Dying Is My Business by Nicholas Kaufmann

check of my limbs. No broken bones. I was lucky. “Are you okay?” I called back to Bethany and Thornton.
    They lay in a tangled heap below the overturned backseat, caught like flies in the web of their seat belts.
    “I have some exciting new wounds and my right arm seems to be bent the wrong way, but otherwise I still feel dead,” Thornton replied. “Thanks for asking.”
    “My leg,” Bethany groaned, her voice laced with pain. “I’m jammed in.”
    From the way the car was lying, I couldn’t see the Black Knight, but I knew he wasn’t far. If he found us like this, it would be like shooting fish in a barrel. I thought about how easily that sword of his had cut through metal. I didn’t want to know what it would do to us.
    “Thornton, help Bethany,” I said. I crawled through the hole where the driver’s side window used to be and out onto the sidewalk. I stood up, but I was still dizzy from the accident. I steadied myself against the side of the car. People on the sidewalks in the distance still had their cell phone cameras raised, flashes popping. Damn. If any of them got a clear picture of my face, not only would I have botched this job, I would have blown any chance of getting information out of Underwood. My only hope was that the cameras were too far away to capture any detail.
    Then, slowly, it dawned on me that I wasn’t the one they were taking pictures of. The Black Knight trotted up and slowed his horse to a stop. He dismounted. He didn’t pay any attention to the crowd across the street. His attention was fixed on me.
    I tried to tug open the car’s back door, but it was wedged stuck. I dug in against the sidewalk and gave it another yank, a hard one. With the loud groan of metal scraping against metal it opened, but only halfway. “Can you move?”
    Bethany looked up at me, her teeth clenched against the pain. “I don’t know, but I’ll damn well try.”
    I looked over the top of the overturned car. The Black Knight was striding toward me, holding his sword low.
    “If you’re going to try, you better do it now,” I said. I pulled my gun from the back of my pants and aimed down the barrel at the Black Knight. “Back it up,” I shouted. The Black Knight ignored me, continuing toward us. I cocked the gun. “Back the fuck up.” He drew closer, lifting his sword. “Fine. I warned you,” I said, and squeezed off two shots in quick succession.
    Both of them ricocheted off his armored breastplate. It didn’t even slow him down.
    “You gotta be kidding me,” I said. I put the gun away and squatted down by the open door again. “Can one of you tell me why everyone is immune to bullets all of a sudden?”
    They’d gotten free of their seat belts, and now Thornton was trying to push Bethany toward the door with his left arm. It wasn’t working. “See if you can pull her out,” he urged me. His right arm hung limply at his side.
    I took both of Bethany’s hands and pulled, but she gritted her teeth in pain and didn’t budge. “Get out of here, Trent,” she said. “There’s no point in all three of us dying.”
    “When are you going to stop trying to get rid of me?” I said.
    I spotted the Anubis Hand lying near her. If the Black Knight was the king of the gargoyles, did that mean the Anubis Hand would have the same effect on him that it did on the gargoyles in the warehouse? There was only way to find out. I pulled the staff out of the car.
    “Just run, Trent, before you get yourself killed!” Bethany yelled.
    I walked around to the front of the car and faced the Black Knight, holding the staff in both hands. “We don’t have the box you’re looking for,” I said.
    The Black Knight lifted the heavy, angry-looking sword over his head and brought it down toward me. I swung the staff, knocking his blade aside. I followed through with the momentum, spinning around and ramming into him with my back. I brought one elbow up hard into the Black Knight’s breastplate. The metal