“All of this,” Daniel said softly. “He’s doing all of this because of me. Because he thinks I’m like him. I’m so sorry, Eric. They’re going to lose and there’s nothing I can do to help. I’m not like you—I’m no leader. All my plans led us here, right into his hands. Now he’s going to win and I’m powerless to stop it.” Daniel opened his fist, exposing the coal-black ring cupped in his palm. “Unless … unless …”
“Unless what?” asked a small voice behind him.
Daniel turned and looked for the speaker, but no one was there.
“Rose?” he asked. “Is that you?”
“I’m not supposed to say,” answered a voice from nowhere. “Louisa told me to stay disappeared and to be quiet until it was all over.”
“Run home, Rose. You should run home as fast as you can.”
“But Louisa said—”
“It’s too late, Rose. We lost.”
“Aren’t you going to help them? What’s in your hand? Is it something to help them?” asked Rose, suddenly visible by Daniel’s side. She was reaching for the ring in Daniel’s palm.
“No!” he said, pulling his hand away from her. “You can’t touch it! It’ll hurt you if you do. I’m sorry, I just … I just don’t know what to do!” But even as Daniel said it, he knew that it wasn’t exactly true. He had the ring.
“Please!” shouted Rose, tears filling her eyes. “You’re the smart one! Louisa always says! So help them!”
Daniel gripped the ring so tightly in his fist that he could feel it cutting into his flesh. The ring was an incredible source of power, but power at what cost? He might be able to use it against Plunkett, but first he’d have to use it against his friends.
Incredible source of power …
Then the answer hit him like a bolt from the sky. He felt that familiar rush, the excitement that he got when the final piece of a puzzle came together.
“Stay here, Rose, and look after Eric. You’re right, I am the smart one, and I just figured out how to beat him!”
Shoving the ring into his jeans pocket, he ran along the tunnel, out into the open and toward the battle. He felt smart, he felt brave and he felt ready for a fight. Plunkett had made a mistake—one so obvious that Daniel had almost missed it. The old man had lived in a world of comic-book villains for too long.
“I know how to beat you!” he cheered as he bounded down the steep incline, careless of how much he stumbled or fell.
The Shroud looked up, and Daniel could feel the old man’s angry glare from within that cowl of shadow. “Don’t be foolish, Daniel. This is your moment as much as it is mine.”
The ooze stopped its spread over Mollie. Rohan and Bud seemed to be making headway in freeing Clay. Apparently Plunkett’s traps needed his full concentration to work, and if nothing else, Daniel had just bought his friends a little more time.
“You’re going too far. You’re out of control!” said Daniel.
“Sometimes sacrifices have to be made,” said Plunkett. “But you can save their lives, Daniel, by taking their power for your own and ridding them of their memories of all of this. Leave them powerless, or watch as they suffer the ultimate fate!”
Plunkett wasn’t bluffing, Daniel could tell. The years of secrecy and loneliness had finally driven the old man insane. For all these years Plunkett had deluded himself into believing that he was acting for the good of the world, while somewhere in the twisted recesses of his mind was the knowledge that he was really just a villain. The truth was there in his art, in those comics he had drawn so many years ago, in which he reduced himself to a lurking shadow, preying upon the sleeping, the defenseless. He wanted Daniel to help him continue the lie. He needed an ally to keep him from facing the truth, and he was willing to kill to get one.
“You said it yourself, Plunkett,” said Daniel, taking another step toward him. He needed to keep Plunkett talking—to keep him distracted until he could get close enough for what he had planned. “You told me that Gram was full of light. She might’ve changed the world, but you stole that from her. I won’t steal that same gift from my friends. I’m not like you and I never will be.”
Though Daniel couldn’t see the expression on Plunkett’s face, he still felt the old man’s fury. His rage was like a living thing, palpable in the very air around him. “If you want to honor your grandmother’s memory so,” he hissed, “then you can join her!”
Daniel ran headlong at the Shroud, but only made it a few feet. From within the darkness of the Shroud’s being came another tendril of blackness, whipping around Daniel’s neck with an iron grip. But unlike Clay, Daniel wasn’t invulnerable. He had no super-strength to protect him. With just a flick, Plunkett would snap Daniel’s neck.
“Goodbye, Daniel. Such a waste. The world’s greatest detective has just met his end.”
Just then, the earth seemed to crack open. With a thunderous crash, the quarry erupted in a shower of wind and dust, blinding Daniel and driving him to his knees. When his vision cleared, he saw that he was free of the Shroud’s tentacle and that Plunkett had engaged a new enemy. It looked like a scene drawn by the old man himself, an epic battle between the Shroud and his archenemy, Johnny Noble. Only it wasn’t Johnny Noble—it was Eric.
Daniel had never seen anything like it. Though Eric was obviously still somewhat dazed, seeing his friends in danger had unleashed a new rage in him. Black tendrils lashed at his face and hands, but he shrugged them off, oblivious to the bloody red welts they left on his body. Through an act of sheer will, he fought his way past Plunkett’s defenses, and when the two superpowered beings collided, the entire quarry shook with violence.
Daniel heard someone call his name, and he turned to see Mollie and the rest of the group scrambling over the rocks to reach him. They were all there; even Rose had appeared in their midst. Clay was conscious, and Daniel found some amusement in the fact that it was Rohan who was helping him limp along.
“Daniel, are you all right?” asked Mollie, her voice barely audible over the sounds of Eric’s furious fighting. Daniel nodded, his eyes locking on the struggle raging nearby. “We have to help Eric!” she shouted. “He won’t be able to keep this up for long.”
Rohan was saying something, but his words were lost in the cacophony around them.
“What?” Daniel yelled.
“I said,” shouted Rohan, moving closer, “that we need to get out of here. This quarry isn’t as stable as it looks, and the fighting is going to bring the walls down on top of our heads. I can hear the rumbling already!”
“We can’t leave Eric!” said Mollie.
“We won’t,” said Daniel. “I promise.”
The tide was turning. Strong as Eric was, he was clearly no match for the Shroud’s powers, and he was weakening fast. “Clay!” said Daniel. “Can you still fight?”
Clay shrugged and spat, “Yeah, I heal pretty fast. I was just a little light-headed is all. That creep jumped me while my back was turned.” But for all Clay’s bluster, he still seemed wobbly on his feet. Daniel hoped that the bully-turned-ally would be strong enough to last at least a few rounds against the Shroud.
“What’s the plan?” asked Rohan.
“The plan is that you and Bud take Louisa and Rose to safety. Your powers aren’t going to help against the Shroud.”
“And what about you?” asked Rohan. “You don’t have any powers at all.”
“No, but I figured out Plunkett’s weakness. Besides, I owe it to Eric. Now get out of here! We’ll join you when we can.”
Rohan looked as if he were ready to argue, but in the end he just nodded. When he turned to gather up the troops, he noticed that Bud was already halfway up the trail. “Didn’t have to ask him twice,” Rohan muttered.
Louisa surprised Daniel with a quick kiss on the cheek. “Be careful.” Daniel hoped that the grime on his face sufficiently covered his blushing. One look at Mollie told him that it didn’t.
Rohan led the others after Bud, and Daniel wasted no time w
atching them go. “Here’s what we do. Clay, you need to get in there and help Eric. Then, while Plunkett’s distracted, Mollie—I need you to get me as close to him as you can.”
“Why?” Clay asked. “What can you do?”
Daniel allowed himself a small grin. “It’s always in the details. Plunkett slipped up and told me the source of his power; now I just have to take it from him.”
“Tell me,” said Mollie. “I’m faster.”
“No,” said Daniel. “You can’t touch it, either of you. If you do, you’ll end up like Simon. It’s gotta be me.”
“Well, New Kid, you’re no coward, I’ll give you that!” Clay said, cracking his knuckles as he talked. “As for me, time for round two!”
Then Clay Cudgens ran down the side of the ravine to join the fight. No longer on the defensive, the Shroud had Eric cornered against the rock wall of the quarry. Large chunks of limestone fell around them as they traded blows. Daniel worried that soon Eric would be unable to defend himself; then nothing would prevent Plunkett from stealing Eric’s powers and adding them to his own.
Mollie let out a low whistle as Clay blindsided the Shroud and brought him tumbling to the ground. “I never thought I’d say it, but I’m glad Clay Cudgens has our backs.”
It was an all-out scrape now as the three of them tumbled and rolled across the quarry floor. In the kicked-up dust and gravel, it was hard to tell the combatants apart. Meanwhile, an ominous rumbling had become audible to even Daniel’s ears. Pretty soon the whole quarry was going to come crashing down around them.
“Okay, Mollie,” said Daniel, putting his arms around her neck. “The next opening you see, go for it! Fly me straight into him.”
“Are you sure about this?”
“Not at all, but it’s the best chance we’ve got.”
Mollie wrapped her arms around his waist and smiled, but her eyes were glued to the scene below.
Daniel didn’t have time to respond, because at that moment the Shroud let out a fierce shout of victory as he threw his enemies to the ground. He brought himself to his full height, the black tentacles of shadow forming into long, jagged spikes above the heads of Eric and Clay.
Mollie reacted quicker than lightning. She flew so fast that Daniel hardly had time to register any movement at all. One moment he was standing on the hill holding on to her, and the next he was hitting what felt like a wall of bricks. Layer upon layer of the thick shadow stuff flooded his vision as he struggled to keep from suffocating in the dark.
But Daniel knew that there was a solid body underneath that darkness—Plunkett’s body. As the Shroud, Plunkett had the strength to snap Daniel in two, but it took concentration for those powers to work, and Plunkett was currently busy with Mollie, who was delivering a flurry of punches at lightning speed. Though Mollie’s blows did little real harm, Plunkett was momentarily knocked off balance from the sheer ferocity of her attack. Hopefully, a moment would be all that Daniel needed, because a moment was all that he would get.
Daniel groped in the dark, searching for the Shroud’s burning heart. His hands found the fabric of Plunkett’s sweater. The answer was in the details, and the most important detail about Plunkett’s powers was that they came from an outside source—the meteorite stone. Plunkett had fashioned one stone into a ring, but Daniel hadn’t noticed any rings on Plunkett’s fingers. That meant that he wore his stone in some other way, around his neck perhaps, near his chest….
There was a sudden hiss as Plunkett realized what Daniel was searching for. They were soon locked in a fierce wrestling match—Daniel’s hand closing in on Plunkett’s throat as Plunkett tried to get a grip on the boy to throw him off. Pain shot up Daniel’s bad arm but he ignored it; he willed himself to keep moving, his fingers to keep searching, clawing at the collar of Plunkett’s shirt….
And there he found it, strung on a chain around the old man’s neck. Daniel’s fist closed around the smooth stone pendant in the center of that ball of fire. It burned his hand but he refused to let go. He tugged hard, but the chain held. Daniel’s breath was being forced out of him as the viscous blackness pressed into his mouth and down his nose.
He’s drowning me, Daniel realized. He’s drowning me in shadow!
Daniel’s lungs burned and his stomach retched as the oily stuff seeped down his throat. His head started swimming and his eyes began to glaze over with a different kind of darkness. He was losing consciousness, and soon he would lose his life. Just as he was gathering his remaining energy for one last pull, he felt arms around his waist tugging at him, lending him their weight, their own strength. There was a deafening rumble, but he couldn’t tell if it was the sound of the walls falling in or the blood pounding in his own ears. Like a human chain, the fighting children of Noble’s Green pulled together, and Daniel felt a snap as the stone yanked loose in his hand, as the world collapsed around him with a roar. The ground seemed to open up beneath him and, together with his enemy, he tumbled into blackness.
Chapter Twenty-four
The Way Home
Daniel remembered a feeling of weightlessness and the sound of distant voices calling his name. He wanted to tell the voices to go away, that he was too tired to get up, but the voices were insistent as the weightlessness gave way to the return of gravity and the feeling of soft earth under his back.
When he opened his eyes, it was still dark, but now it looked as if someone had poked tiny pinpricks into the blackness. He was looking up at a field of stars, at a clear night sky. It was a welcome sight.
“He’s coming to,” said a girl’s voice to his left. “Daniel?”
“Give him a moment,” whispered another. “Man, he fainted just like a girl.”
“Shut up, Clay.”
A girl leaned over him and stroked his hair. He was surprised to see that it was Louisa. “Daniel, how are you feeling?”
“Um, okay, I guess. Did we win?”
“Look around you,” she said, smiling. Rose, Rohan, Eric, Clay, Bud and Mollie were all there. Most of them were grinning, too.
Daniel sat up too fast and his vision threatened to go blurry again.
“Careful,” warned Rohan. “You were out for a few minutes. You’re bound to be a little woozy.”
Daniel propped himself up on his good elbow and rubbed his eyes. “Where’s Plunkett?”
Rohan gestured over his shoulder. “He’s down there. Somewhere.”
With Rohan and Louisa’s help, Daniel managed to stand and look around. He was on the grassy hilltop overlooking what was once the old quarry. Now it looked more like a giant sinkhole, filled with dirt and slabs of solid limestone. A dust cloud had risen from the destruction and was being carried away on the north wind.
“The whole thing pretty much collapsed,” said Rohan. “You all were lucky you escaped in time.”
“The stone? Plunkett’s pendant!” Daniel said, remembering.
“It’s down there, too,” Mollie answered. “After you tore it off Plunkett’s neck, his powers disappeared. His shroud—all that shadowy stuff—just faded and all that was left was this little old man. When the place started to fall apart, Plunkett ran for his cave. I don’t think he made it. The last I saw, the ground was opening up underneath him, and he fell.”
“That crazy monster was just an old geezer, can you believe it?” chortled Clay. Daniel knew he should feel grateful to Clay for his help, but the kid’s careless reaction to all of this irked him too much. Daniel’s plan had been to leave the old man powerless, not dead, and death was never a cause for laughter. Not in Daniel’s book.
“I told everyone not to touch the stone, so we left it down there,” said Mollie. “It’s buried under a ton of rocks now.”
“That’s a fine place for it,” said Daniel.
Daniel looked for the first time at Eric, who was bruised and beaten up. One eye was swollen shut and he was covered in wounds. “I owe you an apology, Eric. This is all my fault because Plunkett convinced me that you were the Shroud. I sh
ould’ve trusted you.”
“Yeah, you should have …,” said Eric. “But Plunkett fooled everybody. Heck, he had us believing in those stupid Rules. For all these years I was convinced there actually was a Johnny Noble!”
“But there is!” whined Rose.
“Rose, quiet now,” said Louisa. “I’ll explain all this later.”
“No! Johnny Noble is real! I met him when he helped Eric.”
A sudden hush came over the group. It was Louisa who broke the silence. “Now, Rose, what did Mom tell you about making up stories?”
“It’s not a story!” Rose said. “Eric was sleeping, and during the fight Johnny Noble appeared in the cave and woke him up! He fixed him and then he flew away—faster than even Mollie. But first he told me to tell Daniel something. Something real important.”
No one said anything—everyone was looking at Daniel.
“Johnny said to tell you that Plunkett didn’t know as much as he thought he knew. He said that there are more answers out there, for a good detective to find.”
“Eric,” said Rohan. “How did you wake up? Just in the nick of time, too.”
“I … I don’t know. I just woke up. I heard the fight outside and, well, you all saw the rest. I don’t remember anyone else around, though.”
“It’s true! I’m not fibbing!” shouted Rose, stamping her feet.
“It’s okay, Rose. We believe you,” said Louisa, giving the rest of them a look.
“No, you don’t. But you’ll see. Johnny Noble is real. For really real.”
Daniel looked at Rohan, who just shrugged, and then at Mollie, who rolled her eyes. He remembered all that Plunkett had told him in the cave, about the real Johnny and the children of the fire, but he didn’t say anything. After all the lies Plunkett had woven, Daniel wasn’t sure what to believe, and it didn’t feel right to be filling his friends’ heads with more false dreams.
“Clay,” said Eric, changing the topic. “I want to thank you for what you did. You really surprised us all.”