Peter & Max - Bill Willingham [93]
Despite the years and wealth of changes in the fellow, Peter recognized him instantly.
“Max!” he cried, relaxing his hand away from the dagger he’d instinctively sought out, inside the open lapel of his jacket.
Bo hadn’t made the connection as fast as Peter had, not realizing this was her husband’s long lost brother, until Peter had named him aloud. But she’d known in the first moment that the man intended to kill them both. The evidence of it was written there in his eyes for anyone to read it.
“Careful, Peter,” she warned. “He has blood in his heart.”
“Your little bitch has the right of it,” Max said. “I am going to kill the both of you, slowly and quite painfully in point of fact. But that doesn’t preclude a friendly chat first. It’s been so long. How’ve you been, brother? Have you had many adventures since we were separated, oh so long ago? The witch mentioned you’d had quite a few of note, when she finally put me on your trail last month.”
But Bo hadn’t waited for Max to finish his grotesque pretense at a friendly conversation. She sprang into deadly action immediately. Quick as a thought, two daggers flew towards Max, striking within an immeasurable moment of each other. But it wasn’t flesh the daggers hit, but the air in front of him, as if an invisible shield of tempered adamant had been raised to protect him. The twin knives hung suspended in that solid wall of air for a moment, until one of them transformed into a red robin and flew away, while the other turned into a cluster of golden maple leaves that drifted merrily to the earth.
Max gave no sign that he even noticed these miraculous occurrences, or the violent acts that preceded them. He simply finished his questions to Peter, as if they were having an enjoyable reunion in fact, as well as pretense.
Peter was stunned, and for a long time had no idea what to do. Frost in its dull, worn and scuffed leather case was strung across his back, as always, but suddenly it seemed much heavier than normal. Peter could actually feel his brother’s desire for it as a physical manifestation, as if his naked coveting was adding actual weight to it.
Following the failure of her knives, Bo unstoppered a tiny blue glass bottle and spilled its contents towards Max’s face. But the heavy amber liquid, which began to pop and sizzle once it met the air, turned into a fine mist before it could touch the man. The mist corkscrewed and whirled for a while above Max’s head, dipping and twisting into a dozen remarkable formations before fading away into nothing.
For the first time Max turned to regard her directly. “Must you persist,” he asked, “while I’m trying to catch up with my baby brother? You can’t harm me. Over the years, as I traversed many a dark and blasted land, I played a hundred impenetrable armors and protections about myself. Neither you nor any of your child’s toys can touch me, save that I wish it so.”
Bo answered him by closing the distance between them and delivering a kick that would have exploded his kneecap, had it landed. But it simply slipped aside, without contact. Undeterred, she kicked again, and punched and slashed at him, with the edges of her hand, and with a third blade that she produced seemingly from nowhere. True to his boast, nothing she tried could touch him.
“You weary me, Bo Peep,” Max said. Then turning to his brother, he said, “Peter, I’m going to do you one last favor, before I kill you today. First I’ll give you an executioner’s divorce from this annoying harlot. At least you’ll have a few minutes of joy back in your life, before the end.”
Max raised his flute to his lips and played a single loud note, which caused Bo to be lifted, as if by a giant’s unseen hand, and then tossed far away from him. The road, which wound around a massive pillar of rock on one side, dropped off in a sheer cliff on the other side. Bo flew helpless towards the dropoff, tumbling through the air like a jester’s comic pantomime of a circus acrobat. At first it looked as if she might strike the last few feet of solid, horizontal road surface before reaching