The drawbridge is slowly ratcheting upward until the iron-reinforced lip clangs against the palace wall. The soldiers more evenly disperse to cover the entirety of the walkway, with their spears slanted forward at a position of readiness. The cavalry are furiously galloping toward me, followed by a torch-wielding mob. The sun has set and the storm clouds have converged overhead, accentuating the flickering lights of the torches and glinting steel, whether from spear tips or sabers, and the lamp lights of the palace reflected in the broad moat.

I'm surrounded and outnumbered, which seems to be a bad habit for me. I could make a run for the water in the reflecting pool, which is the only path open to me. I guess that's exactly what they want, for me to panic and flee into water that is too shallow to swim through, but still deep enough to slow me down. I can fight outnumbered if I can move, where my agility and speed give me an advantage, but bog me down in shallow water, and sheer numbers will overwhelm me because I can't outmaneuver them.

The king comes out from the palace and walks over the rampart, surrounded by a group of six men, all of whom carry shields and short, double-edged swords resembling the Roman gladius. The king's crown is gold, set with a variety of precious stones. He is middle aged with a lined face, and a beard that appears to have been dyed black. His praetorian guard line up along the wall overlooking the moat, with three on either side of the monarch. His lined hand rests on a rod the size of a walking stick, topped with the head of a bull crafted in gold.

The king says nothing, but stares at me without expression from atop the wall. I suppose if you don't have Internet or satellite TV you have to rely on the killing of geckos for entertainment.

The king points his rod at me, aiming the gold bull's horns directly at me. He can't speak because horses are galloping and the mob is yelling behind me, but he doesn't need to say anything.

I have to show faith like Peter, the albino girl said. Great time to solve riddles, Vic. Maybe you'd like to do the New York Times crossword puzzle while the cavalry impales you?

Now that I can remember everything, I've just got to sort it out. Peter was the disciple known for his false bravado, the guy who always talked big but choked under pressure. Peter is the one who drew a sword and cut off the ear of one of the high priest's men.

I don't have a sword, and cutting off someone's ear is not going to do much against the other several hundred I'm facing.

Just after Peter makes the big show of swordsmanship, he runs. When he's spotted later, he's asked, “Hey, weren't you with that Jesus guy?” Peter chickens out and responds, “Jesus who?”

Okay, not helping. There's that one time when Peter...Holy crap.

I turn to face the reflecting pool, and then break out into a full run, rising up on my hind legs. Peter was the one who walked on water. He was doing just great until he realized, “Whoa, wait a minute. I can't walk on water!” And he sank.

The king is looking at me, not concerned in the least. The sabers of the cavalry are at my back, and the soldiers on the walkway have turned to orient their spears in my direction as I approach the moat at a furious run. This is what they want, to have me slowed down in the water, where their overwhelming numbers and the reach advantage of their spears will pick me to pieces.

I am at a full sprint, with my tail whipping behind me from side to side, and my hind legs pedaling furiously. A bearded dragon lizard can do it, and now I'm about to find out if a gecko can do it, too.

I hit the lip of the reflecting pool upright and skitter over the surface of the water without breaking stride. I'm running just as fast as I was over the cobblestones, but now my feet are slapping the surface of the water. I'm not so much walking on water as I'm skipping like a stone.

From the corner of one big eye with a vertical pupil I see soldiers look at me with their mouths agape. Looking up ahead, I see the king's eyes grow wide. His instinct is to draw his fur cape across his body, as though that's going to protect him, but for moments he's frozen, just as his personal guard and the soldiers on the moat are, stunned by the sight of an enormous gecko running across the surface of the reflecting pool.

Some horses behind me leap forward into the pool, while others skid to a stop at the lip of the pool and slide in or throw their riders off. Soldiers on the walkway hop into the reflecting pool and begin to wade toward me, but they're slowed down by the shallow water as well as the armor on their shins. It's begun to rain, so the pool is dotted with little circles, which reminds me of the panfish feeding at Wilson Pond, nipping floating insects on the surface.

The king's guard still hasn't closed around him. In their minds, they're up atop the palace wall in a secure position, while I'm down below them. They're feeling cocky because they know they're the Navy SEALs, and I'm just a lizard.

It's exhilarating flying across the pool, skimming the surface like Jesse Owens running the hundred meters, only I'm about to kill Hitler. I still haven't worked out my escape route, but as long as I kill the son-of-a-bitch, that's fine with me. Moving as fast as I am, it doesn't take me many steps at all before I am at the wall, and let momentum carry me forward.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

I hit the wall hard with my belly, but geckos are designed to hop from branch to branch, so I've recovered and am clambering up the palace wall. The moat behind me is shallow enough that it could serve as a kiddie pool, and with all the shouting and splashing behind me, that's exactly what it sounds like.

One of the king's guard peers over the edge of the wall, only he has to extend his center of gravity forward. My tongue shoots out, latching onto his face and pulls him over the edge as it retracts. His form is great as he does a slow somersault with his arms spread wide, but I would have to deduct massive points for the landing, because I can hear him splat the water beneath me.

I come bounding up onto the rampart, where the guard have managed to close their shields, but leave just enough gap so that each elite man can wield his double-edged short sword, which is deadly in such confined spaces. But I climb their shields, so that when I reach the top my weight causes the shield to tip horizontal and collapse on top of the guy holding the shield. I open my snout and spray acid through a gap in the shields.

As that soldier shrieks and stumbles off the edge of the wall, my tail whips through the second gap, encircling the neck of another soldier, and yanking him forward. He is off balance, so his sword trails behind him, allowing me to throw him off the parapet as I spin. I spring onto two shields, knocking both soldiers off the wall and sending them cartwheeling into the interior palace grounds, where they land with mixed sounds of flesh and metal.

With a leap I am sailing through the air at the king, whose eyes have now grown wide, and he realizes he's screwed. I look in those eyes and see that he's not human, or that the human part of him is gagged and tied up in the basement of his psyche. I know a demon when I see one, and this one is panicked.

One of the praetorian guard thrusts his sword through the gap in the shields, but I'm too fast for him, and am already soaring over his head. My jaws clamp down onto the king and his crown, or onto the demon and his crown—the king himself is a shell with a demon at the helm. My tail whips over and I flip through the air, landing on my hind legs and throwing the king over my shoulder. I guess you could think of it as the gecko version of a judo throw. The king goes sailing over me and flies into the interior of the palace courtyard.

I do a double take, because I see that the king hasn't flown through the air, just his head and his crown, which bound across the courtyard. The head bounces erratically and smacks against the rim of a fountain before rolling to a stop. The crown clangs as it bounces and lands with a plonk in the fountain. I spin and see his guard reach for the headless body of the king, which slumps to the stone rampart. I swear it's the diet: I don't know why I can't throw these people without them ripping apart like wet toilet paper. I've got something in my mouth, and I spit out an emerald and a ruby that I've managed to strip out of the crown when I bit into it.

It seems awfully anticlimactic to me to have the king just collapse to the rampart where no one can see him, so I pick up his headless torso and fling it into the moat, driving his guard back. The decapitated body spins like a Frisbee, with arterial blood still spurting from the severed neck, and splashes into the pool in front of several cavalry officers, who recoil in horror. Once again, everyone, from the soldiers who have waded into the pool, to the rabble who have charged across the plaza, to the elite guard atop the wall—all are stunned by the horrific sight of a headless king tossed into the reflecting pool like a discarded boot. You can always trust a gecko to do the unexpected.

I'm not stopping to admire my handiwork, even though I think this would make an awesome highlights reel, nor am I waiting for anyone to recover. I bolt, sprinting over the rampart on all fours. Because I am low, spears sail overhead, and I'm gratified to see some of them skewer responding palace guard members rushing out from the palace.

Two last soldiers remain at the end of the rampart, where the stone walkway meets the corner of the palace wall. All the soldiers and members of the blood-thirsty mob who waded into the reflecting pool to get a piece of the gecko-killing action are now bogged down in the water and can't pursue me. The soldiers in front of me raise their spears, anticipating that I'll jump, but they have human reflexes, which are excruciatingly slow. I charge in low, feign a jump, then blast through low, butting one guard in the crotch as I slither between his legs and spring over the edge of the wall to the moat. The groin shot was totally unnecessary, but it's always gratifying to get in a cheap shot whenever I can.

Once again, I'm sailing through the air, this time in the direction of the temple of God the Empowerer. I tell you, I'm really enjoying the gecko life, even though I'll never play any Eddie Van Halen on the guitar again, not with these stubby fingers. I'm jumping from the side of the palace and land with a flop into the pool, which is poor form for a human, but good as gold for a gecko, especially because if I tried to dive into the shallow pool I'd just brain myself when I struck the bottom. I find to my relief that a human can't swim the pool because the water is too shallow, and I remember taking Max to the kiddie pool at Lyons Park, but a gecko can swim through it. My body has a flat profile, and I swim sidewinder style with only the motion of my hips, shoulders, and tail. I'm gliding through the pool, and the clear lids come down over my eyes because it's raining more heavily now. Raindrops strike the pool like bullets, sending up spouts of water.

I climb up out of the pool much more gracefully than a human, because my spine is flexible enough that I stay low to the edge of the pool where it meets the plaza and transition effortlessly. Thank Lord Riyel my skin is hydrophobic, which means that as a gecko, I don't get wet, although you'd be hard-pressed to notice it now that the rain is falling heavily. The mob and the soldiers have changed course, steering themselves toward me. The latecomers arriving from the city are closing off any exit in that direction, so I decide to go to the temple.

I am slithering across the courtyard, scrambling on all fours, and scamper up the steps to the temple, passing the bronze bull standing atop the steps near the entry to the towering black marble building. The bull stands defiantly, with its head low and its horns directed ahead. Rain pings against the bull's bronze exterior, revealing that it's hollow.

Dashing inside the temple, I draw the doors closed and drop the cross bar with my stubby arms. I'm about to exhale when I hear clanging outside, a sound of metal on stone that is louder than the rain splattering the steps.

Peering through the gap between the two doors, I realize that the demon possessing the king had to go somewhere. To my horror, the demon has inhabited the bronze bull atop the temple steps, animating it, so that it now charges across the landing with metallic steps, headed right for me.