by Jeff Gunhus
“They told me you were all being taken care of,” I said.
“They took care of us all right,” Eva said.
The sound of a gun being cocked behind me made us all freeze. I turned slowly to see a barrel pointed right at my face. I didn’t like how Lucas’s finger was on the trigger. Without a safety on the gun, there was a chance he might just shoot me by accident.
“What are you doing?” I said. “The Colonel and I have a deal.”
“What kind of deal?” Eva asked.
“I’ll tell you later,” I said.
“No, tell us now.”
Lucas lowered his aim to my stomach and fired his gun. I clutched my stomach on instinct. Then I felt my chest, expecting a roar of pain at any second.
But nothing came.
Nothing but a slow, diabolical laugh from Lucas.
“You should see your face,” he said. “And I thought you were the great hope for ending the war. But I guess that was before you handed the Jerusalem Stones over to the Colonel.”
“You did what?” Eva said.
“There’s no way,” Will said.
When I didn’t say anything right away, the others fell silent.
“Why would you do that?” Daniel said.
It was Xavier who answered. “To bargain for our lives,” he said. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? We’re in here, he’s out there, and there was only one thing he had to trade.”
Eva threw her hands up in disgust and walked to the back of her cage.
“Oh, I think it was more than that,” Lucas said. “Tell them, Jack. Tell them the deal you made.”
I cleared my throat. This was proving harder to do than I’d imagined. “I think we should join forces with the Colonel,” I said.
“What?”
“Are you out of your mind?’
I held up my hand. “Hear me out. They are the best chance we have of defeating Ren Lucre. You can’t deny that.”
T-Rex pressed his face against the iron bars. “What about all your talk about how there are good Creach in the world? About how we can’t judge them all the same?”
“The only good Creach is a dead one,” Lucas said.
Eva reappeared at the front of the cage. “Is that what you believe now, Jack? Does that mean your Aunt Sophie deserved to die? Gregor? Your own mother? How about me and Daniel? We’re Creach now. Do you think we deserve to die?”
I shook my head. “No, of course not. But most of them––”
“All of them,” Lucas said. “Including these two disgusting creatures.”
“I want you to let them out of these cages,” I said. “My deal with the Colonel was that they would be well taken care of.”
“They’re still alive, aren’t they?” Lucas said. “That’s about as good as it’s going to get.” He nodded to a cage with an open door. “That one’s for you.”
“You can’t be serious,” I said. “When the Colonel hears––”
“Who do you think told me to lock you up, you idiot?” Lucas said. “He’ll be down to deal with you shortly. Until then, we aren’t taking any chances.”
“If you shoot me, the Colonel doesn’t get to know how the Jerusalem Stones work,” I said, calling his bluff.
Lucas turned his gun and pointed it at the cage holding Eva and Daniel. “That’s why he told me to shoot one of them if you refused. I’m not sure which one to pick. The guy is pretty cocky, so that might be fun.” He slowly turned the gun toward Eva. “But I get the sense you have a soft spot for this one. So maybe that would be better.”
Eva hissed and bared her vampire teeth at the Black Death hunter..
“Okay, wait,” I said. “I’ll go in. Just leave them alone.” I walked into the cage opposite the one that housed Daniel and Eva. “But this wasn’t the deal.”
Lucas slammed the door behind me, pulling on it to make sure it was locked. “You can take it up with the Colonel when he comes down to see you.”
He waved his gun back and forth between the cages, making soft pow pow pow noises. Left to his own devices, Lucas would have liked nothing better than to be pulling the trigger for real. Finally, he turned and walked back the way we came and disappeared out of sight.
“Do you want to tell us what the heck is going on?” Will hissed the moment Lucas was gone.
I held up my hand, watching the door where Lucas had left, making sure he was really gone.
“You gave that maniac both of the Jerusalem Stones?” Eva said, her voice low and angry.
“Three Stones,” I said. “I got the third one from Master Aquinas.”
“Great,” Daniel said. “Just perfect. What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking how much the Jerusalem Stones look like plain old rocks,” I said reaching into my pocket. Slowly, I pulled out the real Jerusalem Stones and held them up for everyone to see.
T-Rex let out a laugh, and Will gave me a round of applause. Eva and Daniel broke into wide smiles.
“I was also thinking just how mad the Colonel is going to be when he finds out that the band of hunters he called a bunch of kids just outsmarted him and made him look like a complete fool. We’d better come up with a plan to get out of here before he figures it out.”
13
We all shared a good laugh and I shrugged off the apologies they made for doubting me. I told them I just took it as a compliment to my acting skills. After a few seconds though, Daniel shattered the good vibe by stating the obvious.
“Ah guys, we’re still stuck in these cages with armed madmen up top ready to come down here at any minute,” he said. “Not sure how much we should be celebrating right now.”
“You’re right,” I said. “Time to move.”
I clutched the Jerusalem Stones in my hand with the Templar Ring, closed my eyes and pictured the door on my cage open. The Templar Ring had opened doors for me before, even going all the way back to the Cave of Trials at the Monster Hunter Academy. I’d counted on it working here too.
I felt my hand grow warm and I concentrated harder, thinking to myself, Open this cage! Let me out!
There was a great wrenching sound and I opened my eyes in time to see the metal door tear itself from its hinges. Then it bent in half like a giant had squeezed it in a massive fist. Then, with a final squeal of ripping metal, it flew out, smacking against the empty cage across from me with a resounding clang.
A second later, the locks on all the other cages clicked open simultaneously and each cage door slowly swung open.
“That’s so cool,” Will said.
I nodded, a little freaked out by the display of power. “Yeah, totally,” I said, my voice cracking.
Daniel jumped out of his cage and ran to the pile of weapons on the ground nearby, tossing each person their swords and knives from the heap.
“Okay, part one complete,” he said. “But we’re not that much better off. We still have our weapons, but what good are these going to do against their guns?”
“We’re not going to give them the chance to find out,” I said. “Because we’re getting out of here.”
“And how do you expect that to happen?” Eva said. “That’s the only way in and out. And last time I checked there were a couple hundred Black Death hunters out in the courtyard.”
“That’s not the only way,” Xavier said, turning to look at the hole leading out to the chasm.
Everyone turned and looked over at the opening.
“He’s kidding, right?” T-Rex said.
“T-Rex is right,” Will said. “That’s like thousands of feet straight down. No way we climb down. It’s not like there’s enough rope to lower us either.”
I looked at Xavier. “You saw it on the way in, didn’t you?”
He nodded. “In the room next to the door. And I’ll bet you a mug-wump pie that those packs hold more than just parachutes in them.”
“First, don’t talk about pie. I’m starving and that makes it worse,” T-Rex said. “Second, what did you see and why do I
have a feeling I’m not going to like the answer?” T-Rex sounded nervous. He kept looking back and forth between me and the hole.
“Come on, I’ll show you.”
We all ran down the length of the cages to the storage room. I grabbed one of the backpacks and held it up.
“What? Are you going to hike out of here?” Will asked.
“No,” Daniel said, finally grinning as he realized what I was proposing. “We’re gonna jump.”
Eva pushed past me and went deeper into the room.
“Those are parachutes?” T-Rex asked. “Like, jump out of an airplane, pull the cord and float gently to the ground, type parachutes?”
“Probably more like fast-deploying, minimal lift, base-jumping type parachutes,” Daniel said. “Military style. You don’t want to gently float to the ground if there are bad guys beneath you trying to shoot you out of the sky.”
“He’s right,” Xavier said. He’d taken one of the packs apart and was inspecting it. It never ceased to amaze me how his first impulse was always to take things apart to see how they worked. “Small canopy means we’ll fall fast.”
“I’ve done this before,” Daniel said. “Used to base jump back at the Academy. If these are anything like the ones I used, it’ll feel like jumping out of the second story window when we hit the ground.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” T-Rex said.
Will slapped him on the back. “You’ve got this. I used to jump from my bedroom window two or three times a week to sneak out back in Sunnyvale. Just roll when you hit and you’ll be fine.”
“What do you think?” I asked Daniel.
“This might actually work,” he said. “And it’s better than all the other options. All of which probably end with each of us back in those cages or shot by one of these Black Death morons. I’m in.”
I looked around at the others. They all nodded, even T-Rex, though I noticed his lower lip quivered as he nodded.
“What about Master Aquinas? Bocho? All the younger hunters?” Will asked.
I shook my head. I’d had that same thought. It felt like we were abandoning them, but I didn’t see any other choice. “If we escape, we’re on our own until this thing is finished. That means getting the last two Jerusalem Stones and then facing Ren Lucre.”
The group was quiet. They knew what I said was true, but the idea of being completely on our own until we accomplished the impossible sounded even more overwhelming when someone said it out loud.
“I’m open to any better ideas,” I said.
Daniel shook his head. The others did the same.
“They won’t hurt her, will they?” T-Rex asked.
“I don’t think they will. She’s still useful. As long as the Colonel is trying to unite the hunter forces under his Black Death banner, he’ll keep her alive just to make people think she supports him.”
“Look at what I found,” Xavier said, walking from deeper in the room. He held up a weird-looking piece of clothing. “I assumed this would be here.”
At first glance I thought it was a pair of whole-body pajamas, the kind I used to wear as a little kid with the feet and a zipper up the front. Then he held up one of the arms and showed us that there was a heavy-duty rubber webbing attached to the outer arm and the side of the body. He kicked apart the legs and showed there was webbing there too.
“Oh yeah,” Eva said. “Now we’re talking.”
“Now we’re talking? What are we talking about?” T-Rex asked. “What is that?”
Eva grinned. “Wing suits. All sizes. We’re not going to jump and drop to the bottom. We’re going to jump and then we’re gonna fly.”
14
We pulled on the suits as fast as we could, all too aware that the Colonel or his men could appear at any minute. I’d seen videos of people flying with wing suits on YouTube before. It basically copied nature’s best flying mammal, the flying squirrel. In fact, they were actually called squirrel suits too. Flying squirrels don’t really fly, they just leap from one tree to the next, with the tight flaps of skin stretching on their sides, turning them into expert gliders and allowing them to cross large distances. These suits would supposedly allow us to do the same thing, putting much needed distance between us and the Black Death.
The people I’d seen do it online made it look easy, using small adjustments with their feet and legs as they hurtled toward the ground. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, a lot actually.
Will, T-Rex and I used to search for wing suit epic fails. Even the pros would run into a tree now and then, or get tangled up with the person they were next to, making getting their parachutes open a lot harder than pulling a cord.
But there was no turning back now.
“Everyone feel good about this?” I asked.
“No,” T-Rex said, pulling and tugging at his tight-fitting suit. “Of course not. This might be the craziest thing we’ve done so far.”
Considering that we’d battled an army of zombies, fire-breathing dragons and the Lord of the Demons himself, that was saying a lot. And I didn’t disagree with him.
“You can stay here,” I said. “Tell them you didn’t agree with us. Join the others and look for chances to sabotage them along the way.”
To T-Rex’s credit, this suggestion just made him mad. He marched past me and grabbed the nearest parachute and started to slide it on over his wing suit.
“I think that’s your answer,” Will said, pulling on his own parachute.
With our suits on, we ran the best we could down to the opening. Once we got to the edge, I felt my stomach drop. It was one thing to look out over the mountains in the distance. It was another thing completely to stand right on the edge and look down at a drop of thousands of feet. Worse, there were craggy rocks right beneath us, sticking out like knives waiting to cut us up into ribbons, with only a narrow opening between them. If we jumped, then we were going to have to aim perfectly for that opening in order to get into the space over the chasm.
A few feet either way and it was going to be a really short flight.
“Is it even possible?” I asked.
“There’d be no reason to have the supply of wing suits unless they were meant to be used,” Xavier said, his voice trembling. That made logical sense, but it was still super scary to look at what we had to do.
Gunshots burst from the other side of the cavern, zinging off the rock right above us.
“Get down,” I yelled.
We scattered and ducked behind whatever cover we could find. Eva and I crouched behind a large boulder. I saw that the others had decent cover too. At least that gave me a second to think.
I chanced a look over the boulder. It was Lucas and three others. I could see two of them were pulling on wing suits too. They must have seen us wearing ours. Looked like we weren’t getting out of there without someone following us.
“I think we should––”
But when I turned to Eva she was already gone. I spun around to see her sprint to the opening. With a yell, she launched herself off of the edge as Lucas opened fire.
Eva arched her back and spread out her arms and legs, looking like a giant bat taking off. Then she dropped out of sight.
I stumbled backward to get a view over the edge, the boulder still blocking me from Lucas.
Just in time, I saw Eva gracefully swoop down, and then catch an updraft of air that sent her expertly through the opening between the rocks. Somehow she managed to angle upwards until her climb stalled, like the moment when something is thrown straight in the air and it stops in place for a split second before falling back down. In that moment, she reached out and grabbed hold of a rock outcropping, gripping it with both her arms and legs. Now she really looked like a bat.
But a bat that had just proved for certain that it was possible to get through the opening.
Then again, she did have vampire strength and supernatural reflexes, but I didn’t want to dwell on that. There were guys with guns at the far end o
f the cavern. It was time to go.
“Daniel,” I called out. I couldn’t see where he’d taken cover but I figured it had to be nearby.
“Here.”
“Do you have the guys with you?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, I’m going to distract them. When I give the signal, you guys all go for it.”
“But Jack––” Will said.
“Will, you go. Then T-Rex, Xavier, Daniel. I’ll be right behind you. Once you clear the rocks, head south.”
“Which way is south?” came T-Rex’s voice.
“Left,” I said. “Catch as much air as you can so the guys who come after can catch up. Ready?”
“Ready.”
I pulled the Jerusalem Stones from my pocket and held them up over my head. I moved to the right, away from the opening. “Lucas, it’s Jack. I have the Jerusalem Stones.”
There was a long pause then Lucas answered, “You gave those to the Colonel. He told me so himself.”
“I gave him fakes,” I said. I moved slowly into the open with my hands up. I just hoped they didn’t feel like shooting first and asking questions later. “These are what he wants. They’re yours. Just don’t hurt any of my friends.”
The two hunters came out of the room with the parachutes. They were already in wingsuits and strapped into their packs. They were about half a football field away, so if they sprinted the distance after I jumped, I’d have a few seconds start, depending on how fast they were.
“Throw the Stones in front of you,” Lucas said. “Then we’ll talk.”
“Put your guns down first.”
“Why would we do that?”
“Because I don’t want one of your guys to get trigger-happy. If they lunge for their gun on the ground, it’ll give me time to take cover.”
“You’re in no position to bargain,” Lucas said.
I transferred two of the Stones into my left hand and cocked my right arm back in a throwing motion. “I can toss the Stones over the edge. Then you can explain to the Colonel how you let that happen.”