Curse of the Spider King (36 page)

Mr. Charlie nodded slowly. “Expect so,” he replied. “They'll watch for you there till they're sure you aren't coming back.”

“The trees?” Tommy asked. “The black trees you said were watching my neighborhood. Will they leave?”

“I just don't know, Tommy. They should. I'm just glad there weren't any Cragon trees here. That would have been close.”

Tommy turned back to the front seat. He'd nearly been killed. How much closer could it have gotten?

Mrs. Galdarro sighed and leaned her head against the steering wheel. Her cell phone lay limply in her hand on her thigh.

“Mrs. Galdarro?” Tommy tilted his head. “Are you okay?”

“Elle?”

Mrs. Galdarro sat up. “Those messages . . . they are from other Sentinels all over your world. The Drefids have closed all the portals.”

“What does that mean?” asked Tommy.

“It means we cannot get home,” she said. “We're trapped.”

She lifted her hand up as if she'd been stung. Her cell phone vibrated and lit up like a Christmas tree.
Incoming call
. She flipped open the phone and said,
“Goldarrow.”

“Gold-arrow?” Tommy glanced in the backseat.

“It's her Elven surname,” Mr. Charlie explained.

Tommy laughed. “Galdarro . . . Goldarrow . . . how did I not get that?”

“I understand,” said Mrs. Galdarro. A moment later, an “I see.” Then with a courteous “Thank you,” she closed the phone. “Charlie, would you mind driving? I have some plans to arrange.”

“Not a problem, ma'am,” he replied.

Tommy waited as they switched seats. “What's going on?”

Mrs. Galdarro smiled as she pecked out texts on her phone. “Have you ever been to Scotland, Tommy?”

“Scotland? Uh . . . no.”

“Well, we're going there now,” she said without looking up. “Mr. Charlie, we'll need our nest egg. And then to Hangar A17, please.”

Charlie started the SUV. “It would be my pleasure.”

“Scotland? Really? But . . . how? I mean, don't I need a passport or something?”

“We have friends, Tommy . . . very useful friends.”

“Uh . . . ooookay, I'm cool with that.” Tommy shook his head. “What's in Scotland anyway?”

“The last open portal.”

34

When the Music Calls

WHEN KIRI Lee leaped from the window to escape her knife–wielding parents, she thought it was her only escape. But once airborne, she felt sure the fall would kill her. She braced for the sudden, searing pain. She felt the wind whipping at her hair. A light rain sprinkled her face. She heard glass shatter against the concrete far below. Angry shouts from her room were still very near. Too near.

Kiri Lee opened her eyes and looked down. Her slippers felt as though they were on a solid surface, but there was nothing to hold her up. Yet, she was not falling . . . she was standing outside her window . . . on air. She did notice, however, that she was moving down ever so slightly . . . more like sinking through the air.
A very bad dream
, she concluded.
First, my parents try and kill me; next, I'm standing in midair
outside my window.
She continued to sink slowly; whatever
this
was, it would not last long.

She felt something thud against the side of her arm, and then a sudden stinging pain. Something clattered on the street below. Kiri Lee grabbed her arm, felt the blood, and saw the knife blade reflecting in the streetlight.

Without thinking, Kiri Lee put her other foot out in front as if to step down. Six inches below her right foot, her left foot stopped. She had little time to be amazed as her mother flung the last kitchen knife through the window. Another step and it was as if Kiri Lee were walking down an invisible staircase. Like walking . . . on the wind.

Kiri Lee was just five feet above the sidewalk when the final knife missed her head and clattered along the pavement. Instinctively she jumped and found herself on solid ground. She turned back and looked up. Lightning flashed again, and Kiri Lee saw her parents race from the window back into the house.

Kiri Lee had to get away from here. But where? How could she possibly explain this to any of her friends? Her parents might just play it off and make
her
look like the weird one. Plus, at this hour? Who would answer their door? No, she had to get away . . . far away. She turned south down her street and started running. The Paris Metro was just up ahead. She thanked God that she'd worn her coat and clothes to bed.

“Lothriel! Come back!”

Impossible! How did they get downstairs so fast? And why do they keep
calling me that peculiar name?
Kiri Lee didn't even bother to turn around; she could hear their shoes against the concrete, gaining on her. Oh, she so desperately wanted to wake up. . . .

Just up ahead lay the subway entrance, a fancy, red awning waved overhead of the sublevel staircase. Kiri Lee reached inside her right jacket pocket and fumbled for her wallet. She pulled it out and removed her EuroRail pass, holding tight to the plastic.

“Stop!” came another shout behind her.

A second later Kiri Lee was bounding down the steps three at a time, almost tumbling over herself. She turned the corner and raced down the escalator deeper underground. She covered the next thirty feet in a matter of moments and eyed the turnstile up ahead.

Heavy footfalls echoed down through the corridor above.

Kiri Lee swiped her unlimited pass through the card reader, feeling as though it took an eternity for the red light to shift to green. It beeped.

Green.

She shoved her hands against the cold steel bars and pushed her way through. Feeling at least a little secure now, she chanced a look behind her. They wouldn't have their passes on them . . . would they?

Beep
.

Kiri Lee screamed as the turnstile moved, allowing first her father through, then her mother. She looked around for the signs; even though she had ridden this line a hundred times before, she still needed to know where she was headed. She could take this line, the M4, directly to Gare du Nord. And from there . . . anywhere.

Kiri Lee raced around the corner and followed the signs to the northbound line. What time was the next train leaving? How long would she have to evade her parents on the platform? Her heart beat wildly.

She emerged just then through the grand archway and stepped onto the platform, the deep tracks just a few feet in front of her, and filling them, the train to Gare du Nord. Kiri Lee prayed a silent
Thank
You, God
and bounded through the closest set of doors. As if the car had been waiting for her, a woman's voice came over the loudspeaker and announced that the train was departing and to please stand clear of the doors.

At the same moment her father and mother came blasting around the corner beyond.

“No!” Kiri Lee screamed.

“Stop!” cried her father, his face red and horribly stretched.

The doors started to close.

Kiri Lee stepped back and fell into an empty seat.

Her parents' hands strained, grasping for a hold around the rubber door liners . . . but never quite made it before the doors shut.

Kiri Lee sat trembling, her knees bouncing under her palms. Her father and mother hammered the glass with their fists, trying to get in the train, running along its side until the train was traveling too fast and they began to lose ground. Kiri Lee wanted to look away from the black, mindless rage in their eyes, their anguished screams. She couldn't stop watching, not until they were gone. But suddenly, their faces began to change . . . to dissolve. . . .

In a dozen rapid heartbeats, nothing of flesh and bone remained. But a pair of misty, vaporous faces stared into the accelerating car. Then the faces unraveled into two snaking strands of mist. They seemed to slither on the wind. One of them found purchase at the seam of the doors. Kiri Lee watched with horror as a thin tendril of mist wriggled through. The other fell away as the train continued to pick up speed.

“No, nooo!” Kiri Lee cried as the length of the thing that was through the doors began to take the shape of the upper torso of a man . . . a man reaching out with arms of mist to clutch for her. It was inches from her now, swiping at the air and growling.

At once, it seemed to be straining, struggling to get free of the doors; the train was approaching its top speed. More and more of the mist creature was sucked back out, and it began to lose its form. With a haunting moan, the rest of the vaporous thing vanished and was lost in the darkness of the tunnel.

The train rumbled on, stop after stop. The doors opened; the doors closed. And no one got on or off.

Kiri Lee fidgeted incessantly, wringing her hands, her mind running wild. All at once her fingers stopped along an envelope in her pocket. Her invitation to Scotland. She pulled it out of her pocket and removed the letter. She found great comfort in the piece of paper, its fine quality, the signature of the dean . . . even the postmark on the envelope. Everything was as it should be. Safe.

Content that she would be safe as long as she stayed ahead of her parents or whatever they were, Kiri Lee thought long and hard about what she would do next. She had a few friends with whom she might stay, but that would put them in danger, too. Until she could figure out what these things were and what they knew about her life, she dared not go anywhere they might expect to find her.

One of her teachers? That was a possibility, but what would they say to her story? Certainly, they'd suspect she'd lost her mind. They'd alert her parents, perhaps even the authorities. The last place she wanted to end up was some psycho institute for teens who had delusions of their parents trying to murder them in their sleep.

“Scotland,” she said under her breath and eyed the invitation.

She was invited, after all. And it seemed just the thing to keep her mind at rest, perhaps even let everything wash over. If she was going mad, doing something she loved would only help right the situation, wouldn't it? Give her time. Space. It might help. It might not.
Mist
creatures . . . trying to kill me . . . and where are my parents?

A cold chill snaked up her spine. She pulled the collar of her jacket up around her neck. Over and over she considered her options: friends, teachers, Scotland. And over and over thoughts of her parents intruded.
Where are they? What happened?
Her eyes began to fill with tears, and she fought them back.
How embarrassing . . . sobbing like a toddler.
She let her head rest against the glass window and felt the hum of the train. With every rhythmic bounce of the car, her mind began to fill with colors. And then the colors turned into melodies, and melodies into song. Harmonies formed as more colors danced through her inner vision.

The music.

It was calling her . . . calling her forward.

Her answers were not in Paris.

Scotland.
The idea was there in her mind as clear as a billboard. The music told her, she was sure of it. She would go to Scotland. It would be an early arrival, but, if past experiences had taught her anything, she knew her hosts would only be too delighted to have a world-renowned child prodigy such as herself take up residence in their abode.
More time
to see the sights
, she would insist.
Edinburgh is far too wonderful to see in
just a day
. No one would think to counter her.

If all went as planned, and Kiri Lee felt sure it would, she would have time. Time to think about what she should do next. Time to think about what would happen after the concert. Time to think about what has happened to her parents and time to think about how she walked on air. She had no answers, but thought that maybe the music would. And now . . . right now . . . music was calling. Before long, Kiri Lee was lost to the melodies in her mind, leaving the train car—and the night's horrendous events—far behind.

35

Rags to Royalty

MANY HOURS, many trains, and a few euros later, Kiri Lee found herself on a large blue bus crossing into Edinburgh, Scotland. Scotland had always held a certain untouchable mystery for Kiri Lee. She had been once before with her father by royal invitation, and the memories never left her . . . the green countryside filled with ancient ruins, the cliff faces of the highlands, gray skies looming over endless strands of beach, and its ever-present history.

Somehow Kiri Lee always felt connected to the Scots, to their passion for freedom. She thought, like William Wallace she, too, would give everything she had if it came to it. Then she noticed a well-dressed elderly man talking on a cell phone.
He was on the last leg of the train,
too.
She felt as if he might be watching her. . . .

“Parliament Building,” came the metallic voice of the bus driver. When Kiri Lee raised her hand, he asked, “Right in front, wee lass?”

“That's fine, sir, thank you,” Kiri Lee said.