Lyle nodded, tears leaking from his eyes. “And he said I was going to be very important … because I was the first one to Awaken.”
“What does that mean? The first of what?”
“Of the Prophecy,” said Lyle intensely. “He said I was the first, and because of that big plans were in the works for me to help them—”
“What’s the Prophecy, Lyle?”
“—and then you came along,” said Lyle, turning petulant. “It’s all your fault. You ruined my life.”
“What is the Prophecy?”
“We all are!” Lyle’s face twisted into a knot and his voice fell to a whisper. “A-T-C-G. A-T-C-G—”
Will shook him with both hands. “Goddamn it, Lyle, tell me what I need to know! Is the school behind this?”
“The school?” Lyle looked perversely pleased, almost giddy.
“Do they know about it?” demanded Will.
“Some. I don’t know how many,” said Lyle, then lowered his voice again. “You need to start at the beginning. At the clinics.”
“What clinics?”
“See how you like the news. Then ask yourself, Who am I … really? And the best of luck to you,” said Lyle as all his brute nastiness returned. “Oik.”
A deep rumbling burst out of the portal behind them and grew louder until the ground shuddered around them, shaking rocks loose from the walls. An eerie moan pierced the air. The hair on Will’s neck stood up. He turned to look.
A shadowy swirling mass loomed up inside the portal Lyle had opened.
“What did you bring over, Lyle?”
Lyle stared at the portal, terrified. “Wendigo,” he mumbled.
Will slipped Dave’s glasses out of his vest and put them on. An immense semihuman frame appeared on the far side of the portal.
“Please, help me,” pleaded Lyle.
Will yanked Lyle to his feet and pulled him toward the mouth of the cave, but Lyle broke free, pushed Will away, and ran toward the portal. Will looked back and saw the thing step out of the hole.
It was a gaunt giant with a sickening loose hide, mottled and gray, covered with long dank hair. Its long leathery arms and legs ended in talons. Clumps of eyes and knots of gnawed limbs poked out of its exposed rib cage. A grotesque grin of razor-sharp teeth split its face below poisonous deep-set yellow eyes gleaming with hunger and spite. A jet-black darkness moved with it, flowing around it like a cloud.
Lyle walked right up to it, raising his hands in supplication. The creature regarded him curiously.
“I called you over,” said Lyle, smiling darkly; then he turned and pointed at Will. “He’s the one you want.”
When Lyle turned back to it, the thing opened its maw and a long tentacle of flesh shot out and attached itself to Lyle’s face with a wet slap. Lyle’s body stiffened. His limbs thrust out and his whole body pitched and thrashed violently. He let loose an unearthly muffled howl, as if his soul were being run through a log splitter. Moments later, Will thought he saw Lyle’s face appear inside the cage of the thing’s ribs, screaming in agony.
Will backed away, numb with terror, as the wendigo released Lyle and he flopped to the floor of the cave. As Will fled the cave, he heard the wendigo stomping after him. He expected its vile touch to fell him at any moment.
Then he heard … what, an engine? Some kind of motor? Will looked up but the sky seemed unbelievably bright.
“Get down, mate.”
Dave’s Prowler ripped up and over the ridgeline. It soared into the air, arcing over Will, gunned full throttle. Dave leaned out the window, his sidearm blazing as he slammed the Prowler straight into the wendigo at the mouth of the cave.
The collision drove the creature back inside. It planted its feet and grabbed the car in its massive hands. Metal pinched and notched as the wendigo crushed the car like a child’s toy. Dave leaped out of the wreckage and with a burst of light powered up into the full angelic form Will had seen briefly in his room: eight feet tall, platinum armor, wielding a gleaming silver-blue sword.
Dave and the creature savaged each other, trading staggering blows. Dave absorbed fearsome damage in order to drive the thing back. It yielded ground, Dave spinning his sword like a scythe. The air sparked around them like the Fourth of July until, with a devastating combination, Dave smashed the wendigo’s shadowy mass back into the portal.
Will watched from his knees just outside the cave as the portal began to contract. Dave shrank back to human size, bleeding from a dozen wounds. Will saw a fearful look in Dave’s eyes he’d never seen before.
“You all right?” asked Dave, his chest heaving.
Will nodded. “What about you?”
“Been better. That was a nasty one. One of the big boys—”
He took one step toward Will. Suddenly the long desiccated limbs of the wendigo shot out of the contracting portal behind Dave and snared him around the waist.
“Buzzard’s luck, mate,” said Dave. He reached into his pocket and threw something. It plugged down into the snow just outside the cave.
“No!” shouted Will.
Then the thing yanked Dave back into the Never-Was just as the portal winked shut and vanished.
The cave went silent. Will pulled off his glasses and fumbled them into his pocket. Heart thumping, he staggered outside, dropped to his knees, reached a hand down into the puncture in the snow, and found something solid.
Dave’s glass cube, with the two black dice spinning inside.
Will heard an engine sound again, loud and getting louder. He looked up at the sky.
Hovering above him, a helicopter angled sideways as it slowed and lowered toward the ridge. He saw a door slide open on its side, and a rope ladder tumbled out, someone tossing it down to him, and he thought—
I know him. Who is he? Wait, it’ll come to me.…
Yes, that’s Headmaster Rourke.
OceanofPDF.com
MOM AND DAD
Are you Awake? He’s an only child … 1990 … the Paladin Prophecy … Roman numerals … clinics … test scores … the Greenwood Foundation.
Open all doors, and Awaken.
Fragments swirled in Will’s mind. He slowly became aware that he was lying on his back, on a bed with crisp linen sheets. No idea how long he’d been out. And he felt someone was there with him. He opened his eyes. He was in a room in the medical center. When he looked around, there they were, both of them, sitting by his bed in the pale moonlight.
Mom and Dad. Jordan and Belinda. Really them. When they saw him come around, they hurried to his side and held him in their arms, took turns hugging him.
“We were so afraid we’d lost you,” said his mom. “Thank God, Will.”
“I knew you were all right,” said Will. “The whole time. I just knew it.”
“We’re so proud of you, son,” said his dad. “They’ve filled us in on everything. We knew you could do it.”
“I don’t know how. I really don’t. I had a lot of help from my friends. I couldn’t have done it alone.”
“We never doubted you,” said his mom.
“You came through for us, Will,” said his dad. “Exactly the way we trained you. The way we always expected you to.”
“Where have you been?” asked Will. “What happened to you?”
Jordan and Belinda looked at each other and smiled a secret smile. As his mom turned her head, Will saw her neck: no scar.
“Should we tell him?” asked Jordan, cleaning his glasses.
Belinda smiled gently, reached over, and absentmindedly brushed the hair off Will’s forehead. “There’s so much to tell,” she said.