“We gotta go.”
Another hundred yards of running and dodging. They started past a small, snow-covered meadow that opened up on the mountain side of the path. It was surrounded by cliffs, giving it the appearance of an amphitheater. A congregation of tall gray boulders, like boxcars standing on end, occupied the area farthest from the path.
The coat pulled David into this meadow, directing him to the boulders.
“Xander! It’s here!”
“Yes!”
Hoofbeats echoed against the stone cliffs. David glanced back. The Carthaginian David had knocked off the horse was charging toward them! Sword in hand, he urged his steed into a gallop.
“Go, Dae! Go!”
David was already running all out through the snow. Any quicker and he’d lose control and fall.
The horseman was gaining.
“We’re not going to make it,” Xander said.
The beating of the horse’s hooves grew louder, louder.
“David!”
David looked. The horseman was pulling beside them. He leaned out, taking swings at Xander. The boulders were twenty seconds away. The Carthaginian leaped for Xander.
But he hadn’t leaped. He landed in the snow, an arrow jutting from his back.
“David, look.”
Standing at the edge of the border between path and meadow was Fur Man, the one David thought looked like a nobleman. He already had another arrow nocked on his bow, ready to make it fly. The man nodded at the boys. Xander raised his hand.
The coat pulled David around a boulder. His shoulder smacked it hard.
Of course.
Behind the boulder, the portal shimmered, and for a moment David forgot about his aches and pains.
He jumped, Xander right on his back.
FRIDAY, 10:42 A.M.
David went through as though he’d plunged off a waterfall, arms spinning, feet kicking. He landed on his toes, crashed to his knees, then did a perfect face-plant. He rolled away just as Xander’s feet hit the floor. His brother kept moving, slammed headlong into a door, and fell back on his rump.
The door behind them slammed.
The door! The portal door!
David sat up. His head jerked around like a chicken’s as he took in the room: bench, hooks, two doors.
“Xander!” he said. “We’re back! We’re home!” He laughed.
Xander
whooped
. He high-fived David, who bent and kissed the floor over and over.
The Harper’s Ferry rifle was where it always was when they found this particular antechamber, on the bench, leaning against the wall. The other items they had brought into the Civil War world were hanging on hooks: the two kepis and the gray Confederate coat.
David pushed himself off the floor, moaning and groaning, feeling well beyond his years. He struggled out of the Union army coat and hung it next to the other. “There ya go,” he said, as if comforting a puppy. “Back where you belong. Thanks for getting us home.”
A wind blew in from under the portal door.
David sighed, sat on the bench. When the boys returned to their own world, the wind always came for the things that belonged in the one they’d just left, from weapons to the smallest particles. “Guess it’s going to be doing triple duty this time,” he said.
It billowed around the room, whisking over the boys, through their clothes and hair. Then it swished under the door, a million bits of dirt and whatever else it had found tapping against the wood floor and door like the patter of rain on a window. David felt a tingling over his ribs. He looked down to see the dried blood Xander had smeared there breaking up and flying away. He rubbed the spot. “It took the blood.”
Xander rubbed his cheek. “Off of me too? That fur man’s blood?”
David nodded.
“Well,” Xander said, “the guy did die twenty-two hundred years ago.”
David looked at his chest, abraded from the slide down the icy slope. The redness had faded slightly, but it still appeared as though Chuck Norris had used him as a punching bag.
“You might need to see a doctor about that,” Xander said.
“Oh, this’ll just make the day of that doctor who accused Dad of breaking my arm.” He gently poked his chest. “I think this’ll be all right, but I don’t know about my arm.” He barely lifted it off his thigh and grimaced in pain. “I think I re-broke it.”
“I’ll check with Dad,” Xander said, standing. “Get you some painkillers.”
David closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall. “All I want right now is a long, hot bath.” He laughed quietly.
“What?”
“’Member that scene in
Raiders of the Lost Ark
,” David said, “where Indiana Jones is pointing to all the places on his body that hurt?”
“And Marion kissed them,” Xander said.
David groaned. “Well, I got Indy beat in the banged-up department.”
“And I’m not going to kiss you,” Xander said. “I like the scene in
Jaws
better, where Quint and Hooper are comparing scars.”
“We can definitely do that!”
“You know,” Xander said, his voice growing serious. “After all that, we didn’t do what we came home from school to do.”
David instantly knew: “Young Jesse. Xander, we promised.”
Xander frowned. “We’ll get back there, Dae. We tried.”
“No matter how much we do, there’s always more.”
“At least that one, going back to see Jesse and the house being built, isn’t so dangerous,” Xander said.
“I
want
to go there,” David agreed.
Xander gave David a hand off the bench. David said, “How long have we been gone?”
“Maybe hours,” Xander said. “I don’t care what Keal or Dad or anyone says, I’m not going back to school today.”
After all they’d gone through, going to school seemed . . . ridiculous times ten. Dad was firm about keeping up appearances—such as going to school—so they could stay in the house and keep looking for Mom. But for crying out loud! If Dad knew half of the stuff they’d gone through, he’d tell them to stay home for the rest of the year.
“You know,” Xander said, “Dad might not have a problem with our staying home if you write that paper like you said.”
“What paper?”
“About how we changed the Civil War. All those things you said back in the woods.”
David rubbed his lips, thinking.
“How Grant died in 1862?” Xander prompted. “And that caused the war to last a lot longer? How two million people died before we changed history, instead of six hundred thousand?”
“Oh, man,” David said, frustrated and more than a little confused. “I remember saying those things, but I can’t remember why.”
“Jesse was right,” Xander said. “After history changes, he—I guess you too, now—remembers the
old
history for a while, but it fades fast. That’s why he always tried to write it down.”
David was mad at himself. “I didn’t get a chance!” he said.
“We went right into those other worlds.”
Xander put his hand on David’s shoulder. “I’m not
blaming
you,” he said. “Do it next time.”
“Hey,” David said, brightening. “We can have a little kit ready. You know, paper, pens, a tape recorder.”
“Just make sure you come back home after a change,”
Xander said, smiling. “Stop your reckless world-hopping ways.”
He opened the door and held it for David.
David stepped through and stopped. The hallway could not have been more damaged if a bull had rampaged through it. The top of an accent table was propped against the wall, the legs broken off and scattered on the floor; wall lights were twisted off-kilter, one had been knocked to the floor; a strip of molding from around a door had been ripped away—it jutted out of the wall like a spear. Across the hall from him, someone had hit the wall hard: the indentation was the size and shape of a human head.
Xander pushed past him. “
Holy
—Keal!” He ran toward the landing. On the floor, Keal lay sprawled facedown.
FRIDAY, 10:47 A.M.
David’s stomach lurched. He hadn’t noticed Keal on the floor because a chunk of wallboard was lying on top of him.
Xander knelt beside him. “Keal?” He shoved the piece of wall off the man and rolled him over onto his back.
David ran up. “Is he—”
Xander leaned in close. His fingers pushed against Keal’s neck, checking the carotid artery for a pulse. “He’s alive.” He touched a gash on Keal’s head, showed David the blood. “Hasn’t dried, not even a little.”
Toward the far end of the hall, a door slammed. David jumped and looked into the hall’s shadows. “That was a
portal
door,” he whispered.
Xander scowled. “Phemus,” he said. “Taking off.”
“Taking off ? More likely coming back.”
Xander scrambled to his feet and backed toward the landing. “Come on, Dae,” he whispered.
But David leaned over Keal and touched his cheek. “Keal?” he whispered. “Keal!”
The guy was out. David hopped over Keal’s head, stooped to grab one wrist, and tugged. “Xander, help.”
His brother grabbed Keal’s other wrist. “David, we don’t have time for this,” he said. They heaved back, dragging Keal six inches. “This guy weighs—”
A door at the end of the hall opened. Yellowish light from the antechamber spilled out. A shadow moved through it.
“Hide!” Xander whispered.
They lowered Keal’s arms and rushed on tiptoe to the landing. They descended a few stairs, and David grabbed Xander’s shoulder.
“We can’t leave him,” he said. He couldn’t stand the thought of Keal lost . . . over
there
, in time, possibly for years.
“If Phemus wanted him,” Xander said, “he’d already be gone. Anyway, what are
we
supposed to do? We’ve already tried stopping Phemus when he came for Mom.”
And look how that ended up,
David thought
. Mom gone, all three King men banged up, bruised, and bloody.
He heard stomping in the third-floor hallway, crunching over the debris. He didn’t like it, but Xander was right: there was nothing they could do. David wanted to help, despite the odds, but the family couldn’t handle another of them kidnapped, seriously injured, or killed—one of which was nearly certain if they challenged Phemus.
Xander pulled at David’s elbow. David nodded, and his brother led the way down the third-floor stairs, staying close to the outside edge so the treads wouldn’t creak. David listened to the footsteps approach.
When David was at the bottom of the stairs, the footsteps on the third floor stopped—right where Keal was, it seemed to David. He thought he was going to be sick.
Xander grabbed David again and pulled him through the doors in the two walls that separated this secret area from the main part of the house. They stopped, listening. Up on the third floor, Phemus’s footsteps clomped on the landing.
“He’s coming down,” David whispered.
Xander said, “We have to get out of the house.”
As David followed him to the corner where the main hallway met this shorter one, he realized the footsteps behind him didn’t sound quite right. Something was off, but he couldn’t figure out what it was.
Xander cut diagonally across the hall to the main staircase, which would take them to the foyer and the front door.
Behind them, the footsteps were coming down the third-floor stairs.
Xander hit the first step of the main staircase and braked. David bumped into him. The airy first letter of “Hey!” was on his lips when he saw what had stopped his brother: Phemus was not behind them. He was standing right there in the foyer.
FRIDAY, 10:51 A.M.
If Phemus is in the foyer,
David thought,
who just came out of the portal?
The big man hadn’t noticed the boys at the top of the stairs. His back was to them, and he stared out the window beside the front door. He was so tall, he had to stoop to do it. His scarred and dirty back rose and fell as he took slow, deep breaths.
Whoever had come out of the portal reached the bottom of the third-floor stairs.
David darted past the banister overlooking the foyer, toward his bedroom. Xander was practically glued to his back. David’s foot struck the chair that had been propped against the linen closet door, but now blocked the center of the hall. The chair scraped on the hardwood floor, sounding to David like a loud cough.
In the foyer, Phemus grunted. His gravely baritone filled the air:
“Poios einai ekei?”
And he began climbing the stairs.
David’s heart slammed into his throat, apparently trying to exit the body that was ten seconds from getting pummeled to death. His eyes flashed at Xander and he pointed to the linen closet door:
Let’s go through!