“I got hurt coming home.”
Xander shook his head, eyeing David. “You look terrible. Your face is covered with mud . . . where your tears didn’t wash it away.”
David touched his face. He had been in too much pain to even realize he had been crying about it. He kicked out at Xander’s legs, striking him in the ankle.
“Hey,” Xander said.
David said, “What was that, drawing Bob on the tent? We were almost free and clear until you stopped to do that.”
Xander’s expression grew solemn. “Something Dad thought of,” he said. “It’s a way of letting Mom know we were there. If she sees it, she’ll know we’re looking for her.”
“But what if it doesn’t last?” David said. “Does anything we do in those other worlds matter? Do they stay the way we left them?”
Xander thought for a minute. He looked at the portal door. “Maybe we should go back and see.”
“No way!”
“I don’t mean now. You know how the rooms change, how the things in the antechambers switch to something else?”
“Sometimes they’re in another room. Sometimes they don’t show up again until later.”
“Same as the portals; the worlds are cycling through the house,” Xander agreed. “There are twenty portals on this floor. What if there are a hundred different worlds? A thousand? It’s like they move away from this house and then come back.”
“Like a Ferris wheel,” David suggested. “The seats move away from the guy who helps people get on at the bottom, then later on they come back down to him.”
“Yeah, like that,” Xander said. “But we don’t know where the portals go when they move away from the house.” He gestured toward the portal they had just stepped through. “Let’s let it go away. When it comes back, we’ll check it out, see if the world beyond is the way we just left it or if it reverts back to the way it was when we first found it.”
David nodded, thinking. “So if it were a Ferris wheel and we left gum on the seat, would the gum be there when we saw the seat again, or would someone have cleaned it off ?”
“Right,” Xander said, smiling. ”In this case, will Bob be there when we check again? It’s exactly the kind of experiment Dad talked about.”
David frowned. “How are we going to record what we learned if Dad doesn’t even know we’re doing this? You thought we could go over, take a quick look around, maybe find Mom. But, Xander . . .” He shook his head. “I don’t think it’s going to be that easy. Dad was right—we have to learn more about all of this. You can’t take a quick look around when people are shooting at you.”
“We’re going to have to tell him, I guess,” Xander said. He pointed a finger at David. “But he’d better get moving. I feel like we’re dragging our feet.”
David narrowed his eyes at his brother and said, “Don’t talk about Dad like that. He’s the one who thought up the control room. He’s the one who knew it was going to take more than just popping in and out of the worlds to find Mom.”
“Yeah, but we’re the ones actually doing something.”
That made David think of something his old soccer coach had said. “So we’re the players and he’s the coach,” David suggested. “Together we’re a team. We’re in this together, right?”
“Together,” Xander agreed. He smiled again at David. “You know how a hot shower feels so good after coming back from a world?”
“Like you’re washing the bad stuff away,” David said.
Xander gestured toward David’s cast. “Let’s wrap that in a trash bag. You really need a shower.”
CHAPTER thirty - eight
TUESDAY, 8 : 50 A . M .
In school Tuesday morning, David could hardly keep his eyes open. He needed more sleep . . . and they needed to find Mom . . . and they needed to keep up the appearance of a normal life. How could they do it all? Dad always said things looked bleaker when you’re tired. David didn’t really believe a good night’s sleep would give him a better attitude. But it sure would help him keep his eyes open.
His arm continued to throb. Every now and then it would send a searing hot dart into his shoulder, neck, and head. He wondered if it needed resetting or even if he’d broken it in another place. He didn’t want to tell Dad about it, though. Dad would insist on taking David back to the doctor, which would give the doctor, and the town, more reason to believe that he was in danger—either from his own family or from the house. He would suffer through it and hope it got better.
“King?”
He heard Mrs. Moreau say his last name and realized she had been calling on him for some time. He raised his head, forcing his eyes to open wide. “Ma’am?”
She scowled at him with her birdlike features. “Are we asleep, Mr. King?”
He glanced around. All faces were turned toward him, smiling at his being caught unaware. “Uh . . .” he said. “I’m not.”
“Then I must be boring you.”
“No, ma’am.”
Her narrow lips bent into a tight smile. “Would you come to the front, please?” she said.
David lowered his head, miserable. This was all he needed. He pushed himself out of his chair and walked to the front.
Mrs. Moreau said, “Please summarize today’s lesson for the class.”
There was a lesson?
Facing his classmates, he waited for something to come to him. Surely something his teacher had said during the past hour had made it into his head. He could tell his class about meeting a Civil War general, about being shot at, and how it feels to run into a door with your broken arm. But he didn’t think that’s what she wanted from him. After a full minute of her letting him stand there looking stupid, he turned the most apologetic eyes he could muster on her.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize to me, Mr. King,” said Mrs. Moreau. “It’s your classmates who suffer when you don’t pay attention. Look at all the time you’ve wasted.”
David scanned the faces staring back at him. A few nasty smiles, but mostly he saw sympathy. Probably they were just hoping they weren’t next. He looked back at Mrs. Moreau, hoping to be excused to return to his chair. He saw only sly expectation on her face.
What does she want from me? he thought. Then he realized that she had been serious. In a low voice he asked her, “You want me to apologize to the class?”
“That would be nice.”
He turned back to all the faces. “I’m sorry.”
Mrs. Moreau touched his back as though they were buddies again. “Thank you, Mr. King. Don’t let it happen again.”
On the way back to his seat, his eyes landed on Clayton, the boy who had been sent to the principal’s office for ridiculing David’s name. Clayton gave him a stern look and ran his finger across his throat.
Oh, come on! David thought and sat down.
CHAPTER thirty - nine
In his dream, the assassin was back home in Nineveh. He had just returned along with the Assyrian army from yet another conquest. Crowds filled the streets to cheer for the returning fighters and taunt the prisoners in their cages. Each of these cages was designed to hold a single person. They were small, even too small for children. But it was grown men and women who had been crammed into each of the hundreds of cages rolling into the city. Their howls of despair for their families, for themselves, rose above the cheers like the voices of a thousand souls condemned to Hades. Many would be removed from their cages and skinned alive during the coming days of celebration.
The assassin paced at the edge of the crowds, recognized but never acknowledged. No one dared to speak his name or even allow their eyes to dwell on him for more than a couple of seconds. He knew that their collective voices thanked him for his role in the conquest. That knowledge and their fear were gratitude enough.
As he watched, a soldier drew his sword and held it high. The man pointed to the fingers of a prisoner, which were protruding from the iron bars of his cage.The crowd roared louder. The soldier brought down his sw
ord, skimming it along the bars. Sparks flew up and the fingers came off. The soldier leaned over and used the tip of his sword to flick the fingers into the crowd. The citizens of the assassin’s capital city scrambled for these treasures. They would be added to the ever-changing, ever-decaying “works of art” the citizens kept in their homes, art made exclusively of the body parts of their conquered enemies. It was their way of honoring the gods for their victories and their expanding empire. It reminded every Assyrian both of their power and the fragility of their mortal bodies. They had to stay strong, had to keep conquering, or they themselves would end up as artwork in another man’s home.
Striding past a cart of caged prisoners, the assassin paused. The crowd was pointing to something just beyond him, urging him to act. Toes protruded from a cage. In one swift motion the assassin unsheathed his sword and brought it down on the toes. The woman inside the cage bellowed in pain and turned her face to the assassin.
He reeled back as he recognized his own mother.
Taksidian bolted straight up in his hotel bed, gasping for breath. Sweat coated his body and drenched his sheets. They clung to him like a specter, trying to pull him back into the nightmare. He peeled them off his body and tossed them to the floor. He ran his fingers up his face, catching the strands of hair that were plastered there and pushing them back over his head. He leaned his head back and moaned.
Would the nightmare never leave him alone? For more than thirty years it had haunted him. Despite the wealth he had amassed, the luxuries to which he had grown accustomed, ever since he had stepped from the world of his birth into that house, his sleeping mind never let him forget. The world from which he came was violent and bloody, and indeed his mother, his whole family, had been slaughtered. But he had not taken part, except to know what happened as part of the process to harden his heart and prepare him for the life of an assassin.
He rose from his bed and stretched, feeling his joints pop, his muscles flex. Age was catching up to him, and he still had so much more to do. He strode to the curtains and parted them. Daylight streamed in, stinging his eyes. What little sleep he allowed himself he always got during the day. Night was too valuable to waste on sleep. It was for working without interruption. And for stealth.
He went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. While the water heated, he leaned against the countertop to stare at his reflection in the mirror. His face was still lean, his eyes bright. Had he remained in Assyria, had he gone back, he would have certainly been dead by now. No Assyrian lived past the age of forty, and the assassin who saw his thirtieth birthday was rare. Here he was, almost sixty and still kicking. Kicking hard.
He glanced at his watch. 1:13. Good. Still time to get to the house before that family returned from school. He had news to gather and instructions to give. He bristled at the thought of the King family. They were a thorn in his side.
No matter, he thought as he turned back to the running water and checked its temperature. Soon enough, he would pluck them from his flesh and flick them away—like fingers under the tip of a sword.
CHAPTER forty
TUESSDAY, 3 : 00 P . M .
Throughout that second day of school, David kept an eye on Clayton. He watched him in the hallways between classes and at lunch. When he saw David looking, the boy merely smiled. It was not until the final bell rang that Clayton made his move. As David was leaving his last class, Clayton slipped into the room. He grabbed David’s cast, sending a fresh bolt of pain into David’s shoulder.
“Let’s talk,” Clayton said.
“I don’t think so,” David said. He tried to shake his arm free, but Clayton had a good grip, and pain kept David’s movements to a minimum. “Let go,” David said, trying to look fierce.
Another boy, taller than either of them, stepped up beside Clayton. David knew his name was Joe.
He jerked his head to indicate the classroom behind David. “Get in there, King,” he said quietly.
Other kids streamed past them and glanced back knowingly.
David took a step back. Clayton and Joe stayed right on him.
Clayton turned to the teacher, who was erasing the white marker board at the front of the classroom. He used his sweetest voice to say, “Mrs. Hammerstrom, Mr. Reid is looking for you.”
“Oh,” Mrs. Hammerstrom said, setting the eraser down and smoothing the wrinkles out of her blouse and skirt. She hurried out of the room, her heels clack-clack-clacking.
The sound was harsh in David’s ears, which struck him as sadly appropriate for the situation he was in.
“Let’s sit,” Clayton told him.
“You don’t want to sit,” David said.
“I do, for a while,” Clayton said, smiling. “At least until the school clears out a bit. We don’t want your screams to draw too much attention.”
“Clayton, it’s not my fault you went to the office.”
“Oh, really? Whose fault is it, then? Let’s see, it was your stupid name that got me in trouble, and it was your stupid father I had to go see.”
David stuck out his chest and bumped Clayton with it. “He’s not stupid.”
Clayton was taller than David by at least two inches. When he bumped back, David had to take a step to keep from falling.
“Stupid enough,” Clayton said and laughed, as though he had said something clever.
“Look, you want to fight. I get it. But how tough are you, beating up on a kid with a broken arm? Wait until I get this cast off, and we’ll make it fair.”
Clayton’s palm slammed into David’s chest. David stumbled into a desk and fell backward hard. The desk fell with him, and the seat back cracked him on the head. He rubbed the spot, already feeling a knot starting to swell under his hair. He looked up at Clayton’s and Joe’s grinning faces and said, “Mrs. Hammerstrom will be coming back.”
“Not for a while,” Clayton said, laughing. “I saw Mr. Reid take off in his car after last period. He’s the assisstant principal, you know. Her boss. She’ll look everywhere before giving up.” He slapped Joe in the arm with the back of his hand. “Shut the door.”
David watched Joe lean into the hallway, look in both directions, then shut the door.
“Clearing out fast,” Joe reported.
Clayton’s grin grew wider.
“My dad’s waiting for me,” David said. “We pick up my sister right after school.”
“He’ll wait for you,” Clayton said.
“Or he won’t,” Joe added and laughed.
“Either way, this won’t take long,” Clayton said.
David really didn’t need this. He was tired. He was hurt. He just wanted to go home and find his mother. He said, “My father will send in my brother to look for me.” He tried to make it sound like a fact, not a threat.
“Oooh, your brother. I’m scared. Joe, you scared?”
“Shaking in my boots,” Joe said. He laughed again.
Clayton hardened his face into a mask of meanness. He said, “We’ll just have to kick both your butts. Two Kings for the price of one.”
David didn’t like Clayton thinking he could own Xander. “He’s fifteen, my brother. A lot bigger than you.”
“I know who he is,” Clayton sneered. “You don’t think you can just move here without everyone knowing everything about you, do you?”
Not everything, David thought. If you did, your little mind would explode. He wanted to say it, but settled for saying, “You don’t know anything.”
“I know you moved into the old haunted house outside of town,” he said.
David felt sick. “It’s not haunted,” he said.
“Everyone knows it is,” Clayton said. “Right, Joe?”
Joe nodded.
“Last family that lived there, the father killed ’em all, then killed himself.”
“Did not,” David said. He warned himself to shut up, just shut up.
“Did too. Maybe your daddy’s going to do the same to you too. Is that how you broke your arm? Da
ddy try to kill you?”
David lowered his head. Not seeing Clayton’s sour face helped David bite his tongue.
“Yeah, that’s what I heard. Your daddy broke your arm. That’s what everyone’s saying. Huh, Joe?”
“Twisted it until it just snapped like a twig,” Joe confirmed. “Heard you cried like a girl.”
Stay down, David told himself. He wants me to fight. Then he could say I started it.
Clayton said, “The whole town is so convinced your dad’s banging you around, I can pound you to a pulp and no one’ll believe that I did it.”
“I fell out of a tree,” David said quietly.
Clayton laughed. “Oh, is that the best you and your old man could come up with? Fell out of a tree?” He stepped closer, reached down, and grabbed a fistful of David’s shirt.
David swung his good arm up, knocking Clayton’s hand away.
Clayton looked surprised by David’s boldness. He said, “That’ll cost you another broken arm, dude.” He circled around to David’s left side, obviously looking for an easier angle of attack.
Outside, a car horn honked. Joe looked through the windows at the back of the room. “Clay, I think it’s his old man.”
Clayton crouched. “Get down! Get down! Did he see you?”
“I don’t think so. He’s out in the parking lot . . .”
The horn sounded again.
“Honking,” Joe said.
“No kidding? Go look.”
Joe waddled in a crouch to the windows. He peered over the sill. “He’s just sitting—”
David lurched forward. Clayton grabbed for him. David swung his arm and smashed his cast into Clayton’s mouth. The boy yelled and flew backward. David pushed himself up and darted for the door. Clayton was wailing behind him.
David didn’t look back. He pulled open the door and ran into the hallway. He turned right, toward the main entrance, and beat his feet against the tile floor, wanting only to put distance between himself and Clayton. He realized too late that he’d made a mistake. He was heading toward the cafeteria, not the front entrance. He stopped to turn around and saw Clayton and Joe emerge from the classroom. Blood coated Clayton’s lip and chin.