The Paladin Prophecy (49 page)

Lyle was nowhere to be seen. The mouth of the largest cave, taller than he was, opened in the wall straight ahead. Two slightly smaller caves cut in on either side of it.

Which cave is he in?

Will peered back over the ridge. The three riflemen had made no move to follow him. Will looked at his watch: fifteen minutes.
Good
. The cavalry should have reached the boathouse and connected with Ajay, and if they’d heard the shots, they might already be on their way.

But how quickly would they be able to find him?

Will crept toward the caves. The Paladin mask lay in the snow outside the central cave. Will took out his Swiss Army knife and unfolded the biggest blade. He peered into the darkness of the central cave. A slight breeze blew from inside, and he smelled something foul in the air. Something old and sour and forbidding.

Then he heard Lyle’s voice call out from somewhere deep inside. “I guess you don’t know what an
oik
is, West.”

Will froze. Lyle’s voice echoed and rolled. The caves sounded very deep.

“An
oik
is a clot. A commoner. A lesser being of the lower classes, the kind who
used
to know their place. Visit a mall. Ride a bus. Walk into any public school. They’re
infested
with them.”

Will stepped into the smaller cave on the left and crouched in the shadows just inside, waiting for his eyes to adjust. He collected two round rocks the size of baseballs and stuck them into the pockets of his vest. He couldn’t see Lyle yet, so he closed his eyes, pulled up the grid, and found him:

Thirty yards to the right, in the next chamber
. He saw that all the caves were interconnected, a vast warren of chambers and passages honeycombing the entire ridge.

“The problem is you
oiks
don’t know your place anymore. Oh, you still want your bread and circuses, your junk food and blood sports. But a steady diet of garbage isn’t enough to pacify you now. You think because our culture panders to all your infantile impulses that now you’re supposed to have a
voice
. That we should have to
listen
to you.”

Will inched forward to the nearest opening in the sandstone. A white-hot glow issued from the chamber to his right.

“You believe you’re all so
special
! You couldn’t possibly be responsible for your own dead-end lives—you’ve got too much self
-esteem
. You’re all
stars
just waiting to be discovered. Forget self
-discipline
or education or knowing the right people. The world’s one big talent show and all you have to do is show up.”

Will reached the edge of the passage and peeked around; the ceiling of the adjacent chamber arched up more than thirty feet. It was illuminated by the unnatural light issuing from the hooked steel rod—the Carver—that Lyle held in his hand. He was using the rod to trace a huge circle in the air, nearly complete, over six feet in diameter. Its rough outline burned with blinding intensity.

“We stand for something different here. Eternal verities: honor, values, leadership. Now more than ever. A new breed ready to maintain our traditions. It was all going according to plan until
you
walked in. An
oik
crashing the cocktail party. Well, let me make one thing perfectly clear:
Over my dead body
.”

Lyle finished tracing the circle. An energy field crackled to life around the edges, the air blurred and glimmered, and a portal slowly opened inside the circle. Lyle held up the rod, the glyphs engraved in its handle glowing brightly.

Dave’s got my back
. With that thought fortifying him, Will gripped one of the rocks in his pocket and stepped forward. “If that’s the way you want it, Lyle.”

Lyle whipped around, and his wild eyes found Will. “You know what happened to the
last
people who stood in our way? They call themselves
Native
Americans, as if they were here
first
.”

“They
were
here first.”

“Those pathetic primitives believed these caves led to the underworld,” said Lyle. “That their gods used them to pass between here and the spirit realm. They had it all wrong.” Lyle held up his hands to the hole, proudly displaying his handiwork. “The only passage here now is to the Old Ones … in the Never-Was.”

Lyle pointed the rod at Will and a beam of burning white light shot out at him. Will pushed out a thought shield just in time and deflected the beam into a wall, but it nearly knocked him over. Lyle was still stronger, and with that weapon in hand, he was a
lot
stronger. Will ducked back into cover. Two more bursts followed, cracking the rock, blasting holes in the walls.

What if Dave isn’t coming this time? What was it he said?
“Learn. Learn fast.”

Will rose up and threw the first stone three feet to Lyle’s right. Lyle smiled confidently and raised the rod to fire again. Will closed his eyes, stretched out his grid, and found the rock flying into the darkness. He grabbed hold and found a way to invest its mass with some part of himself. Then all he had to do was
think
about it: The rock swung around and boomeranged back toward Lyle.

I’m learning
.

#48: NEVER START A FIGHT UNLESS YOU CAN FINISH IT. FAST.

The rock cracked into Lyle’s arm just above the elbow, knocking the rod out of his hand. Lyle screamed in pain and fell to his knees. Will threw the second rock at the rod and knocked it back into the cave, out of sight.

Lyle went down hard, turning to protect his wounded arm. Will jumped on top of him, straddled his chest, and pinned him to the ground. He held the blade of his knife under Lyle’s chin. Lyle looked up at him once, gulped in a deep breath, and started to bawl in great chuffing sobs, like a heartbroken toddler. The creep’s anguish was so authentic it almost made Will feel sorry for him.

Then he saw a knot of raised flesh on the left side of Lyle’s neck, twitching around like a joystick.

Damn. A Ride Along
.

Will watched in horror as the thing extruded out of the knot on Lyle’s neck. A mottled six-inch black stalk with short barbed arms and eight blinking angry eyes in a furious, contorted half-human face spit and hissed at Will.

Without even thinking, Will flicked his knife and sliced the creature off at the stem. The severed stalk flopped to the ground, uttered a hideous mewling screech, and scuttled into the dark, dragging its leaking, carved-up carcass.

The knot on Lyle’s neck collapsed like a deflating balloon, lost its color, and lay flat. Lyle heaved a blubbering sigh.

“I hurt,” said Lyle, looking at Will with wounded eyes. “Really bad. All over.”

“What do you expect from me?” asked Will. “First aid? You tried to kill me!”

Lyle cried some more, softly, inconsolable. “I didn’t want to,” Lyle whimpered. “They made me do it.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re
afraid
of you,” said Lyle.

“Who made you do this?
How?
”

Lyle showed Will his neck. “He ordered me to put that thing on
myself
,” he said, his voice thick and trembling. “Two days ago. Because I
wouldn’t
kill you.”

“The Bald Man?”

Lyle nodded, looking for sympathy.

“Who is he, Lyle?”

“We call him Mr. Hobbes,” said Lyle in a small voice. “He showed up last year when I joined the Knights. He tested me. My abilities.”

“You mean, what you can do to people,” said Will.

Lyle nodded, tears leaking from his eyes. “And he said I was going to be very important … because I was the
first
one to Awaken.”

“What does that mean? The first of
what
?”

“Of the
Prophecy
,” said Lyle intensely. “He said I was the first, and because of that
big plans
were in the works for me to help them—”

“What’s the Prophecy, Lyle?”

“—and then
you
came along,” said Lyle, turning petulant. “It’s all your fault. You ruined my
life
.”

“What is the Prophecy?”

“We
all
are!” Lyle’s face twisted into a knot and his voice fell to a whisper. “A-T-C-G. A-T-C-G—”

Will shook him with both hands. “Goddamn it, Lyle, tell me what I need to know! Is the school behind this?”

“The
school
?” Lyle looked perversely pleased, almost giddy.

“Do they know about it?” demanded Will.

“Some. I don’t know how many,” said Lyle, then lowered his voice again. “You need to start at the beginning. At the clinics.”

“What clinics?”

“See how
you
like the news. Then ask yourself, Who am I … 
really
? And the best of luck to you,” said Lyle as all his brute nastiness returned.
“Oik.”

A deep rumbling burst out of the portal behind them and grew louder until the ground shuddered around them, shaking rocks loose from the walls. An eerie moan pierced the air. The hair on Will’s neck stood up. He turned to look.

A shadowy swirling mass loomed up inside the portal Lyle had opened.

“What did you bring over, Lyle?”

Lyle stared at the portal, terrified. “Wendigo,” he mumbled.

Will slipped Dave’s glasses out of his vest and put them on. An immense semihuman frame appeared on the far side of the portal.

“Please, help me,” pleaded Lyle.

Will yanked Lyle to his feet and pulled him toward the mouth of the cave, but Lyle broke free, pushed Will away, and ran toward the portal. Will looked back and saw the thing step out of the hole.

It was a gaunt giant with a sickening loose hide, mottled and gray, covered with long dank hair. Its long leathery arms and legs ended in talons. Clumps of eyes and knots of gnawed limbs poked out of its exposed rib cage. A grotesque grin of razor-sharp teeth split its face below poisonous deep-set yellow eyes gleaming with hunger and spite. A jet-black darkness moved with it, flowing around it like a cloud.

Lyle walked right up to it, raising his hands in supplication. The creature regarded him curiously.

“I called you over,” said Lyle, smiling darkly; then he turned and pointed at Will. “
He’s
the one you want.”

When Lyle turned back to it, the thing opened its maw and a long tentacle of flesh shot out and attached itself to Lyle’s face with a wet slap. Lyle’s body stiffened. His limbs thrust out and his whole body pitched and thrashed violently. He let loose an unearthly muffled howl, as if his soul were being run through a log splitter. Moments later, Will thought he saw Lyle’s face appear inside the cage of the thing’s ribs, screaming in agony.

Will backed away, numb with terror, as the wendigo released Lyle and he flopped to the floor of the cave. As Will fled the cave, he heard the wendigo stomping after him. He expected its vile touch to fell him at any moment.

Then he heard … what, an engine? Some kind of motor? Will looked up but the sky seemed unbelievably bright.

“Get down, mate.”

Dave’s Prowler ripped up and over the ridgeline. It soared into the air, arcing over Will, gunned full throttle. Dave leaned out the window, his sidearm blazing as he slammed the Prowler straight into the wendigo at the mouth of the cave.

The collision drove the creature back inside. It planted its feet and grabbed the car in its massive hands. Metal pinched and notched as the wendigo crushed the car like a child’s toy. Dave leaped out of the wreckage and with a burst of light powered up into the full angelic form Will had seen briefly in his room: eight feet tall, platinum armor, wielding a gleaming silver-blue sword.

Dave and the creature savaged each other, trading staggering blows. Dave absorbed fearsome damage in order to drive the thing back. It yielded ground, Dave spinning his sword like a scythe. The air sparked around them like the Fourth of July until, with a devastating combination, Dave smashed the wendigo’s shadowy mass back into the portal.

Will watched from his knees just outside the cave as the portal began to contract. Dave shrank back to human size, bleeding from a dozen wounds. Will saw a fearful look in Dave’s eyes he’d never seen before.

“You all right?” asked Dave, his chest heaving.

Will nodded. “What about you?”

“Been better. That was a nasty one. One of the big boys—”

He took one step toward Will. Suddenly the long desiccated limbs of the wendigo shot out of the contracting portal behind Dave and snared him around the waist.

“Buzzard’s luck, mate,” said Dave. He reached into his pocket and threw something. It plugged down into the snow just outside the cave.

“No!” shouted Will.

Then the thing yanked Dave back into the Never-Was just as the portal winked shut and vanished.

The cave went silent. Will pulled off his glasses and fumbled them into his pocket. Heart thumping, he staggered outside, dropped to his knees, reached a hand down into the puncture in the snow, and found something solid.

Dave’s glass cube, with the two black dice spinning inside.

Will heard an engine sound again, loud and getting louder. He looked up at the sky.

Hovering above him, a helicopter angled sideways as it slowed and lowered toward the ridge. He saw a door slide open on its side, and a rope ladder tumbled out, someone tossing it down to him, and he thought—

I know him. Who is he? Wait, it’ll come to me.…

Yes, that’s Headmaster Rourke
.

MOM AND DAD

Are you Awake? He’s an only child … 1990 … the Paladin Prophecy … Roman numerals … clinics … test scores … the Greenwood Foundation
.

Open all doors, and Awaken
.

Fragments swirled in Will’s mind. He slowly became aware that he was lying on his back, on a bed with crisp linen sheets. No idea how long he’d been out. And he felt someone was there with him. He opened his eyes. He was in a room in the medical center. When he looked around, there they were, both of them, sitting by his bed in the pale moonlight.