“The one and only,” Alexandra sighed and rubbed the fur sticking up on Jack's neck. Callahan turned off the engine and shoved the transmission into park. Forgetting the keys in the ignition, he flung open his door. The crunch of gravel under his step stirred Alexandra from the back seat.
Crawling out from behind the driver's seat, she patted Jack on the head while she slid him from her lap to the floorboard. “Stay,” she ordered, snatching a flashlight from Benjamin's loose grip. Whining at her, Jack obeyed and climbed back into the empty seat.
Alexandra followed Callahan to the driveway, her shabby rubber flip-flops scattering loose pebbles from the sides of her shuffling feet.
Flecks of moonlight sifted through a plume of smoke rising from the dense oak and magnolia forest. Even in the dim glow, Callahan recognized the white, boxy truck blocking the driveway gate. “He made it,” Callahan said quietly, as Alexandra directed the flashlight on the Georgia license plate at the rear of the truck.
“The beast is here?” Alexandra asked softly.
“Yes,” Callahan assured her.
“We have to get inside,” shouted Alexandra, choking her panic back down her throat. Stomping past Callahan, she judged the warped iron gate. The fallen log that was lodged against the top mocked her shoulders as Alexandra shoved against the fence with stoic silence.
“Move,” she demanded of the log, her fists gripping the iron bars as she shook the gate helplessly.
“We will have to walk,” Callahan told her calmly, placing a hand on her shoulder.
“What are we waiting for, then? What if the house is on fire?” Alexandra paced back and forth on the gravel.
In the back of the Mustang, Benjamin stirred and yawned, a gulp of smoke-tinged air souring his mouth. “Taylor,” he said, kicking the seat in front of him. “Roll down the window if you're going to smoke.”
“Huh?” Taylor groaned and rubbed her eyes. “Where are we?” she mumbled as she raised her head from the seat and peered through the windshield. “Where are they?” she asked, realizing that only Benjamin and Jack were with her in the car.
Leaning forward, Benjamin stared at the truck bumper parked in front of the Mustang. “Georgia plate?” he muttered in confusion as a sharp tap against the roof rattled the windshield and a pale, freckled face peered through the glass.
Taylor started to scream, but Alexandra raised a finger to her lips, motioning for her friend to be quiet.
“Hush, Jack,” Benjamin told the dog when he whimpered.
Callahan stuck his head inside the car. “You and Taylor stay here,” he ordered them.
“No,” Benjamin protested.
“We're at Peyton Manor,” Callahan explained, “but the driveway gate is broken and blocked. Taylor cannot walk. There is no other choice.”
“Alexandra,” Benjamin shouted. “Let me come with you.”
She ignored his pleas. “Keep them safe,” she requested as Benjamin held Jack still on the seat beside him.
From the other side of the gate there rose a heinous howl, followed by an echoing, mad bark. The noise drifted over the trees from the direction of the house.
Callahan slammed the Mustang door closed. “Lock it,” he mouthed as Benjamin crawled from the back into the empty driver's seat.
Alexandra turned off the flashlight and fled over the peak of a waist-high holly bush hedge. Callahan followed on her heels and the moonlight lit their steps. With her legs scraped and itching from the holly, Alexandra scoffed at the fallen trunk. She narrowed her sharp eyes on the path ahead of her.
Alexandra
, a voice whispered.
Kraven
, Alexandra thought, glancing skyward. She gripped the swaying medallion in her palms as her legs flew down the driveway.
The moon, pale yellow and hanging low, looked close enough to touch.
They had run the whole way. Callahan felt the strain in his chest as they slowed their steps. The front porch of Peyton Manor was straight ahead. Coming to a stop, he panted and loosened his shirt collar. “Miss Peyton,” he sputtered. “I'm not as young as I used to be.”
But Alexandra had run unfazed. She had not even felt the rush of wind in her auburn locks, nor heard the pounding of her feet against the gravel. She had flown the half-mile down the driveway with a single thought:
Kraven
.
The howl of a wolf focused her gaze on the silent porch. Goosebumps prickled her flesh as she listened to Cyrus sing at the moon. She was ready to fight.
Kraven hovered in the sky, his body suspended above the rolling ocean waves. Because he was hidden in the smoke wafting from the trees, he hoped no one had yet seen him. He thought, shaking his head, of all the miles he just had flown to be at this battle. Alexandra was close, he knew.
Suddenly, his back rippled with pain. Wincing, he felt the tight muscles between his shoulder blades constricting, refusing to comply with the will of his heart. His wings fell limp to his sides. The squawk of a bewitched seagull rang in his ears. He locked eyes with the hovering bird before the waves rushed up to meet him.
Harrison Frost was booting up the computer monitor on Headmaster Sullivan's antique cherry desk. Frost scooted the four-wheeled leather chair closer toward the desk and peered at the screen.
“P-A-S-S-W-O-R-D,” he spelled as he tapped on the keyboard. “Thank you, Dr. Sullivan. Your lack of imagination has made this easy for meâtoo easy, really,” he said, scratching his chin.
Gray temples and wrinkles belied the youthful enthusiasm with which Frost bounded through life. Born in a town in Oklahoma too small to make its way onto any map, he had bought a one-way ticket to Boston after high school and had never looked back. He had worked his way through Harvard before realized his history degree would never translate into a fat wallet. But he never stayed in one place long enough to regret it.
His feet had tread all seven continents before landing a permanent position at Collinsworth Academy, and his adventures had brought him into the path and graces of a wide swath of humanity. Only in the last few years had he come to know of the Knights of the Order of the Dragon King. It was then that he learned a name for the abilities that he had kept secret: soul reading. The Order knew the power well. He could read a mind and see a person's past as the body had lived it.
He knew Alexandra had such powers. As she sat in his classes, he had stared at the young beauty in awe. A constant rainbow-colored halo hovered around her. She was not aware of the abilities she possessed, of that he was certain. When he whispered his suspicions to the Order, they had detained him and sent Sean Callahan to investigate. Frost's suspicions were that she was being followed by a force he did not yet understand.
The computer screen flickered as his eyes searched for the file. “Stop,” he said, pounding his fist against the desk when the screen blinked twice more.
Dr. Sullivan had warned him that the power had been out on the campus and that the outdated computer would fidget and crank if Frost could get the dinosaur to boot up at all. Confident the headmaster was in the air by then, Frost imagined the portly man relaxing in his first-class airplane seat.
“A ticket to Fijiâthat is my price,” the headmaster had negotiated with Frost. “That's if you want me to disappear for a while. And also the gold chain.”
Frost gladly handed over the glittering rope that Callahan had carelessly left in his kitchen. Frost asked Dr. Sullivan for his discretion. He needed the student records, and for the headmaster to tell him what Callahan had been up to in his absence.
“Bones,” the headmaster admitted. “The stories are true. There is a body buried by the old cannons.” Dr. Sullivan told him of the keen interest with which Callahan had studied the grave that afternoon on the vacant campus.
“No gold in the grave with the body? Or is there something you're not telling me?” Frost asked. He had heard the legend along with every other teacher, student, janitor, and cafeteria worker who had set foot on campus.
When the Collinsworth family donated their land for the school, they testified to the truth of the tale. Their patriarch, Charles, had been buried at the foot of the cannons with a stash of gold after his murder by their crazed servant, Mary Scott, just as the Union army pressed down on Atlanta.
Frost thought it was a good story and nothing more. If Charles Collinsworth had been buried with a secret, he did not believe the man's bones still guarded the treasure.
“No gold,” the headmaster repeated to Frost. “Not in the grave, at least.” Dr. Sullivan disagreed with Frost. He did believe there was treasure buried on campus. A wealthy man, war, murder, and mayhemâthe headmaster wanted the legend of the buried treasure to be true.
And I am not the only one
, Dr. Sullivan kept to himself.
Someone else wanted the gold, someone desperate enough to dig up a grave. But who?
Dr. Sullivan did not suspect the truth. He did not suspect a ghost, a man returned from the dead.
Frost pondered the idea as he stared at the headmaster, a dollop of chocolate pudding clinging to the top of Dr. Sullivan's chin.
Jonathan Peyton
, Frost surmised, but he needed the headmaster gone to investigate his suspicions.
“Yes,” Frost said to the empty room. “Dr. Sullivan needed a long break on a sandy beach on the other side of the world. I'll make sure things run smoothly here in his absence.”
Clicking the mouse under his finger, he tapped the e-mail icon and promptly wrote an urgent message to everyone in Dr. Sullivan's address book: “Regrettably, I must inform all parties of the cancellation of tomorrow's classes.” Frost was aware that parents, teachers, and students would breathe a confused sigh of relief in the morning when they checked their in-boxes and realized they had been granted another snow day in August. “Poor Dr. Sullivan,” Mister Frost said sarcastically. “The Board of Trustees would fire youâif they could ever find you.”
Shutting down the e-mail, he clicked into the database of student records and profiles. Scrolling through the names, he landed on “Peyton, Alexandra.” He read her grade record, schedule, and home address.
Mother: Angela Peyton, research scientist at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Father: Jonathan Peyton, archaeologist, possibly deceased; whereabouts unknown.
“Hmph,” he grunted. “Not anymore.”
Frost was aware of a fact the Knights of the Order of the Dragon King had hidden from Callahan. The wealth and power of the Order came not only from generous benefactors but also from black-market sales of historic artifacts. Callahan believed in honor and would not approve of the practice, but his skills were considered too valuable to let him slip into anonymity.
Frost had no such lofty ideals. His talents were for hire, and the Order promised adventure and reward. He read, again, the black letters on the glowing screen:
Possibly deceased; whereabouts unknown.
“He is here,” Frost said confidently, knowing the full story. The man had lived in hiding for two years, terrified to return home and risk harm to his family. The Order had tracked him to a cave in the Black Forest in Germany before he again escaped from their grasp. Like a hermit frightened of the world, he had lived in the cave patiently, desperately, barely surviving off the land as if he were a wild animal. He had discovered the secret of how the Order was funded, and they were satisfied that his life would be the price of that knowledge.
“Jonathan Peyton, I am going to find you and earn myself a handsome reward,” Frost muttered. He stared at a junior-class yearbook photograph of Alexandra, her twinkling eyes belying a cloud of melancholy floating around her. He knew where she lived.
Flipping open a cigar box on the desk, he pulled a lighter from a pocket in his pants. “Don't mind if I do,” he said. The blue butane flame of his Zippo lighter illuminated the copper flecks in his brown eyes.
As June fired, the cock of the hammer echoed against the cold ceramic tile. Brad covered his ears with his palms. When the bullet whizzed past his head, he flinched at the rush of air that tickled the tip of his nose.
June held the pistol steady with both hands and savored the aroma of burning gunpowder as a puff of smoke escaped the bullet chamber. Not a glint of hesitation quivered in her wrists, tender from arthritis.
“Momma,” her son begged from the floor. “Put that thing down before you kill us.”
“Hush, Jonathan,” she told him.
A desperate howl erupted from the porch outside the broken kitchen window. Cyrus had been hit.
“Let me finish this!” she insisted. “I'm going to get rid of that witch once and for all.”
As she lunged forward, the toe of her bedroom slipper caught on Brad's size-eleven feet. Catching her in his arms, Brad hugged her against his chest as the pistol slid across the slick ceramic tiles toward Jonathan.
“Not so fast,” Brad told her softly.
Gripping the gun in his fist, Jonathan got up gingerly from the floor and propped his elbow against the countertop. “Get her out of here,” he told Brad, who nodded his head in understanding.
Limp in the young man's solid arms, June relented to her captor.
“The study,” she said. “Ian is asleep in there.”
“Go,” Jonathan said without hesitation. “Lock the door. It has a deadbolt. Push a chair, a table, whatever you have to in front of the window that overlooks the front porch. Don't open the door again until I return.”
“What about the fire?” Brad asked, lifting June from the floor and cradling her body against his chest.
“Let the house burn!” June said vehemently. Mother and son locked eyes. “You are alive, Jonathan. That's all that matters now.”
“Go!” Jonathan repeated.
Brad swept June from the kitchen.
Outside, the close cry of the wounded wolf grew more desperate.