topic. “Powers and principalities of which you have never dreamed exist everywhere across Creation. You have heard of only a few in myths and fables, but these powers are real and contend with each other for the same reasons as do men, for influence, wealth, territory, and revenge. I myself serve a mighty power that seeks to expand its range of influence, and to do that potential opponents must be eliminated early on. Your former homeland contained such an obstacle. Your parents fought courageously against the invasion, of course, though it gained them nothing. They had everything heroes require—strength, courage, wit, cunning, luck . . . so, of course, to overcome such formidable obstacles, I used the quickest and surest means to the end, any shortcut that would work. I blinded and poisoned your father as we fought, and my sorcerers broke the island apart to break your mother, rather than attack her directly. Victory is victory, no matter how gained.”
Scarlett frowned. She couldn’t believe this sadistic jerk was telling her he had actually killed her parents. It was too fantastic to be true. It was worse than ridiculous, because her parents . . .
Then she remembered her aunt’s eyes opening, a faint gleam visible within. “Take this,” the old woman whispered as she gave Scarlett the knife’s sheath. “It is yours now, your birthright. Excalibur the Stone-Cutter is yours. Go, and . . .”
She glanced at her sword—a sword with unearthly powers. It wasn’t normal in any way.
And neither was she.
So, logically, her parents would have been exactly like her . . . only greater, being older.
Bruno appeared to read her mind. “‘Search your feelings,’” he quoted. “‘You know it to be true.’ Isn’t that how that quaint movie goes? I believe you used a line from that film or a similar one when you tricked Adele, the poor mad little thing. You and I are not so different, are we? We know victory is too precious a thing to win fairly. Adele had no chance against you, as I knew your aunt would surely bring you Excalibur and its sheath if you were in danger. I even told her so, knowing she would be contrary and arrange to meet you and fight you, to prove me wrong. No loss for me, as she had served her primary purpose in bringing me to this world to obtain you, but the fight between the two of you was instructive nonetheless. You are a clever one when you put your mind to it.”
Scarlett swallowed. Perhaps Bruno was indeed what he said he was—and she was who he said she was, too. The terrible implications became clear.
“You killed my parents,” she said in an even voice. “You really killed them.”
Bruno smirked. “Is it finally sinking in?”
“And now you’re going to try to kill me.”
“Oh, no,” said Bruno with assurance. “I won’t do that. You I will take prisoner and lead through the gateway in this building, so I may offer you to the greater power I follow. Believe it or not, you are the whole reason this war across universes was fought. You are the reason Avalon was attacked and destroyed, the reason I killed your parents, and the reason your aunt fled to this miserable world with that toy of a sword on her belt, a powerless wizard in a stone on her back, and you in her arms. I suspect your parents knew their fight with me would end only in their deaths, but perhaps they knew it would also delay me long enough to enable your escape. When your accursed aunt opened that gateway and fled, I swore I would find you if I had to search every world in every cosmos to do it—and, wouldn’t you know, I did find you.”
I was the reason for all this? I was the reason my parents died? How can I be the cause of all this? I can’t possibly be that special! “You searched every planet in the universe for me?” she asked dully.
Bruno shrugged. “Not every world, no. I have no objection to shortcuts, as I’ve said before.”
He means Adele was his shortcut, I’m sure of it—but how? How did that work? Scarlett thought it odd that she wasn’t very afraid of Bruno now. Words came out of her as she felt her way along, sensing what she said was right. “Shortcuts,” she repeated. “You did not search every world, because that would take too long. So, to overcome such an obstacle, you had to cheat, because you were not great enough to do otherwise.”
Bruno’s red eyes grew bright. “You wound me,” he said. “Your own world’s master conqueror, Alexander the Great, when confronted with the Gordian knot that could not be untied, merely drew his sword and sliced it in two. Even a mortal such as he understood what everyone destined for greatness knows: tedium is for the petty. Consider how you overcame Adele Wolff, that nasty trick with the scabbard, teasing her into thinking she could win against you. You have no objection to shortcuts, either. Victory is all that matters.”
Like hell it is, you rotten bastard. I didn’t know I was invulnerable, and I’m sorry Adele died—but I won’t be sorry when you do. “How did you find me if my aunt destroyed the way here? How did you do it without searching every world in existence? What shortcut did you use for that?”
“That is for me to know,” said Bruno tightly. “I think I have been over-generous in sharing my unlimited supply of time with you. Prepare yourself to leave.”
“I thought you had all the time in the world.”
“You do not.”
“You’re taking me to see your leader and seal my fate, whatever it is.”
“Yes.”
“If I do that, will my friends go free? Roger and Tananda, will you let them go?”
Bruno’s lower lip curled. “You disappoint me, wasting my time and yours to ask such a thing.”
Scarlett’s eyes hardened. You bastard. I will never know my father and mother because of you, you filthy creature. Never know them, never see them, never touch them. “You disappoint me,” she said coldly. “That my family could be undone by someone as low as you is enough to make me choke.”
“The apple never falls far from the tree,” Bruno said in a deceptively soft voice. “Your father said something similar to me before he met his unhappy end—a fate that will appear merciful compared to the torment that awaits you when my master, the Lord of Wolves, has you in his teeth. Let us end this parley by whatever means you choose and be done.”
“Scarlett,” said Tananda in a low voice, “this is probably a bad time to ask, but did that lady who owned this sword before me say that it never misses and it cuts through anything?”
“She did,” said Scarlett. She tensed and licked her lips, watching Bruno, knowing the next few seconds might be her last.
“And did she say that it always killed when it was drawn?”
“Yeah, she—”
Tananda bodyslammed Scarlett from behind, knocking her to the left out of Bruno’s line of fire. Scarlett fell sprawling on the floor as a deafening explosion rang in the room, followed in the same instant by a metallic ricochet and the clatter of pots and pans crashing down. She scrambled to her feet clutching Excalibur as two more gunshots assailed her eardrums, simultaneous with long flashes of white light leaping from Bruno’s gun directly at Tananda. Each gunshot, however, was followed by another ricochet as the bullet struck the whirling Tyrfing and was knocked aside in a burst of sparks and sound. Tan’s fiery orange sword had already cut through the intervening food-preparation table in several places, causing the entire table to collapse noisily to the floor in a flat heap.
Tananda ran at Bruno over the remains of the table, her flaming sword coming down to split him from head to foot, when a great blur smashed through the swinging kitchen door, leapt on her from behind, and threw her to the floor. Scarlett thought for a moment the snarling creature was an enormous gray dog—then realized it was a huge wolf. She screamed Tan’s name and charged, Excalibur pulled back for a killing thrust at the beast savaging her best friend.
Bruno grinned down at Scarlett as she came, and he threw something small and white at her. “Catch!” he said.
Roger! Scarlett tried to halt her charge to grab Roger instead of striking out with Excalibur, but she stumbled over the collapsed food-preparation table just as a shrieking Roger hit her in center of her chest. To keep from falling on him she tried to turn her body in midair, but was only partially successful. She slammed into the remains of the table on her side, knocking out her wind. Excalibur stayed in her grasp, held straight out in her right hand toward the wolf that straddled and tore at a screaming Tananda.
“Ow! Goddamn sonofabitchin’ frickin’ hell!” yelled a high voice nearby. “That frickin’ hurt!”
Scarlett got to her feet in a rush. The wolf turned its head and saw her, swiftly releasing its grip on Tananda’s right shoulder and scrambling out of reach. Fear gleamed in its humanlike eyes.
A huge black boot came down on the blade of Tyrfing, pinning it flat against the floor. The barrel of Bruno’s gun lowered and brushed against Tananda’s pale blonde head. “Stay where you are,” said Bruno, looking Scarlett in the eye. “I cannot hurt you, true, but your friend is at my mercy.”
Scarlett had stopped dead in her tracks as soon as the gun went to Tan’s head. Seething with frustration, she looked down at her friend, who lay gasping with her gaze turned toward the brute whose firearm was pressed to her temple. Blood was splattered over Tan’s face and soaked through her ripped-up Lawndale Leopards jersey. The wolf had injured her shoulder and upper arm, but she still held on to Tyrfing with both hands. Dreadful pain was visible on her face.
“Congratulations,” growled Bruno at Tananda. “You figured out that your sword would not miss even bullets and would cut through them with ease. I was hoping you weren’t quite so quick. You were as invulnerable for a few moments as your damnable red-haired friend—but you aren’t now, and for that I must thank you, Adele.”
“You’re welcome,” said the wolf—with the voice of Adele Wolff. “Always a pleasure to work with you, my master Farkas. And thank you for giving me a second chance.”
“You are welcome as well,” said Bruno. His huge gun traced a small circle on Tananda’s forehead as he looked back at Scarlett. “Put down your sword, and I will spare your friend’s life. You, however, must come with me to my own master, the Lord of Wolves. Your life for hers. What say you?”
He was lying, and Scarlett knew it even as he spoke. Tananda would die the moment Scarlett let her guard down. She thought as hard as she could, but again she knew of nothing better to do than delay the inevitable. “Before we burn that bridge,” she said, not releasing Excalibur, “I want to know how you found me. I want to know the shortcut you used to get to this world.”
“You don’t have the time for games, child.”
“I want to know!” Scarlett insisted. “You might have all the cards, but I still want to know. I want to know how you found me. Give me that, at least!”
“Blow her friend’s brains out and let me eat what’s left,” said Adele, staring at Scarlett with her head down and ears pressed back. “Make the redhead suffer as she made me suffer, before she goes to feed almighty Fenrir.”
Bruno inhaled reflectively, studying Scarlett—then nodded. “No harm in humoring a little girl, I suppose,” he said. “She fought well.”
“Just kill her!” snapped the wolf, drool flipping from its jaws. “Kill her, or let me do it!”
“Be calm, Adele,” said Bruno without looking away from Scarlett. “If the threat of more conversation bothers you, then go get your clones, the few who haven’t roused themselves and run away by now, and bring all your books around back of the restaurant, where there’s room. I’m sending you back in time to accomplish your own original mission. You’re going to change history and bring this world into the pack of the Wolf Lord, under the Thousand-Year Reich. In fact—” Bruno started to smile again, though he was looking at Scarlett when he did it “—I might even change your form into that of your namesake so you can take his place. I would trust you as the ruler of the new order more than I would him.”
The wolf, who had appeared to regard Bruno’s plan with increasing delight, now glared up at the brute with the gun. “I hope you’re not saying that I’m not Adolf Hitler,” she grumbled, “because I am.”
“Of course not,” said Bruno soothingly, still watching Scarlett, his gun still pressed to Tananda’s head. “Of course not. I need for you to hurry, though . . . and that was an order, not a request. Get going. We don’t have all the time in the world, now.”
“Yes, my master.” With a look of naked hatred at Scarlett, Adele trotted out the swinging door toward the dining hall beyond.
“Good help is so hard to find,” said Bruno to Scarlett in a more relaxed tone. “Briefly, then, the tale of how I found you. I was knowledgeable enough to know the means to ask a boon of the Three Fates, the Norns who rule the past, present, and future. After your accursed aunt took you from my clutches, I journeyed across many a world and dimension, many a strange plane of reality and time, facing trials you cannot imagine even in your nightmares. When I reached the Well of Urda, at the root of Yggdrasil the World-Ash, there I met the Three Fates and asked them where you were hidden so that I might capture you. They considered the problem for three days, then offered me the means to reach you if I would only give up that which was most precious to me.”
Bruno gave Scarlett a wicked, toothy smile. “I was amazed that such a boon would be so easily gained. I came from a world whose history is divergent from yours, from before the time of your First World War. My true name is Farkas Nagy, and I was once the emperor of the Osztrák–Magyar Monarchia,what you would call the Austrio-Hungarian Empire. I dabbled in sorcery and had gained the attention and support of my master Fenrir before my ascension to the throne, destroying all who opposed me with ease. With Fenrir’s supernatural help—a shortcut, you see—I won all the wars I fought against the Western Powers, America and the like. I had worked long and hard to build my empire, which stretched from the Atlantic coast of Spain to the Ural Mountains and Persia, from Norway down to the Mediterranean shores of Africa. It was mine to do with as I chose—and I gave it to the Norns. The secrets of atomic weaponry that my scientists had sought to control fell instead into the hands of the West, and my empire was attacked by fleets of aircraft and burned to ashes in a week’s time.” He tilted his head toward Scarlett. “All for you.”
Scarlett remembered the tiny dime that showed only the Western Hemisphere, with the V-for-Victory sign on the back. He must have brought the dime with him when he came over to this world, losing it or tossing it away as he entered this new earth.
“With payment rendered,” Bruno continued, “the three Fates induced a madwoman from your world, Adele Wolff, to discover the secrets of the invisible gateway between worlds that lies in the back wall of this building, behind me. The gateway is a weakness in the barriers separating universe from universe, a weak place that can be manipulated by ones with great psychic power, such as you or me.” Bruno raised an eyebrow. “Adele is one of us, you see, and so is that troublesome fellow Maxwell Lane. I cannot allow just anyone to have a chance to control this gateway, so of course Max and anyone helping him—all other psychics, in fact, but those who work for me—must be destroyed. That includes you as well, but you are even more important than Max or Adele.”
“How?” asked Scarlett, dumbfounded. “Why did you go through all of this just to find me?”
Bruno snorted. “You are the daughter of a great power,” he said as if repeating a simple fact to a child. “You have within you the magical potential of your mother, mixed with the human courage and stamina of your father. You are a tremendous danger to the future plans of my master, Lord of Wolves. Further, by consuming you, my master Fenrir will gain all the potential that you possess, strengthening him beyond measure. That is why you are so important, why I invaded Avalon, why your parents died.”
“Oh,” said Scarlett. It made complete sense now, everything did. She looked down at Tananda, who by now was looking back at her. She heard the elevator running in the hallway near the kitchen. Adele the wolf must be directing her surviving “clones” to bring up the boxes of books, preparing for her world’s change in history—and possible destruction.
“Ready to go now?” asked Bruno.
Scarlett thought for a moment longer. “Just a couple of minor things,” she said, looking up from Tananda to Bruno’s red eyes. “One, you cheated the Fates.”
Bruno frowned. “I beg your pardon,” he said.
“You cheated the Fates,” she repeated. “The most precious thing you had was not your empire. You gave that up too easily. The most precious thing you had was you. You think only of yourself, as if you were the only thing of worth in all the universes. Your empire was not what you should have given up to find me.”
Bruno appeared to consider this. “Perhaps I did cheat the Fates,” he said in agreement. “An interesting thought. Still, I got what I wanted—you.”
“Not yet, you haven’t,” said Scarlett. “And Tananda has not yet killed anyone with her sword.”
Bruno’s red eyes widened. He looked down at Tananda. His finger tightened on the trigger of his gun.
“Surprise!” shrieked a squeaky voice. Startled, Scarlett and Bruno both looked over at the same time at the nearest corner of the kitchen, expecting to see Roger the mouse. Instead, they saw a gray squirrel leaping from an open ventilation duct. It bounded up like lightning and landed on Bruno’s face, clawing and biting for all it was worth as Bruno roared and jerked back. His boot came off Tananda’s sword, and his gun swung away from her head, discharging to blow a six-inch-wide hole in a wall. Tan rolled and lashed upward with Tyrfing a desperate instant later.
Bruno’s left hand and the monstrous pistol it clutched flew across the room in a spray of blood, severed at the wrist. Hand and gun tumbled across the floor into a corner. Screaming like the very devil, Bruno grabbed the frenzied ball of gray fur from his face and flung it away with his right hand. Then, the stump of his left arm pressed to his side by his right elbow, he turned and rushed at the wall behind him—and went through it like Alice through a looking-glass, vanishing before Scarlett’s eyes.
“Crap, I think my paw’s broken!” screamed the squirrel, getting to its feet on a countertop, favoring a foreleg.
“Phil?” cried Roger from under one of the stoves. “Phil Ardilla? Is that you?”
“Roger?” yelled the squirrel. “I thought you were dead! You know that Marcello came back as a dog after our skydiving accident, right?”
“Shut up!” yelled Scarlett. She pointed to the swinging door with the glowing Excalibur. “Tan, you’ve got to stop Adele! She’s going to change history by letting Adolf Hitler win the Second World War! Do something before she destroys the world! I have to go after Bruno!”
Teeth gritted against terrible pain, Tananda rose to her feet, the flaming Tyrfing clutched in both hands, then charged through the doorway with a wild yell. Scarlett faced the wall where Bruno had fled, then put out her hand and pointed, summoning all her willpower. This had better work, she thought grimly. Help me, Goddess! “Take me to Bruno Nagy!” she shouted at the gateway, then walked toward the wall, hoping she wouldn’t collide with it.
She didn’t. The wall was as insubstantial as smoke. She was through it and out the other side in an eyeblink
“No!” cried Roger. He ran out from under the stove, waving his forepaws at the wall. “Scarlett! Scarlett! It’s a trap!”
Last updated 1/28/07