Strange Magic: A Yancy Lazarus Novel Read Free Page B

created a superheated friction barrier which dissolved the incoming rounds into a fine spray of slow moving and harmless powder.
    The shooter’s bullets continued to plow uselessly into my friction shield, while I lined up my shot. He was in the prone, forty-yards out, and partially concealed by the hulking wreckage of the toppled Benz, not an easy shot. It’s the kind of shot people don’t make in real life, not with a handgun and definitely not in a combat situation.
    I’m a good shot. My pistol’s imbued by the Vis and responds, at least in part, to my will, which grants me a far greater degree of accuracy than most other shooters. I fired two shots in rapid succession on the exhale, surrounding my rounds in a small pocket of air, allowing them to pass unmolested through my glowing shield. The first shot crunched into metal frame some three inches or so from the shooter’s head. Here I am talking about what an exceptional marksman I am. Jeez.
    The second shot punched a gaping hole in his head, above his left eyebrow.
    The resultant mess was not pretty. I know, such senseless violence doesn’t befit a hero. I’m not a hero. A hero might fire to disable, a hero might try to save the hapless goon, a hero might do any number of improbable and idiotic things. I’m not that guy.
    In my book, when people try to kill me, it’s my policy to kill them first and to do a damn thorough job of it. I don’t go around shooting people all willy-nilly, now, but if someone intends to harm me or mine … I hope their life insurance is paid in full.

 
     
     
     
     
     
    THREE:
    Answers
     
    Now, someone might ask why I carry a gun at all, especially when creating constructs from the Vis can be so much more efficient. There are a couple of things to remember. First, those flashy constructs—badass as they may be—take a veritable truck-load of work and energy. It’s like lifting weights, every rep takes a little bit out, and over time those reps add up. A good bit of that energy comes from the environment itself. In fact, most constructs are a combination of elemental forces derived from whatever is near at hand—water, air, heat, magnetic force.
    But a healthy chunk of that power also comes from inside the practitioner. Tapping into the Vis is kind of like trying to light a candle with a friggin’ volcano—one misstep, one lax moment, and your ass will be up a fiery-stream of doom. An irresponsible mage can easily draw in too much Vis, become overtaxed in the process, and permanently lose the ability to touch the source at all. Burn out happens all the time.
    Shooting, on the other hand, takes almost no effort whatsoever. It’s fast, ugly, and brutal, sure—but as long as you have enough rounds, and the stomach for it, you can go all day. Precisely why I carry the gun in the first place, it offers me portfolio diversity. Flipping over cars isn’t easy lifting, let me tell you, so whenever I can rely on my good ole fashion bang-bang machine, I do. Waste not, want not, my granddad use to say—though I doubt he was talking about shooting people.
    I let the reddish mist disperse, though I kept myself open to the Vis, ready to recall the shield in an instant. I felt fairly certain that the thug and the driver were the only muscle, but it was possible that the unassuming accountant was packing too. I made my way to the wreckage and found the little man slumped on the other side of the vehicle, wounded. A bleeding gash marred his right arm; his right foot was pinned under the roof of the Benz. He was passed out but breathing steadily.
    Average police response time for a neighborhood like this was about eight minutes, which meant I had maybe six minutes to pump the guy for information. Drawing upon the source, I gathered microscopic particles of humid water vapor from the air, condensing those bits and pieces until a basketball-size glob of water floated above my palm. Then I dumped that water right into H & R’s face.
    He