It stood twenty feet on every side, each featureless void-black side extending impossibly through the braces and cables that made up the bridge. Cars in all six lanes skidded and swerved. The bridge echoed with the sound of brakes and crumpled bumpers.

Yusuf looked in his mirrors, eyes darting back and forth at the chaos. “Ah, shit. We’re stuck.”

“It’s just a box, right?” Ruby tried to sound hopeful. “A big, giant, terrifying void box, right? But I mean. It’s not entirely made of clowns or anything, right? And you have a magic gun that does magic. So. We’re good, right?” Ruby took a long breath. “I just said ‘right’ four times, so please tell me this is no problem.”

“It’s just one clown,” Caim said resignedly. “And anything I’d have to break it open would destroy the bridge too.” Very carefully, he disentangled himself from Alice’s sleeping form. “So, I’m going to piss it off enough to come out and try to shred me. When it does, and it comes after me, Yusuf, drive like hell itself is chasing you.”

Ruby pulled Alice to her. “Are you nuts?!”

“I’ll find you, I promise.” Caim gave her a broad wink and shared a glance with Yusuf. “I’m sorry to ask…”

“I’ll get them home.” The cabbie shook his head. “But I agree with the young lady back there. You’re nuts.”

Caim patted the fender of the cab as he strode past, both heavy bracelets breaking apart to form twin Peacemakers.

“You should probably put your seatbelt on,” Yusuf sighed to Ruby.

“You should’ve seen him on the train.” She fastened Alice into the seat first, then looked out the front to see Caim shouting obscenities at the box. “He was much cooler than this.”

A few people gathered near the cab, phones out, filming and taking pictures.

“I believe you.” Yusuf said as outside, Caim started to kick the box.

“He did something to you. To make you help us and…” Ruby started. He raised his hand.

“My family and I…” Yusuf tapped his thumbs on the steering wheel. “We gave up everything to come here. To get away from war and violence and…. let’s just say we almost didn’t make it. And when you have to give up all your things to survive, you try to hang on to the intangibles, your culture, as hard as you can.”

“I didn’t know,” Ruby said softly. “I’m sorry.”

“I was going to be an illustrator. My wife, she’s a writer. We were going to do amazing things. And now, well, I drive this shitty cab all the time. For us to thrive here, we thought we had to give up those things we clung to, so we pushed them away, focused on working. And that idiot out there, screaming at the giant devil box,” he stabbed a finger at where Caim was still kicking the box and shouting. “He gave me back everything. I remembered every lullabye and fairy tale my mother told me. That every mother in my country ever told. Art and music and…” He laughed softly. “I’m going to paint again. Hopefully Farah and I can take back what we thought we had to lose.”

“He’s a muse, I think. I mean, that’s not what he called himself... but he made me feel like I could make all my own clothes and start craft beer brewing. I think it’s his thing” Ruby shrugged and Yusuf’s laugh rose up.

Beside her, Alice stirred. “What happened?” she mumbled against Ruby’s shoulder. Yusuf turned away to give them the illusion of privacy. “I feel like shit.”

“You. Uh. You got bit by a rat,” Ruby said, shifting uncomfortably. Outside, she heard a dull CLONG as Caim hit the box with the butt of one of his pistols. “A plague rat. Maybe.”

“That doesn’t sound right.” Alice yawned and rubbed her face. “Ow,” She opened her jacket to look at the sticky patch of dark blood drying on her plaid shirt. “The hell?”

Outside, a murmur rippled through the gathered crowd. Ruby slowly followed their lines of sight.

Even though it wasn’t clearly moving, there was a sense of activity with the giant black object. The air was rent with the dull, echoing grind of gears, accompanied by an odd tinny music. Caim ran towards the cab in long strides, yelling at the crowd.

“Get back!” he roared as the music grew louder, the clanking of gears echoing off the tall brick towers of the bridge.

“Caim?!” Ruby leaned out the window.

“I think I’ve made it mad.” Caim grinned, then gave Alice a little nod and salute before focusing back on Ruby. “Stay down, both of you.”

When the box opened with an enormous CLANK, there was a mix of screams and laughter. Ruby felt her stomach churn. It looked like an enormous, decrepit toy, its filthy rag-and-greasepaint head waving on a bony, jointed stalk. It wore a tattered ruffled collar and a ludicrously tiny conical hat with a faded orange pom-pom on the top.

Caim had already repositioned himself up on the pedestrian walkway, and she heard him clear over the noise of the crowd. “SHATTER.” Two bright points of light struck the thing right in its bulbous forehead. Ruby waited for it to explode into shards of ice.

But the ice crinkled across the surface, flaking off in huge chunks to the bridge deck. The creature swung its head around, and from the stalk, skeletal arms unfurled. Holes in the sides of the box ground open and spidery legs clattered out.

There was no more laughter from the crowd as its eyes opened, swirling compound monstrosities of red and yellow light. The fabric face tore loudly when it opened the gaping dark maw of its mouth.

“Oh fuck not again!” Ruby yelled. “Yusuf, cover your ears!” She glanced at Alice, who was looking at the monster in horrific realization.

Before it could start the same stinking song the clown on the train had sung, Caim grabbed up a nearby motorcycle. With a grunt, he swung it around and flung it at the creature, clocking it straight in the mouth. The gigantic head snapped back and Caim ran past the cab, grease smeared across his t-shirt, the guns reforming into a single weapon with a long, rotating barrel.

“Those were on the train.” Alice’s eyes grew wide as she watched Caim bound up one of the towers. “Ruby… he…”

“Caim said not to think about the clowns!” Ruby clapped her hands over Alice’s ears and pulled her close, kissing her fiercely. When she was done, Alice’s brown cheeks were flushed dark, and the panic in her eyes had been replaced by surprise.

“Oh god oh god  I’m sorry that was so inappropriate,” Ruby babbled, her hands still cupping Alice’s face. “Caim said not to think about the clowns but this is not the time or the place for me to…”

Alice put her hands over Ruby’s and gently held them. “Let’s put a pin in that for right now, ‘kay? I kind of remember what happened and…” She was cut off as the creature backhanded Caim off his perch. e hit the car next to their cab, skipping off the hood and caving in the windshield. “Oh my god.”

Caim pulled himself out of the glass and shook it out of his hair. “Author,” he panted. “I need help.” His bright, shifting eyes darted to the creature as it shook the bridge, spider legs swinging it around. “Shelve me, summon Valefor. I need Val.” His bracelets chimed and reformed into what Ruby swore was a rocket launcher. “Please, Author, now!”

Ruby fumbled for her phone and swiped the screen. A number of books were shining brighter. The one labeled The Gunner had a circle over over the cover, a dark slice taken out of the green ring surrounding the book. “None of these say Valefor.”

“You can read this?” Huddled behind the seat, Alice stared at Ruby’s screen.

“Sort of. Ok ok. I don’t know what a Valefor is, but The Shield sounds good. Real good.” She went to tap the screen and stopped, remembering the subway. “I gotta get out and do this. Stay down.” Ruby slid out of the cab, hiding behind the door.

“Uh, Shield, I choose you,” she said, holding the phone out at arm’s length.

“Amon. The Shield.” The woman’s voice purred from the phone’s speakers.

There was that same painful electric jolt, but this time she could see the burst of light that seemingly flashed down from the sky. There was the shockwave, rolling across her like the sea, and the enormous clown howled like a wounded beast.

When the light cleared, a figure stood in front of the cab. He wore the same grey coat and uniform as Caim, but a hoodie hung over the high collar. Instead of Caim’s long peacock hair, he had wild, tight curls of pearl-white. She caught a glimpse of his face, broad and handsome, his skin a pattern of dusty purple-brown and pale gold, his eyes bright and shifting like Caim’s.

The monster swung its head around to Amon and the damaged mouth swung loose again. Instead of the horrible song, a gout of stinking flame burst forth.

“SHIELD WALL,” Amon shouted and his own bracelets broke apart, swirling around his forearms. The air shattered and rippled in front of them, and the flame skittered across the barrier.

“You’re not who I was expecting,” Caim said, dropping down behind the shield.

“Oh Amon! I’m so happy to see you! How was your year sitting in a middle school library in Topeka?!” Amon flapped his hands, then shot Caim what Ruby guessed was an obscene gesture of some sort. “Bookworms, Caim. That’s the biggest Jack I’ve seen like ever. Laser breath?”

“It’s adapting.” Caim shrugged. “Barrier? That way I can break out the big guns. Also, I have an Author and two humans under direct protection.”

Amon looked back at the cab and gave them a little salute, then exchanged a quizzical look with Caim. The other man just shook his head. Amon flicked his wrists, the bracelets shifting. “OK then. Let’s kick this jack right in the box.”

Caim covered his face as Amon pressed his hands together. “BARRIER SPACE,” he said, flinging his arms wide. There was a hum like a wet finger on the rim of a wineglass, and all around the air began to splinter. The twilight city around them refracted through a million prisms as Ruby felt a nauseating shift. Fading sunlight broke into countless rainbows, and she looked around.

There were empty cars, but no other people. No sound but the grinding of the Jack and the high singing chime of the barrier. The not-East River stretched out beneath the bridge in a dark rainbow slick. Bits of smaller debris floated around the car.

“What the fuck?” Yusuf swore softly.

Ruby peered around the door as a round shield formed on Amon’s arm and he flung it at the monster while Caim dashed in the other direction. The shield sliced through its legs while Caim kept firing at its face, bursts of flame and ice and light speckling the flailing beast.

“Amon! I need air to use the big gun!” Caim shouted and Amon’s shield shifted again.

“I saw this in a movie! SHIELD!” he shouted back. Caim took off for Amon at speed. When he leapt onto it, Amon launched him upwards as if he weighed nothing.

Caim twisted in mid-air. “ORBITAL,” he said, loud in the oddly muffled quiet of the barrier. The guns reformed again, a long spire of crystal, three rings rotating around the central shaft. “STRIKE!”

The pulse of light that shot out was completely silent, lancing through the Jack in a single, blinding burst. Ruby felt the bridge shake as the beam punched through the bridge deck, spewing rubble along with the exploding bits of the giant creature. Fat, flopping chunks of greasy white and splinters of bone peppered the hood of the cab. Yusuf dove for cover behind the dashboard with a screech.

Caim landed hard and rolled to a stop by Amon. Ruby watched the two of them press their foreheads together, hands clasping the back of each other’s heads. Cautiously, she crept out from behind the door of the cab, and started towards them.

“Sorry. I’m glad to see you,” Caim wheezed.

“I missed you too,” Amon laughed. “Are you sure that’s an Author?” He wagged his free hand at Ruby as he released Caim. “I mean, she’s so… short.”

“HEY!” Ruby shouted.

“You have, like, a distinct lack of verticalit….” Amon started to say and the next moment happened so fast that Ruby could only measure it in heartbeats.

Ba-Dump

There was a blur of white from above, and an ear-splitting boom.

Ba-Dump

Amon was gone in a flash, one of the bridge towers shattering as he hit it, skipping out into the dark water. Caim turned just that fast, Peacemaker forming in one of his hands.

Ba-

“Ruby, run!” Caim screamed. “Run!”