The Fallen Stars (A Star Child Novel) (24 page)

“Kellen, I’m not lying. Gabe’s car went off the road. You have to come with me.”

“And why would I believe anything you tell me? You’ve been playing with us. You sent us letters. You made me go out for a walk yesterday. Made me have the dreams. Then you hit on my fiancée. Tell me why I should listen to anything you have to say.”

“Kellen, I did kiss Cali, but I don’t know anything about the other things that you mentioned. Gabe needs your help. It looked serious, Kellen. You need to come with me. I can’t get him out of the car alone,” William pleaded.

Was he that good of an actor or was he for real? What would he have gained by running here in a rainstorm to tell us about Gabe’s accident?

Cali stood behind me, obviously reluctant to face William after he’d made moves on her. Turning to Cali, I kissed her hard on the mouth. Leaning into her ear and away from William, I warned her. “Lock all the doors. Don’t open them for anyone unless you know it’s really them. I’ll be back to finish what I started.” Pulling back, I touched her cheek and she held my gaze for a moment. We both knew how risky this would be.

“Come back quickly. I have a bad feeling about this,” she whispered, mirroring my thoughts. Then she stood on tiptoe and kissed me. A passionate, heart-wrenching kiss that I knew was as much for William’s benefit as it was for mine.

In all likelihood, William planned to trick us, but what if Gabe really was in trouble? Could we risk his life? I didn’t think so.

We all ran to the front of the house, where I grabbed a coat from the rack by the door. I whipped the hood over my head and pulled the strings around it tight to mold it to me. Following William, I stepped out into the rain.

Cali called my name one last time. “Kellen!”

Turning, I took in her gorgeous form in the doorway. Her emotions overpowered me. She was scared, not just for Gabe, but for me. She worried that she wouldn’t see me again.

“I’ll come back for you. I promise. I’ll come for you,” I said.

My words hung in the air like tangible things as I turned and ran after William, Cali’s image burned into my brain.
You just made a promise that you may not be able to keep.

***

William hadn’t bothered to wait for me and I could see the back of his coat up ahead. We weren’t walking on the main road, but instead running through the woods, the exact place that he’d told me to stay out of. Picking up the pace, I ran after him.

Though it was early afternoon, it looked like some sort of power had eclipsed the light and it was now dark. Not pitch black, but more like early evening. Funny thing, the dark...Regardless of what time of day it was, when the light went away, it began to cause a sort of panic to rise in most people. Scary things often lay in the darkness when no light existed to guide the way, to provide companionship.

Continuing to run, I recognized where we were after we crossed Route 3 and headed into Acadia National Park. Then the view of William’s coat disappeared entirely, as had any trace of light. “William!” Screaming as I ran, I listened for some sign of him, looked around for him. He was nowhere to be found.

A familiar beeping sound emanated from my pocket. My cell phone battery was going to die.

“William!” Yelling again made no difference at all. There was no answer. “Gabe!” Trying a different approach might work, but I reminded myself that William could have made everything up. Gabe could be in Portland by now. What time had he left?

Reaching into my pocket, I grabbed my cell phone. Pressing the power button, I waited for the display to come up. The screen read
No Service
. Looking around me, I turned slowly in a circle as I realized that the woods looked exactly like the ones that I’d started out in.

“I’m screwed,” I said to no one. My body shook with cold even after such a short time spent outside. The rain beat down on me, pelting me with sharp unforgiving pellets which, combined with the wind, soon brought exhaustion.

The worst part about it all was that I had no idea how to get back to Cali or how to find Gabe. They were as gone as William. I’d run after nothing and away from Cali, away from safety.
What direction had I come from?

“Gabe!” I screamed, my throat hoarse. “William!” The scream erupted from me again. “You bastard!”

“My, my, my, all of this yelling! You are certain to wake…well, just about anybody.” The voice was out of place in this nightmare I’d gotten myself into. Deep, like a bullfrog’s, but with a pleasant timbre to it that suggested the owner could sing.

Looking behind me, my eyes blinked involuntarily at the sight before my eyes. A small man stood a few feet in front of me, perhaps the size of a toddler. Dressed in flannels, he would have looked like a local if it weren’t for his size. He stood regarding me, encased in a bubble about the size of a small car.
Yeah, because my life just can’t get any weirder.

“What are you about, being out in this rain? You’ll be soaked to the skin. Why don’t you join me and have a dry-off?” the man asked. Though it poured outside, the inside of the bubble looked dry and sunny. He sat, smiling, on a small boulder that was large enough to keep his feet from touching the ground. Despite his reprimand, he seemed welcoming.

The rain continued to pour on and around me. Though I could hear him plainly, I needed to yell to be heard. “I learned long ago not to trust your kind. The Children of Danu are not among those I choose to believe in.” For a moment, I worried if I had offended him. Despite my intense dislike and lack of trust for William, I still wanted to heed his warning to be respectful of the “Good People”.

“Oh goodness, goodness.” The little man jumped off the rock and looked up at me. “I’m not one of them, see. I’m a
Mihkomuweh
. We’re a different breed, we are. A different sort altogether.”

“William warned me about you,” I said. Though the moment I spoke, I questioned the validity of the information. How could I even trust William about this? He’d led me out into the woods in the middle of nowhere and now neither he nor Gabe were anywhere to be seen. William had probably killed Gabe.

However, none of my thoughts were apparent to the little man in front of me. “William? Warned?” The Mihkomuweh’s voice was conversational, but there was…something…in his eyes. Maybe it was the way he turned his head that made me second-guess him. Regardless, I turned and ran in the opposite direction from which I’d come.

As I ran, Mihkomuwehs’s voice rang in the distance. “Come back! You’re making a mistake. My name is Walter!”

There was no way I was going to stick around and find out if Walter meant me any harm.

Holding my finger on the power key, I tried to turn on my phone. Even if I couldn’t tell anyone where I was, maybe I could use my GPS to find directions to the main road or call 911 and tell them about Gabe.

Miraculously, my phone lit up and had a signal. One small bar of coverage displayed in the upper right corner. Trying to shield the phone from the rain did little good. I could only hope that
waterproof
had been on its features list.

Quickly, I selected the phone option and dialed 911, pressing
Send
. A heartbeat-long ring sounded in my ear before an operator picked up. “911 Emergency Dispatch.” His words were delivered in a crisp, competent voice.

“Hi, I think my friend has been in a car accident on Route 3. He may have gone off the road. Also, I’m lost. I tried to go through the woods to help my friend and I can’t find my way out.”

There was a great deal of clicking on the keyboard as I waited in silence on the other end. “What is your name, sir?”

“Kellen. Kellen St. James.”

“Okay, Kellen, let’s start with your friend. What is his name?”

“Gabriel Stewart.” My throat seemed to expand with thickness; my stomach roiled. Having this conversation had to be one of the hardest things I’d ever done.

“Of the Stewart family at Alastrom?” Alastrom was the name of the house; in Bar Harbor, most of the houses had names. I’d seen this one on the plaque on the front of the house and also in the binder that sat on the kitchen counter. The kind of binder typical of rental properties…it contained a guest book, restaurant list, and other pieces of information that might hold interest for tourists.

“Yes, that’s the family.”

“How do you know that Gabriel has been in an accident?” the dispatcher questioned.

“The caretaker for the Stewarts’ house told us.” Then I remembered that William wasn’t the caretaker and didn’t even know Gabe’s family.

“Thomas has gone missing. When did you speak to him?”

News travels fast in a small town. “No, this guy’s name is William. I don’t know his last name.”

“Okay, I am dispatching an officer out to Route 3 now. Any idea where?”

“He was headed to Boston earlier.”

“Okay, that gives us some direction,” he said. There was a great deal of talking in the background. After what seemed an eternity, he returned. “Okay, let’s try and pinpoint your destination. Kellen, are you calling me from a mobile phone?”

“Yes.” As if he wouldn’t have been able to tell that, what with all the rain pouring down around me.

“Is your phone GPS-enabled?”

“Yes.”

There was a long pause on the other end as he typed. Eventually he called to someone else and there was the muffled sound of a hand being placed over the receiver before he returned. “Mr. St. James, I don’t think your GPS is working very well,” he commented.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because it says you’re in the middle of the Atlantic ocean.” Those last words shook me and then my battery died.

***

The sounds around me were the first to go—the ones that you would typically expect of a forest, like crickets, frogs, the occasional bird…They’d all gone, like I’d entered a soundproof room.

Looking to the edge of the clearing, I could see another Mihkomuweh standing with his back to a tree. He wasn’t Walter, but a different creature altogether. His hair had been shaved to form a blond Mohawk. On his chest were several medallions, gold in color. He reminded me of a very short Mr. T.

Mr. T leaned against a pine tree. He managed to seem unpleasant, despite the smile on his face. He had a sinister quality about him that made me fear him. I wanted to run, but I couldn’t move my legs.

“Mr. St. James.” He walked toward me, circling, keeping a distance between us at all times.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

“Oh, I think you know what I want,” he said. He stopped and looked at his nails as though he contemplated filing them. They were about an inch longer than normal nails might have been, even on a woman. “I’m sorry about your friend. I had to get him out of the picture, you see. It was a shame to do it.”

Anger began to hum in my veins. “What do you mean, get him out of the picture?”

“It was the only way to get you out of the house again. She wanted you pretty badly, and none of us could enter that blasted house of iron to get you. You had to be flushed out.”

“You speak of Cana,” I said, the answer dawning on me.

Mr. T. inclined his head. “Of course, I mean Cana.”

My breath literally stopped coming when he spoke Cana’s name. It had been easy for me to forget about her, to ignore the fact that she might be on the loose.

“Though,” he continued, “the warlock ended up helping more than he knew. He’s the one that actually got you out of there.”
William, that bastard.
“We could only reach you in your dreams, and we weren’t likely to be successful after the arrival of that blasted Dillion, who sneaked right by us.”

“How did you find me? After I left Ireland, I mean?” I kept my voice even, as my heart pounded wildly.

“Willock was kind enough to do that for us. No one knew where you went after your friend said the protection spell on the plane,” the little man commented.

Cali had been right. That had been a protection spell that Gabe said. “How thoughtful of him,” I said. “So what are you going to do with me now that you’ve gotten me out of the house?”

“That will be up to the mistress.”

“What did you to do my friend, Gabe?”

“I ran your friend’s car off the road.”

“And he’s—”

“Dead? Oh yes. I couldn’t imagine how he couldn’t be after that. I’d say five revolutions down the hill at the least.” The being’s Mohawk quivered when he laughed.

My heart seemed to have stopped working and my body slipped into a wicked paralysis. Mr. T stood there watching me and waiting for my reaction. He was not disappointed. Gabe was dead and this creature had killed him, had taken him from the world. “You bastard! You killed him! You killed my best friend!”

My feet were running before I even understood what I was doing. All I knew was that I had to teach this creature a lesson. Gabe’s death needed to be avenged.

Yet no sooner had I started running than I slammed back against the ground as if I’d hit a wall. Jumping up again, I pushed and pushed, running this way and that, trying to break free. After a few moments of panicked scrambling, I realized the reason for my struggles. He’d encased me in a large bubble. No matter where I went, I couldn’t get out. Mr. T chuckled loudly as I struggled.

“Why did you kill him? He meant nothing to you.
Nothing!
” My teeth clenched on the last word.

Coming closer, he stopped just a foot from my encasement. “We had to, you see.”

“I’ll kill you.” The words were out of my mouth before I even realized, words that were the antithesis of my beliefs.

The Mihkomuweh smiled. “Perhaps you will someday, I couldn’t say. I truly had no choice. Cana wanted you and I can’t defy her. There’s too much at risk, too much at stake.

“What does she want with me?” Standing in the middle of the bubble, I seethed, my arms out at my sides, fists clenched.
How would I ever get out of this?

Then I remembered how I’d gotten out of things before when I’d been trapped in Faerie. My knife. Reaching in my pocket, my fingers clasped around nothing; the other pocket also came up empty. My knife with the black handle, the one that I’d used to travel through time in Faerie, was back at Gran’s cottage in Ireland.
That’s helpful.