Magisterium (7 page)

As Sturges approached, Glenn dropped her shoulder and spun, throwing herself into the hard shell of one of the agents’s armor, knocking him off balance. As he righted himself, Glenn dove through the door with Kevin behind her. Sturges shouted something and the agents were after them. Kevin pulled a bookshelf down to block their way and then threw the back door open and together they raced out into the snow.

Glenn spared a look back when they hit the edge of the woods.

The agents were halfway across the yard, sleek black rifles in their hands.

A skiff was gliding over the house and coming into position behind them. The lead agent raised his weapon and fired, sending bullets tearing into the ground and the trees. The muscles in Glenn’s legs were screaming but she kept pumping.

As the greater darkness of the woods closed over them, they zigzagged, leaping over logs and rocks and sudden swells of ground in their way. Finally the red glow of the border lights became visible ahead of them. The agents were behind them, moving fast. Glenn could tell from the sound of their footsteps that there were more of them now.

Four at least. She and Kevin had managed to put some distance between them, but it was only a matter of time. A trio of gunshots roared out as they cleared a hill. Kevin flinched at the sound and stumbled down the hill, end over end. Glenn raced to meet him, caught his arm, and nearly fell trying to get him back up.

“Kevin —”

He yanked away from her. “Forget it. I’m fine. Let’s go.”

Another round of gunfire followed and Kevin threw himself

forward. Glenn’s legs were already cramping and the way Kevin was stumbling and had his hand dug into one side, she knew they didn’t have more than a few minutes of running left in them.

They passed under the lights that marked the border, ducking low through an opening in the trees. The woods grew denser the farther they went, slowing them down as they picked through the brush for a path.

From what Glenn could hear, the agents weren’t faring much better.

She was able to catch her breath, but still, no pang of hope grew in her chest.
Even if we lose them we’re just escaping into a wasteland.

“You should go back,” she called to Kevin as they came to a clearing, but Kevin said nothing. He was hunched over, panting, one palm pressed flat onto a tree trunk to keep standing.

“You’re exhausted,” Glenn said. “You can’t keep this up. They want me, not you. You should go back.”

Kevin took another step but then his foot slipped on a snow-slick rock and he fell into a heap on the ground.

“Kevin!”

Glenn dropped down, turning Kevin over to get his face up out of the snow. His skin was waxy and gray, his lips blue. Lines of pain shot across this face. His head lolled, frighteningly boneless, like a doll’s.

He moaned and lifted his hand to his forehead. It was covered in something as thick and black as oil.

“Kevin, what’s …”

Glenn yanked his leather jacket open. His white T-shirt was soaked through from neck to tail with blood, its redness black in the moonlight.

“Kevin, no.”

Glenn scrambled to lift up his shirt. The bullet wound in his side was ringed in tattered flesh. Blood oozed from it, pooling beneath him.

A wave of panic crashed into Glenn. She leaned into the wound, her thin arms quivering. Kevin howled but she pressed harder. She had hoped the soaked T-shirt would hold back the blood, but she could already feel it seeping through the fabric and onto her fingers. Kevin moaned again, weaker this time. His eyes opened. They were

unfocused and hazy, wild. His life was flowing out of him.

Glenn turned back the way they had come, the panic turning to hysteria. She had no choice.

“We’re here!” she screamed, shredding her throat, hoping the agents would hear her, hoping they would come. “We’re here! Please help us! PLEASE!”

Glenn turned to Kevin, bundling his jacket over the wound. “It’s okay,” she said, trying to control her voice, trying to slow it down and sound calm and sure. “They’ll come and we’ll get you on the skiff and to a hospital.”

She turned back again. Where were they?

“PLEASE HELP US!”

Glenn tore off her own jacket and piled it on Kevin’s side, leaning her whole weight into it. She was about to yell again, but just then there was a rustle of branches behind her as the agents came through the trees. A flash of anger hit Glenn when she saw the guns in their hands, but she pushed it aside.

“I’ll go with you; please, just take him to the hospital!”

The agents stood impassively at the edge of the woods. Four huge men in armor, faceless in their helmets.

“What are you waiting for? Please, I know what I did was wrong.

I shouldn’t have run. That wasn’t Kevin’s fault. He didn’t do anything.

Please don’t punish him.”

The agents said nothing. Glenn tried to tear the bracelet off, but her hands, slick with blood, slid off its surface.

“Take it. Take it and help him! What’s the matter with you, just take it!”

One of the agents raised his rifle.

“No,” another said. “Not here. You’ll have to use the knife.”

The agent’s hand dropped to a knife strapped to his waist. It whispered out into the air between him and Glenn as he advanced.

“Please,” Glenn said, backing away.

But the faceless man kept coming. She couldn’t run and leave Kevin; she couldn’t fight. Deep inside her mind she cried out for her father. The agent’s boots crunched through the snow. Glenn took Kevin’s hand in hers.

Just then, a low moan cut through the woods behind Glenn and surrounded them, echoing through the trees.

The agent stopped.

Something large lumbered in the dark behind Glenn. Tree limbs fell. Rocks tumbled. The agent held up his hand for silence. The moan rose again. Closer now, sharper. More like a growl. It had a wildness to it that made Glenn tremble.

“It’s nothing,” one of the older agents said. “An animal. Go on.”

“Leave them here, then,” said another. “Take the bracelet and we’ll go.”

The agent with the knife nodded and reached for Glenn’s

bracelet.

Glenn was dimly aware of something soaring through the air

above her, a massive shadow blotting out the moonlight. Then there was a scream and the agent in front of her disappeared, wiped away like someone swept out to sea. He was there, and then he was gone, and in his place was a great dark mass crouching between Glenn and the three remaining agents. The agents moved toward it immediately —then stopped as the mass unfolded, rising up into the cold air until it reached its full height.

When it did, Glenn’s eyes went wide and one of the agent’s guns dropped into the snowbank with a crunch.

Whatever it was, it was at least seven feet tall with a broad chest, long arms, and legs roped with muscle. Its hands were bunched into fists; when they unfurled, Glenn saw fingers topped in claws.

On the ground in front of it, the agent with the knife lay on his back. There was a gash in his bulletproof armor, and the snow around him was soaked with blood.

The other three agents froze, looking one to the other until one of them edged closer, reaching for their fallen comrade. He stopped when the creature released a low growl. There was a rumble in its throat and its muscles tensed, ready to spring at them.

“No!”

The thing’s head snapped toward Glenn. In the half-light, she couldn’t make any sense of it. It seemed misshapen, huge and angular.

It regarded her for a moment and then turned back to the agents. It was too late. Glenn looked down into the snow; she didn’t want to see this.

There were no sounds of movement, though, and no screams —

just a deep intake of breath and then a roar that was unlike anything Glenn had ever heard. She could feel it pulsing through her body, deep into her bones. It made some primitive part of her go cold.

When it finally stopped, Glenn managed to look up. The three agents had abandoned their friend and fled into the woods, leaving him lying in his widening pool of blood. The thing crept up to his still body, hunching over it, its claws dripping blood. A moan resounded through the thing’s body as it reached out to him.

“Leave him alone!”

It turned toward her. Glenn squeezed Kevin’s hand in hers and shut her eyes. She could feel the heat of the creature and smell the wild stink of it as it approached, drawing to within inches of her. The hot wind of its breath blew on her face as it leaned in.

Every muscle in Glenn’s body went rigid as she waited to feel teeth and claws. But instead, it spoke.

“Come,” it said in a low rumble. “Come with me, Glennora

Amantine.”

The creature that killed the agent took Glenn and Kevin into its arms and raced through the forest. Glenn could only see flickering shadows and feel the wind and the branches as they whipped by. The roar from moments ago echoed in her mind.

They were moving deeper into the land beyond the border. Glenn let her head fall back and peered up into the sky, hoping to catch sight of stars that would give her a better estimate of how far they had come, but they were moving too fast and the forest was too thick.

“Where are you taking us? My friend needs a hospital. We have to go back!”

The creature picked up speed again and leapt into the air with a grunt, flying over a crack in the earth that had to be ten or twenty feet across. Glenn shut her eyes as the earth came rushing up to meet them, the cold wind tearing through her hair. They hit the ground with a jolt and then were off again without a pause, speeding through woods more wild and overgrown than any Glenn had ever seen.

Glenn didn’t know how long they ran, but when they finally

stopped, the creature set her down on one side of a long scar in the ground, and itself and Kevin on the other. Glenn could hear water running between them.

Glenn sat in a patch of moonlight, but the opposite shore was shaded by overhanging trees and was too dark for Glenn to see anything more than the creature’s immense shadow hunched over Kevin’s body like an animal preparing to feed. It leaned forward until it was only inches from Kevin’s side and sniffed at the wound.

“What are you doing?” Glenn asked.

It turned to scan the woods around them.
What is it looking for?

“We have to go back. Listen to me. We —” But before Glenn

could finish, it was gone, crashing through the undergrowth. What was it? Glenn wondered. And how could something so big move so fast?

Glenn sat frozen. Soon the noise of its movement faded, leaving only the sound of water flowing over rocks and Kevin’s slight breathing.

Glenn listened for any other movement in the trees. Nothing. She braced her hands on the slimy rock beneath her and got up into a low crouch, looking down at an undulating black streak of water. The thermals in her clothes kept her warm enough, but she wasn’t sure she’d survive a dip in the icy water. Kevin lay across from her, his chest barely moving. Glenn extended one slippered foot out in front of her and across the space between the shores. Once she was safely on the other side, she dropped down by Kevin’s side and lifted his head into her lap.

“Kevin?”

His skin was cold and damp. His clothes were cold too — his thermals really weren’t working. Glenn lifted him up and stretched her arms across his chest, pressing her body into his, trying to share her warmth. She wiped the cold sweat from his cheek. As she did, the red jewel of the bracelet glinted.

Why didn’t I give it to Sturges?
Glenn thought bitterly.
If I had
handed it over to him when he’d asked, Kevin would be fine.

Glenn wondered if she could carry Kevin back over the border herself and get to a hospital. She tried to piece together the route they had taken to get there. If she could find a place where the woods were thinner and keep her eyes on the stars, she thought she could keep them heading east, which would bring them to the border eventually.

Kevin moaned as Glenn gathered him up into her arms.

“Put him down.”

The creature loomed in the darkness behind the trees. Its chest was like an iron gate blocking her way. Glenn remembered the rock-like feel of its arms, and the sound of the agent’s scream.