Balmythra

by Linda Palmer

Chapter Twelve

  Ghosts and Shadows

  I screamed and threw my arms around him. He dropped to his knees and fell over with me trying to keep his head from hitting the floor. Now on my knees, too, I pulled up his T-shirt and pressed my hand to his injury. Could I help? I'd never seen a gunshot wound, much less dealt with one, and there was so much blood. But I instinctively pictured the bullet, buried in his flesh, and imagined myself pulling it out. An unexpected surge of mental energy told me that Jor now offered support from the shadows.

  In seconds, something small, hard and wet touched my palm. Shocked by my success, I closed my fingers over the bloody bullet and took it out. Raine and Skye shuffled into the shed, eerily in step. Their blonde, blue-eyed innocence contrasted sharply with the handgun Raine pointed at Matt’s head. I squealed and threw myself over him just in time for Jor's mental blast outward. Both girls crumpled to the ground. The gun hit the floor, slid through the puddle of Matt’s blood, and bumped the dryer with a dull thud.

  I could barely breathe as I raised my head and looked Jor in the eye. "Why would they do this?"

  "They’re Dagonel."

  What? Unable to imagine that, I dismissed his words and checked Matt's wound, which still bled freely. My stomach lurched even as I pressed my fingers to the torn flesh. I caught Jor's eye. "Please try."

  Kneeling, he placed his hand over mine and began a soft chant, concentrating so hard that he began to sweat. Before my eyes, the skin started to mend itself. I put my ear to Matt's heart and heard a steady beat.

  The moment Jor pulled his hand back, I threw my arms around him. "Thank you."

  Startled, he gently freed himself and swiped his bloody fingers down his jeans. Though he stood, I stayed on my knees by Matt, whose eyes had fluttered open.

  "Hey. Are you okay?" I asked.

  He shifted his focus from me to Jor in confusion before getting his bearings and trying to sit up. "What happened?"

  "You were shot." I moved back to give him more room.

  He shifted position enough to lean against the washing machine. "By what?"

  "A gun. Right there."

  Matt looked where I pointed. Seeing his bloody shirt, he sucked in a startled breath and pulled it up to take a look. His skin, red as a sunburn, had almost healed. When he immediately shifted his gaze to me, I knew I'd better start talking. "I took out the bullet. Jor closed the wound."

  "O-kay. And who was it that shot me?"

  "Raine." I pointed to the girls, lying on the floor. Though it was getting harder to see by the minute, I saw Matt's eyes fly open wide. "Jor took them down."

  He whistled low. "Where'd they get a gun?"

  "No idea. Can you walk?" I slipped an arm around his back to help him stand. "We really need to get into the house. Or—" I glanced at Jor "—maybe we should take Matt to Balmythra and then come back for Rocc."

  "Not happening." Shrugging off my helping hands, which were bloodstained, Matt straightened to his full height. "Earth is my home. I’m staying."

  Had to respect that. I quickly washed my hands in the tiny sink tucked in a corner of the shed. Jor washed his, too. I then searched for something to tie up the girls with. Clearly evil was calling the shots, which made friends enemies. I didn't want another surprise attack.

  Jor nodded as if I'd said that out loud, a move not lost on Matt.

  He didn't look happy. "Would you two please include me in your instant messaging?"

  "Sorry." I gave him a half smile of apology. "Something really bad has happened here, so we've got to find Rocc, who's probably in the house, and get out as quickly as possible."

  "Do you sense your brother?" Jor asked.

  "No, do you?"

  Jor shook his head.

  "I'm certain that's his blood on the shovel, though." I tried to swallow the lump forming in my throat. "Maybe he's just unconscious."

  "We’ll find him." Matt took my hand. Peripherally, a shadow shifted in the corner of the shed. I strained to make out something, anything, in the darkness. But the three of us were alone except for the two girls lying on the floor.

  Thoroughly spooked, I peeked outside. Pringle's loomed silently in the rain. Matilda's light wasn't on, which didn’t fit a normal Saturday evening. She was generally a night owl on the weekends. And though light streamed from the kitchen window, the rest of the house seemed dead.

  When I turned away, I found Jor and Matt binding the girls' wrists and ankles with duct tape they'd found on one of the shelves. I located a half-empty can of white paint and, after prying the lid up with Matt's pocket knife, sunk the gun before sealing it shut again. "Where do you suppose the twins got this old thing, anyway?" I handed Matt his knife.

  He pocketed it. "It's probably Mad Matilda's. She’s as paranoid as they come—always thinking someone’s after her stuff."

  "Yeah, well, I hope no one else is armed."

  Jor gave the girls' bonds a last inspection before moving resolutely toward the door. Matt and I followed him outside and across the yard to the back of the house.

  When we ducked below a window, Matt said, "You know, it really wouldn’t be that unusual for us to just walk in. I mean, we live here, after all."

  "Oh yeah." I guessed I'd forgotten that little detail because Nodyra felt so alien to me now. I turned to Jor. "Stay put, okay? If we run into Matilda, we can always make up some excuse. What we can't do is explain you."

  "All right," Jor said, softly adding, "Let caution be your guide, Alleana."

  Matt rolled his eyes as he started toward the house. "Why can't he just say 'be careful'?"

  "He's actually handling earth English pretty well," I whispered. We walked quietly up the back steps onto the small porch. There was a kitchen window there, and we peered through it, but spotted no activity. The rooms beyond lay in darkness.

  I shivered. "I don't like this one bit. Where is everyone?" Heart thumping like crazy, I pushed open the door, but Matt immediately brushed past me and stepped inside before I could. To our left, another shadow shifted. Gasping, I whirled for a better look, but the room was clearly empty.

  "What's wrong?"

  I shook my head in reply to Matt's soft question. He walked to the hall and then up the stairway, which was particularly hazardous in the half light since some of the steps sagged a little.

  I followed right behind, my gaze darting from the stair rail to the landing and then to the dark rooms beyond. The silence challenged my certainty that we weren't alone. Shadows that shouldn't be there ascended the steps with us. When we passed the mirror mounted in the hall, I studiously avoided gazing into it, afraid I would see something lurking behind me. Goosebumps crawled up my arms.

  The air grew thicker and heavier with each step. I struggled to suck in a lungful. Matt's labored breaths told me he did the same. Was this really Pringle's? I felt disoriented, almost as if I were dreaming everything.

  Matt slowed and then abruptly stopped one step from the upstairs hall.

  "What is it?" I tried to see around him.

  He turned his body to face mine. Our gazes locked. And though the darkness blurred his features, I knew without a doubt that this guy was not my dearest friend and secret crush.

  Matt leaned closer, his eyes glowed with menace. I felt the danger I'd felt in Raine and Skye. Dagonel, Jor had said. But Matt wasn't the enemy. He couldn’t be. I pressed my palm to his chest and felt the reassuring beat of his heart.

  I kept my voice low when I spoke to him. "What's wrong, Matt?"

  He didn't answer.

  I gulped, fearing the worst, the impossible. "Please come back to me. Please. I can't do this alone."

  All at once he shivered from head to toe and snapped out of his trance. Our eyes met. Near tears, I grabbed him in a hard hug he didn't have time to return before a creak and groan from one of the lower steps broke us apart. I spun around to see what had followed and glimpsed another moving shadow out of the corner of my eye. "Is this house haunted?"

/>   "You know we just said that to spook the kids."

  Thank God he sounded so normal. "Then what just happened to you?"

  Matt slowly exhaled. "So that was real. I felt disconnected, but I could see you the whole time and there was this sound..." He shook his head, clearly as wigged out as I was. "We should go. There's no one here."

  "You're wrong." I peered upstairs. "I sense them now. In the dorms." I charged up the last steps to the upstairs hall. Hesitating only a moment, I walked into Girls’ Dorm One and then stopped so short that Matt rear ended me. We exchanged a look before turning our attention to the beds on which Ashley, Brady, and all the others lay, fully dressed and as still as statues.

  Matt gulped audibly. "Oh God. Are they...dead?"

  They certainly seemed to be. I made myself walk to the nearest bed. Ashley lay on it, her eyes open in a wide, blank stare. I felt for a pulse, found one, and then sagged with relief. "Not dead. They’re just stuck. Like what happened to Kenny before. They’ll be okay."

  I didn't know how I knew that and was glad Matt didn't question me. Quickly I walked over to Brady and gently stroked her forehead. With a soft moan, she came slowly to life, lazily stretching.

  Her eyes locked onto me. "Where’ve you been?" Brady started to sit, but then sank back, yawning. "Is it already time to get up? I’m sooo sleepy."

  I shared a relieved look with Matt. "Not even close. Sweet dreams, Scooby-Doo."

  Eyes already closed again, Brady managed to say one last thing before she curled up and snuggled into her pillow. "I’ll pee later, okay?"

  I didn't bother to answer, but moved from bed to bed and instinctively touched all the occupants of the room. They stirred. Some even spoke.

  "Make sure Ashley stays awake," I said as I headed to Girl's Dorm Two, where every poP had the same desire to roll over and go back to sleep. I let them.

  I then made my way to the boys’ dorm. I found the same situation there though Kenny sat huddled in a corner, shaking so hard I heard his teeth chatter. I kept my distance since I didn't want to startle him. "Kenny?"

  He glanced up. "Leah? No, not Leah." Kenny closed his eyes and pressed his hands to his head, rocking back and forth. "Leah's gone. Matt's gone. The shadows… All the shadows..."

  I heard Matt behind me and found him rifling through the dresser, probably for a shirt that didn't have blood on it. A quick look revealed that Ashley was with him. Glad they were there, I slowly approached Kenny and knelt to firmly grasp his shoulders.

  I shook him. "It's really me, Kenny. We’re all in this together."

  He opened one eye, then the other. Springing to his feet, he as good as knocked me backward. Kenny charged Matt just as he pulled down the hem of his clean shirt and grabbed him by the biceps. Then he turned to grab me. "You're back! You're back!"

  "What happened here?" Matt's gaze shifted from Kenny to Ashley, who now sat on the edge of a bunk, yawning.

  "It’s Matilda." Kenny actually trembled. "She's really lost it, man...as in mad as a hatter, bats in the belfry, elevator's plumb dropped to the bottom floor." He sounded frantic and began to search the room for something. Finally he snatched up a blue denim jacket from underneath one of the bunks. He tugged it on and zipped it tight. "When you didn't come back from the laundry shed, John and I went looking. We walked in just as Matilda hit some dude with a shovel." His eyes widened. "I think she killed him."

  My stomach did a back flip, but I immediately steadied myself. This was no more than I already knew, after all. Rocc was hurt...badly...but not dead. At least not yet. "What happened after that?"

  "All hell broke loose. She saw us and shrieked like a lunatic. We split...or tried to, anyway. It was kind of like running in quicksand. John didn't get far before he keeled right over in the grass. Matilda grabbed me a second later, and I wound up here with the others. They were all like this." He shuddered and pointed at a boy still frozen in his top bunk.

  It was John, I realized.

  Kenny did a double take. "I don't know how the heck he got up there." Flushing, he turned away. "I should've helped everyone. I mean, she didn't hex me, did she? But I just couldn't move." He shrugged. "Too much of a wimp, I guess."

  "You are not." I tugged one of his dread locks affectionately. "In fact, you're just the opposite. And since you’d already had some experience with this, you were somehow able to fight it off."

  "Huh?"

  "I’ll have to explain later. Right now I need to know what Matilda did with the guy she hit."

  "And it wouldn't hurt to know where she is now." Matt glanced over his shoulder at the door.

  Kenny addressed the last question first. "Don’t know and don’t want to know."

  "And the guy she hit...?" I tried to hide my impatience.

  Kenny still shrugged me off. "I heard her rattling around in the basement. Maybe she hid him down there."

  "I'm going to go check." I charged the door.

  Matt blocked me. "But what about the rest of the poPs? We can’t leave them like this."

  Knowing he had a point, I mentally called out for help and immediately felt a response. "Jor will wake them up."

  "Then I'm coming with you."

  Seconds later we found Rocc in the musty, dark storeroom just below the kitchen. He lay on his stomach on the floor, pale and lifeless. Choking back a sob of fear, I knelt quickly beside him. I felt his pulse and found it almost as nonexistent as his shallow breaths. My own heart slammed against my ribcage. Hands trembling, I explored his blood-matted head with my fingers and encountered a deep gash.

  I lost it, bursting into tears and desperately trying to figure out what I should do.

  "You can fix him, can’t you?" Matt sounded uncertain. "You took a bullet out of me..."

  "No!" I sort of snapped at him and instantly regretted my temper. This wasn't Matt's fault. "That was different, okay? He’s been like this too long for me or even Jor to help. I-I think he’s lost a lot of his life force."

  Jor stepped into the room with us. "Yes, he definitely needs the Sunsanean."

  "What's that?" asked Matt.

  "The healer," I told him, courtesy of Eniywan. I couldn't define Sunsanean further or even picture one, though. I shifted my gaze from Rocc to Jor. "We've got to get back to Balmythra. He needs help now." If Rocc were to die—

  Jor squelched that horrible thought. "He won't if we leave right away."

  "But what about the poPs?" Matt shifted his focus from me to Jor and back again. "Matilda might—"

  Jor cut him off. "We can't—"

  "Oh, yes, we can." I saw another peripheral shadow shift. Though Jor didn't react in any way, I knew he'd seen it, too. "This place reeks of bad things. I won't leave my friends behind."

  Jor gave in with a heavy sigh. Motioning for Matt to follow, he left to gather the other occupants of Pringle's. I stayed close to Rocc until all the guys returned with a stretcher they'd fashioned from an old bedspread. Once they placed Rocc on it and climbed out of the basement, we joined the girls in the kitchen.

  I remembered Jor might not be able to get us back. "Will you be able to find the Xephyr Stream?"

  "Right now we have a whole village fine tuned to us, so I'm pretty sure I will."

  "Thanks." I'd never had so many unanswered questions, but I didn't get a chance to ask any of them before Matt spoke.

  "Anytime now." He clearly wanted to be gone.

  I turned to him. "If I leave I'll never have answers, and so much doesn't make sense. I can accept that the girls are Dagonel since I didn’t really know them, but how can Mad Matilda be?"

  Jor spoke before Matt could. "We have a lot to learn about the enemy."

  "Ya think?" Resolutely pushing my concerns aside, I focused on Rocc, lying unconscious on the makeshift stretcher. I then assessed the poPs, all of whom waited patiently for instructions. No one asked a single question. No one whined. No one whimpered. Remembering just how unusual that was, I glanced at Jor. He wouldn't meet my gaze. S
o he'd somehow calmed them. Thank goodness.

  Automatically, I counted heads and found one missing: Ginzy. I raced up the steps to the girl's dorm and found her dragging my old leather bag out from under the bed.

  I scooped her up and headed downstairs. Just as I reached the others, the bag slid off her shoulder. I instinctively caught it. The moment my fingers touched the leather, the bag became a fuzzy pink jerilap that clung to my hand and wound its long tail around my arm. Ashley gasped. Brady squealed. Ginzy giggled. Enormous cerulean blue eyes appraised them all.

  I felt a rush of joy in spite of our situation. It had been so long… "Meet Patáh. She’s my, um, pet."

  "You mean that nasty old bag was an animal in disguise?" Ashley was wide awake now.

  "Sort of. I’ll explain once we're safe. Cross my heart."

  With Jor in the lead, we trooped to the shed. Matt loosened the bonds of Raine and Skye, who appeared to sleep peacefully. Looking down at them, I tried to understand my mixed feelings. They had to be Dagonel and definitely evil; in fact, they exuded it. But I still sensed innocence.

  Great. More unanswered questions.

  With a sigh, I followed Jor's instructions to line up where the air shimmered suspiciously. I risked a smile of gratitude for his patience with everyone. He actually gave me a half smile back. Seconds after, we followed his lead and stepped into the Xephyr Stream.