by Rena Barron
“What do you think he’s going to do?” Miss Ida asked, her words carried on the wind.
That was definitely Miss Ida, because her voice was huskier than Miss Lucille’s.
“He’ll do what he always does,” Miss Lucille answered. “Handle the darkbringers.”
Frankie and I both looked at each other, our eyes wide.
“Darkbringers,” I mouthed. “Have you heard of them?”
Frankie shook her head. “Sounds like a new gang.”
“What if he can’t stop the veil from failing this time?” Miss Ida asked, voice desperate.
I wondered who he was. Some of the proverbs on my father’s staff mentioned a veil. But I’d never thought to ask what it meant, and now I was seriously regretting it.
“The veil is very old,” Miss Lucille said. “It’s bound to fail one day.”
There was a long pause, then Miss Ida said, “I’m not looking forward to another war.”
Frankie grabbed my arm and stopped me in my tracks. My mouth dropped open as the words another war ran circles in my mind. I imagined the twins in an actual war. Maybe they were fighter pilots, or sergeants yelling at cadets about untied shoelaces.
“This doesn’t feel right,” Frankie said, hugging her shoulders. “I think we should go back.”
Even in the dim moonlight, I saw that Frankie was shaking. Last year, when Eli swore the stairs at school were haunted, she debunked his claim by proving that a faulty air duct, not a ghost, was causing a cold spot. Frankie had an explanation for everything. If she was scared, then we were in trouble.
The streetlight flickered, and we both flinched. In the short time that we’d stopped, the twins had vanished around a corner. An eerie silence settled over the neighborhood. Even the sound of rats in the garbage cans and the hum of water in the drains along the street faded away.
“I think you’re right.” My palm was slick with sweat against my staff. “We should probably go back.”
Before we could make a step, there was a zing like static in the air and the streetlight went out. Frankie switched on her flashlight first, and I fumbled to turn on mine as one by one all the lights on the block shut off.
“Maybe a transistor blew,” Frankie said, sweeping her flashlight in a wide arc. “That would cause all the lights to go out at once.”
“What was that?” I pointed my flashlight in time to see a pack of dogs trot into an alley. At least, what looked like dogs. I’d never seen dogs with ears that round and brown spots all over their coats. Their movements were very un-doglike, and it made the hairs prick on the back of my neck. “I really think we should go now.”
Frankie yelped, and I almost jumped out of my skin. She stared down at her elbow, and I beamed my flashlight on her. “Something cold touched my arm.”
Shadows or not, something was stalking our neighborhood. “Did the light work . . .”
I stopped midsentence as a shadow whipped out from the darkness. I jerked back, but not fast enough. The shadow slashed against my cheek. “Ahhh,” I screamed, and stumbled out of reach. Frankie wasn’t so lucky. The shadow snapped around her wrist. She shrieked as her flashlight crashed against the ground and the light blinked out.
“No!” I fumbled for the whistle around my neck. My fingers were clumsy, and I kept dropping it. When I finally got it to my lips, I blew, but it didn’t work. More shadows grabbed Frankie from behind, dragging her away from me. I couldn’t let them take her.
Gritting my teeth, I swung my flashlight as hard as I could. I got Frankie into this mess, and I had to do something. I wanted to use my staff, but I’d tucked it under my arm so I could switch on the flashlight. The light bounced everywhere, even blinding me for a second, as I swung again. This time I made contact with something and the impact vibrated up my arm. The shadows hissed, low and menacing. I kept swinging until they let go and Frankie crashed into my shoulder. She stared at me wide-eyed. She had icicles on her hands and her T-shirt. We were both shaking. Turned out it wasn’t a good idea to sneak out at night looking for trouble after all.
We ran. Maybe we should’ve paid attention to which direction, but we didn’t care as long as it was away from the shadows. With the flashlight bouncing around, we couldn’t see our way and ended up in an alley. When we stopped to catch our breaths, I leaned over with my hands on my knees.
Frankie wiped sweat from her forehead. “I think we can now say with confidence that those are not in fact shadows,” she said. “But there has to be another logical explanation.”
I stared at her with my mouth open. Of course she would try to come up with a new theory in the middle of fleeing from an unknown foe. I searched for a snappy comeback to ease the tension, but my breath caught in my throat. The dogs I saw earlier trotted into the alleyway with their sharp teeth bared. I swallowed hard as Frankie and I backed away. “I don’t think those are dogs.”
“Those are definitely not dogs,” she said, her voice squeaky. “Hyenas?”
I nodded, almost unable to speak. “Maybe they escaped from Brookfield Zoo?”
As the hyenas closed in on us, I glanced over my shoulder at the wall at our backs. Our only way out was to climb it or go through the pack of hyenas, who were licking their lips. The wall was too high, and there was no time to prop something against it to give us a boost.
“Take this,” I said, thrusting the flashlight into Frankie’s hand.
I banged the tip of my staff against the pavement, hoping I could scare the hyenas away, but they kept coming.
“Try the whistle,” Frankie said, leaning so close to me that our shoulders bumped.
“I would if I hadn’t lost it when we ran,” I said, my heart racing against my chest.
“Oh,” she gasped.
It wasn’t until they stepped out of the shadows that I realized the hyenas had grown bigger. They stood on their hind legs, and their claws looked like curled knives. Their torsos stretched into a shape that was unmistakable and impossible. These were werehyenas, like from Papa’s stories, half hyena, half man. But it couldn’t be. Those were just make-believe.
“No way,” I mumbled under my breath.
Stories or not, they were here now. Moonlight glinted off their sharp teeth as they sauntered forward, savoring the moment. I stood with my staff, ready to fight them, or as ready as one can be facing down six hungry werehyenas. Then the beasts charged, and Frankie stumbled beside me.
I stepped in front of my friend with the staff crisscrossed over my body and dropped into a crouch, my knees bent. When the werehyenas were almost on top of us, though, something happened. A bright light flashed in the alley. It was so intense that I backed away, shielding my face in the crook of my elbow. I could still hear the hyenas cackling, but they had backed off too. Before I could figure out what the heck was going on, I tripped over something and hit the ground hard.
Six
A perfectly reasonable explanation
I wasn’t dead at least. That was good.
The mysterious bright light had disappeared, and I forced myself to sit up. I had scrapes on my palms, and my butt was sore from the fall. My head was spinning, too. The werehyenas were pacing back and forth a few feet away. I thought for sure they would’ve eaten us by now. This gave new meaning to playing with your food.
Not taking my eyes off them, I searched for the staff. My hands bumped into slimy things and puddles of what was most certainly not water and trash. My vision was still a little fuzzy around the edges after the light. Probably better to not see what I was touching, anyway. My heart raced as the seconds ticked down. I didn’t know why the werehyenas hadn’t attacked, but I didn’t expect that to last either.
“Here,” Frankie said, thrusting my staff into my hand.
“What happened?” I asked, half out of breath as she helped me to my feet.
I saw the outline of a faint light that had formed a circle around us. It looked like an electric net made of thousands of tiny lights woven together. It was equal parts f
ascinating and terrifying. I had no clue what it was, but for now it wasn’t trying to hurt us.
“I don’t know,” Frankie stuttered, looking at her hands in shock. “It’s some kind of force field between us and the hyenas, if that’s even what you can call them.”
Her eyebrows drew together. Nothing stumped Frankie. But after the shadows, the werehyenas, the light, even she couldn’t explain this away.
“They’re werehyenas,” I said, “and ten times more dangerous than regular hyenas.”
Calling them werehyenas out loud sounded much weirder than in my head. My face felt hot with embarrassment. Papa said that werehyenas came to North America by pretending to be regular hyenas. They let people working for zoos capture them, so they could look for new hunting grounds. A bunch had escaped. Now people mistook them for Bigfoot all the time, who, according to Papa, got a bad rap on account of his size. Was he real too?
“Maybe there was some mind-altering drug in the vanilla pudding at school today,” Frankie offered. “My moms say that the government performs secret experiments on people all the time.”
“I never eat the pudding.” I shook my head. “So that can’t be it.”
I wondered how this light came to be, but also how it had suddenly grown less intense, less bright, like an afterglow. The werehyenas stopped pacing back and forth. Teeth bared, drool wetting their greedy black lips, they cackled at the moon.
“So much for my mind-altering drug theory.” Frankie pushed up her sliding glasses with one shaky hand. “Then my vote is they escaped a government lab where they’d been genetically spliced.”
When I cocked my head at her, she added, “You know, when you mix the genes of one species with another one.”
“Yes, of course.” I rolled my eyes. “I splice genes in my spare time.”
One of the werehyenas, the biggest of the pack, sauntered closer and sniffed the air. He stopped short of crossing the bubble of light—which seemed to be protecting us from them. The werehyena turned his yellow eyes straight at me as he growled, “We’re going to eat you.”
“Did that thing just talk?” Frankie shrieked. “That’s incredible.”
Never mind that the thing threatened to eat us.
“Do you two ever shut up?” the werehyena snarled.
I tightened my grasp on the staff—getting angrier by the second. My fingers burned from gripping the staff hard, and heat flushed down my arm. I didn’t know where the light was coming from or how long it would last, but if it failed, I was ready to fight.
“I know what you are,” I said through gritted teeth. I knew even if my mind had a hard time believing. I forced myself to slow my breathing like Papa taught me during staff play. I needed total concentration to take on the werehyenas. “We’re not afraid of you either.”
Under her breath, Frankie whispered, “Speak for yourself. I happen to be very afraid.”
“Shush,” I hissed back. “He doesn’t need to know that.”
The werehyena clucked his tongue, his keen ears perked to our every word. He had to be the leader of the pack, since none of the others spoke. He raised himself to stand up straight on his hind legs and stood over six feet tall. Both Frankie and I gulped.
In one quick swipe, he scraped his claws against the force field that separated us from certain death. The noise was sharp, and sparks shot out. Thankfully, the barrier held, but Frankie stumbled back a few steps. She folded over like he had punched her in the belly.
“Are you okay?” I asked, breaking my stance to check on my friend.
“I . . . I don’t know,” she said, breathing hard and fast. “It feels like something cut me.”
The werehyena smiled, and the anger flared inside me. He’d done that to her, but I didn’t know how. The light itself was some kind of magic. Magic. The thing that adults said was make-believe. Well, all the adults except Papa.
The werehyena turned his glare on me. “Which of you little godlings should I eat first?”
I frowned. Never mind that he’d threatened to eat me again, but what was a godling? My legs trembled, and my pulse drummed so hard against my ears I thought they would explode. My fear didn’t stop me from straightening up and shifting my staff back into defense mode. I wasn’t going to let him trick me into doing something silly like stepping outside of the light.
“If you want to eat me, then come get me,” I said, giving him my meanest glare.
It probably wasn’t the best idea to taunt a hungry werehyena, especially a pack of six hungry werehyenas. The leader threw back his head, turned his snout to the moon, and cackled. The others did the same, and then they dropped to all four legs and trotted to the mouth of the alley. Scratch that: it wasn’t a good idea to taunt hungry werehyenas who knew that your only way to escape was through them.
“Do you think they’re gone?” Frankie asked, finally able to stand straight again.
“Not a chance,” I answered, peering after the werehyenas. “They’re coming up with a plan, and we need one of our own.” I glanced down at my staff. “I’ll knock out as many as I can while you run to get help.”
“Maya, I don’t think that’s a good idea.” She pointed her flashlight into the night. “Those werehyenas want to eat us, we should run together.”
Frankie and I didn’t have enough time to argue about the best way to fend off an attack. The werehyenas appeared out of the dark again, charging toward us. The biggest one, the leader, ran the fastest, his yellow eyes glowing.
I decided in that split second how I was going to react. I would duck and roll out of their path, letting their momentum carry them past us. Then I would take out as many legs as I could so they couldn’t pursue once we ran.
The werehyenas startled Frankie, and she dropped the flashlight. It hit the ground, and the light died.
Frankie gave me an apologetic grimace, but she had nothing to be sorry for. This was an impossible situation under impossible circumstances. My hands shook. In fact, my whole body was shaking. Contrary to my brave words, I was scared out of my mind too.
Just as the werehyenas slammed into the barrier, I yelled, “Dive right.”
The force field shattered into a million sparks of light, then a lot of things happened at once. I dove left, ready to slam my staff into the first werehyena to cross my path. Their leader angled his charge for me, his sharp teeth bared. My anemia hit, and my head started to swim. My legs swayed. I fought to stay standing. I couldn’t lean on my staff for balance because I needed it to fight.
Frankie didn’t dive right. Instead, she did something that if I hadn’t seen with my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe in a thousand years. Light shot out of her hands and slammed into the werehyenas. When it hit them, they hurtled through the air and collided with the ground.
I gasped, half in shock and half in awe.
How did she do that?
Frankie stood completely still and speechless, clearly in shock too.
The werehyenas whimpered as they scrambled to untangle themselves. Once they climbed to their feet again, they backed away, then turned to flee. Their leader glanced over his shoulder at us, glowering, his black lips drawn back to show sharp fangs. He reminded me of every sulking bully who had ever gotten caught in the act. Even as the werehyenas tucked their tails and fled back into the shadows, his look said that next time we wouldn’t be so lucky.
Seven
I learn a secret
Frankie and I stared at each other for a full minute. She finally broke the standoff and looked down at her trembling hands. This was the first time that I’d ever seen her confused and unsure. But to Frankie’s credit, she was much calmer than I would’ve been in her situation. If it was me, I would’ve been busy shooting lights into the sky like firecrackers just to see how far they’d go.
“How did you do that?” I asked.
Frankie blew out a shaky breath. “Would you believe me if I said I don’t know?”
“From the look on your face, yes,” I answered. �
�Did you feel anything when it happened?”
She turned her hands around to examine her palms. “I felt this pulsing beneath my skin, almost like a heartbeat.” She stared at me with wide eyes. “I didn’t know to do it . . . It was just instinct. You know when you get a hunch about something? It was like that. I think I created the force field too . . .”
I bounced on my toes, too excited to stand still. “You’re officially a mutant.”
“Be serious, Maya!” Frankie said, her voice high-pitched. “Everything can be explained by science. The laws of physics, gravity, matter, atoms . . . This is impossible.”
“Have you heard of a thing called magic?” I asked. “It explains the unexplainable.”
As soon as I said the words, I knew I had pushed her too far. Frankie didn’t deal well with things that couldn’t be explained. Her eyes welled with tears. She was taking this harder than I expected. It wasn’t every day a science geek found out that she had the power to shoot light out of her hands.
“I know it seems impossible,” I said, patting her shoulder, “but I’m glad we’re okay.”
She nudged her glasses up. “Me too.”
“Eli’s going to be so mad he missed this,” I said as we started home.
“He’ll claim it’s a conspiracy,” Frankie added.
We froze as Miss Ida and Miss Lucille stepped soundlessly out of the shadows. Both wore matching scowls and had their hands on their hips. At the same time, the streetlights flickered back on, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Are you hurt?” they asked together, one voice overlapping the other.
“No,” we answered back.
And we weren’t, aside from a few scratches. Miss Lucille looked me over, and Miss Ida did the same for Frankie. They definitely knew something. I could tell by how nervous they were acting.
“What in the heavens are you doing out here again?” Miss Ida asked me, then turned her glare on Frankie. “You especially should know better than to get caught up in Maya’s antics.”
