Jennifer Scales and the Messenger of Light (27 page)

“Jennifer, I—”

“We’ll try your plan together! I think you’re right to try to reach out to Evangelos, and I want to help you help him. Doesn’t it seem smarter to do this together, instead of fighting each other?”

He was looking past her. “Evangelos is here.”

Jennifer turned and immediately placed the familiar sound.

It was Mr. Slider’s wheelchair.

The geometry teacher was with several other people, she noticed. Half of the class was there for the field trip, including Bob Jarkmand and Gerry Stowe. There were also a few chaperones, though Jennifer couldn’t see much past Martin Stowe.

Then she saw Rune Whisper behind them all.

There he was, the mysterious figure, still gaunt in his ill-fitting green suit. He didn’t really seem like part of the group, walking a bit behind and to the left of everyone else. But he was staring at both Skip and Jennifer.

“It’s Rune, isn’t it?” She took a step back so that she and Skip were side-by-side. “We’ve got to get Mr. Slider and the others out of here!”

Skip chuckled. “Mr. Slider’s an interesting guy. During my independent study lessons with him, I figured out the truth about Evangelos.”

Jennifer caught her breath and stared at Mr. Slider. She whispered urgently, “He’s Evangelos?! But how can that be? He—”

“He’s not Evangelos,” Skip interrupted. “I don’t think he even knows who is. But using the logic he taught me, along with a little research of my own, I was able to deduce the truth. It began with following Rune Whisper.”

“So it’s Rune.” This made the most sense to Jennifer anyway. She clenched her teeth as the crowd drew nearer and he along with it.

“I think he was always aware who was following him,” Skip continued. “He must have known. There was no way we could stay completely hidden from something like him. But he may have wanted us to learn the truth anyway.”

By now, Mr. Slider was only a few feet away. As he started to turn past them, he nodded curtly in greeting. Then he noticed Eddie lying not too far away, obviously beaten. And then he noticed the shards of the Blacktooth blade at Jennifer’s feet.

“Ms. Scales,” he began, “what’s going on? We thought we heard a scream just a few—”

But Jennifer never heard the rest of the sentence. Like a dreadful alarm, a horrible thought triggered in her mind. She tried to close her ears but the voice was inside, just like at her grandfather’s cabin weeks ago.

No daughter
!
No daughter
!
No daughter
!

“Skip, he’s coming for me!” For all of this boy’s intransigence, Jennifer couldn’t help clutching his arm. She had known this moment would come for some time, of course, but there was no hiding the panic in her voice. This predator had followed a long, winding, inevitable course to her. Every incident had hit closer and closer, like a series of bullet holes approaching the center of a ripped paper target. All this time, nobody had found a way to stop him—not her grandfather, not her father, not even her mother. Now he was here. For her. What was she going to do?

Rune Whisper did not attack. He idled behind the others, never taking his eyes off of her. She dragged Skip back a few steps. Mr. Slider was still talking, but could easily see they weren’t paying attention.

“—so should I call the authorities? Ms. Scales? Mr. Wilson? Hello?”

…
no daughter
…
no daughter
…
no daughter
…

“Yes,” Jennifer agreed softly without looking at the teacher. “You should call the authorities. And then find Susan. She’ll get in touch with my dad. Tell him and my mom I never stopped thinking about them.”

“Ms. Scales, I—”

“Mr. Slider.” Jennifer saw Skip and the teacher exchange glances. “You should probably get everyone out of here.”

The geometry teacher turned his chair back and forth to look at the two of them, and the rest of his students, and the adults. Finally, the chair moved past them. “Class, let’s move on. I’m afraid I don’t have a phone with me—something about this chair seems to disagree with the reception—so perhaps one of the chaperones would be so kind as to…Mr. Stowe? Hello, Mr. Stowe?”

…
no daughter
…
no daughter
…
no daughter
…

What Jennifer saw confused her. Most of the class and adults had moved along with the teacher. Gerry and his grandfather, however, stayed between Jennifer and Rune Whisper. Two more people Jennifer couldn’t quite make out were right behind them.

“Rune Whisper went to the Stowes’ house a lot,” Skip was explaining quietly. “And to the school, and the hospital, and the building site there. I think he was a messenger or scout of sorts, running between the rest of them. But he went to their apartment the most, right in the same building as his own at Oak Valley. It was like a headquarters.”

With those words he pointed at the last two emerging figures—Mr. Cheron and his wife. Standing tall in a sharp gray suit with a dark T-shirt, Angus kept a muscled arm around Delores. Just like at the beaststalker trial, she was in flowing robes of soft green, with her face hidden behind a thick veil.

Jennifer tore her glance away from Rune long enough to focus on her. What could she make out through that veil? There was something about her…

No daughter
!
No daughter
!
NO DAUGHTER
!

The intensity behind the words shocked her. It wasn’t quite anger, she realized. The rage was there, but something deeper fueled it.

It was sorrow.

Yes, that was it. There was so much sadness behind the words, so much misery and wretchedness that Jennifer herself could not help but feel deep grief for this woman.

The words were coming from Delores Cheron! She was the source! This was Evangelos!

…
no daughter
…
no daughter
…
no daughter
…

The stench of woe filled the air. Jennifer stumbled back into the cement fixture that overlooked the street four stories below. Gritting her teeth at her foolish assumptions about her sibling, she reached for Skip’s hand to help steady herself.

“Skip…it’s not Rune…it’s her…it’s Delores Cheron!”

He squeezed her arm back as he lifted her up. “Yes. And no. It’s pretty clear to me now that your father made a mistaken assumption about Evangelos. A big one.”

Rune Whisper and the two Stowes closed in around the Cheron couple.

The full truth hit her right before he told her. She gasped.

“Evangelos isn’t exactly what you’d call an only child.”

“There are five of them!”

“Yes, five. And yet one. Best I can tell, my mother had quintuplets. Maybe more, before they died in that other dimension. Werachnids, like most spiders, often have multiple births.”

She didn’t know what else to say, not one clue. How had this happened? How had she never thought of this possibility? You have to know what you don’t know, Mr. Slider’s voice chided her. Otherwise, you can’t solve the puzzle.

Skip went on. He had figured it out, she thought with a shot of envy. “Lost and on their own in another world, the surviving children must have learned to work together. They hid together, hunted together, even thought and moved together. After a while, Delores must have taken charge, and taught her brothers to be together. And when it suited her, the one could become two, or three…or five. Apart, each child could learn something unique about the hell they lived in, maybe specialize and learn a particular skill. Together, they formed a whole greater than the sum of its parts.”

The people around the Cherons were now incredibly close, Jennifer saw—so close that it was hard to tell where one person ended and another began. In fact, Angus and Delores themselves seemed more like a single entity than a couple. She rubbed her eyes and looked again. Were there still even five people?

No, she didn’t think so. And they certainly weren’t people anymore.

Each part was a black twist of scales, wings, and legs—clearly miniature versions of what Jennifer had fought in Grandpa Crawford’s cabin. As one merged with another, the resulting beast became larger and larger.

The soul—where Delores had stood—was shuddering as Angus added his muscle. Not far away, Jennifer guessed, the elder Stowe was blending his knowledge and wisdom with Gerry Stowe’s youth and energy.

“Once she came to our world,” Skip mused, “she adapted, just like she did before. She followed trails of memories and learned to mimic people’s faces, clothes, even their accents. The people we’ve seen here tonight probably still exist somewhere else in the world. She just borrowed their images and voices as disguises.”

“So Evangelos is all of these people.”

“Evangelina, I’m guessing. Yeah, in a way she’s all those people—as many at any time as she wants to be. What attacked your grandfather could have been one of them, or two, or all five together. While I was watching Martin and Angus working at the hospital the other day, the other three parts were probably with you, scaring Susan and attacking Eddie’s mom. That was Delores’s own first real look at her father.”

“They’ve been everywhere,” Jennifer whispered. “Gerry’s been at school to keep an eye on you and me, his grandfather’s been at the hospital to watch mom, Angus has been near my father, and Rune’s been running between them all.”

“Only Delores has been hidden in the apartment,” Skip finished. “She uses her brothers to learn and adapt. But she’s the center. She drives them all. She’s amazing!”

He could not hide the admiration in his voice, but he kept a protective hold on Jennifer’s arm.

The last part, what they had known as Rune Whisper, was different from the others. Barely visible under the bright lights of the parking garage, the new form had no definable shape. Instead, it was the murky suggestion of a child of a dragon and a spider. Surely, this was the part of Evangelina that had learned to hide as prey…and then to hunt as a predator.

Just before Rune’s shadow passed into the whole and clouded the head and torso, Jennifer caught a glimpse of Evangelina in her full glory. To her amazement, it was like looking into a dark mirror. There were three horns pulling back from a crest, and a nose horn in front of cloudy eyes.

“Sister…” The word escaped her without thought.

No
!

Jennifer could make out the surprise and horror in the silent reply. Tendrils of darkness covered the head and splayed out over the pavement. The next words were calmer, but still steeped in rage and melancholy.

There is no sister. There is no daughter
…

“I can hear her, too,” Skip said with excitement. He stepped between Jennifer and Evangelina. “You know who we both are, don’t you? She’s your sister. I’m your brother. We don’t want to hurt you. We—”

NO
!

Faster than anything Jennifer had ever seen, a dark tail whipped around from behind the cloud and slammed into Skip’s head. He crumpled to the ground.

“Skip!” She caught his limp body and dragged him back a few feet. Blood seeped slowly down his neck.

No brother
!
No sister
!
No daughter
!

Just Father. Father will pay
!

“Back off!” Jennifer burst out. “Get away from us!”

The shadow advanced as Jennifer kept backing away with Skip.

No brother. No sister
.

Jennifer couldn’t even describe what she felt. Perhaps it was the same sort of senseless, crazy courage that had consumed her at Grandpa Crawford’s cabin. Maybe it was her desire to defend Skip and Eddie. Or maybe it was something deeper. Whatever it was, it commanded that she drop Skip, slip one dagger out, and throw it with all her might into the middle of the dark cloud.

She couldn’t see where it landed, but she heard the blade plunge into flesh. The resulting shriek pierced both ears and mind.

A thrill went through her. Hey, Mom, I got the distance right!

By the time Evangelina was done screaming, Jennifer had checked Skip for a steady pulse and determined he was indeed all right, if firmly unconscious. She quickly readied her second dagger.

Evangelina did not return the attack. Instead, she reached up with a claw into her dark corona, gasped with pain, tore her foe’s blade from wherever it had pierced, and tossed it back. It skimmed across the pavement, skittered through the shards of the Blacktooth blade, and slid to a stop right before Jennifer’s feet.

The next thoughts Jennifer heard were far more complex than anything this thing had offered before. There was still overwhelming sorrow and rage, yes. But there was also curiosity, and a grim sort of humor…and perhaps doubt?

Like your mother. And yet different
.

“Don’t you talk about my mother, you bitch!”

For a brief moment, she felt a door open—a sort of empathy, she was sure. Evangelina had a mother, too, didn’t she? Didn’t she understand what having one meant? Was that why she had spared Wendy Blacktooth, and Jennifer’s own mother?

Just like that, the door closed. The empathy and the doubt disappeared. Only the wrath and sorrow, and a last vestige of curiosity, remained.

I will enjoy hunting you tonight
.
What is it you beaststalkers like to say
? “Ready yourself, or ready your soul.”
Sister
.

Irony dripped from the last word. Before the thought was even complete, Evangelina had turned and vanished into shadow.

Jennifer was alone.

CHAPTER 16
Sibling Rivalry

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^
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Damn these boys anyway! It was not a charitable thought, Jennifer admitted as she pulled Eddie’s unconscious body close to Skip’s, all the while keeping an eye out for another sign of her sister. But she was dismayed neither had been exactly helpful this evening. If I survive this, I’m beating them both into body casts.