Rick tilted his head and looked down at it, puzzled, and a blast of fire burst forth from Zhai’s outstretched fingers like a powerful arc of lightning. Zhai’s body convulsed with an ecstatic jolt as the Shen flowed through him, propelling Rick backward, a whirling windmill of arms, legs, and screams. He landed at the top of the rise, on the railroad tracks, and Zhai moved fearlessly toward him. Steam rose from Rick’s leathery, demonic flesh, its plumes made silver by the moonlight—but he was still alive. He writhed and groaned as Zhai drew near.
“Do you yield, Rick?” Zhai said, his voice loud and strong. The others—Flatliners and Toppers—skidded to a halt behind him and watched in silent fascination.
Rick sat up fast and swung his club at Zhai, but Zhai snapped it with one sharp kick, sending it exploding into splinters. Then he hit Rick with a blizzard of lightning-fast punches and kicks that left the monster stunned, a stream of blood oozing from his fanged mouth.
“Do you yield?” Zhai repeated even more forcefully.
Rick grimaced as he rose. “Never,” he snarled, and before anyone could react, he took off into the woods, disappearing with the speed of a spooked deer.
When he was gone, everyone seemed to exhale at once. Beet and D’von Cunningham exchanged a weary glance, as did Benji and Dax Avery, but no one seemed to have any desire to continue fighting. Ignacio cursed softly and then vomited and spat between a set of railroad ties.
“You okay?” Benji asked, and Nass nodded.
Zhai looked around. There was somebody missing.
“Bran!” Cle’von shouted, and he ran over to a tree at the edge of the clearing. Zhai and the others followed. Bran was sitting on the ground, leaning against a slender birch tree. His face—even his lips—were nearly as pale as the paper-white bark.
“Bran? What happened, man?” Michael Ponder asked, then his eyes traced down his friend’s body and he said, “Oh.”
The single syllable fell heavily from his lips.
Bran was trembling and his hands, clenched tightly together over his stomach, were covered in blood. He looked down and when he saw it, he passed out.
Zhai stared at him for a moment, trying to figure out what had happened. It wasn’t until someone behind him said, “Oh, God,” that he understood.
Josh had regained consciousness and recovered the gun. He limped up to the edge of the gathering and stared at Bran for a moment, and then the gun fell from his hand.
“I hit him,” Josh said in stunned disbelief. “I didn’t think I hit anything—crap!” He was suddenly frantic. “Well, don’t just stand there!” he shouted. “We have to get him to the hospital—somebody call for an ambulance!”
And together the Flatliners and Toppers lifted Bran and carried him out of the woods.
Chapter 22
Rick ran through the moonlit forest, sometimes sprinting and dodging through trees like he was scrambling on the football field, sometimes galloping along the forest floor on all fours, his hands digging into the thick layers of leaves and earth beneath him and propelling him forward. As he blasted his way through the quivering shadows he struggled to identify what had happened to him. Something in him had changed—he’d known that since he ventured down Maggie’s basement stairs. But the change was going deeper, and it felt more permanent.
It was strange. In some ways, he felt more himself than ever. He was a fuller version of himself, as if he’d now reached a state of ripeness, of completion.
He could still remember the night his father had found the note from his mother, saying that she’d left.
He remembered his father berating him, taking his anger out on him with a series of vicious verbal attacks, and feeling lost because neither his mother nor Aimee was there to bear the brunt of Jack Banfield’s wrath. He remembered locking himself in his room and crying bitter, angry tears feeling as alone as a satellite drifting in the black, frigid reaches of space. Then, he’d gotten angry.
And, instead of diminishing over time, the anger had grown, until it was like another entity abiding within him, a living tumor with its own heartbeat, its own will, its own stubborn desire to exist, then to thrive and finally, to reign. He was angry with his mother for leaving, angry with his father for taking it out on him, angry with Aimee for being the cause of it all because maybe she killed Tyler, angry with Savana Kain for being the seductress who’d led his father astray. He was angry with Zhai for always wanting to keep the peace, angry with Bran for his slick-talking charm, angry with the other Toppers for not being as angry as he was.
He was angry with the Flatliners because no matter how bad his life was, they were there to make it worse. He was angry with them for being so resilient, for laughing and having fun even though they were such miserable losers. He was angry with them for meddling in his father’s business and for trying to tip the normal order of the world in their own favor, and he was angry with Raphael Kain for—for being.
There was more. He could go on and on about all the things that pissed him off, that made him want to smash something or choke someone—or rip them apart like he’d decimated Clarisse’s drug-dealing ex. But they were not individual issues anymore. They were all one, absorbed into the tumor of anger that had been growing inside him for so long. His body seemed to have turned inside out, and the tumor he’d felt swelling within him was now attached to his skin like a giant barnacle. It was a great relief, in a way, to finally look on the outside how he felt on the inside, but it was also mildly disturbing—because he knew he was not exactly one hundred percent human anymore.
He broke out of the woods onto Golden Avenue amid screeching tires and honking car horns and ran north, intending to head back to Hilltop Haven, but as soon as he passed Main Street, something pulled him to his left. It was like . . . a voice coming from within his body, as if the hate-tumor thing had developed the power of speech.
Come to me, Rick. Come now. Come fast.
And it was drawing him like a magnet, pulling him around the corner, off the well-lit main drag, and onto a tree-canopied side street.
My jailor is gone. His spell weakens. Now is the time. Come to me.
Rick ran harder, his muscles pumping beneath his sweat-soaked skin. He stopped suddenly, as if he had run into an invisible wall.
Yes. I’m here. Come to me. Release me.
Rick looked up. He was standing in front of Orias’s house, a grand but dilapidated Victorian structure as beautiful as it was forbidding. The lights were all out, but he knew, somehow, that someone was inside. Not Orias. Not Aimee, who basically lived there now. But someone was there, calling him.
Come to me, Rick . . . Come and release me. Let me out. Now.
Up the steps he went. As he reached the door it creaked open by itself, revealing a foyer cloaked in impenetrable shadow. But since Rick had made darkness his home, he found that he could see. He went up the steps, down the hall, and all the way back to a smaller spiral staircase made of black wrought iron.
Come, Rick. Set me free.
Rick climbed those stairs, too, all the way to the top of the tower, and was soon in a tiny anteroom. Sickly, pale moonlight was spilling in from an oval window, revealing a door directly in front of him. It was bowed outward, as if some incredible force was pushing against it with enough strength to bend the wood. Large flecks of paint from the door’s warped face littered the floor at his feet.
Open it. Do it, Rick. Now!
He was desperate to make the voice stop, and he understood that the only way to make that happen was to open the door. But he was suddenly afraid. Something was locked inside that room. It was calling him, and whatever it was, the last thing on earth Rick wanted was to see its face. He wanted to run down the stairs, maybe even to throw himself out the window, and keep on running until he was back in the woods. But it was too late for that. The magnetic power that drew him held him fas
t. He belonged to it—maybe had always belonged to it—and there was no use resisting.
Do it now. Rick Banfield, open this door!
Rick reached forward and with the hand that had become a claw he was somehow able to pull back the latch bar. The cool metal of the doorknob felt strangely normal against his skin. He expected some resistance as he turned it, but there was none. The knob turned easily, and the latch made a small grating click as it pulled free. The door creaked softly as he pushed it open and gazed into the darkened room beyond.
He had been terrified of what he would find, but there was nothing but impenetrable darkness. He was about to step into the room and grope for a light switch when he saw a form coalescing out of the blackness. He heard a boot step and the plaintive squeak of a floorboard as someone came toward him.
“H . . . hello?” Rick’s voice was just a whisper.
“Hello, Rick.”
The tone was friendly, but something made Rick back up a little. The figure moving toward him was tall, wispy thin, and as dark as the shadows surrounding it. It looked like a black skeleton, a tall man made of onyx who had been left to starve for months. Bones pressed against the creature’s black skin, as if eager to be free of the flesh surrounding them. But it wasn’t the thing’s gauntness that was most horrifying, or even the luxurious, black wings that protruded from its back like a great cloak. It wasn’t the stench of sewage that drifted from the room, or the feeling of vague, electric malevolence that seemed to radiate from the creature.
It was his eyes.
They were gone, and where they should be were just two scarred craters in the skull-like surface of his face. And hanging in front of the craters were what looked like quivering, reddish holograms of eyes. Their shape was bizarre and their stare unblinking. They looked like they had been borrowed from something that, like Rick, was inhuman.
Then something else struck Rick. He recognized his man. It was his father’s enemy. The man who had kidnapped Aimee. The one everyone thought was dead.
“Oberon Morrow?” he asked in a tremulous whisper.
“That’s right,” the dark angel said. “But you can call me master.”
“Master?” Rick said, recoiling. The last thing he wanted was to be anyone’s servant.
Oberon was looking him up and down with his freaky ghost eyes. “Oh yes,” Oberon said. “I always saw the seed of darkness in you—just look how it has bloomed. Follow me, help me, Rick, and I will teach you to use your newfound power. Follow me, and I will give you the strength to conquer your father, Middleburg, and the world.”
* * *
Orias pounded on Lily Rose’s door and waited impatiently for her to answer. He had not been surprised to find no one at home at Jack Banfield’s place. With Jack on his honeymoon, Rick—who’d gone almost completely over to his demon side—was probably out causing trouble for someone. Aimee had mentioned getting supplies for her journey so Orias assumed she would go home—but she wasn’t there. Logically, Lily Rose’s house was the only other place she was likely to go. But it had taken him longer than he’d hoped to mix the explosives, build the timer, and place the detonator, and after so much delay, he had little hope that Aimee would still be here.
Aimee had always said she knew where her mother was and all she had to do to retrieve her was learn how to teleport back in time. What Aimee didn’t know was that she already had that ability. Her gift was special, growing exponentially more powerful every day. All she had to do, really, was visualize where and when she wanted to be and she would go there. But it could be to his advantage if it took her a while to figure that out.
Lily Rose opened the door then and when she saw Orias standing there, she smiled. The moonlight, slanting in sharply, cast her in a silvery shadow. “Figured you’d be showing up sooner or later,” she said.
“I’d like to see Aimee, please,” he said politely and made himself unclench his fists.
“She’s not here.”
He looked over the old woman’s shoulder, but all he saw was the Chinese man who taught kung fu, standing in the hall behind her.
“Please,” Orias said. “It’s important. “Tell me where she’s gone.”
“You know where,” said Lily Rose. “She’s gone to get her mama. It’s all happening, son—just like it’s supposed to.”
“What do you know about what’s supposed to happen?” he asked her. This old soul, he realized, wasn’t like everyone else in Middleburg. She wasn’t like any human he’d ever met.
“I know you got a choice to make,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s closing in on you, boy,” she told him gently. “You got to find your way.”
“My way is preordained.” He couldn’t keep the contempt and the bitterness from his tone. “I have no choice.”
“You always got a choice,” she said. “Like now. You can walk away from all this and leave Aimee behind—or you can go and help her. No telling who or what she might run into where’s she’s going.”
There was a moment of heavy silence, broken only by the ticking of the grandfather clock in Lily Rose’s den. Orias looked at her, deep into her different colored eyes, and he knew what he had to do.
“Yeah,” he said. And then he turned and walked away.
* * *
The Flatliners and the Toppers rode in a caravan, following the ambulance as it bore Bran to the hospital in Benton. Zhai rode shotgun in Michael Ponder’s car, staring out the window at the barren expanse of moonlit fields and the hulking shadows of big trees as they swooped past. He kept running his tongue over his slit lip, tasting the blood. His whole body ached from the fight with Rick. A car length ahead, Beet’s old beat-up Impala chugged along, looking like it had escaped from a junkyard. In front of him was the ambulance, its flashing lights cutting wide red swaths through the starless night.
“I can’t believe this,” D’von said pensively. “Bran didn’t even want to fight tonight.”
“I know, right?” Cle’von agreed.
“That Flats rat is going to rot in jail for this,” Dax said, his anger momentarily overcoming his fear. “They’re going to lock his ass up—fifty to life.”
There was a moment of silence filled only with the shush of the tires on the road.
“You guys see what happened to Rick?” asked D’von.
“You mean like he morphed into some kind of monster and ran off into the woods like an animal?” asked Dax. “What the hell was that?”
“We all saw it,” said Zhai. “And we saw Josh aiming at Rick, not Bran.”
“If I’d had a gun, I’d have taken a shot at Rick myself,” Cle’von admitted.
There was another moment of silence, and then D’von said, “I’m gonna tell the police it was an accident.”
“Me too,” said Cle’von.
“Me too,” said Michael, after a pause.
“Yeah. I guess I’ll say it was an accident, too,” Dax said.
They all nodded in solemn agreement.
Zhai smiled wanly out the window. It hurt his swollen lip.
* * *
Nass and the Flatliners entered the ER limping and shuffling, ragged and bloody. A young nurse behind the reception desk frowned at them, but when they said they were with the kid in the ambulance, she directed them to the waiting area. They all settled into the vinyl seats and glanced at one another, and Nass knew they were all thinking the same thing. They had been here only hours before, for Emory. Now, it looked like they might have to bury another student from Middleburg High.
Nass didn’t like Bran Goheen much. He had always equated Bran’s Southern charm with huckster evangelists, smooth-talking car salesmen, and crooked politicians. But Nass respected him. Bran had always abided by the Wu-de, behaving honorably when the Flatliners and Toppers fough
t. He was a great athlete, and word around school was that he was a straight-A student. The thought that he might die tonight from a bullet that should have hit Rick was hard to take.
The Toppers came in, then, and were passing the nurse’s station when a police officer walked in and called them back. Nass groaned. It was Johnny the Cop.
Josh’s eyes were shut, his body slouched, and his head tilted back against the chair next to Nass. Nass elbowed him now and pointed across the room to the spot where Johnny stood talking to the Toppers. Josh followed his gaze and the color drained from his face.
“They’re telling him I’m a killer, Nass. They’re going to lock me up, man,” he said, his voice rising. “What’s my family going to do? My little brother? My job pays for his clothes. I can’t go to prison—”
Nass put a hand on Josh’s shoulder. “You need to calm down,” he said, serious and quiet. “It’s going to be okay, you hear me? But you gotta stay cool—and stop talking.”
Across the room, Johnny the Cop was glancing over at the Flatliners.
“We’d better go and give them our side of the story,” Beet said.
“Yeah,” Nass agreed. “Let’s go.” When they got within earshot, however, he couldn’t believe what the Toppers were telling Johnny.
“It was an accident,” D’von said.
“He didn’t mean to shoot anybody,” Dax Avery put in.
“He was just showing us the gun, and it went off,” Cle’von added.
“Yeah,” Michael Ponder agreed. “It wasn’t Josh’s fault.”
Johnny looked at Zhai.
“It was an accident,” Zhai said.
Nass heard Josh draw in a quick breath and glanced over at him. He was struggling to contain his emotions.
“Josh,” Johnny the Cop said. “Let’s step outside and have a little talk.”
Josh nodded and followed him out the automatic doors that led into the parking lot, leaving the Toppers and the Flatliners alone together. Nass went weak with relief. The last thing he’d expected was for the enemy to protect Josh.
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