It wasn’t much of a rallying cry, but it was the best Daniel had to offer. If they were looking for inspiration, or courage, he didn’t have any to give. But he was determined that the Shroud wouldn’t get the drop on them again. This time Herman would be the one on the run.
As the meeting broke up, Eric took Daniel by the arm and pulled him off to the side.
“Look,” he said, “I still think you’re being too easy on Theo, but I just wanted to say thanks.”
“For what?”
“For treating this like your problem too,” said Eric. “You could have walked away from all of this, from us, long ago, but you keep sticking it out.”
“Yeah, well …”
“And you said we.”
Daniel looked at him. “I what?”
“In the past, whenever you’ve talked about the Supers, you’ve always referred to us as you. Daniel and the Supers were always two different things, and I know it’s because of the powers. But today you said we. That’s a big deal.”
Powers. The one thing Daniel hadn’t told them about. Everyone just assumed that the Shroud had fled when Daniel had arrived, but they didn’t know about how he’d defended himself. They didn’t know what he’d done.
“Look, Eric,” said Daniel, “I need to tell you something. It’s happened again.”
Eric smiled. “The powers? That’s awesome!”
“No!” said Daniel. “It’s not! Listen, I—”
But Daniel didn’t have a chance to finish, because someone was shouting his name. It was Mollie.
“Daniel! Eric! Come quick!”
The two of them turned. Daniel felt Eric tense up, his friend ready for action. Ready for anything.
No one could have been ready for this. Mollie and Rohan were standing with Louisa at the front door. She looked shaken, but there was no Shroud anywhere. No sign of trouble.
“What’s wrong?” Daniel asked. “Louisa?”
“I … Sometimes I take the shortcut,” she said. “I go through the wall here and it takes me outside. Then I just float down to the ground. I don’t really weigh anything when I’m phasing.…”
“What are you talking about?” asked Eric.
Daniel watched as Louisa put her hand on the wall and pushed. And nothing happened. Nothing at all.
“She can’t phase through,” said Mollie. “She’s powerless.”
Chapter Twelve
The Long Way Home
Daniel took the long way home. He rode his bike alone along Route 20, the Old Quarry road, until he could see the lights of houses in the distance; then he turned off and walked the bike along a twisty footpath that would eventually curl its way onto Elm Lane. The Supers usually avoided this route because it passed by the outskirts of the abandoned junkyard that Clay and Bud had claimed as their territory. But tonight Daniel walked the junkyard’s chain-link fence without fear. It was quiet, minus the usual sounds of senseless destruction and Clay’s cursing. The two were not around, not that it mattered. What could the pair of super-bullies do to him now? He’d just steal Clay’s strength, take away his toughness, and use it against him. What did Daniel have to fear from any Super? He’d just do to them what he’d done to Eric. What he’d done to Louisa.
Daniel squeezed himself through a tear in the chain-link fence and walked through the junkyard until he found the gutted old van that the two bullies used as a hideout. Badly misspelled graffiti covered every inch that wasn’t already rusted out, and the floor was littered with empty potato-chip bags and cigar butts. It looked much the same as the last time Daniel had visited—it was a dank, smelly hole. There was only one new addition. In the corner was a carefully stacked pile of rocks. It looked like an amateur’s collection, limestone mostly. The pieces were different shapes, and of different Shades, but not one of them was anything special. But it was clear that they’d all come from the same place.
The junkyard sat roughly halfway between the town and the tree fort. But if you dared cross it, you could find another footpath that took you farther up the mountain and curled around to the north face and the Old Quarry road. The path cut across Elm at the precise point where Daniel and Eric had discovered Clay and Bud several nights ago. If you were hauling rocks from the quarry to this junkyard, you couldn’t avoid it.
Daniel wasn’t sure when he’d started to cry—he wasn’t even sure what he was crying about. He wasn’t sure if he was feeling sad about Louisa or sorry for himself. He certainly wasn’t crying over this latest discovery. He’d guessed what Clay was up to when they’d met on the road: the two bullies were looking for a way to take away Eric’s powers. If Clay could, he’d take away all their powers and make himself into the one Super in existence. A super-bully in a world of victims.
Funny. Clay was digging through a mountain of dirt and rubble looking for a power Daniel already had.
Now that Daniel had begun to cry, he couldn’t make himself stop. If he’d been as strong as Clay, he’d have twisted metal. He’d have punched holes in cars. He’d have smashed their useless rocks. But he couldn’t do that. Such things were beyond him, such strength was beyond him … that power belonged to someone else, until he took it.
He’d taken Louisa’s powers when she’d needed them the most, and he’d left her at the mercy of that Shade creature.
The mountain overhead had never seemed so ominous as it did this night. Daniel wasn’t super—he was cursed.
As he left the rusted-out hulks of the junkyard behind and started along the wooded footpath away from the town, he pictured a young orphan named Herman Plunkett walking in those same woods, beneath that very same mountain, on an evening so many years ago. Had it begun like this for him? Plunkett was only a boy when he discovered the terrible power of the meteor stone, and his first victim—Daniel’s own grandmother—had been an accident. Did Herman cry too when it happened that first time? Was he filled with regret and shame for what he’d done? And how long did it take before that shame softened into acceptance and, eventually, pleasure? How many children did it take?
He walked his bike along the footpath until he reached Route 20. Then he pedaled away from Noble’s Green, away from the tree fort and his friends. He followed the poorly kept road, broken and gravelly in places, as it curled around the mountain’s deserted north face.
Daniel hadn’t been back to the Old Quarry since the collapse, since their final battle with the Shroud. The limestone quarry had been owned by the Plunkett family, but it had only ever served as cover for Herman’s true purpose: the meticulous excavation of the hidden caves beneath the mountain and Plunkett’s obsessive search for remnants of the Witch Fire meteorite. Daniel supposed that the quarry technically belonged to Theo’s side of the family now, although if Herman was back, that wouldn’t last very long. The Shroud wasn’t one to share.
It looked just like Daniel remembered. The Old Quarry was a creepy place to begin with, hidden away in the constant shadow of the mountain’s north face, but the once-steep walls of the deep ravine had collapsed in their fight with the Shroud, and now the dark caves were buried beneath tons of broken earth and rock. Somewhere underneath all that rubble was Herman’s body, or so they’d thought. No Super was especially anxious to visit the Shroud’s grave.
In his dreams, Daniel had been reliving that night over and over again. In real life the Supers had won their fight, the Shroud had been defeated. But in his dream, Daniel lost. Or if he won, he did so at a hideous cost. Awake now, and standing on the edge of the rock pile, Daniel looked down at his hand. In the dream his hand burned away, and there were times, even when he was awake, that he was startled to find it there. Snippets of the dream were slipping into his waking world, and Daniel had started to fear for his sanity. What was truer, real life or the dream? And who’d really claimed victory that night, the Supers or the Shroud?
He’d warned the others to stay away from here. He’d said that they’d explore this place together—that if the Shroud had returned, then it was too dan
gerous to go snooping around his old lair alone. But that had been before he’d learned what he’d done to Louisa. It was too dangerous for him to be around the others now. He had to do this by himself.
Daniel carefully scrambled his way along the rock pile. Though the walls here were not nearly as sheer as they had been before the collapse, the way down was still treacherous, and no one knew that Daniel was even up here. If he fell or twisted an ankle, help wouldn’t come. Luckily the loose dirt and gravel had settled over the last few months, so his footing was sure. Nevertheless, it was late and it was getting dark, and when he finally discovered the hole it was only because he nearly walked headfirst into it.
It had looked just like another shadow beneath a large slab of limestone, until he noticed the surrounding piles of dark, freshly turned earth. Someone had been digging here, and beneath the slab was a hole just big enough for a person to climb into. Or out of. Scuff marks were everywhere on the surrounding rocks, a sign that someone had been dragging things out of there. At first Daniel thought he’d found Plunkett’s escape route, but then he saw the two pairs of muddy footprints that crisscrossed everywhere. One set looked like they belonged to someone roughly the same size as Daniel, or with the same size feet anyway. The other set left a larger impression—wider, deeper. Whoever had made those had been big and heavy.
Clay and Bud. Of course they’d been here. This was where they’d been digging for all those rocks. Those useless pieces of limestone that Clay had hoped might be meteor stones. Daniel shuddered again to think what Clay would do if he got his hands on one. Clay was as spiteful as Herman, but without any of the old man’s delusions of heroism. No one would be safe from him.
Another thought had occurred to Daniel as well. A chilling one. While Daniel was fairly certain that Clay and Bud had failed in their search for the meteorite, there was no telling what they might have uncovered instead. Or more accurately, who.
Peering over the side, Daniel saw that the hole was deep, and built up on the sides to prevent a cave-in. The weak flicker of electric light was visible some ways down and Daniel could hear a series of grunts and curses getting closer.
Daniel leaned down and took a big sniff of tunnel air, just to be sure. Sour milk. Spoiled fish wrapped in dirty socks. Bud.
His gut told him to get out of there as fast as possible. Survival in Noble’s Green thus far had relied on an inarguable strategy: when Clay and Bud were coming one way, he ran the other. And so Daniel began backing away from the hole. Slowly and quietly at first, then he’d make a run for it once he got to his bike parked up on the road. Neither one of them was very fast.
But Daniel hadn’t taken more than two steps backward before he stopped. He just stopped moving. Things were different now. He was different.
Daniel wasn’t powerless anymore. He didn’t have to run anymore. He placed himself in front of the hole and waited.
Bud came out first, huffing and puffing, awkwardly fumbling with a dirty rock. The poor kid could barely squeeze his big body through the mouth of that hole, much less do so while dragging a chunk of limestone. And that’s all he had—limestone. It was a slightly odd color, and to someone who hadn’t actually been close to a meteorite, it could be mistaken for some kind of extraterrestrial rock; but Daniel saw it for what it was. Of all the Supers, only he’d had the fortune, good or bad, to see the Witch Fire rock up close.
Bud backed right into Daniel, butt-first. He yelled out in surprise and dropped the stone. Then he shouted even louder as it rolled onto his foot.
Clay followed him out of the hole, wearing one of those helmets with a flashlight attached to the front. It was too large on the boy—he had to keep pushing it up above his eyes as he went. Daniel wondered where he’d stolen it from. Clay’s mean little eyes spied Daniel right away. Which was fine. Daniel wasn’t hiding this time.
“Oww!” said Bud, hopping on one foot and cursing. “Man, Daniel, that’s the second time!”
“What do you want?” Clay asked.
Standing there alone with Clay and Bud, a mountain between him and the possibility of help, Daniel nearly lost his nerve. But he tried to picture how Eric would act in this situation. His friend would be calm and confident. Daniel tried to summon up that same bravado.
“I was wondering, um … you know … How you doing, by the way?”
Not a great start.
“We’re doing fine, Daniel, how about you?” Clay answered. Whenever Clay said his name, it sounded like he was chewing the word around in his mouth before spitting it out.
At least this time Clay was keeping his distance. He wasn’t getting in Daniel’s face, breathing on him with that horrible tobacco breath of his (he stole his father’s cigars). Clay stayed near the mouth of the hole and was content to leave Bud between them.
“What’ve you two been digging for?” asked Daniel. “More rocks?”
“It was his idea!” Bud suddenly burst out. “He makes me carry them and I don’t wanna.”
“Shut up, Bud!” said Clay. “So, New Kid’s not so normal anymore, huh? Now you got powers like the rest of us, and you think you’re going to start throwing your scrawny weight around too!”
The air had taken on a more pungent tang. Bud must be getting anxious—his powers were really kicking in.
“But they’re not really your powers, are they, Daniel? I saw you catch that tree just as your buddy Eric had himself a power blowout. Now isn’t that a coincidence?”
Daniel felt his blood rising. He’d hoped to bluff his way through this, but Clay must’ve guessed how Daniel’s powers worked. Clay was as mean as they came, but he was also clever.
Daniel took a deep breath to calm himself—and nearly gagged on the smell. His palms were sweaty, but his mouth had gone as dry as paper. He should have run when he’d had the chance, but maybe he could still defuse the situation by taking a different approach.
“Clay, I have to tell you something,” he said. The air around him was thickening into a foul-smelling fog. Why couldn’t Bud just turn it off?
“The Shroud’s back,” Daniel said. “Or something like it. I need to know what you two have been doing up here. What you’ve seen. Because we’re all in danger.”
Clay didn’t say anything right away. He seemed to be sizing Daniel up, measuring whether he was telling the truth. But it was getting increasingly hard to see. And even though Daniel was trying to breathe into the crook of his arm, he was getting nauseous from the smell of Bud’s stink.
“Bull!” Clay said finally. “How could that old Plunkett guy survive that cave-in …? Man, Bud! Knock it off, will you?”
But Bud was shaking his head. “I’m not … Clay, I’m not doing it! I’m not doing anything!”
“What do you mean?” asked Clay. “Then where’d all this stink come from …?”
Clay’s words drifted away as his eyes settled on Daniel. By then Daniel could barely even see his own feet. The noxious fog was thickest near him, and the smell seemed to be everywhere—cloying, clinging to him like it was sweating out of his very pores.
His pores. Daniel had stolen Bud’s super-stink.
Daniel had hoped to take Clay’s strength if things got too heated. He hadn’t even thought about Bud. And now he was a walking stink cloud.
Bud had his hands on his knees and was getting sick all over the ground. Apparently it smelled worse when it wasn’t your own. Clay had pulled his shirt up over his nose and mouth.
“You weren’t happy with stealing Eric’s powers, so you came up here after ours?” said Clay as he grabbed a basketball-sized hunk of limestone from the pile. More than enough to pop Daniel’s head open like a melon.
“I won’t let you do it!” Clay shouted, and Daniel barely had time to duck before the limestone rock exploded over his head.
He didn’t know what he was doing or how he was making it happen, but the fog got even thicker. Of this, at least, Daniel was glad. Clay couldn’t smash Daniel to a pulp if he couldn’t see him.
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The problem was Daniel couldn’t see now either. A foul yellow cloud loomed around him, and no matter where he went, Daniel was stuck at the center of it. He could hear Clay raging, smashing rocks and throwing whatever he could get his hands on, blindly, at Daniel. Or maybe he was just throwing the world’s biggest superpowered tantrum. Either way, it would soon turn deadly if Daniel didn’t get out of there.
He managed to feel his way out of the quarry and into the line of trees. Though he still couldn’t see, he knew he’d made it that far because he smacked his face on the trunk of a giant pine. The fact that he’d gotten out of the rocks without breaking his head open, and that the trees would provide decent cover from the shrapnel of Clay’s tantrum, allowed Daniel a moment to try and calm himself.
As his own heartbeat returned to normal, the stink cloud faded a bit. Had he really created all this smog? Fortunately, the strong mountain winds were already beginning to clear the air, and he could finally see more than five feet in front of him. Daniel wasn’t sure how far he’d gotten, but he knew he wanted to get farther. If he made it to the road, he could find his bike and be gone.
A fresh gust of wind stirred up the air, and for just a moment Daniel could see the Old Quarry road clearly through a break in the fog. A boy was standing there, watching him. Daniel saw him for only a few seconds before the wind died down and the blinding wall of fog returned.
He could hear footsteps as someone ran along the gravel, then a few minutes later the sound of a car pulling away. Daniel kept moving until he felt the crunch of gravel beneath his feet. By that time, the fog had dissipated until it was little more than a few wisps in the copse of trees. His bike was there, leaning against a tree, untouched. Daniel could actually detect a hint of the air’s normal pine smell out here away from the quarry.
The boy was gone. Daniel had caught just a glimpse of him, just a few seconds. But it was long enough to recognize that cat-eyed stare. There was no question as to who it was.