“Quickly!” he shouted at them through the open window. “I don’t know what you’re doing playing around on that old boat, but you’ve got to get out of this weather now!”
No one argued. Most cars wouldn’t fit all of them at once, but Zebediah had room to spare. Tara let go of the glass rod so her owl eyes disappeared. The sword she kept. As they came down the gangplank, Jack glanced behind him, looking for any sign of The Evil. The dragon was completely gone; all the bugs had fallen into the water. But he had learned from hard experience not to assume anything until Grandma X said it was safe.
Kyle and Jack put Lottie in the middle of the back seat, between the two of them. As they wrapped the seat belt around her, Lottie chuckled.
“I can’t believe you’re still driving this old thing, David,” she said to Rodeo Dave. “Couldn’t you have found a more zippy Companion by now?”
He stared at her via the rearview mirror, brow deeply furrowed.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Do I know you?”
Lottie looked puzzled and hurt. Jack could almost see her thinking how much she must have changed. But he couldn’t explain without breaking their promise to Rodeo Dave: to let him forget his past as a Warden, and the loss of Lottie, long ago. But maybe that promise was invalid now that Lottie was back. Didn’t that make everything else irrelevant?
“Dave doesn’t have any memories of you because he asked Grandma to take them away,” Jack ended up saying. “It’s a long story. We’ll explain later.”
Dave frowned even harder. “I asked your grandmother to do what, now?”
Jaide slammed the door to distract him. Rough handling made the car grouchy, Dave said, although soaking wet passengers had had little effect in the past.
“That’s all of us,” she said, holding a damp and bedraggled Cornelia on her lap. “Let’s go. Where are you taking us?”
“Home, I guess,” he started to say. “Or perhaps Scarborough. It’s getting a bit too blowy out there even for me.”
++I will await you at Project Thunderclap,++ said Grandma X. ++Make haste.++
Jaide jumped. The spectral form of her grandmother had appeared in one of the side mirrors. She still looked very grim.
“Can you take us to the tent?” Jaide asked Dave. “There’s … uh … an emergency town meeting there, for the people who are left. I reckon Grandma will be there. But we might miss her unless we go quickly.”
“Right you are.” Dave shrugged off the matter of his missing memory as though he had already forgotten it. And maybe he had, Jaide thought. That was probably the key to making a deception like this work: not allowing people to know what they no longer knew.
Jack’s cell phone rang as the big car’s wheels spun in the mud and they accelerated away from the sea.
“Hello?”
“Oh, Jack, I’m so glad you’re safe!”
It was his mother. She was calling from somewhere very noisy. The helicopter — judging by the familiar whop-whop sound of spinning blades in the background.
“Everything’s okay,” he reassured her. “We’re all home now.”
“Don’t go home,” she said. “You have to get out of there, fast.”
“It’s just a storm, Mom.”
“We both know it’s much more than a storm. And I’m flying in it right now so I can see what’s going on better than you. Whatever that thing was that fell out of the sky, it just started coming out of the ocean, and it looks mean.”
Jack craned around to look behind him. Something big and black was crawling over the Omega and sending tentacles to the shore. It was dotted with thousands of tiny, glowing white eyes.
“Uh, that’s not good,” he said. “We’re going!”
“If you see Hector, tell him … just tell him to answer his rotten phone. I’ve been trying to call him for hours!”
Susan hung up and Jack suggested that everyone look behind them.
“Reminds me of that big storm the week you two arrived,” Rodeo Dave told the twins. “We were cleaning seaweed out of our gutters for a month. Good for the gardens.”
He seemed almost cheerful about the prospect, but his boot went down hard on the gas pedal.
The tent was lit up like a nightclub as Zebediah skidded around the corner from Main Street to River Road. Instead of parking, Rodeo Dave jumped the curb and drove through the school grounds, right up to the front entrance of the tent. Jack winced at the sound of the broad tires crunching the trellises, on which the class was being forced to grow sickly looking organic vegetables. Mr. Carver would be complaining about hooligans for weeks.
“Wait here,” Jaide told Kyle, Tara, Rodeo Dave, Cornelia, and Lottie. “We’ll be quick.”
Jack scrambled out after her. “Is this where Dad is?”
“Everyone’s here,” she said, running through the entrance. A lone guard, sheltering himself from the storm, waved them through. “This way, I think.”
Jack gaped at the Warden assembly. There must have been a hundred of them, and the lodestone in the center of the room held so much energy it was shining like molten gold. If everyone put their heads together, they could repel The Evil easily.
“The appearance of The Evil is most unfortunate,” boomed Aleksandr over the crowd, as though responding to Jack’s thought. “We can defeat the incursion or we can continue with our plan. We can’t do both.”
The twins looked around for their grandmother, and saw her on the fringe, ushering them toward her. When Jack was within reach she hugged him quickly and fiercely, but then let go to concentrate on what the other Wardens were saying.
“The threat is here and now,” said one. “Deal with it and try Thunderclap another day.”
“But The Evil will be ready,” protested another. “This is our one and only chance.”
“There’s no point succeeding if The Evil is over here now,” agonized a third.
“We have the means of containing it,” said Grandma X in a firm voice that carried clear across the crowd. “Continue with the Project. Leave the rest to me.”
Aleksandr straightened and puffed out his chest, as though he was about to argue with her.
“Do as she says,” said a glowing figure who appeared right next to him and swept a cool gaze around the room. Lottie. “If you stand around arguing with the Warden of Last Resort, then you deserve what’s coming for you.”
A shocked murmur spread through the crowd, and Jack felt a twinge of something lost and forgotten at the back of his brain. Lottie was confirming what he and Jaide had suspected, that Grandma X was the Warden of Last Resort, but was there something else he should be thinking right now? Something about what that role meant?
“Very well, Charlotte,” said Aleksandr, deciding in the moment not to argue with the ghost of the woman he had abandoned to the Evil Dimension more than forty years ago. He didn’t look happy about it, though. This was supposed to be his moment. “We will finish what we started. The megastorm is prepared. All we must do now is unleash it.”
The lightning wielders rebuilt their spiral, with Stefano at the center, and the sense of power building resumed. Lottie’s spectral form vanished, and Grandma X guided the twins back toward the exit.
“What did Lottie mean?” asked Jaide. “What are you going to do?”
“You mustn’t concern yourself with that,” she said in a firm voice, putting one hand on each of their shoulders. “Go with David. Rennie has prepared a sanctuary on the Rourke Estate — a bubble of safety where the people of Portland have been evacuated. Go there and wait with him. The megastorm will take some time to reach its full effect. You must stay out of harm’s way until it’s over.”
“And you’ll come join us afterward? With Dad?” asked Jack. His sense that something bad was going to happen was rising.
“I will do everything in my power.”
Both twins noticed that Grandma X, as she so often did, had avoided answering the question.
“Now go,” she said, “and tell the guar
ds to do their best. The tent must not be breached.”
There was no disobeying that tone. The twins found their legs moving almost of their own volition, out of the heart of the tent and to the exit, where a gaggle of guards had formed to stare out at the stormy world.
Dark shapes were swarming over the school, difficult to make out but moving steadily and greedily toward the oval.
“We’ve got to hold it back,” Jaide said to Jack. “If she thinks we’re leaving, she’s crazy. How are your Gifts?”
Jack tested them. They responded, but were still weak.
“So are mine,” she confessed. “What are we going to do? There’s so much of it.”
“There sure is … and you know what? That’s its greatest weakness.” Jack felt a germ of an idea wriggling excitedly, wanting to be brought out into the light. “It’s huge and everywhere, but it’s only one thing. It’s just it. One mind, one intelligence. It can be distracted, all at once.”
Jaide stared at him excitedly. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“That we can use ourselves as bait and draw it away from the others?”
“Exactly! Good thinking, little brother.”
Jack didn’t object to being called that — he was only four minutes younger, after all — because she had complimented him at the same time. They ran back to the car, where Kyle and Tara were nervously looking out the rear window at the looming shapes The Evil made against the town lights. Lottie had nodded off again after the exertion of sending her spirit form to the meeting. Rodeo Dave was sitting restlessly behind the wheel, looking at her in the rearview mirror and frowning again.
He brightened when the twins jumped in.
“Where to now, troubletwisters?”
Jack and Jaide glanced at each other. He never called them that. Maybe the memory block was failing.
“Grandma wants us to get out of town,” said Jaide, “but we think we’ll be of more use here. How fast can Zebediah go?”
He winked. “You’d be surprised.”
“As long as The Evil’s surprised, that’s the main thing,” said Jack. “We’re going to lead it away from the tent.”
“How?” asked Kyle.
“It’s tried to catch us so many times now,” said Jaide, “and we keep getting away. This is its big chance. It’s not going to pass that up — not if we remind it, anyway.”
Rodeo Dave nodded. “Like a bullfight, then. We’ll enrage it while the others deliver the final blow.”
“Sounds like fun,” said Tara. “Let’s go!”
Kyle and Jack put their fists up in the air and Cornelia flapped with excitement, all of which took Jaide slightly by surprise. It was Jack’s idea and she had proposed it. How did Tara get to be the one who made the decision? Probably it had something to do with what had happened to them in the Evil Dimension, she told herself, and what difference did it make anyway, since they all wanted the same thing?
Zebediah roared and surged around in a wide circle, spraying mud. The car bumped back onto the road and accelerated toward the oncoming mass of bugs.
Jack closed his eyes. He had never tried to start a conversation with The Evil before. Normally, it was The Evil trying to talk to him.
++Go home,++ Jack told it. ++Why won’t you just leave us alone?++
++Join us, troubletwisters,++ it responded, ++and you will understand that we have no home. We need no home. We have only us. We need only you.++
Rodeo Dave eased off the gas pedal and swung the wheel so they headed down a line between the oncoming blackness and the tent. As the headlights swept across The Evil, they provided a glimpse of squirming Earthly bugs and slimy seaweed, with larger creatures mixed in, such as fish, eels, and the occasional stray dog. At the fore stood Dr. Witworth, with arms outstretched. Her hands had far too many fingers, thanks to the bugs she had absorbed, and she rode high, thanks to the buzzing of dozens of insect wings sprouting out of her back. Her sickly white eyes tracked the path of the car.
++You and us, together at last,++ The Evil chanted. ++You and us, you and us.++
++We’ll never join you,++ said Jaide. ++Never!++
“Is it following?” asked Tara.
“Looks that way,” said Kyle.
Jack agreed. The leading fringes of The Evil were swaying and changing course. Like a plague of mice trailing a piper, or a really big block of cheese, the black mass turned to follow them.
“Let it think it’s keeping up,” Jaide told Rodeo Dave. “We don’t want it to give up.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll save something for when we most need it.” He patted the dash. The car was rumbling happily down Dock Road, heading for the old cemetery.
Behind them, a single bolt of lightning fired up from the tent into the clouds, sending fierce tendrils lashing like whips in all directions. It didn’t die as ordinary lightning did. It crackled on, sending powerful booms of thunder rolling across the town. Jaide imagined the lodestone releasing all its pent-up energy, through the Wardens, through Stefano. She thought she heard him cry out in something that might have been triumph but might equally have been pain. The megastorm had begun.
Got to keep The Evil distracted, she thought.
++Do you recognize this place?++ she asked as the lighthouse came into view. The Something Read Ward shone with a bright, golden light near where the actual lighthouse globe was housed. ++This is where we first beat you.++
++You will never defeat us,++ it said. ++We are forever. You will join us or die.++
++How old are you, exactly?++ Jack asked. ++Isn’t it time you retired?++
++We have been here forever. We will always be here. Join us and live with us in eternity.++
Jack imagined The Evil spreading across the universe like some terrible, all-encompassing disease, sucking up life and leaving nothing but death behind. It truly might live forever, if it could find enough to absorb.
Zebediah bumped off-road again, swinging around the tiny church next to the Rock and paralleling South Beach. The hulking mass of The Evil followed, swarming over everything in its path.
++Everything dies,++ said Jaide. ++Even you, sooner or later.++
++Never,++ it said. ++Only those who reject us will die — humans, Wardens, and troubletwisters alike.++
Something large crashed down in front of them, as though from a great height. Mud splattered everywhere. Rodeo Dave spun the wheel, barely avoiding a collision.
“That’s the clock of the church steeple,” said Tara in amazement as the object went by. It was little more than tangled stone and metal now. “The Evil must have ripped it off and thrown it at us!”
Jack and Jaide looked at each other and wondered if they had gone too far. They didn’t want to antagonize The Evil into killing them.
++Tell us again why we should join you,++ Jack said. ++What do we get out of it, exactly?++
But The Evil didn’t answer. Something else crashed heavily in front of them, this time a giant chunk of dripping granite uprooted from the breakwater. Rodeo Dave spun the wheel again, and Jaide realized with a sick feeling what The Evil was doing.
It was herding them, forcing them to come around so they had no choice but to drive right into its waiting mass.
“Go around the Rock,” she told Rodeo Dave. “That might stop it from throwing more things at us.”
“Right-o,” he said. “Hold on tight!”
They bounced and jolted across the terrain, narrowly avoiding the Cutting, a slice of hillside that had been removed to make way for Crescent Street.
++Running only delays the inevitable,++ The Evil said. ++Join us and know an end to fear.++
“Look!” cried Kyle, pointing out the side window, up to the slope.
The Evil had swarmed up to the very top of the Rock and rose over it like the mutant child of King Kong and Godzilla. Projectiles came thundering down on them, and only a sudden burst of speed spared Zebediah from a crippling impact right through the engine. As it was, the near misses were ver
y near, and it was clear that with The Evil holding the higher ground, their luck was bound to run out eventually.
Grandma X’s house on Watchward Lane came into view, and Rodeo Dave made for it. The weathervane was pointing straight at them, and at The Evil rising up behind them.
The bench that sat at the top of the Rock crashed down in front of them, followed by a thick tree trunk and two large boulders. Zebediah skidded, but there was no way to go around the obstacles. The Evil had blocked their path completely.
Zebediah jerked to a halt. Rodeo Dave put the car in reverse and twisted to look behind him. He revved the engine, but didn’t go anywhere.
Jack could see why. The Evil was rushing down the side of the Rock like an avalanche. If they went that way, the end would only come sooner.
“We could lock the doors,” Tara said, looking up the hill. “Will that help?”
“For about a second,” said Kyle, swallowing.
They sat frozen for a moment, out of ideas.
Then the sound of something smashing made them whip their heads around to the front. The old stone bench had been turned to rubble, and as they watched, two heavy stone fists lifted the tree trunk, snapped it in two, and threw it away. A broad, stony face leaned down to peer into the car.
++EVIL BAD,++ boomed a mental voice that sounded like two mountains clashing. ++TROUBLETWISTERS RUN NOW RUN RUN RUN.++
“Angel!” exclaimed Lottie, blinking in sleepy surprise through the windshield. “I thought I was dreaming. What’s she doing awake?”
Jaide gaped at her, then turned back to the giant. The Something Growing Ward lifted one of the boulders and threw it at The Evil so hard that it trailed red fire before it hit Dr. Witworth square on. Bugs flew in all directions.
“I think we’d better do what that thing says,” said Rodeo Dave, putting his foot down as far as it would go. “Have we distracted The Evil enough?”
Jaide looked for the tent through the trees. It wasn’t hard to find, although its bright yellow glow had faded to a simmering red. The lightning flickered and went out.
“I hope so,” she said. “Get us out of here!”