The Blazing Bridge

by Carter Roy

  PRAISE FOR

  THE BLOOD GUARD SERIES

  “The humorous and exciting start of a new trilogy… .

  The stakes are raised with a startling revelation that will have readers eager for the next book.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Breathless action, witty dialogue, and unabashed fun.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Wildly intense and deviously funny, The Blood Guard has real heart as well as characters you’ll fall in love with. This is cool stuff, very cool stuff.”

  —Michael Grant, New York Times bestselling author of the Gone series

  “A superbly written adventure… . Just the right amount of sarcastic humor and genuine heart… . A great start to what is sure to be a wildly popular series, especially among boys, and a must-have.”

  —VOYA (highlighted review)

  “Intense, action-filled… . The Blood Guard is a non-put-downable page-turner… . This book is a must-have.”

  —The Guardian

  “The Glass Gauntlet is the exciting and long-awaited second book in the Blood Guard series… . I can’t wait to read what Carter Roy will come up with next.”

  —San Francisco Book Review

  “With strong character development, edge-of-your-seat pacing, and fairly rich world building, The Glass Gauntlet is a strong sequel.”

  —School Library Journal

  “An action-packed book you never want to put down.”

  —Denver Post

  “Hits the ground running and doesn’t let up until it’s dragged you, gasping and astonished and delighted, over the finish line.”

  —Bruce Coville, author of Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher and My Teacher Is an Alien

  “Packed with breathless adventure, sword fighting, heartless betrayal, and car chases—but what I love best about this book is that amid all the fun it’s also pure of heart.”

  —Sarah Prineas, author of the Magic Thief series

  “The kind of witty, fleet-footed, swashbuckling adventure my twelve-year-old self would have gobbled up.”

  —Bruce Hale, author of the Chet Gecko mysteries and A School for S.P.I.E.S.: Playing with Fire

  Also by Carter Roy

  THE BLOOD GUARD

  THE GLASS GAUNTLET

  For Beth,

  a hat trick;

  and for Georgie,

  the last line of the book

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Praise for the Blood Guard Series

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue: Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before

  Chapter 1: A Dark and Stormy Flight

  Chapter 2: The Biz With Diz

  Chapter 3: Home Is Where The Hurt Is

  Chapter 4: The Door Between Worlds

  Chapter 5: A Song In His Heart, A Sword In His Hand

  Chapter 6: Guarding Greta

  Chapter 7: Cat-O-Graphy

  Chapter 8: A Pink Fluffy Unicorn

  Chapter 9: Jack Dawkins, Imbecile Abroad

  Chapter 10: The Trap at the Spot Where We Went that Time

  Chapter 11: Leeroy Jenkins to the Rescue

  Chapter 12: The Cat’s in the Bag

  Chapter 13: Weapons of Brass Destruction

  Chapter 14: A Slippery Slope

  Chapter 15: Zip Tie Meets Zippo

  Chapter 16: A Fountain of Stars

  Chapter 17: Borderline Crazy

  Chapter 18: The Blazing Bridge

  Chapter 19: I Have the Absolute Worst Idea of My Entire Life

  Chapter 20: Taking the Plunge

  Chapter 21: The Reckoning

  Chapter 22: This is the Way the World Ends

  Chapter 23: The New World

  Chapter 24: The Spangled Globe

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  STOP ME IF YOU’VE HEARD THIS ONE BEFORE

  Again and again this summer, I found myself climbing up the side of a burning building.

  Okay, not really—this was a recurring dream, my brain rerunning a real-life nightmare from months earlier. (Thanks a lot, brain.)

  It always starts like this:

  Smoke swirls around me, but so do flurries of snow. My hands, chest, and toes are practically broiling against a wall of scorching-hot brick. That’s when I remember: I’m stuck on the front of our burning brownstone in the middle of a snowstorm.

  When I look up, the edge of the roof is impossibly far away. I know I’ll never reach it. So I look down instead.

  Bad move.

  I am so dizzyingly high that the cars parked on the street look like Hot Wheels, and the snowy yard in front of our brownstone seems about as big as a postage stamp. Everything is lit up a creepy carnival orange thanks to the crackling flames.

  Fear wallops me. My breath sticks in my throat, my fingers cramp, my right foot slips, and—

  I hug the wall and catch myself.

  Then, because I have no choice, I keep going up.

  I climb for what feels like hours.

  And here’s the amazing thing: I make it. My groping hand feels only air because I’ve reached the top.

  And then someone grabs my arm.

  It’s my dad. He’s clean shaven and wearing a pinstriped suit, like he’s just stopped by on his way to an important meeting—never mind the snow, ash, and smoke.

  He’s got hold of me, so I raise my other hand to pull myself over.

  That’s when he says, “My work here is done, Evelyn.”

  It sounds like a punch line, but he isn’t the kind of dad who jokes around.

  Then he lets go.

  And just like that, I’m falling to my death.

  He watches. I can see his face over the edge of the roof, the front of the building an inferno, and we lock eyes until, with a full-body flinch, I jolt awake.

  In real life, Dad hadn’t been waiting on the roof, but he was the one who’d burned our house down. I’d heard lots of explanations for why he’d done it, but none of them ever made any sense.

  That dream nagged at me all summer, but I kept it to myself. I didn’t want Dawkins or my mom to think I wasn’t ready to join the Blood Guard. I wanted to solve the puzzle of this dream on my own.

  You’re missing something, you idiot, I kept telling myself.

  But what?

  CHAPTER 1

  A DARK AND STORMY FLIGHT

  My dream was true about one important thing: Heights? They utterly terrify me now.

  Most of the time, the fear wasn’t a big deal. How many times in everyday life do you find yourself staring down at your certain death? Not all that often.

  So I hardly felt nervous at all during the helicopter flight from Agatha Glass’ estate. I was sitting between my friends Sammy and Greta on the leather-covered back bench, a helmet on my head, the four Dobermans of the apocalypse curled up warm against my feet, and it was easy to forget that we were zooming through the twilight sky in a noisy little glass bubble, thousands of feet above the ground.

  We had taken the copter and left the rest of the Blood Guard behind. It was the fastest way to get to Greta’s house in Brooklyn and convince her mom to come into hiding before my father and his evil flunkies showed up.

  My dad is a bigwig in a murderous organization called the Bend Sinister. They’re working to bring about the end of the world by finding and killing thirty-six special “Pure” souls who keep the world in balance. The Pure at the top of his hit list just happens to be my best friend, Greta.

  Greta doesn’t know she’s a Pure … and I can’t tell her. It was one of the very first lessons Dawkins taught me: self-knowledge changes a Pure, deep down. If Greta found out the truth, she would lose the very quality that makes h
er so special, the quality that makes her a Pure. And then the world would begin to end.

  But my dad had learned the truth about Greta. And since he couldn’t get to her, we guessed he would go after Greta’s mom.

  So we had to get to her first.

  We had almost reached New York—flying over some little town in northern New Jersey—when Agatha threw us into a steep dive. The world through the helicopter’s canopy tilted, and a bunch of blocky buildings like models in an old train set rushed at us.

  “Flying under the radar to keep our approach to New York a secret,” she explained. “You can never be too safe.”

  “Ahhh!” I yelped, and tried not to hyperventilate. “Why’s everything dark?”

  “Because you covered your eyes,” Greta said, prying my hands down, her face invisible in her giant flight helmet. “Gross. You’re all sweaty.”

  “Because we’re so high up,” I said, staring straight at the back of Agatha’s and Dawkins’ seats.

  “You’re afraid of heights?” Greta asked.

  “Didn’t you tell me some crazy story about how you climbed the front of a burning house?” Sammy asked, skeptical.

  “That was different,” I mumbled, rubbing at the scar across my palm. “This is …”

  We leveled out a hundred feet or so, soaring through the early night sky. On the floor facing me, Agatha’s four Dobermans blinked and tilted their heads. Their bulbous headphones made them look especially judgmental.

  “Stop looking at me like that,” I told them. “I am not going to be sick.”

  “They don’t believe you, Ronan,” Dawkins said, cranking his body around. He handed me a white paper airsickness bag. “And neither do I.” Jack Dawkins is like your best friend’s annoying older brother—a skinny hipster who acts all worldly even though he looks like he’s still in his teens. Thing is, with Dawkins, he is all worldly, on account of being almost two centuries old. “This new fear of heights may be an after-effect of that near-death escape Sammy mentioned. Traumatic experiences leave thumbprints on the emotions, you know.”

  “But this is all new,” I said. “I used to be fine.”

  “Perhaps your psyche has finally snapped … like an overloaded graham cracker.” He licked his lips. “Anyone else wishing we’d eaten dinner before departing?” Dawkins is always, always hungry.

  “My psyche is not like a graham cracker,” I insisted.

  “Whatever the case, this fear of yours may well disappear if you simply tackle it head-on,” Dawkins ended.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  The copter bounced up and down.

  “Bit of turbulence—sorry!” Agatha called back. Like Dawkins, she’s old but looks super young—a two-hundred-year-old woman magically trapped in a nine-year-old’s body. She had to use a booster seat in the pilot’s chair, which didn’t help me feel a whole lot safer, to be perfectly honest. “We’ll be back down before you know it!”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” I muttered.

  “Easy, Ronan,” Greta whispered, wiping my face with the sleeve of her green hoodie.

  “I’ll be okay.” I made myself grin. It wasn’t easy. “Crazy to think that we’ll be home in like twenty minutes!”

  “Crazy is right.” Greta’s smile faltered. “How am I going to explain all of this to my mom?”

  Good question. Somehow Greta was going to have to convince her mom that Greta’s dad had had a secret identity for most of the time they’d been married. Mr. Sustermann was, like my mom, a member of the Blood Guard, the ancient order of sword-swinging, buttkicking knights who protect the thirty-six Pure from those who would do them harm.

  Would Mrs. Sustermann even believe her? I may not have believed my mom, if I hadn’t witnessed her leap thirty feet through the air and use a sword to deflect bullets. That sort of thing will make a believer out of anybody.

  “Yeah, it’s going to be very weird,” I agreed. “Still, it’ll be nice to be home.”

  “You don’t even have a home anymore,” Greta said, frowning. “It’s just an empty lot now.”

  Some part of me understood, of course, that our blackened, burnt-out house wouldn’t still be standing. But knowing a thing and feeling it aren’t the same, and for a moment, my stomach clenched. My old life really was long gone.

  Back when I lived on First Place a year and a half ago, I was just a stressed-out, over-scheduled middle schooler with a distracted dad and a way-too-intense mom—basically, just like any other kid in our Brooklyn neighborhood. All of that went up in flames when my father put our home to the torch.

  I gasped.

  “What is it now?” Greta asked.

  “It’s just …” I pointed. “That.”

  We were flying over water now, the glimmering skyscrapers of New York City rising from the darkness ahead of us.

  “Wow,” Sammy said, leaning forward. “Unreal!”

  Even I had to admit: it did look pretty glorious. The shadowy towers were speckled with lights, and the streets below glowed gold from all the cars and streetlamps. I’d missed the city. I’d forgotten how beautiful it is.

  There was no place for Agatha to land in Brooklyn, so the plan was to touch down at a helipad in lower Manhattan where Dawkins had arranged for another Blood Guard to meet us. That person would drive us to Greta’s house “with all haste and lead-footed abandon,” according to Dawkins.

  Raindrops suddenly drummed against the canopy, and the four Dobermans began growling.

  “It’s just a little rain,” Dawkins said, scratching one of the dogs’ heads.

  War, Famine, Pestilence, and Debra strained at their safety harnesses.

  “Maybe they’re disappointed that the Statue of Liberty is so small,” Sammy said. Out the left-hand window was the familiar greenish-white monument.

  “It’s a lot bigger up close,” Greta said. “And on this side is the Brooklyn Bridge.”

  Sammy turned. “Why is it so orange?”

  I risked a glance. It was true: a third of the bridge was bright orange, like it had been wrapped in an enormous tent. “That is weird,” I said. The view blurred as rain hammered against the glass.

  Agatha strained against the joystick as the copter bucked and then dropped thirty feet.

  Greta held her stomach. “This is making even me feel sick.”

  “A good thing we’re so close.” Agatha wrestled the controls as the copter rocked from side to side. “The heliport is right off the West Side Highway.”

  “Maybe if you take us lower, we can escape the worst of it,” Dawkins said.

  But closer to the churning black waters of the Hudson, the rain didn’t let up. If anything, it got heavier.

  And then the inside of the cabin pulsed with blinding light.

  “Lightning?” Agatha said as a second bolt of electricity sizzled through the air.

  I blinked away a soft violet afterimage.

  “That was close!” Greta said.

  “Too close,” Dawkins said. “Worse, it was going the wrong direction.”

  “Wrong direction?” Agatha repeated, bringing us still lower.

  “Usually lightning goes from the clouds to the ground. Those bolts are coming from directly in front of us.”

  “The Bend Sinister,” Greta said.

  “We have a welcoming party,” Dawkins said. “Though how they knew we were coming, I can’t say.” His eyes flicked to Agatha.

  “I didn’t tell anyone,” she protested. “I’ve been with you the whole time!”

  “I trust you,” he said. “It’s the circumstances I mistrust. Is this your usual flight path?”

  “It is,” she said. I wouldn’t have thought such a little kid could slump into herself, but Agatha seemed to shrink behind the pilot’s seat. “And if anyone had been watching, they would have seen us lift off.”

  “Right,” Dawkins said. “And someone might have been watching thanks to Ronan’s dad. We’re going to come in hot, everybody.”

  “They probably m
ade this storm, too,” I said, remembering how a Bend Sinister Hand and one of her agents had made a river flow backward. If they could do that, then creating a thunderstorm shouldn’t be too tricky. “Some of them can control nature.”

  “True—when enough of them work together. We’ll be lucky if it’s only five agents and a Hand. Any more than that and we’ll likely end up in the drink.” Dawkins flipped some switches on the dash. “Would you mind, Agatha, if I take the controls?”

  “Flying’s not as easy as it looks,” Agatha replied.

  “I piloted a Huey a half century ago in Vietnam; trust me, I can handle this little bird.” A burst of violet light shot forth from the dark line of the shore ahead, and Dawkins flicked the helicopter left. The Tesla bolt crackled past just over the rotors, leaving a lavender shadow on my eyelids.

  “The helicopter’s rotor blades,” I stammered. “Would that spell you use on swords work on something that big?” I’d seen it used only twice—once when my mom enchanted a sword before facing two Bend Sinister agents who were armed with pistols, and another time when Dawkins used it on a pocketknife.

  Dawkins laughed. “A fine idea!” Then he whispered a quick, pretty singsong in some other language, weaving the fingers of his left hand in the air. As he finished, a new light shone down upon us: a pale blue glow radiating from the rotors overhead. “Now we have a shield!” Dawkins said. “But alas, only one way to use it—we have to come in at an angle. Forgive me, Ronan.”

  “For wha—?” I started to say, and then he tipped the copter forward so sharply that all of us dangled in our harnesses—even the dogs. Their claws scrabbled against the metal bulkhead.

  Now all I could see through the helicopter’s canopy was the frothing dark water of the river. We were flying at a forty-five degree angle, using the glowing rotors to shield the cabin.

  “Now I think I’m going to be sick,” Sammy said, pinwheeling his arms in the air.

  By raising my head I could just make out a concrete strip of land in front of us. Five silhouettes were lined up across it. They were haloed by a bunch of small white lights—the helipad landing guide. Just beyond them was the West Side Highway, buzzing with nighttime traffic.

  “You’re heading straight for them!” I said.