The Second Siege (26 page)

“This is it,” decided Dr. Rasmussen.

“How many does this seat?” asked Miss Boon.

“Nine or ten,” replied the man, eyeing Mr. McDaniels.

“Plenty of room,” said Miss Boon. “We’ll wait for Cooper.”

Breaking glass showered onto the floor.

“There’s no time!” Rasmussen cried, climbing aboard as three vyes squeezed through a second-story window across the hangar. The vyes leapt from the jagged sill down to the floor, scrambling to their feet in a sliding screech of claws to close the distance. Several more pushed their way, snapping and slavering, through the window.

A rumbling noise filled the hangar, a ponderous drumming of metal and wheels. At the far end of the building, Max saw the hangar doors sliding open. A gust of cold night air swept toward them with Cooper in its wake, yelling at them to board.

The bomber’s hatch clattered open; Rasmussen had already disappeared inside. Mum shrieked and climbed on all fours up into the plane’s belly. Nick leapt in after, retreating quickly into the gunner’s seat, a small glass hemisphere attached to the underbelly of the plane. Mr. McDaniels and Miss Boon managed to carry David inside.

Propellers whirred to life and the plane strained against wooden blocks wedged beneath its wheels. Skidding to a stop, Cooper ducked beneath the bomber and wrenched the blocks away.

Several vyes had now reached the plane, which shuddered and rolled slowly forward. Cooper’s wavy-bladed knife flashed; a vye howled and fell to the ground, snapping wildly at a wound in its belly. Max went to help Cooper, but the Agent waved him away with a furious command.

“Get David out of here!”

The Agent was now moving with blurred precision; three more vyes fell as Cooper placed himself between the open hatch and the approaching creatures. Rasmussen yelled from the cockpit.

“They’ve blocked our exit!”

Max ducked beneath the slow-rolling bomber and saw that the vyes had positioned two trucks as a barricade before the open doors. Flames leapt outside in the dark, sending white smoke up in sputtering waves. Max heard Cooper grunt as a vye closed its teeth on his leg; the kris whistled in a lethal arc. Disentangling himself from the heavy mound at his feet, the Agent whirled to glimpse the barricade at the hangar’s exit before hurrying over to them.

“What should we do?” asked Max breathlessly.

“What I told you,” huffed the Agent, seizing Max in a painful grip and practically hurling him through the bomber’s hatch. Miss Boon met him at the doorway.

“Hurry and get inside, William,” she pleaded.

Cooper paused long enough for a smile to flit across his ruined features.

“Got things to do, Hazel. Be well.”

The Agent slammed the door shut and pounded twice on the plane’s side. Max squirmed around his father and squeezed into the cockpit next to Rasmussen, who was guiding the plane slowly past several fighters. The trucks loomed ahead, blocking their way as more vyes streamed into the hangar. Max blinked as a brilliant flash momentarily blinded him.

“What was that?” asked Rasmussen, pawing at his eyes.

“Cooper,” said Max, letting his eyes readjust. He blinked again and saw that the Agent had run up ahead of them and was weaving his way past blinded vyes to close on the rear truck blocking their path. The Agent swung himself up into the truck and disappeared inside. A vye was promptly thrown through the windshield, skidding across the hood before it lay still. There was a hideous squeal of metal on metal as Cooper rammed the other truck from behind, inching it forward.

“What’s happening?” asked Miss Boon urgently from behind them.

“He’s clearing the way,” muttered Max, his spirits falling as more vyes converged on Cooper’s truck, clinging to the bed and scrabbling for a hold on the doors and windows, apparently suicidal in their determination to reach the Agent.

Despite the onslaught, Cooper forced the other truck steadily forward in a shower of sparks. Smoke from outside now billowed into the hangar, filling the air with a filmy haze. Easing the throttle back, Rasmussen guided the bomber smoothly forward.

“Can we make it?” called Mr. McDaniels.

“I can hardly see,” muttered Rasmussen, squinting through his broken spectacles.

A dark shape suddenly obscured their view; an enormous vye had climbed up onto the windshield and clung like a barnacle to the plane. Its muzzle contorted in a smile; a heavy palm smacked against the glass, creating a spiderweb of thin cracks. Rasmussen shrieked and braced himself as the vye reared back for the shattering blow.

It never came.

The vye was yanked unceremoniously from the windshield by an invisible force that left the creature momentarily suspended in midair, flailing like an overturned turtle, before it was suddenly flung away to thud against a neighboring plane. Max turned and saw Miss Boon behind him, her features furrowed with concentration.

“Did
you
do that?” asked Max, but his Mystics instructor merely squeezed past him. Hurrying into the cockpit, she placed her palm against the cracked windshield as Rasmussen pulled back on the throttle. While the plane eased forward, the spiderweb of cracks seemed to thin and diminish until the glass was whole again.

“Everyone strap in!” yelled Rasmussen, sending Max scurrying down to the ball turret, where Nick was stowed.

Sliding in next to the lymrill, Max saw the dark shapes of vyes swarming all about them. Beyond the vyes, Max could see that Cooper’s truck had now nearly rammed the other truck out of their way. A few more seconds and . . .

“Go!” shrieked Max, banging the hatch above him. “Go, go, go!”

The plane groaned forward; fighters and cargo planes rolled past. Vyes scattered as the plane picked up speed, hurtling out the doors and through trails of burning oil and smoke.

Seconds later, air rushed beneath the bomber’s wings. The heavy craft bucked slightly and then leveled off, rising steadily above the dark clearing and its strange constellations of campfires. Looking below, Max saw Cooper’s truck in flames, careening wildly toward the woods while dozens of vyes galloped behind on the white snow. The plane lifted and banked to the right; the Black Forest fell away beneath tattered layers of clouds that hid the world beneath a veil of pale gossamer. Cooper disappeared from view.

Max sat perfectly still in the gunner’s turret, clutching Nick and watching the wisps of cloud go racing by. Rummaging through David’s pack, Max felt for the cool metal rings of the armillary sphere. Pulling it out, he placed it on his knee. The lymrill sniffed at it tentatively.

“Do you see this?” he asked quietly. “We came all this way for a bit of metal and wood. A key, says Bram. Not like any key I’ve ever seen. And it’s cost an awful lot, hasn’t it, Nick? Señor Lorca . . . David . . . and now maybe Cooper.”

Nick mewled and nipped his finger.

“We’ll be home soon,” Max whispered, scratching the coppery quills and listening to the hum of the engines. Beneath his feet, the turret’s windows began to mist with cold. His father handed down a blanket, which Max accepted gratefully. Wrapping himself and Nick in the deep green folds, Max lost himself in the drone of the bomber’s engines. The night was black and the stars were bright as they flew west above a sea of clouds.

He awoke to hear Miss Boon puzzling over maps and arguing with Dr. Rasmussen. Bright blue sky and tufts of cloud raced below along with occasional peeks of ocean. Yawning, he clutched the blanket around him and wriggled like an inchworm out of the ball turret and toward the cockpit. Max glanced at his watch and had an alarming thought.

“That’s what I thought,” said his father, rinsing his mouth clean into a metal cup. “The good doctor says they’ve modified the engines on all these planes—we could fly to America and back. Not that I want to.”

“How far away are we?” asked Max.

“Close, apparently,” said Mr. McDaniels. “That is, if we can find it. David might have done his work too well.”

Max glanced at his roommate, who was sleeping beneath a mound of blankets and emitting a wheezy whistle as he breathed. Nearby, Mum grumbled and pulled her blanket tight around her ears. Climbing forward, Max stuck his head into the cockpit.

“I’m telling you that we’re too far north,” growled Rasmussen, purple-faced as he waved a map at Miss Boon. The two bickered back and forth over when they’d last glimpsed Cape Cod.

“But it’s right on the ocean,” said Max, reaching for the map. “Can’t we just fly along the coast until we see it?”

“We’ve done that,” snapped Rasmussen. “We managed a lovely glimpse of Kennebunkport, but no Rowan. It’s as though it doesn’t exist! Vanished!”

Max opened his mouth and closed it once again, choosing instead to look out the window where tatters of cloud and mist revealed a jagged coastline below. Max blinked. Rowan was right ahead of them; the copper weathervane on Old Tom was winking in the sunlight.

“But there it is!” blurted Max, stabbing a finger at the cockpit window.

Miss Boon and Dr. Rasmussen ceased arguing for just a moment to gape at the gleaming spire and snow-sprinkled lawns ahead. The black silhouette of the
Kestrel
looked like a toy anchored to a blue-gray sea. The two adults pressed against the window, speechless for several moments.

“That’s impossible,” breathed Rasmussen, tapping the compass. “We’re at least a hundred miles north of Rowan.”

“Fifty miles south,” muttered Miss Boon, glancing at the map.

Rasmussen grunted and dipped the nose of the bomber toward the ocean, taking a long banking turn that brought them low over the waves and skimming straight toward the sheer cliffs.

“I don’t suppose you have a runway handy?” asked Rasmussen.

Max envisioned the grounds’ manicured lawns, English gardens, and well-tended hedges.

“Dear Lord,” groaned Miss Boon. “Nolan’s going to kill us!”

“Get back and buckle in,” ordered Rasmussen sharply. “This is going to be bumpy.”

Max hurried back into the fuselage and relayed the orders to his father and Mum. Sliding back into the turret, he buckled himself in just as the landing gear began to lower. Up ahead, the Manse tilted wildly as Rasmussen strained to steady the plane. Max held his breath as the nose cleared the cliffs and splashed down onto wet snow.

Immediately, the bomber groaned and began lurching sideways, throwing up a spray of snow and dirt and grass as it screamed across the lawns. People scattered, rushing for the safety of the gray stone buildings. Brakes squealed and muddy snow spattered the turret’s window as the Manse loomed ever closer.

“We’re going to hit it!” yelled Max as the plane wobbled and skidded forward. The marble fountain was a mere fifty yards away. Max shut his eyes and covered his head.

Suddenly, their progress slowed—smoothly, wondrously, as though the intervening air were congealing into gelatin. Forces rippled through the plane, magic so strong that the hair on Max’s neck stood on end. He opened his eyes a peek and saw that they had slowed to a crawl. The fountain’s marble horses fixed him with a blank stare, shooting streams of water that shimmered and billowed in the cool air as the plane ground to a reluctant halt. Ms. Richter stood on the Manse’s steps, eyeing them with quiet curiosity.