The Obsidian Blade (25 page)

K
OSH
F
EYE POPPED OPEN ANOTHER CAN OF BEER
, walked unsteadily out of his workshop, swung one leg over the seat of his Harley, made himself comfortable, and took a sip.

Probably not a good idea to go for a ride,
he told himself. Nine beers was nine too many.

He took a bleary look around at his little slice of heaven.

Garden needed weeding.

Barn door half off its hinges.

Adrian’s Chevy parked all kittywampus, with the windows open.

No Tucker.

Kosh took another swig of beer. He couldn’t believe that he missed having that kid around. He thought about Adrian. His brother had asked him to do one thing in fifteen years — take care of the kid for a few weeks — and Kosh had failed. He thought about the day Tucker had wrecked the dirt bike. He’d been furious, but at the same time, he’d been seeing himself at that age, just as boneheaded and suicidal. No, not suicidal, just not thinking that he could ever die. And now Tucker was gone, maybe dead.

His thoughts returned to Hopewell. The girl, Lahlia, jumping into that thing on the roof. He had no doubt that Tucker had preceded her. What had they been thinking? He should have gone after them. He had tried. He really had. But he had hesitated too long. The disk had disappeared.

Kosh had stayed in Hopewell for two weeks, waiting. The Beckers, of course, searched everywhere for Lahlia. Kosh endured several interrogations from the Hopewell County Sheriff. He did not tell the police that he had seen the girl disappear into a magic disk — that would have landed him in another institution. Ronnie Becker also fell under suspicion, but with no evidence against either of them, the police turned their attention to searching the fields and woods with an army of volunteers, and investigating rumors of suspicious strangers.

They found nothing. The girl — and Tucker — had simply disappeared.

The disk never returned. After another week, Kosh closed up the house and drove home to Wisconsin. And began to drink.

It wasn’t helping.

Kosh leaned back on his bike and looked up at the roof of the barn. He squeezed his eyes closed, then looked again.

“Son-of-a . . .” It was back. He fell off the bike but managed not to spill his beer.

One minute later he was dragging his extension ladder over to the barn. The ladder was tall enough to bypass the missing rungs. Kosh climbed, still holding his beer, and soon found himself standing shakily on top of the roof, glaring at the pulsing disk.

He let out a string of curses. The disk absorbed his words without comment. He took another gulp of beer and wiped his mouth with his leather sleeve. Part of him wanted to jump into the disk — if only to punish himself for not going after Tucker and the girl when he’d had the chance. But what then? Would he arrive on top of the World Trade Center again? He could bring his own ladder. He might find Tucker there. He might be able to bring him back. . . .

A tendril of black smoke snaked out from the disk. Kosh inhaled through his nose. The unmistakable tang of burning jet fuel. Fire and brimstone. Were the towers already in flames? If so, the disk might deliver him to a time
after
the towers collapsed. He would fall a thousand feet onto a pile of smoking rubble. And even if he did find Tucker again, would it be the same Tucker? Did the disk in Hopewell also lead to the Twin Towers?

The disk’s surface swirled into a pattern he had not seen before, a sort of stuttering, grainy spiral, then flashed bright green. A small, slim figure leaped from the disk and landed lightly upon the roof.

It was a girl, maybe seventeen or eighteen years old, with long yellow hair tied back and dark eyes hard as stone. She wore a sleeveless black tunic with a metallic sheen to it, black leggings, and thick-soled black boots.

“Hello, Kosh,” she said, looking from his unshaven face to the can of beer dangling from his fingers.

“Do I know you?” said Kosh.

“You don’t remember me?” She half smiled.

Kosh squinted, trying to bring her into better focus. A fine white scar, beginning at the corner of her left eye, scrolled down her cheek to her jaw. It actually looked good on her.

He said, “Lahlia?”

“I am Lah Lia no longer. I am the Yar Lia. You can call me Lia.”

“You’re old. I mean, older ’n you was.”

She regarded him with a look of disappointment.

“You’re drunk,” she said.

Kosh nodded; there was no point in denying it.

“How long will it take for you to get sober?”

Kosh took the question literally. “Four or five hours,” he said. “Depending how sober you want me. Not that I see much point in it.” He gestured with his beer to include both the girl and the disk. “This all makes way more sense when I’m wasted.”

She took the can of beer from him, sniffed it, made a face, and dropped it.

“Hey!” Kosh said.

The can rolled down the roof, leaving behind a trail of foam, and disappeared over the edge. Kosh heard a faint clank as the can landed on something metallic — probably his bike.

“Tucker is in trouble,” she said.

“Tucker?” A surge of hope cut through his alcoholic haze. “He’s okay?”

“No. He needs us.”

“Us?”

“Yes. Do you think you can climb down off this roof without killing yourself?”

“I have no idea,” Kosh said honestly.

She rolled her eyes. “Come on.” She held out her hand. “Let’s get you sobered up.”

Kosh began to tilt to the left. She grabbed his arm to steady him. He tried to pull his arm free, but the girl’s grip was uncommonly strong. Kosh looked over her head at the disk, and the old fear came crashing back.

“Do I have to go in that thing again?”

“We do not need a Gate to get where we’re going,” said the Yar Lia. “We can take your bike.”

T
UCKER LANDED ON HIS FEET
.
I’
M GETTING GOOD AT
this,
he thought, looking around. He was on yet another roof. The disko floated several feet above his head. The roof was flat, large, covered with tiny gray pebbles pressed into soft asphalt, and surrounded by a knee-high wall. Tucker approached the wall and looked down onto a street four stories below. He knew at once that he was looking at the busy main street of a small town. Cars were angle-parked, facing into the crowded sidewalks. There was some sort of festival happening. Several vendor carts along the sidewalks were selling minidonuts, hot dogs, and other carnival foods. Except for the cars and people and all the vendors, it looked a lot like Hopewell. In fact — was that Krause Hardware across the street? And, two doors down, the Pigeon Drop Inn.

Hopewell!

Tucker’s chest swelled, and tears filled his eyes. He knew exactly where he was — on the roof of Hopewell House, the old, boarded-up hotel. No sign of murderous priests, scary pyramids, or frozen-faced Medicants. This was
his
Hopewell. He looked back at the disko that had delivered him. Was it the same disko that had delivered Lahlia to Hopewell? How many diskos
were
there in Hopewell?

Tucker tried to pick out a familiar face, but the crowd below was made up of strangers who didn’t have that small-town look. Some were too well dressed, like the portly man wearing a suit and eating a hot dog, and the woman next to him in high heels and a white dress. Others looked like tourists, in jeans, colorful shirts, clean athletic shoes, and sunglasses. Many had binoculars or cameras hanging around their necks. A lot of the people looked Hispanic. That wasn’t unusual — a lot of seasonal workers showed up in Hopewell for the harvest. Several young people wearing yellow T-shirts were moving about in small groups.

He spotted old Emil Janky outside his barbershop, shooing away a cluster of yellow-shirted teens who were blocking his doorway. That was reassuring — for a few seconds, he had feared the entire population of Hopewell had been replaced by strangers. Leaning out over the parapet, Tucker looked toward his father’s church, but his view was obstructed by a large banner strung across Main Street:

Pigeon Daze?
Tucker could make no sense of that — unless he’d gone back to when Lorna Gingrass had killed those two passenger pigeons. . . . But no, the cars were all later models. This had to be about the same time he had left. Except, according to the banner, it was now September.

He found a large trapdoor on the southeast corner of the roof, pulled it open, climbed down a steel staircase, pushed through another doorway to enter the hotel’s fourth floor, and stared in astonishment.

The last time he had been in Hopewell House — he and the Krause brothers had sneaked in one day — it had been home only to barn swallows, paper wasps, bats, and dust. What he saw now was a pristine hallway with fresh paint and new carpeting, illuminated by a row of ornate wall sconces. An enormous mirror hung at the end of the hallway. Tucker approached it slowly, gawking at his new self: a lanky young man with a soft, patchy beard, a longer chin than he remembered, and floppy hair hanging nearly to his shoulders. His gray coveralls made him look like a janitor, or an escaped prisoner — except for the blue plastic boots. Moments earlier he had been eager to run out onto the street and find a familiar face, but now he wondered if anybody would recognize him. And even if they did, there would be questions. He was not ready for questions. He needed time to think. And new clothes. A barrage of problems tumbled through his head: he had no money, he didn’t even live in Hopewell anymore, he still had no idea where his mother had gone, and his father . . . Was his dad even alive? The only way to find out would be to somehow return to the tomb.

He turned his back on the mirror and forced himself to make a mental list. Clothes. Food. Then what? Call Kosh? No, first he would check to see if his mom or dad had made it home. He could find some normal clothes there, and there might still be some canned or dried food in the pantry. After that, he could figure out his next step.

It wasn’t much of a plan, but it would have to do.

With so many people on the streets, nobody paid attention to Tucker as he made his way down the sidewalk. Several new shops had opened. Every store displayed pigeon products: pigeon mugs, pigeon postcards, pigeon T-shirts, and other souvenir items. The pigeons depicted were not normal pigeons but passenger pigeons. The new pizzeria was advertising something called a Passenger Pigeon Pie. He hoped it wasn’t made of real passenger pigeons.

Yellow T-shirts were everywhere, all with the same imprint: he is coming! on the front and the lambs of september on the back. Most of them were worn by teens.

He was walking behind a trio of yellow-shirted teenage girls when one of them — a girl with long blond hair — looked back and gave him a big smile.

“Are you coming tonight?”

“Coming where?”

The girls stopped walking and turned to him.

“To the
revival
!” the blond girl said, as if she could not believe he didn’t know about it.

“I don’t think so,” he said.

“You should,” she said, suddenly all serious. “He could come tonight.”

“Who?”

“Jesus!”

Tucker thought about the dead man hanging from the cross.

“All the signs are here,” said the girl. “The miracles and everything. And the birds.”

“What birds?”

“The
passenger
pigeons,” said all three of them at once, giving him exactly the same look — a look that said he was clearly insane.

Another of the girls, the smallest and prettiest of the three, looked closely at Tucker. “Did you used to go to school here?”

“No,” Tucker said, even as he recognized her. Kathy Aamodt. She was in the same grade as him at school — Tom Krause’s crush.

She looked at him even more closely. “You kind of look like this guy that used to go to our school,” she said. “But you’re older.”

Tucker figured it was best to change the subject. “What’s the deal with the pigeons?” he asked.

“Are you, like, from another planet?” asked the blond girl.

“I’m from Bulgaria,” Tucker said.

“The passenger pigeons came back. Thousands of them. It’s been all over TV and everything.”