Pegasus and the Flame (17 page)

The stallion’s eyes were wide and bright with fear as his nostrils remained flared. He gently nuzzled her neck.

‘That was too close,’ Joel said as Steve inspected the carriage for damage. ‘This thing was ready to break before the attack. One more flight like that and it won’t last another minute.’

‘We were lucky back there,’ Steve said grimly as he tested the large wheels. ‘But we’ve got to keep ahead of the Nirads. Those four arms are lethal.’

‘They are,’ Diana said. ‘And with their three eyes, they have full directional vision.’

‘Three eyes?’ Joel asked. ‘Really? Where’s the third one?’

‘In the back of their head, under all that filthy hair,’ Diana explained. ‘From what we have learned, they do not see well out of it. But it is enough that you can never take them by surprise.’

‘How can we ever beat them?’ Emily asked. The fever flared, making her feel even more weak and tired. ‘They’re too strong.’

‘We need that bridle,’ Diana uttered. ‘With it we can defeat them.’

‘Plus the Flame,’ Joel added. ‘Once Pegasus gets the Daughter of Vesta back to Olympus to relight the Flame, you should have your powers back. Right?’

Diana nodded. ‘That is correct. But we must keep away from the Nirads until Pegasus is ready to fly again. He is our only way home.’

Emily was leaning heavily against Pegasus for support. Her father felt her face.

‘You’re getting worse,’ he said worriedly. ‘Come on. Let’s get you back into the carriage. You need some sleep.’

Emily didn’t resist when her father lifted her into the carriage. A second blanket had been stored under the seat. He pulled it out and draped it over her. ‘Settle down and rest,’ he advised. ‘I’m going to try to find us somewhere to hide for the night. Then when the city starts to wake again, we can blend in with the other carriages and start to make our way off Manhattan.’

As her father climbed back up into the driver’s seat, Diana settled in beside her. She put her arm around Emily protectively and drew her closer. ‘Sleep, child,’ she said softly. ‘We will be going home soon.’

When Emily awoke, the sun was up and the sounds of the city had returned to their normal noisy pitch. But there still seemed to be more police sirens than usual, and the frightening sounds of the helicopters could still be heard overhead.

Diana was still beside her. But her father and Joel were gone.

‘Where are we?’ Emily asked groggily as she looked around.

They appeared to be on a building site hidden amongst several large cement mixers. A large scaffold was built above them, blocking them from the view of the helicopters that still flew very low over the city.

‘Your father knew of this place and brought us here,’ Diana explained. ‘He said we should be safe for a while. He said it was in a place called Downtown. Though I am not certain what that means.’

Emily felt relieved. ‘That means we’re well away from the stables,’ she said.

Pegasus was still tethered to the carriage. He nickered softly and tried to look back at her.

‘Morning, Pegs,’ Emily said softly.

‘Sleeping Beauty wakes,’ her father called.

Steve and Joel were approaching through a hole in the tall fence surrounding the building site. They both carried several bags of food. At their approach, Pegasus whinnied.

‘He smells the sugar,’ Joel said. He looked at Diana. ‘I bet you’ll need some too. We’ve got lots for you both.’

‘And I’ve got more stuff for your leg,’ Emily’s father told her as he put the bags down on the ground. He reached for her forehead. ‘The fever’s down a bit, but not a lot. How are you feeling?’

‘Not too bad,’ Emily lied. The truth was she felt awful. Her head was pounding, her body ached and her leg was throbbing painfully to each beat of her heart. ‘I’m fine for today. I just hope we can get out of New York before the Nirads find us again.’

‘We will,’ her father said. ‘Now, we’ve got fresh bagels and cream cheese for us. Diana, you and Pegasus can have the cereal.’

‘Guess what?’ Joel added, reaching into one of the bags. ‘We made the front page of all the papers!’ He handed several newspapers to Emily. ‘Look at the headlines.
FLYING HORSE EXPOSED AS A HOAX!
Can you believe it? Half a million people saw us soaring up 5th Avenue and they are calling it a big hoax!’

Emily looked at the grainy images of their panicked escape flight. The pictures looked like they had been taken from a camera phone and blown up too large to clearly see any details. She could see Pegasus and his huge white wings. But she couldn’t see her or Joel’s faces.

She quickly scanned the article. ‘A movie stunt? Do they really expect the people who saw us to believe it was a stunt to promote a new movie? And look, they don’t even mention the Nirads! How dumb do they think people are?’

‘They don’t think they’re dumb at all.’ Steve pulled more items from the bags. ‘But you can bet the CRU ordered the papers to print that. I’m sure if anyone tried to challenge the story, they can expect a visit from a not so friendly CRU agent to set them straight. This is probably the best thing that could have happened for us. The public won’t be adding to the search. Especially now that Pegasus is …’ Her father paused and tried to think of the best possible words. Finally he said, ‘Now that he’s not white any more.’

In the bright daylight, Emily could see that their midnight dye job on Pegasus was awful. The stallion’s head and part of his neck and mane were black. But further down his front legs, a sharp, distinct line changed to brown. Then a bit further down his back, the colour changed to medium brown. At the end of the blanket, his exposed rump and tail were black again. He looked as strange now as he had when he was glowing white.

‘Let’s eat and then get moving again.’ Steve pulled out the rest of the food. ‘We’ve got a lot to do today and not a lot of time to do it.’

As expected, Pegasus was starving. The stallion hungrily went through three large boxes of sweet, sugary cereal and several bags of brown sugar and honey before he started to slow down.

Diana was much the same. Emily watched in amazement as she ate handfuls of the cereal from the box and washed it down with honey straight from the bottle.

‘This is delightful,’ Diana said with a mouth full of food. ‘What do you call it?’

‘Some like to call it breakfast,’ Steve chuckled. ‘But most of us call it garbage. There’s enough sugar in that cereal to keep a kid hyperactive all day.’

‘But it’s as close to ambrosia as we could get,’ Joel added.

‘It is very good,’ Diana agreed. ‘Different from ambrosia or nectar, but it will do nicely.’

After the cereal, Diana and Pegasus finished off two boxes of honey-glazed doughnuts.

Emily watched Diana wolfing down the food and thought she was going to be sick. Her father had brought a bagel for her, but she couldn’t eat it. She caught him watching her, but was grateful when he didn’t nag her to eat.

‘Your world has changed a great deal since I was last here,’ Diana said as she reached for the last doughnut. ‘It is not all bad after all.’

‘Well, we do have our good points,’ Steve said as he began cleaning Emily’s wounds and changing the bandages. Though he didn’t press Emily to eat her bagel, he made sure she took the painkillers. When he finished bandaging her leg, he sat back and shook his head. ‘We’ve got to get that looked at soon. It’s getting worse.’

Emily didn’t need her father to tell her that. She already knew it. And she suspected that Pegasus knew as well. The stallion kept looking back to check on her, whinnying softly.

‘Well, it’s almost seven,’ said Steve, checking his watch. ‘We’d better start making a move. The contractors will be back to work any minute. I don’t want them to find us here and see what we’ve done to their fence.’

‘Isn’t it too early for the other carriages to be out?’ Emily asked.

‘We don’t have much choice,’ said her father. ‘If we take our time heading uptown, maybe no one will notice.’

As the food was packed away and the stallion’s wings thoroughly covered, Emily’s father sat in the driver’s seat again. ‘You ready to go, Pegasus?’ Pegasus whinnied and started to move. ‘We’ve got to make it to the 59th Street Bridge.’

‘59th Street?’ Diana repeated. ‘Excuse me, Steve, but is that not where the CRU are concentrating their efforts to find us? You wish to go there?’

‘We don’t have much choice,’ he explained. ‘The bridge is the closest above-ground route off Manhattan,’ said Steve. He took up the reins. ‘We can’t take the tunnels or the ferries. Besides, with the Nirads rampaging through the city, I’m sure the CRU and military have their hands full. Hopefully, we can stay under their radar.’

He looked at the stallion. ‘All right, Pegasus, let’s get going,’ he said. ‘But nice and easy. We don’t want to draw too much attention to ourselves.’

Pegasus nickered once and started to move.

Paelen was once again handcuffed to the bed. This time, there were cuffs on his ankles as well as his wrists.

The blow to the head had only stunned him for a few moments. But when he awoke and begged the men to help Pegasus, his pleas were ignored.

Agent J stood beside his bed, glaring at him. ‘I would suggest you reconsider speaking to us,’ he said. ‘I am authorized to use full force to get what I need from you. You have until dawn to decide. You will either tell me the truth, or I will use methods infinitely more unpleasant than you have ever known. The choice is yours.’

But Paelen already knew what he planned to do. He had no intentions of cooperating. His only thoughts now were to get to Pegasus and warn him.

When Agent J and his men had gone, Paelen concentrated on the problem at hand. Getting the cuffs off wouldn’t be difficult. The big problem was getting out of the facility. Agent J had claimed they had serpents’ eyes watching him. The fact that they caught him on the lower level proved Agent J’s words to be true. But was there anything watching him in here?

Paelen strained his eyes carefully studying every wall and every area of his room, searching for anything that might look like a serpent’s eye. He saw nothing out of the ordinary.

He was convinced the serpents’ eyes were only in the corridors. With that route blocked to him, he would have to find a different way out of the facility. Once again, he looked up to the air vent above his bed. That would be his escape. He felt certain there wouldn’t be any serpents’ eyes in there. Decision made, Paelen turned his attention to the handcuffs and reluctantly used his one Olympian skill.

It was incredibly painful. Starting with his right wrist, he folded his thumb in tightly and started to pull. Just like all the other times he had been chained in Olympus, Paelen was able to stretch out the bones in his hand until the metal of the cuff slid off. He repeated the process with his left hand.

With both hands free, Paelen sat up and reached for the cuffs on his ankles. He winced in pain as the bones in his feet stretched out until the cuffs simply slid away. When he was free, he returned his shape to normal with a sigh of relief.

Paelen pressed his ear to the door and heard voices. He counted at least three men posted outside his door. They were locked in a deep conversation, talking about something called football. With their attention diverted, they would never hear him go.

Paelen climbed on his bed. Standing on his pillows, his keen eyes scanned the air vent. It would be a tight fit, even for him. But if he stretched himself out long enough, he knew he could squeeze through.

There were only four screws holding the cover to the mount. He caught hold of one of the edges and started to apply pressure. It took very little effort to pull the vent cover away from the wall. He hid it under his pillow.

Paelen stole a quick look back to the door and then reached up. He pressed his palms firmly against the inner metal walls of the duct and hauled himself up to the vent.

As he had suspected, the entrance to the air duct was brutally tight. Paelen had to painfully stretch every bone in his body to slip through. It was only then he realized his ribs weren’t completely healed yet. As he moved, he felt sharp twinges of warning pain from the altered length of his ribcage.

Biting back the pain and wincing at every move, he entered the countless tunnels of ductwork. The ducts themselves were much larger than the entrance had been and he was able to return his body to its normal shape.

Crawling forward on his hands and knees, Paelen used every sense to listen for danger. When he reached a T-junction, he paused. To his left, he heard nothing. It was still very early in the morning and there weren’t many people in the facility yet. But to his right, he heard voices. Paelen recognized one of the voices. It was Agent J.

What he was saying wasn’t clear. But Paelen was certain he heard the word ‘Pegasus’. Agent J was talking about the stallion!

Paelen followed the voices, moving as quickly and quietly as he could. Moment by moment, the agent’s voice was getting louder. He approached a short tunnel and saw a light at the end shining through another vent. Through the vent, he heard Agent J speaking to two other men.

He approached the opening. Paelen discovered that if he moved his head just right, he could actually see through the louvred grill and down into the office.

Agent J was sitting at a large desk, his back to the vent. Paelen almost gasped aloud when he saw one of Mercury’s sandals sitting on the desk before him. Agent J was waving the second one in the air while he spoke. Paelen looked at the other men and saw the younger one he knew as Agent O sitting before the desk. The third man seated beside Agent O was unknown to him.

‘So, what do you think?’ Agent J asked.

Agent O shrugged. ‘I just don’t know. But there are too many coincidences for it not to be true. The kid’s test results and the way he sticks to the same story over and over again. Those sandals and that winged horse, Pegasus? What about those creatures in the city? I hate to admit it, but I’m beginning to believe him. I think we might actually be dealing with a bunch of Olympians and not the aliens we first thought.’

Agent J turned to the other man. ‘What about you, Agent T?’