House of Secrets (9 page)

And the wolf stopped, cocked its head, and ran off behind the house.

Brendan couldn’t believe it. He caught Eleanor as her knees gave out, hugging her with Cordelia, using all his strength to tear off his helmet and kiss her hair.

“What happened?” Eleanor asked. “I thought I was gonna
die
!”

“The wolf must’ve been scared by us.”

“By what, our fierce appearance?” Cordelia said.

“Maybe,”
suggested Brendan.

“Don’t be stupid. It heard something. Listen.”

They all heard it now, far off in the woods: hoofbeats.

“Horses?” Eleanor asked hopefully.

The sound grew louder, drumming through the ground into their legs and the pits of their stomachs. “Everyone inside,” Cordelia said.

“But Deal,” Eleanor began, “I want—”

“
Now.
Someone’s coming!”

Cordelia rushed to the entrance of Kristoff House. Brendan followed, dragging Eleanor with him. They slammed the door and turned all the locks. Brendan tried to set the house alarm, frantically pressing buttons on the keypad.

“Bren!” said Cordelia. “There’s no electricity!”

“Right, my bad.”

Cordelia led them to a window.

“What do you see?” Eleanor asked.

“Shh.”
The truth was that Cordelia found it difficult to describe what she saw without sounding completely insane.

A band of warriors was riding up to the house on horseback. They were muscular and massive and terrifying, from the glinting helmets on their heads to the knifelike spurs that rattled on their leather boots. They had thick, bristly beards and big shining full-plate armor that made her breastplate look like a toy. They carried swords, axes, and bows. Their boots were caked with dried mud . . . or was it blood?

“How many horses are there?” asked Eleanor.

“Seven, I think, but Nell, that doesn’t matter—”

“Let me see!” Eleanor pushed her sister aside. “Oh my gosh!”

Brendan crowded her out. “What is this,
Lord of the Rings
, the reality show?”

The siblings jostled for position, finding a way to all peer out. The warriors dismounted and tied their steeds to trees. They approached the house with caution. The one who was clearly the leader had a maroon feather sticking up from his helmet like a plume of blood. He took off the helmet to reveal pockmarked skin and a scar running from his ear to his chin. When he turned to speak to his men, the Walkers saw the glint of his black, suspicious eyes.

“A witches’ den. This was not here yesterday,” he declared.

One of his compatriots, a red-haired, red-bearded man, grabbed his arm. “Slayne, m’lord, could be a trap.”

Slayne (
Good name,
thought Brendan;
he looks like he’s slain a lot of people
) grinned, twisting his scar like a second smile, baring blackened stumps of teeth. “If there are witches . . . we need to get inside. And quickly kill them all.”

“Um, may I suggest we go to the attic?” whispered Cordelia.

The Walkers dashed away from the window.

At the front door, Slayne grabbed the knob, found it locked, and turned to his redheaded number two. “Krom?”

Krom handed him a battle-ax. Slayne swung. The first blow left a gaping hole in the door. The second sent it flying off its hinges.

Slayne and his men entered, on guard.

“A great battle was waged here,” said Slayne. He drew his sword, stabbed it through the remains of Bellamy Walker’s iPad, and lifted it off the ground. “And at least one of the parties
was
a witch. This appears to be some sort of occult toy for children.”

Slayne led the warriors though the living room and library as the Walkers huddled in the attic. They could hear the warriors’ clomping boots and gruff voices but not their words.

“We can’t just
sit
here,” Eleanor said. “We’ve got to find out what they want. Maybe they know where Mom and Dad are!”

“How do you propose to find that out?” Brendan asked.

“Watch.” Eleanor opened the attic door and started down to the second-floor hallway.

“No, Nell!”

“Stop!”

But it was too late. Eleanor was already opening the door to the dumbwaiter. The warriors were in the kitchen, below her, and sound traveled directly up the hollow shaft. It was like she was in the midst of the warriors as they investigated their alien surroundings.

“This appears to be a witches’ torture chamber,” Slayne said. Eleanor heard the microwave door pop open. “Possibly a box for shrunken victims.” Eleanor stifled a laugh.

In the kitchen, Slayne opened the fridge and paused. Here was a pleasant surprise. His men were all hungry, and the power hadn’t been out long. Slayne tossed an apple aside and went for a jar of Hellmann’s Mayonnaise. Behind him, Krom opened a cabinet, found a box of Cap’n Crunch, sniffed it, and started pouring it into his mouth. “It’th
good
!” Slayne unscrewed the mayo and scooped out a big clump.

Upstairs, Brendan and Cordelia poked their heads over the attic steps to get a report from Eleanor.

“They’re eating our food!” Eleanor said. Then she heard Slayne’s voice through the dumbwaiter.

“This white sauce is mine, men. Touch it under penalty of death. It’s so good, I do believe when we return to Castle Corroway I’ll eat my horse with it. He’s getting on in years; it’s time for a younger steed—”

The men all laughed. That set Eleanor off.

“He can’t kill a horse!” she said, climbing into the dumbwaiter, gauntlets on, brandishing her barbecue fork.

“Nell, stop! You can’t—” Brendan yelled, but she had already closed the door.

I
t was pitch-black in the dumbwaiter. Eleanor could hardly move. If she’d been a foot taller, she never would have fit inside. She twisted to grab one of the bicycle-chain-like cables that the container rode on and pulled one way. The dumbwaiter inched up. So she pulled the other way and started down, moving quickly. The rusty pulleys squeaked. With every foot she descended, the voices of the warriors grew louder.

“Hand me that sweetened meal, Krom!”

“Find your own!”

“We could set up camp here and run raids over the East!”

“It could do with a few slaves to tidy up—”

Halfway down Eleanor started to think she’d made a terrible mistake. Slaves? Raids? This wasn’t some TV show; these men would cut her to pieces. But she couldn’t reverse course and be a coward. Not with Bren and Deal upstairs depending on her.

The dumbwaiter stopped at the kitchen with a metallic
chunk
.

“What was that?” Slayne asked. Eleanor heard him approach. He was only a few feet away, on the other side of the wall—and then he opened the dumbwaiter door.

His black eyes met Eleanor’s. He had mayonnaise in his beard. His rancid-sweat smell hit her like a punch.

“Why, it’s a little witchling,” Slayne chortled to his companions, turning his head—

And Eleanor stuck him in the cheek with her barbecue fork.

“Raagh!”
Slayne brought his hand to his face, shocked that the girl had cut him. Then he plunged his sword into the dumbwaiter. Eleanor shrank back and threw up an arm—

Clang!
The blade glanced off her gauntlet.
“Help!”

Slayne pulled back for another thrust. Eleanor felt a jolt—and the dumbwaiter began to rise rapidly. The next sword strike hit the wall of the shaft below Eleanor, just missing her. She heard Slayne’s bellow of frustration as she moved up in herky-jerky starts until she reached the second floor. Light entered the dumbwaiter . . . and with it the shadows of Cordelia and Brendan.

“Get out!” They yanked her into the hall. “They’re coming!”

A thunderous clamor of metal sounded from the spiral steps. “Kill her!” roared Slayne.

The Walkers ran up into the attic, pulled up the steps, and locked the trapdoor. “Nell! What were you
thinking
?” Cordelia demanded.

Eleanor started to explain—when they heard the deep crunch of an ax biting into wood behind them. They turned to see the tip of Krom’s ax poking through the attic door. It disappeared and struck again. Chunks of wood fell away, leaving a hole. A sword stuck up and slashed around.

“I’m so sorry!
I’m so sorry!
” Eleanor cried.
“I was just trying to be brave, and now we’re all gonna die!”

B
rendan ran to the rollaway bed. There wasn’t much time. Krom kept widening the hole—any minute it’d be big enough to let all the warriors in. Brendan tossed the mattress off the bed and wheeled the metal frame to the window.

“We’re too high up to jump. But if we can get to that tree . . . ”

Cordelia and Eleanor understood. They opened the window, and then helped Brendan lift the front of the frame and shove it out diagonally, so it would fit; then they grabbed the back and lifted that too, pushing it out to make a bridge, hoping it would catch against the gnarled bark of the nearest tree.

“Count of three!” Brendan said. “One . . . two . . . ”

With all their might they heaved.

“Yes!” Cordelia said. The far end of the bed caught. The near end was hooked over the inside of the windowsill. “We did it!”

“You two go first.” Brendan glanced back. There was now a huge hole where the attic door used to be. The stairs, which folded up when the door closed, were gone as well—reduced to splinters. Slayne’s red feather poked through the hole. “Krom, on your hands and knees! I need to get up there!”

Cordelia took the lead. She removed her bulky breastplate and stepped out on the bed, teetering back and forth. She willed herself not to look down. She moved by feel, eyes closed, trusting her balance. The humid air washed across her face as she reached the tree. The thick seams in the bark provided perfect handholds. She started descending.

“Nell!” she called back. “You can do it! Just don’t look down!”

But Eleanor, crouching at the foot of the bed frame, had already looked. The fall was far enough to cripple her, if not kill her.

“C’mon!” Brendan urged.

“I can’t, Bren!”

“You have to!”

“I can’t. I looked down.”

“Then look behind you!”

Eleanor glanced back to see Slayne hoisting himself into the attic. She didn’t give it another thought; she tore off her gauntlets because they made her arms feel clumsy and ran full tilt across the bridge, nearly slamming into the tree at the other end and starting down as Brendan came across last.

Cordelia stood on the ground, urging Eleanor to jump the rest of the way. Brendan reached the tree and kicked the bed frame aside so no one could follow. Eleanor screamed as it fell, diving off the tree to keep from getting hit. Cordelia darted into position and caught her. The frame crashed to earth, smashing ferns and logs. Brendan reached the ground as Slayne appeared in the window and yelled, “Run, sorcerer’s spawn! See how far you get before I gut you!”

Another warrior appeared at the window with a bow and fired off a shot.

The bronze-tipped arrow whizzed past Brendan’s ear and thudded into the earth. Brendan, Cordelia, and Eleanor ran through the woods, slipping on pine needles and wet rocks, no idea where they were headed. The journey across the bed bridge and down the tree had left them with bruises and scrapes that screamed at them. Their armor was gone; none of them had weapons. They were terrified and had no idea how to run without leaving a trail. They didn’t speak, hearing only their breath—and then another sound. Hoofbeats.

The warriors were mounted and gaining. Cordelia stumbled on a root. Brendan grabbed her before she hit the ground. With a
thunk
an arrow spiked into a tree next to him. Eleanor ran as fast as her small legs could carry her. The thoughts going through the Walkers’ heads were less the thoughts of human beings and more the thoughts—
No! Keep going! They’re here!—
of hunted animals.

Slayne, in the lead on his mighty horse, expertly twirled a chain-mail net and let it fly at Cordelia, Brendan, and Eleanor. It landed on top of them like a spider’s web, only a million times heavier. Slayne jerked it, bringing the chains together, and the kids crashed against one another as they were pulled over sharp rocks and sticks and brought to a stop, crying out in pain.