Matt Archer: Legend (19 page)

“Matt!” he yelled from the top of the canyon as three ropes
sailed over the side to drop down next to us. “Grab hold—we’re going to pull
you out!”

The ground was turning to powder all around us, sucking at
my boot soles, so I didn’t take time to ask questions or argue. I sheathed my
knife, tugged on my climbing gloves and caught a rope. Will and Ramirez did the
same.

A low moan, like a sound a beached whale would make, echoed
down the canyon. Clutching at my rope, I held on for dear life as a vortex
started swirling beneath my feet. Dirt vanished into a red-brown whirlpool and
tornado-like winds pulled at my hair, my clothes, my legs. Dust filled the air,
blocking my view of the sky. I wasn’t sure how long I could hold on and my
hands slid down a few inches. At my right, Will cursed and tried to use his
feet to scramble up his rope without luck. Ramirez, on my left, was mouthing,
“Hold on! Hold on!”

My hands slid again and I gripped the rope as tightly as I
could. My fingers, which were going numb, dug into my palms and my arms
shuddered under the strain. After the long night, the fight with the Greenies,
and the boss battle, my body was nearing total exhaustion. Everything hurt, and
the swirling dust cloud promised rest. The dark voice told me so. Much quieter
now, it whispered reassurances to me, promising peace, calm. All I had to do
was fall. It would let me rest if I just let go.

I felt my fingers loosen on the rope.

You just scored a big victory. Don’t be stupid and let go
now just because he tells you to,
Tink snapped.
Hold on.

Right. I redoubled my grip, and to my surprise, started
rising. All of us were. Slowly we ascended the canyon wall, out of the dirt and
wind, until I could look up and see my uncle watching our progress from the
cliff’s edge.

“It’s working!” he said. “Tell Murphy to keep going, nice
and slow.”

When my head was above ground level, two of Brandt’s guys
hurried over to tug me out of the canyon. Once I was free, I could see that
they’d pulled us up by tying the ropes to a Humvee like they were towing a
stuck car out of the mud.

I glanced down at my clothes; I was covered with a mix of
slime, green blood, red blood and dirt. Will clambered over the side, grinning
at me. His hair was matted to his head with the same paste of filth coating my BDUs.

“That was nine kinds of awesome!” he said.

“You look disgusting,” I said, limping away from the cliff’s
edge, too tired to revel in a newbie wielder’s zeal. Maybe it was awful to
think that way, but Brandt’s death weighed on me.

“Look who’s talking.” Will sheathed his knife and his smile
disappeared. Clapping his hands to the side of his head, he fell to his knees
next to a clump of scrubby bushes.

“Migraine?” I asked, feeling a headache of my own coming on.

Will groaned and lay down flat on his back. “Man, my skull
feels split open. Like that time Helena’s right tackle clocked me with his
shoulder pad and gave me a concussion.”

“It’s like that at first,” Ramirez said, dropping to the
ground next to Will. He moved slow, as if his knees had rusted while we were
fighting. “But I think we’re all a little worse for wear after this one.”

Uncle Mike hurried over. “I know you guys feel like hell,
but we need to evac. So far the ground here feels sturdy, but who knows what’ll
happen. The canyon is crumbling away as we speak.” He forced us to our feet and
herded everyone to the Humvees.

Klimmett insisted on riding with us and managed to get Will
to sit still long enough to take his temperature again. “Ninety-nine point
four. Better than last time. His pulse is still tripping pretty fast, though.”

I let out a relieved breath. Will’s spirit was relinquishing
control. Sometimes they didn’t want to let go; he and I would have to work on
that some. That’s when it really sunk in. I was going to have to explain how to
deal with a spirit connection…to
Will
. Because
Will
was a
knife-wielder.

I wasn’t sure my brain could make sense of that yet.

Will let out a pitiful groan. “How long’s this headache
gonna last?”

“Couple hours,” I said. “Sorry, man. Ramirez is right,
though; it’ll get easier. And you have to admit that the fight was pretty
badass.”

“Yeah, it was.”

“So, is it everything you wanted and more?” I asked.

“It is, except the way it happened.” Will stared out the
window, lost for a few minutes. “I’m remembering every freaky thing you told me;
about the headaches, the mind control, the voices.” But then he gave me a hard
smile. “I’ve known for a while that I was meant to be here, though. I’m not
sure why, but I had this feeling…and the knife knew it, too. The spirit called
me by name when I picked it up. He
knew me.
”

Of course he did,
Tink said smugly.
My brother has
always known Will’s name.

Chilled, I turned to watch the countryside speed by,
wondering if that was a good thing or not.

It was early evening by the time we made it back to the
village. People were gathering debris from last night’s attack and burning what
couldn’t be salvaged. Johnson came to greet us when we pulled up, grimacing
when he got close. I grunted—he was downwind of me and Will and I imagined the
smell was pretty awful, what with the dead monster slime, blood and Greenie
juice all over us.

“You found trouble, I take it,” he said, as he scanned the
rest of the group. His lips moved, counting heads, and when he came up a few
short, he looked Will and me over more closely. When his gaze landed on the
bronze handle sticking out of Will’s thigh pocket, he shook his head.

“Cruessan…”

Will stood up straighter. “More like trouble found me, sir.”

“What happened?” Johnson asked, his deep voice full of
concern. I knew why, too. Tough as he was, it hurt Johnson’s soul to watch what
was happening to me. Now he had to watch it happen to Will, too.

“The major will fill you in,” I said quietly. “Will and I
need to clean up.”

He laid a big, brown hand on my shoulder, not even reacting
to the gunk all over my clothes. “There’s some water in our gear. Best to use
ours instead of theirs, okay?”

I sighed, knowing he was right. What little water the
village had couldn’t be spared on a bath. “Yes, sir.”

Johnson watched us walk toward the Humvee that had stayed
behind with the guard crew, his eyebrows drawn up in worry. In fact, every
Green Beret in the village paused in whatever they were doing to stare at Will
and me. Okay, so we looked like a pair of nightmares, but I knew the real
reason: news spread fast, and Will’s status as wielder was big news.

Using a pair of empty plastic totes as washbasins, we rinsed
most of the gunk off our skin before dressing in fresh BDUs. Being clean made
me feel a little better, but I still planned to burn my dirty clothes; they
stank of demons and death. Will gave me a weary nod when we were finished, then
wandered away to the edge of the village. He had a lot to deal with, so I let
him go.

I wasn’t ready to talk to Uncle Mike or Ramirez either. I
didn’t want to relive today anytime soon. Instead, I watched the sun sink
toward the horizon, hoping we had completed our job here. Losing guys always
made me feel empty, and I needed to know some good would come of it, especially
because we’d lost a wielder, too. We weren’t immortal, I knew that, but seeing
it happen shook me to the core.

“The major tells me Captain Brandt is dead.”

I jumped a foot before turning to face Zenka. “You scared
me.”

“I’m sorry.” She smiled one of her mysterious smiles and
said, “Come. I have something new to show you.”

I didn’t feel up to any mysteries, but she was already on
the move, so I followed.

Zenka led me across the village to her hut and disappeared
inside. She returned with the sketch pad. “I wasn’t surprised to hear the
captain had been killed. You see, I thought it might happen.”

I didn’t want to talk about how Brandt died—or why—but she
had my attention. “You can see the future, can’t you?”

“Not exactly, and I’m not the one who foretold it.” She
rifled through the pages of her book, then rested a gnarled hand on my arm.
“Look at me, Matthew Archer.”

I let out a slow breath and met her eyes.

“I know this hurts you. I see the pain written in the lines
on your face, but there are things you must know,” Zenka said. She waited until
I nodded before going on. “I didn’t wish to alarm the captain, because I
couldn’t be sure this would come true and I didn’t want him to worry. Now that
I’ve seen William…well, it wouldn’t have changed anything anyway, but you
should know the truth.”

She held out the sketch pad and showed me the half-finished
portrait, the large head with the blank face who might’ve been Brandt. Then she
flipped through the other wielders to the end. A sketch I’d never seen was
slotted behind mine, something she’d hidden when she showed us the sketch book
the first time. Another perfect likeness.

Drawn in color.

Will wore his crooked grin and a look of surprise. He was
sitting with his knees drawn to his chest and his arms wrapped around them,
wearing desert camo and boots. A bronze-handled knife dangled from his left
hand. Brandt’s knife.

No,
Will’s
knife.

Zenka flipped back to Ramirez’s portrait. “Earth.”

My heart seized up. “What did you say?”

“Earth,” Zenka said. “He’s the guardian of Earth. If what
you’ve told me about this war so far is true, the fights themselves are telling
us who guards what element. Jorge guards water. Parker, air. And now
Ramirez—he’s earth.”

I hadn’t gotten there yet, but she was right. Jorge had
killed countless Gators in Peru—monsters that lived in the water and on land.
Ramirez and I had killed our share of Gators too, but only Jorge lived in a
rain forest. Parker had killed the winged demon in Afghanistan, the one who
could spew demons across the countryside to steal children and fly them back to
his lair. And Ramirez had killed the Ga-Gorib, a creature of the desert who
lived in the ground.

All we had left was Fire and the Shadow Man.

And then there was Will. What did this mean for him? Or me?
“This…isn’t good, you know.”

“For you and your friend?” she asked.

“Yeah. If you’re right, one of us…” I couldn’t go on, struck
by what this meant. Will’s portrait was in color, just like mine.

Could Will be the Sentinel, instead of me?

“You boys are special, and my husband knew that all along.”
Zenka closed the book and rubbed her hand over the cover. “This is what my
husband and I could offer to you…knowledge. Unlike Jorge, we couldn’t build you
a knife or create some powerful talisman. But we could tell you the truth, a
truth I believe they didn’t want you to know, about who would defeat each point
of the star and why.”

I sat back. There was something else bothering me. This last
monster had been trying to kill Will, not me or Ramirez. What was it about my
best friend that scared the other side so much?

“The monsters here didn’t want Will to become a wielder,” I
said. “They didn’t want us to find out what your husband suspected, to make
sure Brandt’s knife didn’t transfer over to Will.”

“Yes, that is what I believe as well,” Zenka said, watching
my face intently as I pieced it all together. “What we need to discover is
why
.”

So many questions…but I knew one thing for sure.

Our destinies weren’t in our hands anymore.

* * *

The night passed without incident, as I suspected it would.
In the morning, we said goodbye to Zenka and her people and drove back to our
camp. Will was unnaturally quiet during the trip and took off for our tent as
soon as we arrived.

Ramirez watched him go, his face a blank mask. “I sent my
report to the colonel last night. He wants you two to report to the Pentagon as
soon as possible. I’ll be staying here for a while just to make sure the threat
is eliminated.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “When do we leave, sir?”

Uncle Mike joined us, gray-faced and scruffy. He’d really
taken a beating on this trip and it showed. “Tomorrow. Technically Will has to
be back in school in a week, so we can’t stay longer.”

“What did the colonel say about Will?” I asked, getting the
feeling we were being summoned back because of the wielder change…and the dead
bodies we had to bring home.

“He wasn’t pleased,” Ramirez said. “But there’s nothing we
can do to change it. I think he’s most worried about what Cruessan’s parents
will say.”

Oh, God, I hadn’t thought about that. “Is he going to call
them? Or can we just keep up the ‘study abroad’ cover?”

Uncle Mike was already shaking his head. “Given how often we
have to deploy you on the spur of the moment, I think we’re past running a
wielder part-time on the sly. Will’s going to be needed, if not immediately,
then soon. His parents have to be notified.”

He was right, sure, but my best friend would be in for a
very rough ride back home when he had to explain his new job to his family.

And Will probably already knew that. “You sure you don’t
need me to stay here with Ramirez?”

“You need a break,” Uncle Mike said firmly. “You’re going to
Australia next, and the colonel wants you rested up first.”

For once, I agreed with him.

A raw wind tore through my jacket as we made our way into
the Pentagon, but I was so glad to be on my way home. Uncle Mike had let Will
and me stay in a hotel by ourselves last night so he could be alone with Julie
and I’d loaded up on room service, thinking it was time I spent some of my
military money on a stupid splurge. Even though I worried about the meeting
with Colonel Black, being back in the States where I could get a hot shower and
a greasy hamburger was nothing short of heaven.

It took five minutes and six wrong turns before Mike found
the right hallway at the Pentagon and when we arrived at the conference room
for our meeting, I groaned. Colonel Black was waiting for us, dressed in
Class-B uniform and looking stern. Worse, he had a guest with him.

“Why’s General Richardson here?” I whispered to Mike.

“To meet his new wielder,” Uncle Mike said with resignation.
“Let’s go get this over with.”

“Major Tannen, Mr. Archer, good to see you both!” General
Richardson boomed. The man had a voice like a cannon; it could pulverize lesser
life forms. He bobbed his giant head in acknowledgment as we entered the room.
“And this must be Cruessan.”

Will’s skin had turned the color of paste. He gulped before
saying, “Yes, sir.”

“Well, I never thought we’d have two teenagers on this team,
but I guess we can’t argue with the knives.” The general narrowed his eyes and
glared at Uncle Mike. “Do we know for sure the knife can’t be turned to someone
else? Did you even try?”

I held my breath, wanting to tell the general to shove his
accusations up his two-star ass, but Uncle Mike might be busted down to captain
if I said anything.

Colonel Black drew himself up and towered over the general. “Sir,
we’ve discussed this. The knives aren’t some parlor trick; they decide who
wields them and can’t be turned. A man died and the knife chose Cruessan to go
on in Brandt’s place.”

“I understand that,” General Richardson barked. “But I
received a very suspicious phone call from the chair of House Armed Services
Committee, asking about appropriations for a strange project coming out of the
Terrorism and Unconventional Threats subcommittee. My contact there apparently
hasn’t keep our team’s budget scrubbed well enough and the chair has been
asking about contractor fees posted to the project. Said he wanted to know
who’s attached to those accounts.”

Contractor fees…as in my paycheck, and Will’s. I glanced at
Uncle Mike. His lips were pressed together so tightly they’d just about
disappeared. Yeah, this was bad.

“Sir?” I said, raising a hand to divert the general’s
attention to me. “I’ll work for free if that’ll keep the budget under wraps.”

Colonel Black shook his head. “No, Archer. You—and
Cruessan—are routinely risking your lives for the Army. The least we can do is
ensure that you get paid.”

General Richardson looked annoyed that the colonel butted
in, but he said, “That’s right, son. We just need to find a better way to do
it.” He sighed heavily. “Well, Cruessan, welcome to the team.”

The general left the room, muttering to himself, and I
caught a number of colorful swear words in his tirade.

Uncle Mike sagged into a chair. “Thanks for the assistance,
sir.”

“Don’t mention it.” Colonel Black nodded at Will. “Your
parents are still in the dark. What are we going to do about that? As soon as
we had that last eclipse, we started get reports from around the world.
Suspected supernatural activity has suddenly picked up again and I need you
ready to deploy at a moment’s notice should any of these reports prove serious
enough.” The colonel drummed his fingers on the table, wearing the expression of
a man asked solve a Sudoku puzzle blindfolded. “How do you want to handle this,
Cruessan? I could show up at your house with a slide presentation and a stack
of confidentiality agreements, but I have a feeling that won’t be very
effective.”

“No, sir,” Will said, sounding hollow. “My parents don’t
respond well to that kind of thing. My dad was a pretty tough negotiator when
he was playing pro ball. I’m going to have to tell them myself to have any shot
at making them understand.”

“And what if they say no? What then?” Uncle Mike asked.

Will picked at his cuticles. “If they say no, I’ll call you.
But this is something I need to do on my own, if possible.”

The colonel watched him for a minute. “Okay. You and Matt
will fly home tomorrow. I need you to tell them as soon as possible.”

“Sir?” I asked. “When will you need me?”

“Probably not until late March,” the colonel said.

“But…that’s nearly three months away,” I said, feeling a
flutter of panic in my belly. Yeah, I could use a furlough, but was I going to
be stuck in Billings the whole time?

Mike chuckled. “Guess who’s going back to school?” When he
caught the look on my face, he grinned. “Oh, yeah. Dani’s all set to re-enroll
you, give you ‘a taste of normal life’ for a while. You, uh, ever work things
out with that cheerleader?”

I rested my head on my arms on the table. “No. Not even. In
fact, if I show my face at Greenhill, she might try to scratch my eyes out.”

Colonel Black started laughing, too. “Well, if I can deploy
you earlier, I will. Sounds like that might be preferable.”

They had no idea.

* * *

We made it back to Billings two days before school started.
Mom seemed delighted by the idea that I’d be re-enrolling. I managed not to
snarl like a cornered coyote when we discussed it, but I growled good and loud
on the inside, especially since the news that Will had been chosen to wield a
knife had beaten us home and given Mom more fuel for the “normal teenage life”
argument. I blamed Aunt Julie for leaking that secret, but at least I didn’t
have to explain the story again.

Mamie saw my expression and swallowed a smile. “We’re glad
you’re back.”

All my annoyance dried up and that hollow feeling I’d kept
at bay while on the hunt came back full force. “So, when are you heading back
to Missoula?”

“Wednesday. Which means you have time to tell me everything
about your mission and give me some new research topics.”

There was so much to tell her, but I wasn’t sure I was ready.
“I have a raging case of jetlag, so I’d like to put off the long talk until
later, but…”

“But…what?” she asked, her eyes gleaming. Mamie loved a
mystery.

I stared at the floor, knowing I couldn’t leave her hanging
without some kind of tidbit to chew on while I slept. With so much to choose
from, I went for the big pieces first.
“Well,
apparently it’s down to Will or me…one of us has to fight a fire-breathing
lizard, and the other has to save the whole damn world. Unfortunately, it’s
unclear which job I’ll get.”

My sister gasped and covered
her mouth. “Did you just say fire-breathing lizard?”

“Yeah. Look, sis, I’m really tired,” I said, and I was. I
didn’t think I could handle a long, drawn-out discussion about the sketch book,
or how the monster in Africa specifically wanted to kill Will, or how Brandt
died or how the knife knew Will’s name. “We’ll talk more later, if that’s
okay.”

“Yes, of course. Go take a nap. Mom said supper was at six.
She’s making chicken lasagna.”

“Sounds great,” I said, yawning around the words, and went
straight to bed without bothering to change out of my track pants and t-shirt.
My nap didn’t last long, though. Around four, my phone rang on my nightstand,
startling me out of sleep.

“H’lo?” I said, not even looking at the caller ID first.

“Matt?”

I still had cobwebs of sleep sticking to my brain, so the
voice didn’t register. “Yeah? Who’s this?”

“It’s Millicent. I’m sorry to bother you, but…” Her voice
was soft, like she was trying not to be overheard. She also sounded worried out
of her mind.

I sat up fast. “Is everything okay?”

“No…I need you to come over if you can.”

Concern shot adrenaline through my veins; Will’s housekeeper
wouldn’t call me unless it was serious. Wide awake now, I got up to look for my
car keys. “What’s going on?”

She sighed. “Will’s telling his folks. About the mission.
And it’s not going well.”

No doubt. I jogged down the stairs. “I’ll be there in two
minutes.”