Fenzy
frenzy
BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR
Comes a Horseman
Germ
Deadfall
Deadlock
DREAMHOUSE KINGS SERIES
1 House of Dark Shadows
2 Watcher in the Woods
3 Gatekeepers
4 Timescape
5 Whirlwind
6 Frenzy
frenzy
BOOK SIX OF
DREAM HOUSE KINGS
R
OBERT
L
IPARULO
NASHVILLE DALLAS MEXICO CITY RIO DE JANEIRO
© 2010 by Robert Liparulo
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmit-ted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.
Thomas Nelson, Inc. books may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].
Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
[[CIP data to come]]
ISBN: 9781595548160
Printed in the United States of America
10 11 12 13 14—6 5 4 3 2 1
[[D
EDICATION TO COME
]]
Table of Contents
READ HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS,
WATCHER IN THE WOODS,
GATEKEEPERS, TIMESCAPE,
AND WHIRLWIND
BEFORE CONTINUING!
“We are not here on earth to change
our destiny, but to fulfill it.”
—
GUY FINELY
“What good is the present
if we can’t change the future?”
—
EDWARD KING
S
OME TIME IN THE NEAR FUTURE
. . .
Xander flew out of the portal as though shot from a can-non. His legs kicked, his arms spun. His feet hit the ground, tangled together, and he went down. He tumbled over pine needles, a small bush. His shoulder struck a tree trunk. Clawing at the bark, he scrambled to stand.
Cold wetness struck his face, contrasting with the warmth of his tears, of the blood already on his cheeks.
Holding the tree, he turned his eyes skyward. Beyond the branches and needles, ash-colored clouds churned as though stirred by angry fingers. Rain burst from them, spattering fat drops across the woods. For the briefest moment he thought
Of course, of course the heavens would be crying too!
Then he pushed off the tree and began running. His sneak-ers slipped and slid over the wet ground cover. They sailed out from under him, and he fell, soaking his hip and leg with mud. He rose and ran, feeling he was heading the right direc-tion, but not certain. He crested a small hill and descended the other side.
He stopped to get his bearings. He blinked rain out of his eyes, only to have it replaced by tears. He pushed his palm into each socket, shook his head, and tried to get a hold of himself. To his right, he recognized a short cliff of earth, tree roots protruding like veins. He knew where he was.
He stumbled forward, raised his face again, and screamed: rage, pain, grief . . . it all roared out of him. He dropped his head and sobbed.
No, no, no . .
.
This isn’t happening. It isn’t!
Then he saw the underside of his forearms, and knew it was happening . . . it had happened. The blood was still there. It glistened darker than movie blood, thicker. It coated his arms as though someone had slathered paint over them with wide brushstrokes.
Oh, God
, he prayed,
let it be paint! Let there have been some mistake
and make it not blood, anything but blood!
But he knew better.
Raindrops plopped on his forearms, cleaning away the red in small starbursts and long streaks. Suddenly, he didn’t want it to be gone, washed away. There was a finality to it that he couldn’t stand. He crossed his arms over his chest, protecting them from the rain.
He ducked his head and plowed into the bushes. Branches scratched at his face, his arms; they snagged his clothes. He yanked himself free and tumbled out on the other side, landing in the long grass of a meadow. He pushed himself up and saw the log where he and David had first found Young Jesse—the boy who would become their great-great uncle—sitting there, carving a piece of wood.
He ran across the meadow to another clump of tall bushes and pushed through. Wooded land rose and disappeared. He kept going, mounted a hill, and looked down a shallow slope to where the house stood.
Barely a house, really. Only the framework had been com-pleted, two-by-fours forming the shape of the house in which Xander and his family had been living for barely eight days.
How could so much have changed in eight days!
He spotted Jesse then, standing under a makeshift roof on the railless porch—at least that much of the house was finished. He was talking to a man. Had to be his father. The guy looked rugged: scruffy stubble over a square jaw and hol-low cheeks, short-cropped hair, more gray than black, muscles pushing against a dirty white T-shirt.
The man caught Xander’s eye, and he scowled. He reached back to a workbench, grabbed a hammer, and stepped forward.
Jesse, seeing Xander now as well, slapped his hand against his father’s chest. A big grin broke out on the boy’s face and he yelled, “Xander!” He turned to his father. “That’s Xander, one of the boys I told you about,” he said. “Your great-great grandson.”
The man’s scowl softened. Then he noticed Xander’s con-dition, and his features became worried and puzzled.
Jesse hopped off the porch and ran toward Xander. “You’re back!” he said. “You said you would be, but—“
He stopped, eyed Xander up and down. He took in the blood, Xander’s deep frown, his wet, red eyes. “What . . . what . . . ?” He looked past Xander. “Where’s David?”
Xander fell to his knees. He covered his face and smelled the blood on his hands. He looked up at Jesse. “Dae’s . . .
dead
. Jesse, Taksidian
killed
him!”9