by Rena Barron
“Check him for illusions.” Nulan waved to another officer, who thrust his prod into Zeran’s side. I clenched my teeth as his legs gave out and he crumbled to the ground. Blood ran out of his nose, but he only grumbled through the pain as he wiped his face. “You appear to be one of us.” Nulan moved to stand in front of me. Her golden eyes flashed with contempt like she could already see through my disguise. “Do you have a tongue, girl?”
“Yes, sir!” I glanced at the half-eaten jeejee fruit discarded on the ground. “I have a tongue.”
Nulan quirked a plucked eyebrow at me. “Did you both eat from this grove?”
“Yes, sir,” I repeated like a robot through gritted teeth. “There’s plenty to share.”
“Check her,” Nulan commanded, and I looked to Zeran, desperate. He’d said to trust him, but I nudged the ring down my finger into the palm of my hand just in case.
The jolt of electricity hit me as soon as the patrol officer jabbed the prod into my side. My whole body seized, and my knees buckled. The ring slipped out of my hand as I hit the ground.
I glared up at Nulan. If she was going to get the best of me, it wouldn’t be with me cowering at her feet. I gagged at the taste of blood on my tongue. Magic rippled across my skin. It pulled and twisted and stretched until the tingling passed. Sweat stung my eyes, and I drew in a sharp breath.
“It’s not them.” Nulan glowered, clearly disappointed. “Move out.” As she turned to go, she added, “It’s rather unfortunate that you ate that fruit. Jeejee patches digest their prey for weeks. They excrete an enzyme that keeps you alive as they do. It’s a rather painful death.”
“What . . . We didn’t know,” Zeran said, his voice suddenly squeaky. “Can you help us?”
“I could, but I won’t,” the aziza answered, her iridescent wings fluttering at her back.
She and her patrol officers moved away as Zeran and I pretended to be sleepy. We collapsed to the ground, and moments later, the soil swallowed us whole. This was not part of the plan.
TWENTY-SEVEN
We stumble upon a graveyard
Zeran’s wings spread wide as he shot up from the ground with me in tow. He kept one arm wrapped around my waist as we soared through the air. That was until he clipped a tree branch and got tangled in the leaves. He lost his hold on me, and I plunged toward the grove with a bunch of jeejee fruit to brace my fall. I might have (and that’s a big might) let out an undignified squeal. By some miracle, Zeran grabbed my arm right before I hit the ground.
“Um, thanks for saving our butts again,” I said as he let me down in one piece. I looked for the ring and found it pulsing with light on a pile of leaves. When I picked it up, it turned back into a staff with a deep sigh of indignation.
“I owe you an apology for some of the things I said back at camp when we first met.” Zeran stared at his black boots caked in mud. “I had some ideas about humans and godlings that weren’t true. The Lord of Shadows said that you were all selfish and couldn’t be trusted, but you three aren’t like that.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” I said, digging my heels into the dirt. “Before we met you, we’d only run into darkbringers trying to kill us. We thought you were all mindless cronies.”
“Mindless cronies, huh?” Zeran finally looked up from his feet, smiling.
I crossed my arms and laughed. “Yup.”
“I’m glad we were both wrong,” he said.
“Me too.” Okay, I’ll admit it. Zeran was cute in that dark, brooding way you saw in movies and comic books. It usually didn’t work in real life, except it totally worked for him. “I can’t believe your magic fooled Nulan and their fancy equipment.”
Zeran wriggled his eyebrows. “I did say that I was top in my class.”
* * *
After the ordeal with Nulan, Zeran and I dug through the soil until we reached the edge of Frankie’s force field. As soon as she let go of the bubble, Eli’s snores filled the air. Frankie let out a deep sigh, and I shook my head.
“Ugh,” Eli said, rubbing his belly the next morning. “Why did you let me eat that jeejee fruit? I have the worst stomachache now—and I had the weirdest dream that I was buried alive.”
“We did try to warn you,” Frankie said.
“Next time, try harder,” Eli insisted.
“Are they always like that?” Zeran whispered to me.
“Yup,” I nodded as we trekked through a murky bog that smelled like two-day-old farts. Air pockets bubbled up on the surface of the mud and popped, which only made the smell much worse. The sky had grown darker over the past hour, and the thick clouds were the color of indigo. Streaks of black lightning cut across the sky, and I swallowed hard. Sometimes black lightning appeared right before a tear in the veil. I hoped this wasn’t one of those times.
According to the map, we had a straight shot to the palace from here. In a few hours, we’d have to face the Lord of Shadows. It made me queasy to think about being within a hundred feet of him. If he wanted me alive, then it had something to do with the veil. I couldn’t think of any other reason. One thing was for sure. The Lord of Shadows hadn’t found a way to get through the veil even with Eleni helping him all these centuries. So he’d come up with another scheme—one that involved me.
We still didn’t have a plan to defeat him and steal back my father’s soul. I didn’t even know what a soul looked like. Before, when we rescued my father, I could feel his presence. I hoped it would be the same with his soul.
Crossing this bog was like walking through wet cement. Mud clung to my jeans, and I struggled to take each step. This was slowing us down, which I bet was the map’s reason for bringing us on this path. “Any idea of what we’ll be up against at the palace?” I asked Zeran.
“I don’t know for sure,” he said, sloshing through the bog. “I heard a rumor that the Lord of Shadows has a hundred recruits and twice as many soldiers on the palace grounds.”
“Three hundred darkbringers against four,” Frankie noted, up to her ankles in mud. “Those are horrible odds.”
“There has to be a way to get around the wards,” I said. “If so, I could open a gateway inside the palace undetected. That way, we could avoid most of the soldiers altogether.”
Eli groaned, with an arm wrapped around his belly. He didn’t look so good. His face was paler than usual, and he walked with his shoulders hunched. I was starting to worry about him.
“Let’s think about this for a moment.” Frankie wrinkled her nose after another air bubble popped right in front of her. “Wards keep people out—sort of like my electromagnetic field. Once you’re inside the palace, you might be able to open a gateway without any problems.”
“That’s a big might,” I said, waving away the funky smell. “Plus we have to get inside the palace first.”
“Does anyone else feel like we’re being watched?” Eli asked, glancing around.
Zeran frowned. “I haven’t heard or seen anything to suggest that anyone else is out here.”
“Me neither,” I said, but an eerie thick fog had rolled over the bog. We couldn’t see more than a few feet around us at any given time.
“I’m telling you.” Eli wiped beads of sweat from his forehead. “We’re not alone. I can feel it.”
Zeran cracked a lopsided smile and shook his head. “You’re just spooking yourself out, Eli. If the city patrol or the soldiers had caught up with us, they would’ve attacked by now, especially since we’re at a disadvantage, stuck in mud and all.”
I didn’t sense anyone in the fog, but the map was a trickster. First, it had led us straight to Chief of Order Nulan. Then it put us on a treacherous pass that almost got Frankie killed. Who could forget the Lost Forest, with its vicious shadows, or the grove that tried to eat us alive? But above all those things, I trusted Eli’s instincts. If he said someone was following us, then I believed him.
“We’ll keep a lookout.” I tightened my grip on the staff.
Air pockets grew on the
surface of the mud and popped at irregular intervals. Except for that and our sneakers sloshing through the mud, it was dead quiet. No mosquitos buzzed around our faces, no wind rustled in the trees, no sound of any animals at all.
Several air pockets popped at once, and the mud let out a collective growl. I stepped on something that cracked underneath my foot. “What was that?” I said, reaching down to pick it up. My hand shook as I stared in shock at the row of teeth covered in mud.
“Is that a mandible?” Frankie asked, pointing a shaky finger at the teeth.
I remembered the model of a skeleton in the corner of Mr. Jenkins’s science class. I was pretty sure that I was holding the bottom half of somebody’s jaw. I dropped the mandible. “We need to pick up the pace and get out of here.”
“Too late,” whispered a sinister voice on the wind that set ice in my veins.
“Who said that?” Frankie asked, sparks of electricity growing on her fingertips.
Bones started to rise to the surface of the mud: a skull, a rib cage, a thigh bone, and whole skeletons. My heart thundered against my chest as the truth hit me at once. “This is a graveyard.”
“Time to die,” growled the man who stepped out of the fog.
The darkbringer was seven feet tall. He wore black cargo pants and a bloodstained black jacket—a soldier’s uniform. His whole body had a gray tint to it, and he was see-through.
“This can’t be possible,” Zeran gasped next to me. “That’s General Dekala. He’s a legend, and he’s also been dead for over a hundred years.”
“He’s a ghost,” Eli said, his voice somber. “They all are.”
“What does he want—” Before I could get all the words out, I saw the rest of them.
Hundreds of ghastly faces appeared in the fog. Most of them wore soldier uniforms. They were young, old, winged, and horned, and their eyes burned black like pools of hot tar. They all talked at once until the man Zeran called Dekala raised a hand to silence them.
General Dekala smiled, revealing an endless black hole for a mouth. “Goodbye, trespassers, or should I say welcome, for you will never leave this place again.”
As the ghosts rushed forward, Frankie raised a force field around us, but they charged through it. She dropped the force field and started to hit the ghosts with balls of energy. That didn’t slow them down either. The symbols on my staff lit up as I swung at a ghost who was wielding a battleax. I ducked in time to keep my head, but my staff went straight through him.
“Maya, the staff!” Eli called as he dodged a blow of his own. “I have an idea.”
I figured that Eli would’ve turned invisible by now, but maybe that didn’t work against ghosts. As much as I didn’t want to part ways with the staff, I tossed it to him. If he had an idea, that was better than having a tombstone that read Maya Janine Abeola, death by ghost in a stinky bog.
Eli caught the staff in one hand. As soon as he did, the symbols pulsed with blue light. New symbols appeared on the staff—symbols that I didn’t recognize. They configured themselves in a new pattern, too. “Stop!” Eli shouted, and his voice was the crack of a whip.
The ghosts froze in place as blue light lifted from Eli’s skin and spread over the bog. They struggled against his magic, grimacing and glaring at him, but they couldn’t move. Even General Dekala had frozen in place. Eli was shaking, and his nose started to bleed.
“Eli,” Frankie said, her voice quiet.
He wiped away the trickle of blood from his nose with the back of his hand and gave her a sheepish smile. “Say hello to my new ghost army.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
We break into the Crystal Palace
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. These were ghosts, as in spirits, as in the undead. Eli was right; ghosts existed! He had a crooked grin on his face, but his whole body shook from the effort of holding the ghosts in place. Frankie sloshed through the mud to be by his side as he leaned on the staff.
“Let go of us, little mutant boy,” General Dekala demanded, sounding ticked off.
“Hey, who are you calling mutant?” Eli shot back.
“What are you?” General Dekala asked, and the other ghosts whispered among themselves.
“A human?” Eli rolled his eyes. “Well, actually a godling.”
“A godling, here?” Dekala scoffed. “Things have changed since my day if a godling can walk free in the Dark. What has happened? Don’t tell me that the veil has finally fallen. That would be a shame.”
I couldn’t believe that this darkbringer general was against the veil failing, too. I had to remind myself that not everyone in the Dark agreed with what the Lord of Shadows was doing. They didn’t want a war with the human world either. “It hasn’t failed yet, but it will if we don’t stop the Lord of Shadows.”
“We need your help getting into the Crystal Palace,” Eli blurted out, straight to the point.
“We should eat them,” someone hollered from the crowd of ghosts.
“You don’t want to eat me,” Eli retorted. “I taste as bad as this bog smells.”
Several of the ghosts gagged.
Zeran looked at General Dekala with wide eyes. “You challenged the Lord of Shadows for control of the Dark.”
“And I got my whole squadron killed for my efforts,” the general growled. “The Lord of Shadows tied our spirits to this bog for all eternity as punishment. Now we spend our days waiting for visitors so we can add their souls to our collective misery.”
“That’s horrible,” Frankie said, giving him a stern look. “Both being trapped here and trapping others.”
General Dekala shrugged. “Everyone knows the bog’s haunted, so we haven’t had a visitor in fifty years. It was boring around here until you came.”
“You fought the Lord of Shadows when no one else would,” Zeran exclaimed. “You’re a legend.”
Was it just me, or was Zeran a little starstruck?
“Seems to me that you’re standing against him now.” General Dekala yawned. “Good luck.”
“But we need your help,” Eli insisted. “It’s fate that I found you . . . You were meant to help us.”
“Meant to help the likes of you?” Dekala crossed his arms. “I may not agree with the Lord of Shadows, but I’m no friend to godlings, either.”
Even if General Dekala and his ghost army offered to help, I didn’t know if we could trust them, but Frankie was right. Three hundred against four were horrible odds.
“The Lord of Shadows is preparing for war with the other celestials again,” Zeran said, his eyes desperate. “When he’s done, there’ll be nothing left of our people or the Dark.”
Dekala ignored Zeran, and Eli waved his arm dismissively. “Let him and his squadron spend another hundred years in this stinky bog.”
Eli and Frankie started to slosh through the mud again while the ghosts stood still, locked in place by his magic. I followed, and Zeran reluctantly fell into step with me.
“To think I was going to free them from their eternal prison,” Eli grumbled under his breath.
“Wait!” General Dekala shouted. “Do you have the strength to free us, godling?”
I held back a smile. My friend had dropped the one thing the ghosts couldn’t resist.
“Oh, now you want to talk, huh?” Eli said, still walking. “Naw, we’re done with you.”
“We can help you get into the Crystal Palace,” Dekala offered.
Eli stopped in his tracks, his back to the general. “We’re listening.”
“I’m no traitor,” Dekala spat out, “but we’ll help you get into the palace, and then you’ll be on your own after that. I’ll do it to protect my people from war, nothing more.”
Eli stroked his chin. “My friends and I will confer.”
Frankie, Eli, and I moved in for the huddle, but Zeran looked at us, unsure. I waved him over, and he joined us with our arms dragged over each other’s shoulders. “What do you think?” Frankie asked. “We do need help.”
“General Dekala was the one who started the Resistance,” Zeran explained. “If he says he’ll help us, we can trust him.”
“They already tried to kill us once,” I reminded them. “Like, only five minutes ago.”
“I’m not holding them anymore, and they haven’t attacked again.” Eli rubbed his forehead. “This isn’t going to make sense, but I believe him. I have this weird connection to the ghosts. It’s hard to explain.”
“I don’t know if we have much choice, Maya,” Frankie said, and all three of them—she, Eli, and Zeran—looked to me for a decision.
I sucked in a deep breath. As much as I wanted to say no, this was the distraction we needed to get into the palace. I bit my lip and gave my answer. “Okay.”
Once we’d settled it, Eli turned to the ghosts. “We will accept your offer. I’ll free you from this bog in exchange for you helping us break into the Crystal Palace.”
Dekala nodded, and the squadron broke into chatter. They really wanted out of this bog—not that I blamed them for that. “Call for us when you’re ready.”
Dekala and the other ghosts faded bit by bit until they disappeared. Eli looked to me, Frankie, then Zeran and grinned. “I got myself a real ghost army.” He did a little dance that involved waving his elbows around like chicken wings.
“And I have an idea to get rid of Nulan,” I said. “I’ll tell you on the way.”
Three hours later, we hid in the forest outside of the gate that surrounded the Crystal Palace. It was almost nightfall, and a blanket of shadows shrouded most of it from view. Five towers of varying heights stretched into the sky. Glass shaped like fish scales covered their bases, while the tops were sharp needle points. To my horror, giant green serpents slithered up the length of the towers. I swallowed hard, hoping we didn’t have to go anywhere near those creatures to retrieve my father’s soul. The palace itself was sprawling with black stone walls almost completely masked in the fog. The ground was immaculate, with a garden bursting with pristine flower beds. Writhing moss wrapped around the tree branches, and vines snaked between the bars of the ten-foot wrought-iron gate.