Awoken (3 page)

Karl’s hatchback smelled of antifreeze and coffee, a natural result of a leaking radiator hose coupled with Karl’s habit of placing his coffee on the dash rather than a cup holder. Not a pleasant smell, but at least the Wiffles didn’t smoke.

“You tackle the big ‘uns low,” Karl instructed. “Not at the knees, but the thighs. From the side, not the front. Throws ‘em off balance. Understand?”

Michael nodded mechanically. “Uh-huh.”

In his true element, Karl had been spouting football pointers nonstop since they had left the house. He took a sip of his coffee and set the cup back on the dash. “You’re thin for a boy your age, but that don’t matter if you’re smart. You listen to me, and you’ll be fine.”

Michael leaned against the passenger window, absently fingering the mud-brown stone that hung below his throat, hidden by his shirt.

It was oval-shaped, and about half the size of his thumb. He’d discovered the stone on a thin black chain draped around his neck when he woke up this morning, a parting gift from the dollmen.

“You keep the ball tight to your chest when you’re running,” Karl continued gruffly. “And none of that fancy dancing around you see on television. Real men take a tackle head-on. A solid hit builds character, by God.”

“Builds hospitals, too,” Michael muttered.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing,” Michael said more loudly. “You know I could have walked, Mr. Wiffle. I know the way.”

Karl grunted. “No trouble. The park is on my way.”

Michael grimaced. This sucked. Okay. The imaginary football game had been his idea, but after last night, having to deal with the consequences of his little white lie seemed cosmically unfair. He should have said he was going to play Frisbee golf. Karl would never have driven him to a Frisbee golf match. Not manly enough.

A brown wooden sign with yellow lettering appeared just ahead.

“Glenview Park,” Karl said. “Fix your hair, Mike. You look a mess. There’s a mirror under the visor.”

Michael sighed. Since when did personal grooming become an important part of playing football? He flipped down the visor.

A pair of silver eyes looked back at him.

“Ahhh!”

Karl slammed on the brakes. The coffee left the dash, splashing lukewarm contents all over Karl’s white shirt and onto his lap.

Tires squealing, the hatchback skidded to a stop.

Holding the wheel in a deathlike grip, Karl scanned the street. “What? Is something in the road?”

“I…I thought I saw…” Michael stared into the mirror, seeing only his own dark brown eyes. They had been silver, hadn’t they? As silver as the eyes of the dollman.

Karl peered at him. “You thought you saw what?”

Michael slapped up the visor. “A…deer, coming out of the park. I thought we were going to hit a deer.”

Karl frowned at the pines and balsam surrounding Glenview Park. “I don’t see any deer.”

“A big one, with horns,” Michael elaborated. “You must have scared it back into the trees when you stopped the car.”

“Horns, huh? The Department of Natural Resources isn’t doing its job. Getting so a man can’t step outside without some beast or other jumping out of the bushes.”

“You have no idea.”

“What’s that?”

“Nothing.” Michael opened the passenger door and a wall of heat struck him like a hammer. “You’re going to have to hurry if you want to change that shirt before work. I can walk from here.”

Karl lifted the wet garment from his chest with two fingers. “Great. All right, you go on. Have fun. See you tonight.”

“See ya.”

Michael waved and Karl pulled away. The sun was warm against his hand—another scorcher today. The hatchback disappeared around the corner, and he headed into the park.

Glenview was a large park, with lots of trees along with a well-kept football and baseball field. The park even had a bit of artistic appeal in the form of a large marble fountain, complete with a water-spitting mermaid and pool. He headed for the fountain. If he had to stay here all day, he might as well hang out where he could cool his feet.

Ten minutes later, he looked down at his reflection in the fountain’s pool. The water was sparklingly clear, the mermaid’s spout causing only small ripples to mar the surface. Karl had been right about his hair. He was a mess. Dipping his fingers in the water, he raked them through the tangles. Getting a little on the shaggy side. Wouldn’t be long now before he would need to pay a visit to Karl’s barber. Michael was naturally tan, with skin more almond than brown. One of his foster families had suggested he had a touch of Native American ancestry. Might even be true. He rarely sunburned. Average height for his age, Barbara accused him of being too skinny. Other than that, Michael was like any other fourteen-year-old.

“Just like any other kid with vicious, cat-killing albinos living under their deck, I guess. As normal as the next kid who has to watch out for the green and brown, because they’re the colors of the Ven. Whatever that means.”

Why couldn’t the dollman have been a little more specific? Something was after him, and all he had to go on was “beware the green and brown.” He might as well be watching out for a killer vegetable garden.

He leaned against the edge of the fountain.

Humming music exploded in his mind.

He jumped back, and the music died.

What the…?

The music in the marble fountain was louder than anything he’d heard before, louder than when he’d stepped inside that cave in second grade. Slowly, he laid his palm back against the stone. The music was different, like a merging, a tangible sense of connection between him and the marble. His mind opened, and suddenly he could
feel
the rock, every sinuous curve and turn. He
was
the fountain…most of it, anyway. The metal piping inside the mermaid he sensed as a soundless void tangling within the humming rock. He could not feel the metal, only the absence of sound.

What was happening to him?

The dollmen’s cup. Whatever they’d given him had changed the music, allowing him to join with the song of the rock. The dollmen had said the stonesong was awaking.

The fountain trembled. The mermaid spat a sudden torrent of water far out over the basin.

“What are you doing here?” someone asked behind Michael.

Michael spun.

A dozen teens on dirt bikes formed a loose half-circle behind him.

“I’m sorry?”

One of the teens, a towering boy with piggish eyes and a short crew cut, heeled down his kickstand. “I’ll just bet you are.” He got off the bike, walking over to Michael. “I said, ‘What are you doing here?’”

Several of the teens laughed. Others shouted encouragements to the adolescent giant.

“Get him, Billy. Show him the beast! Beat the brakes off him!”

The suggestions were varied, and often creative, but all revolved around the general theme of mangling and broken bones.

Great
, Michael thought,
as if things aren’t bad enough
.

“Leave him alone, Billy,” said a green-eyed girl on a dirty mountain bike. Blowing long strands of coal-black hair from her eyes, she hefted a wooden baseball bat. “I came to play baseball, not to pick on some loser.”

Billy gave her a sour look. “There’s always time to pick on losers, Lina. Go cry to your nanny if you don’t want to watch.”

The girl’s knuckles whitened as she tightened her grip on the bat. “Watch it.”

“Or what, rich girl? You gonna take a swing?”

Lina snorted, lowering the bat. “Don’t be stupid, Billy. I like this bat, and your rock head would probably break it.”

They glared at each other.

Michael began to inch away. “Uh…I can see you guys have a few issues to work out. I’ll just leave you to it.”

A heavy palm slapped against his chest.

“You’re not going anywhere, loser.” Billy drew back a ham-like fist. “Not until you learn whose park you’re in.”

Michael braced himself.
Here we go
. The fist cracked into his cheek, sending a bright bolt of pain into his jaw and head. He stumbled back, clutching the rim of the fountain to keep from falling. The stonesong swept out from him in a rush. The fountain trembled under his palms, and a spiderweb of cracks shot up the mermaid’s tail.

“Knock it off!” shouted Lina. Tossing the bat to the ground, she started forward. “Knock it off, Billy!”

Some of Billy’s posse pointed at the cracks, murmuring to each other uncertainly as the cracks spread up the statue’s torso.

“Stay out of my park, loser.” Billy swung at him again.

Michael closed his eyes and the fist landed with the wet crackle of breaking bone, but astonishingly, he felt no pain. The stonesong surged, and the music became a wailing shriek before the mermaid shattered like a crystal vase on an anvil.

Michael opened his eyes. Everyone was staring at him.

Billy cradled his fist against his chest, his face white as a sheet. “How…what are you?”

“Did you see his eyes?” someone whispered. “They were like metal. His eyes changed to metal and the fountain broke in a million pieces.”

Billy lumbered back to his bike. Grabbing his handlebars with his good hand, he awkwardly mounted and began to pedal away without bothering with the kickstand. His friends were right behind him.

All that was left of the mermaid was a bent copper framework that spurted out water in hissing, pressurized, streams. Shattered bits of marble decorated the bottom of the basin, but the water was still clear enough for Michael to see his reflection, and the mercury color of his eyes.

“Figures,” he said. “Frigging dollmen.”

His head spun, and bile rose in his throat. He folded and became noisily sick on the grass.

“Gross. What did you have for breakfast? Chili?”

Michael wiped his mouth on his sleeve and looked up at the girl Billy had called Lina. She wore jeans, a grass-stained baseball jersey, and scuffed tennis shoes. She sure didn’t dress like a rich girl. She leaned on her baseball bat and smiled down at him. “So, you’re one of the Wiffles’ foster kids? I used to see you around at school. I’m Melina, but everyone calls me Lina. What’s your name?”

“Uh…Michael. You can call me Mike.”

“Pleased to meet you.” She gave a nod to the broken mermaid. “How did you do that?”

“I…” he paused to dry-heave. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Come on, Mike. The silver eyes, the fountain, Billy’s hand…” Lina’s grin turned wicked. “Tell me how, and I might not tell the police where you live.”

Lina glared at the boy with the most irritated expression she could muster. He was kind of cute, she thought, even with the weird eyes…in a skinny, dark, and scary kind of way. “Come on, spill. What’s with the eyes? Are they contacts or something?”

The boy looked away. “Go away.”

Why was he being so difficult? Were orphans all this stubborn, or just this one? He had to live in a foster home. Well, whoop-tee-do. At least he had someone there to take care of him. She had to make do with her eighty-three-year-old nanny, Harriet Findleshin, while her parents vacationed in the Alps. The old crackpot couldn’t cook toast. If Lina weren’t going to dance camp in a couple weeks, she would probably starve.

The boy blinked, and his silver eyes were suddenly a normal brown. Another trick.

“So you can change them back and forth,” she said. “What’s next? Are you going to pull a rabbit from a hat?”

“They’re brown again?” Michael bent over the fountain. “Thank God. Barbara would have had a heart attack.”

Lina rolled her eyes. “Knock it off, already. You might have fooled Billy, but he’s a moron. Do you really expect me to believe you’re some kind of Criss Angel? You gonna freak my mind?”

“I don’t care what you think.” He splashed water on his face and neck, and wiped the grime from his mouth. “Nice meeting you, Melina. Bye.”

“Is the magic show over already?”

“How about we end with a disappearing act? I’ll count to three, and every annoying girl in the park will vanish. One…two…” He raised an eyebrow at her. “No? Guess I’ll have to work on that one.”

Lina’s cheeks flushed with anger. “Why are you being such a jerk, Mike? All I want is to know how you did those things.”

“You said that, Lina. You also said you’d tell the cops if I didn’t tell you. Nice way to make friends.”

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t have vandalized the fountain,” she retorted. “I’ll tell the police, you jerk.”

A misting of silver covered Michael’s eyes. Queasy uncertainty fluttered in Lina’s belly. That was some trick.

“I’ll tell them,” she said. “I swear.”

The silver flickered and disappeared. The boy grinned. “You’re going to tell the police you saw a kid with silver eyes break a statue?” He started to walk toward the trees. “Good luck, Melina. Have fun in the mental ward.”

Lina felt her cheeks growing hot with anger. “You’re just going to leave? You’re not even going to tell me how you did those things?”

“I don’t know.” He broke into a jog.

“Liar!” she yelled after him, but he had already disappeared into the trees. “What a tool.”

Lina started back to her bike, then paused, spotting a shiny black chain in the grass. She knelt and lifted the necklace. The chain held a brown pendant with a small chip that sparkled in the sun. On a hunch, she dipped the pendant into the fountain and rubbed it between her palms. A layer of clay broke away, turning the water muddy brown. The water slowly cleared, revealing a jewel mounted in a ring of glimmering silver.

Lina gasped. The chain held an oval diamond almost an inch long. She scrubbed harder, and something cut into her palm.

“Ow!”

There was a flash of light, and suddenly, she was lying on her back.

What happened?

She sat up slowly, feeling…weird. A thousand tickly ants crawled beneath her skin, and her palm throbbed painfully. The last thing she remembered was scrubbing the pendant. There had been a sting of pain. Then she was on her back.

She lifted her burning hand up to take a look. A broken chain slipped from her fingers, and cold terror froze her blood.