Lyle was nowhere to be seen. The mouth of the largest cave, taller than he was, opened in the wall straight ahead. Two slightly smaller caves cut in on either side of it.
Which cave is he in?
Will peered back over the ridge. The three riflemen had made no move to follow him. Will looked at his watch: fifteen minutes. Good. The cavalry should have reached the boathouse and connected with Ajay, and if they’d heard the shots, they might already be on their way.
But how quickly would they be able to find him?
Will crept toward the caves. The Paladin mask lay in the snow outside the central cave. Will took out his Swiss Army knife and unfolded the biggest blade. He peered into the darkness of the central cave. A slight breeze blew from inside, and he smelled something foul in the air. Something old and sour and forbidding.
Then he heard Lyle’s voice call out from somewhere deep inside. “I guess you don’t know what an oik is, West.”
Will froze. Lyle’s voice echoed and rolled. The caves sounded very deep.
“An oik is a clot. A commoner. A lesser being of the lower classes, the kind who used to know their place. Visit a mall. Ride a bus. Walk into any public school. They’re infested with them.”
Will stepped into the smaller cave on the left and crouched in the shadows just inside, waiting for his eyes to adjust. He collected two round rocks the size of baseballs and stuck them into the pockets of his vest. He couldn’t see Lyle yet, so he closed his eyes, pulled up the grid, and found him:
Thirty yards to the right, in the next chamber. He saw that all the caves were interconnected, a vast warren of chambers and passages honeycombing the entire ridge.
“The problem is you oiks don’t know your place anymore. Oh, you still want your bread and circuses, your junk food and blood sports. But a steady diet of garbage isn’t enough to pacify you now. You think because our culture panders to all your infantile impulses that now you’re supposed to have a voice. That we should have to listen to you.”
Will inched forward to the nearest opening in the sandstone. A white-hot glow issued from the chamber to his right.
“You believe you’re all so special! You couldn’t possibly be responsible for your own dead-end lives—you’ve got too much self-esteem. You’re all stars just waiting to be discovered. Forget self-discipline or education or knowing the right people. The world’s one big talent show and all you have to do is show up.”
Will reached the edge of the passage and peeked around; the ceiling of the adjacent chamber arched up more than thirty feet. It was illuminated by the unnatural light issuing from the hooked steel rod—the Carver—that Lyle held in his hand. He was using the rod to trace a huge circle in the air, nearly complete, over six feet in diameter. Its rough outline burned with blinding intensity.
“We stand for something different here. Eternal verities: honor, values, leadership. Now more than ever. A new breed ready to maintain our traditions. It was all going according to plan until you walked in. An oik crashing the cocktail party. Well, let me make one thing perfectly clear: Over my dead body.”
Lyle finished tracing the circle. An energy field crackled to life around the edges, the air blurred and glimmered, and a portal slowly opened inside the circle. Lyle held up the rod, the glyphs engraved in its handle glowing brightly.
Dave’s got my back. With that thought fortifying him, Will gripped one of the rocks in his pocket and stepped forward. “If that’s the way you want it, Lyle.”
Lyle whipped around, and his wild eyes found Will. “You know what happened to the last people who stood in our way? They call themselves Native Americans, as if they were here first.”
“They were here first.”
“Those pathetic primitives believed these caves led to the underworld,” said Lyle. “That their gods used them to pass between here and the spirit realm. They had it all wrong.” Lyle held up his hands to the hole, proudly displaying his handiwork. “The only passage here now is to the Old Ones … in the Never-Was.”
Lyle pointed the rod at Will and a beam of burning white light shot out at him. Will pushed out a thought shield just in time and deflected the beam into a wall, but it nearly knocked him over. Lyle was still stronger, and with that weapon in hand, he was a lot stronger. Will ducked back into cover. Two more bursts followed, cracking the rock, blasting holes in the walls.
What if Dave isn’t coming this time? What was it he said? “Learn. Learn fast.”
Will rose up and threw the first stone three feet to Lyle’s right. Lyle smiled confidently and raised the rod to fire again. Will closed his eyes, stretched out his grid, and found the rock flying into the darkness. He grabbed hold and found a way to invest its mass with some part of himself. Then all he had to do was think about it: The rock swung around and boomeranged back toward Lyle.
I’m learning.
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#48: NEVER START A FIGHT UNLESS YOU CAN FINISH IT. FAST.
The rock cracked into Lyle’s arm just above the elbow, knocking the rod out of his hand. Lyle screamed in pain and fell to his knees. Will threw the second rock at the rod and knocked it back into the cave, out of sight.
Lyle went down hard, turning to protect his wounded arm. Will jumped on top of him, straddled his chest, and pinned him to the ground. He held the blade of his knife under Lyle’s chin. Lyle looked up at him once, gulped in a deep breath, and started to bawl in great chuffing sobs, like a heartbroken toddler. The creep’s anguish was so authentic it almost made Will feel sorry for him.
Then he saw a knot of raised flesh on the left side of Lyle’s neck, twitching around like a joystick.
Damn. A Ride Along.
Will watched in horror as the thing extruded out of the knot on Lyle’s neck. A mottled six-inch black stalk with short barbed arms and eight blinking angry eyes in a furious, contorted half-human face spit and hissed at Will.
Without even thinking, Will flicked his knife and sliced the creature off at the stem. The severed stalk flopped to the ground, uttered a hideous mewling screech, and scuttled into the dark, dragging its leaking, carved-up carcass.
The knot on Lyle’s neck collapsed like a deflating balloon, lost its color, and lay flat. Lyle heaved a blubbering sigh.
“I hurt,” said Lyle, looking at Will with wounded eyes. “Really bad. All over.”
“What do you expect from me?” asked Will. “First aid? You tried to kill me!”
Lyle cried some more, softly, inconsolable. “I didn’t want to,” Lyle whimpered. “They made me do it.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re afraid of you,” said Lyle.
“Who made you do this? How?”
Lyle showed Will his neck. “He ordered me to put that thing on myself,” he said, his voice thick and trembling. “Two days ago. Because I wouldn’t kill you.”
“The Bald Man?”
Lyle nodded, looking for sympathy.
“Who is he, Lyle?”
“We call him Mr. Hobbes,” said Lyle in a small voice. “He showed up last year when I joined the Knights. He tested me. My abilities.”
“You mean, what you can do to people,” said Will.