“I said, ‘You’re coming with me,’ ” he repeated.
Molly drove her fist—and the three-inch flooring nail that was sticking out of her fist—up under the Giant’s chin.
The Giant’s eyes went wide as the nail sank into him. His hand opened and Molly dropped to the floor. On impact, she sank down into a crouch, trying to keep her balance as she fell. Crouching there, she watched as the Giant staggered back, the room quaking underneath his footsteps. He gagged, clutching at the nail buried deep in his flesh. Blood flowed out through his fingers. He stumbled to one side, putting his free hand out for balance.
That left the door unblocked.
Molly sprang out of her crouch and ran.
The next wild moment she was in the hallway, a second-floor landing. Eyes wide, mind racing, she looked right, then left. She saw the stairs. She bolted for them. She heard a tremendous crash behind her and realized the Giant had fallen, dropped to the floor in the room behind her. She didn’t look back. She just kept running.
She reached the top of the stairs. She had a brief, confused impression of the place she was in. A worn-out inn or hotel of some sort, with doors all along the landing. The paint was gone from the walls, the wood exposed, the light fixtures either stripped away or empty or carrying naked bulbs.
That was all she had time to notice. Then she was stampeding down the stairs, her hand lightly tracing the splintery banister to her side. A few steps and she saw the foyer beneath her. The front door. She could see trees at the sidelights. The outside. Freedom. She flew down the stairs toward it.
She was halfway to the bottom when Smiley McDeath stepped out in front of her.
He had heard the Giant fall. He came around the corner, stood at the base of the stairs, looked up, and started to call out, “What was that noise up . . .?”
But he hadn’t expected to see Molly barreling toward him.
Startled, he froze where he was for a second, his snaky diamond-shaped face a blank. He was wearing his usual black jeans and T-shirt, but he’d taken off his windbreaker and Molly could see the gun in the holster under his arm. His hand instinctively went for the weapon.
But Molly was now only a few steps above him. She grabbed hold of the banister with both hands so she could lift herself up, lift her leg up high and draw it all the way back.
She snapped her foot out hard and kicked Smiley McDeath in the face.
Smiley McDeath stopped smiling. Dazed by the blow, he fell backward and sat down. Molly, meanwhile, reeling from the force of her own kick, lost her balance. She stumbled helplessly over the last two stairs and fell onto the foyer floor, rolling past her captor.
Smiley McDeath was already climbing onto all fours, trying to stand. Blood was dripping from his mouth where Molly’s sneaker had connected. His eyes were nearly white with rage.
Molly used the speed of her roll to jump to her feet. She was standing over Smiley as he tried to rise. She kicked him again, hard as she could, bringing her powerful volleyballer leg straight up off the floor and into the killer’s chin.
It was such a powerful blow that Molly hoped the man would go flying backward and land unconscious—the way bad guys did in the movies. But that was in the movies. In real life, men are thick and heavy. They don’t go flying anywhere very easily. Molly’s kick connected well, but Smiley McDeath only let out a grunt and dropped down onto one knee.
That was enough, though, all Molly needed. She rushed to the door. She grabbed the knob, twisted it, pulled. The door flew open. The winter cold of the outside world flooded over her. Another step and she’d be over the threshold, out of here.
Smiley McDeath reached out and grabbed her ankle.
In her panic, Molly found the strength to pull free at once, but even as her foot slipped out of the man’s grasp she felt herself spinning, tripping, falling. She went out the front door and toppled over the threshold. She hit the hard, cold dirt outside, the gray sky and naked branches twirling crazily above her.
The fall jarred her. It was a second before she recovered, before she leapt to her feet again. She was facing the building. It was an inn, in fact, she saw. Four stories, clapboard, once white, now weather-worn. Windows boarded up or black with broken glass.
She saw it for only an instant. Then she saw Smiley McDeath. He was on his feet, too. He was moving into the doorway. He was drawing the pistol from the holster on his belt. That weird, narrow face, pointy at top and bottom, was twisted with deadly determination.
Molly had only two choices: surrender or run. She ran without thinking. She turned her back on the gunman and dashed with all her speed across the dirt cul-de-sac. There was a car in front of her, a black sedan of some kind. She headed for it, expecting the crack of the gunshot every moment, the bullet in her spine.
She reached the car, grabbed the hood, flung herself over it—just as the first deadly blast sounded behind her.
The window of the car cracked and collapsed into fragments as the bullet struck. But Molly was unhurt. She went on flying over the hood. Landed on it, rolling. Rolled off and tumbled to the earth on the far side.
She heard Smiley McDeath let out a curse. The car was blocking his next shot. She heard him shout, “She’s making a run!”
But she didn’t look back to find out what happened next or how many thugs rushed to come after her. Crouching low to keep the car between herself and Smiley’s gun, she raced off the cul-de-sac into the high grass, toward the deep, tangled forest beyond.
Another gunshot sounded behind her. The bullet whistled past her head. Bark exploded off the tree in front of her.
She did not slow down. She did not look back. She ran. Soon the winter woods surrounded her.
And she kept on running.
16. THE FOREST
FAVIAN WAS DYING. Rick took one look at him and knew.
The excitement of the chase was passing now. Rick was recovering from his wild escape from the wraiths, his tightrope walk over the energy bridge across the Canyon of Nothingness. He was catching his breath. His mind was clearing. When he was calm enough to take a good look at his friend’s shifting, light-made face, he could see at once that the life was draining out of it.
The last time Rick had seen Favian—the last time he’d been in the MindWar Realm—Favian had seemed like a young man. Now, only two months later, the sparkling creature appeared to have aged bizarrely, even supernaturally. Favian still had the same boyishly worried expression, but his face had dried out and caved in somehow. It was collapsing into its own wrinkles like a balloon that was losing air.
Favian lay propped up on his elbows in the red grass, too weary to move. He stared dully out over the black canyon. Rick, sitting up, rested his arms on his raised knees. He did not know what to say. He knew that Favian was a fearful fellow, that he hated to think about the endless death that was hanging over his head here, over his head and Mariel’s, too. Rick figured he already knew how close to that death he was. There was no point in talking about it.
So instead, he said, “What were those things?” as he lifted his chin to point at the retreating army of wraiths. “They were like vampire ghosts or something.”
“Energy Wraiths,” said Favian. Even his voice sounded creaky and old. “Kurodar sent them to clean up the ruins of the fortress after you blew it up. They sense the energy in the forms Kurodar created, and they drain it until the forms are gone. Your energy must be so much more powerful than the energy of broken stones. They sensed you there and came after you to drain you.”
“What about this?” said Rick, gesturing toward the canyon.
“Kurodar put that there to keep the wraiths in check,” Favian told him. “That’s what I think, anyway. He didn’t want them to spread out over the whole Realm and devour everything he’s made.”
Rick remembered dangling off the energy bridge. He remembered that feeling that he was being sucked down into the nothingness beneath his feet.
“It felt . . .,” he began. “It almost fe
lt . . . alive somehow. The darkness. Like it was trying to pull me in.”
Favian nodded weakly. “Yes. I’ve felt that too. This place—the Realm—it can be pretty to look at sometimes. The red grass; the yellow sky; the blue trees. But underneath that, I think it’s all darkness. I think darkness is the heart of the place, and the darkness wants to devour everything. It even wants to make you part of itself. I guess pretty soon, I won’t be able to fight it anymore. Pretty soon, the darkness will have me.”
There it was. Spoken aloud, out in the open. Favian was dying the living death of the Realm. Rick stole a quick glance at him. He could see the fear embedded deep in his eyes—fear and desperate hope because he, both he and Mariel, believed that Rick was some kind of hero who had come to rescue them.
Rick looked away, embarrassed. He tilted his head back and gazed up at the yellow sky just to have something else to look at. “I brought you some energy,” he said. It was all he could offer for now. “There’s enough for you and for Mariel. It should help keep you going for a while, anyway.”
“For a while,” Favian repeated in his strangely distant and echoic voice. “But not for long.” It was an unspoken accusation: Rick had not turned out to be the hero they had hoped for; not yet at least. “My energy is draining faster now. And once death comes, it’ll never end. I’ll be part of the darkness here for as long as the Realm exists.”
Rick didn’t know how to answer. He wanted to say: My father is working on bringing you out. And he wanted to say: I’ve been trying to find out the truth about you. He wanted to say: No matter what happens, I promise I won’t forget you. But everything he wanted to say just sounded lame and empty. Cheap encouragement without any real meaning. If he were really a hero, as Mariel had said, he would have found a way to save them by now.
Rick turned to his friend. Favian’s sparkling blue form wavered and shifted like smoke in a swirling breeze. In one sense, the man hardly seemed to be there at all, seemed more like a phantom than a person. But in another sense, Rick felt his presence strongly: he understood his anxiety, his sorrow, his fear.
Rick lifted his left hand—the hand with the energy pod pulsing red and shiny under the skin.
“Well,” he said, “let me give you some of this. It’ll make you feel better.”
But Favian shook his head slowly. “Not here. Not now. The longer we stay out in the open, the more energy we expend, the more likely we are to draw Kurodar’s attention. Once he knows we’re here, he’ll start sending security bots. You remember the Spider-Snake, right?”
“Right, right,” said Rick. He did remember, and he shuddered at the thought of the hideous creature who had chased him through the forest and nearly devoured him. And now he had to think about Molly, too. If Kurodar detected his presence here, the kidnappers would kill her. “You’re right,” he said. “We should hide ourselves first. Where can we go?”
“Help me up,” said Favian. “I have a place. I’ll take you there.”
Rick got to his feet. He reached down and Favian reached up. The touch of Favian’s insubstantial hand was like a low electric hum going up Rick’s arm and through his body. Rick tugged and Favian rose slowly to his feet.
“This way,” Favian said.
And he flashed off—a blue streak—yards away before Rick could even think to be surprised at his speed.
They traveled that way over the red grass, under the yellow sky, Favian streaking away and Rick jogging after him. Up ahead, a misty blue expanse of trees appeared and Rick realized they were heading for a forest, another blue forest like the one in which he and Favian had first met.
It was a relief when they reached the tree line, when they ducked under the aquamarine leaves and the greenish trunks rose up on every side of them. Rick supposed it was silly to think that Kurodar couldn’t find them here eventually. The whole MindWar Realm grew out of his imagination, after all. Every place must be accessible to his consciousness. Still, he felt safer in the forest.
They traveled through the woods a long time. Rick felt the pressure of the passing seconds. He was painfully aware of the clock in his palm ticking away. He remembered Miss Ferris’s instructions: don’t waste time on his friends; just find Kurodar’s new outpost before the terrorist could launch his devastating attack. Rick forced her words out of his mind. It was bad enough that he could not rescue Favian. He wouldn’t add insult to injury by telling him to hurry up. He followed in silence.
Finally, they came to a cottage. It was strange to see it there. It looked different from everything around it. It was made of sawn logs and thatched branches. The green-brown wood had dried out and turned a wondrous pinkish-gold. The place almost seemed to glow.
“You built this?” Rick asked, catching up to where Favian had flashed ahead. They both paused there outside the cottage’s stone gate. Rick leaned forward to catch his breath, his hands on his knees.
Favian nodded in answer. His strangely old-young face had turned wistful at the memory. “I knew I would need a place to hide until . . .” He didn’t finish the sentence, but Rick knew: he was going to say until I died. “So I built this. It was something I’d seen somewhere. Something I remembered from RL . . . but I don’t know what exactly.”
Rick gazed at the cottage. It looked like an illustration from a book of fairy tales. Something from Favian’s childhood maybe, something from that life in RL that the sparkling man could no longer remember.
Then a darkness came over Rick’s heart, like a cloud inside him. And he realized what Favian had said: I knew I would need a place . . . I built this . . .
I, not we.
“What about Mariel?” Rick asked him. “Where is she?”
But Favian only shook his head in answer. The expression on his face was so sad that Rick felt his heart grow even darker. But before he could ask another question, Favian flashed away again: to the cottage door and through, out of sight.
Rick hurried after him.
The first thing he saw inside the cottage was a portal: a glowing purple diamond of energy floating just off the floor.
“I built the cottage around this,” Favian told him. “In case you came back.”
The unspoken accusation again: In case you came back as you promised you would.
The rest of the cottage was small and sparsely furnished. Only one room. A heavy wooden bed against one wall, a wooden table and chairs under the window. A stove. A basin.
“Looks . . . comfy,” Rick said. In fact, the place was melancholy and lonely-looking.
Favian nodded sadly. “I wish I could remember where I’d seen a cottage like this before. There was a woman who told me about it, I think. I remember her voice.”
Probably his mother, Rick thought. Reading to him from a book of fairy tales. But all he said out loud was, “Come on, let’s get some of this Happy Juice into you. Give you some strength.”
He drew the broken sword from his belt. Once more, as his fingers closed around her image on the hilt, he felt Mariel’s warmth and energy rise through him. Before he could think too much about it, he pressed the jagged blade against the pulsing red spot in his left palm and plunged it in. There was a flash of pain and then he felt the energy start to flow out of him like blood.
“Quick,” he said, “high five.”
He raised his glowing hand and Favian raised his and they struck their palms together, red against blue.
The effect was instantaneous and remarkable. Rick could feel the energy pulsing from his hand into Favian’s. He could see Favian growing fresher, younger, stronger before his very eyes. With every heartbeat, Favian’s sagging face seemed to flush with new youth and vibrancy. In moments, the wrinkles and the heaviness and weariness were gone from him entirely. He straightened and grew strong.
Rick had an internal sense of how much energy there was, like a meter in his brain. When half the supply was gone, he pulled his hand away.
Favian staggered back, gasping. He lifted his chin and spread his arms wide, glo
rying in the fresh life passing through him.
“Oh! It’s like growing young!” he cried.
Rick sheathed his sword and pressed his two palms together to stop the energy flow and preserve what was left. “I have to save some for Mariel.”
At the mention of Mariel’s name, Favian dropped his arms to his sides. The joy that had flooded his face for a moment receded, and the sorrow and anxiety came back into his expression.
“What?” said Rick tensely. “What is it?”
“Rick . . .,” said Favian. “Listen . . .”
“What? Tell me.”
Favian averted his eyes. “It’s Mariel.”
“What about her?”
“She’s . . . she’s gone.”
At once the darkness in Rick’s heart turned to anger. He was a hot-blooded guy, and he’d never had much control over his temper. He had seen what death was like in the Realm. He had seen the dried-out shell of a creature lying in the Spider-Snake’s tunnel, its body shrunken and empty like a snake’s shed skin, but the eyes—the horrible eyes—still alive and glowing with the pain of slow decay. He had seen the poor creature’s desperate yearning to be freed from Kurodar’s mind prison, freed into true death and the life beyond. The thought of Mariel being trapped like that, dead like that, suffering like that, hit him in his core like a blow.
He stepped close to Favian, his eyes flashing, his teeth gritted and bared.
“It’s not true!” he said.
“Rick . . .” Favian still wouldn’t look at him directly.
“You’re lying, Favian.”
“You have to understand . . .”
“She’s still here. I know she is. I can feel her spirit in the sword.”
“You can’t help her anymore.”
“Tell me where she is.”
“She . . . she wants you to forget her. She made me promise . . .”