GHOST CROWN: THE TRACKS TRILOGY - Book Two

by J. Gabriel Gates

  Raphael paused on the threshold and addressed his crew.

  “Okay, listen up,” he said. “We’re not here to fight—but if we run into Zhai again, we may have to. We’ve seen how dangerous he can be. He almost took us all out last time, me included. So if anyone shows up, even Zhai by himself, I want you to run. Scatter, all of you. And don’t look back until you get home. Got it?”

  He looked at them until they had all nodded, even Clarisse, and then he led them inside.

  The smell in the house made Raphael gag. The place was completely empty; there were no boxes, no furniture, nothing but matted, orangey-yellow carpeting. But whoever had lived here must have been a chain smoker, because the air had a dizzying, ashy stink to it. Raphael covered his nose with his sleeve as he tried the first door he found. The room was filled with dirt.

  The third door Raphael opened revealed the basement staircase, and he led the way down the creaking steps, raking the darkness ahead of him with his light, and listening for any hint of an ambush. All they found was another big hole in the basement and more tools left scattered around. He paused at the bottom of the stairs.

  “There’s not a lot of space down here,” he called up. “Emory, Clarisse, Benji, you guys stay up there and keep watch. Nass and Josh, come on down and help me trash these tools.”

  When Nass reached him, Raphael asked, “What do you think? Any treasure here?”

  Nass tilted his head slightly, as if listening for something. Then he shook his head.

  “All right,” Raphael said. “Let’s get this done.”

  At first, he thought there wasn’t much down there to sabotage. There were a couple of shovels (he showed off by breaking them both with kicks) and three plastic buckets, which Josh ruined with a few well-placed stomps. The guys were about to head up the stairs again when Nass noticed two cases stacked in one corner.

  Raphael felt his heartbeat quicken as Nass opened the smaller one. Inside was the silver divining rod he’d seen the mysterious men using in the backyard of Emory’s vacant building.

  “Sweet,” Josh whispered as the thing glistened in the glow of the flashlight.

  Nass picked it up. “It’s so light,” he said in wonder.

  “Put it back in the case,” Raph said. “We’ll take it with us. What’s in the other one?”

  The other case was much bigger, somewhere between a briefcase and a crate, actually, and so heavy it took two of them to move it. After a moment, Nass figured out how to get it open. He smiled as he gazed down into it.

  Raphael shone his flashlight into the shadows and saw what he was smiling about. It was one of the high-tech scanning devices they’d seen the strangers using.

  “This is awesome,” Josh said.

  “Close them up, we’ll take them both,” Raphael said. His anxiety was increasing by the moment and he wanted to get out of there. From the way Nass fumbled with the latches on the cases, he also seemed to be strung a little tightly.

  Together, Nass and Josh grabbed the larger case while Raphael picked up the smaller one. Just as they turned to head for the stairs, they heard the sound of screeching tires outside.

  Clarisse’s voice shouted down to them. “Guys, you better get up here—fast!”

  

  “What’s going on?” Raphael shouted as he thundered up the steps.

  “I’m not sure,” Clarisse said. “We saw somebody run by the window and then heard this little scream.”

  Nass and Josh were still on the stairs, struggling with the heavy case.

  “Leave it,” Raph shouted down to them. “Let’s go!”

  Benji hurried in from the living room, looking rattled. “I just saw Beet pull up out front—he jumped outta the car and ran into the backyard.”

  Without hesitation, Raphael handed Benji the divining rod case and ran out the back door, with the rest of his crew right behind him. The minute he stepped into the dark yard, he froze. Beet was lying in the middle of the driveway, his face covered with blood.

  “Hello.”

  The voice was somehow both familiar and foreign. Raphael looked up to find Zhai standing atop the roof of the ramshackle garage—and he had Haylee.

  Raphael’s mind spun with confusion, until he realized what must have happened: Haylee had followed them, and after Beet got injured trying to protect her, Zhai had grabbed her. Now he had one arm clamped around her neck, choking her. Her face was red, and strands of her hair were plastered across it by her tears. She managed to wheeze out a little scream, but Zhai squeezed harder and choked off the sound.

  “Let go of her, Zhai. Now!” Raphael commanded. “What the hell is wrong with you? Have you forgotten the Wu-de completely?”

  Zhai’s laughter was strange. “The Wu-de,” he said at last. “The law. It is a quaint notion. But this is the new me, Si-dai. I have no use for the law.”

  “What do you want?” Raphael asked. As he spoke, he scanned the garage, looking for some way to get up to the roof where Zhai was. “We’ll do anything—whatever you want. Just don’t hurt her.”

  “If I only threaten, you’ll keep meddling in our business. But if I kill the child . . .” His eyes took on an unnatural light. “Yes, the child will serve as a sacrifice . . . as an example of what happens when you interfere—”

  Raphael wasn’t waiting to hear more. He hurled himself forward, jumping at the rickety fence that ran along one side of the garage. He grabbed the top of it, then pushed off, twisted in midair, grabbed the edge of the garage roof and pulled himself up. In seconds, he was on the rooftop with Zhai.

  “Impressive,” Zhai said. “But the only way to make me let go will be to kill me—and I’ll take the child with me.”

  It occurred to Raphael that Zhai had gone truly and completely crazy, but Raph wasn’t worried about him; all that mattered now was Haylee. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Emory following him up onto the garage roof while the other Flatliners stayed below, some of them hurrying to help Beet and others watching the drama unfolding above them.

  He couldn’t wait any longer. Haylee’s face was a dangerous shade of red that bordered on purple.

  “No more talk, Zhai. Let her go and fight me.”

  Zhai only laughed, and Raphael attacked. But Zhai managed to jerk Haylee in front of each strike Raph threw, and Raphael was forced to pull back to avoid hitting her. He threw five more punches, and each time Zhai used Haylee as a shield. Finally, Raphael grabbed Zhai’s forearm and tried to pry it away from Haylee’s throat. It was impossible. Zhai was always strong, Raphael thought, but never like this.

  Emory was on the roof now, too, and he charged Zhai. “Let go of my sister,” he shouted, but Zhai spun around and caught him in the right temple with a kick. Emory’s knees buckled beneath him and he slid down the roof on his stomach, coming to a rest with his face half buried in the eaves trough.

  Zhai’s spin had also pulled him free of Raphael, and as Raph hurried forward to grab his enemy’s arm again, Zhai swept Raphael’s feet out from under him. Raph landed in a kneeling position, with one knee hitting the shingles hard. He was instantly on his feet again, but it was too late.

  Zhai tossed Haylee over his shoulder and leaped from the roof of the garage onto the low porch roof of the next house, then scrambled up the slope toward the two-story portion of the house. As Raphael went after him he heard Emory cursing. The jump was too much for him.

  “Don’t worry!” Raphael called over his shoulder. “I’ll get her back!”

  Ahead, he watched Zhai leap from the peak of the house’s roof onto the gable of the apartment building next to it. Raph sprinted across the rooftop after him and launched himself off the edge. He hit the gable of the roof chest first. The impact knocked the wind out of him, but he managed to pull himself up in time to see Zhai running away under the bright winter moon. He struggled to his feet, cursing,
and gave chase.

  Raphael thought about trying one of the fingertip lightning blasts of Shen power he’d used to defeat Oberon, but there was too big a chance he’d hit Haylee, or send her and Zhai tumbling off the roof—from three stories up. His only hope was to catch them on foot, but that prospect was looking more unlikely.

  Zhai leaped to the rooftop of the next building and Raphael followed him across it, and across two more roofs. Finally, Zhai ran out of running room. They were on top of the highest building in the Flats, five stories up, above a gravel parking lot on the corner of Golden Avenue. Cornered, he turned and waited for Raphael, a wicked grin on his face.

  Breathing hard, Raphael approached slowly, careful not to make any quick movements as he balanced on the peak of the sharply pitched roof.

  “Zhai,” he said, his voice calm, soothing. “I know you, man. I’ve known you since we were kids. Maybe we have our differences, but I know you’d never hurt a little girl.”

  Zhai’s strange smile only widened.

  “Well, people change,” he said. “Who knows what a person is like when no one is watching? There’s only you and me here, no witnesses. So imagine, if this little girl were to fall off the roof now—who do you think the police would blame? The son of a billionaire, or the son of a dead loser?”

  A searing anger lashed Raphael’s heart at the insult to his father, but he forced himself to remain calm. Haylee’s life depended on it.

  “You won’t do it, Zhai. I know you.”

  The terrible smile on Zhai’s face disappeared. “Forget the treasure,” he said harshly, in an unnatural voice unlike his own. “It will never be yours.”

  And before Raphael could take another step, Zhai turned and threw Haylee from the rooftop.

  Raphael’s mouth opened in a silent scream as he saw her body fall. Unable to contain his horror and fury, he rushed forward to attack Zhai. Before he could reach him, however, Zhai stood stiff and straight, like a soldier at attention. His eyes met Raphael’s for an instant before he closed them and let himself fall backward, off the rooftop.

  Raphael reached the spot where Zhai and Haylee had been only seconds before and fell to his knees. Anguish and frustration wracked his whole body, and he collapsed, his fists balled up and trembling, his forehead pressed against the grit of the shingles, his teeth on edge and grinding. He had failed. Zhai was gone. Haylee was dead.

  Chapter Nineteen

  It seemed like hours passed, instead of just seconds, by the time Raphael got the courage to inch his way forward and peer down, over the edge of the roof. First, he saw black pavement stretching off to his right and his left. Then he saw a lone figure on Golden Avenue, running away and heading in the direction of downtown. He recognized the runner’s gait immediately; it was Zhai. Somehow, he’d survived the fall. Apprehensive, Raph lowered his gaze to the shadows below. At first, he saw nothing but a few gnarled bushes. Then, he heard approaching footsteps and saw two figures running around the side of the house. After a moment Benji and Emory rounded the corner and stopped.

  “Haylee!” Emory shouted joyfully.

  “No way,” Benji said quietly.

  Raphael followed their stares into the shadows below, and he made out something he’d missed before. He could see the blue and white of Nass’s L.A. Dodgers cap, and Nass was holding something in his arms. As Raphael watched, it squirmed. Nass set it down, and it ran toward Emory.

  Haylee.

  “Raph, you up there?” Benji shouted.

  He scrambled to his feet. “I’m here. Coming down.”

  After a quick survey of the roof, Raphael found a rickety wooden staircase stuck to the far side of the building as a makeshift fire escape. He hurried down it, and then jogged around to his comrades.

  Emory was locked in an embrace with his tearful sister. “I saw you fall.” His words were muffled as he pressed his face against the top of her head. “I thought you were dead.”

  Wearing a strange, dazed grin, Benji was shaking his head in wonder. Nass stood rooted in place, staring up at the edge of the roof.

  “What happened?” Raphael asked, still too much in shock to piece it all together. “When Zhai dropped her I thought . . .”

  “I caught her,” Nass said, still a little stunned by the fact.

  “You caught her?” Raphael repeated, sure he must have misunderstood.

  “When you and Zhai took off across the rooftops, something made me run to this spot. I knew she was going to fall. And I caught her.”

  Benji cackled. “That’s freakin’ awesome!” he said.

  Raphael looked up at the rooftop, then down at Nass. It was a good fifty feet from there to the ground. If Nass had been two feet to the right or the left, Haylee would be dead.

  “It’s a miracle,” Emory said, blinking away tears as he turned to Nass. “I can’t thank you enough, man.”

  Nass replied with a solemn nod.

  “So what happened to Zhai?” Benji asked.

  “He landed in those bushes over there,” Nass said. “He just rolled out of them and shot off down the street like some kind of alley cat, not even hurt.” Nass shook his head. “Hey, I know those Toppers are douche bags, but I never expected something like this from Zhai.”

  “That bastard—I’m going to kill him. Seriously,” Emory said as he stroked Haylee’s hair. Her arms were still clamped around his waist.

  “What about Beet?” Raph asked.

  “He’s coming to. Josh is with him,” Benji said. “He wasn’t hurt that bad—all that blood came from his nose. I think he broke it.”

  “We better go check on him,” Raphael said. “Come on.”

  He led his troops toward the sidewalk. Benji followed first, then Emory, one arm still around his little sister. Bringing up the rear, Nass stopped for a moment and took one last look at the moonlit rooftop before he turned and hurried to catch up with them.

  “So, are you loving Shen yet?” Raphael asked as Nass came up beside him.

  Nass laughed. “Do I love Shen?” He tipped the brim of his ever-present Dodger’s cap. “I’m going to trade in my hat and get one with Shen written on it, that’s how much I love Shen.”

  

  Chin felt himself rising toward consciousness. It was the feeling of ascending a black, spiral staircase from some deep, dark primordial basement. His head throbbed with pain at each step he took.

  When at last his eyes opened, the light that spilled into them felt like slivers of glass. Still, he forced himself to sit up. The room was spinning, but at least he was still in his barn; Zhai hadn’t dragged him away somewhere. Nausea came to him then, and he felt his mouth filling with saliva. He rolled onto his hands and knees and spat twice on the gnarled, blood-speckled floorboards of his kwoon, and then sat back again, closed his eyes, and called upon the power of Shen to restore him. Soon he felt the energy wicking up from the floor like water up a tree’s roots, then falling down from the heavens like sunlight on a tree’s leaves. The throbbing in his head diminished to a dull ache, and the nausea boring into the pit of his stomach shrank and then disappeared. When he opened his eyes again he still felt pretty awful, but it was getting better. He stood on shaky legs and ran his fingers over his brow. They came back bloody. He could feel a goose egg over his left eye and a sizable gash near his hairline. He had been lucky, he knew. The Order of the Black Snake could just as easily have snuffed out his life. The question was, why hadn’t they?

  Walking gingerly through his dizziness, Chin took his coat off a hook in the corner and pulled it on as he stepped out of the barn, shutting the door behind him. A frigid wind blasted across the fields and seemed to cut right through his flesh to chill his very soul. Large snowflakes swirled in the darkness, like stars that had come unmoored.

  As he made his way up to the house, he thought of Zhai’s strange transformation, at the exac
t moment the boy was about to remember something important. Something—someone—had taken possession of Zhai’s body and mind.

  It was clear. The Order of the Black Snake had made him their slave, and that Chin would not stand for. He would find Zhai, even if it took him all night. He would capture him, subdue him and free him from the Order’s spell.

  And do you think you can find him if they don’t want you to? The voice echoing through Chin’s head was familiar, as was the laugh that followed it. He looked around.

  Chin couldn’t see him, but he knew he was there; he could feel him—that strange, mischievous, malevolent presence. Chin turned and walked out of the barn, past the corral and into the barren field, stumbling over furrows of desolate, frozen earth. The trees surrounding the field were like charcoal marks against the shroud of the sky, black on black, but soon the snow was falling more heavily, blotting the darkness out with swirling, blowing flecks of white. Chin felt himself shivered by another blast of wind, and before him, coalescing out of the blizzard, a tall, white-robed figure approached. His face was ancient, timeless, his beard dark and wispy, his eyes filled with ferocious mirth, and his fingernails long, black and sharp. It was the Magician, and this time he was clothed in robes of the lightest blue, so pale it was almost white.

  “Why do you torment me?” Chin asked, his head throbbing. “You offer me no help, no wisdom, only suffering. I don’t have time to waste with you.” He turned away. But there was a sudden gust of wind, and the Magician stood in front of him again, closer this time, and again coalescing out of the drifting snow.

  “What will you do, then?” the Magician demanded. “Seek your student? At this late hour, don’t you think his work is already done?”

  “I’m not going to sit back while the Order uses him.”

  “And you can defeat them?”

  The question was simple enough, but it hit Chin like a lead brick. Images of the dark days before he left China flooded his mind. With some effort, he forced them out. Perhaps the Order had been too powerful for him back then. Perhaps they were too powerful now. But if he had to die to keep the treasure out of their hands, then so be it.