Chapter 67
BETA WASN’T INTERESTED in the grandeur of a tournament. Before Arthur had even finished his flourish, Beta’s fiery jet darted forward till it encircled Arthur like a boa constrictor ready to squeeze and turn him into charcoal. Arthur dove and rolled and avoided becoming toast—literally. By inches.
“That was too close,” Merlin thought at me, and then I heard him sigh, a long, long sigh of relief. So I guess he was a little nervous about Arthur after all. Was I just as insane as Merlin to let Arthur get mixed up in this?
Merlin wasn’t going to take any chances.
At that moment I felt a sudden change in the air. The remaining clouds of steam began to glow white against the dark cavern walls. I heard crackling, and the sword’s hilt began to glisten. I stared, trying to get a better view. Was that… frost?
Merlin was really something. Even I didn’t know how to freeze water right out of the air.
And then in a beautiful stroke of luck or brilliant swordsmanship, Arthur thrust the frozen sword into Beta’s side. The dragon’s oblong face twisted in pain and anger and shock as its flames were sucked back in.
Then the huge beast slumped down, his entire body covered with a sparkling sheet of ice. His eyes, no longer flames, were more like empty sockets weeping frozen tears.
A tiny flame still flickered in his open mouth like a bright forked tongue, but the rest of his body was going dark.
Arthur drew the sword out of Beta’s side and aimed for the dragon’s head. This would end it, end Beta. And then the dragon’s mouth opened and gasped something in a voice that sounded almost… human.
“I didn’t think you had it in you… Pendy.”
Arthur hesitated, a confused expression contorting his face. As he did, the last few flames leapt from the dragon’s mouth, sizzled against the floor, slithered over to the wall, and—to my sudden horror—disappeared through a fissure.
“No!” I yelled. But it was too late. The last few sparks that were left of Beta had escaped underground. He wasn’t gone for all eternity. He would rise again.
Meanwhile, the dragon’s body was crumbling. By the time I reached it, it was no more than a pile of gray ash—with a shape inside, a shape that moaned and turned over as I came closer.
It was burned beyond recognition, but to my astonishment it began to regain its form. I saw Merlin off to the side, with both arms extended—chanting in an unidentifiable tongue. Healing the beast?
Instantly the form was complete—and it was human.
“Kay?” said Arthur.
“My king,” muttered his stepbrother.
Chapter 68
TALK ABOUT A TOUGH DAY in the mines.
When we finally pulled ourselves together enough to hoof it back to the castle, Arthur locked himself in his room. Merlin and I had felt it was only fair to try to explain to him what had just happened, right down to our suspicions that Kay had become a flame weaver and that Beta had come to possess him. As you can imagine, that shocked him even more. I don’t think he even bothered to sponge off the soot and burn marks before he turned in that night.
That gave me the private moment I needed with Merlin. I had a bone to pick with him.
My fellow Alien Hunter—or so he said.
I limped back across the fields to his house in the water mill in silence. By the time I got there I couldn’t hold it back any longer. “We let him get away, Merlin. Beta slipped through our fingers! We failed. I’ve never failed like this before.”
Merlin looked at me for a long moment before speaking. There were bags under his eyes that were way too large and saggy for his childish face.
“Beta is an extraordinary creature,” he said, and heaved a sigh. “We had better sit down and have a drink. I suppose I’m going to have to explain this to you after all. Y’see, my boy, I’m not exactly an Alien Hunter. I was backup for one. She was my mentor. Guinevere was her name.”
We sat down and he handed me a cup. It was empty. I looked at him questioningly.
“What? I’m exhausted!” he said, a little snappily. “If you want a drink, imagine it yourself.”
I put the cup down as he pushed a book across the table at me. It was the same one he’d shown me before.
The List… Ye Olde version.
This time, it was open to a page with a series of panels, kind of like a comic book. Only this one had panels that were beautifully outlined with gold leaf. The lettering was an intricate calligraphy. And of course the ink swirled as the pictures moved in an utterly dizzying way.
At the top, the title read “Phosphorius Beta—Known Aliases,” and underneath each panel was a name in a different language.
In the first, a sinuous, cloudy form swooped down on a pathetic cluster of huts. It chased a group of terrified Asians around on the page, setting their village on fire over and over again. A single Chinese character underneath the picture represented the word for “dragon.”
Another showed a bearded man with a sword and shield on the steps of a building with marble columns. Behind him was a grotesque creature that looked like it couldn’t quite decide what it wanted to be. It had three heads, each of them a different beast, each more hideous than the last. The bearded man turned as if to run, but one of the heads was unleashing a torrent of fire that enveloped him over and over again. Chimaera, read the inscription in Ancient Greek.
In the third picture, a man in a feathered headdress was kneeling—and seemed to be praying—at the top of a stepped pyramid, maybe Aztec in origin. That is, until the giant, scaly bird-snake in front of him bent down and swallowed him whole, then let out a fiery belch.
The rest… well, you get the idea, don’t you?
Fiery beasts of all kinds, terrorizing half the human civilizations I’d read about in history books, as well as a few that I didn’t recognize.
Maybe because Beta had destroyed them?
I finished studying and sat back in my chair, confused, though a bit relieved. I’d half expected to see myself in one of the brutal illustrations.
Merlin slumped forward and buried his face in his beard. When he spoke, his voice was muffled, and rather sad.
“Well, now you can see it with your own eyes, Daniel. Beta’s been ravaging this planet for all of recorded history. No one knows how long, really.
“When things get too dangerous for him, he just hops through one of those time holes and ends up somewhere ten thousand miles and five hundred years away. That’s what happened after he murdered poor Guinevere.
“In some of the places he goes, he’s respected, even worshipped. More often, he’s feared. But he’s always looking for more fuel, and more power. The thing is—he loves to kill, lives for it.”
That made his escape from the caves sting even more.
“But we could have stopped him in there. We could have shut him down for good,” I said. “Destroyed him, maybe.”
Merlin shrugged. “Don’t beat yourself up too much. We did well today. He’s never been thrashed this badly before. He’s underground, licking his wounds, and let me tell you, no one will be seeing him for a long time.”
“A long, long time,” I said slowly. “You mean like, say, fourteen hundred years or so? Sound about right to you?”
Merlin turned his head. “Hmm. Right.”
“And he’s still going to be waiting in ambush for me and my friend Dana on the other end. With about a thousand flame weavers. So my whole mission here has been a waste.”
Merlin thought for a minute or two, twiddling his fingers and humming a tune. Actually, I’d heard that song once, at my grandmother’s house on Alpar Nok.
“Not so fast, Daniel. You haven’t thought about what disasters you’ve prevented from happening here on the British Isles.”
“Such as?”
“Imagine an explosion the size of the one you told me about that happened in your own time. In these times, Daniel, with so many people living in wooden huts with thatched roofs, with so much of everything we
use made from wood and simple flammable materials… why, whole villages could be wiped out. In a thousand years or more, Beta could decimate our whole island.”
“All right,” I conceded. “So my time here wasn’t a waste. And I made a friend in Arthur—and you, too,” I added hastily. “But how am I going to defeat him when I get back to my own time?”
“Beta invaded this country once before, Daniel. And the people who used to live here, the ancient Britons, built a machine to stop him. Guinevere and I helped them, actually.”
“A machine? You can’t be serious. If Beta came here before, it must have been hundreds of years ago.”
“Try thousands,” said Merlin. “I fibbed about my age.”
“So what are you telling me? That this device to destroy him still exists? That it will exist in the twenty-first century?”
“You tell me. We called it Stonehenge.”
Chapter 69
STONEHENGE. Of course I’d heard of it. A famous prehistoric site, the mysterious circle of giant stones on Salisbury Plain that has confounded scholars for centuries.
What was I to make of it? Putting my faith in a bunch of rocks to destroy the all-powerful Beta didn’t sound like a good idea. But since when did any of my plans sound like good ideas?
Merlin and I talked into the night, but he couldn’t tell me much more. Even if Stonehenge was some kind of alien Roach Motel, he didn’t know exactly how it worked. “My mentor, Guinevere, used to say, ‘Look to the sky, look to the sky,’ but that’s all I can recall. I’m sorry, Daniel.”
Too bad Stonehenge was pretty much the only chance I had, once I got home.
And that was assuming I could even get back to modern times. I could try getting to Stonehenge before the present day—but I didn’t think I had the luxury of picking and choosing where the wormhole would take me.
The next morning, Merlin and Arthur brought me to the lake where Beta had first warped in. Arthur had been quiet all morning and I hoped he was okay. I’d told him I was going home, but not much else.
I regretted the talk Merlin and I had given him the night before. Gosh, would the king of England go mad on account of nightmares about extraterrestrial life? Merlin had warned me about messing with history…. But I looked again at Arthur and saw a sense of steady calm and knew that he would be fine. And a fine leader.
The sun sparkled off ripples on the lake’s surface. It wasn’t as bright as it had been when Beta emerged, not by a long shot. But hey, I’ll take serene landscapes over homicidal time travelers any day.
“Beta ripped open a gigantic hole here the other night,” said Merlin telepathically. “I’ll bet my beard that time is still weak in this area. You should be able to punch right through, Daniel.”
“Yeah, it’ll be a breeze,” I thought to him, rolling my eyes.
Arthur shook my hand and fixed his eye on me seriously. “You sure you don’t want to stay a little longer, Daniel? It might be fun. We could trade off being king every other week.”
“You’re kidding,” I said, resisting a joke about trading off being Alien Hunter every other week. I sure could use a break right about now.
He shrugged, and the corner of his mouth twitched a little like he was trying not to laugh, or maybe like he was trying not to cry.
Part of me wanted to stay, maybe take him up on his offer. A Kansas Alien in King Arthur’s Court would make a great title for a memoir. But the rest of me knew it was time to go. I didn’t want to leave my new friends Arthur and Merlin, but I had to.
I had a country to save—this one. England.
Chapter 70
NOW I JUST HAD TO MUSTER some really strong emotion, and open the door, on time again.
It wasn’t hard to get emotional anyway. All I needed was one look at Arthur’s face. The last few days had held more chaos for him than most people experience in a lifetime. He’d handled every one like a great king, and he was a good friend now, too.
Silently, the 3-D (or was that 4-D?) hole emerged from the water. Faces and galaxies and points of light flickered inside it, and Arthur’s eyes widened at the sight. I could tell it was something he’d remember for the rest of his life. Merlin nodded and combed his fingers through the hair around his chin.
“I’m not good with good-byes, guys. All I can say is… stick together. You’ll go down in history, and I’m proud to have known you,” I said.
“Take care, Daniel,” said Arthur, and then he winked. “Oh, and—don’t let the aliens bite.”
I grinned. “By the way,” I added, half turning. “Get used to hanging around lakes. You never know when you might find a beautiful lady in one of them.”
Arthur smiled back at me. “A lady in the lake. I’ll be on the lookout. Sure thing.”
Then I took a running jump off the shore, right into the hole, wondering if I was about to die a horrible death.
Hey, it happens more often than you’d think.
Chapter 71
I LOOKED BACK, twisted my head around like the girl in The Exorcist movie, but Arthur and Merlin were already gone. All I could see was a castle in the distance, with pennants the color of blood flying from its towers.
Like before, I was falling, falling, falling. I just hoped I was going in the right direction. I didn’t particularly want to find myself in the middle of the Crusades, the Black Plague, the Spanish Inquisition, World War I or II, or a U.S. presidential debate, something awful like that.
Then again, the last thing I’d seen before going back in time was a car being enveloped in flames, with me inside. I wasn’t too keen on going back there either.
I tried to look around and get my bearings—not that it had much meaning in this whirligig of motion and loud noise. Was that Dana’s face, up above me near that odd tangle of DNA?
I craned my neck and reached out, willing my body to move toward her. It didn’t seem like I had much of a choice where I went this time, though. Even in free fall, my feet felt heavy, and when I looked down at myself, I saw why.
Or actually, I didn’t see why. My feet weren’t there.
My legs just came together and disappeared in a single point above my ankles, the way they would have in some kind of crazy fun-house mirror. And more of me was disappearing by the second.
That strange, heavy feeling was spreading over my whole body, a tugging sensation that I could tell was impossible to fight against. I felt like water circling down the drain, fast, really fast.
I was pretty sure this time hole was about to spit me out someplace.
Oh, God, but where?
Chapter 72
UNFORTUNATELY, judging from the fact that my feet already felt as hot as metal left on a fire, I was about to arrive back in my own time, at precisely the same spot where I’d left. I’ll bet Beta will be awfully glad to see me, I thought.
I strained and struggled against the forces that were ejecting me from the time stream, but it was no use. No matter how hard I tried, the car interior was gradually materializing before my eyes, or at least what was left of it. Every surface was blackened, and flames filled the entire physical space, like the air inside was on fire.
What was going on? Was I too late?
As things got clearer, the scorching heat became unbearable. I shut my eyes and threw all of my energy into twisting my body, not upward but sideways.
Then the ground knocked the wind out of me as I slammed into it at maybe 150 miles an hour. Just a guesstimate. But suddenly my mouth was full of dust. Maybe some of my bones were broken. Or maybe all of them?
One thing was clear immediately, though: I must have caused a spatial-temporal shift of some sort. I was not in the car. And I most definitely was not with Dana.
I hauled myself up shakily, using a stack of wooden flats as cover. I was still in the junkyard, and I could see the damaged hulk of Beta’s spaceship outlined against the sky. A couple hundred yards away, flames cascaded skyward from the burned-out shell of the Peugeot.
Hallelujah! I wasn
’t returning home to the flaming jaws of death.
But—that meant—
No—no—no!
Dana was still in the flaming jaws of death? Without me?
Chapter 73
I SPRINTED to the Peugeot. I couldn’t let myself believe it. Maybe this was a different car. There were junkers all over the place. It could have been any one of them…
But the hope was futile. I knew this was the car. And then I saw the telltale faint dark figure running off. The Dark Heart. He had just devoured his prey. I was going to take him out once and for all.
And so I went sprinting after it. My eyes were blurring with rage and tears. Closer, closer, closer… I was moving at a bionic speed.
But no one was more surprised than I when I actually tackled it to the ground.
It was a human being. Or rather, an alien being, one hundred percent Alparian.
“Dana?”
“Daniel?”
We gasped the words at the same time, breathless, and then I clutched Dana tightly and quickly rolled us off into the shadows, away from obvious view.
“How did you escape?” I croaked, still in disbelief.
Dana looked equally bewildered. “You sucked me into a time warp or something—right?”
“Unbelievable! We must’ve separated. I didn’t know it was possible.”
“What, you mean you didn’t think it was possible for me to live without you?” she said with a wink. “Neither did I. And wait until you hear everything that’s happened to me since I last saw you.”
“I think I’m gonna outdo you on the outrageousness scale,” I said as I grabbed her hand and pulled her up and away.
The next part was easy. We decided to boogie out of there pronto. And as we ran, I could hear Beta shouting somewhere behind me.
“Gone? How could he be GONE? NO! I want him DEAD!”
On the last word, he flared up, blowing the Peugeot’s roof high into the air.
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