* * *
Aimee still had the ring shards and the flashlight, but she was no longer on the Wheel of Illusion. Instead, she was in a strange barren world with a stifling hot climate, standing in the middle of a dirt road, a few hundred yards from a desolate crossroads. And she was alone.
Why, she wondered, hadn’t she ended up in the same place as her friends (which she hoped was 1877 Middleburg)? Then, she remembered that she’d been thinking about Orias as she’d pulled the lever. Was it possible that he was here, somewhere in this strange place?
She could try again to slip to her mom, but she didn’t think she could go back in time that far without the Wheel. So, she walked up the path she was standing on, toward the crossroads. Off to her left over the horizon was a strange reddish glow. As she reached the crossroads, she saw something else: a big, ramshackle silver gate that was chained and padlocked and looked like it hadn’t been used in ages. The sign on it read: morrow
“Well, well, well—what have we here?”
Aimee looked around but saw no one—and then someone tugged on her sleeve.
“Down here,” said the voice and when she looked, she saw a little guy who was too tall to be a child but too short to be a grownup. He smiled up at her. “And behold—she’s a pretty, pretty one,” he said over his shoulder.
Another small guy stepped out of the shadows. He gave Aimee a careful appraisal and then turned to his friend. They exchanged a few words in a language she didn’t understand and then the first little man spoke again. “What’s a pretty-pretty like you doing here?” he asked. “What do you want?”
“I’m looking for someone,” she said. “Orias Morrow. Is this his place?”
“Oooh! Orias! What do you want with him?”
“Sorry, it’s kind of personal. Is he here?”
But he didn’t reply to that. “I’m Steel and this is Begg,” he said. “Who are you?”
“Aimee Banfield.”
“And what is Orias Morrow to you?”
She gave an aggravated sigh. This was wasting time. “Not that it’s any of your business but he’s my boyfriend, okay? Now, come on—is he here or not?”
“We can’t tell you that,” Steel said. “But Azaziel can. We can take you to him.”
Of course, she realized. I had Orias’s problem with Azaziel on my mind when I slipped. That’s why I ended up here. “Let’s go,” she said. “I’d really like to talk to him.”
Steel and Begg led her down a stone pathway that ran parallel to the Morrow Estate. It felt to Aimee like they walked forever. They passed bizarre rock formations, half-buried skeletons of huge, strange animals, and a few slowly turning black windmills that gave Aimee the creeps.
All the while, the red light that Aimee had seen earlier loomed in the distance, and she soon understood that the glow came from flames and that somehow, the massive conflagration was their destination. As they approached it, however, the place’s true nature became apparent. It was no massive bonfire, as she’d imagined. Instead, the flames made of the walls and ramparts a huge fortification. The heat that rose from it was so much that Aimee could scarcely breathe.
“Behold,” Steele said as they drew nearer. “The Burning City!”
They passed through a broad gate, running quickly as their clothes and hair began to smoke from the heat. Aimee was surprised to find on the other side a bizarre, ancient-looking city made mostly of black stone. The peculiar beings that passed her on the street were too numerous and malformed for her to even guess what they could be. She rushed past them as fast as she could.
Finally, her small guides led her into a foreboding black castle and down a long staircase.
From there they went through another gate, deep into a cavern, until they came through an arched passageway lined with giant columns. And then, suddenly, they were in a wide, cold room with a domed ceiling and black, stone floors. On a platform several feet above the floor was a silver, jewel-encrusted throne. The creature sitting on it was astonishing and as black as obsidian. Its head was enormous and its shoulders broad and muscular. She wanted to shrink away from it, but for some reason she drew closer.
Steel and Begg bowed low before it, and then Steel ran behind Aimee and pushed her forward. “My Lord Prefect Azaziel,” he said. “See what a pretty-pretty we have brought you.”
Slowly, the creature rose from the throne to its full height. He stared haughtily down at them. He was the tallest man Aimee had ever seen—only he wasn’t a man. Not exactly.
“I have no use for a human woman,” Azaziel said with contempt.
“Not even if she’s Orias’s woman?” Steel asked slyly.
The being turned to Aimee and a pair of black, feathery wings unfurled from its back. Its skin was as sleek and black as a killer whale’s and its eyes had sizzling red irises. His gaze raked over her, and she could feel disdain radiating from him.
“How fortuitous,” he said. “Fortuitous, indeed. Why go after the prey when we can make him come to us?” He descended from his throne, never once taking his eyes off Aimee. Passing close to her, he moved gracefully to the edge of a balcony that seemed to look out over a wide chasm from which the red glow emanated. “Uphir!” he bellowed. “Come up from the Pit! I have a job for you!”
* * *
Bran, in his hospital bed, stared groggily at the TV. A rerun of Saturday Night Live was on, but the volume was off. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to concentrate on the words even if he could hear them. With every breath, the wound in his side sent a jolt of pain through his body, but all in all, it wasn’t too bad. Maybe it was because he was in shock or maybe it was because of all the pain meds they had him on, but he felt pretty good, given the fact that he’d almost died. Now, for the rest of his life, he’d be able to tell girls he got shot. If that didn’t give him bragging rights as a bona-fide badass, nothing would.
The thought of bragging about it like some rap star made him laugh, and the laugh made his stomach hurt, which made him quit laughing. It’s a good thing SNL is on mute, he thought. If I was cracking up right now, I’d probably die. He was still trying to keep from laughing when Johnny the Cop entered the curtained enclosure.
“Hey—Bran, isn’t it?” Johnny asked. “How ya feeling?”
Bran shrugged. “Okay.”
Johnny nodded sympathetically. “I know this might not be the best time, but I need to ask you a few questions about your injury. Can you tell me what happened tonight?” He had a little notebook in one hand and the tip of his pen hovered over it, ready to write. A long moment passed before Bran finally spoke.
“I don’t really remember,” he said.
“Yeah—the doc said you might not. Trauma and all that. But if you can remember anything, it would really help. We’d like to investigate this as an attempted murder case, but it’s going to be tough.”
“Why?” asked Bran.
“Because of the account your buddies gave—and those kids from the Flats backed them up.”
“They did?” Bran couldn’t hide his surprise.
Johnny nodded. “Yep. They all said it was an accident. That Josh was just showing off a gun.”
Suddenly, it all came back to Bran. Josh, enraged, sprinting up the tracks toward Rick with a gun. Zhai shooting some sort of energy out of his hand at the last second, knocking Josh off the tracks. Bran remembered feeling a pain in his side, like a bee sting that kept getting worse and worse. He’d fallen to his knees and then he’d blacked out.
It was Josh, and he’d taken that gun out with the intention of taking a life with it; Bran knew that. But it wasn’t Bran’s life he was trying take, it was Rick’s. In a way, it had been an accident. He decided to stall for time.
“Yeah. Like I said, I don’t remember,” he said slowly. “But if the Flatliners and the Toppers actually agree on
anything, it must be true.”
Johnny snorted. “But it’s curious, don’t you think? Two known gangs get together in a place where everyone knows they go to fight. You all come in here beat to hell. Somebody gets shot, and you’re telling me it’s an accident? Come on, Bran. What happened?”
But Bran wasn’t thinking about what had happened to him anymore. He was thinking about Emory, his body limp, as Rick continued pounding away at him. He was thinking about Emory’s girlfriend screaming as she saw his body behind the Dumpster, broken and bloodied. Emory had been in this hospital. He might even have been in this bed. And Bran had lacked the courage to tell the truth about what had happened to him.
Bran remembered all the times he’d seen Josh and Emory hanging out together at school, sitting together in the lunch room, walking home together. They were best friends. It was understandable that Josh wanted revenge.
“You know, even without your testimony, whoever that gun belongs to could get charged with attempted murder. That’s how it works,” Johnny said. “Try to remember.”
Bran looked Johnny in the eye. “Like the guys said—it was an accident.”
Johnny’s eyes narrowed. “So, you don’t think that Flats kid—Josh—should be charged?”
“No,” Bran replied. “He’s not the one who should be behind bars.”
“Then who should be?” Johnny asked.
Rick had been Bran’s first friend in Middleburg, since the first day of football practice Bran’s first year in town. Rick had watched him carry the football twice, and then he’d introduced himself. They had been allies, comrades on the football field, on the basketball court, and more recently in the octagon at Spike Ferrington’s gym. But Rick wasn’t Rick anymore. And he was more dangerous than ever.
“Is Rick here?” Bran asked.
“Rick Banfield?” Johnny was surprised. “No.”
Bran nodded, his eyes drifting absently back to the TV.
“All right,” Johnny said, flipping his notebook shut. “I can see you’re tired. We’ll pick this up tomorrow. Feel better, okay?” He headed for the door.
“It was Rick,” Bran said.
“What?” Johnny turned around.
“Rick Banfield killed Emory Van Buren,” Bran said, and it felt like a vault inside his chest clicked open, releasing a host of warming sun rays.
Chapter 23
On Sunday morning, Agent Wade Hackett woke to the deafening chirping of his cell phone. His first thought was that there could be nothing worse than the grating, high-pitched sound of that ring. He was wrong.
Ten minutes later, his teeth unbrushed, hair uncombed and tie askew, he stood at the door to the mobile lab unit where the three ring shards his men had collected so far were being kept and analyzed. It wasn’t going to be easy to get inside, he saw. There were puddles of blood on the metal steps that led up to the door, and the lifeless body of Agent Whitehead was slumped across them. A gaping red slash had opened his throat from ear to ear.
“Cover him up,” Hackett said. “Get him out of here.”
“Detective Z said he’s waiting for his crime scene team to—” Agent Brown started, but Hackett cut him off.
“I don’t give a piss what Z said. I told you get him out of here!” Hackett barked, then stepped over his fallen comrade and into the mobile trailer. It was just as he thought. Two of his science officers lay butchered on the floor, and the door of the lead-lined safe where they’d been keeping the shards was standing open. He didn’t bother to go over and look inside—he already knew it was empty. The shards were gone. He sat down heavily at the desk near the door, feeling like someone had stomped good and hard on his gut.
His cell phone chirped again and when he saw who it was, he silenced it. It was his commander in Washington D.C. The guys who had found the body had notified him as soon as they discovered the casualties, no doubt. It was protocol. Hackett would get reamed out for not answering the call, but he didn’t care. He was getting a reaming either way, and he needed time—a few minutes anyway—to sort through what had gone wrong.
It was pretty clear. He didn’t need Z’s crappy CSI unit to tell him that the Order of the Snake had waltzed in here, slaughtered his men, and taken the ring shards. The question was, how? His own men were highly trained and the lab was wired up with all sorts of sensors, cameras, and alarms. The whole unit would have been alerted the minute someone approached the trailer. Furthermore, how had the Snakes known that the shards were in the trailer? Hackett wasn’t an idiot. He’d set up a decoy lab across town and manned it with heavily armed, well-trained agents to create a perfect trap. Well, obviously, not perfect, he thought. Somehow, the Snakes knew the shards were there and they’d snagged them. They could be halfway back to China by now.
With a heavy sigh, he leaned his elbow on the table and heard a sound like the crinkling of paper. It was the science team’s report. Fresh off the printer when they were killed, he thought and scanned it.
Hackett was no scientist. High school chemistry, for him, had been an exercise in boredom, and the rows of numbers and chemical symbols he was looking at now might as well have been Egyptian hieroglyphs. Fortunately, there was a section at the bottom that the team had written in layman’s terms, a concession to Hackett’s superiors in Washington, who didn’t understand chemistry either.
The specimen’s chemical composition does not match that of any known element, compound, or alloy, and its properties seem to be completely unique. There appears to be enough potential energy stored within a ten-gram sample to power the city of New York for three thousand years, and yet the compound is completely stable, emitting no more radiation than a common piece of glass. The potential for peaceful energy use, as well as weaponization of the material, is nearly infinite. The team recommends that all available resources be used to secure the remaining material and keep it out of the hands of the Chinese government. Priority: Alpha.
Hackett dropped the report back to the table, unable to suppress a groan. The morning had started out bad when he learned that three of his agents were killed and his security was breached. He hadn’t thought it could get any worse, but his blunders might cost the United States its role as leader of the free world. A few minutes ago, he was concerned about his career. Now, it looked like the balance of world power was at stake.
“Connors!” he barked, and a husky agent with ruddy cheeks vaulted into the trailer.
“Yes, sir,” Connors said, whipping the aviator sunglasses off his face and standing at attention.
Hackett fought the urge to roll his eyes. He hated when they sent him guys fresh out of the military. They were always stiff and by-the-book. But there was no way he was going to tell the kid to relax—not now, when Feng Xu was on the move. Hackett’s phone chirped again.
“Scan this report and email it to headquarters now. Use the encrypted line,” he said, handing the pages to Connors, and then he answered his phone.
“Hackett here.” The tongue-lashing began immediately and lasted so long Hackett felt obliged to butt in. There would be plenty of time for him to get dressed down later, but now there were more important matters at stake. “Sir,” he broke into his superior’s tirade. “I’m sending the science team’s report to you now . . . Yes, they finished it . . . You’ll see when you get it, sir, but I think you’ll want to send your strike teams in now. I recommend six units, at least. . . . Yes, six. The urgency of this situation can’t be overstated. If Feng Xu gets the materials back to China, it might tip the balance of global power forever. It might be the end of us, sir. . . . No, I’m not out of my freakin’ mind, sir. You’ll see when you get the report. Just read it—and send me the units now. We need to form a perimeter around the city immediately, order a media blackout, and bring in every damned asset we’ve got. If we don’t find a way to stop it, Middleburg, Kansas, is going to be a war zone.”
<
br /> * * *
Dawn was breaking as Orias parked his car on Golden Avenue and headed north, toward the wooded path that would lead him to the Middleburg Tunnels. If Aimee had gone to bring back her mother, Orias was sure she would try to use the Wheel. And that, he now realized, would be very, very dangerous. The Wheel was a portal. And a portal could lead to all sorts of places—good places and bad ones, too. It was also the place in Middleburg where the power of the Irin was the greatest. His only hope was to find Aimee before Azaziel did.
Orias picked up his pace. He was floating weightlessly a couple of inches above the sidewalk when a little way ahead he noticed a strange glow. Streams of reddish light were shining up from around the edges of a manhole cover in the center of the street. Orias froze, staring at the heavy circle of steel as it slowly rose into the air like the roof of an invisible elevator.
His feet hit the sidewalk as a shape emerged from the round opening. Was it possible that the mighty Azaziel would choose such an undignified route to the surface? Although he thought not, anything was possible. But the creature that emerged from Middleburg’s sewer system was not the Lord Prefect of the fallen Irin.
“Uphir?” Orias said.
“None other.” This time the demon doctor had not bothered with a human disguise. “I have a message for you—from Azaziel.”
“I don’t answer to Azaziel.”
Uphir reached out an arm that was little more than wispy smoke and opened a skeletal hand to reveal a scroll. “You might today,” he hissed. “I’m in a lot of trouble because of you, Orias. Your friend Aimee is, too. He has her.”
Orias snatched the scroll from the demon, broke the seal, and unrolled it to see that a vivid image had been burned into the leather. Azaziel, his hand clamped around Aimee’s neck, was holding her over a smoldering chasm. Beneath the picture, the fallen Irin had inscribed,
Shadow Train Page 33
