L.O.S.T. Trilogy Box Set

by R. S. Collins

  “Come.” Jazz’s voice was a ghostly whisper as she took my hand and pulled me through the Path. I could tell her strength was fading, but she was pushing herself forward.

  Shadows whined and shrieked as they reached for us from the walls. I clenched my sword hilt and the silver glow of my skin intensified—and as usual, the things shrank away from us. I had been on the Path so many times in the past week that the moving floor no longer bothered me. I’d gotten used to the Shadows, too. They weren’t like Nire’s Shadows that had attacked the manor. These were lost souls, not yet drawn into Nire’s clutches. That much I finally understood.

  As we hurried along the Path, that rubber band feeling around my chest kept getting tighter and tighter. What had I done, bringing that stupid golem into Shadowbridge? The nasty thing had possessed me, making me feel gross and disgusting inside. It had made me lie to Jazz, and I had promised to be honest with her.

  I should have been stronger. I should have thrown the thing as far as I could the second that mangy jerk gave it to me. It was all my fault Shadowbridge was no longer a safe place for Jazz. And it was my fault she was hurt and that Rol had been taken.

  What kind of champion was I turning out to be?

  Ha. I was a joke. I was nobody’s champion.

  I almost stopped walking the Path, I was so disgusted with myself. Jazz pushed on ahead, but I knew she was weak. How could I help her? Yeah, some champion I was.

  But, still. When we fought those Shadow minions, for the first time I really felt like I was the Shadowalker. I had felt strong, powerful. All the training that I had gone through with Rol had clicked, and I knew exactly what to do. And on the broom I was able to take over and save us from the slither. I had even opened the Path with Jazz right there.

  The golem had been holding me back, keeping me from telling Jazz and Rol that I had learned to use my magic, I just knew it. Without that thing in my pocket, I felt a sense of freedom, like a weight had been lifted from me. But still I felt that somehow I should have been strong enough to resist it.

  Rol. What if Nire killed him? I would never forgive myself if anything happened to Rol or Jazz. Never.

  “Here.” Jazz’s voice was weak and her breathing sounded harsh, echoing in eerie waves. “Open the Path. I don’t have the strength.”

  Again I used my sword to slice the Path, and sealed it once we had stepped out. We were in a clearing in the middle of a thick forest. I’d been to this Sanctuary during my practice sessions. I’d been to them all. In the distance, ocean waves crashed against the shore, and I smelled a briny odor mixed with the rich loam and pine of the forest.

  When I turned back to Jazz, she was staring at me with hurt in her golden eyes. “That was what you were doing all those afternoons when you were alone. You practiced in secret. And you hid your progress from Rol…and from me.” She blinked, and a tear slipped down her cheek. ‘‘You’ve hidden so much, even after you swore to be honest.”

  With a sigh, I slid my sword into its sheath. I wanted to go to her and wrap her in my arms, but the fact that she thought I had betrayed her was apparent in the rigid way she held herself. I didn’t think she would welcome my touch.

  “Look, Jazz. I’m really sorry.” Frustration filled me and I wanted to pound something-anything. Instead, I picked up a rock and flung it through the trees. It crashed through pine boughs, and my now-sensitive hearing heard a soft thud as it landed. I turned back to Jazz, my gaze locking with hers. “I wanted to share everything with you. That first day we were at the ocean, I tried to. But I think that golem thing kept me from saying anything.”

  “Ah.” Jazz nodded, her stance relaxing as understanding came into her expression. And her eyes widened. She looked at the glittering wall beside us, and back to me. “You could have left at any time once you learned to open the Path. You knew that, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, and I’ve explored all of the Path.” I shrugged. “I figured out how to do it the first day you showed me. I was so mad at you I thought about going home. I almost did. But I realized I couldn’t leave you to face Nire alone.” I pulled at a thread on my tunic as I met her eyes.

  Her lower lip trembled, and I thought she was going to start crying harder. She turned her gaze to the sky. “We have to go to Middle Salem—it isn’t far now. Perhaps five miles to the north. Will you call a branch to us?”

  “Wind!” I raised my hand and caught the live oak branch that came hurtling from the trees. I had practiced that, too.

  This time Jazz climbed on behind, holding tight with her good arm. She buried her face against my back and all but melted against me. Her exhaustion was obvious, and my fear for her intensified.

  “Are you sure there’s nothing we can do for your arm before we go after Nire?” I asked as I guided the broom upward.

  “No.” She sighed and said, “Since we are likely flying to our doom, let me know more about you. This time without secrets. Everything—especially your family. Tell me about your parents.”

  Likely flying to our doom? I didn’t like the sound of that. Was she giving up on herself? On me?

  Wind whipped my hair around my face and my sword bounced against my thigh as Jazz and I flew toward Middle Salem. My hair had grown over the past three weeks, and I knew my dad would hate it even more than he already had.

  I figured I would let it grow even longer.

  “Bren?” Jazz’s soft voice brought me out of my thoughts and back to flying on a broomstick with a witch. On a broomstick with a witch? Hey, I was the one flying the broom. I was a witch, too.

  Maybe none of this was real. Maybe I was really in a white padded room and laced up tight in a straightjacket—that actually made more sense. But the girl behind me felt real. I didn’t have to pinch myself to know it wasn’t a dream and I wasn’t going to wake up.

  “Will you tell me about your family?” she said again.

  I thought about her question, but I didn’t know what to tell her. After all this time at Shadowbridge, my family seemed so far away. Which I guess they were. But it felt like an eon since I’d seen Mom, Dad, and Todd, and their faces were becoming kind of fuzzy in my mind. I felt a twinge of homesickness and realized how much I missed them. Even my dad.

  “You really want to know about my parents?” I finally asked.

  “Yes.” Jazz moved her head against my back as we rose far above the treetops. “What are they like?”

  I laughed, the sound bitter even to me. “Dad thinks I’m a screw-up and he probably believes I’m a total loser for vanishing with the truck.” A lump lodged in my throat, and I swallowed hard. “I wonder if he’s even worried. If he even misses me.”

  “I’m certain he does,” Jazz said so soft I could barely hear her, even with my sensitive hearing. “What does he look like? What’s his occupation?”

  “He’s pretty normal looking, I guess.” I shrugged and gripped the rough wood of the branch tighter as we flew beyond the forest. “He has brown hair and eyes like me. He was sort of a jock in high school, but after he went on some kind of exchange-student program, he decided to major in history. So now he’s a professor at the community college. I guess that’s why he expects me to do so well in school.”

  “History?” Her voice sounded odd, like it was a big deal or something. “What kind?”

  “American, especially the colonial stuff.” I glanced down and saw that we were passing over farmlands with barns, pastures, and little brown animals that I figured must have been cows. “He has a real thing for the seventeenth century. He has this whole collection of crap, but Todd and I have never been allowed to go near it, ’cause he thinks we’ll break it or something. He keeps all the junk locked in his den.”

  Jazz tensed behind me, and she felt colder. What was wrong with her?

  Before I could open my mouth to ask, she said, “Tell me about your mother.”

  Mom’s face flashed in my mind, and I had this weird ache behind my eyes. I could see her sitting in the stands at one of my b
aseball games, wearing her dark sunglasses. “Mom’s usually pretty cool. Always after me to try new things—expand my horizons and all that stuff.”

  I shook my head and mimicked my mother’s voice, “‘Get out of the concrete. Try the abstract, Bren. Consider the impossible, Bren.’ She’s always telling me ‘respond, don’t react,’ and she’s always on my case about my grammar and bad language.”

  I tried to see what we were passing over as I talked, but the clouds below us had become too thick. “Mom and I have this special relationship. Nobody means more to me than her. And I think she feels the same way. She got Dad to let me go on this trip to see my friend. She’s probably totally freaking out and has my face on a bunch of milk cartons by now.”

  “Milk cartons?”

  “Uh, never mind.”

  “What does your mother look like?”

  “She’s average, like Dad. Blonde hair and blue eyes. Pretty, for a mom, I guess. Except she’s always wearing purple, which is too stupid for words, but she loves it.” I shifted on the broom and it wobbled a bit. A broomstick’s definitely not the most comfortable way for a guy to travel.

  “What’s her occupation?”

  “Mom’s old-fashioned. She always stayed at home with me and my brother.” I pictured her in our backyard, where she spent a lot of her time every evening. “She’s got this huge garden and raises plants and herbs, and this room where she grows mushrooms and stuff. Her horticulture club says she’s amazing.”

  “Oh.” She was quiet for a moment, and then asked, “How old are your parents?”

  I shrugged. “In their early forties. Dad’s starting to go gray above his ears, but I think Mom looks the same as she did when I was little.”

  “And what about your brother?”

  I grinned. “Todd’s fourteen and a pain in the butt.” I pictured his blue eyes and blond hair, which looked so much like Mom’s. “He used to follow me around when he was younger, and it drove me nuts. Most of the time now, he’s hanging around with his friends or messing with all his pets. He’s practically raising a zoo in his room. He’ll be a freshman this fall when I’m a senior.” I grinned. “Can’t wait for initiation.” That was, if we survived Nire.

  “Where are your parents?”

  “They would be home by now.” My soul twisted at the thought of how worried they must be. “When I left, they flew to the East Coast with Todd for vacation. To Massachusetts, I think. That’s where Mom and Dad first met.”

  Jazz went very still. “I see.”

  I wondered what she was thinking, but I was sure she wasn’t going to be honest. Something in my gut told me she had started lying to me about lots of things after that golem.

  Everything had changed between us since she had gone inside me with her magic. Since she touched me…like that. I couldn’t explain it, but having someone that close was almost like, well, too much. And she hadn’t asked my permission or anything.

  It was humiliating. Even the memory of it made my face burn. And she’d been weird with me since she did it. Like she regretted being that close to me. That made me ten times madder.

  What did she find out about me that freaked her out? I wanted to force her to tell me, but just thinking about what she had done made my skin crawl like there were centipedes inside my flesh.

  It was like Jazz had probed every part of me, and I felt violated. Even though I knew she did it to save my life, a part of me hated her for it. She had also heard in my thoughts that I was in love with her. That wasn’t something I was ready to share.

  For a moment I was quiet, feeling the wind on my face. The smell of fish and brine was strong, with Jazz’s sweet scent blended in.

  But there was something different in the air, too. Something rotten and evil. A stink like sour milk and rotting meat. The clouds grew darker and churned, like a big thunderstorm was building up. But worse. Much, much worse.

  Jazz hunched closer as if she was in pain.

  I turned and spoke over my shoulder. “Hey, are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” I heard the lie in her voice and anger coursed through me like hot lava.

  “What’s wrong?” I shouted. “Why are you shutting me out? Why are you lying to me?”

  She froze, not moving a muscle, but I heard her sob.

  Aw, man. I had gone and made her cry again. What was I supposed to do?

  “All right, Jazz. We’ll do this your way. But I’m going to trust you to tell me what I need to know to help us defeat Nire.” Maybe I couldn’t trust her with telling me the truth about anything else, but I knew she would do whatever she could for the witches.

  “Of course.” Her voice came out in a choked whisper. “We’re almost there.”

  I figured I might as well change the subject. “So, are we at the place where they held all those witch hunts?”

  “Yes. Middle Salem.” She nodded against my back. “The year in this Sanctuary is now 1696, four years after the witch disasters.” Her words were tight and matter-of-fact.

  “That’s wild that we’re going to the late seventeenth century. My dad would—” I stopped, strange thoughts churning in my brain. My father had been unusually fascinated by the Salem witch-hunts. Why hadn’t I remembered that before? It was almost like it had been blocked from my thoughts, and all of a sudden it was there. No, there couldn’t be a connection. Or could there be? It didn’t make any sense. My dad was a jerk, but—

  As I guided the broom into the churning clouds, everything around us grew black and colder still. A gust of wind blasted us. Jazz screamed as the wind knocked us sideways.

  I lost control.

  The broom spun around and around. Everything whirled. My heart pounded. Round and round we flipped. I had no idea which direction was up or down, and it was all I could do to hold on. We were going to fall off and splatter all over the streets of Middle Salem.

  No. I wouldn’t let that happen. That feeling of being hyper-focused overcame me, even as we spun through the clouds. I realized in that instant that I had always performed best under pressure-always able to block out distractions when it counted the most.

  I could do this. For her. For me.

  Concentrating like I had practiced over and over and over, I reached deep inside. I searched for my source of magic. Raging warmth surged through me as I grabbed hold of it. The magic burned within me, building and building as I focused on the broom. I focused on stopping the rolling motion. At first, nothing happened, and we kept spinning. Then, gradually, we turned more slowly, until we finally leveled out. Slumping back against Jazz, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. And realized our hair was standing straight up.

  No, we were hanging upside down. And we were approaching a church steeple dead-on.

  I jerked hard to the left, and we rolled upright. But we were still going too fast. Smoke filled my nose. The live oak branch was on fire!

  We shot over a road and some houses—the outer part of a village. It was dawn in this Sanctuary, and people were out tilling the land and feeding animals. They screamed and ducked as we zoomed over their heads. Lower and lower we dropped. Our feet almost dragged on the ground.

  My muscles were taut, my jaw clenched as I struggled to bring us to a halt. I reached for my source of magic and with all my might, commanded the broom to stop.

  The broom stopped.

  We kept going.

  Jazz lost her hold on me, and I cried out as I flipped through the air. In the next instant, I slammed into water. It gushed up my nose, filling my mouth and eyes and ears. Deeper and deeper I was propelled underwater, until I finally slowed.

  Above me I could see faint green light and I struggled to swim toward it. My sword hit my leg as I fought to reach the surface.

  My lungs burned. Air. I had to get air. My chest ached. My lungs were going to explode. The sword tangled in my legs, dragging me down. Hot knives stabbed my lungs and chest. I felt lightheaded. Dizzy. I had to get to Jazz. I couldn’t leave her alone to face Nire. Murky green light g
rew brighter above. Almost there.

  Cold water was replaced by even colder air as I burst above the surface. I gulped all the air my lungs could handle as I trod water. My whole body ached, and I felt like I could sleep for a week. But I looked to the shore and saw Jazz sprawled on the grass.

  Not moving.

  “Jazz!” A burst of energy returned, and I forgot everything but getting to her. I swam to the shore, crawled out, rushed to Jazz, and dropped to her side. Relief flooded me as her eyelids fluttered. She coughed and clutched her stomach with her good arm.

  I leaned over her, water dripping from my hair and face onto hers. “Are you okay?” I brushed moisture from her cheek with the back of my hand as she nodded. Taking care not to touch her wounded arm, I helped her as she struggled to sit up.

  “I’m fine. Thank you.” She was a mess, covered in dirt and leaves, and on top of it, I was dripping water all over her. If she could have seen herself, she would probably have freaked.

  I pulled her to me and pressed her to my chest, because I needed to feel her close to me. I needed her. She shivered, and I wished I wasn’t wet, so that I could warm her with my own body heat. “Sorry about that stop,” I said as I pushed my soaked hair out of my face.

  Her teeth chattered so loud I could hear them. “F-f-far better to land here, than t-to have smashed into that h-house.”

  Glancing in the direction she was pointing, goose bumps popped over my arms. She was right. It was a big house, too. The base was gray rock, and the rest was white boards. A few more yards and someone would have been scraping us off the wall.

  A man stood beside the house-and I knew him. Blood rushed in my ears, and I started to shake. It was the jerk who caused all the horrible things that had happened to Jazz and Rol.

  “Jazz!” I got to my feet so fast I yanked her up with me. “That guy. He’s the one who gave me the golem thing.”

  “Alderon?” She blinked and stared past me. “Where?”

  My stomach dropped when I looked back toward the house. Alderon was gone. “He was there. By the porch. It was him! I know it was.”