The 13th Sign

by Tubb, Kristin O' Donnell

  “Defeat?” I wailed. I looked at both Ellies, both looking at me with tear-stained faces and red-rimmed, pleading eyes. Gemini’s twin—obviously the evil twin—had mimicked Nina to trap me. And now? “What does that mean, defeat?”

  “I believe you know what it means,” Gemini whispered to the ground. “Consider this. It’s better than having to battle your grandmother.”

  Fire choked me. I growled, balled my fist, and punched the brick house. My knuckles exploded in pain.

  Brennan ran at our guide in a tackle stance. “Give me back my sister!” But before he even touched her, he flew backward, like he had bounced off a wall.

  “Ah, ah, ah!” our guide said, twitching her finger. Her midnight eyes throbbed, darker than anything else in the night. “Think about your actions. You do not need to anger me.”

  I grabbed one Ellie’s hand, paused, then grabbed the other Ellie’s hand, too. One of my hands touched my best friend. The other one touched a predator. Which was which?

  “You’re both coming.”

  Running away from that cozy spot was like getting a bucket of ice water dumped over my head. Alarming, awful, but awakening. No Nina, an extra Ellie. We stopped at last to catch our breath.

  I was surprised Dillon stuck by us. “You’re still here,” I said between breaths. He nodded and dropped his tuba, a wheeze sounding under his panting.

  “Y’all are obviously in some deep doo-doo,” he said, lifting his chin at the pair of Ellies. “I’m not leaving you. It’s just getting interesting.” He winked at me. Sparks glimmered inside my chest when he did, despite where we were.

  The area was industrial, dark, with one solitary barge docked on the river. The river slap-slap-slapped the barge, the bank. A crane on bulldozer wheels hoisted an empty seafood cage above the barge. Tomorrow the crane would lower the huge cage, and the barge would bring it back to the fishing boats in the Gulf. Life moving forward, despite everyone changing. It would, right? Move forward?

  “So what’s going on here, exactly?” Dillon asked. “If I’m going to help you, I want to know what we’re up against.” We paused, and then I nodded at Brennan. He started to explain, telling Dillon all about the Keepers of the Zodiac with huge arm gestures and oversize, snarling facial expressions. This was where Dillon would leave us for sure. And probably call the police. And probably a few psychiatrists.

  I had to turn away from Brennan’s explanation, because I hardly believed it myself. I looked instead from one Ellie to the other. I felt nothing. Nada. Before, I had been excellent at reading people. No, if I’m being honest, let’s call it what it was: judging people. But now—nothing. One of the Ellies saw my eyes darting between her and her twin, and a tear slid down her cheek. Wouldn’t that be the real Ellie? Could the Keepers be that accurate? And yet I’d seen people transform into beasts just this evening. They’d almost fooled me, trapping me by impersonating my own Nina. Surely an imposter Ellie could whip up a few tears on command. No, I couldn’t just guess. The danger of guessing wrong was too great. I had to be certain.

  “So then who was that?” Dillon asked.

  I startled at his question.

  Dillon licked his lips, and it made me realize how thirsty I was. “I mean, not the crazy old lady turning young.” He looked at the pair of Ellies. “No offense. I mean that mom?”

  Both Ellies dug The Keypers of the Zodiack from a messenger bag, like it was a race to see who could get the answer the fastest. “Cancer!” they both shouted.

  They started reading in a blur of words:

  “‘Cancer, the crab. July 21–August 9.’”

  “Stop!” I snapped. Both Ellie heads shot up. My knee bounced—still no clue which twin was which. I cracked my knuckles. “I can’t understand when you both read.” I pointed at the closest Ellie.

  “You,” I said. “Read.” The other Ellie slammed her copy of the book closed and kicked the gravel. The closest Ellie gloated and read like the teacher’s pet.

  “‘Cancer, the crab. July 21–August 9. Cancer, thou wert sent by King Eurystheus to distract Hercules while he battled the nine-headed Hydra sea monster. That is therefore thy gift: the gift of distraction. Thou preferest to think of it as the gift of hospitality. Though it comes not without a price: One must praise thine efforts in order to gain thine affections. But when thine affections are won, no one is more nurturing or caring than thou art. Thy need for constant love and encouragement contradicts thy lack of trust in others. Contradiction, in fact, is at thy core. Thy moods are shifty and unpredictable, from sullen to smiling to stormy in seconds. Cancer, thou art a feeling being, ruled by the heart. And yet thy memory is long, and when thou feelest wronged, thy need to bury thine opponents overwhelms. Avoid this need, as it may disrupt sought-after security. The pressure thou placest upon thyself is too intense; beware lest thou explode.”

  “Well, that doesn’t paint a pretty picture at all, does it?”

  I spun to see Cancer standing there, a jacket thrust out to me. A cigarette ember bounced an inch from her red lips. The irony of the fact that Cancer was a smoker was not lost on me. “Mmm-hmmm,” she breathed. “Not pretty at all.”

  Smoke filtered out of her nostrils. I was reminded of a dragon. A dragon in an apron.

  “Jalen,” she breathed in a cloud of smoke. “At least, put on this jacket. You look so cold.”

  Cold. I was cold. Wasn’t I?

  “No!” I said. I grit my teeth to prevent them from suddenly chattering. I wasn’t cold. Why did I want that jacket so badly? “No, not cold.”

  Cancer lowered the jacket, stomped out her glowing cigarette. The orange fire squashed so quickly beneath her pointy patent-leather toe. “No jacket then. Fine.”

  Cancer’s lipsticked smile stretched as tight as a rubber band across her face, but her eyes were steely knives. The picture of contradiction. Her maternal leanings tugged her in one direction, her fury and power and madness pulled her in the other. Cancer had a hard shell and a mighty pinch.

  I longed for that jacket. It looked cozy and warm and soft. It would protect me.

  “No jacket,” she said, her words etched like ice on air. “Be cold.”

  “And you,” she said, spinning and pointing at one of the Ellies. “I’ll show you who’s an idiot.”

  And then, she disintegrated. Cancer dissolved like candle wax, melting into a low pool of smelly mist. The apron strings untied and shriveled into long, pinching claws. The lipstick swelled and spread across her skin, turning every inch of her red. The pearl necklace hardened into a tough outer shell. Cancer doubled into two crabs, then again to four, then again and again and again.

  I scurried backward, but Ellie—the one nearby, the one she had called an idiot—stumbled and fell. A tidal wave of slick crabs swelled from the mist, higher and higher and higher, a writhing, crawling wave of crustaceans. It crashed down over a screaming Ellie.

  “Ellie!” I yelled too late.

  A shrill creak split the air, the sound of rusted metal forced into action. The bulldozer crane behind me whirled about. The seafood cage was no longer empty; it was teeming with hundreds of crusty, snapping crabs.

  The hatch on the cage sprang open, and hundreds of crabs rained down on top of the existing pile. It buried Ellie under another wave of crab bodies, crab legs, crab claws.

  It was a small mountain of crustaceans, taller and wider than a bus, and it had swallowed one of the Ellies whole. We had to dig her out of there. She wouldn’t be able to breathe for long under those pounds and pounds of crabs. But digging through a pile of crabs was like digging through a pile of sharp slabs of rock, plus slime and stink.

  Brennan and Dillon had already started flinging clumps of crab bodies aside. I did the same. The other Ellie, the free Ellie, grabbed my elbow.

  “Jalen, stop! I’m the real Ellie! Stop digging—you’re saving a Keeper!”

  I paused and looked into her green eyes. They twinkled—with what? Tears? Amusement?

  “Jalen, that
is Gemini under there. You heard what Cancer said! She’s getting even with Gemini for calling her an idiot! Let them duke it out!” Ellie grabbed me by the elbow and started pulling me away. I followed.

  But. Wasn’t she pulling a little too hard?

  Was this Ellie telling the truth? Or was this a Keeper, trying to convince me to stop rescuing my best friend? That would weaken me more than anything else the Keepers could conjure if I was somehow involved in hurting my friends. They’d defeat me for certain if that happened.

  “Jalen!” Brennan yelled over the clicking crabs. “Where are you going?”

  It could be a trick, couldn’t it? Cancer could be tricking me. She would trick me into thinking she was just getting even with Gemini, when it was actually my Ellie under there. Cancer was manipulative. She would do that, wouldn’t she? To win?

  “Don’t you believe me, Jalen?” this Ellie asked. Her voice wavered.

  If I didn’t dig for the buried Ellie, I was choosing, wasn’t I? Which Ellie I thought was mine? I wasn’t ready to make that choice.

  “I can’t,” I said. And I didn’t have any more time to ponder which Ellie was which. I decided to climb.

  But climbing a hill of clicking, shifty crab bodies wasn’t easy. Placing my feet and hands on them did relatively nothing; the crabs I touched would simply slide down the mountain of shell to the bottom, tiny landslides every time I tried to gain traction. And crabs are made of everything awful: hard shells, thick pinchers, slick bodies, heavy stink. The cut on my ear stung like acid from all the crab muck.

  My hands would plunge into the swarm and I’d feel a sharp pinch. I’d remove my hand to find a crab clamped onto my finger, and I’d have to sling it aside before starting again. I could only imagine what Ellie was going through in there at the heart of the crab hive. I couldn’t even hear if she was screaming; the click-clacking of hundreds of crab legs and pinchers was near deafening. And the other Ellie, the free one, kept begging me, begging Brennan, begging Dillon, to believe that she was our Ellie. It was hard not to believe her.

  I finally decided to keep my feet planted on the ground. I started flinging the crabs aside with my hands, like a dog digging a hole. It was faster, yes, but the crabs I launched to either side marched back to their pack like an army of zombies.

  I plunged my hand into the mass again and drew it back sharply—a sliver of crab shell pierced me under my fingernail. I saw white, then orange anger cleared the pain. My anger was sharper than these crabs. I knew this.

  That’s when I saw Brennan scaling the bulldozer. Free Ellie pleaded with him to get down, begged him to believe her. He ignored her. He stood on top of the six-foot-high treaded wheels, covered his face with his arms, and jumped into the clot.

  “Brennan, wait!” I yelled. He disappeared almost immediately. Between seeing that and the overpowering stench of the crabs, I turned my head to the side and retched. The free Ellie sobbed and shouted, “No!” She plunged her hands in at last, covering herself in slime.

  Would a Keeper do that? I wondered. Appear so concerned about Brennan? I decided that, yes, she would if she’s playing the game right. If I lose the Gemini Challenge by guessing the incorrect Ellie, then she’s doing everything in her power to confuse me. I slicked back my hair with my forearm, leaving a trail of gooey crab chunks across my scalp. I kept digging.

  Moments later, the other Ellie’s head shot out of the center of the fester like she was propelled from below. She gulped in a deep, wheezing breath. Brennan’s head popped up next to hers, and then the side of the mountain began to crumble. Brennan had righted Ellie on her feet. They were pushing their way through the crabs.

  Dillon grabbed them both and dragged them aside, the crab muck shimmering on them all. Ellie had crabs tangled in her hair and a deep gash on her left cheek. She wasn’t screaming, but tears streamed down her face, cleaning away blood and crab guts. Brennan yanked a crab pinched to his ear and howled.

  Cancer wasn’t done with us yet. The crabs thinned out and scurried around us, turning the ground into a moving, swelling thing.

  Brennan stepped on a crab and slipped. When he stood again, a dozen crabs were pinched to his skin. He looked down, and at that moment, I saw his eyes twinkle.

  He’d crushed one of them! Cancer’s horoscope came barreling back to me: The pressure thou placest upon thyself is too intense. We began stomping and crushing crabs as quickly as we could to defeat them, to find that cursed birthstone. Dillon was a champion crab crusher. But squashing crabs is difficult; it takes far more force than simply stomping a cockroach. And it was slippery work. Each of us fell several times, and each time we got up, we had dozens of pinchers embedded in our skin.

  One of the Ellies had managed to climb on top of a small metal electrical transformer. Although the crabs couldn’t climb the slick metal box, they had figured out that if they stacked one upon the other, they could reach their prey eventually.

  There were too many crabs, and we were tired. I whipped around, trying to hop on one of the larger crabs in my vicinity, when the bulldozer again caught my eye.

  Please let the keys be in it, I thought. Then, Please let bulldozers even have keys. I ran, I slipped, I skidded the dozen or so yards to the bulldozer and climbed aboard.

  Maybe someone up there heard my prayer because the keys dangled in the bulldozer’s ignition. I cranked the engine, and the bulldozer snapped forward like a dinosaur awakened.

  I soon figured out that the lever in the floor was how to steer the thing, like a joystick in a video game. The dozer lurched herky-jerky forward, left, right, slinging me around in its metal cab, swaying the crane, swinging the seafood cage like a wrecking ball.

  But it was working! The crabs popped like pimples under the weight of the bulldozer’s tread. I crunched as many as I could and scanned the dark area for my friends.

  Brennan, Dillon, and the other Ellie had joined Ellie One on top of the transformer. The two Ellies clawed at each other like one would surely push the other off into the nest of crabs. And the crabs were almost high enough to reach them. I steered the bulldozer as best I could toward the box.

  Brennan looked at the rapidly approaching bulldozer with wide eyes. I leaned out of the cab and yelled, “Jump! On one!” I held up three fingers as high as I could outside the cab in case he hadn’t heard me. Oh, please—let him have heard me.

  Brennan saw my fingers and nodded.

  “Three!” I yelled. Three fingers. The bulldozer ground forward, crushing crabs, swinging the crane hook behind me.

  “Two!” Two fingers. Mere feet away from my best friends. They were now not only timing the approach of the bulldozer but were also swatting away the crabs that had managed to stack up high enough to attack their feet and legs.

  “ONE!” One finger. Brennan and Dillon and Ellie and Ellie hurled themselves to my left, and the bulldozer plowed into the transformer, which was now festering with crabs. The transformer cracked open and sparks of electricity sizzled and spit. Crab parts flew everywhere, and every light for as far as we could see went out.

  Beware lest thou explode.

  The bulldozer was pushed back by the force of the impact, but the electrical box had been too small to cause such a massive machine much harm. I couldn’t say the same for the crabs, however. They were electrocuted, their tiny crab parts twitching with shock.

  I climbed out of the cab. “Ellie? Brennan? Dillon?”

  I heard their voices in the dark night, a night even darker now. “We’re here.”

  I choked on a sob and ran to the sound of their voices. We hugged as a group for a minute, both Ellies panting and sobbing, both with gashes on their cheeks, glop in their hair. Dillon pulled away.

  “You guys stink,” he said with a grin.

  We all breathed out. We did stink. We were slimy and wet and covered in muck and a little blood. I looked around. “How in the world are we going to find the birthstone in the dark?”

  One of the Ellies wiped a chunk of c
rab goo off her face and flung it aside. She pulled the birthstone, a ripe red ruby, out of her sweatshirt pocket.

  “You’re welcome,” she said. She glared at the other Ellie.

  I held the birthstone aloft and said my chant, “Sic itur ad astra.” If I hadn’t just been attacked by these creatures and then blown them to bits, I’d have thought that the sparkling trails skittering into the skies were what took my breath away.

  Two Keepers down, ten to go.

  And there we stood, watching Cancer ascend into the heavens, reforming into a crab constellation, when a click sounded behind us.

  I jumped and whirled around, terrified that we’d missed a crab. A flashlight beam blinded me.

  “There you are, Jalen Jones. I think you better come with us.”

  “The men from the car,” an Ellie whispered.

  The men with the arrows, I thought. The tip of my ear throbbed.

  “Jalen Jones.” The second man stepped forward into the edge of the light.

  “Can I help you?” I asked, squinting at him. I felt one eyebrow arch up, punctuating the question. Cool! I’d always wanted to be able to do that. Now, apparently I could.

  He extended a huge hand, handshake-style. I didn’t shake it.

  “I’m Agent Cygnus. And this—” he shoved his partner with his elbow, causing the flashlight beam to lower at last. “This is Agent Griffin. I hope we didn’t scare you three too badly? Griffin here has been sneaking around like a spy on steroids ever since the personality shift. Stupid rookie.”

  My eyes adjusted back to the night. I couldn’t decide if the red spots I saw were from the blinding light or the blinding anger. But I’d caught one thing he’d said: “you three”?

  I stole a sideways glance. Dillon had snuck away. Over the shoulder of the guy with the flashlight, he signaled me, jumping and waving. Shhhhh, he gestured, finger over lips. I tried not to nod at him; he was obviously up to something, and I didn’t want these guys to see. But still—three?