The End of Never (20 page)

What he did not realize was that a white truck was speeding toward his parked Jaguar. Not until the driver figured out that he was trapped inside a dead end did he slam on the brakes.

Dr. Sullivan did hear a squeal above the slowing rhythm of his pounding heart, but lost in his daydream, he paid no attention to the sound. Suddenly his beach chair cracked beneath him and spat him onto the beach. The thump in the rear end of the car jolted him wide awake. He cursed angrily, his body smashed against the steering wheel.

He looked at the rearview mirror to see who had done this to him. He saw a white delivery truck squealing in reverse. Ready for battle, Dr. Sullivan scrambled to open his door. Pouring his girth onto the sidewalk, he rolled far away from the damaged Jag. He was startled to look up and see an Atlanta Police cruiser roaring into the parking lot, blue lights flashing and sirens blaring.

Officer “Crunch” Scott had not earned the nickname by driving cautiously. While in the Academy, he'd totaled three cruisers. He had only one driving style: fast and furious.

The officer's palms, slick with sweat, slipped off the steering wheel, sending the cruiser veering over the cement curb and onto the sidewalk. Officer Scott regained his grasp and turned the steering wheel hard to the left. His tires bounced against the black asphalt, suddenly gripping the road. With the back end of the car fishtailing, Officer Scott rammed his foot on the gas pedal. His strategy: barricade the only exit before the truck driver could turn around in the parking lot.

“I got you now!” he yelled at the top of his lungs at his cruiser's windshield. The Collinsworth entrance gate loomed ahead. He had already been there once that morning and knew classes had been cancelled: no students, no innocent bystanders to get in his way.

“You're mine now!” he shouted.

“Car Seventy-seven,” the radio dispatcher said. “Report your position.”

Officer Scott ignored the call and took his foot off the accelerator.

“Car Seventy-seven,” the dispatcher repeated, her husky voice muffled by static.

Officer Scott flipped off the radio and slammed on his brakes as the paved asphalt of Tangle Wood Lane terminated into a dead end.

The two front tires of Car Seventy-seven came to rest on the peak of a yellow speed bump. Scattered leaves and thin tree limbs littered the deserted parking lot. Dead ahead idled the white truck.

In the truck, hovering over his steering wheel, Cyrus grinned, his fangs peeking out over his lips. Wagging his tongue, he aimed his front grill at the police car and gunned the accelerator.

“Chicken!” Officer Scott had time to spit out before his engine died. “No!” he screamed, his fist pounding the dashboard. Again he turned the key, even as Cyrus was bearing down on him. “Tenth time is a charm,” he muttered, when finally the engine revved under the hood.

By the time the police officer slammed the accelerator to the floor, the grill of the truck had already filled his windshield.

Cyrus howled as the police car shot forward, and he swerved his truck sharply to the right—just fast enough to miss hitting the cruiser's front bumper. As if swatting a buzzing fly with his tail, Cyrus brushed the police car aside with the heavy steel grill of the truck. Tapping the brakes, he stared into the rearview mirror, watching the cruiser spin out of control. Finally, a champagne Jaguar arrested the tornado that was Officer Scott's car.

Cyrus shuffled out of the parking lot, the wheels rolling north furiously along Tangle Wood Lane. He knew how to find his way home, and getting back there with his passenger would take a lot less time by truck than by paw.

In the parking lot, two bewildered men each surveyed their wrecked cars and shook their sore heads. “Alive,” they both sputtered and patted their chests as they tallied the damage from the accident. As for the officer's mangled vehicle, it was echoing a drowsy whine. This was what was left of the emergency siren, which finally waned and died. The blue lights on top of the car were still flashing and spinning, as if the chase were still in progress.

“This is bad,” Officer Scott said, shaking, as he stared at the crushed grill and dented hood. The two front tires had blown on their bent wheel rims. “I'm sorry,” he apologized to Dr. Sullivan. “Are you okay? You're bleeding!” he said in a panic.

Rubbing the dried pudding above his blackened right eye, the headmaster shook his head. “Not blood,” he explained. He sat down on the curb of the sidewalk.

Officer Scott joined Dr. Sullivan on the curb, his blond head hanging against his knees. “Guess you don't have to worry about getting a new tire for that spare we put on this morning,” he observed. Although the front of the Jag looked fine, the back end was crushed.

“Don't worry about it, young man,” Dr. Sullivan assured him, gazing at the shards of glass scattered over the pavement that used to be his rear window. “I hated that car.”

Officer Scott smiled only slightly, the possible end of his young career weighing heavy on his broad shoulders. “Can I give you a ride somewhere?” he asked, patting the headmaster's shoulder as a plume of smoke rose from under the hood of his police cruiser. “After I call for some tow trucks, I mean.”

Headmaster Sullivan raised his eyebrows. “Oh, no,” he declined. “I'll walk,” he said, and he headed to Callahan's on Mockingbird Lane.

But he could not have known that at that moment, Callahan was tucking a white, button-down dress shirt into his pressed black slacks, planning to meet Alexandra. He considered himself lucky to have found the shirt in a drawer untouched by the beast. He slipped his tuxedo jacket over his shoulders. He swiped a speck of dust from his lapel.

At the curb outside on the street, an impatient cab driver honked sharply three times.

“One more thing,” he told himself, and he shook his favorite cape free from a heap of rumpled clothes on the floor. “Travel light,” he assured himself, gingerly navigating the stairs to the foyer. He did not stop to lock the front door, because he thought he had nothing worth the time of a burglar. Climbing into the back seat of the taxi, he laid his cloak across his lap and handed the driver a hundred-dollar bill. “For your trouble,” he explained and rested his back against the seat. “Park View Tower, sir, and hurry, please,” he told the driver.

Behind Drake Hall, amid the overgrown weeds and cigarette butts, Dr. Sullivan gauged the height of the stone wall that separated his campus from the cemetery on the other side. Crawling across on his stomach, he ripped a button from his dress shirt.

With his belly poking out from the gaping hole, he staggered past the headstones, his shoulders shivering despite the August heat. He reasoned Mockingbird Lane should be on the other side of the low hill that he was climbing. He crept up the knoll slowly, panting for air in the muggy heat.

“Ah, ha!” he shouted from the peak. “I knew it.” His eyes lit on the roof of Callahan's rented Victorian.

The downward slope of the hill helped renew his race past the weathered headstones and the puddles of red mud that pooled across the ground. Finally, he rested his arms atop the stone wall that separated the perimeter of the cemetery from the city street.

Meanwhile, Callahan, in the back seat of the taxi, narrowed his eyes on the signet ring he twisted around the ring finger on his left hand. He did not notice the headmaster shimmying over the wall and to the sidewalk.

“The Order will not believe me,” Callahan muttered to himself. “Kraven—the Dragon King—is real.”

In the front seat, the cab driver made the sign of the cross, then lurched the taxi from the curb.

Meanwhile, Dr. Sullivan had staggered to his feet on the sidewalk. Snarling and filthy, he clambered across the street toward Callahan's house like a determined zombie. Dragging himself through the mud-splattered front yard and up the rickety wooden porch steps, he gasped and raised a clenched fist.

Resting his heaving weight upon the front door, he knocked once and stumbled forward into the tiled foyer. “Hello?” he called from his knees. “Hello?” he yelled up the staircase. He helped himself up with a firm grip on the banister.

There was only silence: no answer, no footsteps.

Suddenly there was the clap of a wooden screen door at the back of the house. This noise lured him down the hallway from the foyer to the kitchen.

“Callahan?” he shouted when the back door rattled again in the breeze. Grumbling, he latched the door for good and peeked out at the backyard.

He noticed a gaping hole in the dirt. “What in the blazes is he doing out there?” Dr. Sullivan said. “I need to remember to check his resume again.”

His eyes landed on the kitchen counter. “Now what have we here?” he asked, his fingertips gliding giddily over the thick, gold chain.

Wrapping the treasure around his neck, he stifled his chuckling when a determined knock rapped on the front door.

He waited silently and motionless, hoping the visitor would go away. But the creaking hinges announced that there was another visitor to the house. Dr. Sullivan held his breath as footsteps walked toward him down the hallway from the foyer.

“You're not Callahan,” the bearded man greeted the headmaster.

“Mr. Frost?” Dr. Sullivan asked of the apparition, just before the intruder lunged at him.

Stumbling backward, Dr. Sullivan slipped against the ceramic tiles. Abruptly, the back of his skull cracked against the countertop.

“Frost!” he stuttered, looking into the intruder's face as he slipped into unconsciousness.

19
Stupid Girl

O-M-G
, Alexandra thought when she shut her bedroom door behind her and slumped to the floor. She was beginning to suspect that Benjamin was the most handsome boy who had ever spoken to her in the whole seventeen years she had been alive. As such, she was mortified that he was in the living room, looking at pictures on the table of her when she had braces and a frizzy perm.

Behind her back, a wet nose sniffed at the crack at the bottom of the door, while a pair of anxious paws scratched at the polished hardwood floor. “Jack, hush,” Alexandra said. She cracked the door open to let her bulldog inside the bedroom before he mauled a hole through the wood.

“It's okay, little man,” she said, stroking the top of his furry brown head. She patted her lap for him to curl up with her.

Jack nuzzled her palms with his curious, twitching muzzle. With the scent of dried blood clinging to his flaring nostrils, he growled and backed away from Alexandra. Stuffing his hind end under the bed, he crawled backward and huddled against the wall under the mattress, his body shaking.

“What's wrong, Jack?” Alexandra pleaded with him. She crawled on her hands and knees across her bedroom floor and raised the ruffled bedskirt to peek at the dog.

He smelled the blood on her hands and quivered, barking at her.

“Stop it, boy,” Alexandra cajoled. The agitated dog gritted his jaw and snapped at her prodding fingers.

She bumped the back of her head against the bed railing and slid out from under the mattress, angry and confused.

There was a cautious tap on the closed door. Jack whined and kept his position under the bed.

“Alex?” Benjamin asked from the hallway. “Is everything okay in there?”

“No,” she whispered. She examined her red-stained palms.

“Alex? Can you answer me?” he implored again.

A flush of heat rippled through her veins. “I'm fine,” she lied. She wanted to rip off her clothes and plunge naked down the side of an iceberg. She stood up from the floor and rested her forehead against the door.

“What does the thermostat say on the wall out there?” she asked, pulling her tank top over the sweaty auburn ringlets of hair against her neck.

It's gone
, she thought, patting her chest as the t-shirt fell to her curling toes.
The necklace is gone
. Frantic, she kicked the tank top away and flung herself to the floor.

Benjamin flipped on a light switch to read the flashing digital numbers on the thermostat. “It says seventy-two,” he answered.

A low moan echoed from behind the closed bedroom door.

“Do you need help with something?” he asked, his ear planted against the door.

His toe tapped against glinting metal. He bent to the floor. “Your necklace,” he said, wrapping the leather strap around his fingers.

Alexandra sighed and threw on a light robe. She anxiously swung open the door.

Benjamin stumbled back from the threshold. Her green eyes blazed at the necklace entwined in his fingers.

“You're, uh, flushed,” Benjamin hesitated, the medallion in his palm.

Her pink cheeks blazed.

“Are you running a fever?” he asked.

One thought crossed Alexandra's mind:
Water. Lots of it. Now.

“Do me a favor,” Alexandra insisted, her eyes following the sway of the talisman in his fingers. “Hold it for me.”

“Seriously?” he asked, untangling the leather strap from his fingers.

“Yes,” she said firmly.

“Okay,” he agreed, shoving the necklace deep into the front right pocket of his jeans. “You're sure? I know this thing is pretty special to you.”

“I want to go swimming,” Alexandra explained. “Keep that safe for me, because my dad went to a lot of trouble to make sure I got it.”

She tugged the robe closer to her narrow waist and crossed her arms across her chest.

Benjamin felt a flush spread across his own face. “Can I go?” he asked sheepishly.

“The pool is on the roof,” Alexandra said. “Are you afraid of heights?”

“No way,” he said grinning. “And I'm not afraid of water, either.”

I am scared of both
, Alexandra thought.
Just born that way, I guess.

She wrestled a one-piece, black bathing suit from the bottom of her sock drawer. It had never been worn.