Alcatraz versus the Scrivener's Bones (18 page)

It's my fault.

I
'
ll
admit the truth; I did it.
You've undoubtedly noticed
it by now, if you've been reading closely. I apologize.
Of all
the dirty tricks I've used, this is undoubtedly the nastiest of
them all.
I rea
lize
it might have ruined the book for you up
until now but I couldn't help myself.

You see, doing something like this consistently, over
fourteen chapters, was quite challenging.
And I'm always
up for a challenge.
When yo
u noticed it, you probably real
ized how clever I was, even as you blushed.
I know this is
supposed to be a book for kids, and I thought it was well
enough hidden that it wouldn't come out.
I guess I was too
obvious.

I'd have taken it out, but it's just so clever.
Most people
won't be able to find it, even though it's there in every
chapter, on every page.
The most brilliant literary joke I've
ever made.

My apologies.

I stood, facing down the s
ilhouetted creature, still hold
i
n
g on to Bastille's arm.
I slowly came to understand
somethi
n
g.

I had been wrong to run from the creature
–
that
had
caused my group to get split up.
Now the hunter could take
us one at a time, grabbing us from the catacombs as we ran
about in confusion.

W
e couldn't continue to run.
It was time to confront it.
I gulped, beginning to sweat.
This is one of the reasons
why I'm no hero
–
because
even though I walked down
that corridor toward the creature, I pulled Bastille along
with me.
I figured two targets were better than one.

As we moved forward
,
Kaz
trailing behind, Bastille lost
a bit of her frenzied look.
S
he pulled her dagger from its
sheath, the crystalline blade sparkling in the flickering
lamplight.

At the end of the corridor was a small room, split in
hal
f by the large iron grate. The S
crivener's Bone was on
the other side of the bars.
He smiled as I approached – one
side of his face curling up, lips leering.
The other side
of his face mimicked the motion, though it was made of
bits of metal that twisted and clicked, like
a clock mechanism
that had been compressed tenfold
until all of the
gears and pins were smushed
t
ogether.

"Smedry," the thing said, voice ragged,
as if the sounds
themselves had been flayed.

"Who are you?" I asked.

The creature met my eyes.
The entire left half of
its body had been replaced by the bits of metal, held
together by a force I didn't understand.
One of its eyes
was human.
The other was a pit of dark glass.
Alivener's
Glass.

"I am Kiliman
jaro
,”
the creature said."
I have been sent
to retrieve something from you."

I was still wearing the Lenses of Rashid. I raised my
fingers to them, and Kiliman nodded.

"Where did you get that sword?" I asked, trying to hide
my nervousness.

"I have the woman
,”
the creature said.
"I took it from her."

"She's here, Alcatraz,”
Bastille said.
"I can feel her
Fleshstone."

Fleshstone
? I thought.
What in the name of the first
sands is that
?

“You
mean this?" Kiliman asked, voice deep and crackling
.
He held up something before him.
It looked like a
crystal shard, about the size of two fingers put together.
It
was bloody.

Bastille gasped.
"No!" she said, rushing toward the bars;
I grabbed her arm and barely managed to hang on.

"Bastille!" I said.
“He's goading you!”

"How could you?" she screamed at the creature.
“You’
ll
kill her!"

Kiliman lowered the crysta
l
, placing it in a pouch at his
belt.
He still held the sword in front of him.
“
Death is
immaterial,
C
rystin.
I must retrieve what I seek.
Y
ou have
it, and I have the woman.
We will trade.”

Bastille fell to her knees, and at first I thought she was
weeping.
Then I co
uld see that she was simpl
y shaking,
white faced.
I didn't know it at the time, but pulling the
Fleshstone from the body of a
Crystin is an unspeakabl
y
vulgar and gruesome act.
To Bastille, it was like Kiliman
had shown her Draulin's heart, still beating in his hand.

"You think I'd bargain with you?
”
I asked.

"Yes," Kiliman said simply.
He didn't have the flair of
evil that Blackburn had shown
– no
flaunted arrogance,
no sharp clothing, or laughing voice.
Y
et, the quiet danger
this creature expressed was somehow even more haunting.

I shivered.

"Careful, Al," Kaz said quietly. "Those creatures are
dangero
us.
Very
dangerous."

Kiliman smiled, then dropped the sword and flipped a
hand forward.
I cried out as I saw a Lens in his hand.
It
flashed, shooting out a beam of frosty light.

Bastille came up, her dagger held clawlike in her hand.
She took the beam straight on the crystalline blade, then
stumbled backward.
She held it, but just barely.

I growled, throwing off the Translator's Lenses and
pulling out my Windstormer's Lenses.
He wanted to fight?
Well, I'd show him.

I snapped the Lenses on, then focused on the Scrivener's
Bone, sending forth a wave of powerful wind. My ears
popped, and Kaz cried out from the sudden increase in
pressure. The blast of wind hit Kiliman, throwing him
backward, spraying bits of metal from his body.

Kiliman growled, and his Frostbringer's Lens turned
off. To my side, Bastille fell to her knees again; I could
see that her hand looked blue and was crusted with ice.
Her little dagger's blade was cracked in several places.
Like the Crystin swords, it could deflect Oculatory powers,
but it obviously
wasn't meant to handle much pun
ishment.

Kiliman righted himself, and I could see the bits of
metal that had fallen off of him spring up little spiderlike
legs.
The nuts, screws, and gears scuttled across the floor,
climbing up his body and rejoining with the entire pulsing,
undulating heap of metal scraps.

He met my eyes and growled, bringing up his other
hand. I focused again,
b
lasting him with another wave of
wind, but the creature stayed on his feet.
Suddenly, I felt
myself being pulled forward.
His other hand held the Lens
that Bastille had called a
V
oidstormer's Lens, the one that
sucked in air.

The Lens was pulling me toward the bars, even though
I was pushing Kiliman away with my own Lenses.
I slipped
on the ground, stumbling, growing panicked.

S
uddenly, hands grabbed me from behind, steadying
me.
"
W
hat did I tell
y
ou, kid?" Kaz called over the sound of
the wind.
"That thing is part Alivened!
Y
ou can't kill him
with regular means!
And those are blood-forged Lenses
he's using.
They'll be more powerful than yours!"

He was right.
Even with Kaz holding on to me, I could
feel myself being pulled toward Kiliman.
I turned my
Windstormer's Lenses away from him, then focused them
on the wall, pushing myself back.

Kiliman turned his Lens off.

I was shaken by the force of the wind blowing from my
face. I stumbled,
knocking Kaz over, and I nearly lost
my footing as I turned my Lenses off.

In that moment, Kiliman focused
h
i
s
Lens directly at
the pair of Translator's Lenses in my other hand.
Appar
ently, the Voidstormer's Lens
–
just
like my
W
indstormer's
Lenses
–
could focus on a single object.
The T
r
anslator's
Lenses were pried free from my fingers and sucked across
the room.

I yelled, shocked, but Bastille snatched the Lenses from
the air as they passed her.
She stood up, dagger in one hand,
Lenses in the other.
I stepped
u
p beside her, readying my
Windstormer's Lenses, trying not to look at the frosty
wounds on Bastille's hand.

Kiliman stood up, but did not raise his Lenses.
"I still
hold the knight," he whispered, picking up the fallen
Crystin sword.
"She will die, for you don't know where to
find her.
Only I can replace her Fleshstone."

The room
fell
silent.
Suddenly, Kiliman's face began to
disintegrate, the tiny bits of metal all springing legs and
crawling down his body.
Half of hi
s head, then his shoul
der, and finally one arm all transformed to tiny, metal
spiders, which crawled across the bars separating us,
swarming like bees in a hive.

"She will die," the Scrivener's Bone said, somehow
speaking despite the fact that half of his face was now
missing.
"I do not lie, Smedry. You know I do not lie."

I stared him down, but felt an increasing sense of dread.
Do you remember what I said about choices?
It seems to me
that no matter what you
choose, you end up losing some
thing.
In this case, it was either the Lenses or Draulin's life.

"I will trade her to you for the Lenses," Kiliman said.
"I
was sent to hunt those, not you.
Once I have them, I will
leave."

The metal spiders wer
e crawling into the room, cross
ing the floor, but they stayed away from Bastille and me.
Kaz groaned, finally getting
to his feet from where I'd inad
vertently pushed him.

I closed my eyes.
Bastille's mother,
or the Lenses?
I
wished that I could do something to fight.
But, the
Windstormer's Lenses couldn't hurt this thing
–
even
if
they blew him back, he could simply flee and wait for
Draulin to die.
Australia was still lost somewhere in the
Library.
W
ould she be next?

"I will trade," I said quietly.

Kiliman smiled
–
or, at least, the remaining half of his
face smiled.
Then, to the side, I saw several of his spiders
climb up on somethi
n
g.

A trip wire in the room where I was standing.

The floor fell away ben
eath Bastille and me as the spi
ders tripped the wire.
Bastille cried out, reaching for the
edge of the floor, but she just barely missed grabbing it.

"Rocky Mountain Oysters!" Kaz swore in shock, though
the pit opened a few feet away from him.
I caught one last
glimpse of his panicked face as I tumbled into the hole.

We plummeted some thirty feet and landed with a thud
on a patch of too-soft ground.
I hit on my stomach, but
Bastille
–
who
twisted herself to protect the
T
ranslator's
Lenses she still clutched
–
scraped
against the wall, then
hit the ground in a much more awkward position.
She
grunted in pain.