“Now!” he shouted.
Nass pulled the trigger on the jackhammer and the thing sprang to life in his hands, giving him a jolt that made his teeth rattle. Instantly, the loose dirt below gave way and the jackhammer fell downward, almost taking Nass with it. He managed to let go at the last second and Benji and Josh grabbed the back of his jacket to keep him from falling into the hole. There was a cloud of drifting dust, and everyone stared down into the chasm, waiting breathlessly for the air to clear. When it finally did, they all sighed as one, relieved. The plan worked. The jackhammer had caused a little landslide, and Zhai was now buried up to his neck in dirt. He twitched violently, trying to get free, but for the moment at least, he was stuck.
“Grab the ladder,” Nass said. “Let’s get Raph out of there.”
Raphael was sitting on the ground, in the same spot he’d landed when he rolled out of the way of the trap, staring at Zhai. When the ladder came down next to him, he glanced at it, as if startled awake from a dream. Then he slowly rose and started to climb up.
A thin trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth and he had a cut above one eye. He was bruised and filthy—but the worst part for Nass was the worry in his face.
“Thanks, guys,” Raphael said weakly and then he looked down at Zhai, who was still struggling to get free. The rest of them looked, too.
“What the hell is up with him?” Nass asked. “Is he on some kind of super steroids?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why didn’t you use Shen on him?”
Raphael shook his head. “I tried but it didn’t work. I don’t know why.” He finally tore his eyes away from the pit and looked at his crew. “Let’s get out of here before the rest of the Toppers show up,” he said.
Everyone followed Raphael outside, into the cold night air. He didn’t stop until they had crossed the street and gathered on the stoop of Nass’s building.
“Well, now we know what they’re doing with the apartments: digging big ass holes in them,” Benji said, with his usual sarcasm. “Makes perfect sense,”
“Yeah,” Josh agreed. “Digging holes and using kung fu master gang leaders to guard them. That’s normal for a real estate company, right?”
“It’s normal for Middleburg,” Raphael said, a glint of humor finally returning to his eyes.
“There was something weird about Zhai, though—right?” Nass said. “About the way he was fighting.”
“Yeah,” Raphael admitted. “He kicked my ass.”
“What do you think is going on—with Zhai and the holes and everything?”
Raphael gazed across the street at the empty apartment building and shook his head. “I don’t know, Nass. All I know is I’ve had enough fun for one night. Let’s get some sleep. I’ll catch you guys at school.”
Zhai felt a strange, plummeting sensation and his vision came into focus. His left cheek ached and he tried to reach up and touch it, but he was unable to move his arm. He looked down and saw he was buried up to his armpits in dirt. His tank top was filthy and spotted with little drops of blood. His eyes closed as he struggled to remember, to understand why he was here, what was happening, but the place in his mind where memories should have been was glaringly, painfully empty. He remembered doing his nightly meditation, putting his homework away, and zipping up his backpack, then climbing into bed and switching off his bedside lamp. The next thing he knew he was here, buried chest deep at the bottom of what seemed like an indoor pit. It was dark, but above him he could see the ceiling of what looked like a normal room. What he couldn’t see was any way to get up there.
After a few frustrating minutes, he managed to extricate one of his arms from the dirt. His hand hurt, and he paused for a second to stare at the tattoo on the back of it. It was throbbing and stinging now, like the insistent pain from a burn. But worse than the pain was what the symbol meant.
Slave.
That’s what Li had told him. She seemed terrified for him when she saw those marks on his hands.
But that was crazy. He wasn’t anyone’s slave—was he? What had he done while he was blacked out, and on whose behalf? And whose blood was on his shirt—his or someone else’s?
Growing more claustrophobic by the second, Zhai worked fast, shoveling dirt away from himself with his free hand until he was able to get his other arm loose. After another few minutes, he managed to get his body and his legs out of the dirt. He rolled down the slope of the little avalanche that had buried him and stood, brushing the black, sticky soil off his clothes as he looked around.
Four tunnels radiated out from the pit, each with an entrance wide enough for four people to walk through side by side. He looked up. The hole he was in was deep, and there was no way he could climb the slippery, crumbly walls. He looked at the tunnels again and spotted a yellow extension cord strung down one of them. Far back in that tunnel, he could see a faint glimmer of light. He hurried toward it.
It was hard to know how much time elapsed as he moved through the barren corridor. He passed numerous work lights—single bulbs enclosed in protective metal housings—affixed to the extension cord. Each of them offered a small oasis of illumination on his journey through the darkness. Once, he almost took a step forward when a sudden rush of cool air coming from below warned that there was no floor beneath him. He reversed his momentum at the last second, falling backward; then he eased forward and stared down over the rim of what appeared to be a downward leading shaft. There wasn’t much light so it was impossible to tell how far it might go, but Zhai was thankful for the superior sense of balance Master Chin’s training had given him. If not for that, he would be at the bottom of another pit. He leaped over the chasm, moving forward more carefully now. As his journey progressed, he found three more down shafts, all of them so deep he couldn’t see the bottom. He hopped each of them and continued on, his unease growing. What if there was no exit the way he was heading? What if it was just a dead end? What if he didn’t see the next pit in time and fell in? What if somebody unplugged the extension cord and the lights went out, stranding him in darkness?
At last, he saw a jumble of debris ahead, and heard the rustle as a snarl of yellow caution tape crinkled in the breeze. He hurried forward and found himself in yet another pit, this one strewn with broken cinderblocks and broken concrete. He looked up and to his left, he could see the ceiling of the Middleburg High gym, complete with a faded Middleburg Phoenixes—1980 State Basketball Champions banner hanging from one of the girders. To his right was open sky, clear and black with a surprising array of stars, where a little section of the gym roof caved in when the wall fell. Zhai easily scaled the debris and pulled himself up, then followed the red glow of an exit sign across the gym to a doorway. He pushed through the doors and stumbled onto the school’s lawn, still white from a dusting of snow. He had no idea what time it was, or what he’d been doing, but he was completely exhausted. All he could think about was taking a shower and getting back into bed.
Automatically, his hand went to his pocket and came out with his phone—whatever state he was in when he left home, at least he’d remembered that—and called his family’s driver, who sounded confused and sleepy. Bob responded to Zhai’s request for a ride with what Zhai was sure had to be a curse in his native Chinese, but soon the Shao’s huge, regal-looking car pulled up in front of the school.
Zhai jumped into the backseat and cranked up the heat. Whether he was chilled from waiting out in the winter night in only a tank top and jeans, or from the fear of what was happening to him, he didn’t know—but either way he couldn’t stop shivering.
A few minutes later, he hurried gratefully into the house, entering from the garage into the kitchen. He slipped out of his shoes, not caring what the maid would think when she found them there, caked in filth, the next morning. He hurried across the moonlit tiled floor and passed through the foyer. Sudden
ly a hand reached out of the darkness and grabbed his arm. Instinctively, he spun and struck out, just managing to stop his fist an inch before it struck his stepmother’s face.
“Lotus?”
In the shadows, he could barely make out her features. He was surprised to find her downstairs in the middle of the night. He was even more amazed that when he’d almost hit her in the face she hadn’t even flinched.
“Did I startle you?” she asked, her voice as even and pleasant as ever.
As Zhai lowered his fist, she caught his hand and turned it over, examining the mark on the back of it, along with his bloody knuckles. He expected to see some fear or concern when she raised her eyes to his again, but she remained perfectly placid.
“Well,” she said. “Perhaps those fighting lessons your father has been paying for all these years haven’t been wasted after all.”
She knows, Zhai thought. She knows something about what’s happening to me.
“Those men who came over the other day—who are they?” he asked.
“They are from the Hei She Bang,” she responded. “The Order of the Black Snake.”
“What’s that?”
“Nothing you have to worry about, my son,” Lotus said. It was the first time Zhai could ever remember her calling him that, and he thought he detected a trace of sarcasm in her tone.
“What are they doing in Middleburg?”
“The same thing they do in China,” she said with a cynical smile. “Whatever they want.”
“What is it they want?” Zhai pressed. “What are they doing to me? Why did they call Dad a slave?”
“That I can’t say—but I will tell you this.” She spoke quietly but her tone was serious. “Best to stay away from them. But if you can’t, whatever they ask, do it. Whatever they want, give it to them. There’s a saying: those who poke at snakes get bitten.” She stared into Zhai’s eyes for a moment longer and then dismissed him. “Good night, Zhai. Pleasant dreams.” And she turned and gracefully ascended the stairs.
“But—wait,” Zhai began. There were so many questions he needed answered, but Lotus didn’t turn back.
Silently, she disappeared into the shadows.
Orias Morrow had a solitary meal at Spinnacle but he did not eat as mere mortals did, to sustain life. He ate because it was delicious and, because no matter how much he gorged himself, he didn’t have to worry about gaining weight. He ate to fill the emptiness in his soul, the lonely void that permeated his life—thanks to his father and his very human mother. It was a void that would be with him for all time, no matter how much he ate, how many houses he owned, how many designer clothes and cars and motorcycles he bought, or how many beautiful women fell at his feet, ready to give him anything he desired. He ate to spite all the miserable souls in the world who had no appreciation for the gifts God extended to them on an unlimited basis. But most of all, he feasted for the same reason he did everything: because he wanted to.
After his dinner he walked, sometimes rising an inch or so above the sidewalks and gliding around Middleburg, until midnight when he was sure Oberon had consumed enough wine to pass out. Only then did Orias go home where he drifted, a few inches above the carpet, up the attic staircase to slip into the hidden tower room, a new Sharpie marker in his hand. He had discovered that his father was normally in a deep sleep at this time, so he could slip in and out undetected.
Tonight was no exception. Oberon lay on his back on the bed, a quilt pulled up to his chest, the scarred sockets of his ruined eyes staring sightlessly upward at the water-stained ceiling. But water stains weren’t the only things on the cracking plaster; there were words, too. Three words written over and over and over again across the walls, the windows, the door, the floorboards, all in the same broad, angular script. Orias’s handwriting.
Though the words were perfectly clear to him, they were written in a language no human on earth could read. It was a language begun eternities ago in the Celestial City, but this was a corrupted version of it. The tongue of the Dark Territory. And although it lacked its original beauty, it contained all the power of Celestial speech—and then some.
Of all the surfaces in the room, only the bottom half of the door had not yet been covered; Orias stooped in front of it now and began writing. He knew he had to work fast. Three words:
SHALL NOT PASS
His father could read in that tongue, too, of course—if his eyes worked. Weeks had passed since Oberon had summoned Dr. Uphir. If Orias’s work wasn’t finished by the time he arrived, there would be no way to contain Oberon.
As he wrote, his mind wandered to the life he’d left in New York City. He had thrived there, and he missed it. The press of Manhattan’s crowded sidewalks, the honking of the taxis, the shouts of the angry and the insane (who roamed freely), the sheer energy of the place: all these fed his need for chaos. It was like the Tower of Babel right after it fell, all those people clashing and contending with one another, struggling with one another, competing with one another, building and destroying and building again. New York was home for him—or at least, the closest thing he could find to home in this earthly plane of existence—and he had been loath to leave. Middleburg was completely different.
In New York, the veil between worlds was thick and solid—a metaphysical stone wall that kept everything earthly and material in and everything supernatural out. But in Middleburg, the veil was thin, frayed, as insubstantial as a sheet of tattered gauze. With only a little force, he knew, one could punch through it altogether. The prospect made his mind reel with possibility. But that wasn’t all. There were souls here that were greatly prized by God—souls that could, if properly developed, be nearly invincible in His service. How delicious it would be to cause their fall!
Then, of course, there was the treasure. He could feel it now, throbbing, thrumming, singing across the mountains and valleys of time and space, its voice filled with power beyond comprehension, calling to him.
Orias, come! Use me! Possess me! Corrupt me and become mighty beyond all reckoning!
At last he understood why his father was so fascinated by this miserable out-of-the-way place. It had the potential to be a wonderland of abomination, the epicenter of all annihilation. And if Orias could not find peace in a decaying world he was cursed to wander for generations (seventy times seventy, times seventy thousand, times seven of them, to be exact), why should anyone?
The crossing of the tracks was like the crosshairs of a great gun sight aimed at all of humanity, and with a little luck and a lot of cleverness, he could be the one to pull the trigger. It would be incredibly amusing—and he wasn’t about to share the fun with his father. If the mad old bastard hadn’t lost his one good eye in a battle with a kid, he never would have called on Orias in the first place. They’d never had more than a cursory relationship, yet his insufferable ego had convinced Oberon his son would rush to do his bidding, as he’d done as a child. But when Orias was finished writing on every inch of the walls, floor and ceiling, the incantation would be complete. His father would be sealed in this room forever.
With Oberon out of the way, Orias would get Aimee Banfield to fetch the treasure for him. With the treasure, he would be able to open the door to the Dark Territory. And with that door open, the world would be his.
His father stirred on the bed in a great screaking of springs.
“Orias?”
Yes, you pathetic old man?
“Yes, Father. I’m here.”
“What’s that I smell? It smells like a marker.”
Pathetic, but still as cunning as ever—and as dangerous.
“It’s paint, downstairs,” Orias said. “I was painting my bedroom. I just came up to get your dinner tray.” Silently, he recapped the marker and slipped it into his pocket. He had a little more to do, but it would have to wait.
“Any word from U
phir?”
“Not yet, Father. I’m sorry. You know how it is. The doctor’s priorities are not always of his choosing—it’s that business on Mount Hermon, I think.”
“Conclave of the Seventeen Prefects. Yes—and usually a bad business,” mused Oberon.
Orias laughed. “So . . . what? He’s on call in case they start hurling thunderbolts at each other?”
“Don’t make jokes,” Oberon said sternly. “That’s exactly what they’ll do if things don’t go well.”
Orias went to his father’s bedside, and when he bent down to pick up the tray, Oberon reached out with incredible speed and grabbed his wrist. As lean as his father was, Orias felt bone-crushing strength in his grip.
“Are you attending to the family business—all of it?” he asked.
“Yes, Father. I am.”
“Have you encountered any problems yet—from either faction?”
“Don’t worry,” Orias assured him. “The Toppers and the Flatliners—one group operates from greed, the other from need, both equally easy to manipulate.”
Oberon nodded, satisfied. “And what about the girl? Have you decided how you’ll meet her?”
Orias forced himself not to pull away from his father’s grip. “I’m giving a talk at her school tomorrow,” he said.
Oberon laughed. “Excellent. You are your father’s son, Orias. Make me proud.”
“I will, Father.” You sick, crazy, impotent creature.
At last Oberon released him and sat up, his back against the ornate headboard of a bed that had once belonged to a king. He was gloating, a wide grin on his face. “Ah, yes . . . Aimee. Spin your web carefully for her, my son. She must not slip away from us. And those Oriental wizards, the snake-men—what of them?”
“They’re still searching.”
Oberon chuckled darkly. “Fools. They don’t know that only the Banfield girl can retrieve it. Make her ours, Orias, and the treasure will be, too.”
GHOST CROWN: THE TRACKS TRILOGY - Book Two Page 20
