“Do you see her?” Wolf asked.
“See who?” asked Master Dreadthorn.
“Ileana,” said Wolf.
“No,” I answered with disappointment.
I mean, I knew the prophecy had pretty much predicted it, but I just couldn’t believe after all we’d been through together that Ileana would betray me.
“Now what?” asked Wolf as I came back into the room. Below us, at the bottom of the winding staircase, I heard a loud crashing sound.
I shut the door and braced it with a chair.
“Good work, Rune,” said Master Dreadthorn. “First I was imprisoned, now we all are. Bravo.”
We heard feet pounding up the stairs, and with one gust, Vortex sent the door flying from its hinges, nearly slicing off my head.
When the swirling debris settled, Deven, Vortex, and Omnibrain were all standing between us and escape. We were trapped. I didn’t see the Queen Bee anywhere. I assumed she and Invis-a-boy were still hashing it out somewhere in the corridors.
“Really, Rune? You came here just to save your dad?” Deven asked as the three heroes moved slowly into the room. “Why? All he does is humiliate you, betray you, and lie to you.”
“He’s got a point,” Wolf said. The Dread Master’s cold eyes fell on him. “Sorry,” Wolf added quickly.
“I do what is necessary to teach him. That is all,” said Master Dreadthorn.
“Does that include lying to him about his mother? His sister?” Deven asked with a smirk. “Oh, yes. I know. Morgana told me everything.”
“I don’t answer to you,” Master Dreadthorn said, his eyes boring into Deven Do-Good.
I was starting to wonder if Deven had a point. I mean, my dad had been a jerk to me all my life. He’d taken me away from my mother, lied to me. But then he kind of had to. I mean, the crystal had revealed that my mother couldn’t keep me. What was my dad supposed to do?
I didn’t have time to sort out all the drama. We came to get my dad and reclaim the villain school from Morgana. That was all I cared about right now.
“Face it, you’ve lost,” Deven said. “No one can save you now.”
We heard a terrible ripping sound and a loud roar. The ceiling tore away, and bright sunlight streamed in. Lucky for Jezebel, she was still hidden in Wolf’s cape. Above us, Custard roared and dipped, flapping her golden wings in the air. Beside her, Fafnir wheezed and flew kind of lazily with Ileana perched on his scaly back.
Before anyone could react, Custard dived into the room. Her immense body was too much for the little space. The young dragon’s tail thrashed, knocking over furniture and slicing through the cell bars like they were made of butter. In seconds, the room was demolished.
The heroes had taken refuge under the tattered remains of an old wooden desk. Deven peered out. We locked eyes just as one of Custard’s taloned claws wrapped around me, plucking me from the tower room. Beside me, in her other claw, was Wolf. We were lifted up just as Fafnir dived into the room to rescue my dad.
“This isn’t over, Rune Drexler!” Deven shouted after us.
Briefly, I wondered if he would come after us. After all, he could fly, but he didn’t follow. I figured Deven wouldn’t fight alone against two dragons. No, he would get some help, then come after us. In seconds, we were airborne, and Doctor Do-Good’s School for Superior Superheroes was shrinking behind us.
Chapter Fourteen
Back to School
We flew on for a while longer, just to be sure no one was following us, then the dragons landed in a clearing. That was when I realized we’d picked up some extra baggage.
“What’s he doing here?” I shouted, tumbling out of Custard’s claws and over to where Fafnir had landed with Ileana, my dad—and a still-unconscious Doctor Do-Good.
“Oh, you’re welcome,” Ileana said, sliding down from the old dragon’s back. “No, it was no trouble at all. I was happy to save you after you accused me of betraying you.” She crossed her arms and thumped her foot. She had changed back into her dress.
“Do you have our clothes, too?” Wolf asked hopefully.
“I might,” Ileana said, “and I might not. I think all of you have something to say to me first.”
“Sorry!” Wolf said, holding out his hand for his clothes.
Ileana raised her eyebrows at me. I took a deep breath.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled.
“What was that?” Ileana asked, cupping her hand to her ear.
“I’m sorry I thought you would betray us to the heroes,” I said loudly.
“Now can I have my clothes?” Wolf asked eagerly. I knew he was ready to be rid of the hateful cape, but Jez was still hiding from the fading sunlight.
“Not yet,” said Ileana. “There’s someone else who needs to apologize.” She looked meaningfully at Wolf’s cape.
“Not a chance,” came Jezebel’s squeaky bat voice. “You could still betray Rune!”
“C’mon, Jez!” said Wolf. “If you don’t apologize, I’ll have to stay in this outfit forever!”
“Don’t be dense,” Jez squeaked. “You can change when we get back.”
“Yeah,” I added, “but that means we’ll have to enter the school dressed as superheroes. Including you, Jezebel.”
“I’ll just stay a bat then,” she said.
“Okay, but you’re not hiding in our capes. I hope you like the sunlight,” I said, reaching in to grab her. She squeaked frantically beneath Wolf’s cape.
“Fine! Sorry,” Jez said, finally.
Ileana nodded and smiled and gave us all our clothes. We took turns changing behind a tree. Wolf transferred Jez from his cape to my cloak. After the sun finally set, Jez turned back into a girl and changed, too.
When we were done, we gathered around Doctor Do-Good, who was completely zonked. A thin string of drool ran down his chin like a trail of slug slime. Beside him, my dad held out his shackled hands to Ileana.
“Do you mind?” he asked. She looked at him.
“Why didn’t you tell us that we were twins?” she asked.
My dad stared for a moment, then sighed.
“Obviously a conversation needs to take place. But now is not the time, Princess,” he said, still holding out his hands.
“When is the time, then?” Ileana asked. “When is the time to tell somebody you’re her father?”
I could see Ileana’s eyes filling up with tears. Wolf coughed uncomfortably, and Jezebel grabbed his furry arm and led him off to the other side of the clearing. I just poked my foot in the grass and tried to look everywhere but at the princess. Did I mention villains aren’t good with emotions?
“A good time might be when we are back at villain school,” said my dad, boring into Ileana with his sharklike eyes. “Right now, I’m guessing that an entire army of superheroes is about to descend on my students in search of him.” My dad poked Doctor Do-Good with his boot. “I’m also guessing that since you were all able to escape Morgana’s clutches, you most likely had help from Queen Catalina, which means she might be in danger. Where exactly did you leave her when the four of you went truant?”
Ileana and I exchanged a guilty glance.
“She was safe,” I said. “I mean, she should’ve been. Right?” I asked. “Unless—unless Morgana found her before the spell wore off or something.”
“Spell?” asked Master Dreadthorn. He turned his eyes on me. “You hexed your own mother?” My eyes got big and I shook my head and pointed my finger at Ileana. Hey, no loyalty among villains.
“Well done, Ileana!” my dad said.
“What?” I asked in disbelief.
His mouth twitched in a funny kind of way, and I realized he was smiling. “It’s not easy to catch Cat, uh, Catalina off her guard.”
Oh sure. I braved a school full of superheroes to rescue him, and not even a thank-you, but Ileana hexed our mom, and it’s “Well done, Ileana!”
Ileana smiled at our dad, then her face fell.
“You’re right, Rune
,” she said.
“I am?”
“About Mother. We didn’t exactly sneak quietly out of the school when we left.”
I recalled how we blasted our way through the walls of the dragons’ cavern. Someone would’ve come to investigate. Would the spell have worn off by then? Or would the queen have stood helplessly as Morgana descended on her? Ileana seemed to be thinking the same thing.
“We have to get back,” said the princess. She sucked in a deep breath, pulled out one of her hairpins, and tried to pick my dad’s lock.
Ileana was the best lock-pick I’d ever seen, so when a few minutes had gone by, and my dad was still in chains, I began to worry.
“I don’t understand,” Ileana said with frustration. “I’ve never seen a lock like this.”
“It’s magical,” I said, “maybe it can’t be picked.”
“I’ve picked magical locks before,” said the princess, biting down on her tongue and working feverishly.
“These must be different,” I said when her hairpin broke, and my dad remained handcuffed.
“My mom could do it,” Ileana said, remounting Fafnir. “Come on. Once we get back to the school, she’ll set you free.”
I expected my dad to berate the princess for failing, but he didn’t. Boy, I could already see who the favorite child was. In a few minutes, we were all mounted on the dragons. Doctor Do-Good was still unconscious on the ground.
“What do we do with him? Leave him here?” I asked.
“No,” my dad said. “Bring him along. We might need him.”
“For what? Weapons practice?” I asked. My dad glared at me.
“You heard the man,” I said to the dragons. “Bring him along.”
Ileana passed the message to Custard, who scooped up Doctor Do-Good in her talons.
The sky was a deep purple when we arrived at the entrance to the school. Ileana commanded the dragons to roam freely but not to go too far from the school, then she used a spell to make Doctor Do-Good float along beside as I led the way through the castle ruins toward the front entrance.
“Not that way,” my dad said. “Morgana might have it guarded.”
“What other way is there? Back through the hole we made in the dragons’ cavern?”
“No, there is another way,” Master Dreadthorn said. Then he did his slow, creepy turntable spin, raising his hands to his face, his fingers steepled. “But you must never reveal it to another living being on penalty of death.”
We all exchanged nervous glances and followed my dad to a nearby hill as night descended. With the cool of the evening, an eerie fog crept into the low places. As we crested the hill, I realized where we were going and shuddered.
Mist ghosted across the grass so that only the tallest tombs could be seen. They floated in the fog like lost ships. Gnarled trees twisted their ancient branches toward the smile of a crescent moon that made the mist glow. Being a villain, I might be expected to gravitate to a place like this, but I couldn’t help feeling a chill as we passed through the iron gate of Silent Hill Cemetery.
Chapter Fifteen
A Grave Situation
We wound our way through the maze of tombs as the night grew colder. Every cracking branch and rustling leaf made us jump.
“What about ghosts?” Wolf whispered behind me, his tail drooping as his eyes darted from side to side.
“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” said Jezebel.
“Says a vampire,” added Ileana.
“Rune,” Wolf whispered, moving closer to me.
“What?”
“You don’t think your dad’s going to bury us in shallow graves, do you?”
“Nah,” I said. “He’s very thorough. I’m sure they’ll be a proper six feet under.”
Wolf’s eyes got huge, so I smiled reassuringly and patted his hairy back.
“We just saved him, Wolf. He’s not going to do anything to us.” I hoped.
“Be silent,” my dad said.
“As the grave,” I added with a chuckle. This earned me an evil glare.
“In here,” he said, stopping in front of a stone building. It was a mausoleum—a crypt. I really didn’t want to find out what was inside, but it looked like my options were pretty slim.
Wolf gave me a meaningful look and whimpered.
“Why in here?” I asked.
“Because I said so.”
We followed my dad into the tomb. Once we were all crammed inside, Master Dreadthorn reached up, took a torch from the wall, and handed it to me.
“Well?” he asked.
“What?”
“Light it, Rune.”
“Oh! Right.” After singeing Wolf’s fur and burning a hole in the Dread Master’s cloak, I finally managed it.
The sudden glow of light revealed a small, square room of stone. It smelled damp, and I could see moss growing in the cracks in the wall. In the middle of the crypt was a long, rectangular box. I really didn’t want to know what was in it, but I had no choice because my dad reached for an old vase on a shelf. The vase must have been some kind of lever, because gears grinded and the lid on the coffin slid slowly open.
Beside me, Wolf whimpered again, and his tail drooped even more. Ileana moved away from the casket, and even Jezebel looked worried. I held up the torch, expecting to see old dry bones and shreds of ancient cloth. Instead, I was looking at a staircase that descended down inside the coffin.
“A secret passage!” said Jezebel.
“And it will remain a secret unless the four of you want to spend the remainder of your educations dangling over boiling cauldrons. Understood?”
We quickly nodded in agreement.
My dad took the torch from me and disappeared into the coffin. Jez went next, then Wolf, then Ileana with the still-unconscious Doctor Do-Good floating beside her. I brought up the rear. My dad pulled a lever at the bottom of the staircase, and the lid of the casket ground back into place, leaving us in darkness.
We walked along an old tunnel that felt very similar to our school passageways, only a bit darker and moldier. Every once in a while, water would drip into some unseen puddle with a tiny plop. Other than that, the crackling of the torch and the soft thud of our own footsteps were the only sounds.
The tunnel ended suddenly in a flat stone wall. My dad handed the torch to Jezebel and motioned for us to be quiet. He reached up with his bound hands, slid aside a small panel on the wall, and pressed his face to it.
Master Dreadthorn gasped suddenly, then spun around, pointed at me, and wiggled one of his pale fingers, motioning for me to come look. I padded across the floor and raised my eyes to the peephole. It took me a minute to understand what I was seeing. It was a room, obviously. There was a door on the far side, opposite me. Closer was a desk. A black onyx desk. I was looking at the Dread Master’s study. And a moment later, I realized something else. I was looking at his study through his glass cabinet, the one where he kept his precious crystal locked up. The crystal that was currently tucked away in my cloak.
Directly in front of me, I could make out the back of a blond head. Morgana was sitting at the Dread Master’s desk. And beyond the desk a woman stepped into view. Her hands were bound with magical manacles. It was Queen Catalina. No, this wasn’t just the kindly queen, this was my mother. An angry shock went through me at seeing her handcuffed like that.
“You can’t keep me locked up here forever, Morgana. It’s only a matter of time before Veldin comes to reclaim his school,” said the queen. “You should run while you still can.”
Morgana laughed.
“Oh, Cat. Still haven’t figured out how to be a villain. Let me give you a few tips. First, villains don’t come to the rescue. We undermine. We scheme. That’s what I do. That’s what Veldin does.”
“You’re wrong. He’ll come here, and he’ll save me, and you’ll be sorry.”
“Maybe the old Veldin would have. But when you left, he changed, Cat. He’s not the man you once loved. Now he’s as ruthless
as any villain. Well, except me, of course. Really, you leaving was probably the best thing that ever happened to him. There’s no love in him now.”
“That’s not true!” said the queen. “He loves his children. And they’re going to rescue him.”
More laughter.
“I think not. An entire school of superheroes against four wayward villains? They’re probably locked in a tower room as we speak. In fact, with any luck, they’re already—What was that?”
The ground shook. I backed away from the spy hole. For a moment, nothing happened, then the ground shook again, louder this time. Dust and dirt rained down from overhead as the shuddering continued.
We stepped back from the wall. My dad looked meaningfully at the floating Doctor Do-Good.
“The heroes have come,” he said.
We heard shouting, and I raised my eyes to the spy hole again.
A man had burst into the room, one of Morgana’s guards.
“Mistress! The school is under attack!” he said.
“Attack? From whom?” she asked.
“Superheroes!”
“What!” said Morgana. “Why that little two-timing weasel Do-Good! He’ll be sorry he ever crossed Mistress Morgana! Gather the school Masters and all the Apprentices. Assemble them at the front entrance! Now!”
“Right away, Mistress,” the man said, then dashed out the door.
“Cat, sorry we couldn’t chat longer, but duty calls. Being the Mistress of two schools is such a burden. Why don’t you just sit a spell?”
With that, Morgana hexed the queen, causing her to sink into a chair, where she was unable to move.
“Let me out, Morgana. I can help you!”
Morgana laughed bitterly.
“Oh, Cat. Do you really think I’d let you go? No, I have other plans for you. Once I chase off this rabble of superheroes, I think I’ll set my sights on your kingdom next. I believe I’d look rather fetching in a crown, don’t you? Ta!”
Morgana stopped to check herself in a mirror, then left the room.
Villain School Page 11
