Fenzy (24 page)

He said, “Why do you think we ended up
here
. . .
now
, of all places in all times?”

“The house sent you and Xander to Atlantis,” Dad said. “Why
not
here? Why
not
now?”

“Mom,” David said. “He knew my
name
.”

“Did you think he wouldn’t?” Mom whispered.

Dad got to his feet. “The pull’s getting really strong now. We’d better go.”

The pull . . . the house . . . It seemed weird to David that after all this, he still had things to do. He still had to eat and sleep and breathe. He had to go to school and do the dishes. People still wanted him dead.

He looked at Dad. “What about Taksidian?”

“Let’s hope he’s gone when we get home,” Dad said.

“And if he isn’t?”

“Then we’ll just have to take care of him, won’t we?” Dad said.

Xander shook his head. “It’s not right, what he’s doing. He told me he was
king
of our house, and that’s how he acts, like he can do anything and get away with it.”

Dad said, “It’s not over yet, son.”

David looked down the street where Jesus and the mob had gone. It was empty now, nothing to mark what had happen. “My heart hurts for him,” David said.

“
Heart
,” Xander repeated, pointing at David, and David saw the wheels turning behind his eyes. “I’ll be right back.” He ran off, heading the way they had come before finding Mom.

“Xander!” Dad called.

“Don’t leave without me!”

CHAPTER
fifty-four

S
ATURDAY
, 1:07
P. M
.

Jesse bolted upright in the hospital bed. He felt fantastic. All the energy that had drained out of him with his blood was back. Even his ninety-two-year-old joints didn’t ache, and he hadn’t been free of that burden for ten years.

What in the world . .
. ?

He felt the place just under his bottom rib where Taksidian had stabbed him. Through stiff tape and bandages, there was no pain. He pulled his gown up, worked his fingernails under the tape, and ripped the bandages away. Nothing, not even a scab or a scar.

He looked at his hand. Still missing a finger.
Oh, well
. Guess he couldn’t have everything. He tore the bandages off the stub. Skin had grown over the end, as though he had been born that way.

He scratched his head. He didn’t know any medicine or surgical procedures that could fix all his ailments like this.

Movement caught his eye. The covers at the end of the bed were moving. Holding his breath, he whipped them off. His feet were tapping the air, as if to some unheard tune! He wiggled his toes. He bent his knees and pulled his legs up. Eight years—that’s how long it’d been since he could do that, could move his legs at all.

He looked down at the floor. What was the worst that could happen?

He ripped the IV needle out of his arm. Tore the oxygen tubes from his nose—wincing as the tape plucked whiskers out of his mustache. Stripped the heart monitor sensor and wires from his chest. An alarm sounded.

Glory be!
he thought.
The sound of health and freedom!

He sprang out of bed. His landing was anything but grace-ful. He stumbled forward, wobbled back, grabbed the bed to keep from spilling onto the floor. But he was standing! He tested his knees, felt his weight on his legs, and let go of the bed. He shuffled, then walked to the window. Nice, sunny day. He turned. A wave of dizziness washed over him. He took a step, clenched the bedspread, and leaned against the bed.

Here it comes
, he thought.
The memories . . . the history that changed,
somehow resulting in his recovery
.

But the typical flood of images, of events that had been erased,
didn’t
come. Instead he became aware of something else, something even more incredible. More
miraculous
. The dizziness passed, and he raised his face toward the ceiling. “Thank you,” he whispered.

A nurse ran in. She saw him, and her expression couldn’t have expressed more shock if he’d been a green elephant sip-ping tea. “Mr. Wagner!” she said. “What are you
doing
?”

“Getting out of here, dear,” he said, striding to a cabi-net setup that acted as the room’s closet. “Where are my clothes?”

“They . . . uh . . . “ the nurse stammered. “They’re gone. You have to get back to bed.”

“Why? I’m fine.”

“You
can’t
be,” she said. “You . . . you . . . I’m getting security.”

“Miss!” he said, stopping her movement toward the door. He held his arms out from his sides. “Do I really
look
like I need to be in that bed?”

She stared, at a loss for words.

“I’m an old man,” he said softly, going for a puppy-dog expression he hadn’t attempted in eighty years. “Give me this, at least. Please.”

She thought about it, walked to cardiac monitor, and turned off the alarm. She said, “I think I have a bedpan or two to change.” She winked and walked out.

He looked into the empty closet. No matter. He reached behind him and tied his gown closed. He left the room, spot-ted an exit sign, and went for it.

CHAPTER
fifty-five

A few minutes after he’d left, Xander stormed up to David and the others. “I think he wants payment. He showed me some coins, but we don’t have money. What can I give him?”

“Who?” Dad said.

“The blacksmith.”

Dad got up. “What are you—“ “David,” Xander said, “your necklace.”

“Oh, the one I gave you,” Mom said, touching it. “How sweet.”

“Xander,” David said. “It’s just a cross.”

“Come on,” Xander said. “The guy will freak over it.”

David slipped it off his head and handed it to him. Xander took off again.

“Daddy!” Toria said. Her beaded necklace was extended straight out now.

“I know,” Dad said, trying to keep his tunic down. He took Toria’s necklace from her and held on to it. It was perfectly stiff in his hand, looking like a thick, bumpy stick. “Let’s get ready to go,” he said.

They started toward the pull, keeping an eye out for Xander. As they hurried down the street, Dad told Mom about the note Xander had left—would yet leave?—in Young Jesse’s world. She dropped back and put her arm around David. It felt good having her there, and he realized that as much as he had missed her when she was gone, he hadn’t missed her enough. Her love was bigger than a word like
missing
could replace.

He looked up at the storm clouds, churning black masses in which bolts of lightning flashed like gunfire. They were converging on the city, rolling in from all sides.

The Kings were almost around the bend in the road when David saw Xander running for them. David called to him, and Xander waved.

“Just around the corner, I think,” Dad said.

Xander caught up and David saw the piece of metal in his hand, about the size of a dinner plate. A chain hung from it.

David said, “A weapon, Xander? Really?”

He simply grinned. “We’ll see.”

“There it is!” Toria yelled. “The portal!”

•••••••••

David hit the antechamber’s floor and spilled onto the pile of bodies in front of him: Dad, Mom, and Toria. Xander came through the portal, landed on top, and rolled off. The portal door closed.

“Everybody off,” Dad grunted.

David pushed up from Toria, grabbed her arm, and got her to her feet. He leaned past her to help Mom. He led her to the bench, encouraged her to sit, and sat beside her. He leaned his head into her shoulder and closed his eyes. For the first time in recent memory, his arm wasn’t throbbing, he didn’t feel like their problems would crush him, and he was happy.

“Okay,” Dad said. He was holding his ear close to the hall-way door. “Dae, we’re getting you out of here fast. Straight for the front door. No stopping for anything, got it?”

Everyone nodded.

“Xander, you lead the way. Then Mom, Toria, Dae, and me.”

The wind blew in from under the door. “Oh, no!” Xander said, his eye flashing wide. He clutched the metal he had brought from Jerusalem to chest. “I need this!” he said.

“What—“ Dad said.

“It’s to protect David!”

David pulled open the door. He stuck his head out and looked around. “Get out in the hall,” he said. “Go to the land-ing. We know it takes longer for things to get back to their worlds when they’re outside the antechambers.”

Xander bumped past him and stomped down the hall.

“But you know you can’t keep that thing for long?” Dad yelled after him.

“Just till we get David away,” Xander said.

David shook his head. “As if any weapon’s going to stop Taksidian if he comes after me. Keal said he fights like he’s had martial arts training.“

“Well,” Toria said, “he’s
definitely
taken courses in how to be a mean person.”

The wind billowed through their hair and clothes, pluck-ing atoms of sand and dust off them. Mom quickly pulled off her tunic, leaving her sitting there in the nightgown she’d been wearing when Phemus kidnapped her. It was dirty and ripped, and David felt a new surge of sadness for her, think-ing of what she must have gone through.

The tunic fluttered around the little room and whisked under the portal door.

David waited to feel a tingling on his face. When the wind left without scrubbing his skin, he touched his fingers to his cheek and looked at the blood on them. “Hey,” he said. “It didn’t take Jesus’ blood. It’s always taken the blood before. The Carthaginian soldier’s, the Civil War guy’s. It belongs back where it came from as much as dirt and clothes do.”

Dad nodded, looking puzzled.

“I know,” Mom said. “God lives outside of time. It’s all the same to him, two thousand years ago or two thousand years from now. He’s in all times
all
the time. He belongs everywhere.”

“All right, enough already,” David said, covering his eyes. “I’m having a hard enough time wrapping my head around time travel and changing history and meeting Jesus . . . to name just a few mind-benders.”

Mom smiled and tilted her head. “I was just thinking out loud, dear.”

Something occurred to David. “If you’re right,” he said, “if God does live outside of time, then his letting us use the house to fix history isn’t
weird
to him, right? He must see us as the same people no matter what time we’re in.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what I’m trying to say.”

Mom patted his leg. “It’s nice to hear your voice, no matter what you say.”

Dad stepped into the hallway. “Xander, all clear?”

“As far as I can tell,” Xander called. “I don’t hear anything.”

“Okay, come on,” Dad said, waving his arm to direct his family out of the antechamber.

David noted that the other antechamber doors were closed. A good sign; but then again, how long would it take for Phemus or Taksidian to yank open a door and spring out? He rushed behind Mom and Toria to join Xander on the landing.

Dad peered down the stairs to the first of the false walls. “If you see anything—“

“Dad,” Xander said. “We know.” He pounded down the stairs, the rest of the family on his heels.

CHAPTER
fifty-six

S
ATURDAY
, 1:25
P. M
.

Standing in the foyer, Taksidian heard them coming. He turned to his Atlantian slave. The Kings called him Phemus. Wasn’t that cute? They’d given him a name. Taksidian held his finger to his lips. He pulled the big Bowie knife from a sheath on his belt and quickly looked around for the best ambush point.

He hurried up the grand staircase, staying close to the wall and trying not to make too much noise. He stopped just before reaching the second-floor hall and pushed his back against the wall. The family was descending the third-floor steps. He sus-pected they would go past the walls at the bottom and come down the hallway.

A loud creaking came from below him. Phemus was put-ting his weight on the first step. “Shhh,” Taksidian said.

He thought about how he wanted to do this. What strat-egy would best accomplish his goal of putting all of the Kings into shallow graves out back? Well, maybe not the little girl, he reminded himself. He owed the Atlantian royals one female. It would be too perfect if he could solve all of his nagging problems in one easy burst of activity.

The girl could be leading the Kings’ charge down the stairs.
Better not use the blade right off
, he thought.
Stop them first, then cut
everyone but her
. He had no doubts that he could take them out without a hitch. What were a teacher and three kids to him? He’d defeated squads of royal guards, other assassins. He was so sure of success, he allowed himself a brief thought of the trophies he’d take: a finger from one, a foot from another . . . He’d have his enemy-body-part artwork—which the boy Xander had destroyed—back together in no time.