I shook my head, trying to chase these terrible thoughts away. How could I think such things? What was wrong with me? Before the voice of hunger began gnawing on my mind again, I left, moving at a speed only a Gorgon could. Running between the seconds. To those people, I probably seemed to vanish before their eyes, leaving them to wonder for the rest of their short mortal lives, Who was that stranger sitting in my chair? Eating my pie? Sleeping in my bed? Just some crazy kid with crazy locks, who saw us and ran away. That’s all. They would never know how close they had come to their own stony ends.
I ran through their yard, across the street, and into the woods, finding that no matter how fast I ran, I never lost my breath. I knew the direction I was running in. I could sense direction just as I could sense life, and soon I came out of the woods to see my school up ahead, with the students already arriving. Just a few. Not the crowds that would be there in another half hour. Going to school seemed pointless to me now. School was for regular kids, who would grow, and get jobs, and die someday. But now I wondered, would I ever grow beyond fifteen? Was I stuck at this age for all eternity? That would really be a curse. Or perhaps, in the same way I could stretch and shrink the flow of time, could I change my age by merely thinking about it? I had so many questions, and I knew that the only one who could answer them was Tara. I didn’t want to see her now. I felt so strange within my own skin, I didn’t want to face her until I felt more comfortable, more myself, whatever that meant now.
Would she be at school today? Maybe, but I could deal with that. There were plenty of ways to avoid talking to her, if I really wanted to. Perhaps there was no longer a need for me to go to school, but I wanted to go there, anyway. I desperately wanted something normal back in my life, if only for a few hours. The hunger had faded just a bit now. I figured I could control the hunger in a familiar place, around people who I knew. I was sure of it.
I crossed beneath the stone arch of Excelsior Academy, telling myself that the reason I wanted to be there was simply to go to class. Funny how your own mind can trick you into believing things that just aren’t true.
Hiding behind my sunglasses, I made my way right to the library. Even through the dark lenses, the people around me shone in dazzling color compared to the strange grayness of the walls and floors. I could smell them, too. Not their hair gel, or deodorant, or nasty gym smell, but some other smell. The smell of their life. I could hear myself groaning with hunger, so I picked up my pace, practically knocking the door to the library off its hinges as I entered.
“Parker Baer!” the librarian complained. “Control your impulses!”
“Sorry,” I said, then grabbed some teen magazine and headed to the farthest table in the dimmest corner, away from any of the other kids. I forced myself to read articles about things I didn’t really care about. According to my watch, there were still twenty minutes until my first class would begin. My first blissful distraction of the day. Who would have thought I’d ever call algebra blissful?
With no patience for waiting, I concentrated on my watch and the movement of time, until I could see the minute hand moving at the speed the second hand usually moved. Sounds around me became whiny and high-pitched. Perhaps it was this acceleration of time that kept me from noticing Dante sitting down beside me.
“Dude, I’ve been watching you. It’s like you haven’t breathed for a whole minute.”
I turned to him slowly, time resuming its normal pace. “Leave me alone, Danté,” I heard myself say, with a dead flatness to my voice.
He leaned forward, misreading the tone of my voice to mean something else. “I guess you heard, then.”
“Heard what?”
“Ernest.” He spoke in a whisper, like it was too terrible to speak out loud, which it was. “He’s dead.”
I just stared at Dante through my lenses, my jaw dropped open.
“I know, I can’t believe it, either,” said Dante. “But whatever strange disease he had, it killed him. Something to do with the hardening of his bones. It’s like his bones just kept getting thicker, until everything else just got pushed out.” Dante shivered. “Sick.”
“That’s not what happened,” I told him.
“Why, what did you hear?”
“It’s not what I heard; it’s what I know. He petrified. He turned to stone.”
“Hey, man, don’t make jokes, okay? The dude is dead. It’s not funny.”
“And I’ve got news for you,” I added. “There’s going to be a whole lot more. I could even tell you who.”
“Parker, you’re really starting to freak me out,” Dante said, leaning away. “I mean first the freaky hair and now all this freaky talk. That’s freaky squared.”
I understood now how Tara saw people. Like food. That’s what I was beginning to see now. Even Dante. Remember that old cartoon: two guys stuck on a desert island, one guy looks at the other, and instead of seeing his bud, he sees a roast turkey? That’s what it was like looking at Dante. It was probably the most disturbing thing I had ever felt.
I suddenly had an absolute need to turn something to stone, as overwhelming as the need to breathe. “I have to find something big,” I said, more to myself than to him. “An elephant, a whale—anything!”
“Just when I thought you couldn’t get any weirder ... what are you gonna tell me next, you’re a zombie that must eat human brains?”
I almost laughed. He had no idea how close he was.
Dante must have seen something unspeakable in my nasty little grin, because he stood up and backed away.
“I’ve had it with you, man. I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but you’re in definite need of some major therapy.”
He turned to leave, but I couldn’t let him go like that. I just couldn’t. If there was anyone I could spill my guts to, it was Dante. He might not believe me, he might call me crazy, but if I showed him how I could turn animals to stone, he’d have no choice but to accept it, and then maybe I’d have someone on my side. Someone besides Tara.
“Danté, wait!” I followed him out into the hall, moving so remarkably fast, everything was a blur. Suddenly I found myself in front of him, right in his path.
Dante just looked at me, stunned. To him, it must have seemed like I just appeared there. “How did you ...”
“Never mind how,” I told him. “There are other things we need to talk about.”
I was about to tell him all about Tara, all about who she was and the cursed gift she had given to me, but instead of talking, I found myself reaching for my glasses and pulling them off my face. I couldn’t stop myself.
It took only an instant for me to catch Danté’s gaze in mind Triggering the change in Dante wasn’t as easy as it had been wit the animals I had come across, but I was still able to do it.
I gasped a breath of deep relief. My curls squirmed, satisfie in a way they hadn’t been when I had petrified animals. An suddenly I realized what I had done.
“Danté! Danté, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” But what did son mean now? His eyes were already starting to glaze. His skin ha begun to pale.
“Your eyes,” he said weakly. “Don’t look at me again, okay Just don’t look at me.” He turned and staggered away. Othe kids were looking at me now, wondering what had happened an why Dante was acting so strangely. Quickly I put on my sun glasses, desperate not to catch anyone else’s gaze, and I bolte from school.
How long would it take for Danté’s flesh to turn? Weeks Days? It didn’t matter, because there was no stopping it. I ha turned my best friend to stone.
17
THE FIELD OF DRAGONS
Danté was as good as dead. I could run as fast and as far as I wanted, but I couldn’t outrun that simple fact. I could hurl myself off the highest cliff to purge myself of the guilt, but I would merely walk away from it uninjured. This act of turning a friend into stone was the final stage of my initiation into Tara’s dark world. I had become a Gorgon, like her sisters and her. Hideous to behold. Ugly in a way beyond
words. I understood the myth now. It wasn’t a physical ugliness, but an ugliness of spirit. My spirit bore that same ugliness now.
I ran all the way home, but I had no intention of staying. I would not face my parents, or my ailing brother and sister. I headed straight for my room and began to pack. My gym bag couldn’t carry much, but I realized there was little I needed to take with me. A few changes of clothes. A picture of my family. It’s funny how few “things” really matter, when you think about it.
I had no idea where I would go, but I didn’t care. I was going away. That’s all that mattered. I had to get away from this place. Away from people I knew—away from people, period. I could never again be in a place where I would be tempted to remove the shades that shielded my eyes and petrify another human being. Just because I couldn’t resist it when faced with Dante didn’t mean I couldn’t teach myself to be stronger. Given enough time, I could learn to fight that urge, and now I had all the time in the world.
As I zipped my gym bag closed, mentally plotting my path out of town, I heard someone crying. It was a man. I focused my attention on the life energies around me, which I could sense like a scent. It was not within the house, but outside. Out back. I went downstairs and out the back door, to see my father, head in hands, sobbing on a chair beside the pool. Garrett stood next to him, just watching. I had never heard my father cry before—until now I had thought he only had two emotions: frustration and annoyance.
“Dad?” Checking to make sure my sunglasses were firmly in place, I slowly walked over to him. “Dad—what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at work?”
“It’s not a good day, Parker,” he said through his tears. “It’s not a good day at all.”
Garrett, I noticed, said nothing to comfort him. He just stood there, looking down.
“Things like this shouldn’t happen,” Dad said, doing his best to hold back the flow of tears. “They don’t happen. How could it happen to us?”
“What things?”
But it was like he wasn’t hearing me, he was so lost in his own thoughts. “You spend your life working, providing for your family. You buy a big house; you give them everything they could possibly need. And this is what happens.”
He threw a quick, pained glance at Garrett. And this time, when I looked at Garrett, I noticed something I should have noticed right away. Garrett wasn’t moving. He wasn’t shifting his weight from one foot to the other, like he always did. He wasn’t looking at his watch; he was just standing there, staring at Dad. He was paler than ever before. The shade of his pale gray eyes was the exact shade of the color of his skin. I took a few steps closer; I touched his arm, his fingers. They were as cold and rigid as death.
“Garrett, no!”
There’s a vein—you know the one. It runs along your wrist, winding up your arm. Kind of a strange purple-blue line. It’s the one they take blood from at the doctor’s office. I watched as this vein, the last sign of life left to Garrett, slowly began to fade from blue to the same gray that filled the rest of his body. What had begun in him weeks before was almost done. A few more minutes, and he’d be completely turned to stone.
“Now Katrina’s come down with it,” my father said. “Same symptoms.” Then he turned to me. “Looks like we’re going to have statues of all of you around the pool.” He laughed bitterly at the awful thought, then put his head in his hands and cried once more.
Whatever else I had become, I was still human enough to feel my father’s pain. After that, I couldn’t just run away. Escape wouldn’t be that easy for me, because I was still saddled with a conscience. Perhaps Tara had shed her conscience years ago, or maybe she had never had one, but I still did, and I was glad. It was the only thing that kept me human.
As I stood there watching my father mourn for my hardened brother, a sound came hissing over the tops of trees. It was far off, but my hearing was tuned beyond human capabilities. It was the sound of distant, labored grinding. Metal against metal. Gears and pistons painfully pumping in a forgotten, old oil field.
I left the pool, crossed the tennis court, and strode through the grass of our huge yard until I came to the woods that bordered our property. There was no path from here to the oil pumps, but I didn’t need one. Their sound rang in my ears like evil church bells. It was Tara calling to me, I knew. I had the power to resist the call, but I didn’t want to. I had to face her, although I had no idea what would happen when I did. She had destroyed all three of us Baer kids. My brother was stone, my sister would soon follow, and my curse was a fate worse than stone. I was immortal, with a hunger so uncontrollable I would destroy my own friends to satisfy it. I was strong in so many ways now, but that hunger was stronger than me.
I walked miles until I reached the abandoned road that led to the hidden oil field. Five of the six wells bobbed up and down, their rusty gears groaning in complaint. The insect eyes painted on their bulbous heads seemed to follow me as I entered the clearing. The sixth well was unmoving, the creature’s “head” bowed low, as Tara repainted its face. This creature was not an insect anymore, but a dragon: a beast with menacing yellow eyes and razor-sharp fangs.
“Giving your friends a new look?”
She turned to me and smiled that warm, disarming smile that had always left me so defenseless. But I was wise enough now not to lower my defenses at all. I kept my distance and kept my face as cold as stone.
“They’re wrong as insects,” Tara said, putting down her paintbrush and slowly sauntering toward me. “Powerful predators are what they ought to be. Just like us.”
“Just like you,” I corrected.
“Are you still in denial, Parker? Do you still refuse to accept what you are?”
I didn’t answer her.
“I can sense that you’ve turned your first human. Did you enjoy it, Baby Baer? Who was it? I want to know every wonderful detail.”
She stood right in front of me now, and I refused to back away. She reached out and touched my long, twisting locks, but I reached up, grabbed her firmly by the wrist, and moved her hand away.
She looked at me, perhaps trying to read something behind my dark lenses. “Still mad at me, Parker? Still angry that I chose you for my most wonderful gift?”
“It’s not a gift; it’s a curse. It’s horrible. You’re horrible.”
She tugged her wrist out of my hand. “Then so is every human being. You breed and murder animals to serve on your tables. You lure fish, then tear them out of the water and let them suffocate. You shoot birds and beasts for sport, and half the time you don’t even eat them.”
“That’s different!”
“Why?”
“Because we don’t kill our own kind!”
“And neither do we! You and I are not human anymore, Parker. We’re something more. Something greater. Human beings are predators, plain and simple. And eventually every predator becomes prey.”
There was truth to her argument. Brutal, maybe, but it was truth nonetheless. Humans were the most successful predators on earth. Not sharks, or tigers, but us puny, civilized humans. Her hand was in my hair again. This time I closed my eyes, enjoying the feeling.
“We are a new link in the food chain,” she told me gently. “You mustn’t feel guilty about that....”
“But my family ... my friends.”
“Mourn for them,” Tara said. “Mourn for your old life, but don’t let it stop you from accepting your new one.” Then she leaned forward and whispered, “I’m your only friend, Parker.”
“I hate you,” I whispered back.
“That will change,” she said. “I want to give you something. One more gift.” Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out a hunting knife, shiny and deadly sharp. I backed away.
“I’ve never done this for anyone before ... but I’m doing it for you.” Then she reached up, grabbed two of her shiniest curls, and with a grimace, she tore the knife through them.
I don’t think I can describe the scream of pain that came out
of her then. Not in the deepest torture chamber has such a scream ever been heard. It could have made stone shiver.
Tara fell to her knees, and the two locks wafted to the ground. They squirmed for a moment, then were still. As the hair died, it turned from gold to ashen gray.
“There,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “I’ve released your brother and sister.”
I was speechless. My brother and sister were free? I reached to my own curls, thinking about Danté.
“Don’t try it on yourself,” she warned. “The pain would destroy you.” She picked herself up, still weak from the experience. “But I was willing to experience that much pain for you.”
She came over to me, already recovering from her pain.
“We will be wonderful together,” she said. “We can go anywhere, do anything. We will be companions, Parker. Eternal companions.”
I was repelled, yet drawn to the idea at the same time. Both feelings were so powerful, I felt I’d be torn apart.
“I know what you’re feeling,” Tara said. “Love and hate, terror and peace. To feel both extremes at once—that’s our nature, Parker. All your life you’ve lived a lukewarm existence: never too warm, never too cold. That’s not living. Now you will learn to live the extremes and embrace them.” And she hugged me as she said it. It felt horribly wrong. It felt totally right. I now lived at the extremes.
“We are two of a kind,” Tara said. “The only two.”
Something about that didn’t ring true. It took a moment until I realized why. “We’re not the only two. What about your sisters?”
She took a step away. “My sisters are in a gallery at the Louvre,” she said, with malice in her voice.
“What are you talking about?”
“They fought a thousand years ago and caught each other’s gaze. They turned each other to stone. Now they’re just two statues in a museum.”
I stared at her in disbelief. “But ... but I thought Gorgons were immortal.”
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