Toria shook her head. “Daddy said they were going to trick Taksidian and lock him in the room between the walls.”
“I hope he . . .” Keal’s voice faded. He squinted out the windshield. His mouth dropped open.
Toria looked. A man was walking on the side of the road, taking big long strides, swinging his arms. He wore a hospital gown. The back of it was mostly open; it was closed in only one place, barely covering his rear end.
They cruised past, and Toria yelled, “Keal, stop! It’s Jesse!”
Keal slammed on the brakes. “It can’t be, sweetie,” he said, turning to look. “He’s in the hospital, and besides, he can’t—”
The rear door opened, and Jesse’s grinning face leaned in.
“—walk,” Keal finished weakly.
Jesse hopped in. “Where are we going?” he said.
CHAPTER
sixty - three
“Mom!” David yelled. He watched Xander fumbling with the padlock on their side of the wall, and crowded up behind him.
Xander pushed him back. “No, Dae!” he said. “Stay here.” He got the lock off, and when he stepped back to swing the door around, David rushed through. Xander grabbed at him. “David!”
David ran between the walls and out the other side. Without slowing, he assessed the situation: Taksidian was standing ten feet away, his back toward David. He held Mom from behind—David could see her hair and legs, how she was struggling. Dad was facing them, his legs bent, his arms held out like a wrestler facing an opponent. David could tell he was looking for an angle of attack, a way to dart in and grab Mom.
David leaped. He landed on Taksidian’s back. One arm wrapped across the man’s face; the other cocked back and drove a fist into Taksidian’s skull. He seized a handful of hair and yanked. Taksidian’s head snapped backward.
Dad rushed in. Taksidian’s knife flashed out, making him jump back. Dad dropped to the floor, got a hold of Mom’s ankles, and pulled her down, out of Taksidian’s grasp.
Taksidian switched the blade to his left hand and raised it high. It was pointed at David. He plunged it down toward David.
Xander grabbed Taksidian’s arm, halting the blade an inch from David’s neck.
David angled away from it, and Taksidian’s other hand reached around, pinning David’s head to Taksidian’s shoulder. The shoulder lowered, and David felt himself flipping up, over, and around. When he came down, he was where Mom had been: directly in front of Taksidian, his back pressed against the man.
David thrashed, but Taksidian’s arm was an iron strap. It crossed like a seat belt over his shoulder, the right side of his chest, to his left hip—where the man’s fingernails dug into David’s flesh. David twisted and froze in pain.
David tried to control his breathing, but it was no good: He panted in time with his heart—fast, short breaths. A phrase flashed through his mind over and over again, like a shrill alarm: This is it! This is it! This is it! His consciousness knew too well what the “it” was: Xander’s prediction . . . David’s death. Would it hurt or would it be over too fast? Would he see the blood or smell it? Would his family’s terrible expressions of shock and grief be the final image he sees? It didn’t seem fair. With all the beautiful things in the world—flowers, clouds, babies—his last would be horrible. His eyes darted around, hoping to find something that would save him.
He craned his neck and glanced back in time to see Taksidian’s elbow sail into Xander’s face. His brother stumbled away, losing his grip on Taksidian’s arm.
Taksidian swung around and backed into the corner formed by the two hallways. His arm was pressed so tightly over him, David’s breath became fast and wheezy.
Taksidian positioned the blade a foot from David’s heart, ready to plunge it in.
“Stop!” Dad yelled. He was kneeling beside Mom, who was lying on the floor. They were just inside the main hallway, between Taksidian and the grand staircase. Xander was in the shorter hall, between Taksidian and the false walls. He pressed a hand against the wall and stood. The other hand covered his chin. Blood poured out from under it.
“Let him go,” Dad said, looking fierce enough to bite Taksidian’s head clean off. He dragged the back of his hand across his own face, smearing the blood that was seeping out of his nostrils. “You don’t have much time.”
David noticed: Taksidian’s overcoat was fluttering toward the false walls, the stairs to the third floor, and the portal that had opened to pull him in. The man’s long, kinky hair whipped around his head, snapped straight toward the portal, then flittered around again.
“Boy,” Taksidian said to Xander. “Shut that door.”
“Don’t, Xander!” Dad said.
Taksidian’s voice boomed in David’s ear: “You seem to forget who’s holding all the cards!” With that, the blade flashed in front of David’s face, and he felt a sharp pinch on his cheek. Taksidian was holding the tip of his knife there. David cried out before he could stop himself.
Panic rippled across Dad’s face. “Wait!” Gritting his teeth, he said, “Do it, Xander.”
Xander moved to the door in the false wall and swung it closed.
The pull on Taksidian settled a bit, but not much. The man moved the blade back into position over David’s heart.
“Shutting the door’s not going to help,” Dad said, rising. He helped Mom to her feet. “You don’t belong in this time. As long as you’re in this house, the pull’s going to keep getting stronger.”
As if to prove Dad’s point, Taksidian’s coat sprang out from his body. He jerked forward. He leaned back, and his boots slid across the floor a few inches. He leaned farther, pulling David back with him, and stopped moving.
“Move out of my way!” he yelled at Mom and Dad.
Dad squared his shoulders. He said, “Come over here, Xander.”
Xander stooped and snatched up a two-by-four. He edged along the wall until he stood beside his parents. The three of them formed a human barricade across the hallway, blocking Taksidian’s escape.
This is it! This is it!
“What are you doing?” Taksidian said. “You care so little for this one, that you defy me?” He dug his nails into David’s hip, causing him to scream.
Mom cried out, “No . . . please!” She held shaking hands toward them, and David could tell she was mentally pulling the knife away from her son.
“We can’t let you take him,” Dad said.
“Then back away,” Taksidian answered. “Clear the way to the door, and you can have this whelp.”
Dad raised his arms, crossing them over Mom’s and Xander’s chests. Together, they backed away a step.
Taksidian pushed David forward, staying right behind him. The knife hovered over his heart. “More,” the man said.
“More!” He was starting to panic.
David’s family took another step back. Their bodies still blocked the path to the stairs.
“Very clever, trapping me between the walls,” Taksidian said. “Holding me here long enough for Time to sniff me out. But it’s not going to work. If you want this boy to see today’s sunset, you’d better get out of my way.” He screamed: “Completely out of my way! Right now!”
“Let him go,” Dad said.
“As soon as I see a clear route to the front door, I’ll release him.” Taksidian paused, then added, “You have my word.”
“Which means nothing,” Dad said. But he nodded and dropped his arms. “Let him leave, Gee, Xander. There will be other days.” He backed past the stairs. Mom went with him.
Only Xander stood between Taksidian and the front door. He held the two-by-four in both hands, crossed over his chest like a rifle. “No,” Xander said. “It almost has him. We can’t let him leave.”
“Xander,” Dad said. “Son, step back.”
“Boy, if Time takes me,” Taksidian said, “your brother’s coming along for the ride.”
Xander stood his ground.
“I do not make idle threats,” Tak
sidian said. His hair and coat were going crazy, whipping and flapping, snapping as though caught in a hurricane. “Look at David!” More digging into his hip, more screams. “It will be the last time!”
Xander did, staring deep into David’s eyes. He backed up to Mom and Dad.
Taksidian pushed David along in front of him. His movements were jittery and sharp. David could tell he was fighting the pull with every muscle. His knife hand shook violently, bringing the tip of the blade within an inch of David’s chest. They reached the top of the stairs and stopped.
“Let him go!” Xander yelled. “Just let him go and run. Get out of here!”
“I did promise to release him, didn’t I?” Taksidian said. “But I never said in what condition.”
Dad’s eyes sprang wide. “Noooo!”
Taksidian plunged the knife into David’s heart.
That is, he tried to. The blade struck David’s chest and bounced off. At the same time—probably planning to push his corpse into the family as he fled down the stairs—Taksidian relaxed his grip.
David rolled out of his arms and fell. He landed on his back on the floor, so close to Taksidian, one of the man’s boots was between his knees.
Taksidian’s shocked expression made David grin. He raised his shirt, revealing the metal plate over the left side of his chest. A chain around his neck held it in place.
“You!” Taksidian said. He bent to finish the job.
“Too late!” David said, pointing at the ceiling.
Taksidian swung his head around to see.
Directly over him, the ceiling was cracking, breaking apart. The pieces disappeared into a portal shimmering just beyond the ever-increasing hole. Taksidian turned and leaped down the stairs. But he never touched down. He floated, suspended in air. As fast as he would have gone down, he went up. He leveled into a horizontal position and smacked against the ceiling across from the hole. He was too long to go through: his head and his heels extended beyond the opening.
The knife fell out of his hand and stuck into the floor by David’s thigh.
Taksidian bared his teeth at the Kings and screamed—not in fear, but in fury. His hands gripped the outside of the hole. He strained, pulling himself away from the hole.
Xander stepped beside David, directly below Taksidian. He said, “We’re the Kings in this house, not you,” and he jabbed the two-by-four into Taksidian’s stomach.
Taksidian ooph’d. His waist buckled into the hole, and his head slipped through. His body arched farther into the hole, pulled toward the portal waiting for him in the room above. His nails gouged tracks in the floor joists exposed by the ripped-out opening in the ceiling.
He yelled, “Nooooo!” and shot up into the antechamber. His voice cut off in midscream, the door up there slammed shut, and he was gone.
CHAPTER
sixty - four
SATURDAY, 2:26 P.M.
David saw a small item fall from the opening to the floor with a soft tink! A fingernail, sharp and thick and tipped with blood. His blood, from his hip. The nail flipped onto its tip and spun around fast. It sailed up into the hole, leaving a drop of blood on the floor.
“Holy cow!” Xander said, gaping at the ceiling.
Dad reached down and pulled David out from under the hole. Just in time: Chunks of ceiling, joists, and flooring fell out of it and crashed down. A cloud of dust billowed up. As it cleared, it swirled around the hole like smoke.
David conked his head on the floor. He held his bloody hip and didn’t care about the pain. He felt too good: They had beaten Taksidian. They had beaten the future.
“Ha!” he yelled and started to laugh. It was joyful and honest—the sound of someone whose This is it! didn’t happen and who had a long life stretching before him like a path to a far-off horizon.
Mom, Dad, and Xander began laughing as well. They crouched around David, every one of them leaking at the eyes and stretching their smiles wide. Dad gripped David’s shoulder and rubbed it.
Xander did something that at any other moment would have earned him a one-way ticket to the funny farm, but this time seemed right and totally awesome. He raised both fists high and said in a loud, deep voice, “This is Sparta!”
He flashed a toothy grin around and caught Mom’s slightly unsure expression. “It’s from a movie, Mom,” Xander said. “Trust me.”
Mom simply nodded. She lifted David’s head and leaned over him, spilling tears onto his cheeks. “Dae,” she said, “I was so scared.”
Dad touched the metal plate. He looked at Xander and said, “This is what you got the plate for? You knew all along?”
Xander smiled. “When Dae said his heart hurt for Jesus, it hit me. I didn’t draw the heart on the note because I love my brother—even though I do,” he said quickly, smiling at David. “What I meant was that Taksidian stabs him in the heart. And it makes sense; a guy like that, he would. That got me thinking about A Fistful of Dollars.”
“Huh?” Dad said. “The movie?”
David laughed. “That’s what I said.”
“Clint Eastwood puts a metal plate over his heart,” Xander explained, “because he knows the bad guy always shoots people in the heart. That’s how Eastwood’s character beats him.”
Mom touched Xander’s arm. “Remind me never again to complain about your movie watching.” She raised her fingers to his chin. “We need to take care of that.”
“A scar nobly got is honorable,” Xander said. “Dad told me that.” He rubbed his chin. “I don’t mind having a permanent mark to remember today.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “I mind.”
The plate slipped off David’s chest and trembled. He unhooked it, and it zipped across the floor, looking—with its tail of a chain—like a robotic stingray. At the end of the hall, it whipped out of sight and clattered up the stairs to the antechambers above.
The front door banged open. Toria tromped in, spotted the hole, and said, “What happened?” She pounded up the stairs. “Dae, are you all right?”
“I am now,” he said.
Keal rushed into the foyer. “What’s going on? Everything okay? Where’s Taksidian?”
“Time took him,” Xander said. “He went back where he came from.”
“Yah!” Toria said, clapping.
“I don’t know for how long, though,” Dad said.
Another voice came from the foyer: “Oh, you don’t have to worry about that.”
“Jesse?” David said. He rolled over to look through the railing spindles. The old man stood in the doorway, smiling up at him. “Jesse!” David scrambled to his feet and ran down the stairs. He jumped into Jesse’s arms. He said, “You’re better! You’re . . . walking!”
The old man danced in place, smiling like a kid with a new pony.
At the doorway, Nana said, “Are we having a party?”
“Nana!” David said, giving her a hug.
Mom appeared at the banister. “I feel like the new kid in school,” she said. “I don’t know anyone.”
“Jesse, Keal, Nana—we found Mom!” David said. His heart almost burst at the sound of it, so he said it again. “We found Mom!”
He took them upstairs and made the introductions. They stood in a circle on the second floor: Mom, Dad, Xander, David, Toria, Jesse, Keal, and Nana.
Jesse looked up into the hole. “Taksidian’s really gone?”
Dad nodded. “Until he finds a portal back here.”
“He doesn’t have any antechamber items?” Jesse asked.
“No.”
Jesse scratched his beard-stubbled cheek. “I met Taksidian when he first found his way to the house,” he said. “He stumbled into a portal. The chances that he’ll be able to find another one without an antechamber item leading him to it are . . . I don’t know, one in a million?”
Dad scowled at the hole in the ceiling. He said, “I still don’t like the idea that he’s out there somewhere . . . looking for a way to get back here.”
“Po
rtals are hard to see,” Xander said. “Even when you’re looking for them. They’re just rippling air.”
“And it took Nana thirty years to find her way home,” David added.
“Well,” Nana said, “good riddance to bad rubbish.”
“Jesse,” David said, “do you think sending Taksidian away fixed the future? I mean, the destruction of Los Angeles, the end of the world?”
Jesse aimed his frown at David. “I’m afraid not, son. The damage is done. You’d have to go back and undo everything he did that led to it.” He offered a knowing little smile. “That is, if you want to fix it.”
“If we want to fix it?” David said. “How can we not ?”
“Think about it,” Jesse said, looking at each of them in turn. “It would mean staying in the house, figuring out just what parts of history he messed with, and making each one right.”
“But isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?” David said. “You said this was our destiny.”
Jesse nodded. “It’s true. Fixing the messes humans made in the past has always been in our bloodline. The portals to the past have been around forever. They’re a way for certain people to fix mankind’s mistakes—not to make everything perfect, but to make it . . . less bad, so we don’t wipe ourselves out.”
“I don’t understand,” Mom said. “Only God has that kind of control.”
“True,” Jesse said. “But he gives the world doctors to repair our bodies, and . . .”
“And he gives the world us to repair Time,” David said, getting it—at least as much as something so weird could be understood. “Time doctors.”
“Gatekeepers,” Xander said, using the word Jesse had used when they’d first met.
David said, “But why us?”
Jesse shrugged. “I know only that it is us. Our ancestors have always been drawn to the Time currents, like magnets to metal.”
“Then,” David said, “we’re supposed to be here. We’re supposed to make the present and future better by fixing the past. It’s our purpose.” He looked around at the others. “Right?”
Xander said, “What if we don’t want to do that?”