The Watchtower

demons.”
    “Ah,” Roget said, laughing with a crackling sound. “There are no demons but the enemies who torment us on this earth.” He flicked his right wrist upward and sent off a bolt at an angle that caused it to nearly slit Will’s right ear, then to pool harmlessly in brittle luminescence against the side window of the cab. The driver might have heard the sparking conclusion not too far from his perch, but gave no sign of it. Roget’s crackle deepened with apparent amusement and Will felt even more afraid. His veins chilled with the darkness. But he had the courage to speak.
    “Has John Dee sent you?” he blurted. “As a messenger of his powers? Or, to threaten me in this vile way? It won’t work, Monsieur Roget,” he added importantly. “My miracle is stronger than yours. My miracle is love.”
    Roget’s crackle nearly became a shriek, then died away suddenly like a torch plunged into water. “If you think love is stronger than lightning, you’ve got a lot to learn about life, boy. Lightning is a condensation of the universe itself. ‘Love’ is mostly illusion, the mutant offspring of self-interest and moon shadows. As to Dee, that is but a worm to my dragon. I would no more carry a message for him than a hawk would for a goat!” By way of additional exclamation point, Roget fired off yet another bolt, brighter than the others, as if he had added fire and urge to it. It found the tiniest scrap of Will’s chin before glancing off into a blur of brightness against the window.
    Will grimaced with a fiery pain that, though tiny in diameter, carried the force of a too fierce pinch. Almost unthinkingly, he coiled and unleashed a savage left hook against Roget’s jaw. The miracle worker seemed dazed for a moment, blinking heavily and doubling over, his skinny torso riding his bony lap. But when he came back upright, he held a gleaming Spanish buccaneer’s knife in his right hand, one he’d evidently kept concealed in a scabbard affixed to his leg. He drew the knife overhead for a downward blow, grinning with wicked slyness at Will, though all of it a bit sluggishly as if he were shrugging off the effect of Will’s punch.
    The window to their right shattered with a metallic sound and both men glanced over to see what had happened, but the window was draped in black as though by funeral crêpe. Will took advantage of his opponent’s distraction to leap from the carriage, rolling onto the ground as he’d reflected on doing moments earlier, hitting the ground with a jarring lurch and in a tangle of limbs despite his effort to remain bodily organized. Before he was able to get to his feet he saw Roget spring from the carriage, his black robe flapping behind him like the wings of the giant black bird Will had spied earlier. Something gold glinted at the man’s throat and, as he leaped toward Will, Will felt the first prickling of recognition. He’d met this man before—at the party in London at which the poet and Marguerite had announced their engagement. He was none other than the Italian priest who had denounced their union as bigamous! Was he some avenging Savonarola whose mission was to punish adulterous fornicators? But why attack Will? Neither he nor Marguerite were married. And, perhaps more to the point, where had a priest learned to wield lightning?
    All these questions were but the work of a moment, and then the man—priest or no—was above him, sword drawn, and Will saw that he would be run through if he didn’t move quickly.
    But before he could take evasive action, his assailant was jerked back as though on a string. He seemed to hover for a moment midair, his eyes growing wide, then he dropped to the ground, crumpling into a ball like a piece of scrap paper tossed impatiently away by a frustrated writer. Will looked up into the sky to see what force had so cavalierly disposed of Roget—and saw, hovering above him, the huge black bird. It was beating the air with its enormous wings, its beady, bloodred eyes focused on the inert, facedown figure of Roget. When Roget turned over, the bird dove at him, snapping at his face with its long yellow beak.
    Roget screamed and, shielding his face with his arms, scrambled to his feet. Will saw that he was trying to snap his fingers again to generate one of his lightning bolts, but the bird wouldn’t let him. It kept pecking at his fingers, drawing spouts of blood where before lightning bolts had sprung. At last Roget was forced to run