Guardian of Atlantis (The Children of Atlantis) (9 page)

“Hey. How dare you call me ugly! You’re not exactly the pick of—” but Raven didn’t get to finish her sentence. The next second, she found her back against the far wall, well out of the circle, but with the hand of a very angry Ethan wrapped around her throat.

He leaned in until his lips were against her ear. “I’ll do or say anything to protect my pack.” He paused and sniffed her hair. “Or you from them. Am I clear, Raven Weir? Or should I say, Guardian of Atlantis.”

Raven’s heart raced. She tried to nodded her head, but couldn’t. “As crystal,” she managed to say.

“Can you drive?” he asked. His voice was very low.

“Yes.”

Ethan slipp
ed a set of keys into her hand. “Meg
will take you out. Don’t come back. You’re not safe here. Go to Sam Westing’s house. It’s the house directly behind yours. A path through the woods connects them. You’ll be safe there.” He loosened his grip on her neck. “Take her,” he said over his shoulders in a much louder voice. “She’s not worth the time of day.” Ethan glanced at the pendant. “I will come for you,” he whispered to her.

Before Raven could say anything, she found herself being dragged out of the building by the brunette.

Meg
stopped at the side door Raven was trying to get to earlier. “Far right corner of the student parking lot by the bus barn.
The black jeep.
You can’t miss it.” She opened the door and shoved Raven outside.

The rain was much colder and coming down a lot harder than it had been
earlier. Raven looked at the
keys
in her hand
. She glanced up at the d
oor, but no one was there. She
chewed on her bottom lip, trying to make sense of what had just happened. Why was he helping her and threatening her at the same time? How did he know where she lived? Raven shook her head and ran to the student parking lot.

It didn’t take her long to find the black jeep. It was the only one in the whole parking
lot. She pressed the unlock button
on the remote pad on the key chain. She heard the lock click in response. Shivering, Raven climbed in the jeep and shut the door. She fumbled with the keys. Her fingers numb from the cold. Finally she got it to go into the ignition. The jeep roared to life.  After a few minutes, heat poured out of the vents. Raven stuck her hands
up against one them, letting the hot air flow over her fingers
.

Slowly she warmed until finally she wasn’t shivering as bad. She looked around the interior of the jeep. In a small hole in the console, she spotted a cell phone.  Raven grabbed it and punched in her mom’s cell number. The phone rang and rang, but no one answered and the voice mail didn’t pick up. Frowning, Raven ended the call and tried calling home. It too rang and rang. She put the cell phone back where she had found it and pulled out of the school parking lot.

She had to get home, warn her mom, and find her dad’s journals.

5

Dad was always writing. Sometimes he wrote at the huge computer on his desk in his office, but most of the time he wrote in a brown leather book. When he wasn’t in his office, he was outside on the back porch. He said he liked to listen to nature as he wrote.

I asked him why he wrote so much. Wouldn’t it be more fun to play dolls with me, or pick flowers in the backyard?

He told me he had a lot to say and he had to get it down onto paper, because one day I would be glad he wrote everything down. I asked him, in typical five year old fashioned, why he couldn’t just tell me instead of writing it down. He said there was a lot of stuff I wouldn’t understand right now. He also said there would come a day when he wouldn’t be here to help me, and reading his journals would help me with some really big decisions I would have to make.

What he said, at the time, didn’t make any sense. Dad was always going to be there. He wasn’t going anywhere.

Between his death and all the moving mom and me did, I forgot about what he told me. I forgot about his journals. I don’t even know what happened to them either. I doubt mom would tell me where there where. There are a lot of things she tends to avoid.

And talking about dad is one of them.

             
--Raven Weir’s journal

Fear of being followed kept Raven driving around town for hours. If a car stayed behind her a little too long, her heart stopped, thinking it was Meritus or even Marley. Police cars were just as bad. Every time she saw one in her rearview mirror, she freaked out as she waited for the flashing red and blue lights. How would she explain not having a driver’s license or the fact the jeep didn’t belong to her?

By late afternoon, Raven’s stomach growled for the hundredth time. The needle on the gasoline gauge hovered on empty. Her pockets, as usual, contained plenty of lint, but no money. Raven sighed. Followed or not she had no choice. She was going home.

Fifteen minutes later, the jeep’s engine sputtered then coughed. It coasted to a stop. Raven turned the key but nothing happened. The vehicle was dead. She banged her hands on the steering wheel? “It’s not fair!” The steady tap, tap, tap of raindrops pulled her eyes to the window shield. She watched the watery ribbons roll down the glass.

“So much for warm and dry.
You could stop the rain. Enough is enough,” she grumbled. Raven grabbed her bag. In seconds the cold rain soaked through her clothes and skin until it reached her b
ones. Her teeth chattered. She
glared at the grayish black skies. “It’s
all your
fault.”

At each corner a street lamp cast its eerie, dim yellow light across the wet pavement and sidewalk until the dusk
of evening gobbled it up. She
glanced over her shoulders. No one was
outside, at least
no one
she saw. Even the houses stood quiet, except for the occasional light shining through a window.

Raven turned her attention to the house looming in front of her.

Sam Westing’s house.
The one house she remembered from her childhood, because it terrified her.

Even then rumors whispered the house was older than dirt, but just a few years younger than Sam, the old man who lived there. It didn’t help that her mom had forbidden her to go near the house or Sam. Of course
it only
made her more curious. With its odd angles and mixed-matched siding, the house stood out. People in town swore the place was haunted. Strange colored lights appearing at odd times of the night and day fed the stories. Once Raven saw a man, she thought was Sam Westing, standing in one of the upstairs windows, staring down at her. She waved at him. He disappeared, leaving her wondering if he had really been there or not.

Raven stared at the house.

It felt cold. Empty.
Dead.

She tried suppressing a shudder. The house gave her the creeps, but cutting through the woods behind it was the fastest way home and that meant she had to walk by the house. Really close to the house.

Raven walked up the driveway. Why Ethan told her to go here, was a mystery to her. No way was she going inside.

She shivered.

The house stared at her.

She ignored it as best she could, and slipped between the old shed and the house, avoiding even the slightest brush against the house just in case it got irritated and decided swatting her like a pesky fly or mosquito was more fun than flinging the rain off its roof. She stepped into a small clearing in the backyard. The woods at the edge of the clearing loomed like a sleeping troll. Raven remembered spending a lot of time playing in the woods before they moved away, even though they were supposed to be off limits. At that time the woods were like an old friend, but today they were dark and menacing.

Maybe it was because she felt different.

Or the rain.

Or maybe she had just walked into the twilight zone.

Raven adjusted the bag on her shoulders. She headed straight into the dense growth of trees, without a thought about what she was doing. Her mind filled with memories.

When she was little, Raven loved the peaceful quiet of the woods. The gentle sway of the trees, along with the whistles and chirps of the birds created a much needed sanctuary away from her lonely life. She never really had any friends. In fact Ben Stone was her first real friend and she missed him. But before him, the woods accepted her. They even whispered to her. Told her they had a secret. And when she learned their strange, ancient language, she would learn their secret too. But that was before her mom got really mad one day and forbid her from every playing in the woods again.

The trees were silent. They didn’t even move, not even a leaf, even though the thunderstorm raging around should have had them swaying like crazy. They knew something was wrong. Raven felt it like she felt her own heartbeat.

“Probably just my imagination playing tricks.
It’s always been a little over the top,” she whispered. “Probably should blame my imagination for everything,” she shook her head. “No, that would be too easy. Way too easy.”

The hair on the back of her neck stood up. She stopped and looked around. Raven didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, but something was out there. Watching and waiting from somewhere in the shadows.

Raven frowned.

For a brief second running back to the jeep sounded really good, but she quickly dismissed the idea. She needed food, money, dry clothes, and answers she could only find at home.

A chill ran through her.

“Whoever you are, show yourself!” Raven yelled. “I’ve had enough games for one day.”

No one answer her.

No one stepped forward.

She glanced around again. “This is your last chance.” Raven waited. But still no one answered. Raven’s gut told her someone was still there, but she didn’t dare waste any more time on them, because it could give them an advantage. She took off like a rabbit running for its life down a path only she could see.

Minutes later, Raven stopped at the edge of the woods. Her house, partially hidden in the shadows, stood on the other side of the clearing.

“This is ridiculous. Why couldn’t we have a smaller backyard?” Raven frowned. The house was dark. The porch light was off. So was the kitchen light. “I know I left the kitchen light on this morning.” Raven chewed on her bottom lip. “Why isn’t it on now?” she asked herself. “Maybe mom c
ame back before she went to the interview
.”

Lightning flickered across the grey sky, bathing the area in an eerie pinkish yellow light.

“Maybe the breakers tripped. Or the electricity went out,” Raven listed the possibilities. “Yeah, that’s what happened. With all this lightning, we probably just lost power. No big deal. It’s n
ot the first time.” She
giggled,
convinced she had come up with a reasonable explanation for no lights.

Thunder boomed.

Raven jumped.

“Enough of this.”
She took off running, but not once did she look back, just in case someone or something followed her. The minute Raven’s foot hit the wooden steps leading to the back porch; she reached in her jeans pocket and pulled out the house key her mom insisted she carry with her at all times.

Raven fu
mbled with the key, dropping
it twice before she forced it into the lock. Lightning flickered. Electricity filled the air. The hair on Raven’s arms stood up. She twisted the key a little harder than she intended. The small tapping noise sent a huge rush of relief through her. So huge,
she didn’t realize the door wasn’t locked.

Raven stepped into the kitchen and closed the door as she turned on the light. She blinked several times while her eyes adjusted. Broken glass and food still covering the floor was the first thing she noticed. Checking the door to make sure she locked it, Raven walked across the kitchen. Glass crunched under her feet. The sickening smell of stale food grew stronger the closer she got to the kitchen table.

Raven paused at the
table. Even though she was hungry, her stomach rolled at the sight of cold eggs over easy and bacon splattered with solid white chunks of grease. The pancakes looked like little volcanoes erupting with butter in the middle of syrupy seas. Next to the plates of ruined food sat her birthday present, wrapped in bright emerald green paper and tied with a pink bow. She reached for it, but stopped mid-reach. Raven pressed her lips together until they were only a faint thin line. Her arm dropped to her side.  Turning her back on the pretty box, she headed to her bedroom.

A few minutes later she emerged, wearing clean, dry clothes and had another set replacing the books in her bag. Raven paused at the top of the stairs.

Maybe mom’s got some money stashed in her bedroom. And if I’m really lucky the name and address where she had her job interview, she thought.

Raven stared at the door to the master bedroom. “Quit being a coward. Open the door!” she told herself. “Don’t be a chicken. Open it.!” She gave the door knob a twist. The
door swung open with a hushed swoosh
. Raven stepped into the room. She looked around. Everything looked the same as it had five years ago.

The night she cried herself to sleep in her mom’s bed.

The night she knew her dad wasn’t coming home anymore. The night her mom packed their stuff and they ran away.

Raven rubbed at the tears in her eyes with the back of her hand. Images flashed through her head—the funeral, the cemetery, people whispering in groups inside and outside the house. Raven wanted to run and hide in the woods, but her mom wouldn’t let
her. She
couldn’t understand why her mom wouldn’t even let her outside, not even on the front porch. She just knew she couldn’t stand the whispers or the looks of pity anymore. They were everywhere she turned and she desperately needed away from them.

Pain, anger, overwhelming sadness rolled in and out of Raven’s body, leaving bits and pieces each time, until an explosion was inevitable, that’s when her mom brought her in here, staying with her until she cried herself into a dreamless sleep. Sometime in the early morning hours, her mom woke her, and told
her
they were leaving. Her mom kept looking over her shoulder, even after they drove out of town, and to the first of many homes and schools.

Raven slumped down on the corner of the bed. A thick layer of dust flew up into the air. Raven coughed and sneezed. She fanned at the dust particles floating in the air around her but the instead of clearing the air, it made it worse. In the middle of another coughing-sneezing fit, Raven got up from the bed and moved away from it, searching for dust-free air.

“What’s going on? Where did all this dust come from?” grumbled Raven when she could
finally breathe without coughing. She stared at the bed for a long time. Slowly she surveyed the entire room. Color drained from her face. Her hands trembled.
“No way!
No freaking way!”

She crossed the room to the dresser. Various combs and pieces of jewelry were strewn across the top. Raven swiped a finger across the top of the dull wood dresser. She turned it over so she could see the padded tip. Dust covered her fingertip. She looked down. A dust-free line cut the layers of dust in half, revealing the rich dark mahogany wood hidden underneath years of neglect and dust bunnies.

Raven took several deep breath
s, letting each one out slower than the last. The more she actually looked at everything, the heavier her heart grew and the more her head spun making her already queasy stomach churn worse.

No one had been in the bedroom for years!

Raven rushed
to
the closet. The clothes hanging in there were covered with dust. A few belonged to her mom, but the rest were men’s clothes—her dad’s clothes.

Raven stepped back from the closet, her eyes wide with fear, her heart heavy with a growing realization she couldn’t deny. She ran to the bathroom, putting on
the brakes just inside the doorway
. Dust flew up from the floor. It covered everything in the bathroom. Cobwebs hung from the light fixtures over the mirror all the way down to the sink. Raven shook. She gre
w paler
. Even though they had moved back into the house, her mom wasn’t staying in the master bedroom.