Will heard footsteps running up the stairs: Elise charging hard. He could see her shape flowing through space, growing brighter and stronger, filling with some kind of vibrant power.
The walkie-talkie in Will’s pocket crackled, and he heard Ajay’s voice, low and urgent: “Will. Cover your ears.”
Two of the Knights rushed to the stairs: “Who’s there?” Another reacted to the walkie-talkie: “What was that?”
Will cut the final tie, clamped his hands to his ears, and called out, “Brooke, cover your ears!”
A wave of energy burst through the doorway. Will’s first impression: a single note encompassing every known frequency, above and below the range of human hearing. Then the note exploded throughout the enclosed attic space like a sonic boom. Even with his hands pressed tightly against his ears, Will felt as if a howitzer had gone off beside his head.
The windows blew out, the planks beneath him rippled, and at the center of this gash in the surface of things he saw Elise standing at the top of the stairs, jaws wide open, arms spread, palms up, her body a field of wild energy, the epicenter of this concussive shock wave.
And it all made sense to him: Elise had talents, too. And she was Awake.
Crouching near the porch, Ajay had waited exactly a minute, like Elise had told him to, his eyes glued to his watch. “Will. Cover your ears,” he said into his walkie-talkie.
He’d taken two steps forward before it occurred to him: Oh, dear, I should probably cover mine as well.
He raised his hands to his ears just as all the windows in the boathouse exploded and the whole building shuddered. The blast wave knocked Ajay backward into another snowdrift.
“Mother of mercy,” said Ajay.
He wobbled to his feet and staggered onto the porch. He opened the front door and walked straight into the sill before he course-corrected and made it inside.
“Elise? Will?!”
“Up here!”
It was Will’s voice. He sounded miles away. Ajay’s ears were ringing louder than at a rock concert. Ajay launched himself at the stairs, weaving from one wall to the other.
“Good grief,” said Ajay. “A direct hit to the gyroscope.”
As he passed a window in the stairwell, Ajay looked down and saw a snowmobile pull out of a garage and head for the woods. The Paladin was driving. Ajay stumbled through a door at the top of the stairs, where he found Will crouched over Elise, who was unconscious and pale on the floor.
“Is she all right?” asked Ajay, but couldn’t hear himself, so he repeated the question, much louder than before.
Will didn’t seem to hear him either time. He said something and Ajay saw his lips moving but couldn’t hear a word.
“What?!” yelled Ajay, moving closer.
“Use the phone! Call for help!”
“Okay! Where’s Brooke?!”
“In here!”
Will led him to a doorway, where Brooke lay on the floor just inside. Two Knights—Pigtail and Pirate—were slumped crookedly against a wall, out cold. They looked like they’d been hit by a bus. Their masks had been knocked off. They were Hodak’s attack dogs from the cross-country team: Durgnatt and Steifel.
A trapdoor in the middle of the room stood open, and a rope descended to the floor below. Will pointed to the rope and said something.
“What?!” shouted Ajay.
Will yelled into Ajay’s ear, “There’s a phone! In the office downstairs! Kidnapping! Attempted murder!”
Ajay gave the “okay” sign and said, “One of them got away! Snowmobile!”
“I know!” shouted Will. “Lyle!”
Ajay grabbed the rope in the trapdoor and tried a heroic slide to the floor below. He lost his grip halfway down and crash-landed on his rump. After making sure Will hadn’t seen him, Ajay lifted the receiver of the black phone in the office. He had to assume an operator answered because he couldn’t hear a thing.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to yell!” shouted Ajay.
Upstairs, Will gathered Brooke in his arms, carried her into the other room, and laid her gently beside Elise. He covered Elise with his jacket. Will stripped the winter coat off one of the downed Knights and was about to cover Brooke when she opened her big blue eyes.
“Who wins the Drama Club Award now?” he asked.
“You came for me,” she said.
“What?!” he said.
She threw her arms around him and closed her eyes and said into his ear, “You came for me.”
He heard her that time.
Downstairs, Ajay had to shout to make sure he got the message across. He was pretty sure the operator told him help would be there in fifteen minutes.
“I’m sorry!” he shouted to her. “I feel like I’m inside a large bell! Actually right inside it! In a bell tower! And it’s ringing incessantly!”
Ajay hung up the phone and left the office as Will leaped down through the trapdoor, grabbed the rope, and landed—without falling—right beside him.
“You stay here,” said Will. “Take care of the girls, wait for help.” Will headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” shouted Ajay, following him.
“I’m going after Lyle.”
“On foot? Wait, Elise brought her horse. You could take him.”
“I won’t need a horse,” said Will.
THE CAVES
The snow had slowed to flurries when Will left the boathouse and started after Lyle. The tracks and furrows of the snowmobile led Will deep into the woods. He dodged and lunged over the unfamiliar ground, training all his senses ahead, calling on his speed to keep pace or narrow Lyle’s lead.
Will pulled up his sensory grid, throwing it out ahead to track Lyle, but it felt muddy, imprecise, and he realized that his hearing, stunned by the sonic explosion, played a major role in this ability to “see.” He couldn’t find Lyle anywhere, and as the ground grew steeper and rockier, he needed more time to pick his path. He left the trees and crossed onto a clear plateau that sloped gradually up toward the ridgeline, where, high above, were the caves he’d noticed the other day.
As he crested the next rise, Will caught a glimpse of Lyle on the snowmobile, moving straight for the ridge. As his hearing returned, Will heard a sound like the distant buzzing of a swarm of angry hornets. He thought it must be Lyle’s engine, but then he realized it was coming from behind him.
Three more snowmobiles were cutting and plunging through the drifts, approaching from behind him to the east. Three more Knights: Ben Franklin, George Washington, and the Wolf. All three masks had rifles strapped across their backs. They were less than a hundred yards away.
Will would reach the base of the ridge in another minute. The snowmobiles weren’t gaining on him, but it occurred to Will that catching him might not be their plan. Maybe they wanted to herd him this way and flush him into the open where they could stop, sit back at range, and pick him off with their rifles.
But if the situation escalated to life-threatening, Will knew his insurance policy would kick in. Dave hadn’t let him down yet, four times without fail. He could count on his angel riding to the rescue. Couldn’t he?
Will hopped over a line of boulders and glanced at his watch: seven minutes since he’d left the boathouse. Help should reach his friends within fifteen minutes of Ajay’s alert. He just had to keep the Knights occupied until then.
As he neared the escarpment, Will saw Lyle scrambling up a rough path in the face of the rock. Piles of rubble ran along the edge of the path, offering some cover. Will passed Lyle’s abandoned snowmobile, struggled through a field of loose, crumbled shale, and reached the bottom of the path. He looked up; he had forty yards to climb, with two switchbacks, to reach the ridge. Will ducked behind a rock and looked back.
The other snowmobiles had stopped in a cluster, fifty yards back. The drivers, already dismounted, rifles cradled in their arms, were walking toward the bottom of the ridge.
If they plan to shoot me, this would
be the place. And if I want my friends to figure out where the hell I am, a few gunshots ringing out in this cold clear air should do the trick.
Will took a deep breath and sprinted straight up the gradient. Something kicked off a rock three feet to his right before he heard the report of the rifle. Another shot ricocheted to his left, and a third hit just behind him. Will dropped behind a low cluster of rocks, about halfway up the path.
“Any time, Dave,” he grunted. “Now would be really good.”
Will looked up and saw Lyle pulling himself over the top onto the ridge. As Will looked back, a fourth shot kicked off the rocks just in front of him. Will launched himself up the path, pulling with his hands, driving hard with his legs, bursting out of hiding so quickly that the next few shots landed well behind him. As he turned the final switchback, the last ten feet to the top left him completely exposed, so he kept pushing and grabbing and pulling until—
He leaped for the top of the ridge, scrabbled over, and rolled away from it as three shots in a tight pattern zipped just above him. One clipped the shoulder of his down vest and feathers flew into the air.
Will lay still, gasping for breath, cradled in snow as the rifles’ sharp reports echoed off the rocks. He raised his head just enough to look around for Lyle. The ridge, snow laden and only thirty feet across at its widest, ran off in both directions until it curved and disappeared. Another sheer rock wall, unscalable, rose straight ahead of him.
Lyle was nowhere to be seen. The mouth of the largest cave, taller than he was, opened in the wall straight ahead. Two slightly smaller caves cut in on either side of it.
Which cave is he in?
Will peered back over the ridge. The three riflemen had made no move to follow him. Will looked at his watch: fifteen minutes. Good. The cavalry should have reached the boathouse and connected with Ajay, and if they’d heard the shots, they might already be on their way.
But how quickly would they be able to find him?
Will crept toward the caves. The Paladin mask lay in the snow outside the central cave. Will took out his Swiss Army knife and unfolded the biggest blade. He peered into the darkness of the central cave. A slight breeze blew from inside, and he smelled something foul in the air. Something old and sour and forbidding.
Then he heard Lyle’s voice call out from somewhere deep inside. “I guess you don’t know what an oik is, West.”
Will froze. Lyle’s voice echoed and rolled. The caves sounded very deep.
“An oik is a clot. A commoner. A lesser being of the lower classes, the kind who used to know their place. Visit a mall. Ride a bus. Walk into any public school. They’re infested with them.”
Will stepped into the smaller cave on the left and crouched in the shadows just inside, waiting for his eyes to adjust. He collected two round rocks the size of baseballs and stuck them into the pockets of his vest. He couldn’t see Lyle yet, so he closed his eyes, pulled up the grid, and found him:
Thirty yards to the right, in the next chamber. He saw that all the caves were interconnected, a vast warren of chambers and passages honeycombing the entire ridge.
“The problem is you oiks don’t know your place anymore. Oh, you still want your bread and circuses, your junk food and blood sports. But a steady diet of garbage isn’t enough to pacify you now. You think because our culture panders to all your infantile impulses that now you’re supposed to have a voice. That we should have to listen to you.”
Will inched forward to the nearest opening in the sandstone. A white-hot glow issued from the chamber to his right.
“You believe you’re all so special! You couldn’t possibly be responsible for your own dead-end lives—you’ve got too much self-esteem. You’re all stars just waiting to be discovered. Forget self-discipline or education or knowing the right people. The world’s one big talent show and all you have to do is show up.”
Will reached the edge of the passage and peeked around; the ceiling of the adjacent chamber arched up more than thirty feet. It was illuminated by the unnatural light issuing from the hooked steel rod—the Carver—that Lyle held in his hand. He was using the rod to trace a huge circle in the air, nearly complete, over six feet in diameter. Its rough outline burned with blinding intensity.
“We stand for something different here. Eternal verities: honor, values, leadership. Now more than ever. A new breed ready to maintain our traditions. It was all going according to plan until you walked in. An oik crashing the cocktail party. Well, let me make one thing perfectly clear: Over my dead body.”
Lyle finished tracing the circle. An energy field crackled to life around the edges, the air blurred and glimmered, and a portal slowly opened inside the circle. Lyle held up the rod, the glyphs engraved in its handle glowing brightly.
Dave’s got my back. With that thought fortifying him, Will gripped one of the rocks in his pocket and stepped forward. “If that’s the way you want it, Lyle.”
Lyle whipped around, and his wild eyes found Will. “You know what happened to the last people who stood in our way? They call themselves Native Americans, as if they were here first.”
“They were here first.”
“Those pathetic primitives believed these caves led to the underworld,” said Lyle. “That their gods used them to pass between here and the spirit realm. They had it all wrong.” Lyle held up his hands to the hole, proudly displaying his handiwork. “The only passage here now is to the Old Ones … in the Never-Was.”
Lyle pointed the rod at Will and a beam of burning white light shot out at him. Will pushed out a thought shield just in time and deflected the beam into a wall, but it nearly knocked him over. Lyle was still stronger, and with that weapon in hand, he was a lot stronger. Will ducked back into cover. Two more bursts followed, cracking the rock, blasting holes in the walls.
What if Dave isn’t coming this time? What was it he said? “Learn. Learn fast.”
Will rose up and threw the first stone three feet to Lyle’s right. Lyle smiled confidently and raised the rod to fire again. Will closed his eyes, stretched out his grid, and found the rock flying into the darkness. He grabbed hold and found a way to invest its mass with some part of himself. Then all he had to do was think about it: The rock swung around and boomeranged back toward Lyle.
I’m learning.
#48: NEVER START A FIGHT UNLESS YOU CAN FINISH IT. FAST.
The rock cracked into Lyle’s arm just above the elbow, knocking the rod out of his hand. Lyle screamed in pain and fell to his knees. Will threw the second rock at the rod and knocked it back into the cave, out of sight.
Lyle went down hard, turning to protect his wounded arm. Will jumped on top of him, straddled his chest, and pinned him to the ground. He held the blade of his knife under Lyle’s chin. Lyle looked up at him once, gulped in a deep breath, and started to bawl in great chuffing sobs, like a heartbroken toddler. The creep’s anguish was so authentic it almost made Will feel sorry for him.
Then he saw a knot of raised flesh on the left side of Lyle’s neck, twitching around like a joystick.
Damn. A Ride Along.
Will watched in horror as the thing extruded out of the knot on Lyle’s neck. A mottled six-inch black stalk with short barbed arms and eight blinking angry eyes in a furious, contorted half-human face spit and hissed at Will.
Without even thinking, Will flicked his knife and sliced the creature off at the stem. The severed stalk flopped to the ground, uttered a hideous mewling screech, and scuttled into the dark, dragging its leaking, carved-up carcass.
The knot on Lyle’s neck collapsed like a deflating balloon, lost its color, and lay flat. Lyle heaved a blubbering sigh.
“I hurt,” said Lyle, looking at Will with wounded eyes. “Really bad. All over.”
“What do you expect from me?” asked Will. “First aid? You tried to kill me!”
Lyle cried some more, softly, inconsolable. “I didn’t want to,” Lyle whimpered. “They made me do it.”
“Why?”
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“Because they’re afraid of you,” said Lyle.
“Who made you do this? How?”
Lyle showed Will his neck. “He ordered me to put that thing on myself,” he said, his voice thick and trembling. “Two days ago. Because I wouldn’t kill you.”
“The Bald Man?”
Lyle nodded, looking for sympathy.
“Who is he, Lyle?”
“We call him Mr. Hobbes,” said Lyle in a small voice. “He showed up last year when I joined the Knights. He tested me. My abilities.”
“You mean, what you can do to people,” said Will.
Lyle nodded, tears leaking from his eyes. “And he said I was going to be very important … because I was the first one to Awaken.”
“What does that mean? The first of what?”
“Of the Prophecy,” said Lyle intensely. “He said I was the first, and because of that big plans were in the works for me to help them—”
“What’s the Prophecy, Lyle?”
“—and then you came along,” said Lyle, turning petulant. “It’s all your fault. You ruined my life.”
“What is the Prophecy?”
“We all are!” Lyle’s face twisted into a knot and his voice fell to a whisper. “A-T-C-G. A-T-C-G—”
Will shook him with both hands. “Goddamn it, Lyle, tell me what I need to know! Is the school behind this?”
“The school?” Lyle looked perversely pleased, almost giddy.
“Do they know about it?” demanded Will.
“Some. I don’t know how many,” said Lyle, then lowered his voice again. “You need to start at the beginning. At the clinics.”
“What clinics?”
“See how you like the news. Then ask yourself, Who am I … really? And the best of luck to you,” said Lyle as all his brute nastiness returned. “Oik.”
A deep rumbling burst out of the portal behind them and grew louder until the ground shuddered around them, shaking rocks loose from the walls. An eerie moan pierced the air. The hair on Will’s neck stood up. He turned to look.