The Agent nodded.
“But if we go back to Rowan, won’t that trigger the witches’ curse?” asked Max.
“I don’t know,” sighed Miss Boon, shooing Mum’s flaring snout away from David.
Two miles later, the Workshop’s car began belching smoke—guttering puffs of white vapor that streamed and fluttered into the dark woods. A grinding of metal on metal vibrated the floor beneath Max’s feet. Rasmussen moaned and rocked the seat in front of him, coaxing the car forward in vain. Fifty feet later they had stopped; the vehicle gave a convulsive shudder, releasing a great plume of silvery water vapor.
“How far is that depot?” asked Cooper.
Rasmussen peered out at a street sign.
“Twenty kilometers at least,” he said.
Cooper glanced at the dashboard’s blinking lights and rubbed wearily at his eyes.
“We’ll have to walk,” he said, shutting down the engine.
“Can’t you people conjure something?” snapped Rasmussen in irritation.
“I don’t know what’s around here or if we’re being followed,” said Cooper. “A witch or something else might follow any trail that Mystics leave behind. We walk.”
Minutes later, Max waited by the roadside as Mr. McDaniels and Cooper returned from pushing the car off the road. The car had stopped smoking and now lay beneath a pile of branches and shrubs at the bottom of a shallow ravine. Cooper took David from Mum and Miss Boon, slinging the small boy over his shoulder, where he lay limp and still. Wet snow fell lazily from the sky as they trudged toward a rising wall of dark fir trees.
Max walked quietly, simmering in his thoughts, as the group hugged the winding road and the wind blew needles from the trees. Nick waddled alongside, straying off periodically only to reappear up ahead, peering expectantly at them as the afternoon gave way to dusk and then to a thin sliver of moon. The forest about them was utterly still; no birds called, no animals rustled amidst the branches or among the underbrush. When they passed a lone cottage with a broken door, Cooper peered inside.
“There’s nothing you want to see in there,” he said quickly before coughing conclusively into his sleeve.
A few stars were twinkling, scattered and faint overhead, when Rasmussen finally broke the monotonous scrape and shuffle of their feet.
“We’re nearly there,” he rasped, stomping his feet for warmth as he pointed to a fenced service road that sloped away into the trees on their right. As they approached in the dark, Max spied snow-spattered signs that warned trespassers to keep away. Rasmussen reached out to the door, which swung forward on its hinge. He kicked something in the snow and bent down to retrieve the remnants of a chain. It had been cut in two.
“Someone has already been here,” he muttered, squinting ahead into the dark and thumbing the severed metal. They stood before the open gate for several seconds, amidst the rich smell of pine and the soft crunch of frost. Max looked closely at David, from whom heat radiated like a warming brick. Mum suddenly hobbled back onto the road and peered back the way they’d come.
“Trucks comin’!” she whispered. “Big ones!”
“Inside the gate,” ordered Cooper, handing David to Mr. McDaniels and ushering them off the road and into the inky shadows beneath the trees. Max heard the low rumble of diesel engines; snowflakes drifted like luminescent plankton across the white shine of headlights.
“They’re vyes,” hissed Mum, sniffing the cold air.
“Dr. Rasmussen, lead them on,” said Cooper. “I’ll catch up.”
They scampered quickly after Rasmussen, who seemed to swim through the dark with tentative swipes of his raw white hands. Mr. McDaniels huffed and sputtered under the burden of David as they trotted along. The forest closed behind them. No headlights could be seen; they heard no sounds from the road.
A half mile later, the path opened into a large clearing that Max felt before he saw; the black canopy gave way to the dim shades of night and muted stars. An airplane hangar, a long dark structure of domed steel and glass, sat in the midst of the clearing. Workmen’s sheds dotted the landscape, and among these several bonfires burned, surrounded by many crouching figures who chattered and brayed in strange voices.
“Things must be very bad if the goblins are venturing out alone,” whispered Miss Boon.
“Bleedin’ cowards,” agreed Mum, “unless they’ve got numbers.”
Max peered out at a squat, sway-backed goblin with a curling nose and the twitching ears of a goat. It tottered away from the nearest fire to relieve itself behind a shed. Above the fire was the skinned and spitted body of a sickly-looking horse, rotating slowly while the assembled goblins sang and drank and cast strange shadows on the snow.
“Are they Astaroth’s servants?” whispered Max, tugging at Miss Boon’s sleeve.
“I doubt it,” said the teacher, frowning. “I think they’ve just wandered down from the mountains or out from beneath some hill.”
“What are they singing?” asked Max, trying to decipher the bits of words from the goblins’ chorus.
“They’re singing of trickery and deceits, dark gods and vengeance,” said Miss Boon, frowning as a pipe began to play. Several of the goblins cavorted about the fire in a jerky, leaping dance while they tilted their small, horned heads to shriek at the sickle moon. Whether they called out in worship or fear or delight was lost upon Max as they circled about their spitted dinner and their chorus filled the clearing. Max gazed back into the woods, but there was no sign of Cooper.
“What’s in that building?” whispered Miss Boon to Rasmussen.
“Transports,” he replied. “Planes of all sorts.”
“Can they get us to America?” asked Miss Boon.
“Yes, yes, of course,” muttered Rasmussen. “Assuming they haven’t been damaged.”
“We’ll just have to sneak by them the best we can,” said Miss Boon.
“Oh dear,” said Mum, squeezing Miss Boon’s arm. “Wind’s changing, and goblin sniffers would give me own a run!”
True to Mum’s word, Max felt a cool breeze on his neck. It carried their scent out into the clearing as thick and rich as spilled soup.
The singing stopped.
The goblins turned from the fires to gaze at them, like curious hyenas inspecting a potential kill.
“So much for stealth,” muttered Miss Boon. “Run!”
Max clutched the gae bolga as they dashed across the clearing. The goblins merely watched them for a moment, their small luminescent eyes blinking in surprise. Max saw one of the larger ones lope forward to rest its weight on its hands like a potbellied baboon. It scratched at a curling leather cap on its head and scowled at them with a mouth full of chipped teeth. With a guttural shriek, it suddenly bolted after them. Dozens of goblins followed suit, converging on the group as they fled toward the hangar.
The goblins surrounded them just as they gained the door. Rasmussen frantically punched numbers into a keypad while the others huddled around with their backs against the wall. Miss Boon muttered a spell, but a thrown rock sent her ducking low with a shriek, disrupting the incantation. The goblins leered close, gibbering and gnashing their teeth; bony hands swiped at the humans with increasing boldness.
The pointed, swollen face of the goblin leader emerged as he pushed through their ranks. Taking his place before the huddled group, the long-armed goblin spoke to Mum in a sly, rasping language. After several barking snippets, the goblin wagged a clawed finger at Mum and spoke in halting English.
“Three for you and three for the pot. Fair is fair, foul hag.”
“What does that mean?” said Mr. McDaniels, kicking his foot out at a particularly brazen young goblin. Nick hissed and bristled at the creature, which retreated back into the throng.
“Goblins and hags work together sometimes,” panted Mum, eyeing the lead goblin warily. “An old truce. He’s striking a bargain, you see. Naturally assumes me to be the leader. If three of us are given up, then the rest can go. His name is
Bnuublik and he’s from Feldberg.”
“I don’t care where he’s from!” bellowed Mr. McDaniels.
“What do they want with the three who are given up?” asked Max cautiously.
“Astaroth’s armies have gobbled up everything for miles,” explained the hag with a sympathetic shrug.
“Tell them to forget it,” said Max, swinging up the sharp spearhead.
The goblin leader glanced at Max and raised his hand, speaking quickly to Mum.
“Wait!” cried Mum. “He’s prepared to make another offer to the fierce one with the evil knife! Bnuublik says that they will let us go if we surrender He-Who-Looks-Like-a-Mound-of-Cheese and if I agree to . . . No,” said Mum, frowning. “No, that can’t be right.”
The goblin calmly repeated himself.
Mum’s face darkened.
“I’m not that kind of girl!” roared the hag, walloping the goblin, who somersaulted backward to the immense delight of his comrades. He scowled and rocked back onto his haunches, rubbing his mottled cheek.
Suddenly, a car horn blared in the distance, long and continuous as though stuck. Shouts sounded from far away; lights bobbed and flashed in the woods. Seconds later, Cooper hurtled into the clearing, dodging to the side just as a truck screamed past him, almost rolling over as it skidded to a stop in the snow. More trucks lumbered into the clearing; vyes in trench coats and red armbands spilled out the back. Scrambling to his feet, the Agent sprinted toward the hangar.
The goblins shrieked and scattered away, fleeing like frightened gibbons into the safety of the trees. Rasmussen resumed his frantic pecking at the keypad until the door swung inward to reveal a dark, cavernous space within.
“Inside!” shrieked Rasmussen, tugging at Mr. McDaniels’s arm and waving at the others to follow. Cooper closed the distance between them while the vyes dropped down to all fours, black and gray blurs against the moonlit snow. Dashing inside to join them, the Agent slammed the door shut and pressed his weight against it. A tremendous impact jarred the door as the first vye slammed against it; metal hinges groaned, and the door frame gave a brittle shiver. Rasmussen and Mr. McDaniels flanked Cooper and the three threw their shoulders against the door as it dented inward under the weight of the vyes that snapped and cursed and raged against it.
“Hazel, bind this door!” grunted Cooper, wrenching back a hairy arm that thrust itself through the opening. There was a hideous crack and a bloodcurdling howl erupted from the other side of the door. Snatching back its injured arm, the vye let the door slam shut once again.
Max watched dark shapes dart past windows; a wolf silhouette pressed against the frosted panes, scratching at the reinforced glass. He turned to help Mum pull David away from the door, where Miss Boon was hastily scrawling invisible symbols in the air. The men staggered back as something large and heavy—an improvised ram of some sort—crashed into it from outside. Cooper hurled himself once again at the door, which was beginning to warp and buckle from the strain.
“There!” cried Miss Boon as the entry began to hum and glow with a soft iridescence.
“Are there any other doors?” asked Cooper of Rasmussen.
“One on the other side,” gasped the man. “And the hangar entrance, of course.”
At this, Max turned and gazed at the looming shapes behind them. Rasmussen hastily flipped on the lights, transforming the black, mysterious forms into a fleet of aircraft that appeared to be salvaged from earlier eras to comprise a sort of aviation museum. Max spied round-bellied bombers and delicate biplanes, broad-nosed cargo craft and troop carriers neatly arrayed in rows of matte green and gleaming silver. Behind him, the pounding came to a sudden halt. Cooper glanced warily at the door.
“I’m going to secure the other door. Rasmussen, get everyone aboard whatever we’re taking. Quick now! ”
The Agent dashed across the hangar, ducking under the wing of a World War II fighter. While his footsteps clattered away, Rasmussen trotted down a line of aircraft. He stopped at a broad-winged bomber that had an unobstructed path to the hangar doors. The engineer muttered to himself and counted their numbers on his fingers.
“This is it,” decided Dr. Rasmussen.
“How many does this seat?” asked Miss Boon.
“Nine or ten,” replied the man, eyeing Mr. McDaniels.
“Plenty of room,” said Miss Boon. “We’ll wait for Cooper.”
Breaking glass showered onto the floor.
“There’s no time!” Rasmussen cried, climbing aboard as three vyes squeezed through a second-story window across the hangar. The vyes leapt from the jagged sill down to the floor, scrambling to their feet in a sliding screech of claws to close the distance. Several more pushed their way, snapping and slavering, through the window.
A rumbling noise filled the hangar, a ponderous drumming of metal and wheels. At the far end of the building, Max saw the hangar doors sliding open. A gust of cold night air swept toward them with Cooper in its wake, yelling at them to board.
The bomber’s hatch clattered open; Rasmussen had already disappeared inside. Mum shrieked and climbed on all fours up into the plane’s belly. Nick leapt in after, retreating quickly into the gunner’s seat, a small glass hemisphere attached to the underbelly of the plane. Mr. McDaniels and Miss Boon managed to carry David inside.
Propellers whirred to life and the plane strained against wooden blocks wedged beneath its wheels. Skidding to a stop, Cooper ducked beneath the bomber and wrenched the blocks away.
Several vyes had now reached the plane, which shuddered and rolled slowly forward. Cooper’s wavy-bladed knife flashed; a vye howled and fell to the ground, snapping wildly at a wound in its belly. Max went to help Cooper, but the Agent waved him away with a furious command.
“Get David out of here!”
The Agent was now moving with blurred precision; three more vyes fell as Cooper placed himself between the open hatch and the approaching creatures. Rasmussen yelled from the cockpit.
“They’ve blocked our exit!”
Max ducked beneath the slow-rolling bomber and saw that the vyes had positioned two trucks as a barricade before the open doors. Flames leapt outside in the dark, sending white smoke up in sputtering waves. Max heard Cooper grunt as a vye closed its teeth on his leg; the kris whistled in a lethal arc. Disentangling himself from the heavy mound at his feet, the Agent whirled to glimpse the barricade at the hangar’s exit before hurrying over to them.
“What should we do?” asked Max breathlessly.
“What I told you,” huffed the Agent, seizing Max in a painful grip and practically hurling him through the bomber’s hatch. Miss Boon met him at the doorway.
“Hurry and get inside, William,” she pleaded.
Cooper paused long enough for a smile to flit across his ruined features.
“Got things to do, Hazel. Be well.”
The Agent slammed the door shut and pounded twice on the plane’s side. Max squirmed around his father and squeezed into the cockpit next to Rasmussen, who was guiding the plane slowly past several fighters. The trucks loomed ahead, blocking their way as more vyes streamed into the hangar. Max blinked as a brilliant flash momentarily blinded him.
“What was that?” asked Rasmussen, pawing at his eyes.
“Cooper,” said Max, letting his eyes readjust. He blinked again and saw that the Agent had run up ahead of them and was weaving his way past blinded vyes to close on the rear truck blocking their path. The Agent swung himself up into the truck and disappeared inside. A vye was promptly thrown through the windshield, skidding across the hood before it lay still. There was a hideous squeal of metal on metal as Cooper rammed the other truck from behind, inching it forward.
“What’s happening?” asked Miss Boon urgently from behind them.
“He’s clearing the way,” muttered Max, his spirits falling as more vyes converged on Cooper’s truck, clinging to the bed and scrabbling for a hold on the doors and windows, apparently suicidal in their determination to
reach the Agent.
Despite the onslaught, Cooper forced the other truck steadily forward in a shower of sparks. Smoke from outside now billowed into the hangar, filling the air with a filmy haze. Easing the throttle back, Rasmussen guided the bomber smoothly forward.
“Can we make it?” called Mr. McDaniels.
“I can hardly see,” muttered Rasmussen, squinting through his broken spectacles.
A dark shape suddenly obscured their view; an enormous vye had climbed up onto the windshield and clung like a barnacle to the plane. Its muzzle contorted in a smile; a heavy palm smacked against the glass, creating a spiderweb of thin cracks. Rasmussen shrieked and braced himself as the vye reared back for the shattering blow.
It never came.
The vye was yanked unceremoniously from the windshield by an invisible force that left the creature momentarily suspended in midair, flailing like an overturned turtle, before it was suddenly flung away to thud against a neighboring plane. Max turned and saw Miss Boon behind him, her features furrowed with concentration.
“Did you do that?” asked Max, but his Mystics instructor merely squeezed past him. Hurrying into the cockpit, she placed her palm against the cracked windshield as Rasmussen pulled back on the throttle. While the plane eased forward, the spiderweb of cracks seemed to thin and diminish until the glass was whole again.
“Everyone strap in!” yelled Rasmussen, sending Max scurrying down to the ball turret, where Nick was stowed.
Sliding in next to the lymrill, Max saw the dark shapes of vyes swarming all about them. Beyond the vyes, Max could see that Cooper’s truck had now nearly rammed the other truck out of their way. A few more seconds and . . .
“Go!” shrieked Max, banging the hatch above him. “Go, go, go!”
The plane groaned forward; fighters and cargo planes rolled past. Vyes scattered as the plane picked up speed, hurtling out the doors and through trails of burning oil and smoke.
Seconds later, air rushed beneath the bomber’s wings. The heavy craft bucked slightly and then leveled off, rising steadily above the dark clearing and its strange constellations of campfires. Looking below, Max saw Cooper’s truck in flames, careening wildly toward the woods while dozens of vyes galloped behind on the white snow. The plane lifted and banked to the right; the Black Forest fell away beneath tattered layers of clouds that hid the world beneath a veil of pale gossamer. Cooper disappeared from view.