James Munkers (16 page)

Fine. I'll do it the other way.

I focus my attention on Claire. Before she knows what's happened, a protection shield has lifted her right off her feet.

‘James, what the –' she manages to say before she comes flying straight at us.

‘Claire's flying, Claire's flying!' Win cries, clapping her hands and jiggling about. The movement sets my shoulder off again, and I lose concentration. The protection shield collapses, but Claire's still coming at us. She crashes into Win and me and we all go toppling over the edge of the window and out into space.

Okay, I think rationally as we fall. Now, you know you can protect yourself from things flying at your head. This is no different. It's just that the thing flying at your head right now is the ground.

I breathe in the rushing air, bury the pain in my shoulder and gather my concentration, and a beautiful, glistening ball of protection surrounds us and floats us gently to the ground, rotating slightly so we're upright again. It makes the garden around us look like an early frosty morning, all gleaming and new. Winifred laughs with delight. It's too bad Claire has her eyes shut.

Our feet touch the ground and the protection shield falls away. Sleet hits our faces again. Claire falls sideways into a bush, gasping and looking horrified. She struggles to her feet and hits me across the chest. ‘Don't you
ever
do that to me again,' she screeches.

Jeez. You're welcome.

A smashing sound comes from above us, and we run for it around the side of the house, only to skid to a halt as a man in wellingtons appears down the path, walking purposefully towards us. His eyes aren't blank. This isn't a mindless zombie. This is a Hoarder.

We dash back around the corner and try for the other side, but a woman in a beanie has appeared at that side too. She smiles a nasty smile. We can't get back to the car.

‘The woods,' I mutter to the girls, and we fly across the muddy lawn and onto the forest track just as a tree to our right bursts into flames.

I need backup.

Mr Lancer!
I scream in my head.
Mr Lancer? Is this thing on? Can you hear me?

I'm here. I can hear you.

Oh, good.

Hoarders. Can't get through.

Hoarders?
he repeats, sounding confused.
Well, they
didn't come round the front. They must have been waiting for you. Where are you now?

On the track that leads to Will's.

Righty-ho
, he says calmly.
See you there.

No, I meant come and save us!
I call desperately, but he's gone. How are we supposed to make it there by ourselves? It's all I can do to keep a protection shield at our backs as we charge along, the sounds of pursuit behind us.

‘Where are we going?' Claire yells as we run.

‘Will's,' I shout back. ‘Keep to the path on the left.' Then we all have to duck as a branch comes swinging at us from the side.

‘Claire,' Win wails. Her slippers have come off and she's limping along on bare feet, her wet hair plastered to her face.

‘We've got to keep moving, sweetie,' Claire pants, but it's clear Win can't go much further. I swing her up onto my back, my shoulder throbbing in pain as I do, and we stumble along, the Hoarders gaining on us by the second. I've just about collapsed in exhaustion by the time we reach the place where the path splits in two.

‘We're not going to make it,' I gasp, sliding Win off my back and falling to my knees in the mud.

‘James, get up!' Claire screams, but it's too late. The two Hoarders have crested the hill behind us and are closing in, gathering their power to finish us off. I fall forwards, the cold air tearing at my lungs, and dig my fingers into the dirt of the path.

As soon as my hands touch that other path, though, dark power surges up my arms. My spine snaps up straight and my hand whips out in front of me, fingers splayed, then I crunch it into a fist. The trunk of a giant tree behind me splinters, and the tree goes toppling right between us and the Hoarders.

I'm energised and on my feet in an instant. ‘GO!' I roar at the girls and, ignoring the carnage behind me, I start charging down the path.

‘JAMES!' Claire yells after me. I stop and look back. ‘You said the track to the left.'

I'm on the wrong path. Why did I think I had to go this way? I look deeper into the woods and feel a great power hidden in there. If I could just get to it…

Claire screams, and I whip back around. The Hoarders are smashing their way through the fallen tree, bark and branches flying everywhere. It almost hurts to walk away from the energy coming from down the other path, but I double back and the three of us start running towards Will's again. I don't dare touch Win – there's dark light crackling around my fingers – but Claire grabs her hand and helps her along.

A minute later we break out of the trees and run up Will's driveway, only to be almost run over first by Will's car, then Peter's, then Mr Lancer's mini as they screech up to the door with three other vehicles on their tails.

Car doors fly open and we're joined by Peter, Pippa, Will, Mr Lancer and Jem as we make a dash for the front door. We burst into the hallway, dripping and gasping, and the door slams shut behind us, leaving us in darkness.

Will flicks the light on and winces at the sudden brightness. He's sporting a black eye and a cut cheek, and looks like he spent the better part of the night in the gutter. A feeling of loathing washes over me. Honestly, leaving us in mortal danger so he could go out and get drunk, just because a girl once kicked his arse? Pathetic.

‘What are you all doing here?' he asks acidly.

‘We're moving in,' Jem tells him. ‘Apparently it's safer.'

Will looks horrified. ‘All of you?' he exclaims.

‘Warwick, what happened?' Pippa asks Mr Lancer, absent-mindedly stroking Win's wet hair off her face.

‘Busted,' Mr Lancer says cheerily. ‘I'll explain over a cup of tea once we're all dry.'

‘Yeah, well just stay off the leather couch until you are,' Will says, slouching through his unwanted guests and walking into the lounge room. ‘I don't want any more of my stuff ruined by –'

He stops abruptly. I'm aching and trembling with fever and fatigue, but I walk up behind him to see what he's looking at.

A girl who looks just like Pippa is asleep, lying sideways in one of the leather armchairs. Her letterbox-red coat is still on, but unbuttoned, and her black boots have been slouched off and are lying next to Gwen, who is guarding them loyally. A nearby lamp creates a pool of light around her and sets sparkles off in her damp hair, which is curling in ringlets around her face.

She looks so still and serene and beautiful, and I feel a wave of relief so strong at the sight of her that I almost collapse where I stand.

Will stares at her for a moment, then walks towards the woman who defeated him. I panic, wondering whether I should put a protection shield around her, but Will kneels softly in front of her. A long-fingered hand reaches out and tucks a stray piece of hair behind her ear. She stirs. He smiles.

‘Hey, Kitten,' he whispers.

I don't remember much after that.

My last clear image was of Will picking Kit up in his arms and carrying her out of the room, but then maybe that was me being carried, because I end up in a bed somehow, shivering uncontrollably with sweat pouring down my face. There's a light shining somewhere near me, but its beams don't even reach the edge of the bed, and all around there is heavy blackness pressing in on me. I'm sure there's someone in the shadows. The pale orb of someone's face swims into my vision, and I hear my name being called from far away.

‘Mum?' I croak. My throat feels like it's on fire.

A cool hand caresses my forehead, but it can't keep me with it. The orb dims before me, and I am plunged once more into sleep.

Only I don't like this sleep. It isn't restful; it's a prison. It's too full of things, of images I never would have dreamed up on my own; of terrible, distorted things that only an evil mind should have to deal with. They are not my own, and they shouldn't be here in my sleep.

There is a tree, a big tree, with a family living inside, and I walk up to it and peer in at them, all huddled up together. Then I step back and set the tree alight with my hand, and laugh as they all burn up and the tree collapses on them.

Then there is a building, and I am throwing the first-graders off it into the traffic below, and watching the congestion spread down the roads around it for miles, until everyone is at a standstill and watching the growing pile of bodies.

Then I am watching a man being tortured on a rack, his limbs being pulled back beyond their limits, his mouth stretched open in pain, his bloodied chest exposed to the white-hot poker inching towards him. I am painting the scene, calmly mixing paint to get the right shade of red.

Then I am standing in front of a woman and her heart is in my hand. I start squeezing it, and the tighter I squeeze the more she screams. Eventually the heart explodes and she turns into a shadow, and the shadow twines itself around my family and suffocates them as I walk away.

I sit up, gasping for air, my damp hair smeared across my head. It's dark, the shadow is everywhere and it's suffocating me, I can't breathe. I fight my way out of the clammy sheets clinging to my legs and stand up shakily.

‘Jim, what are you doing?' A girl rushes up and grabs me before I fall over. I let her steady me for a second, then push her away. I have things to do.

She follows me into the lounge room nervously, and several people stand up from couches and chairs as we pass. ‘Jim, what are you doing?' someone else says. I ignore them and head for the front door.

‘Jim, no!'

I step outside and the cold wind freezes the sweat on my brow. It's snowing. I peer through the darkness and the flurries of snowflakes and see several figures moving towards me, but none of them are the person I'm looking for. ‘Where are you?' I call desperately. ‘Where are you?'

I think I see something else moving out there, deep among the trees, and my heart stops…

Strong hands grab me from behind, and several shots of pure white light go streaming past my head to explode out in the darkness, making the figures out there scatter. ‘NO!' I scream, and struggle to break free from the arms locked around me.

‘What the hell do you think you're doing?' a harsh voice yells in my ear. The arms around my chest tighten, my feet are lifted clean off the ground, and suddenly I'm back inside. Some more people come in after us and the door is shut against the snow and shadows. The man with the harsh voice puts me down on the floor and I sit there shivering, rocking back and forth with tears streaming down my face.

‘I left her,' I sob. ‘I left her.'

The next time I wake up I find I've been sleeping under guard. Claire is asleep on the bed next to me, Peter is lying on a mattress near the door with Win asleep in his arms, and Will is snoozing in a chair in the corner, a book drooping from his hand and a lamp burning next to him. I weakly kick my way out of the covers and swing my legs to the floor. My head violently objects to being upright, and feels like it might roll off my neck. Happily, it doesn't, and after half a minute I feel able enough to try standing.

Claire sits bolt upright next to me. ‘Where are you going?' she demands.

‘I need the loo,' I say quietly. ‘Go back to sleep.'

‘Oh,' she says, and flops her head back onto her pillow. She's asleep in seconds.

I reach the door and fumble about for the handle. Peter wakes and looks up from his pillow. ‘Where are you going?' he asks.

‘Just to the loo,' I answer. He looks suspicious but lets me go.

I totter out into Will's living room. A snore startles me, and I look over the back of the couch to see Mr Lancer sleeping soundly, his head on one of the arms. He stirs. ‘Where are you going?' he murmurs without opening his eyes.

‘Loo,' I say. What's with everyone?

The harsh light in the bathroom hurts my eyes, and my head is still spinning. I'm so shaky that I can't even stand up to pee. Probably just as well. I'm not sure what my aim is like, but it can't have improved any.

After the difficult task of urination, I splash some cold water over my face and on the back of my neck. I grip the basin and look at myself in the mirror, the drips running down my face and trickling down my back. I look terrible, all blotchy and gaunt. I could be a walking advertisement for the evolution process, displaying the stage between swamp- and jungle-dwelling.

At least my nose doesn't seem to be broken. Also, my shoulder feels better.

When I come back out again, I see a light that wasn't there before coming from the kitchen, and hear the sound of the kettle, so I totter along to investigate.

It's Kit. I can tell it's Kit and not Pippa by the way she stands, leaning her hip against the kitchen counter. Pippa always looks like she's half an inch away from either coming to attention or breaking into interpretive dance, always watchful and alert. Kit seems more relaxed.

Also, this girl is wearing one of Will's shirts and little else, which I just can't picture Pippa ever doing.

Kit turns and smiles at me.

‘I've just been to the loo,' I tell her, lowering myself into one of the kitchen chairs.

‘That's nice.' She comes up behind me, places a steaming cup of something or other at my elbow, and kisses the top of my head. ‘How do you feel now?' she asks, going back to the kettle to fix her own drink.

‘Crappy.'

‘Hmm, yes, that's been going around lately.'

‘And wobbly. And nightmarish.'

‘Yes, I know.' She turns and peers at me from across the room. ‘You were very unsettled for a while there, but you seemed to calm down after your jaunt outside.'

I glance at her in surprise, but surprise hurts my eyes too much. I wince, rub them, and ask, ‘When was I outside?'

‘In the early hours of yesterday morning. You've been fast asleep for a good twenty-four hours since.'

‘I have?' I say, frowning. ‘Kit, what exactly happened to me?'

She comes and sits in the chair next to me with a mug of her own. ‘Have you ever been poisoned before?'

‘No,' I reply. ‘Claire tried to feed me bleach once when we were little, but Mum caught her before I swallowed any.'

‘Well, that's pretty much what happened when you went into Grayson's mind. You got an overdose of evil in your bloodstream and it's taken this long for it to work its way out.'

Grayson's mind. That's right, I was sucked into it. But there was something else in there. Something with the same energy as what I felt in the woods.

The image of a shadowy figure walking through the trees floats to the surface.

I frown, trying to remember. ‘The other night,' I say slowly. ‘There was someone outside.'

Kit snorts and takes a sip of her coffee. ‘There were several people outside, and none of them nice. You seemed to want to invite them in.'

I shake my head. ‘I was looking for someone. I did something…'

‘I think you were looking for you mum,' she says quietly. She leans towards me and puts her hand on the back of my neck. It feels warm and dry and solid, and I feel less like an amoeba with it there. ‘I know you're upset about leaving her behind, but it was the right thing to do, honey.'

I frown and nod and feel guilty.

‘So,' I say, wanting to change the subject. ‘You and Will, huh?'

‘Drink your drink,' she orders me, taking her hand away.

‘What is it?' I ask, eyeing it suspiciously.

‘It's good for you.'

I'm even more suspicious at that. I take a sip and it's awful, all sour and scalding. ‘Why is it that everything that's good for you tastes completely foul, like cough medicine, or sprouts?' I complain.

‘I like sprouts.'

‘You would.' I take another sip of my horrid drink, figuring I already feel terrible anyway. Then I ask, ‘What's happening with my parents?'

She sighs, and I wonder if she's going to try to avoid the topic, arguing that I'm not up to talking about it.

‘They're probably still at your house,' she says at last, staring into her mug, ‘and still under Grayson's control. Physically they'll be alright; he has no reason to harm them, not when he can't get to you. It's in his best interests to keep them in good health as long as he thinks he may be able to use them against you.'

‘And Garth?' I ask, a sickening feeling thudding into the pit of my stomach. I haven't even thought about him for days. Well, I was unconscious for most of them, I guess.

‘Him too,' she says sadly. ‘We couldn't find him in time. He's alright, though.'

I feel angry at this comment. He's not alright. My little brother has been taken over by a bastard who doesn't think anything of causing others pain. He's about as far from being alright as he's ever been.

‘Why are you here?'

She hesitates. ‘I saw that things were getting out of hand and came to help.'

‘No, not you,' I say angrily. ‘All of you. If the war is in the other dimensions, why are Guardians and Hoarders here at all? Is it just to screw my family over, or is there another reason?'

She runs a finger around the rim of her mug, thinking. ‘There is another reason,' she says. ‘It's a bit technical, though, and you haven't been well.'

‘I'm fine,' I say. ‘I've still got my brain.'

‘Okay,' she says and takes a deep breath. ‘This war between the Guardians and the Hoarders – has anyone told you what it's about?'

‘Will said it was about energy. The Hoarders were using it all up, or something.'

‘That's pretty much it. Once, there were energy deposits in both our dimensions that kept us sustained. But the way Hoarders use their power is very wasteful. You know the times when you've used energy out of fear or hate? Fear uses up energy very quickly, and hate feeds on itself, makes you lose control. It's like an addiction: the more you use it, the more you crave it.'

‘Is that when the power goes darker?' I ask, thinking back to the pinecone, the Christmas tree and the music stand.

‘That's it, yes. You may have noticed that when Guardians use it, it's white – very controlled and doesn't use up nearly as much energy. When Hoarders use their power, it's red.'

‘Black.'

‘Red, honey. Anyway,' she says, sighing, ‘like I said, there were energy deposits everywhere, until the Hoarders gained strength and began to drain theirs. When they started running low, they came to the human dimensions to look for new sources of energy. They didn't find any strong enough for their purposes, but what they did find was a way into the Twelfth, which was, at that time, brimming with energy.'

‘But it isn't now?'

Kit shakes her head. ‘We welcomed the Hoarders at first, but found out almost at once that they were after our power, and the way they would use it would drain it almost instantly. We knew the consequences of that, so we pushed them back into the human dimensions and have been fighting to keep them out of the Twelfth ever since. Unfortunately, keeping them out has meant using up our own power supply to do it. Right now the Twelfth is in little better shape than the Thirteenth.'

‘Hang about,' I say. ‘You're saying that both sides are using up power fighting over the fact that you're running out of power?'

‘Essentially.'

‘But…' Am I really thick, or is there a big problem here? ‘Won't that run you guys out of power and, like, end the world?'

‘Well, usually we're at a stalemate,' Kit says. ‘The Hoarders didn't have the power to make a serious assault on the Twelfth, so all we had to do was guard the gateway and stop them coming in. That's where you get the name “Guardian”. Recently, though, they've been more liberal with their energy, which has been making us twitchy. It's clear they're up to something. We haven't seen them this bad since we first pushed them back into the human dimensions.'

‘When was that?'

‘In Twelfth Dimensional time? About two weeks ago.'

‘That recently?' I say, surprised. ‘I got the feeling it had been going on for ages. So it happened at the same time I got my power?'

‘I said Twelfth Dimensional time,' Kit reminds me. ‘In human dimensional time, it's been about two hundred years.'

I blink a couple of times. ‘You've lost me,' I say.

‘Time doesn't work at the same speed there as it does here,' she explains. ‘To cut a long story short, one of the reasons we followed the Hoarders into this dimension was to give ourselves more time. A contingent was sent here to come up with a solution, to the Hoarders problem and the waning power. Two weeks in the Twelfth wasn't long enough. Hell, two hundred years in this dimension hasn't been long enough, either. We're still not sure how we're going to fix everything.' She looks at me apologetically. ‘We've been kind of hoping you could help us out with that.'