Délon City: Book Two of the Oz Chronicles (6 page)

“Queen?” Reya said. She huffed and set out to throw a tantrum, but her brother stopped her with a simple slow tilt of his head. “But I am to be queen.” She looked as if she would cry.

I laughed. “Not going to happen.”

“But it is by order of the Royal Council. I am to be queen.” She stomped her foot. The tantrum was coming despite her brother’s wishes.

“Enough, Reya,” General Roy barked.

“But...”

“This is a matter for the Council.”

“It is a matter that has already been decided.” Her defiance was bordering on suicidal. She had to know that the general was about to explode.

“I am the king. It is my choice,” I said.

“Don’t I get a say in this?” Lou asked.

“Shut up, human,” Reya said, her voice reaching a disturbingly high pitch. She turned her venom on me. “You are not king yet. You are merely marked. Until your shunter finishes with you, you are just another filthy human. You’d be wise to remember that.”

General Roy managed to release his arm from my grip. In a shockingly tender voice he said to me, “You should let the human... Lou show you to the bedroom. You need some rest. This can all be settled later.”

I wanted to settle it then. I wanted to rip Reya apart, but the superhuman strength I had felt just seconds before was gone. She would tear me to shreds. I reluctantly agreed and backed away. Lou gently took me by the arm and led me to the bedroom. I was asleep on my feet before we even made it to the hallway.

***

I woke up several hours later in Stevie Dayton’s bedroom. With the sun peeking through the blinds above the bed, I felt refreshed. It was almost impossible for me to grasp, but I actually felt... good. I looked to my left and saw Lou’s warm and gentle face looking back at me. I quickly went from good to great.

“The pain is gone?” she asked.

I nodded. The sound of her voice lifted my spirits even higher. “I’ve heard that it is a remarkable feeling when you awake

from your marking...”

“It didn’t feel so good last night,” I said.

“Just because you were conscious doesn’t mean you were

awake.”

I sat up, stretching my arms, sucking in the cool air of Stevie’s room. “You haven’t been marked?”

She shook her head. “Haven’t had the pleasure.” I noted a hint of sarcasm in her voice. “Roy and Reya remember me from... before, but they’re not exactly sure what to do with me. I guess they were waiting for you to show up.”

“Waiting? It’s only been a couple of days... if that.”

She cocked her head and raised an eyebrow. “A couple of days? It’s been months since you destroyed the Taker Queen.”

“Months?” I studied her baffled expression. “It just happened...”

“It was almost a year ago. More maybe.”

That was what was different about her. She wasn’t twelve anymore. She was thirteen. She was a year older. I stood up and looked at myself in the mirror above Stevie’s dresser. Had I aged a year? Was it possible the gangly kid I was staring at in the mirror was fourteen years old? “I don’t get it. Mom and Pop acted like I had been there the whole time. That it was just another morning.”

“It had been to them,” Lou said. “It’s hard to explain. Let’s just say time doesn’t really make much sense anymore. It kind of jumps all over the clock. Ever since the Storytellers changed everything, things have been kind of chaotic.”

“Tell me about it.” I examined my once swollen left eye. It was completely healed now. There was just a slight bruising where I’d been stung, but other than that, you would have never known it was swollen to the size of a grapefruit just a few hours before.

In the mirror, I could see Lou standing behind me now. I remembered seeing her that first time in Manchester. Her hair was tangled and unruly and her face was covered with dirt. She was afraid to talk because of the Takers. Wes protected her like he was her father... I turned to her in a moment of desperation. “Wes? Where is he? The others, where are they?”

She tried to remain stoic, but she couldn’t. Her face sank into a morbid expression of despair. “I was hoping you could tell me.” She began to sob. “I miss them so much.”

I didn’t know what to do. Lou was a rock. She had been emotional before, but never had I seen her so inconsolable. I moved closer to her. Hugging her seemed wrong for some reason, but I didn’t know why. I reached out and patted her back. “It’s going to be all right.”

She practically lunged for me and buried her head in my chest. “I don’t know what to do,” she said. “The Délons, they’re not like the Takers.” She looked up at me with tearful eyes. “We can’t beat them.”

“We can if we find the Source before they do.” I said with unfounded confidence. I made it sound as if it were the simplest solution to the most complicated problem in the world. Like we could actually do it. In reality, I agreed with her. We couldn’t beat the Délons. They were smarter than the Takers. They were organized and militant. The Délons were here to build something, a world they could rule with absolute authority.

Lou did not detect the doubt in my voice. “Do you know where it is?”

I shook my head. “Well, no...”

“Do you even know what it is?”

“Not exactly, but...”

“What makes you so sure that we can find it before they do?” she asked.

I gave her a stern, unflinching look. “Because we have to.”

She buried her head in my chest again. “I don’t think that’s enough this time.”

I did what my mother used to do to me when I was a kid and couldn’t stop crying. I patted her back and said, “There, there.” They were the two most repeated words I heard until I decided I was too old to let my mother see me cry. “There, there.” The words made me feel like... I was home, safe from the thing that had made me so upset in the first place. I tried to convey this same feeling to Lou as we stood there in Stevie Dayton’s room contemplating the end of the human race. I did this until I noticed a picture on the wall. It was a drawing, a masterful drawing of a Délon-like creature. It was crouched with well-muscled legs. Its hands were gnarled and it was in an attack posture. Its mouth was open and the razor sharp mandibles were snapping in the air. Its spider legs danced on its head. Its cold dead eyes stared at me. It was a perfect rendition of a Délon. Not a Délon really. More than a Délon. There wasn’t a hint of humanity in the creature in the drawing. What was it doing in Stevie’s room?

I released Lou and moved towards the drawing. The startling image seemed to glare at me as I approached it. The artist had signed it on the lower right-hand corner. Clancy... something. The writing was chicken scratch. I couldn’t make out the last name.

“What is it?” Lou asked. She sat on the bed.

“This drawing...” I looked around the room. The walls were covered with drawings of monsters from Stevie’s imagination. They were good, but not as finely detailed as the drawing of the Délon. “Why is it here?”

Lou was unimpressed. “Stevie liked to draw.”

“He didn’t draw this one.”

“How do you know?”

“For one thing, Stevie died before the Délons ripped a purple hole in the sky and, for another, this one is signed by a Clancy somebody.” I moved in to get a closer look.

Lou stood and joined me in my sudden fascination with the picture. “Who’s Clancy?”

“I don’t know.” The picture was amazing. The more I stared at it, the more detail I picked up. The artist had even included drawings of skinners and scorpion beetles.

The door to the bedroom opened. Mrs. Dayton stood in the hallway, hiding her mutilated left hand behind her back. Her lips pressed together, she nodded her head and walked away.

“I think we’re supposed to follow her,” I said.

“Yeah” Lou said. “You first.” She gently pushed me ahead of her.

I reluctantly left the bedroom with Lou holding onto my arm and followed Mrs. Dayton down the hall. I didn’t think Mrs. Dayton was dangerous, but she moved with a deliberateness that unsettled me.

Mrs. Dayton pushed through the swinging door that led to the kitchen. Lou and I watched as the door swung back and forth in smaller and smaller increments until it stopped. “Well,” I said. “We should go in.”

“I guess,” Lou answered.

“Let’s go then.”

“I’m right behind you.”

“What do you think she wants?”

“To thank you for torturing and belittling her son until he committed suicide and in doing so causing the end of the world as we know it.” She said it in one excited breath.

“Hmmmm?” I said.

“What?”

“Oh nothing. I was just remembering the good old days when you didn’t talk.”

The kitchen door swung open sending Lou and me into a series of ear piercing screams. Mrs. Dayton stood on the tile floor of the kitchen, shocked by our reaction. She smiled, trying to put us at ease and motioned for us to come in. With some hesitation, we entered the kitchen.

We were immediately struck by the smell of bacon and freshly baked biscuits. The kitchen table was set for three. Pancakes and seemingly every other kind of breakfast food were neatly displayed in the center of the round table. Lou and I quickly sat down. I buried my plate in hash browns, scrambled eggs, sausage, silver dollar pancakes covered in maple syrup, bacon and homemade buttery biscuits. Every bite tasted as if I were sampling each food for the first time. It was a feast fit for a... king.

Lou covered her plate with the pancakes and drowned them in a thick lake of syrup followed by a pile of powdered sugar. I got a sugar rush just looking at it.

Mrs. Dayton sat at the table and sipped a piping hot cup of black coffee. She kept her left hand hidden from view. I glanced at her while I ate. Her face was relaxed, much more relaxed than it had been the night before. General Roy and Reya were gone, and they weren’t coming back. I could tell from Mrs. Dayton’s expression. They were through with her for now. She had served a purpose. They had made her suffer because of me. I had done this to her. They knew she didn’t know who or what the Source was. They were sending a message to me. Others would suffer in great numbers if I didn’t help them. For some reason they thought I knew, and they were going to torture and mutilate others until I told them what they wanted to know. They were desperate.

Time was running out. That was what the general had alluded to at school the day before. They couldn’t wait for me to finish the transition. They needed to know where the Source was ASAP. They were desperate. Which meant in a strange way, I had the upper hand.

Lou and I didn’t talk during breakfast. I guess we thought it would be rude since Mrs. Dayton couldn’t join the conversation. We lapped up our breakfast like it was our last meal. Our bellies full, we leaned back in our chairs and soaked in the feeling of complete satisfaction. It was a rare feeling, one I hadn’t felt since... the moment I found myself in my bed after having killed the Taker Queen. The moment just before my mother said those words to me. I belched a little and asked, “Where is Délon City?”

“Where it’s always been,” Lou said. She was struck by a sudden dose of memory. “Oh, that’s right, I forget you’re not exactly caught up on the... new world. It’s Atlanta.”

“Atlanta? The Titans are playing the Falcons this weekend. They still play football?”

“Not exactly,” Lou said. “Not the way you’re thinking any way.” She looked at Mrs. Dayton. Mrs. Dayton gave her an approving nod. “First of all,” Lou continued, “It’s not the NFL. It’s something completely different. They don’t play with a ball.” She hesitated. I could tell she didn’t want to go on.

“What do they play with?”

“Nothing, really.”

“Why do they call it football?

She took a deep breath. “Because they play for feet.”

“Feet? What are talking about? How do you play for feet?” The answer came to me as soon as I asked it. “You mean feet?” “The teams are made up of ten Délon players and one human. The humans rotate as needed.”

“As needed?” I asked.

“Until the other team gets his feet.”

I cringed. “You mean the Délons cut off their feet.”

“No.” Lou shook her head. “That’s against the rules. They can only hold the human down while...”

“While what?”

“While the human on the opposing team cuts off his or her feet.”

“Her?”

“Welcome to a world with equal rights,” she smiled. “Anyway, the team with the most feet at the end of four quarters wins.”

“What human would do such a thing?”

“Needless to say, they don’t have very long careers.” She stood and took her plate to the kitchen sink. “In fact, there’s only one human who’s played the game since its inception who hasn’t gotten so much as a scratch.” She looked at me like I should know the answer.

“Who?”

She paused. She wanted me to come up with the answer on my own, but upon seeing my dumbfounded expression she blurted out, “Pepper Sands.”

I stood up. “Pepper? No way. He wouldn’t do such a thing.” I sat back down when I realized he just might do such a thing. He was an animal as a linebacker who was known for taking great pleasure in inflicting pain on opposing players when he played professional football. But cutting off the foot of another human being? Could he actually do that? I pictured him the last time I saw him, hacking away at the Takers in our battle at the zoo. He was a great warrior.

“Don’t think too badly of him,” Lou said. “It’s his job.”

“His job?” I sat incredulous. “To cut off another man’s foot?”

“Or woman’s,” Lou corrected.

“It’s barbaric.”

Lou reached out and touched my arm. “It’s the way the world works now. It’s not Pepper’s fault. Besides they dope him up before each competition.”

Mrs. Dayton began to clear the table.

“Here, let me help you, Mrs. Dayton,” Lou said reaching for my plate.

Mrs. Dayton hissed and slapped Lou’s hand away. At first, I thought it was just a playful gesture to let Lou know that she was a guest in Mrs. Dayton’s house and that she didn’t allow guests to clear the table, but when I got a look at her eyes I could see that it was something more. She didn’t like Lou. I couldn’t really blame her for not liking anybody or anything. Her tongue and hand had been cut off. What’s to like?