Cloak (YA Fantasy)

by James Gough

  Mars sniffed her studded black jacket and hands. “Aw, man, this stink is never coming off. What do you have stench-in-a-can for anyway?”

  Will shifted. “Well, I just…”

  “Wait minute, how did you know where I was? I heard Rizz tell you to put in your enhancer. Are you a…no way!” Mars stepped back, wide-eyed, and slapped her hand to her forehead, causing a strand of purple hair to fall across her face. She took a deep breath and then shrieked.

  The sound was so shrill Will covered his hears. “Ouch! What are you doing?”

  “Proving my theory,” grinned Mars. “You’re no gerbilchant, Stinky.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I always thought you were different. You’re in here for allergies, but you’re not allergic to anything. You know nothing about enchants. You have bodyguards. Then you barely get an enhancer and suddenly you can hear in super high def?”

  “What? Who says?”

  “You did.”

  “Me?”

  “Yep.”

  “When?”

  “Right now,” she giggled. “I’m talking like five octaves above normal enchant hearing and you keep answering. And my highest radar scream just about knocked you over.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah, ‘Oh.’ Not to mention that you have a can of instant gerbil funk and right now your musk stench is pretty weak. You must have sweated it off and forgotten to restink yourself. Will, Noctua raised me. Don’t you think I’ve heard every one of his theories? The doc is obsessed.”

  She was getting excited now—flapping her wings as she poked Will in the chest with a finger. “You’re not a gerbilchant, Stinky; you’re not even an enchant. You’re an Immune.”

  “I…”

  Mars held up a hand. “Yeah. Don’t even try to deny it. You’re a horrible liar. I can hear your heart doing the jitterbug already.”

  Will realized he was caught and sank to the edge of his bed. “Okay. But you can’t say anything to anybody, nobody, not a soul.”

  “Promise.” Mars crossed her heart and kissed her fingers. “But now that I know, you have to tell me everything that’s going on around here, or I’ll spill the beans to everybody and their grandmother.”

  Will knew she wasn’t bluffing. “Fine, but if you tell anybody—”

  “May my wing fall off and I lose my sight. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it. Now start talking. I want details.”

  Will filled Mars in on his real past. Being a bubble boy, meeting Dr. Noctua, the wolf attack, his relocation to St. Grimm’s, the enhancers, naturalization, and what just happened in that cafeteria. It felt good to unload his secrets, although he didn’t mention the Builder with the red stripe, or how he had communicated by some sort of weird scent-speaking-mind-reading.

  As Will spoke, Mars paced up the walls and across the desk. She ended up hanging from the ceiling by her feet with her arms crossed, chewing on her lip. “Wow. So some wolfchant hunter is after you? Cylus and his crew hate you, Liska thinks you’re in league with the Builders, and the Builders are probably trying to kill you?”

  “Well, it sounds a lot worse when you say it like that.”

  “This is awesome!” Mars rubbed her palms together.

  “How is this awesome in any way?” Will put his head in his hands.

  “Are you kidding?” She fluttered to the floor. “It’s like a real-life crime drama. Intrigue. Murderers. Villains. This place can get so boring, but now we’re going to have something to do.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? We’re going to solve a case.”

  “What case?”

  “I don’t know yet, but with so many enchants after you, something bad is totally going to happen and we’ll be right there to figure out who did it.”

  “That’s a horrible idea.”

  “Why, Stinky? I thought you’d be excited.”

  “You want me to get excited about investigating my own murder?”

  “I didn’t say it was going to be a murder. It might just be a mauling or a kidnapping or something.”

  “Oh, that would be a lot better,” grumbled Will.

  “Hey, all I’m saying is that it’s gonna be cool to be friends with an Immune…the Immune.” She punched Will in the shoulder.

  “So, I guess this means you can’t call me Stinky anymore, huh?”

  “Whatever. You’ll always be Stinky to me. And besides, I wouldn’t want to blow your cover.” Mars flitted back up to the ceiling, where she gripped a wooden beam with her feet.

  “Gee, thanks.” Will fingered the fang around his neck and glanced up.

  Mars was insane and completely neurotic, but at the end of the day, Will knew the crazy, purple-haired bat-girl hanging from the ceiling was a friend he could trust. He’d bet his life on it. And in a way, he just had.

  23

  Sequestered Secrets

  It was six a.m. Rizz stood in Will’s doorway, covered in mud and looking exhausted. “We found her.”

  “Kaya? Is she okay?” asked Will.

  Rizz rubbed his neck and shrugged. “The doc’s not sure. We found her up in the mountains above the tree line. It looks like she ran until she collapsed from exhaustion. She has severe hypothermia and pneumonia.” Rizz dropped his eyes. “We’ll know more in a day or two.”

  “But why’d she change like that?”

  “Noctua thinks something on those jackal enchants infected her. Dervis is testing samples of the jackals’ fur.” Rizz cleared his throat. “Or it might have been something—or someone—else entirely. When we found her, she was mumbling the same thing over and over again.”

  “What?”

  Rizz scratched his arm. “It’s not important.”

  “Rizz. What did she say?”

  “She kept saying she had to get away. From you.” He eyed Will.

  “Wait. You think I had something to do with why she acted that way?”

  “No.” Rizz hesitated. “I don’t know. It’s just that you seem to be in the middle of a lot of aggression lately. First the wolf, then the Builders, Cylus, the stampede. Now this thing with Kaya. Will, those jackals were the same two you tagged in the lobby yesterday. It just seems too connected to be coincidence. The only thing that links it all together is…”

  “Me.” Will dropped into a chair. “You think I’m making this happen?”

  “Not on purpose. I don’t know. Maybe there’s something about being an Immune that sets carnivores off or something.”

  Will stared at the floor.

  “Look, kid, this is just me being overly cautious, and I don’t want you to take it personally, but we’re all going to take it easy for a few days. You’re gonna stay put and we’ll have Nurse Starr bring your food in here. Let’s just relax and enjoy some downtime.”

  “So now I’m under house arrest?”

  “No. It’s nothing like that. We just want to keep you on the down-low for a day or two, just to see what happens.”

  “Keep me quarantined to see if the attacks stop?” He thought about the way he’d somehow communicated with the Builder. Maybe Rizz was right. Maybe he was causing these attacks. His shoulders slumped. “Fine. If you think it will help, I’ll go along with it. I was a bubble boy for thirteen years, what’s a couple more days?”

  Rizz flashed a tired smile. “Thanks. We’ll get this all straightened out. I promise.”

  It wasn’t the confinement. That was nothing new. It was the two days of seclusion that tortured Will. He missed the Special Branch team. They stood guard outside the door but kept him at a distance. It was like he was a prisoner awaiting a verdict.

  Rizz had confiscated the enhancers. “We don’t want you tempted to sneak out. It’ll be easier if you don’t hear what’s going on outside your room.”

  Will suspected it was so he couldn’t use the enhancers to communicate with Mars and Berko.

  Lonely and bored, Will spent the first day reading and updating his yellow
allergy journal. He cataloged every new food he’d tasted, new enchants he’d met, and new places he’d been. But by the evening, he had written down everything he could remember.

  The next day, he tried reading the antique copy of Grimm’s History that Dr. Noctua had given him in New York, but its weighty, old-fashioned language kept making him nod off. He sifted through a stack of history books he was supposed to study for his naturalization test.

  The Rise and Fall of the Dodochant explained the reasons dodo birds and dodochants died out at about the same time—a lack of fear, a tendency to taunt carnivores, and choosing to nest in floodplains. Under Wraps: The Abridged History of Cloak mentioned that the inventor of Cloak was an owl enchant named Vincent Beauchamp. The book, Double Life: Enchant Athletes Who Made it in the Nep Leagues, told how enchants were forced to drop from the Olympic games thirty years ago after a horse enchant tested positive for horse hormones.

  At the bottom of the stack, Will found two books he had never seen before. One was a children’s book from the 1930s—The Beginner’s Book of Scent-Speaking: A Guide to Communicating with Builders. The cover had an illustration of a rabbit enchant and a young Builder playing a game of hop-scotch. The word BANNED had been stamped on the front and back. Will read through pages full of tips on how to communicate with a new Builder friend, like using hand signals and smiling.

  The first chapter was “Scent-Speaking Lesson One—Scent Extremes.” It taught that since scent-speaking is based on feelings, you have to be able to recognize the emotion pheromone of the speaker.

  “The four basic emotion pheromones are: Love, Hate, Joy, and Despair. Emotions are the building blocks of scent-speak, just like vowels are for English.”

  There was a cartoon of four emotional mailmen taking letters from the Builder to the rabbit enchant.

  Will paused. Builders hadn’t always been hated. This book taught how to reach out to them. Even though it did say learning scent-speak was almost impossible, the book taught that it was important to understand how Builders communicate so they could be publicly accepted. He closed the cover and ran his fingers over the ugly BANNED stamp.

  The other book was thick and red with a black title: The Builder Uprising and the End of the Immune. Just inside the front cover, Will saw the words: This is not truthful. Do not be deceived. The blocky handwriting looked like it had been written by a child.

  Will began with Chapter One: THE BUILDER THREAT.

  The Builders described were nothing like the children’s textbook. Here, it spoke of unthinking creatures without sympathy or emotion of any kind.

  Will read for hours, barely noticing when Nurse Starr dropped off his lunch, then dinner. He was too engrossed in the accounts of Builders appearing out of nowhere, invading offices, burning homes, spiriting away Immunes, and sweeping through the City of New Wik like a great plague. Builders attacked the enchant seat of government, The Chambers of Wik. Six Senior Wik Councilmen were killed as Builders stormed The Chambers.

  The book told how Xavier B. Noctua had organized a defense, keeping the Builders at bay long enough for the rest of the Council of Wik to escape. The fight left him injured, but the Council of Wik intact. Dr. Noctua was called the greatest living enchant hero, solely responsible for the survival of enchant government.

  The next chapter was about Immunes and what the author called the Silent Siege. With Immunes in mortal danger and Dr. Noctua wounded, the Council of Wik ordered all Immunes to take refuge at St. Grimm’s. It was thought that it would be easier to protect them if they were all together. The plan failed horribly. Builders infiltrated the Silent Sanctuary and attacked. Every Immune was killed one by one, until the only Immunes left were the young in the Nursery. The night the Builders breached the Nursery doors, there was a ferocious battle to save the children, but there were too many Builders and too few protectors. Will felt sick when he read Chapter Six: THE NURSERY MASSACRE.

  Chapter Ten was about the fall of Special Branch. The author called it, “the elite jewel in ISPA’s crown.” They were the best-trained, most respected defense agency in the world. There were multiple accounts of how Special Branch agents died defending their assigned Immunes against overwhelming odds. At the beginning of the Builder uprising there were over 300 Special Branch agents and when it was over, only three survived—Agent Tony Rizzuto, Agent Yvonne Liska, and Agent Dean Rizzuto.

  Will read the three names again. Rizz and Liska had both been in Special Branch together? Dean? The same Dean that Nurse Starr had mentioned to Rizz? Was it the same Dean that left Rizz cringing on the cliffside—his cousin?

  The second to last chapter was about Dr. Josef W. Grimm. While the rest of the Immunes were being attacked, Builders had surrounded Josef Grimm’s lab. Grimm, two of his assistants, and two Special Branch agents defended the lab for four days until the Builders caused an explosion, wounding the agents and killing Josef Grimm.

  When Will read the names of the agents and assistants that had survived the explosion, he gasped:

  Dr. Thaddeus Bump, lab assistant, wounded.

  Dr. Elham Dervis, lab assistant, kidnapped and recovered.

  Agent Tony Rizzuto, wounded.

  Agent Dean Rizzuto, wounded, in a coma.

  The book said Dr. Bump was the only one able to remember any details of the explosion. He reported that Josef Grimm was trying to build a prosthetic that would allow him to communicate with Builders and possibly stop the attacks. But the device was volatile and exploded when Builders broke into the lab and attacked. Nothing but the DNA of Josef Grimm was found in the wreckage.

  The final chapter in the book was just as Rizz had explained. With Josef Grimm dead, the Builders withdrew and their queen accepted punishment on behalf of her subjects. The end.

  Will closed the book and rubbed his face. Rizz had been there when Josef Grimm died, along with Thaddeus Bump and possibly Rizz’s cousin? No wonder Rizz didn’t like Builders. No wonder the enchant world was terrified of them.

  Will stood and stretched. Two trays of untouched food sat on his desk. He glanced outside. Night had snuck up on him. It was almost one in the morning. A heavy complaint from his stomach told Will that his clock was right. As he picked through the cold meals, he yawned, feeling the stiffness in his joints. But how could he sleep after what he had just read?

  The room went black.

  Will held still, letting his eyes adjust. A blackout. Perfect. Light poured in from the crack under his door. The blackout was just in his room? Strange. Will stood and stumbled to the edge of his bed.

  “Ouch.” He sat, holding his stubbed toe. There was a scratching sound across the room. His breath caught in his throat.

  Against the moonlight, a shadowy silhouette pressed against his window. Something scraped against the pane. Squeals of glass being gouged sent shivers along his spine. He sat paralyzed.

  The glass squealed again, then again.

  Time stopped.

  The shadow shifted its weight and the window made a crackling sound. Will wanted to yell, to call for help, but there was no air in his lungs. The figure scraped once more, finishing a giant circle. Through the slit in the curtain, a white eye flashed against the night.

  The glass screeched and fell inward shattering across the floor. Shards showered Will’s bare feet. A cold wind sent goose bumps up his arms, but he didn’t feel it—he was too focused on the snarling wolf enchant that had just stepped into his room.

  “You owe me something, boy.” In the thin moonlight, the hunter tapped his eye patch with a long yellowed claw. “Eye for an eye.” The beast sniffed the air and smiled. “Fear, my favorite flavor. I promised to deliver you intact, but my employer will have to settle for a few pieces missing.”

  Something collided with the wolf enchant’s temple. His head jerked to the side and he snarled. Something else flew in from the other direction, smashing the brute in the ribs. The wolf turned to defend himself from an unseen assailant. There was a quick sound of scurrying feet, and a da
rk shape swept the hunter’s legs out from under him, sending him to the floor.

  A second later, hard fingers wrapped around Will’s wrist and pulled him off the bed just as the wolfchant shredded the mattress. Will was dragged across the room.

  With a crack, the balcony door was ripped off its hinges and the Builder with the red mark pulled Will into the light of the atrium. It had been the Builder who had thrown himself into the wolf enchant’s head and ribs. It had been the Builder who had knocked the wolf to the floor. And now this Builder was Will’s only hope.

  The white-eyed monster lunged.

  Will was hoisted up the wall. The Builder climbed with incredible speed, swinging Will around balconies, fifty stories above the floor. Behind them, the wolf was in pursuit, plunging his claws into the wall as he leapt from one balcony to the next. The hunter caught hold of Will’s pant leg. The Builder’s grip on Will’s wrist slipped.

  Terrified, Will used all his strength to kick the hunter. The wolf enchant tumbled backwards into space, his arms and legs flailing. Will thought it was over, but the beast caught a balcony. He glowered and started to climb again.

  The Builder made sure Will had a firm hold of his vest. Then, with all six limbs gripping the wall, he climbed with a new burst of speed. When they reached the crystal dome at the top of the atrium, Will looked around—there were no exits, just a dozen air vents not much wider than a bathroom sink. They were trapped. The Builder had climbed to a dead end.

  The wolfchant licked his teeth.

  With urgency, the ant enchant carried Will over to one of the small, round vents, ripped off the grate and pointed inside. Will stared at the hole and shook his head. He couldn’t crawl in there. He wouldn’t even fit. The Builder pointed again then motioned to the wolfchant, who was only a balcony below them now. It was the hole or the hunter.