Shadow Walker (Neteru Academy Books) (56 page)

“What is it, boy?” Mr. Milton said, trying to calm the agitated stallion. “I haven’t seen him like this since we lost those two fliers.

Allie covered her head, and suddenly Peggi was whinnying in such distress that Sarah ran and let her out of her stall to comfort her as Val dragged Allie to safety.

“Milton, Milton,” Mrs. Hogan said, running into the barn, wand raised and sparking. “One of the first years, that Neteru boy Alejandro, went out on a stupid attempt to find those missing students and got sucked into the energy of the back forest—that poor boy is in the dead zone!”

“Find Titan Troy. He’s the only one strong enough to hold Sophocles!” Mr. Milton yelled. “Call Professor Razor immediately!”

“No!” Sarah hollered as Val took off running and glided into flight.

“Call him back!” Mr. Milton said shouting.

“It’s my brother!” Sarah yelled, running alongside Peggi. “Val’s his best friend, a Valkyrie. He can’t leave Al out there any more than I can!”

Mrs. Hogan, Mr. Milton and Allie ran into the barnyard as the huge red stallion broke free, not waiting on Titan Troy and went airborne in the war party.

“We’ve got to stop him!” Mrs. Hogan shouted, sending useless glamour sparks toward the red stallion.

“Give it up, love,” her husband said. “That’s Hannibal’s charger, and the boy who went down is a Neteru heir. Sophocles will die looking for him. Call Headmistress Stone and Headmaster Shabazz,” he ordered her. “Tell them the Neteru children and their friend are in imminent danger!”

T
he images battering her mind were so horrible that Sarah pressed her face to Peggi’s neck and squeezed her eyes shut. Her brother was in mortal danger. She not only felt it, but saw it all in a terrible, intense vision.

Brutal magnetic force clawed at his body like a riptide current, the tendrils of its dark energy tangling his body in their horrifying grip. He lost altitude at a breath-stealing velocity, making the gnarled twists of black tree limbs seem as though they were reaching for him, yearning for his body and blood. Unable to fight gravity, he slammed into a blackened oak. They both heard and felt his wing snap just like a dead branch.

Sarah cried out at the same time Alejandro released a long yell of agony that echoed as his body continued to careen from snapping branch to snapping branch before finally coming to rest in a heap on the dank forest floor.

Groaning, she felt the pain in his shoulder stabbing into his back and spine as he finally opened his eyes and turned to survey the damage, only to quickly shut them again. But she saw what was coming for him.

“Get up,” she screamed, making Peggi fly faster.

She wanted to hurl as nausea roiled in Alejandro’s stomach. One of his glorious wings was broken. Jagged bone had torn through the skin and bloodied the once-pristine white feathers, which were now gray and covered with filth.

Panting, her brother couldn’t even drag himself to the base of the tree. “Oh, God, oh, God, oh God, this hurts,” he whispered between his fangs, then let out another scream as the bone slid at an odd angle. “Oh, Jesus…” Blood and saliva mixed in his mouth until the pain finally made him hurl.

Two inches from his own vomit, all he wanted to do was die—until he heard the howls. Shuddering and clutching the Peguni’s mane, tears wet Sarah’s face as terror made her repeatedly call out to him, “Al, get up! Get up!”

Sudden adrenaline helped him lift his head. His keen hearing picked up the sound of snuffles in the distance, footfalls, snapping branches. Frantic, he glanced around for anything he could use as a weapon. The ground was barren. Gnarled roots were so thick and dug in so deeply that even if he’d been uninjured, they would have been impossible to break lose. The rocks that bit into his skin were the crests of boulders, mammoth and half buried.

Survival instinct told him that he had to move. He seemed to be straining toward Sarah’s insistent calls. Something quiet and deadly inside his mind told him that, as much as the broken wing hurt, getting eaten alive by walkers would be horrific and a hundred times worse. As soon as the thought crossed his mind, Sarah screamed, almost feeling his pending death. Her brother had to get up! He’d lost himself momentarily to despair, until a lonely howl cut through his pain and brought him back to reason.

Alejandro clawed the ground and finally pushed himself up with one arm, then clambered to his feet, wincing, sweat pouring off his face and favoring the left wing as he stumbled forward. He tried to remain quiet, stopping every few feet to pant like he was giving birth, blood running from his mouth where his fangs had punctured his tongue. Revenge was far away from his mind now, seemed so pointless as he struggled to live. How many times had his mom told him that he couldn’t bargain with God? How many times had Nana Marlene said the same thing? Sarah said a silent prayer—Dear God, please save my brother!

Al slumped against a tree trunk for a moment to spit blood and gasp for air. “I swear, God,” he rasped out, eyes closed, “I’ll change my ways. Just get me out of here in one piece.”

After a moment he opened his eyes and saw a drop of blood from his wound hit the top of his sneaker, then watched as the black earth slid over this shoe, as though licking it. When it receded, it left black, wriggling maggots in its wake, and as he turned back to look at his path, he saw that everywhere he’d bled there stood a small, gargoylelike demon with red gleaming eyes, savoring his life essence.

“Run!” Sarah shouted against the wind.

Run
. His mind shouted the command.
Run
.

So he did.

A sea of thousands of glowing red eyes and tiny, slimy, deformed demon bodies gave chase. Branches slapped his face and jarred his injured wing, making him cry out, but he had to push on. Glowing golden eyes suddenly opened in a huge tree as he knocked into it in passing. Vicious vampire bats rose up like a dark cloud from its branches, coalesced into a black funnel and then bore down on him, tearing up trees by the roots with the splintering force of a tornado.

Al zigzagged as if he were running a football play, and the effort paid off as the bats saw the gargoyles chasing what they considered their meal. The two groups of predators collided in a vicious, snarling, high-pitched battle. Small black beetles and scorpions poured over the ridge in a nasty carpet, sending him in a different direction that he was sure was taking him farther into the darkness.

It was as though the darkness was corralling him like a farm animal to be butchered—exhausting him, sending him this way and that, until pain, blood loss and fatigue would win.

Heavy branches broke before him, all around him. He spun wildly, knowing he was surrounded, holding the injured wing. And then they stepped from behind the trees, eyes vacant, teeth yellow and twisted, mouths black holes…hands reaching.

Complete terror shot through Al’s nervous system and connected to Sarah’s as he looked around wildly and spotted a path that had the fewest of the circling walkers. He stared at one of them, determined to lower his good shoulder and take it out in a football rush, but suddenly it screamed and held its face as its head exploded. He looked at the one behind it, and the same thing happened, and then they all started coming at him.

Al leaped over the two shuddering bodies. His silver stare and his fangs were his only defense. Then something huge came out of the thicket and lunged. He didn’t see it, just felt it coming and had only seconds to go down on one knee. The attacker hurtled over his head in a blur, then began to take out the walkers like bowling pins.

Sarah was glad he didn’t wait to watch the carnage. Her voice was hoarse now from screaming into the whipping wind. Her brother’s internal sense of direction was beginning to return, his Neteru homing sense. Together they could hear the bone-crunching battle going on between what they now knew from the growls was a werewolf and the walkers. The fight for food—human blood—was to the death, but Alejandro and Sarah couldn’t count on it lasting for long.

A stabbing pain shot into his third eye. His sister’s voice was screaming his name. Val, airborne, was yelling that he was on the way. Alejandro stopped for a second, coughing blood, getting his bearings, then headed off toward their voices and the light.

The huge red stallion crashed through the green fields just before the land turned black. Val glided to a running stop, and Peggi and Sarah alit beside him. She slid to the ground and saw that her Collectors were going wild, screeching and squealing and running between her and Sophocles. The warhorse reared and pranced, his loud vocal protest added to the stomping of his hooves.

“We can’t take him in there, Sarah. He can’t spread his wings, could break a leg. I’ve gotta go in on foot, find Al and bring him out, and then we’ll all get out of here on the horses. You stay—”

“Not on your life! He’s my brother, and you’re…special. So hell no, I’m not staying out here in the dark just waiting to hear you eaten.”

“Then what?” Val said, spreading his arms in question. “We don’t even know where he is!”

“He’ll find me,” Sarah said. “I’m his twin…well, at least we shared the same womb. And I know this much about war horses—they go in where angels fear to tread. My parents flew them right into Hell, and that forest’s a portal to Hell, so we ride.”

Sophocles bowed to allow Val to mount him, and Peggi went down low and whinnied for Sarah to hop back on as Beep and Bop ran headlong into the darkness. At a breakneck gallop, Peggi led the way, her unicorn horn turning a hot glowing white and then discharging a laserlike blast that blasted away enough trees for Sophocles to spread his wings. Beep and Bop scampered up trees and leaped over boulders, keeping pace and slashing out with showy claws as they ran.

“This is how they said it was done!” Sarah shouted, feeling something new and indefinable snap to life inside her. Her brother’s life was at stake; there was nothing scarier than that. If her shadows could help them now, so be it.

They had to get to Alejandro! It no longer mattered that she’d always been afraid of the dark, always scared of what might come crawling out from under the bed. But as Peggi white-lighted a flight path, Sophocles torched everything beneath him, and Beep and Bop scampered beside her, a sense of power rose within her, even as dark and threatening shadows closed in behind her. A war cry burst forth from her lungs, raced up her throat and cut through the night. Beep and Bop jetted in front of her, inking the passage and attacking anything that entered the path.

“Lelelelelelelele!” she shrieked, swooping over Harpies and gargoyles and thick-bodied black serpents, Sophocles left everything burning in their wake, and then—finally—she saw a small form huddled by a tree.

“Down there!” Sarah shouted, urging Peggi forward.

Sophocles landed behind her, prancing, nervous, alert for anything as Sarah jumped off her mount and ran to her brother. Val finally got Sophocles to stop dancing long enough for him to get down, and he followed Sarah to Al’s side, but when they tried to hoist him up, he let out a blood-curdling scream.

“My wing, man! Not that side—don’t touch me!”

Black beetles and maggots already covered the bloodied flesh where the broken bone protruded.

“Oh, God,” Sarah said as Val helped her drag Al over to the horses.

He’d lost a sneaker, his clothes were bloody, dirty and torn, and more maggots infested his hair. Peggi backed up nervously at the sight and smell of him, and Sophocles reared.

“They won’t carry him like this,” Sarah said, staring at Val as her brother passed out in their arms.

“He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother,” Val said, hoisting Al’s entire dead weight in both arms. He held him around the waist, Al’s back to his chest. “If I carry him like this, I can follow the horses in the air.” Val closed his eyes as beetles scuttled from Al’s body up Val’s chest, one even crawling up the side of his face. “Let’s go!”

But just as Sophocles opened his wings for takeoff, the huge, golden-eyed werewolf that had been chasing Alejandro barreled through the trees. Peggi and Sophocles charged side by side. Beep and Bop let out a simultaneous high-pitched shriek and attacked. Then a huge translucent entity with a cruel face, bat wings and a massive spade-shaped tail hurtled toward the werewolf. The small Collectors dashed away and threaded themselves between Sarah’s legs.

“Sarah!” Val came down, clearly torn between airlifting his friend and going back for her.

The werewolf went airborne toward her in the fragile seconds while Val lowered Al’s body. The demon lobbed a cinderblock punch that knocked the werewolf off course. Peggi leapt, spearing the beast through the temple, and Sophocles scorched the wolf’s body the second Peggi yanked her horn free. The beast roared a final death call as the red stallion’s massive golden hooves crushed its skull. Then Beep and Bop pounced on the carcass, wrangling it out of sight through a small fissure in the ground.

The huge demon saluted the horses, who both reared and pawed the air in triumph, then Peggi went down on one knee so Sarah could ride.

“You kids get out of here,” Mr. Hubert shouted, taking human form again. “I’ll keep the rest back while you all high-tail it!”

Sarah climbed onto the red stallion, waiting for Peggi to take off, reaching over to give the smaller horse a quick pat. She had to let the mare rest; she just wasn’t as strong as Sophocles.

“Are you all right? Can you carry him?” Sarah shouted to Val as they took to the air.

He nodded, even as he strained to hold onto Alejandro. “I am a Valkyrie! This is what we do. We airlift the dead and wounded to safety. Our motto is ‘Be valiant, be victorious!’ We never drop a warrior!”

Peggi’s shrill whinny made Sarah clutch Sophocles’ muscular red neck more tightly. The small Peguni broke formation and dipped down into the green zone.

“Keep going!” Sarah called to Val. “Get Al to the hospital before he goes too far into shock!”

There was no time to argue, no
way
to argue. Peggi was spiraling down like a missile, with Sophocles right on her heels. Both animals touched down, and what Sarah saw in the dark was a boy just a bit older than her brother, curled up in a fetal position.