Watcher in the Woods (7 page)

David hitched in a breath and tried to yell for Dad, but his mind would not form the words he wanted to use. He moved his mouth without saying a thing.

He suddenly realized he was still moving, fast and out of control. He saw a heavy tree branch seconds before he crashed into it. His face hit first, then his chest. The pressure or currents that had been holding him up suddenly evaporated, and he fell.

His hands clawed for the trees and grabbed a branch. His descent jerked to a stop, then the branch snapped and he kept falling. His fingers tore at leaves and twigs. Like a freight train, the ground rushed at him.

David screamed.

CHAPTER thirteen

The assassin tumbled over the body of the prince. He realized instantly that
the man was intact; it must have been a trick of the light, the shimmering,
that had made him think the prince had been torn apart.

The assassin crashed down against a wood-planked floor. His ankle
twisted; the puncture in his side flared with fresh pain. He ignored it. Instead,
he rolled away from his adversary, away from any slicing blades the injured
man might swing at him. A wall stopped him short. So he twisted and spun
and plunged his knife into the prince's back, cracking through the left shoulder
blade to reach the heart. The prince did not utter a gasp of death. He did
not spasm in a final effort to retain life. The man had been dead before the
assassin's knife–from the arrows, surely. But the assassin was trained to consider
all possibilities before a normal person would think of even one. Could
someone else have killed him, someone now hiding?

He looked around. He was in a small room with doors on opposite
walls. A wooden bench, some items hanging on the wall above the bench—a
helmet, tunic, an archer's bow. One door was open, revealing the walls of
the crevasse into which he had jumped in search of the prince. Beyond the
crevasse, black smoke streaked through a blue sky.

The door slammed shut. The assassin leaped for it. He tugged and pushed
at a circular metal protrusion, but the door did not budge. Light glowed from
a torch mounted on the ceiling, but it did not flicker with flames, and when he
held his palm up to it, the light did not warm it. He squinted suspiciously.

A banging noise came from the other door. Quickly, he pressed his foot
against the back of the prince and extracted his knife. He swung it toward
the door, crouching, ready to spring. With no place to hide, he would simply
have to fight whatever confronted him.

The banging continued, and he realized it was not coming from the door
itself, but somewhere beyond. He stepped silently to the door and listened.

Bang, bang, bang.

It was not at this door that someone pounded. Perhaps, he thought, the
people here knew an intruder had entered their midst. Maybe this banging
was an alarm.

He must have stumbled into secret caves the Sidonians used to escape
from their enemies. But why would they have put so much effort into the
construction of a subterranean hideaway? The room was a perfect box, its
walls smoother than he had ever seen outside of a king's palace.
That's it
,
he thought, this place must be a sanctuary for Sidon's nobility. That's why the
prince, and not commoners, had fled to it. Only a select few knew of it.

Bang, bang.

And one of them was beyond the door, obviously deeper into the cave. He
put his fingers on the metal knob and pulled. The door remained shut, as he had
expected it would. Like the other door, its latch was hidden. Then his hand moved,
and the knob turned with it. He heard a click, and the slab of door came loose
from the wall. He inched it open and peered through the crack. He saw a corridor
stretching out of sight. It was narrow, as a tunnel should be. Like the room,
however, the walls had been carved smooth and shaped into a rectangle. Fifteen feet
away, a man studied the frame of another door on the other side of the corridor.
While the assassin watched, the man slammed a tool into it:
bang, bang
.

What would he be doing at a time like this? Certainly, he knows about the
city's besiegement.

But the man's relaxed posture and casual movements indicated no knowledge
of the war outside or of the assassin's intrusion.

Good,
the assassin thought,
the man will be dead before he realizes his ignorance.

At that moment the first door blew open. Blinding light flooded in, along
with a wind that carried stinging grains of sand and swirling smoke. The
wind whipped through the small room and back out the door from which it
came, like a genie's invisible hand reaching for the assassin. He squinted against
the light and the blowing sand, and his hair flapped like a flag pointing at the
wide-open door.

When he looked, the man in the corridor was staring back at him. The wind
pulled the door out of his hand, opening it all the way. The wind was pulling
everything
. The hem of his chiton, which hung from belt to mid-thigh, snapped
up and down and then pulled tight toward the open door. He thought again of
a hand tugging at him.

The body of the prince began sliding along the floor. The shafts of the arrows
extending from his back bowed in the fierce wind. A gust howled in and, as
it departed, took the prince's body with it. The assassin watched the prince fly
through the door and vanish in the light. The wind pulled at the assassin's feet,
and he fell. His knife was ripped from his hand. It disappeared into the bright
void beyond the threshold. The assassin would have gone through next, had he not
gripped the frame of the other doorway.

The man in the corridor rushed toward him, his expression changing
from bafflement to alarm.

The assassin was powerless to defend himself. It was all he could do to
hold on to the frame and resist the force that pulled at him. Everything in
him screamed out against being taken through that other door. Before the
wind had come, he had seen the crevasse and smoke-filled sky on the other
side. Now there was nothing but light and wind. Perhaps his nation had
angered the gods by attacking this land. Or maybe he had stumbled into the
lair of some beast unknown to his people. At that moment all he knew was
that he must not go back through that door.

He pulled with all his might toward the hall, but the wind's grip on
him was too strong. The other man reached him, grabbing for his arms. He
seemed suddenly to become aware of the storm. He lurched forward, and
the assassin thought this man, too, was going to fly right past him and out
the door. But the man jammed his feet into the corridor wall on either side of
the door's frame. Over the howl of the wind the assassin could hear the man
yelling in a strange tongue. The man held firmly to the assassin's arms.

The assassin noticed the man's clothes and hair were flapping only slightly
and realized the pull of the wind was not as fierce outside the small room. He
had to get out. Seeking to gain more leverage, he released one hand from the door
frame and gripped the man's clothes under his neck. The man canted his body
backward, pulling the assassin with him.

The wind grew even stronger. The assassin's sandals came apart and flew
away—first one, then the other. Near panic now, he tugged hard on the man
in the corridor, putting him off balance. The man flipped forward, over the
assassin and into the blinding light beyond the other door. The assassin squinted
back, watching the man disappear. As soon as he vanished, the door slammed
shut, and the wind died.

The assassin gripped the door frame and kept his eyes on the closed door for
a long time. When it didn't burst open again, he pulled himself into the corridor,
rolled away from the room, and stared up at the ceiling until his breathing and his
heartbeat slowed to normal. Finally he sat up. The corridor was dimly lit from
vessels of light attached to the walls. Like the light in the ceiling of the small room,
they did not flicker with flame. Everything about this place was strange.

He nodded to himself. He had thought a beast resided here. The strangeness
seemed to confirm that suspicion.

Grunting, feeling his wounds and aching muscles, the assassin stood. With the
caution and stealth that was as natural to him as breathing, he approached the open
doorway to the little room. It was cleared of everything he and the prince had brought
into it: no sand, no weapons, no clothes. Even the blood they had shed was gone.
Strangely—but no stranger than the rest of this place—the items still hung
from hooks over the bench. He remembered them rattling against the wall as the
wind tugged at them, and he wondered how they survived its devastating pull.

He stepped into the room, just far enough to reach his fingers around the edge
of the door. He pulled it shut as he backed into the corridor and stood quietly.
He kept his eye on the door, expecting something to lurch out at him. His ears,
accustomed to hearing the slightest scrape or breath, sensed nothing. He scanned
the corridor one way and then the other, and the skin on the back of his neck
tightened as he realized that the door he had just shut was only one of many.
Who knew what monsters lurked behind the others? If they were anything like
the wind-beast he had survived, he was in no hurry to meet them. A wall
blocked one end of the corridor. Set into the other end was an opening. Shadows
lay beyond. He was used to darkness. He thrived in it. He walked toward it.
Leaning against the walls for support, he stumbled past the doors, determined to
find a way out of this labyrinth of ghosts and monsters.

CHAPTER fourteen

SUNDAY, 5 : 55 P . M .

David sat on a treatment table in the Pinedale Community Health Clinic. Every time he shifted his weight, paper crinkled under him. He frowned at the newly plastered cast encasing his left arm. A nurse had given him pills for the pain, but it still felt like someone was twisting the point of a knife into his forearm. Dad ran his fingers over David's head, sweeping the hair off his face.

David wrinkled his nose at him. “It still hurts,” he said.

Dad brushed his fingers over David's cheek. “I'm sorry. Nothing like that ever happened to me, just falling like that.”

“I lost my concentration. That man . . .”

David had already told his father about the man he had seen in the woods. While Dad was checking him for more injuries and scooping him up to carry him to the car, Xander had run into the woods for a look. By the time Dad pushed through the dense vegetation surrounding the clearing, David in his arms, Toria holding on to his pants pocket, Xander had returned. He had not spotted anyone or seen any signs that someone had been there.

“But he was there! I saw him!” David had insisted. He had not wanted his father to think that the excitement of flying had caused him to be reckless. Plus, Dad should know that somebody had been there. Somebody had
seen
them.

Dad had given him a squeeze and said, “Let's not worry about him right now, Dae.”

That had made him feel better, but now that he knew he was going to be all right, the man's presence concerned him again.

“You're sure he saw you?” Dad whispered.

David nodded. “He was looking right at me. Just standing there.”

“You've never seen him before?

David thought about it. “I don't think so.”

“Long, dark hair? How old?”

“His face was in shadows, but I think he was old . . . older than you.”

“Wow, he must've been ancient.”

David smiled. “Sorry.”

Dad stroked David's head again. He said nothing.

David looked up at him. “What does it mean, someone seeing us like that? I mean . . . it can't be good, right?”

Dad frowned. “I don't know.” He leaned closer to whisper. “David, you're sure he wasn't the same man who . . . the one who took Mom?”

David shook his head. “No way. The guy who took Mom was bald and
big
. The guy in the woods was a lot skinnier. The one who . . . who . . .”

As soon as Dad had mentioned Mom, David felt his chest tighten. His eyes stung with unreleased tears. Getting hurt bad enough to go to the emergency room was just the kind of thing that brought out the best in his mother. She would be here comforting him, assuring him that everything would be all right. Dad had been there for him, saying the right things, coming to his rescue. But he wasn't Mom.

When he'd fallen, and all the way to the clinic, David had yelled and groaned. He had gritted his teeth and essentially handled the scariness of the fall, the pain of his arm, and his concern over having been seen. Now, with the thought of Mom thrown into the mix, it was more than he could bear. His father's face swam out of focus as tears filled David's eyes. He lowered his head, and fat drops fell onto the hospital gown covering his lap.

Dad pulled him close and hugged him. The paper under him crinkled again. It reminded him that he was in a strange place—not just the hospital, but Pinedale and the house itself. They were away from everything and everyone they knew, and bad things had happened. He wanted to go home, to his bedroom in Pasadena, to the familiar walls and smells and faces that would come to smile at him and wish him well.