by A Corrin
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Credits:
Cover illustration by Eva Soulu—www.evasoulu.com
Interior Illustration by Katie Hofgard
Map by Rengin Tumer—rengintumer.com
Contents
Chapter One: Instant Hero
Chapter Two: I Almost Beat Up a Bully
Chapter Three: The Second Dream
Chapter Four: The Final Dream
Chapter Five: Moving Shadows
Chapter Six: Rankers
Chapter Seven: Fighting Garrett
Chapter Eight: I Meet a Gaggle of Griffins
Chapter Nine: I Make Out with a Monster
Chapter Ten: Meanwhile, Back in Reality
Chapter Eleven: Tree Spirits
Chapter Twelve: I Find Out My Wings Work
Chapter Thirteen: Meanwhile, Back in Reality
Chapter Fourteen: The Worst Vacation Destination Ever
Chapter Fifteen: Peter’s Secrets
Chapter Sixteen: I Almost Get Stoned
Chapter Seventeen: Meanwhile, Back in Reality
Chapter Eighteen: Bar Fights are Intense
Chapter Nineteen: A Father-Son Talk
Chapter Twenty: Meanwhile, in the House Next Door
Chapter Twenty-One: Werewolves and Gargoyles
Chapter Twenty-Two: Meanwhile, Back in Reality
Chapter Twenty-Three: I’m an Unlucky Boi
Chapter Twenty-Four: Meanwhile, Back in Reality
Chapter Twenty-Five: Victorious
Chapter Twenty-Six: Bonding Time with Kayle
Epilogue
About the Author
Chapter One:
Instant Hero
At first I thought I was playing football. I was standing on a grassy field holding something football-shaped in the crook of my arm, cradled against my chest. There were people running toward me roaring aggressively—just like the opposition does in the heat of a game when I’m gearing to bolt for a touchdown and they want nothing more than to take down the quarterback.
But when I looked down, I realized that it wasn’t a football I held—at least, not anymore—but rather a silver helmet reeking of metal oil. The kind of helmet that knights used to wear. And the guys sprinting at me turned into random people emerging from gray clouds of ash and smoke, their faces stretched in horror, their eyes stark in their dirty faces. They ran right past me like I didn’t exist. I could have sworn that there had been a goalpost behind me, forking up into the sky, but now it was the ashy remains of a fire-blackened village. More smoke chugged from straw huts. Cattle and pigs roamed free, trotting in circles all confused while women jogged briskly around them screaming for their children.
When I looked down again, I saw that my football jersey had been replaced with a full suit of armor that glistened in the sunlight shining brown through the smoke clouds of ruin. In my other hand I held a sword. I didn’t feel confused at the turn my dream had taken. If anything, I felt a weird kind of anticipation.
Then I saw the reason for the panic—a gigantic dragon materialized through the smoke in front of me, its scales the color of mud, its eyes round and savage like a snake’s. It saw me, the only tasty morsel standing between it and a feast of innocent people and roared its fury down at my face. I felt heat wash through my blood and stuffed the helmet over my head, throwing open my arms and bellowing back at it, “Show me what you got! Come at me!”
And it did—but in the instant that its jaws darted down and my sword rose to meet it, everything became slow motion. I saw myself and the beast about to lock in combat as if I were watching a movie, and I started to get that weird, foggy feeling you get when you’re about to wake up. Damn, I look badass; I thought vaguely as the smoke started to obscure my view of what was happening.
In the final few moments before I returned to reality, I saw a flash of white in my periphery, like a huge horse or something had jumped by to aid my dream-self in combat. I saw someone in a black cloak and hood watching from the fringes of the demolished town and heard a voice say, “He’s almost ready.”
Then a patch of icy snow slid down my back.
“Oh!” I leaped to my feet, pinching my coat at the collar and shaking it until a clump of melted snow fell out the bottom and hit the floor with a splat.
My friends laughed their heads off and my best friend, Tyson, backed out of reach of any immediate retaliation, shaking water off of his fingers, tears of mirth streaming from his eyes.
“Oh, you jerk!” I laughed weakly, the shock of having been yanked from my daydream by the sudden cold leaving me dizzy.
“What were you thinking about?” asked my friend Kitty in that gentle voice of hers. “You were staring off into space for a good minute or two.”
“Minute and a half,” said Ben, cradling Kitty’s head against his shoulder, combing his fingers through her long, dark curls, and waving his phone at me to show that he had a timer going.
I scowled at them. My friends and I had decided to spend the day up on the Coloradan slopes fifty miles west of our hometown of Firestone. The conditions were excellent—a fresh layer of powder had come in overnight. The sky was a crisp robin’s-egg-blue, and the sun still had a bit of latent summer warmth, despite it being the end of September.
The trouble was, I couldn’t help dwelling on the dream I’d been having off and on for the past few weeks. I’d had it again last night, and it was getting annoying. I didn’t want to tell my friends about it and have them make fun, so I stood there like an idiot, floundering for an excuse, when the greatest girl in the world came to my rescue.
“What’s going on?” Nikki, braiding her long, chocolate-colored hair, came over to us from where she’d just purchased her lift ticket for the day. When I started walking toward her, she looked up and smiled warmly, her hazel eyes twinkling.
“I was daydreaming about my wonderful girlfriend,” I said, swooping in to kiss her cheek.
Nikki wrinkled her nose at me while Ben pretended to vomit and Tyson made a dramatic sound of adoration, like someone watching baby bunnies play.
“Go get your rental,” Nikki said, dropping her braid over her shoulder and swatting me with her lift ticket.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, and imitated tipping my hat.
It bothered me a little that I was the only one of my friends who couldn’t afford my own snowboard. Well, actually, I probably could afford one if I didn’t have to pay Dad’s bills and if my lame part-time job wasn’t working with Tyson at the lumber and soil farm. I was so low on the food chain of employees that Tyson was my boss.
I slipped past other skiers and snowboarders shutting their purses and sneakers into lockers or sitting on benches to lace up their snow boots and exchanged smiles with the woman at the rental counter.
“Hey, Jon,” she greeted, bumping my fist with her own. “The usual?”
“Por favor, Sandy,” I replied and perched on a bench to untie my wet tennies.
Sandra came around the desk lugging a pair of boots and a snowboard. I laced up the boots first, m
aking sure they were snug, and then measured the board against my chin to make sure it was still the correct height.
As I twisted to pick up my beanie and put my phone back in my pocket a bark of pain slashed across my hip and I sucked in a breath. I lifted my coat, studying the giant bruise splashed across my hipbone and just beginning to turn yellow.
“How’d that happen?”
Tyson had found me. He looked stonily from the bruise and then into my eyes.
I tried to smile, but all my mouth would do was twitch. “Don’t worry about it, man.” I let my coat drop and made to shuffle past Tyson, but he caught my arm.
Lowering his voice, he murmured, “Your dad again? What’d you do this time, sneeze too loudly?”
I snorted. “Talked back. He pushed me into the counter.”
Tyson chewed on his lip, shaking his head. I could tell he was furious but trying not to show it for my sake. “Sorry, man,” he said, after a bit. “Give me a call next time. I can come pick you up and you can stay the night, okay?”
“Sure,” I said, and this time I did manage a genuine smile. He trailed me back out into the commons area and I dragged my battered and scratched rented snowboard alongside me, thinking bitterly of my dream. Me? A knight in shining armor? As if. I heaved a sigh. As if I’d be anything more than this… A small-town jock with a homelife that would drive even the most successful psychiatrist to hang up their Rorschach blots and retire.
The others were chatting, waiting for us, occasionally glancing at the tv set above the lodge’s giant fireplace which was tuned to some news station.
“You hear this?” Ben asked us, flicking his head at the flat screen. I frowned up at it, slipping my arms around Nikki’s waist and giving her a squeeze.
The news story’s scrolling headline caught my eye: “Country’s Defense System Unable to Defend Against Mass Mayhem Nationwide.”
The reporter spoke gravely, and the video footage she was discussing about some political meeting flashed instead to a map of the United States. Red dots were scattered all over the place.
Ben swore softly.
I felt a weird tingle of fear run up my spine. It was an almost wild and inexplicable type of fear, like something big was happening that I couldn’t comprehend. I’d tuned in a little late to the story, but I leaned forward, straining to hear.
“Swings of violence have, in recent days, soared in occurrence, as you can see on this map, eliciting concern in our nation’s capital. It seems that gangs have abandoned secrecy and struck out in mass movements across the world. States that were relatively shy of violence before now face kidnappings and murders in the shadows of the night. But the government hasn’t called any gangs to accountability, claiming to have no evidence.”
The camera cut to some cranky white-haired guy from the FBI who was saying, “Gangs aren’t involved in spying on the affairs of the government. And we must remember that America isn’t the only one suffering from these attacks. Israel and Africa and Russia…they’re all taking it with us. These aren’t gangsters, and this isn’t a cult; these are terrorists.” He dodged a dozen microphones and ducked inside a shiny black car.
The reporter returned and concluded her story, her voice grim. “Many wonder whether or not these are indications of the threat of war. But the question on everyone’s mind nationwide is: a war with whom? This is Teresa Sullivan, the nine o’clock news.”
The story went to the newsroom where the facts turned to some violent, mysterious robbery in Wisconsin.
“Crazy times, eh?” Ben said, shaking his head. We all nodded in agreement, wandering outside and toward the lifts that would carry us up the slope. Tyson was chatting with Kitty and Nikki about the flight he would be taking to his sister’s wedding on Wednesday, and Ben was filling me in on something he’d recently learned in his fire cadets program. He suddenly tapped my arm with the back of his hand and pointed off to the side.
“Is that Garrett?”
I squinted toward a group of guys clustered by a stand of pine trees. I recognized the guy in front instantly by his spiked-up black hair and the stud in his ear.
“Yep,” I said, feeling a hot spurt of dislike burn in my insides.
Garrett was talking to a kid maybe a few years younger than us, pointing at the lift we all moved toward as if giving directions. He and his friends laughed about something and the kid laughed too, a little delayed.
“What, so they’re picking on kids now?” Ben growled.
“Par for the course,” I grumbled back. “He won’t do anything out in public like this, though. It’s not his MO.”
Garrett was a lost cause. As far back as I could remember, he’d always been the town “bad boy,” all angst and backtalk. He was the kind of guy who sassed teachers, smoked behind the school, and started fights with other kids. But he liked to give me special attention. There had always been a sticky vendetta between Garrett and me since elementary school, and it had festered early in the ninth grade. He had publicly embarrassed Nikki just to get to me, rumor had it. I would have taken him apart that day—or any day since—if Nikki hadn’t begged me not to. So I usually tried to avoid him.
I tried to keep an eye on him through the crowd, but as people paired off in line to grab a seat on the chair lift and go up the slope, I realized that he’d disappeared.
We took the lift uphill and once everyone had made it to the peak, we pointed nose down and took off. Immediately, I felt icy air on my barely exposed cheeks, and the bumps of curdled snow threatened to tip me over, but I found my level of balance and concentrated on my speed. I didn’t want to go too fast; there was a batch of fun trick obstacles coming up, and I needed the challenge.
We rounded a bend, and I saw the grinding rail. Bending lower so my butt almost touched the snow, I pushed off and spun sideways, hitting the rail perpendicular. Sliding off with a spin, I kept my knees coiled to absorb landing impact and rejoined my friends, swerving aimlessly through some orange cones set in a straight line. Tyson gave me a high five and veered to try a backflip, a trick only he had mastered.
I led the way down a side path, and for a while, we chased each other past the beautiful mountain scenery. We were currently the only group on the trail, and it felt like we were, I don’t know, like, part of the surroundings. As if the hill belonged to us. This was what I’d needed. This was freedom. Just me and friends, not a care in the world, no responsibilities, no stress, no wacky dreams, and no deadbeat dads.
I was racing a tiny red cardinal flying beside me through the trees when a high, squealing kind of sound caught my ears, making my skin crawl before I’d even really comprehended what the sound meant. I flipped my board around ninety degrees and dug the back into the snow, skidding to a stop. Snow flew in a powdery wave around me. My friends halted behind me.
“Did you hear that?” I asked, pulling my face gaiter down to expose my ears to sound better.
Tyson and Nikki exchanged cocked eyebrows.
“Hear what?” Ben asked, his penetrating eyes framed like a ninja’s between his hat and scarf.
I slowly inched closer to the trees and tilted my head. “Somebody’s screaming,” I mumbled. I slipped into the fringe of trees and heard it again, long, plaintive, and agonized.
“I’m going after them,” I decided with finality and freed my board from the snow, vanishing into the trunks.
Nikki yelled after me, “Jonathan, no! You’re going to get yourself killed!”
I hardly heard her—worst-case scenarios raced through my head. What would I find? Was someone hurt? Dying?
I almost hit a tree and reeled back, slowing down to lean against another’s trunk. As far as I knew, I faced at least two dangers besides crushing myself against a trunk. One was that a large amount of snow could collapse on top of me, deposited by overweight branches. Another was that I could sink into a tree well, the piled-up snow ar
ound the trees, and suffocate in six-foot drifts.
The scream rang out again, and I headed toward it, finding a deep and crooked trail. I followed it and came to an area choked with brambles that were badly broken and bent, as if someone had struggled to clear a path…or stop themselves.
I kneeled and slid through, thorns grabbing at my white coat. Coming out into an area where the trees were farther apart but thicker, I spotted what I was looking for: a concave bowl of broken-in snow at the base of a tree. Steady moaning and cursing trailed out from inside it, punctuated by yelps of pain and cries for help.
I coasted over and braked, peering into the depression at the crumpled body within. It was the boy I’d seen talking with Garrett. Now that I was up close to him, I guessed that he was maybe twelve or thirteen. He wore a bright-orange coat with black pants and a beanie. His face was chapped and his board bent to one side, his left foot twisted with it.
He saw me and closed his eyes in relief, murmuring hoarsely, “Help me, please. My ankle.” He leaned forward, retching in pain.
Wincing, I asked calmly, “What happened?”
The kid fidgeted in an effort to get comfortable and replied a bit guiltily, “I went off the trail…wanted to try something harder. But I hit a tree, and…I think I sprained my ankle.”
While he talked, I shifted away some of the snow and made a slanting path down to him. “Preteens,” I mumbled.
“Just help me,” the kid grumbled.
I got out of my straps and moved down to tenderly hook my hands under the boy’s arms. I pulled him out, ignoring his piercing protests, and asked his name.
“Carl,” he spat through gritted teeth.
I laid him across my lap while I strapped back in and tugged his board out of the pit, and said lightly, “Well, Carl, now we know not to go down the big-boy paths without some practice, right?”
Carl met my gaze with his sharp gray-green eyes. “What are you, like a year older than me?”
“Try about four, Pips. Now here’s what we’re going to do.” I settled him into the snow by me and attached his board to mine by clipping his foot-holster strap to one of my boot buckles. His board tilted and slid down-hill, just barely pulling at me until I firmly settled my weight in. I helped Carl sit on his board, his injured foot out in front of him and propped up behind the knee by one of his empty, floppy boot buckles. He was weighing us down even more in front, and this time, I let him slowly but surely start to pull us forward. Carl twitched when he tried to tilt his leg to one side and cursed violently.