Son of Tesla

SON OF TESLA: Chapter 35

IN A LETHAL CROUCH, the Koschei lifted its hands to crush Brodham's neck.

Brodham tensed. Waited. He had one more trick ready, but the timing had to be right. Beside him, the anonymous good samaritan had grown pale; the thin cranial blood trickling from his pierced eye had slowed to a thick black crust. His green pick-up idled a few yards away.

How long had Brodham been inside the Koschei's mind? He didn't have time to wonder.

The Koschei's hands came down quickly and, with their guard lowered, Brodham swung his arm up, still clutching his pistol between bloody fingers.

The sickening blue hands gripped Brodham's throat like a lost lover.

"Suck it," Brodham gasped, and pulled the trigger.

The hammer dropped. Metal snapped into metal. A nearby bird chirped.

Nothing.

He was out of ammo.

And getting weaker.

Simpy because he had absolutely no other option, he squeezed the trigger again.

Click.

The sound was the oiled descent of a guillotine. A guillotine of putrid blue flesh.

Brodham's brain screamed for oxygen. The Koschei blurred into a sapphire smudge before his eyes. The gun weighed more than the universe. He felt his arm dropping, stuttering toward the ground. A calming blanket wrapped around him. It was all okay. He could just go to sleep. Forget work. Forget Petar and his damn mysteries. Sleep forever. Yeah, that'd be nice. Forget Robert's suicide. Forget Clarice.

Clarice.

Her face swam out of the haze and smiled at him, her wedding smile. Her summer smile.

"Nrrmph," Brodham groaned. Not like this. One more.

He couldn't die, because his death would just as surely kill Clarice.

With an effort that would have parted the Pacific, Brodham pulled his index finger against the curved steel of the trigger. Squeezed.

It sounded like the Earth was collapsing beneath him.

Something hot and wet sprayed over Brodham's blood-splotched face and suddenly the pressure was gone. The blanket slipped away, and for the second time, Brodham found himself gasping in the dry, itchy strip of grass beside Birtram Road. The Koschei slumped beside him, a hole the size of a softball punched through the center of his face. Through the exit wound, Brodham could see sun-dappled trees.

"What the..."

"Sorry I couldn't help sooner," The voice came from above and behind, inside the wrecked car. A choir of angels wouldn't have sounded sweeter to Brodham's ears. "I watched what was happening for a few minutes, but couldn't seem to make sense of it. Couldn't get the pieces together."

Brodham rolled in the grass and looked up to see Vickers leaning over the center console from the passenger seat, arm still outstretched. The smoking Beretta in his hand was dangling over the edge of the driver's seat.

"Alex, I could kiss you."

"How about just an arm around the shoulder?" Vickers smiled and slid head-first out the open driver's-side door. He knelt next to Brodham, who gratefully draped an arm over his neck and struggled to get his feet. It didn't work. Brodham's world was still spinning. As one, the two slumped back into the grass and just leaned against the car.

"What the hell happened?" Vickers asked, rubbing his forehead. "I feel like I've been in a coma."

"There was a Koschei hiding in our backseat. He did something to you. Knocked you out. So I followed the training manual," Brodham said, gesturing weakly at the car's hood wrapped in a death grip around the spruce.

"My head's a little fuzzy right now, Bill, but I don't remember the part where it recommended driving straight into the New York timber."

"Sure it did. Page sixteen. Footnote. Easy to miss."

The two locked eyes for a minute, understanding flowing between them as easily as it had ten years earlier when they'd first partnered up. As if on cue, they both burst out laughing.

"That was a close one, Bill."

"Eh, they've been closer."

"Not by much."

"Sure they have. Remember that wannabe bomber? September '07, filled his bathtub full of homebrew hobbyist rocket fuel, that sugar-and-stump-remover putty. Must have been thirty gallons of the stuff, and he was threatening to spark it if we didn't bring him $40,000 to pay his mortgage. Idiot was threatening to blow his own house. Anyway, so we barge in there, and..."

"Bill," Vickers said softly. "I remember."

At his tone, Brodham stopped. He'd been rambling. He was still shaken over the whole thing. He looked over at Vickers.

"Thank you." Heartfelt. Earnest. Vickers nodded. Brodham grunted and tried to stand again.

"Bill." Same quiet tone. Brodham paused with a knee still on the ground.

"Yeah?"

"What did you say a second ago? 'Ko-shay'? What was that? You mean the Blue there?"

"I've seen it, Alex. It's all real. Everything Peta...everything the fugitive said. It's real. I've been there. It's like a...a planet. He really did escape from there, and someone wants him back. Some kind of freak. So he sent these things, these Koschei. They're like hitmen. I don't really know, it was all glimpses. They're after him and they'll kill everyone in their way.

"And Alex, his army. God, if you could have just seen. There's millions of them."

Brodham had sat down in the grass again as he talked, and now he gazed into Vickers's eyes. Pleading with him, almost. Searching for a sign of belief.

"You realize how crazy you sound." Vickers said.

"I know it. Believe me, I know it. But you have to believe me. For a moment there, I was inside that thing's mind, and I saw. You know me, Alex. When have you ever known me to do something without double- and triple-checking it? I know this is real. If we don't do something, it's all over."

Vickers listened to him without expression, and remained quiet for a few moments after Brodham stopped talking.

"I do believe you, Bill," he finally said.

Watching his face, Brodham wasn't sure if he really did.

Thanks for reading my story! Please VOTE and let me know what you think of it so far, then check out Chapter 36!