The Deadlock Trilogy Box Set

by P. T. Hylton

  Something welled up inside her. Something she hadn’t felt since she’d killed Taylor back in Sanctuary. Before she realized what she was doing, Alice’s sword was in Sophie’s hand. She pressed it against Zed’s neck.

  “If you don’t set that knife down in the next three seconds,” Sophie said, “I will kill you.”

  Zed hesitated. He spoke slowly when he answered. “Think very carefully before you do anything. Frank is dying. We can’t stop that. His mind has not had a thousand years to prepare for this moment. Mine has. Don’t let his death be for nothing.”

  “Put down the knife,” she said.

  “Sophie,” Zed said, “I can do so much good. Humanity is not safe. Consider the Ones Who Sing. You think they’ll never break into time? Consider the Harbinger’s Song. And the mirror lands.”

  “I don’t know what any of that means,” she said.

  “Exactly! But I do! I can stop those dangers and a thousand others. I can lead humanity into the next millennium. I can do so much good. Kill me if you must, but know humanity is losing its chance to step into the future safe and free.”

  The sword quivered in her hand. Maybe humanity did need someone to lead them. But it sure as hell wasn’t Zed. “You told me something a long time ago. You told me I’m capable of great evil. And I think you were right.”

  Sophie slashed the blade across his neck with one quick motion. It sank deep into his flesh and blood poured out around the wound.

  She staggered back, shocked at how simple it had been, at how easily the steel had cut his throat and how deep of a gash it had made. She let the sword fall from her hand and it clattered to the ground.

  Zed’s eyes widened, and he touched his neck. He brought up the hand and squinted at the blood. He looked from Sophie to the blood on his hand as if he was having difficulty connecting her with what was happening to him.

  He opened his mouth, but all that came out was a weak gurgling sound. He wouldn’t speak, not ever again, and the look of horror in his eyes showed he knew it.

  But he never let go of the knife. Not even at the end.

  He collapsed onto his side as he passed out. A few bloody moments later, Zed was dead.

  Frank quivered on the ground.

  Jake stepped forward and held out his hand to Sophie. She took it and he pulled her to her feet. “I don’t think Zed was lying. Frank’s not looking good. All that power in his head. It’s trapped in there.”

  “It’s like a lock without a key,” Christine said.

  What had Zed called that earlier? A deadlock.

  Matt looked up suddenly. “Wait. I think I know something.” He took Alice by the shoulders. “Frank said it himself the day we talked up on the bluff. The morning before all this started. He said you were the key to all this.”

  “That was just a figure of speech,” Sophie muttered.

  But Alice didn’t seem to think so. There was a distant look in her eye. “We have to let the power out. It’s trapped in there, like you said. If it really is humanity’s—I don’t know, potential—like Zed said, it needs to be released back into the world, right?” She picked up the sword and a bit of Zed’s blood dripped off the blade and onto the ground.

  Sophie raised an eyebrow. “If you even think about stabbing Frank with that sword of yours—”

  Mason put a hand on her shoulder. “I think it’s okay. She’s the key, remember? Frank’s head is like a deadlock. And she’s the key.”

  “That’s what my sword does,” Alice said. “It releases things. It’s what allowed me to get the scissors to King’s Crossing.”

  The girl stood over Frank and set the point of the sword against his forehead. It was so similar to what Zed had done with the knife only a few moments ago that Sophie had to suppress the urge to tackle Alice to the ground.

  Alice took a deep breath and paused, her eyes scrunched shut. She pushed the broken mountain symbol and gingerly pressed the sword into Frank’s head.

  A beam of light poured out around the sword. It shot into the sky, widening as it went.

  Alice pulled the sword out of Frank’s head with a grunt and stumbled backward. She clutched the sword to her chest.

  Sophie tried to follow the light’s path into the clouds, but it was too brilliant to look at. She hoped it scattered as it hit the clouds. Whatever the Exiles had taken out of the world was flowing back into it. The potential. That’s what they taken. Human potential. A small part of it, anyway. And now it was escaping back into the world.

  A moment later the light was gone. The only evidence it had ever been there was the dazzling pain in Sophie’s eyes, like she’d looked directly at the sun. She blinked a few times and that too went away.

  But Alice wasn’t done. She walked over and—one by one—stabbed the pools of liquid metal. The remains of Wilm and Vee and San. These reacted differently to the sword. Instead of the light, there was only a bit of smoke as the pools dried, crackled, and turned to dust.

  Alice spit on the ground and walked back to her father.

  Frank sat up and put a shaky hand to his head. The place where Alice had cut him wasn’t bleeding. The skin was whole and undamaged. Sophie dropped to the ground next to him.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I think I am.” He looked at Zed’s body. “Your work?”

  She smiled, blinking back the tears. “You know me too well.”

  It was late afternoon in King’s Crossing. Soon there would be questions to answer. There would be decisions to make. And someone would have to do something with Zed’s body.

  But for now Sophie and Frank Hinkle sat on the grass in Volunteer Park next to the Mississippi River, surrounded by their friends. They were alive and unafraid, and they held each other.

  THE LAST OF THE HINKLES

  1.

  Jake opened the door and took a deep breath. This would be the first time he’d driven a car in…how long? It felt like a hundred years. He was a little nervous.

  Or maybe the nerves stemmed from the fact that he was alone with his son for the first time since their strange reunion. His sixty-something son.

  “You ready to do this?” Mason asked.

  Jake considered the question. Ready to drive across the country with his son, a boy he’d treated distantly at best and who’d grown into a man he didn’t know at all? “Yeah. I’m ready.”

  “Just to let you know, I get car sick.”

  Jake smiled. “You get that from your mother.”

  Mason’s eyes widened. “Really? I didn’t know that.”

  Jake put the car in reverse and eased out of the driveway. “Yep. That’s what she told me, anyway. We were never actually in a car together. She said anytime she wasn’t driving she felt like she was gonna throw up.”

  “Huh. Maybe you should teach me to drive.”

  “Well,” Jake said, “it is kind of a father-son tradition. Let’s take it slow, though.”

  A weight hung in the air as they drove toward the highway, and Jake knew what it was. The same thing that burned in his gut like a furnace. It was a serious topic to start the drive on, but Jake had to talk about it. He felt like he couldn’t go another mile without saying it.

  He looked at his son. “Mason. I’m so sorry.”

  Mason screwed up his face in surprise. “Sorry for what?”

  Now it was Jake’s turn to be surprised. “For abandoning you. I didn’t protect you. I left you alone in Sanctuary with that monster.”

  Mason looked out the window. “Well, you were dead at the time.”

  Jake let out an involuntary laugh. “Yeah, as excuses go, I guess that’s a good one.”

  “Best I’ve heard.” Mason turned back to his father, a slight smile on his face. “You know something I learned from Frank? It was right after he’d proposed to Sophie. Everybody knew they should get together. Everybody but them. Then they started dating and it was going well and everybody knew they were made for each other. He finally proposes, and I as
k him, ‘Frank, why’d you wait so long? We were here for years before you even made a move.’ You know what he said?”

  Jake shook his head, a sad smile on his face.

  “He said, ‘I don’t know, man. And I don’t care.’ He said, ‘there’s no use looking back. You gotta enjoy what you have and not fret over why you didn’t have it sooner.’” He rapped on the window with his knuckles. “Did I have a messed up childhood? Yes. But, you know, now I’m taking a cross-country trip with my dad in his prime. How many old timers can say that?”

  “Let’s not go crazy,” Jake said. “You never saw me in my prime. I was something back then. The Unregulated, they called us. Zed spent years trying to figure us out.”

  “I heard.”

  “Oh no, you heard Zed’s version. You haven’t heard the truth.” He reached out and patted his son’s knee. “Sophie told me you used the book in Sanctuary. She said you could move the trees with it. That you opened a door to Rook Mountain.”

  Mason let out a laugh. “Now that was something. You should have seen me.”

  A few quiet miles passed. Mason kept his eyes on the fields rolling past the window and Jake kept his on the yellow line in the center of the road.

  “The University of Denver,” Jake asked. “Nineteen hours and forty-five minutes, according to my fancy phone app.”

  Mason grinned. “My brother. I can’t wait to see what he’s like.”

  A shadow fell over Jake’s face. “Me too. Two sons, and I missed both their childhoods.”

  “Remember what Frank said. Eyes on the future.”

  Father and son drove west, crossing the country they’d helped save and enjoying the sights and the sounds of it. They stopped at too many scenic overlooks and ate too many greasy roadside burgers. The conversation grew easier as they went. They found they had similar senses of humor. Jake wondered if that was genetics or if they just shared a certain gallows humor common to men who had lost so much.

  Neither of them mentioned that Will and Christine lived out in Colorado, too.

  Jake hadn’t even said goodbye to Christine. She’d moved on with her life, and he had to let her. After all, he too had moved on back in Sanctuary. Mason was living proof of that. And he could see she was happy. Will was the right person for her. Jake wasn’t going to get in the middle of that. He wasn’t going to make her choose.

  They met up with Trevor at a pizza place near the university. They stayed in town a few days and got caught up a little. But Trevor needed his space and time to understand everything that had happened.

  So, Jake and Mason returned to Rook Mountain. It turned out there were two vacant cabins at the old Hinkle Resort. Jake took Will’s old cabin, the one where the Unregulated had met so many times.

  Trevor came often to visit, and he eventually fell back in love with his childhood home. It wasn’t long before he was looking at apartments in town.

  Rook Mountain, it seemed, had a way of bringing folks back.

  They stayed in Rook Mountain from then on. Jake, Mason, and Trevor. Survivors of Zed. Wielders of books and Tools. Family.

  2.

  It was two years before Frank started making locks again. For a long while, the idea was too heavy in his mind. It carried too much weight, too much baggage. But every once in a while, usually when he was least expecting it, out for a walk or in the shower, an idea would pop into his head. It was never a full lock, only a concept that could eventually lead to a lock. A feeling almost. Something he couldn’t put into words.

  But he knew from experience that if he pursued that idea, it could eventually lead to something. That process, creating something new, used to fill him with so much joy.

  Still, he never did anything with the ideas. Not for two years. When he finally sat down to work on one, everything about it felt clumsy. His fingers felt too big and he couldn’t quite get them to do what he wanted. The lock didn’t come together the way he’d thought it would. When he finally got it working, he realized it was clunky and derivative.

  He tossed it out and started over. The next one was a little better. The one after that was better still. And after a couple months he had two new designs he didn’t hate.

  His locks didn’t have any special powers now. Whatever had allowed him to do that had leaked out when Alice stabbed him with the sword. His locks were just locks. But most days that was enough.

  He never did get back to the pure joy of creation he’d had when he was younger. He always held a little back, like he was afraid to get lost in the process. Sometimes he caught glimpses of that old mental state of pure creation, but he never gave over to it. Of all the scars he bore from the things he’d been through since meeting Zed on that day so long ago, that might have been the one that hurt the most.

  Sophie had scars too, he knew. Killing Zed had damaged her, but her greatest pain came from the thing she hadn’t been able to do. Frank had his brother back. Sophie’s sister was still dead. What was worse, she might not have to be.

  Heather had been killed in 2010. Alice would have been four at the time. If Alice Pulled Back to the morning of the day Heather was killed, she could dial Sophie’s parents’ phone number. Sophie had thought of a dozen things Alice could say to stop Heather from going out that day. To save her life. She’d shared them all with Frank, usually late at night. They both had trouble sleeping sometimes.

  But Sophie knew it wouldn’t be worth it. Who knew what other things might change? Maybe the domino effect would make them lose their chance to defeat the Exiles. Maybe millions would die because Sophie missed her sister.

  Even if nothing changed, was it fair to ask Alice to relive everything she’d experienced?

  Still, sometimes in those late night conversations Sophie admitted she believed she could talk Alice into it if she tried. And that she wondered if maybe things could turn out even better than they had this time around. But those thoughts were always gone by morning.

  Frank knew Sophie still believed what Zed had told her. She believed she had the capacity for great evil.

  But didn’t they all?

  Frank trusted Sophie. And the fact that she shared these dark thoughts with him at night proved she trusted him back.

  They’d decided to stay in King’s Crossing. After spending seven years fighting to hold the town together, it felt like the right place to be. Rook Mountain was the past. King’s Crossing was the life they’d built together.

  Sophie still worked at the library. She’d gone back to school to get her bachelor’s degree and eventually her master’s in library sciences. Her dream was to take Joe’s job when he retired in a few years. She still attended every meeting of the Rough-Shod Readers, though Frank had dropped out after things had gone back to normal in King’s Crossing. They actually discussed books now, and Sophie even convinced them to slip in some sci-fi and fantasy every once in a while.

  They visited Tennessee every fall to see Sophie’s parents and the southern Hinkle clan: Jake, Mason, and Trevor. Rook Mountain was as beautiful as ever when the leaves were changing. They made it out to see Christine and Will in Colorado every few years too.

  But Frank’s favorite pastime was sitting on the front porch with Sophie in the evenings. Sometimes they read books or took turns strumming the guitar. Many nights they just sat in silence, Sophie often sipping a cup of tea, and Frank with the compass in his hands.

  He couldn’t explain exactly why he’d saved the compass from Christine’s knife. The tree in the shed had withered and died. Christine had taken the knife back to Colorado. Mason had kept the scissors. Alice still had her sword. Maybe Frank just wanted a little piece of magic to call his own.

  He held the compass on those nights and watched the needle spin as he thought of destinations. He said them aloud, enjoying the way it always made Sophie laugh.

  “Denmark,” he’d say, and the needle would spin.

  “Bill Clinton,” he’d say, and the needle would turn again.

  “The first girl I ever ki
ssed,” he’d say, and the needle would move as Sophie slugged him in the arm.

  They ended every night the same way. After Sophie had finished her tea, or they’d closed their books, or they’d put away the guitar, he’d say, “Home.”

  And the needle would point to Sophie.

  Then they’d go inside, lock the door, and keep each other warm.

  The end of the Deadlock Trilogy

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  We’ll leave Frank and Sophie there. I think they’ve earned a bit of privacy, don’t you?

  Frank, Sophie, and Mason’s journeys are over, but I will likely return to this world in future novels. Other heroes will rise to face some of the threats Zed listed in his final moments. And Alice still has that sword and the ability to Pull Back. I assume she’ll put them to good use. Maybe she’ll let us tag along sometime.

  Thanks for reading this trilogy. I hope it was as much time-hopping, genre-bending, never-back-down-in-the-face-of-evil fun as I intended.

  If you’re wondering what to read next, check out my fantasy novella series about the assassin Zane Halloway. The first installment, Thorns and Tangles, is absolutely free. Visit pthylton.com/books/thorns-tangles for details

  If you’d like to stay in touch, you can find me at:

  My YouTube channel - where I post weekly (at a minimum) videos about what I’m reading

  My Twitter account - where I mostly talk about books

  My blog - where I mostly write about writing

  Or, if you just want to say hello, email me at pt@pthylton.com

  Thanks once again for your support!

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  This book would not have been possible without support from the following people:

  My wife, who is always supportive and holds me accountable for writing each day.

  My daughter, who asked me, “Is that nine-year-old girl in your book based on me?”