Awoken (9 page)

No!

Michael sprang to his feet. “Leave them alone!”

Smiley looked up at him and his grin widened. “Or what, amigo?” Tossing the briefcase aside, he waved away the lingering vapor in the air.

Michael’s eyes flickered. Down in the living room, the TV screen shattered in a shower of silver sparks. “If you’ve hurt them, I’ll…”

Smiley’s lips peeled back, revealing long, yellow fangs. “You’ll what?” he growled. His shoulders and arms bulged, stretching the fabric of his jacket. Pulling off his sunglasses, he glared up at Michael with mismatched brown and green eyes. “You’ll what?”

Michael’s mouth went dry. Smiley was a Ven. This was bad. Really, really bad.

Smiley groaned, and thick hair began to sprout from his cheeks and neck. His stretched jacket split apart, revealing a chest covered by curly black fur. His jaw twisted and cracked, pushing into a short snout.

Michael spun on his heel and sprinted toward his room. “Lina!”

Michael burst into his bedroom, nearly colliding with Lina.

“Watch out,” she snapped.

“Move.” Michael shoved past her to his dresser. Wrapping his arms around the bulky frame, he pulled the dresser a couple of inches from the wall. “Don’t just stand there. Help me!”

Lina crossed her arms over her chest. “How? I don’t even know what you’re doing.”

“He’s coming,” Michael grunted. The dresser moved another inch, stopped, and stubbornly refused to budge another centimeter. “We need to block the door.”

A long, eerie howl echoed through the house.

Lina was next to the dresser in a heartbeat. “Move it, muscles.”

“This thing is heavy. We’ll have to work together.”

“Shut up.” Lina put her shoulder to the dresser.

“Lina, I don’t think…”

The dresser flew across the room, crashing into the door with an explosion of splintered wood and pulverized plaster.

Lina brushed her hands on her jeans. “What do you think?”

“What do
I
think?”

Michael spat a grimy mix of plaster dust and saliva onto the floor. The dresser completely covered the lower half of the doorway, parts of the shattered frame wedged deeply in the wall. “I think you killed my dresser. How did you… you know what, never mind. Just help me tie these sheets.”

Quickly, they gathered up his sheets.

“What happened to the dollman?” Michael asked as he began his first knot.

Lina began knotting the end of one of the sheets to a bedpost. “He took off right before you came in.”

Michael bit back a curse. Without the dollman, how was he going to get the waystone out of Lina’s hand?

“What was that howling?” Lina jerked her knot tight.

“A Ven, a human one.” Michael tossed the makeshift rope onto his mattress. “Help me drag the bed closer to the window.”

Lina grabbed a bedpost. “Some guy was howling like that?”

“No time to explain.” Michael grabbed another bedpost. “We have to get out of here.”

A clawed hand burst through the door, tearing a two-foot long hole in the paneling as it if were tissue paper. Then a bestial face pressed through the opening. “Hello, Mike,” Smiley snarled.

Lina screamed.

Smiley snarled and pushed against the door. The dresser rocked an inch, but then stuck fast, keeping the door from opening.

Michael pulled on the bed, but he was working alone. “Come on, Lina. The rope won’t reach this far. We have to get closer to the window!”

Pushing his hairy arms through the door, Smiley dug his claws into the dresser and lifted. The particleboard broke apart in his hands, and he fell back into the hall with a howl of rage. But the damage was done. The makeshift barricade was in ruins.

Michael let go of the bed and frantically began unknotting the sheet-rope from the bedpost. They were out of time. “Lina, get to the window. I’ll lower you down.”

Lina didn’t move. Deathly pale, she held the bedpost, staring at the broken door with blank, uncomprehending eyes.

“Great,” Michael said. He flogged her with the end of the sheet. “Wake up, Lina! There’s a frigging werewolf in the hall!”

Lina blinked. “Werewolf?”

Smiley burst through the door, showering them with plaster and paneling. Michael pushed Lina toward the window. His hand touched her arm, and the stonesong surged. Lina’s palm blazed like a supernova, filling the room with a blinding, silver light.

Smiley howled. Covering his eyes with his forearm, the Ven tripped over the bed and crashed into the wall.

Michael took his hand away from Lina, and the light died.

Shaking his head like a confused bear, Smiley pushed himself away from the wall.

“Come on.” Grabbing the strap of Michael’s backpack, Lina ran toward the window.

“Lina, are you nu—Whoa!”

“Hang on, Mike!” Lina leapt out the window, dragging Michael behind her into the night.

Shattered glass surrounded Michael in an expanding cloud of debris as he and Lina flew over the deck and into the oak tree.

Michael felt Lina loose her grip on his pack, and gravity took hold. He tried to grab something, but all he caught were leaves as he fell through the not-so-springy branches. He broke clear of the tree, and landed on his backpack with a muffled
thump
.

With far fewer crashing noises, Lina dropped from the leaves and alighted next to him. “You okay?”

Michael made a face. “Ouch.”

“You’re okay,” Lina asserted. She pulled him to his feet. “Come on. We gotta move before that thing comes down here after us.”

“I still need to call the cops.” Michael brushed off the seat of his pants and started toward the driveway. “Mrs. Finche’s house is across the street. We can call from there.”

“Look out!”

Lina’s tackle took Michael at the waist, knocking him to the ground. Something zipped by above his head and struck the oak in a shower of sparks.

Lina sprang off him, and he rolled to his feet. A three-foot long steel rod quivered in the tree beside them, spitting electric-blue sparks from its shaft.

Next to the garage, Skullface lowered what looked like some kind of harpoon gun. Reversing the weapon so that the barrel faced toward the sky, he pulled another rod from a cylindrical black quiver at his waist and slid the rod into the barrel.

“This way,” Michael said to Lina.

He ran for the fence at the back of the yard, making certain he put the oak between them and Skullface’s shock rifle. Mrs. Finche’s house was out. He’d have to find another way to get the Wiffles help.

The privacy fence was six feet high. Lina hurdled the barrier like a gazelle. Grabbing the top of the fence, Michael did a chin-up, threw one elbow over the top of the barrier, and levered himself the rest of the way over. A clanging crash sounded in the yard behind him, followed by venomous cursing.

Michael grinned. Skullface must have tripped over the garbage cans. “That should slow him down.”

Rolling over the top of the fence, he dropped into a vegetable garden watched over by a dozen ceramic gnomes. A few feet away, Lina bounced nervously on her toes.

“Come on. He’s right behind us.”

Michael straightened his backpack. They were in the Nelsons’ yard, a snobbish couple he’d met only briefly when he’d first moved in. “Hang on a sec. I’m thinking.”

The Wiffles needed help, but if he tried to wake the Nelsons they might not answer, or worse, they might think he and Lina were playing some sort of teenage prank.

“What’s the hold-up?” Lina pressed. “Do you want to get caught?”

“I have to call the police first,” Michael said. He nodded toward the Nelsons’ house. “The thing is, I don’t know these people all that well. And I don’t want to stand around trying to convince them while a furry beast-man and some guy with an electric harpoon gun are chasing us.”

Lina began patting frantically at her pockets. Her face screwed up in frustration. “Great. I lost my cell phone.”

Michael hadn’t even thought of using a cell. He’d never had one. He liked his freedom, and a phone would have just allowed the Wiffles to keep closer tabs on him.

“We’ll just have to wake up the neighbors.”

“Fine.” Picking up a garden gnome, Lina jogged toward the house.

“What are you doing?”

“Calling the cops.” Drawing back her arm, she threw the gnome through the Nelsons’ kitchen window. There was a fearful crash. A light flicked on the second floor, and a woman started shouting somewhere inside.

Brushing the dirt from her hands, Lina turned to Michael. “Problem solved. Now what?”

Judging by the Nelsons’ cries of alarm, Michael figured Lina was right. If flying, window-breaking garden gnomes didn’t get the police out here in a hurry, nothing would. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Lina followed him out of the yard, down the driveway to the street. There, they took a right, heading east toward the center of town.

He’d done all he could for the Wiffles. Now, he had to figure out what to do about Lina and the waystone. Without the dollman, there was only one person who might be able to help.

As they turned down Main Street, Lina asked, “Where are we going?”

Michael gave her a sour look. They were running hard. He already had an angry stitch in his side, but Lina wasn’t even breathing heavily. “The bridge,” he panted. “I have a…friend… might…help us.”

Lina smiled impishly. “Want me to slow down?”

“Very…funny.”

“Just a suggestion,” Lina said, still smiling. “I thought you boys were supposed to be tough.”

Michael skidded to a halt.

Lina went on for a couple of steps, then stopped and came back. “I was just kidding. Anyway, this is no time to be so sensitive.”

“That’s not it. The stonesong…there’s something…”

He fumbled as he tried to explain. Since the stonesong’s awakening, the music was a steady hum in his mind, a singular melody he’d learned mostly to ignore. Now, a strange new chord had joined the song, a discordant note that did not belong.

“Something is wrong,” he whispered. “We’re not alone.”

They were near the middle of town, a collection of hundred-year-old buildings of red brick separated by narrow alleyways. The stores had closed hours ago, and the streetlights stood scattered along the street. Shadows, dark and menacing, lurked everywhere.

Lina didn’t waste time asking how he knew such a thing. Moving closer to him, she searched the empty streets and sidewalk through narrowed eyes. “Where?” she whispered.

“I’m not sure,” he replied. “Hang on a sec. I’m going to try something.”

Michael’s eyes glowed silver, and he sent stonesong sweeping out from him in all directions. The strange note wasn’t far, scratching continuously at his mind, making it easy to pinpoint the source amidst the hum of concrete.

His eyes faded to brown, and he pointed to an alley between two office buildings. “There.”

No sooner had he spoken than five black dogs emerged from the dark alleyway. They were huge, each as large as a full-grown lion, possessing long, wolf-like snouts and muscles bunched like steel cables beneath their dark hides. They spread out as they came, moving toward Lina and Michael in a crescent-shaped pack.

“Holy giant Cujo,” Lina choked. “Where did those come from?”

“I don’t know,” Michael said. “Let’s just back away, but not too fast. We don’t want to spook them.”

“Spook them?” Lina scoffed. “Are you trying to be funny?”

The first hound stepped under a streetlight. The dog had brown and green eyes.

“Oh, crud,” Michael said. “Um, Lina?”

“Don’t tell me. The giant dogs are Ven, too?”

He nodded. “Bingo. Remember what I said about not moving too fast?”

“Yeah.”

The giant hounds sprang toward them.

“Forget it. Run for your life!”

Spinning on his heels, he bolted away. Lina was only a step behind. But the dogs were fast, and it took Michael only seconds to realize they couldn’t outrun them. They had to find somewhere to hide.

“This way, Lina.” He ducked into the alley between Pete’s Barbershop and the Flintville Furniture Store.

The dogs were right behind them, but their numbers worked against them in the mouth of the narrow alley, crowding them together and slowing them down.

Michael paused to knock over a couple of garbage cans to discourage pursuit, and Lina swept by him.

A large dumpster blocked all but a thin portion of the alley ahead. Lina leapt over the garbage bin without slowing, and he squeezed his way past the dumpster behind her.

“Keep going,” he said. “They’re right behind us.”

“I can’t.” Lina pointed ahead to the blank wall fifty feet beyond the dumpster. “This is a dead end.”

There was no way out. They were trapped.

The Ven hounds had sorted themselves out. Two by two, they came down the alley with hackles raised and raw hunger gleaming in their mismatched eyes.

Michael searched the ground for some kind of weapon—a pipe, a brick, anything. All he saw were torn cardboard boxes and plastic soda bottles.

“Do something,” Lina told him.

Michael gave her an incredulous look. “Like what?”

She slugged him hard in the arm.

“Ow! What was that for?”

“What do you mean, ‘like what’?” she demanded. “Make with the special effects and smash those mutts. You know, like at the fountain.”

Michael rubbed his throbbing bicep. “I can’t do that here.” That wasn’t exactly true. The bricks called to the stonesong with a hum only a little different from the street or sidewalk. He might be able to stop the dogs, but if he lost control and started breaking things, he could bury them
all
beneath a ton of brick. “If I use the stonesong in here, I could kill us both.”

The first hound edged around the dumpster.

Lina pressed her back to the wall behind her. “We’re going to die anyway if you don’t do something! You have to try.”

The other hounds began moving around the dumpster, and the lead dog took a step toward them.

Michael’s eyes went silver. “You win, Lina.” Pressing his palms against the wall behind him, he bled silver flame into the brick. Merging with the brick and mortar, he spread the stonesong down the length of the alley to the street and took a deep breath. “Cross your fingers. And don’t say I didn’t warn you.”