Jack Thompson's Arc

Chapter 19 of 25

Jack ducked as a black fireball roared past his ear. He scrambled into a gutted storefront, glass crunching under his boots, metal security bars half-torn from the frame. Inside, display cases had been shoved into a tight maze, every exit blocked but the one he came through. A trap. One had set this up before the fight even started. "Nowhere to hide from Leona," One said from the street. His voice stayed flat. "That's the name. Figured you should know it." His skin split with orange light. Bones cracked outward. Black flame swallowed him whole, and a lioness made of fire stepped through the doorway, eyes burning. Jack reached for the bridge. It bucked. The dice in his pocket pulsed hot, cracked seam bleeding dark light through the fabric of his coat. Blackjack was shoving against the bridge from the other side, hammering it. Jack tried to throw a card. It crumbled to ash in his hand. He tried Lady Luck's reels. They spun and locked on nothing. The cobbles under his bad leg split open in a jagged seam, red light bleeding up through the crack like the floor itself was tearing. "Not now," Jack hissed. "Not now, not now—" One word slammed through his skull, loud enough to white out his vision. *OUT.* The dice in his pocket shattered. The storefront windows blew outward in a single black pulse. Jack felt his knees give, felt himself fall backward into something deep and quiet inside his own chest. From the dust stepped a shape that wasn't Jack. Inky black, edges smoking, shotgun held easy in one hand. Blackjack tilted his head at the burning lioness and smiled with Jack's mouth. Somewhere far behind his own eyes, Jack watched, locked out of the driver's seat. He had lost control. Not all the way. Not forever. But the bridge was Blackjack's now, and the fight was only starting.