The Power (The Magnificent 12 4)

Because honestly, those two? They were just not hooked up right.

Even Valin looked upset. And he was still at least 50 percent evil, so you’d have thought he wouldn’t be upset. But he was. He had his sword drawn and was jumping around all twitchy like he was expecting an attack.

“Now, that’d be a good six point four,” the bartender said, beginning to reshelve some bottles.

“Five bucks says it’s not that high,” the waiter demurred. “Okay, six point three is the over-under. Six point four or over, and you win.”

“Deal,” the bartender said.

San Francisco folks can be strange.

“Are you kidding?” Mack cried shrilly. “That was a huge earthquake!”

The waiter looked at him pityingly. “Young dude, that was a big one, but that was not the Big One by a long shot. Every full point on the Richter scale is an order of magnitude bigger. So, like, a five is not just a little bigger than a four. A five is ten times bigger than a four. Now, if the Big One ever hits, that’ll be more like an eight point five. Maybe even an eight point seven. Get to nine and the whole city slides into the bay.”

The bartender nodded. “Yeah, kid, if you’re cleaning up broken glass, it’s not the Big One. When the Big One comes, we’ll be cleaning up bodies.”

Despite this cheerful talk, the eight Magnifica plus Stefan decided to pay their bill and get out of there. Out on the street Mack saw very little evidence of the quake. Maybe a new crack in the street. But suddenly the horror of their situation was coming home to him in a very real way. He looked around at the buildings, at the street, at the cars, and especially at the people—none of whom were panicking but all of whom looked shaken up—and realized that what was coming was infinitely worse. Many orders of magnitude worse.

A thousand times worse.

And it was his job to stop it from happening.

“We can’t just wait here eating sourdough bread and crabmeat,” Mack said. He crossed his arms over his chest and planted his feet wide. People seeing this probably assumed this was his “strong leader” look. In fact his feet were planted wide apart in case the ground started moving again. And his arms were crossed because they were trembling so badly it was the only way to avoid looking like some twitchy crazy person.

He was scared. The locals might be able to shrug off an earthquake, but that was because they thought it was all over.

It was far from over.

It hadn’t even begun. And when it did truly get going, when the hordes of the Pale Queen reached this city, there would be screams and terror, blood and pain and death.

“We can’t just wait for her to come. We’re going after her,” Mack announced.

“But we are still just eight,” Charlie pointed out.

“Eight is better than none,” Mack said. It made no sense, really, but he said it with a very firm jaw and a very resolute voice, so it would go down in history as one of those things great heroes say that are kind of dumb but sound cool anyway.

“We are going to fight her every step of the way,” Mack said. “We’re going to need a boat.”

Which is how the Magnificent Eight ended up on a sailboat named The Cornucopia captained by a woman named Grace—who accepted a cool fifty grand charged to the million-dollar credit card—and headed that lumpy craft into the bay, and beneath the majestic Golden Gate Bridge, and straight out into the Pacific Ocean.

Sixteen

The Cornucopia was a pretty big sailboat, with vast triangular sails pulling at a mast that seemed to go up a long way. Grace was pretty big herself, a seafaring sort of woman with salt-bleached blond hair and a face that had seen a few storms.

She had no crew at the moment, so Stefan had been drafted. On her orders he raced back and forth, cranking this and hauling that and tying off something else, all resulting in the boat moving pretty fast toward the Golden Gate Bridge.

The Golden Gate Bridge is like the Eiffel Tower in that both are very well-known, no surprises, but both are still very cool. It’s a suspension bridge, which means that the road part basically hangs from wires. The wires hang from massive cables, which are in turn sort of draped over two very tall towers.

Some people think those wires and that cable are just there for show. They aren’t. If you started cutting those wires, or worse yet, one of the two cables, the road and the cars on it would go plunging many feet down into the swift current of the Golden Gate.

Mack thought uneasily about this as the boat passed beneath the bridge. It was both big and fragile, somehow. You could imagine some giant with a giant pair of scissors cutting through those wires.

Mack was unfortunately very good at imagining terrible things. It was probably related to his many phobias. Imagination is great, but it can also torture you.

The deck of the boat was already tilted but it heeled over much farther once they passed beyond the shelter of the bay. It was pitched now almost like a roof.

“One hand for yourself and one for the boat!” Grace yelled as Charlie and Sylvie slid like out-of- control skateboarders. Then, “Stefan! Take up the slack in that line.”