The Paladin Prophecy

  Will’s chest tightened, and the air in the room clamped down: RUN, WILL. He fled out the back door, hopped the fence, and headed north. With a startled flap of wings, the little blackbird lifted off the fence and settled in a nearby tree. Two hours and change until Dad got home.

  Dad will know what to do.

  * * *

  The bald man in the black cap jogged around the side of the house. Raising binoculars, he caught a glimpse of Will as he disappeared over a rise, sprinting toward the hills. He ordered the others to hold back and spoke into his wrist mic. “He’s on the fire road, headed north.”

  “Is he Awake?”

  “Hard to say,” said the bald man. “But we can’t take any chances. Bring me the Carver.”

  PROWLER

  Will reached the trail beyond the last house at the end of the street and followed it up a slope to a locked gate at the base of the fire road. Slipping through a gap between posts, he headed straight up the fire road. The sun dipped low in the west, painting the slopes above him in vibrant crystalline light.

  Air pumped through Will’s lungs as he followed a series of severe switchbacks carved into the canyon. The road leveled off and ran flat along a ridge before grading up again. Deep thickets of chaparral and dried bramble lined both sides of the road. Sharp sunlight around him faded to dusk. He stopped to look behind him and noticed a strange circle of light farther down the hill, as if the sun’s last rays had shot through a huge magnifying glass. The light looked so intensely bright, he thought the brush might burst into flame.

  The weirdest day of my life, he thought. Dr. Robbins shows up right after the black sedan, the Prowler, and just before the fake Belinda. But if there’s a connection—and according to Rule #27 there has to be—what is it?

  The test. That had to be it. What if his score had raised a red flag that caught someone else’s eye? Someone whose interest in him wasn’t nearly as positive or benign as the Center’s?

  What if that test had set in motion whatever happened to his mom?

  Will heard an odd noise, faint and scratchy. Something was moving through the underbrush near where he’d noticed that peculiar circle of light, which had now faded. He heard branches cracking; it was a deer, most likely. These hills were full of whitetails. Then there was more rustling off to the other side of the road. Louder.

  Will stopped. The crackling in the brush stopped as well. When he ran forward again, the sounds picked back up, paralleling his progress forward.

  What kind of animal reacts that way?

  Will stopped again, but this time the movement continued, on both sides, edging closer to the road. Mountain lions? Not likely. They were native to the area but almost no one ever saw them. And they always hunted alone.

  He heard a low, guttural snarl.

  Coyotes. Had to be. Will saw more movement in the thickets. Branches were shaking on both sides as the pack closed in.

  The wind shifted and he caught a nauseating smell: burned rubber or hair, a heavy dose of rotting eggs. Was it coming off these animals? Will picked up a sturdy dead branch from the side of the path. Down the slope, he noticed a clearing where a mudslide had piled against the edge of the brush line.

  As he watched, astonished, impressions appeared in the mud. They were blank and round, like bony knobs. And they appeared in a pattern: two, then one; two, then one, with big gaps in between. Like a tripod working its way toward him up the slope. An invisible tripod.

  The snarling began again, all around him on both sides of the road. He heard a low gibbering embedded in the growls, dotted with glottal pulses and a guttering wheezy percussion. It sounded like some sort of language—

  Cold terror burst in the pit of his stomach. There’s only one way down from here, Will thought, and if whatever these things are cut off the road …

  Will spun around and sprinted down the hill. An instant later he heard them crash after him with a wild whooping yowl. As he neared the end of the ridge, a shadowy mass leaped over him from behind and landed directly in his path. Without breaking stride, Will swung the branch with both hands as hard as he could. The branch shattered as it smacked something he couldn’t see, and whatever he’d hit snarled in pain.

  The impact threw Will off stride. He nearly fell, but pivoted, pushed off the ground, and kept his legs churning. Whatever invisible nightmare he’d just smashed with the branch wheeled after him. The air rippled. Something sharp sliced through Will’s sweatshirt and raked across his back. A fiery spike of pain spurred him to run even faster down the winding road.

  It was getting hard to see. He could hear the things behind him, but he’d opened up some space. Desperate to extend his lead, Will headed into a sharp turn without slowing. As he planted his left foot to veer right, he hit a patch of mud and skidded. He lost his balance, turned as he fell, and—

  Wham. He landed on his left side, rolled, then stuck out his hands as brakes, skidding along the road. He stopped on the outside edge of the curve, just short of plunging over a twenty-foot drop into blackness.

  Will dragged himself to his feet and limped on. He heard nauseating yawping sounds, the snorting and snuffling of something wet and fleshy; the things weren’t more than thirty yards behind him now and closing fast. With at least a quarter mile to the end of the fire road, he’d never make it before they caught him.

  Farther down the road, a blinding light sliced through the night. A deafening throttle roared and a pair of white-hot headlights hurtled toward him, torque screaming. Was it the black sedan? He couldn’t tell.

  Will threw himself to the side of the road as the car passed, the heat of a massive engine warping the air. He caught the acrid smell of burning rubber as it spun sideways and curled behind him. But it wasn’t the sedan. Eyes blinded by the headlights, Will could only make out the black outline of the Prowler he’d seen outside the diner and its hulking driver behind the wheel.

  Flames erupted from the Prowler’s twin exhausts with a deafening whoosh. A wall of fire shot into the road behind it, and the creatures chasing Will ran straight into it. Their howls changed to revolting high-pitched squeals. Will saw writhing misshapen masses thrashing around, outlined in fire.

  The car skidded beside Will. “Get in,” growled the driver. It was the same voice he’d heard—but in his head—outside the diner that morning.

  Will threw himself onto the backseat as the driver gunned the Prowler down the road. Will looked back and saw the burning creatures flail off the edge of the cliff, pinwheeling fiery spirals falling away into a void.

  The car roared through the open gate at the base of the road and reached the flats in moments. Will crouched down as they weaved through sharp turns at what seemed like impossible speeds. With the driver hunched over the wheel, in the light of passing streetlamps, Will noticed a large round patch on the back of the man’s leather jacket. Inside it were three images and words he couldn’t make out.

  Then, in a strip of darkness, the Prowler skidded to a stop.

  “Out,” said the driver.

  Will leaped out of the car and backed away. The driver remained in shadow, motionless, staring at him from behind black aviator shades. The man’s taut presence and unsettling stillness held a promise of violence.

  “What were those things?” asked Will.

  “You don’t want to know,” the driver said.

  “But—”

  “Stow it. You may think you’re dux, mate, but unless you want to kark it early days, next time don’t be such a nong.”

  Will couldn’t place the driver’s accent, which was harsh as a blade. “I’m sorry,” Will said. “I have no idea what you just said.”

  The driver leaned forward into the light and lowered his shades. He had fierce black brows above a raptor’s piercing eyes. And scars. Lots of scars.

  He held up his right index finger. “That’s one,” said the man. Then he stomped on the gas. The Prowler sped off around a corner, the sound of its engine fading quickly into the night. r />
  Will looked around. He was standing fifty feet from the back door of his house. Music drifted through an open window, a woman’s voice backed by a big band with old-fashioned orchestration:

  “If you go out in the woods tonight

  You’re in for a big surprise …

  If you go out in the woods tonight

  You’d better go in disguise …”

  DAD’S HOME

  Will peered around the side of his house: The black cars were gone.

  He hurried to the back door and entered silently. Someone was in their kitchen. He caught a whiff of his mom’s perfume and cookies baking. Will edged down the hallway and peeked into the kitchen.

  “Belinda” was pacing back and forth, holding a cell phone to her ear. As he watched, she raised a hand to the back of her neck and flinched, as if in pain.

  Then she spoke into the phone in a monotone voice he hardly recognized: “He’s not back … I don’t know where he went … yes, I’ll let you know if he …”

  Will backed away down the hall. He landed on a creaky floorboard, then bumped into the wall trying to avoid it.

  “Will-bear?” she called. “Is that you? Are you home?”

  Damn.

  “Hi,” he said, reopening the back door as if he’d just come inside.

  “Come in the kitchen! I made cookies!”

  “One sec. I’ve got mud on my shoes.” He wanted to run again, but Dad would be home soon. But he couldn’t face her yet, either, and with that loopy song blaring away, he couldn’t think straight. Will closed the door loudly and followed the music to the living room.

  The antique turntable sat next to Dad’s precious vinyl collection: LPs and stacks of old 45s, still in their paper sleeves. The soundtrack of his parents’ lives. Will knew this music better than his own generation’s.

  #78: THERE’S A REASON THE CLASSICS ARE CLASSICS: THEY’RE CLASSIC.

  “At six o’clock their mommies and daddies

  Will take them home to bed

  Because they’re tired little teddy bears—”

  Will jerked the needle off the record. A scratch popped in the speakers. “Belinda” came in behind him.

  “You always loved that song,” she said.

  “I haven’t heard it for a hundred years,” he said. “It’s kind of creepy.”

  “You played it all the time when you were little—”

  “I’m not really in the mood right now.”

  “But you loved it—”

  “Yes, I did,” said Will. “And when I played it over and over again, it used to drive you crazy.”

  Her smile never wavered. She didn’t even blink. She held out a plate of cookies and a glass of milk. “Oatmeal raisin,” she said.

  Will stared at the milk. Were his eyes playing tricks on him, or did it have a faint greenish glow?

  She kept the plate in front of him. He finally took the milk and a cookie, hoping she wouldn’t wait for him to eat it. “Where’d you go?” she asked.

  “For a run.”

  “It looks like you fell. Did you hurt yourself?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Come help with dinner.”

  He followed her to the kitchen, trying not to limp. He broke off half the cookie, dumped it into the umbrella stand in the hall with half the milk, then pretended to chew as he walked in after her. She stood over the stove tending pots, one of them pouring steam into the air. Dr. Robbins’s packet sat on the table where he’d left it, next to his laptop.

  “How’s the cookie?” she asked.

  He held up the remaining half. “Good.”

  “Did you look through all the stuff from the school?”

  She’d emptied the packet onto the table: the electronic brochure, a small pamphlet about the school’s history, and a stack of official forms and paperwork.

  “Most of it,” said Will.

  “So what do you think?”

  His iPhone dinged. He fumbled it from his pocket and switched it on. An unfamiliar app popped up on his greeting screen: a feathered quill pen poised over an old-fashioned parchment. The title below read UNIVERSAL TRANSLATOR.

  Where did this come from?

  “Seems pretty interesting,” he said.

  “I have to say, I’m having trouble with the boarding school thing. It’s halfway across the country. When would we ever see you? Know what I mean, jelly bean?”

  She stepped past him and reached to an upper shelf for the pasta. Her hair parted for a moment, and Will caught a glimpse of a gnarled knob of flesh on the side of her neck, just behind her left ear. A more vivid pink than her skin tone, it looked like recent scar tissue, or an inflamed insect bite. And it was twitching.

  What the hell?

  As she turned back, Will looked away, trying to mask his fright. He gathered up the laptop and the contents of the packet from the table.

  “I have time for a quick shower?”

  “Twelve minutes,” she said, looking at her wristwatch.

  With the same hand, she poured the whole box of spaghetti into the pot of boiling water. Then shoved the tops into the water with a spoon.

  Mom always breaks the spaghetti in half before she drops it in the water.

  “I’ll be quick.”

  Will walked out of the room and up the stairs, fighting the urge to break out of the house at a dead sprint.

  #5: TRUST NO ONE.

  He tossed the cookie out the back window and closed his door quietly. It had no lock, so he tilted his desk chair and wedged the top rail under the knob. He started his phone’s stopwatch app and set it on the bed. Eleven minutes.

  He stepped to the bathroom and turned on the shower so she’d hear water in the pipes. He peeled off his shirt and sweatpants and checked the road rash on his hip. It was red and raw but he’d had worse. He cleaned it with a washcloth, then splashed on hydrogen peroxide. The scratch on his back looked nasty and inflamed. He poured peroxide on it, then gripped the sink and grimaced through the burn. Moving back to the bedroom, he glanced out one of the windows at the street in front. Empty.

  Will dressed in fresh sweats. He picked up his iPhone and tapped the new application. A moment later the “Universal Translator” opened into a blank gray page. No menu or on-screen instructions about how to use it.

  He logged onto his laptop and opened his email. A new message was waiting from Dad. The time tag read 8:18 that morning, but it had only just arrived. He double-clicked it. A blank message opened. No text. But it carried an attachment. He clicked on the attachment and it transferred onto his hard drive. It was a video file. He clicked on it repeatedly but couldn’t open it. Six minutes.

  He tried every program on his drive that could play video. Nothing worked. Then he noticed the subject tag on the email: Translated. He transferred the Universal Translator app from his phone to the laptop. This time a pull-down menu appeared. On the menu were two options: Translate and Delete. He clicked Translate. A video player’s graphic interface came up on-screen. A triangular PLAY arrow floated into view. Will clicked on the arrow. The video file began to play.

  A generic hotel room faded in, shown through the wide-angle lens of a laptop’s on-board camera. There was a framed generic still life on the wall and a fragment of window on the left side of the screen. Pale morning light.

  “Will.”

  Dad’s voice. A moment later, Jordan West sat down in front of the camera. Will felt a flood of relief just seeing his father. But it didn’t last. Dad’s face and sweats were drenched, as if he’d come back from a hard run. His wire-rimmed glasses were fogged up; he took them off to clean them. Will realized it wasn’t just fatigue or urgency in his eyes: Dad looked terrified.

  “Pay attention now, Will,” his dad said. “I’m in room twelve-oh-nine at the Hyatt Regency.”

  He held the front page of a San Francisco newspaper close to the lens. He pointed to its upper right-hand corner. His hands were shaking.

  He’s showing me today’s date. Tu
esday, November 7. Then Dad held his phone in front of the laptop’s camera: 8:17 a.m. So I’ll know exactly when he recorded this.

  Jordan leaned in close and spoke in low, controlled tones. “Son, I’m making a big bet that only you will be able to open this: I’ve always bet on you. From what I’ve just seen, I don’t have much time, and by the time you see this, neither will you.

  “I know how strange and how frightening this sounds, Will. The first thing you have to know is that none of what’s happened, or might happen, is your fault. Not one bit of it. We’re responsible for this. And the idea that something we did would bring pain or sorrow into your life is the worst feeling your mom and I have ever known.”

  Will felt panic spread from his gut.

  “We always hoped this day would never come. We’ve done everything in our power to prevent it. We’ve tried as best we could, the only way we could, to prepare you if it ever did. Someday I hope you’ll understand and forgive us for never saying why—”

  A startling bang rocked the screen. Will recoiled along with his dad. The camera shook as Jordan West looked to his left: Something powerful had crashed into the door. He turned back to the lens, his eyes frantic.

  “My dear boy,” he said, his voice breaking. “We love you more than anything in life. Always and forever. Tell no one about this or about our family, no matter who they say they are. Believe me, these people will stop at nothing. Be the person I know you can be. Use the rules and everything we’ve taught you. Instincts, training, discipline, hold nothing back. Run as far and as fast as you can. Do whatever you need to do to stay alive. I’ll come for you. I don’t know when, but I swear I’ll tear down the gates of hell to find you—”

  Another explosion blew out the laptop’s equalizer into white noise. The hotel room filled instantly with a cloud of dust and debris. The image spun around as the laptop flew through the air and landed on the floor at a crazy angle. Will was looking at the window he’d seen earlier but the camera had turned sideways. In the near distance, a tall, singular skyscraper jutted horizontally across the window: the Transamerica Pyramid. San Francisco. The video signal fractured into static lines. Dark figures rushed into view. A curtain closed across the window, and then a hand reached into the keyboard. Dad’s hand: He hit the key that attached the video and sent the email—