Chapter 29: Shortcut
A few days later.
Ting!
Amon was driving when his phone buzzed. He glanced at the screen once, and his face went flat.
Claude sat in the passenger seat with a paperback open on his lap. He noticed the change right away.
"What is it?" Claude asked.
Amon kept his eyes on the road for a few seconds before answering. "Heaven and Hell seem to have figured out I’m not playing by their rules. So they’re moving, quick.
So we’re short on time."
Claude closed the book. "How short?"
"Short enough that we stop taking the long way around." Amon switched lanes and accelerated. "We’re taking the shortcut."
Claude frowned. "Why didn’t we use it from the start?"
"Because shortcuts have a habit of fucking people in the arse, numbstick," Amon said. "Usually the people who think they’re clever enough to use them. But right now we don’t have the luxury of being careful."
They drove through the night without much talk after that. The highway lights slid past in steady intervals, and Claude went back to his book for a while, then gave up and watched the dark trees blur by.
Richmond came into view a little after midnight. The city was quiet. Streetlights reflected off empty pavement.
Amon found a mid-range hotel near the river and paid cash for a room with two beds. He wanted to rest, as he felt a large headache coming tomorrow.
Inside the room, the air smelled of industrial cleaner and old carpet, but Amon didn’t care, heading right for the bed, while Claude dropped his bag on the chair by the window and pulled out the thin volume Amon had given him centuries earlier.
The cover was plain brown leather, the title stamped in faded gold: Basic Enchantment Structures. He sat on the edge of the bed and opened it to a page marked with a torn scrap of paper.
Amon stretched out on the other bed, boots still on, one arm over his eyes. After a few minutes he turned his head.
"Ha... still reading that?"
"Yeah..."
"Waste of time. Like I told you, you don’t have the spark for it."
Claude didn’t look up. "I know. I just want to be useful. Whatever means possible..."
"Hmm..." Amon was silent for a moment as he kept looking at Claude, reading the book maybe for the thousandth time.
Then he sat up, swung his legs off the bed, and walked over. He reached out and set his palm flat against Claude’s forehead.
Suddenly Claude jerked back so hard the book slipped from his hands and hit the floor.
Amon froze, hand still raised. "What... was that?"
Claude stared at him, breathing a little faster than usual. "I don’t know. My body just moved."
"No need to be frightened. I’m checking if anything new bloomed," Amon said. "Same way I did before."
"Oh, okay. Don’t know what happened there... sorry."
Claude stayed still this time while Amon pressed his hand to his forehead again. Amon closed his eyes. Several seconds passed, then he pulled his hand away and shook his head.
"Sorry, buddy. Nothing. Same as always."
"Haaaa..." Claude sighed, disappointed as usual.
He picked the book up off the floor. "Maybe next time."
"There won’t be a next time if we don’t move faster," Amon said. He went back to his bed and lay down. "Get some sleep. We leave at first light."
Claude didn’t listen and kept reading for another hour. The diagrams of basic binding circles and resonance keys made more sense than they used to, but the actual working of them still felt distant, like instructions written for someone else.
Eventually he closed the book, switched off the lamp, and stretched out on top of the covers.
Amon’s breathing evened out quickly. Claude lay awake listening to the occasional car pass on the street below.
Should I tell him again? But... he thought, looking at Amon.
He would do it again if I told him, and everytime he would say, not to tell a single soul.
His eyes were heavy and closed when, sometime past three, he opened his eyes.
He hadn’t been fully asleep long. A sound had pulled him up, soft, almost not there. His name, spoken once, from outside the window.
He sat up carefully so the mattress wouldn’t creak. The room was dark except for the thin orange line of the streetlight coming through the gap in the curtains. He stood, crossed the short distance, and pulled the curtain aside just enough to look out.
A woman stood on the sidewalk across the street. Purple dress, dark and purple hair that caught the light even in the dimness.
She was looking straight up at the window. Straight at him.
Claude blinked. When his eyes opened again, the sidewalk was empty. He stayed at the window another minute, scanning both directions, but nothing moved except a plastic bag drifting along the curb.
"Huh... strange. I must be tired."
He went back to bed and lay still.
In the morning he almost told Amon about it while they packed. The words were ready.
Then he decided it wasn’t necessary. Amon already had enough to carry. One half-seen figure on a sidewalk at three in the morning didn’t change the plan.
"Come on, numbstick, our future is laid bare, onwards!"
They left the hotel just after dawn. The city was starting to wake up, delivery vans, early buses, a few runners along the river path.
Amon took the route that would put them on the old bridge within the hour. It was peaceful. The ride until now had been peaceful.
"I was thinking this would be an adventure, after that archangel face-off, but it’s been peaceful ever since..." Claude commented with a smile.
Claude watched the skyline change as they crossed the outskirts.
The bridge came into view as a long gray span over the water, the type of structure people took for granted until something went wrong with it.
They were halfway across when the road dropped.
There was no warning sound. One moment the asphalt was solid under the tires. The next it folded.
Doom!!
Purple light flared across the concrete in sharp geometric lines, enchantment work, clean and deliberate. The car pitched forward.
Metal screamed. Glass exploded inward. Amon’s hand shot out and caught Claude’s shoulder, but the force was already too much.
Bang!
The vehicle hit the collapsing section and folded around them.
From the wreckage, Amon came out first.
His coat was torn and blood ran down one side of his face. He touched the blood and knew it wasn’t his.
"Shit, Claude!" he called. "Buddy, where are you?" he called, his voice getting heavy.
Smoke and dust filled the air. Chunks of concrete continued to fall into the river below. He turned in a slow circle, eyes sharp, looking for him.
Claude was still in what remained of the passenger seat. He knew it. Or most of him was. When Amon lifted the concrete, the impact had driven the frame inward, and Claude’s bone and flesh were mixed with twisted metal.
Blood soaked the torn upholstery. Amon reached in and checked for a pulse, even though the answer was already obvious. Nothing.
Amon’s jaw tightened as he grabbed Claude’s bloody body, a slight tear dropping from the edge of his eyes.
"Claude, I’m sorry. I’m sooo sorry."
Suddenly everything paused. Time paused. The entirety of the world stopped as Claude’s body started shining golden.
"Haaaaa!" Claude huffed, as he opened his eyes.
He was lying on the hotel bed. Morning light came through the gap in the curtains.
The thin volume of enchantment theory sat on the nightstand where he had left it. Across the room, Amon was still asleep, one arm over his eyes, boots still on.
"Again..." he voiced.
Claude sat up slowly. His hands were whole. No blood and no broken bones. He looked at the window. The car was still parked downstairs.
He looked at his own palms for a long time. In many ways, Amon was wrong. The talent had never been absent in him. It had simply been the wrong shape for anyone to notice.
Every time Amon checked for a bloom, the talent itself prevented anything else from taking root.
It sat in the center and occupied the whole space, letting nothing new come inside. Claude had known for centuries and never spoken the name out loud to anybody. His one and only skill and talent.
Return by Death.